Here's a selection of Malkmus/Jicks videos including a medley of R.E.M. covers

Stephen Malkmus plays scrabble

Top 5 Tips
1. "Save your X and Zs so you get at least 70 or 80 points when you use them."
2. "Don't waste your wildcards (blanks) because they're really precious."
3. "I don't switch letters very often. I think it's probably smarter to do that more than I do. Don't be afraid to change your tiles."
4. "Learn your two letter words."
5. "Keep yourself up to date with the new words that are added to the Scrabble rulebook."

Paper Cuts blog on Ray Davies

Here's the setlists for this year's Yo La Tengo WFMU cover-a-thon

And here's video of YLT playing "The Passenger" with improvised Jack Nicholson referencing lyrics

Controversy at the Horn Book blog about characterizations of adults who find reading fulfillment solely in children's books

Neil Gaiman posted Dave McKean's neat cover sketches for the upcoming Graveyard Book

back on the chaingang

Last night we saw Word Wars, a documentary about Scrabble. It made me want to get good at Scrabble, even if the reward isn't so good. Also, all the good scrabble players are fairly messed up.

Official movie site
IMDB site

Links:
Dinosaur Jr is playing some expensive shows this summer.

all about Jandek

some stuff about Chris Ware

these bands so far at the Siren thing:
Spoon, Mates of State, Brendan Benson, VHS or Beta, Dungen, Q and Not U, The Dears

Oh, I also saw the Star Wars movie a while ago. It made me sleepy in parts but was not as silly as episode 1. Episode 2 I didn't see, so maybe I missed some things. Space seemed to be a lot more high tech in this one than in the older (but later) Star Wars movies.

Last weekend I went to a wedding. it was at this museum. Mr. and Mrs. Backwardscity formalized it. It was nice, as weddings should be. The Wilmington airport is very expensive. $7 for a bottle of water, bottle of soda, gum and chips? I think that's more than laguardia or JFK. Who would have predicted that? Also while in NC: caught an episode of Bibleman, starring the buddy guy from Charles in Charge. I guess the daily show doesn't need to make this stuff up.

The Bibleman website also links to a site that proudly brags to be " the only national organization fighting to repeal the Brady instant "registration" check, and is alone in pushing truly constitutional CCW legislation that allows law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm without a permit." wow. There is also acually a villain named "Wacky Protester" I am glad to be back home.

Oh and another Franzen piece in the New Yorker...he must have some incriminating evidence to hold over the editors' heads...

Chicago Day 3

On Day 3 I got to go to the original location of pizzeria uno. Across the street is pizzeria due. I guess with number 3 they just went back to calling them all pizzeria
uno. they made us order at the door because apparently it takes an hour to make a real pizzeria uno pizza but it was pretty good.

I also went to the Art Institute and saw lots of Joseph Cornell boxes, which i like.
And I saw another art museum, which had some pictures that I liked but none of them were available on postcards. I had a hard time finding postcards that I liked in Chicago.

I also went to a hipster record store and ate at a veg
restaurant.

The day ended with a nice game of scrabble.