Does anybody remember this guy's solo career? I've been listening to the first two Plant solo LPs, and you know what? They're pretty damn good! I remember half the songs from youth, and the rest are kind of a surprise. Some of the output sounds like In Through the Out Door with a really average band, but the other half sounds like the Plant who said "Kashmir" was his favorite Zep song, and Presence his favorite album. Dollar bins rule.

If I Sang Karaoke in NY, I Can't Remember and it Didn't Happen...

New Dexter isn't a novel but this thing. Last time someone did this it was William Kennedy, and I slapped myself in the head after buying his collected newspaper writings, as no one collects newspaper articles, because newspapers are good for lining birdcages, wrapping fish, and driving mad cunt extraordinaire Clint Reilly batty. I'll wait for the remainder table.

Taking my time with Women in Love, and gonna do The Rainbow after that, and then write a 40,000 word essay on why those are the only two novels one needs in life. I'm taking my time because half.com is delivering books at a nice pace, and reading some nonfiction like Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic is kinda fun. I'm gonna order all books by one author per month from half and let the trickle trickle.

And the poetry, my god there is the poetry. Robert Frost is a seriously talented motherfucker who might become my second favorite modern guy after Eliot. I tried to be cool and get into Wallace Stevens but he left me flat 10 years ago, and no one who cares about American letters can slag Stevens, but I'm going to until I have the time to go round again.

Anyone heard the new Stooges record yet? Anyone laughing at the new Stooges record yet?

I woke up at 3:21 this morning, and I was reading The Brothers Karamazov by 3:43. At 4:21 the SF Chronicle arrived, and I was done reading it at 4:42. My coffee was ready at 4:48, and I hit page 400 at 5:03. Nicole and Amy came downstairs at 5:59, and they left for the hospital at 6:12. The boys arrived downstairs a minute later. The waffles popped at 6:18, and I poured the milk. The baby sitter arrived three minutes early at 6:27, and I left for school at 6:37. All times are Pacific Standard. I feel a cold sore coming on.

I'm tired of pictures. I've always prefered words, but I ain't got no time no more. Sometimes I wonder if the "the grass is always greener" is the truest of all cliches. Tonight, that sounds right.

Most folks reduce the stereotypical midlife crisis to pathetic and futile attempts at regaining youth. I see it as awakening from habitual slumber and remembering to live, without changing your hair.

The December frost killed my garden. Fuck the December frost.

Here's to digging through dollar bins in strange attics. Fucking afternoon bliss.

I'm desperately trying to stay awake until 9, but I'm failing. This is the result.

Listen to Entombed. Preferably Uprising. And for the love of God, turn that folkie shit off.

Teel collapse.

No Giant hope.

Monte hope, but he goes alone.

The Black Lips, with a producer, could be the new Rolling Stones. But there are no more Rolling Stones, so the Black Lips are just the Black Lips, and that's just fine.

Gavin's news cycle- 4 days. Even Matier got bored. Even Matier.

Chron desperately looking for steroids up Danielle Steel's botoxed writing wrist. They'll settle for amphetamines up that Komodo Dragon's jaw. Heard he died of AIDS...

Did Dmitri kill Daddy K.? I can't remember.

The grass is always greener.

Haas Report: Eat at the Wood House Tavern, former home to Grasshopper on College Ave. Rachel and I ate Rabbit, Duck, Pork Shoulder, 4 stinky cheeses, rigatoni, and washed it down with 7&7s and champagne. It's a great place for a night out. Also get the Wilco Record Summerteeth. It's a lovely record about hating your mate. That's a contradiction, but it's worth a lesson.

RIP Anna Nicole Smith...

Actress Kate Winslet hopes to star alongside Matt Damon in a film adaptation of Yates's 1961 novel, "Revolutionary Road," next year.

Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It's no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boiled down to is one moment's knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt. - Lester Bangs

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