ARE ALL THOSE YOUR GUITARS? Mountain Goats epic posting, part three in a series of I do what I want! (No, seriously, I’ll try to finish up tonight.) The Sunset Tree: I am so easy for those songs where some indie-rock guitar singer-songwriter dresses up his voice like he’s some kind of sexy gumshoe. (“Dilaudid,” “The Lion’s Teeth.”) Also, “Up the Wolves” made me choke up this time. This is a really heartfelt album, trying hard to forgive a lot... Read more

“WHY BLACK MEN ARE WEARING PRISON JUMPSUITS IN CHINATOWN“: The Museum of Crime & Punishment consistently has the most trivializing, jokey-worship-of-a-police-state advertising I’ve ever seen, so this is really not surprising. I suppose I’ve never seen them use a prison-rape joke so… that’s something! But really, when a tacky tourist sinkhole like the Spy Museum outclasses you on a regular basis, you should rethink your choices. Link via Racialicious. Read more

“HOTEL CALIFORNIA”: A persistent and damaging national-security myth is that in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks a dispute developed between the FBI and the CIA over the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. The intelligence agency was uniformly in favor, or so the story went, and the FBI was strongly opposed. What should have been a simple question about efficacy (what is the fastest and best way to gain reliable information from terrorists?) was transformed into a highly... Read more

IF MY HEART WERE A HOUSE YOU’D BE FROM A BROKEN HOME BY NOW: The Mountain Goats, redux. I’ll catch up with myself in the next post. (Really!) All Hail West Texas: Yes, I know I already talked about this disc. I have a lot of feelings, okay? This is an album about the American experience as, above all else, transience. Post-office boxes in towns we don’t live in anymore. I wonder how much this contributes to our obsession with... Read more

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: MONSTER MASH! …Not quite, but still: a couple demi-successes. Not garlic bread: First I did my standard roasting-garlic method. Everyone has one. Most involve roasting an entire head after getting the papery casing off but not the thicker casing around each individual clove. I find that approach messy and fiddly, plus it makes way too much for a single squid. Instead, I set the oven to 375 (as always, you should play around with times and temperatures before... Read more

“WELL IT CERTAINLY ISN’T OUR MISTAKE.” Kindertrauma’s “Stream Warriors” series continues to be a fantastic guide to overlooked horror/suspense gems, now available on Netflix Instant Viewing. Last night’s movie was 1969’s Games, a creepy, twisty little pleasure-cruise of a movie. The premise: A plush New York couple live in the world’s most awesome apartment, filled with pinball machines based on car accidents (“You’re Dead, Man!”); pop art about infidelity; spirally things; crazy porcelain-and-gilt masks, and similar rich and strange flotsam.... Read more

THOMAS TALLIS FLASH MOB IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM! Via Wesley Hill. A nice description is here. update: Unsurprisingly, the YouTube video doesn’t have great sound quality. If you’d like to hear some really sublime music, though, check out the Tallis Scholars. Read more

“The Slav is never subject, not even to himself.” and “Queen Natalija was chaster than snow, she was as chaste as sleet.”–both via TKB and from Rebecca West, Black Lamb, Grey Falcon Read more

UK EUCHARISTIC FLASH MOB! Your Corpus Christi link, not quite too late. The clapping is weird but watching the people come and kneel is pretty amazing. Read more

I SWEAR I’M NOT ALWAYS GROSS AND BITTER. Sometimes I also listen to music? The Mountain Goats, All Hail West Texas. It’s kind of amazing how catchy he already is. I get these songs stuck in my head all the time now. Everybody needs to know “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” because we’ve all known those guys (…I hope?) and also I’ll say that the one time I really did fly in to DFW they really did... Read more