kathyp

Songbook was okay. I have weird Nick Hornby issues (not unlike my weird Dave Eggers issues. Something about those "perfectly groomed for my generation" writers is a huge turn-off). Generally, I like his non-fiction: essays and whatnot, but I haven't read a novel of his that didn't cause my head to drop. I'm not being sarcastic, really, I fell asleep reading About a Boy.

I had a pimped-out nineties computer until...last year.

More than...oh, say five...of those albums on that album covers quiz someone posted a few months ago. (Unless you were a thirteen-year-old boy in 1978.)

Honestly, I only picked it up because the title is one of my favorite Robyn Hitchcock songs. It's okay so far, but I've read about twenty pages.

Great pop album. One of the first ones I wrote about on my old site. I don't think it's ever been released on cd, but a friend of mine was nice enough to convert it for me.

Joke goes here. No really, I have absolutely nothing to add other than Brit's going batshit crazy at least took some ait time away from the three-ring circus that is Anna-Nicole Smith's death. (P.S. I had the mother of all tangles in my very long hair this morning and for about three seconds was tempted to take a whack at it with a pair of scissors.)

When I submitted a piece of (crap) fiction, it correctly identified me as female. Anything else I've submitted was plucked from my online existence, so apparently I grow a penis in cyberspace.

clicky I tried it with a blog post, and it told me I'm male.

I don't know how you feel about books on tape, but I listened to Salman Rushdie reading Fury recently, and hearing his words spoken in his own resonant, hypnotic voice is something to experience.

I forgot a big one: Paul Weller.

On voice alone (which leaves out a lot of my favorites): John Doe Freddy Mercury Mark Kozelek Joey Ramone (who has a greater range than you'd think) Brian Ferry as much as I'm loath to admit it, Robert Plant (Sorry Zep fans, I'm not one of you. He does have a set of pipes, though.) Lisa Kekaula (Bell Rays)

You could do an entire page just on parodies of Whipped Cream and Other Delights. (Someone probably has already, I'm too lazy to look it up right now.)

The Letting Go peaked at #180 on the Billboard 200. (Says All Music.) To scrape the bottom of the chart you only have to sell, what, 2000 albums? That record came out in September, and unless it's still clinging to the nether regions of the chart, I can't see it selling 500,000.

Does Little Hits still exist?

This Book Will Save Your Life is definitely not her best. Saftety of Objects is a book of short stories -- she has a few more whose titles I'm blanking out on right now. It was made into a movie a few years back, where they tried to tie all the stories together, and it just ended up being vaguely confusing and disjointed, somehow. End of Alice is creepy, like American Psycho creepy.

The first test is biased toward christians and golfers. You mind if I put the link up on my site? I'll make sure to say I found it here.

She does a great cover of Nick Drake's "Which Will." Lots of Lucinda love here.

Congrats?

I didn't know he had any others. I'll definitely check them out, though.

"Nothing Else Matters" - Metallica.

I'm almost finished with Jim Knipfel's Slackjaw. In his twenties, he learned he had retinitis pigmentosa, but it's totally not "sick-lit."

One of my favorite books of last year.

I was in a record store a while back and I overheard the clerk say something like, "Well, I don't worship at the altar of Chris Bell..." Not that's of any significance other than I've never hear anyone namecheck Chris Bell, not even an uber-cool record store guy. (I did have another uber-cool record store guy half-serenade me with "I Am In Love With a Girl," though.)

I liked Ice-T's Rap School better. I'm a connoisseur of VH1's crap progamming, but I've only seen a few episodes of The White Rapper Show and none of I Love New York. At least it's crap that knows it's crap and doesn't try to be anything more. (A la all the E! specials about the cultural significance of MTV's The Real World et al.) It's metacrap.