(Like the title, longtime readers?)
Hot on the heels of his new comic, Jim Dougan has a new blog! (Or LiveJournal. Whatever.) Jim is one of my bestest Internet friends, and also one of the few I’ve met in person, much to my delight. I’m glad he’s blogging.
Speaking of Internet friends, Alan David Doane has posted his version of the Caesar’s Bath meme. Gee, when you see that two things he doesn’t really see the fuss about are music and comedy, it makes the arctic shit-knife a little easier to understand, no? 🙂 Ha ha, I kid because I love.
And hey, Joe Rybandt did it too! Folks, it’s not too late to get on this bandwagon.
It is good to see that Phoebe Gloeckner is blogging a lot again.
Yesterday my coworker Justin and I were discussing this article about the continuing decline of rock radio, and in particular, this quote:
Those within the business cite poor quality music with the sharp decrease in rock listenership and ratings figures.
It is to laugh, we both thought, so we did. After all, if rock radio is dead it’s a suicide, without question: The relentless uniformity of the “format” and its aversion to playing all but the surest-things in terms of new music has made it almost entirely worthless. (Oh, how I pine for the days of freeform.) My friend and I both chuckled because, of course, there’s plenty of great rock music out there–you just wouldn’t know it from listening to your FM dial. Infinity Broadcasting, heal thyself, in other words. But then I got to thinking: Would it really make a difference? K-ROCK could have switched from its usual diet of mook-rock to nonstop LCD Soundsystem and Death Cab for Cutie and freaking Azure Ray ’round the clock, and my guess is its ratings would have gotten even lower. Sometimes I wonder if the awful stuff really does choke out the good stuff–if it isn’t just that the good stuff is thought of as such by too few people for it to be viable. And sometimes I think that it might be good to keep this in mind when discussing similar issues in other media.
Aside: I’ve now gotten several recommendations for good radio stations listentable over the Internet thanks to this post on the dearth of good music video shows. So maybe there’s some hope.
As it turns out, Citizen X is an excellent film.
Recommended.
Finally, one of my favorite writers on horror, Sam Costello, has good things to say about The Outbreak. Perhaps you will too?