Pic: The cover is broken into roughly four quadrants. The upper left reads OLD with an orange background, and the bottom right reads 97's with a yellow background. The lower left is a black and white photo of the band, four white guys, posing a bit goofily for the camera. In the upper right quadrant is a listing of all the songs on the album. The whole cover aesthetic has the feel of something released in the 60s. Second pic: A yellow circle, sun-like, with rays of yellow and red emanating from it just on the top 180 degrees. The other 180 degrees below it is blue. In the circle, written in black, is THE KNIFE. The "I" in knife has been replaced by a red silhouette of a knife.

The Best Album of 2001 Round 1 Match #22
#52 Old 97s, SATELLITE RIDES
VS.
#77 The Knife, THE KNIFE

Go here to vote:
forms.gle/YtCRsmcNBK8T...

The two wolves

Saw a headline today “AI adoption has been faster than personal computers or the internet” no shit, nobody was barging into my house unasked with a Gateway cow box in 1998 to install a computer I hadn’t asked for

LAWYERS: is there a way to combat this heinous behavior by filing a lawsuit accusing the paper of fraud if they actually do it? Because I don't think you can put somebody's name on something and claim they wrote it when they didn't. Or is there maybe some other statute that could be used?

NIGHT GALLERY STORIES, RANKED by tier, then within tier * denotes blackout sketch [1-4 star rating] denotes rating given in Scott Skelton & Jim Benson's "Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour" S Silent Snow, Secret Snow (S02E05) [****] The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes (SO201) [***1/2] Camera Obscura (S02E11) [****] A Pamela's Voice (S01E05) [*1/2] A Question of Fear (SO2E06) [****] They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar (S01 E06) [****] A Fear of Spiders (S02E04) [****] Pickman's Model (S02E10) [****] Since Aunt Ada Came to Stay (S02E03) [***] The Messiah on Mott Street ( S0213) [****] B The Different Ones (SO2E14) [*1/21 Eyes (Pilot) [****] The Dead Man (SO1E01) [****] The Housekeeper (SO1E01) [**1/2] Class of '99 (SO2E02) [****] Brenda (SO2E07) [***] Big Surprise (SO2E08) [***] Keep in Touch - We'l Think of Something (S02E09) [**1/2] Tell David….. (SO2E14) [**1/2] The House (SO1E03) [***1/2] Marmalade Wine (S02E04) [***1/2] The Painted Mirror (S02E13) [***] Hell's Bells (SO2E08) [***] The Tune in Dan's Café (S02E15) [***] The Devil is Not Mocked (SO2E06) [***1/2]

C The Little Black Bag (S01E02) [****] The Cemetery (Pilot) [****] Escape Route (Pilot) [****] Clean Kills and Other Trophies (S0104) [***] Cool Air (S02E11) [****] Green Fingers (S02E15) [****] The Dark Boy (SO2E09) [***1/2] Midnight Never Ends (S02E07) [**1/2] The Academy (SO2E04) [***1/2] The Diary (S02E08) [**1/2] A Death in the Family (S02E02) [***1/2] The Doll (S01E05) [****] *Phantom of What Opera? (S02E01) [**] Logoda's Heads (S02E14) [**] The Funeral (SO2E15) [**] The Dear Departed (S02E10) [**] *A Midnight Visit to the Neighborhood Blood Bank (S02E08) [*] *An Act of Chivalry (S02E10) [*] D Room With a View (S01E02) [**1/2] The Flip-Side of Satan (S02E03) [**] The Nature of the Enemy (S0102) [*1/21 *Miss Lovecraft Sent Me (S02E01) [*] The Last Laurel (SO1E06) [**] The Hand of Borgus Weems (S02E01) [**] House - with Ghost (SO2E08) [**] *Satisfaction Guaranteed (SO2E02) [***] The Phantom Farmhouse (SO2E05) [***1/2] Certain Shadows on the Wall (S0103) [***1/2] *The Merciful (SO2E02) [**1/2] Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator (S02E08) [***1/2] Professor Peabody's Last Lecture (S02E08) [*1/21 Lone Survivor (S01E05) [**1/2] Make Me Laugh (S01E04) [**] *Junior (S02E04) [**] F *Quoth the Raven (S02E11) [*1/2] *A Matter of Semantics (S02E08) [*] *With Apologies to Mr. Hyde (S02E03) [*1/2]

About 1/2 way through NIGHT GALLERY, and here’s my rankings of the individual stories so far, from S tier to F, and then ranked within tier. I’ve also included the star ratings from the book “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour.” The authors and I have disagreements.

