Painfully Obvious
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118953936892024096.html">This</a…; Wall Street Journal article asks: "Are MP3s and the iPod ruining pop music?"
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32 Bars of Nothing
Moises Kaufman has written <I>33 Variations</I>, a play that explores Beethoven's obsession with Diabelli's inane little waltz. Sounds worth seeing—or you could buy <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicrecordings/506dia/">this</A>.
Bring Back Personal, Individual Embarrassment
Euan Ferguson took the Tube last week. "Only three stops on the Piccadilly line between Knightsbridge and the centre of town, and I would have got there more quickly, pleasantly, and safely by crawling backwards through the linking sewers with a twitching rat in my mouth and open bleeding weals on my bare backside."
Cua Cua Ra, Cua Cua
We're shipping our November issue today. Shipping gets me all excited and nervous. I don't sit, I shake. I don't walk, I dance. I don't talk, I sing. Like Willie Colon: Cua cua ra, cua cua!
Thomas Jefferson's Wine?
Growing up in the shadow of Monticello, I was raised on tales of Jefferson's taste for wine—after all, the estate had its own vineyards, distillery, and acres of crocuses for saffron. What had us all buzzing were the acres of hemp—local heads maintained that TJ never missed a hemp harvest. <I>Right</I>.
Dogs Read Facial Expressions
Apes and wolves do not. Not news to any dog owner, although I cannot speak for ape or wolf owners.
Meet Fred Franzia
Don't recognize the name? He's the guy who brought you Two Buck Chuck's. He 's a bit of a bully and he's crude—and, as Joel Stein notes, <I>that's</I> when someone with a notebook is following him around.
Not So Fine Print
Match the side-effects with the commonly prescribed drugs. I only scored 40%—and only that high because I had taken one of them. Kind of scary.
Pitchfork Gives Music a 6.8
"'Music's first offering, an eclectic, disparate, but mostly functional compendium of influences from 5000 B.C. to present day, hints that this trend's time may not only have fully arrived, but is already on the wane,' [editor in chief Ryan] Schreiber wrote. 'If music has any chance of keeping our interest, it's going to have to move beyond the same palatable but predictable notes, meters, melodies, tonalities, atonalities, timbres, and harmonies.'"