WORDS ESCAPE ME A reader sent this link from Zwecker's People, via CBS2Chicago.com: "Hard-working actor and Glenbrook North alumnus Jeff Cahill will be featured on next Sunday's "Deadwood" series on HBO -- though Jeff's mom and dad, Josie and Ed Cahill (and Josie's loyal customers at the George … [Read more...]

WEST WING They're not gonna hand over the reigns of this franchise to Hawkeye... which means we'll get a Hispanic President and TERI POLO AS FIRST LADY. DEADWOOD Would you say it takes BALLS? to have Bard Dourif shove a poker up Swearengine's johnson not once (for season premiere) but TWICE (for … [Read more...]

THREE INSANELY GREAT MUSIC SITES: Chromewaves , with weekly covers, copy, right?, a very savvy survey of ongoing mashups, covers and remix paraphanalia, and Brat Productions, "obligatory web clutter" (check out "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Baby You're A Rich Man"). … [Read more...]

We were imprressed with Garret Dillahunt when he played Jack MacCall, the dazed dumbfuck who up and shoots Wild Bill. Last week he showed up on ER as Sam's Ex Steve Curits (they pulled a Bewitched switcheroo), another dazed df. Suddenly he's back as dapper perv Francis Wolcott, and goner Crop Ear as … [Read more...]

HOW COME the NYTimes puts out such a good Circuits section but still runs vapid editorials like this... ESPECIALLY WHEN there are ALREADY intriguing alternatives to sending lawyers' kids to college for all eternity like this...? Nina Totenberg did a much better job explaining the opposing … [Read more...]

I'm behind on this, but it's worth noting: Springsteen inducts U2 into the Hall of Fame: Oh, my God! They sold out! Now...what I know about the iPod is this: It is a device that plays music. Of course their new song sounded great, my guys are doing great, but methinks I hear the footsteps of my old … [Read more...]

CLASSICAL Brahms Viola Sonatas, Kashkashian and Levin (ECM 1997) Leon Fleisher, Two Hands (Vanguard 2004) Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, Lazar Berman, Abbado, LSO (Columbia, 1976) Brahms Second Piano Concerto, Rudolf Serkin, Szell CSO (Sony) Mahler Second Symphony, Claudio Abbado, Chicago (DG) … [Read more...]

I agree that there's a far "cooler" sensibility alive in today's pianists, but the "newness" is a stretch (Pollini epitomized cool a generation ago), and the influence of rock is a wayward swipe: "But there is something more going on now. The new coolness seems generational: a contemporary, … [Read more...]

Among the new titles in Continuum's 33 1/3 series, Erik Davis's treatment of Led Zep's ZOSO walks the line Xgau called "genius dumb": Of all the guitar heroes from the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix took this transformative potential the furthest, both onsteage and in his obsessive and almost extraterrestrial … [Read more...]

I Can See For Miles and Miles [RA] Pete Townshend on Petra Haden in today's Boston Globe: "I was a little embarrassed to realize I was enjoying my own music so much, for in a way it was like hearing it for the first time," Townshend said in a lengthy e-mail interview. ''What Petra does with her … [Read more...]

from Billboard's new blog, PostPlay: The RIAA's False Mathematics Here's another great post by Barry Rotholtz on The Big Picture. He takes a look at the paid subscription models like Rhapsody and Napster-To-Go and shows that the actual P2P losses to the industry are much much smaller than the … [Read more...]

from Artifice Eternity: You know your surround sound system is good when the semi-psychotic, spouse-abusing British actor/writer who lives upstairs confronts you in the hallway and screams that you are "A PATHETIC LITTLE MAN!" with "ABOMINABLE TASTE IN MUSIC!" And I didn't even have it turned up … [Read more...]

Fortune salutes Women Don't Ask in its 75 Most Smartest Books list: Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever (2003). The first book to adequately explain the dramatic differences in how men and women negotiate and why women so often fail to ask for what … [Read more...]

Stephen J. Ducat on W.'s Texan manhood in Buzzflash: "I think a complex combination of factors determines this. Not all cultures and all historical periods evidence this kind of femiphobia. But we’re seeing a number of factors, not the least of which is a kind of backlash against feminism and the … [Read more...]

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: from SKL, on Mel Harris's WEST WING appearance: "Nobody in the U.S. Senate has hair like that..." DEPT. OF EX-SQUEEZE ME? I don't know when defending Albert Goldman became critical "chic," but it doesn't wash. His pop journalism is not "criminally underrated," it's idiotic on any … [Read more...]