Valeyard Columbo out there somewhere committing the perfect murder.

That first picture is where the Order of the Silver Twilight hang out, I think

My Titsiana Booberini movie has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the title of my movie.

Best Album of 2001: (52) Old 97s – Satellite Rides vs. (77) The Knife – The Knife N: I was feeling really motivated yesterday, so I listened to this Old 97s album while making a lasagna. It was the exact correct length for making a lasagna–I started it while I was pulling everyt…

good morning @bestalbumbrackets.bsky.social voters! today’s match is between the old 97s and the knife! one of these sounds like the gin blossoms (which is good or bad depending on which one of us you agree with) and one has a moment that sounded (to me!) like a cat barfing

your mileage may vary…

In the summer of 2001, a friend knew someone who knew Rhett Miller, and we ended up on the guest list for one of his solo shows at Fez, a much-missed NYC venue that was under the Time Cafe. I didn't know Miller or the band he fronted, The Old 97's, but the price point was right and I'd never seen anything less than fun in the small basement club. When Rhett took the stage and kicked off the show, I was immediately impressed. He seemed to have it all: the look, the voice, the delivery, and the songs. One jumped out: "Question," a deceptively simple song about a marriage proposal. Two verses, a chorus, no bridge, just enough detail to create a full world in which a couple walks into a park, he pops the question, and they walk home together. That's it, but it's a complete, melodic, romantic story.

The show sent me to The Old 97's new LP, SATELLITE RIDES, and the one just before, 1999's FIGHT SONGS. The band, from Austin, TX, was three records deep into a deal with Elektra Records, which had signed them out of the Insurgent Country/No Depression/Y'allternative/Whatever scene. Both the Fez gig and the records made it pretty clear why a major had picked them up: They had a charismatic frontman with a sharp pen, a lead guitarist with a hot hand, and a snapping rhythm section that could propel the whole thing. They had solid songs that they could deliver both on record and on stage. It was a small leap to imagine them hitting big, or at least big enough. SATELLITE RIDES, which has a baker's dozen of fun tunes given a studio polish by Wally Gagel (go ahead and check, he's all over your record collection), sounds like Wilco if they'd never turned away from their AM sound, or maybe The Replacements if they'd moved to Austin and gotten their act together.

The LP revs right up with "King of All the World," a bright, high-energy track that does what the title says. Then it rolls into "Rollerskate Skinny," ostensibly about Winona Ryder--I think every Gen X alt-rock dude had to at least try to write about her at some point; it's got lots of non-specific specifics about a boy in awe, if not love, with a girl who is "gonna wake up with a ghost instead of a guy." Even better is "Buick City Complex," a short story about GM closing down a Michigan auto-manufacturing plant that finds the narrator ignoring the devastation and, instead, seeing if this woman who also lost her job wants to fool around. On paper, it sounds like a drag--the song is anything but. Like any good rock album with a pop sensibility, pretty much everything here is about boys who like girls and girls who maybe like the boys liking them. "Question" is on here, along with "Designs on You," which I nervously added to the last mix-CD I ever made for a woman I was dating. "I don't want to get you all worked up/Except secretly I do/I'd be lving if I said I didn't have designs on vou." Reader, we've been married for 20+ vears.

Maybe the songs are too literate or maybe there are too many country-ish touches (like the bottleneck licks that give some songs an extra gear or maybe it just wasn't the right time. The Old 97's didn't hit it big, and this was their last record for Elektra. Since then, they've bumped around from mid-size indie to mid-size indie, stayed on the road, and are still a going if not growing concern. (If they show up in your town, go see them play!) Maybe that's for the best, in its own way. A band like this is built to last, but a pop hit or big tour can throw that out of whack. SATELLITE RIDES is one of the highlights of a broadly solid catalog, with songs and a sound that ask you a bunch of questions that you should say yes to.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for SATELLITE RIDES, and it’s from Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social. Take it away, Brian!

TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS defeats TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS AND JACKET, 187-80-2.

Metal Council Convenes To Discuss 'Metal Hand Sign' Abuse VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER, ICELAND—In an emergency session Tuesday, members of the Supreme Metal Council strongly condemned the increasing use of the metal hand sign in lay society, claiming that its meanin...

theonion.com/metal-counci...

