Jumping right into it...

There's an excellent Greg Dulli interview over here at Synthesis, which contains this teaser about the next Twilight Singers record...

... Dulli is currently returning to a more conceptual style with the next album. �I�m working on the next Twilight record right now and [the songs] all tie together, even to the point of borrowing lyrics from previous songs.� He enthuses that the tunes are feeding into each other at an earlier stage of development than any Whigs albums ever did, so the result should be an even more conceptually tight album."

Ok, that's got me almost giddy with anticipation.


Great Sleepyhead-related post over at Lacunae yesterday.


About this whole "Not One Damn Dime Day" spending-freeze that's supposed to take place on the day of the inauguration? Well, Micki conveniently crystalizes my own thoughts on the matter over here. That's not cynicism, Micki, that's reality. Something our side probably needs to get a little more familiar with. Snopes shares their thoughts as well.


This abandoned escort service internal messageboard from 1998 is a fascinating read. Yet another reason to love the internet. Start from the bottom. Oh, Tabatha, what's with all the 'disappearing'? (via metafilter)


The end-of-year accolades continue to come down upon the creative pair of Brian Wood & Becky Cloonan, the duo behind AiT/Planet Lar's DEMO. This time it's Becky's turn, as Ninth Art names her Talent Most Worthy of Wider Recognition. Yup, that's about right.


See Your Video: It's a Replacements video goldmine. Hold My Life directs us to the Twin/Tone site, where they've posted two sets of reeeaally early live 'Mats video clips. Hot dayum.


The sad assimilation and destruction of TechTV by the behemoth that is Comcast/G4 is offically complete, as they accounce that they are officially dropping the 'TechTV' part of the ever-awkward G4TechTV name that came out of their 'blending' last fall. Now they're just back to G4, and officially back to full-time suckage. (ok, except when Sarah's co-hosting The Screen Savers. She still rocks.)

There's some promising news to go along with that, though. Now that still-standing TechTV-geek Kevin Rose has been relatively muzzled on the retooled and de-fanged version of TSS (which has all-but removed it's solid tech content and replaced it with usually-weak entertainment bits), he's been motivated to resume production on his web-only tech show The Broken, as well as start up a new, yet-unnamed show. Good news.

Of course, G4 won't let Kevin borrow their video equipment on weekends, like the much-friendlier TechTV would, so he's forced to raise funds to buy his own camera, mics, and lighting gear. So check out the existing editions of The Broken, and if you dig it, pick up a t-shirt to help 'em out. Or, hell, just skip the shirt and give 'em paypal dollars. They deserve it.


For those of you that missed Conan O'Brien's thoughts on Why the Red Sox Finally Won the World Series (as I did, thanks to the craziness around Christmas), here's the link. So good.


Sasha Baron Cohen is at it again, causing a near-riot at a rodeo as his character, Borat. I cannot wait to see this segment when it airs on HBO's Da Ali G Show.

I don't think I have ever laughed as hard as when that Spring Break wrestling-boy jumped down into frame for Bruno in last season's final episode, "Realness". My god. Makes me laugh just picturing it.

"Near-Riot At The Rodeo" deserves to be an album title, does it not?


I wholeheartedly endorse the new beta release of Microsoft's AntiSpyware utility. However, don't let it stop you from using Ad-Aware and SpyBot alongside of it. Each one still finds nasties that the other two can't. So help me, if Micro$oft ends up charging for theirs when it comes out of beta... making us pay to fix vulnerabilities that they themselves let happen... well, yeah, I'll probably just bitch about it here. And keep on using the free ones.


Head over here for a live recording of Death Cab for Cutie doing the Stone Roses' I Wanna Be Adored. (courtesy bedroom dancing. hey, maybe this post can help them get a higher hype ranking? I do what I can.)


According to Billboard, Mary Timony's next album has a title, a label, and a release date. Ok, a release month. It's called Ex-Hex, out on Lookout! Records, and in mid-April. Glad to hear it. (courtesy chromewaves)


So does anyone else think that Alias has officially become a parody of itself? That opening scene last night? Ridiculous. It was goofy enough back when Dixon posed as a club DJ, and now they've just gone too far. Methinks they didn't jump the shark, but the shark may have swallowed 'em, chewed 'em up a bit, and spit 'em back out. Y'know, I've never found Jennifer Garner all that attractive, and now that someone has pointed out that Syd is looking more and more like a drag queen, I can't get that outta my head.


I declare myself officially healthy. My hard-fought battle with the dreaded influenza is over, and I'm back in the game. I think it officially left my body last night when I watched the end of NESN's rebroadcast of Game Six from the 1975 Red Sox vs. Reds World Series, as Fisk hit Fenway's foul pole and sent us to Game Seven. Been waiting to see more than just a clip of that moment for a looooong time.

Supposed to get near 60 degrees in Boston today. Now there's a mid-winter gift right there.


EDIT TO ADD: Looks like the 4AD reunion speculation was Dead Can Dance after all, which had already been confirmed a few months back... ah well...