I'm listening to Margot & the Nuclear So and So's now. They sing songs about vampires and kittens, mice and clowns. You might like them. Their story is one of poverty and despair and desolation thwarted by sudden friendship, a burst of creativity, and life on the road. It sounds familiar, but then not. They make music with trumpets and cellos and keys.

English comedy doesn't work in German—and that's no joke. Blame it on a "geographical accident."

The real horror of <I>The Da Vinci Code</I>? It's Tom Hanks' hair.

<I>Moistworks</I> has a great post on the "lost to history" NYC bebop wars, which have left a historical record by spilling over to the Caribbean and migrating to London, where&mdash;wait for it&mdash;"they were fought by proxy, in the streets of Notting Hill, by a host of Trinidadian stick-fighters and calypsonians."

Just what I need&mdash;another daily stop on my Internet rounds. Zimmer, an alarmingly prolific, vastly entertaining science writer, has a knack for explaining complex ideas simply enough for <I>me</I> to grasp. Check out his coverage of the <I>Homo floresiensis </I> (Hobbit Man) brouhaha.

I remember when <I>The Virginia Quarterly Review</I> was the perfect panacea for insomnia, but something has happened to that august publication: It woke up! These days, it has become a must-read, from Art Spiegelman's latest multi-chapter opus to well-written articles such as this one on Winsor McCay's <I>Little Nemo in Slumberland</I>.