Really weird that this take become a locus of discussion the same day I wrote all this about Blink-182 lol
share.evernote.com/note/27c8dc9...

THE X-FILES SEASON 1 RANKED S "Deep Throat" (S01 E02) "Eve" (S01E11) A "Ice" (SO1E08) "Ghost in the Machine" (S01E07) "The Erlenmeyer Flask" (S01E24) "Squeeze" (SO1E03) "Beyond the Sea" (S01E13) "E.B.E." (S01E17) B "Lazarus" (S01E15) "Tooms" (S01E21) "Genderbender" (S01E14) "Shadows" (SO1E06) "Pilot" (S01E01) "Miracle Man" (S01E18) "Conduit" (S01E04) "Fallen Angel" (S01E10) "Darkness Falls" (SO1E20) C "Roland" (S01E23) "The Jersey Devil" (SO1E05) "Born Again" (SO1E22) "Shapes" (SO1E19) "Space" (S01E09) "Young at Heart" (SO1E16) D "Fire" (S01E12) F (none)

According to this, “Deep Throat” by a hair over “Eve.”

First pic: A pen and ink diagram of three airline seats on a beige background. Arrows point to one of the arm rests, a bar at the bottom that runs across the bottom of all the seats, and to some unidentifiable piece underneath the first chair. Second pic: On a black background, on the right side, are three circles, arranged vertically. The first one is red, and has a plane icon. The middle one is yello, and has an icon for pants. The third on the bottom is green and has an icon for a jacket.

The Best Album of 2001 Round 1 Match #21
#13 Rilo Kiley, TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS
VS.
#116 Blink-182, TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS AND JACKET

Go here to vote:
forms.gle/PiRzWDFxUikz...

famed industrial metal pioneers Ministry are advocating for better academic pay on here = this app has the juice

Best Album of 2001: (13) Rilo Kiley – Take Offs and Landings vs. (116) Blink-182 – Take Off Your Pants and Jacket N: I have to tell you, friends, last week was rough. By Friday afternoon I was asking myself if I was “sick of music.” And for a minute I thought “well yeah, I kind of am.” But what I think I’m sic…

good morning, @bestalbumbrackets.bsky.social voters! today’s match is between Rilo Kiley and Blink-182! also: am I sick of music?, genre is satisfying, and one of the best headlines I wrote when I was adding headlines to angry emails from Pitchfork readers circa 2001

I first listened to Take Off Your Pants and Jacket by Blink-182 on Saturday afternoon. I am writing this on Sunday morning after listening to the album a second time. I do not have a personal relationship with this album. I don't know much about Blink-182 or pop punk in general; I was never the target audience for this genre. I'II freely admit that some of this was snobbery- I felt that I was above this kind of sing-songy, formulaic music- but some of it was that I was already in my mid-20s when pop punk became a thing. The roots are in the early to mid 90s with the rise of Green Day, but by 2001 it seemed like the punk had been stripped away, leaving only simple tunes with mildly hard edges covered in a thin veneer of rebellion. This isn't entirely incorrect, but after listening to this album, I realize that I've misjudged Blink-182, and that pop punk is actually an excellent counter to the messages that tweens and teens- especially boys-are being fed on a regular basis. We hear a lot about the influencers who purportedly have captured the imaginations of young American men-the looksmaxers and the pick up artists, those types. Their message: that your value is in your appearance, that your partner's value is in their appearance, that there are low-value and high-value people, that you're worthless if you can't look and behave in a certain way, and that expressing your emotions is for lesser men. Everything is about having the upper hand over someone else dominance is key and vulnerability is for wimps. Never mind that at least one of these dudes looks like a sentient rectal polyp wearing sunglasses and another one looks like a Ken doll that has come to life sans personality. Kids (mostly boys) are seeing this stuff and internalizing it and adults can't stop talking about how we can bring these boys back from the brink. Enter Blink-182.

