Ric Ocasek's sunglasses

Wheels they turn and gears they grind. Via Boing Boing

Chicago Underground Trio, Chronicle
Alvin Curran, Animal Behavior
Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest
Cardiacs, various tracks
The Cars, The Cars
Camper Van Beethoven, Key Lime Pie

Media announcements: I review Nick Flynn's latest memoir The Ticking is the Bomb and the iPhone app version of Stephen Elliott's The Adderall Diaries at outsideleft.com.

There are no situations in which a song from the Cars' first album doesn't sound brilliant compared to whatever preceded it.


From 1978, y'all. We are still trying to catch up with  Ric Ocasek's sunglasses.

Some of this playlist was from last night, bleeding into today. Crunch time. It's kind of exciting to be involved in but boring as hell to talk about. I had to look up traipses just now, for spelling and meaning. I always have a fear that a word I like to use in things means the exact opposite of what I think it does. I don't know what else traipses could mean, traipsing even kinda makes the sound "traipses" when you traipse, but then I was wrong about erstwhile for ages.

Every time I put up one of those media announcements, I'm conflicted about how to reference a website, even though I should have it down pat by now, considering this is one. Do you say an article is at whatever.com or in it? For magazines, it's always in them, but a website is more of a place, cognitively speaking, than a bound thing, though a place in real life has intrinsic boundaries; it has to or else everywhere is one big place. I usually say up at or up in because that's how I got it there, by uploading it, or sending it to someone else to upload it, but really, who cares how it got there besides the author and the editors? It's just there to everyone else.


Thanks, Steven, for pointing me to Cardiacs.


Camper van Beethoven, "Sweethearts." This is where I got the caption for the gear video. It took me a while to remember were it was from.