"...I thought one of the rewards of becoming rich was not having to Warholinate your art..." I saw some of this, but checking the blogs, here's my favorite report so far: "White trash cred expires after the first award, Hils...." Where are the jokes about Sydney Lumet's daughters? Props to RW for walking on with his mouth taped, then doing some of the racy jokes anyway, coming off like a once-was all the same. … [Read more...]

To pay tribute to Johnny Carson, Rolling Stone reruns its 1979 interview by Timothy White. How's that for lame? Me, I come out somewhere inbetween Kenneth Tynan's New Yorker profile and Harry Shearer's Credibility Gap food fight. Which is to say, Thomson has the last word. And here's my favorite link on you-know-who. … [Read more...]

from the GRAND POOBAH OF THE DISMISSIVE FOOTNOTE, I give you Luc Sante on Dylan: "Chronicles works so well in part because in writing it Dylan apparently found a formal model to adhere to or violate at will, and if he did not have in mind any specific nineteenth-century account of callowness and ambition, maybe he conjured up a cumulative memory of dusty volumes found on friends' bookshelves in Greenwich Village or in the basement of the bookshop in Dinkytown he worked in as a student. He also found an outlet for his inclination to counter his … [Read more...]

Hooked up my new Airport Express downstairs, put it through the old Sony receiver and KLH bookshelfs I just had refurbished and it sounds nice and warm and cushioned. The drawback to AX is: it will broadcast only to your computer or to the remote location, not both. There will probably be a hack for this soon enough. MY GRAMMY WISECRACK: Will somebody please, PUHL--eeeze, put a sock in Bono's mouth? PREDICTION: i-Podding is NOT the next big thing. … [Read more...]

Eat your heart out, Bill Flanagan. ALWAYS GOOD FOR A QUOTE: George Michael, in today's NYTimes: George Michael says pop music is dead. Speaking yesterday at the Berlin International Film Festival, where he presented his autobiographical film "George Michael: A Different Story," he said, "I think my own genre is dead," The Associated Press reported. Mr. Michael, 41, said he wanted to "try to move my career into a different form. I don't know what that's going to be yet." Too bad Georgie had to compete with today's Greenspan quote: The Fed chief … [Read more...]

We take no satisfaction in intersecting the Dean's list with Youssou N'Dour and Courtney Love, but how could I totally space out SMILE? Just put him up top. The Langford is on my wish list, way behind there, and I'll have to check out Todd Snyder. BIG CLICKS in the order that I checked off the complete ballots page: Rob Sheffield (Hold Steady totally rocks... Rob you're gonna LOVE Reigning Sounds...) Greil Marcus (made me pull out PJ again, and swoon) Ann Powers Milo Miles [way ahead of us as usual, the lone critic voting for J.U.F.'s Gogol … [Read more...]

UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEARFrom John Leland in the NYT: "If old songs create more profits than new ones, in a business that claims to sell newness as hipness, then the business is at odds with itself..." … [Read more...]

Nick Tosches on how "...glibberish kills": "Think about it. If a great writer's words are deemed to be worth nothing between the covers of a book, why should they be deemed to be of value on the back of a book?" "When writers and would-be writers asked him to read and comment on their work, William Faulkner used to tell them that he only read the bible—a lie finer by far than those of which blurbs are made..." IN THE CLEAR (Nettwerk America, March 1st) The Ivy advance arrived, and it's a hummer. Honey disconnect the phone. PRINT … [Read more...]

See this entry, below: TR: What WAS the original context of connecting these pieces, silly boy? MR: DISSONANCE. i.e. heaven on earth MORE ON THAT PESKY WHITE HOUSE SCANDAL: So let us get this straight: The top Democrat in the Senate loses a race where the GOP sets up a phony blog that passes along news reports from a pseudo media organization, written by a reporter given White House credentials under a fake name. (also: BEST TAG LINE: "Like Kryptonite to Stupid...") … [Read more...]

Bush committed fraud during the debates. Lindorff ran this story in Salon, but what I want to know is: why isn't this STILL a story? I can appreciate the broader factors weighing on the paper’s top editors, particularly that close to the election. But personally, I think that Nelson’s assertions did rise above the level of garden-variety speculation, mainly because of who he is. Here was a veteran government scientist, whose decades-long career revolves around interpreting imagery like features of Mars, who decided to say very publicly … [Read more...]