PETE ROSE GO HOME: Ghosts and Empties

We've gone "cuckoo-crazy" in our house for the "silent" quote routine from AUSTIN POWERS SPY WHO SHAGGED ME. My "buddy" Jimmy Guterman is starting up a tribute project to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of SANDINISTA! He's launching sandinistaproject.com in the spring, and already has "major" artists donating studio time and creative efforts in that direction. I haven't listened to Sandinista in years, and I've never listened to it...ALL THE WAY THROUGH. Which is not to say I don't "think" it would make a nice sprawling mess of a tribute record. During a time when "new" releases by the Eagles and (egads) Rod Stewart punch it out in the top ten, anyone covering the Clash is at the very least pointed in the "right" direction. Oh and two tribute CD stood out for me last year: The Louvin Brothers tribute (with a drop-dead gorgeous duet from James Taylor and Alison Kraus....JAMES TAYLOR: I always said he should go country) and that Dolly Parton title.

But I'm BUMMING because only one day after bopping around the basement to Springsteen LIVE IN BARCELONA with my gleeful my three-year-old, our DVD player (Panasonic RV22) has died. So until we get some more clams, I'm gonna watch DVDs and listen to CDs through my laptop and call it "luxury." If anyone out there knows of a decent DVD/DVD-A/SACD unit for under $150, I'll barter for half a dozen piano lessons.

THERE'LL ALWAYS BE A NEW YORKER: Katha Pollitt's "Webstalker" (not online) is the kind of lifestyle piece Shawn would NEVER have run in a zillion years, and I think it would be difficult to argue that the magazine is better because such pieces are now routine. Shawn knew such characters, even lived such a life, was certifiably beyond neurotic about drawing his line between the two. But the subtext of Pollitt's piece is: "Revenge is sweet cause I get to unmask you in the prestigious pages of the most lofty publication in the world, a mag you will NEVER write for!" But like the Stones's "Beast of Burden," it's WAY more revealing than it's intended to be, and not nearly as funny as Nora Ephron's classic howler, HEARTBURN (book not film). And I LIKE Katha Pollitt.

IBID: Sometimes you hear the quote of the day in unusual places, sometimes the quote's banal but the source is the punch line. Guterman quotes from "Spongebob," but that's SO LAST MONTH in our house. This entry's QUOTE OF THE WEEK comes from ED, EDD AND EDDY (Nick), and I don't know who said it, it just wafted over the tube to my ears while I was working: "No more free-range soybeans before bed for me..." Rose was DEFINITELY "in the running"...