I thought I'd really begin where I always begin: with my band's first album. As I've said before, I know this thing better than I know most anything else. From the creation of a song like "50 Bullets" &#151; sitting on my bed and turning a simple four-note riff into a complicated and violent four-minute explosion &#151; to the recording process, marred by uncomfortable, late-night drives from Clifton to New Brunswick where <a href="http://www.versioncity.com/">Jeff Baker</a> fooled around with tape reels and watched lazily as we somehow came up with fourteen tracks that we could only almost perform &#151; drunk on Budweiser and stuffed on fried chicken and tired, so damn tired &#151; I know this thing. I know this amazing and ambitious and awful album better than I know most anything.

Audiophiles are lucky when it comes to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, especially when you consider the embarrassment of riches that are the Shostakovich String Quartets. If you dig LPs, there are two essential batches of complete recordings: the Borodin Quartet and the Fitzwilliam Quartet. On CD, there's the fabulous <I>live</I> edition by the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//musicrecordings/671/">Emerson Quartet</A>, rendered in superb sound by Da-Hong Seetoo.

These animated Nissin Cup-O-Noodle ads are great! Almost makes me want to buy some just to say thanks.

You simply <I>have</I> to read "The Peekaboo paradox," a fantastic piece of writing by Gene Weingarten. (It's long, so you might prefer to print it out and save it for later.) It conforms to a formula I admiringly call <I>The New Yorker</I> paradigm, in which a writer introduces you to a subject you think you don't have much interest in (in this case a children's party entertainer) and makes it fascinating. <I>Then</I> you discover that the <I>real</I> story is so much deeper and compelling than you could have ever imagined.

Parts is parts you say? They don't make 'em like these any more.