Math rock

I. Via Three Percent: Books as art? Artists' books? Wait till I put my eyeballs back in my head.



II. OK people, this is what blogging's all about—part II! All journalists worth their salt—salts?!—know how to slap together a hot lead...or as I spell it, lede!...but what about a great closing line? The Light Reader and I went back and forth on this last week...Today's Times magazine has a great one by Virginia Heffernan! She uses exclamation points a lot!

III. Ask and ye shall receive! The Dizzies Music Supplement wondered what bands have written songs with their names as titles...and Dizzyheads chimed in. Douglas and Scott each had a triple play of sorts, the former with Talk Talk's "Talk Talk" on their platter Talk Talk (sing it with me: "All you do is talk talk...talk talk, talk talk...all you do is talk talk!"), and the latter with three variants of "Body Count" on Body Count's Body Count.

IV. Ask and ye shall receive, part II: I mentioned how a Sarah Johns song reminded me of New-York Ghost theme-composer John's early work...and he has kindly re-recorded one of the songs I was reminded of, "Every One of My Tears." (Check it out on Team Knucklehead's MySpace page.) It's fierce! And the bridge is as loopy and grand as I remembered:

Take all the tears I cried
Add them up and then divide
By all the times you lied
And you'd still have less than one...

Is this what the kids call "math rock"?

V. Via Jane:

They were two of the distinctive American voices, born 97 miles apart as the catbird flies. Red Barber and Mel Allen spoke the language of baseball in Southern cadences to Northern ears. ... “Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule,” Barber blurted when Cookie Lavagetto broke up Bill Bevens’s no-hitter and won a 1947 World Series game with two outs in the ninth. —NYT