The best way to get a message across to a middle school boy is to wrap it in a dick joke or something equally juvenile. And there's some really juvenile shit on this album. Consider "Happy Holidays, You Bastard," which admittedly made me snicker because it's so crass and goofy. "It's Labor Day and my grandpa just ate seven fuckin' hot dogs / And he shit, shit, shit his pants / He's always fucking shittin' his pants" is some puerile nonsense. But I can totally see a 13 year old boy hearing this at a friend's house and having his mind blown because it's stupid and it's funny and it feels transgressive. The dick jokes are a gateway into what this album is really about: how confusing it is to grow up, how nerve-wracking and uncomfortable it is to have feelings when the message you keep hearing is that men don't express their feelings, how relationships are weird and complex. You're pulled in because it rocks and your buddy played you the song about ejaculating in a sock and you found that hilarious, but there's some surprisingly vulnerable stuff going on in the lyrics. Consider "Rock Show," a love story about two seventeen year olds who meet at the Warped Tour and fall fast and hard for each other. I've heard plenty of star-crossed yet ultimately doomed love stories in music, but they're either a) from the woman's perspective, or b) end in some kind of horrible denigration of that awful bitch who rejected you. (Murder ballads are good for this, I think that's why they make me uncomfortable.) This is a young man, heart on his sleeve, extolling the virtues of this girl that he met. She's not perfect, but she's the coolest, and while there's a sense that it's over, he still says he'd do it all again if he could. There's no hatred, no bitterness, just a lack of regret and a hope that maybe it could work out someday. Also, wouldn't you love for someone to tell you that everything is better when you're around? I think that's a beautiful sentiment!

"First Date" does something similar. He's about to go out with this amazing girl for the first time, and he's terrified. He's nervous and worried that he's going to fuck everything up. This is the opposite of the message of those manosphere influencer clowns who treat everything as a conquest to be won. He's opening his heart, he's showing his soft underbelly, he's saying, "hey, I'm nervous too, it's okay to be nervous when you like someone and want to impress them so maybe they'll like you back." But it's couched in that simple pop-punk sound that's bouncy and ever-so-slightly edgy. It doesn't take an English major to parse these lyrics, either. You're not sifting through metaphors and flowery language to get at the meaning. There's no mistaking what's being said in these lyrics; it's all plainspoken and easily digestible. Both "Ballad of a Lonely Guy" and "Roller Coaster" capture these feelings of disappointment effectively. No fault is assigned, no fingers are pointed, relationships are not treated like battles in an ongoing war between the sexes, it's just something that happened and it's sad and unfortunate and a good wallow is just what's needed. There's something touching about "And now I'm breathing deeply, walking backwards / Finding strength to call and ask her / Roller coaster, favorite ride / Let me kiss you one last time." Maybe this song would have provided you with something you needed during that time, a reminder that feeling this way when a relationship ends is normal and okay and not a terrible thing. The whole album is, in its way, a celebration of vulnerability, of how awkward and difficult and confusing just existing in the world can be. We can tell our kids these things as often as we want, but we're parents and what the fuck do we know? If our kids can get this message elsewhere-from Blink-182, perhaps-it might make them feel that much less alone in their feelings, and more open to expressing them rather than bottling them up.

My favorite class in library school was Adult Popular Fiction, a readers' advisory class where we explored genre fiction in depth. We learned about genre conventions and why readers are drawn to particular genres (what we call "appeal factors") and read a ton of books. One of the genres we read was westerns-which I'd never read before because those were books for old men like my grandpa, who devoured Longarm and Spur and Louis L'Amour. But I remembered my grandmother telling me how much she enjoyed Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey when she was a girl, so that's what I read. And it was very satisfying! There was a stampede and tumbleweeds and a woman in distress and the villains wore black hats and the heroes wore white hats. It was everything I'd expect a western to be. I feel the same way about this album: it is exactly what I want and expect a pop punk album to be, perhaps even more, and as a result it is very satisfying. Take Off Your Pants and Jacket isn't perfect. It's goofy as hell, it's simplistic, it's basic, it's puerile at times. But not everything has to be James fucking Joyce. Sometimes you just want to read James fucking Patterson. An album that checks all the pop-punk genre boxes AND sends some surprisingly thoughtful and positive messages-targeted at young men!--about vulnerability and feeling all your 'feelings? I'd have been shocked if you'd told me this a week ago, but this Blink-182 album was extremely satisfying and I wholeheartedly enjoyed listening to it. If you give it a chance, I think you might enjoy it as well. P.S. If you love Weezer but think you're too cool for Blink-182, you're wrong because it's the exact same thing with louder guitars and a slightly different aesthetic. Oh, and more dick jokes. [P.P.S. You aren't too cool for Blink-182.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS AND JACKET, and it’s from @nanette.bsky.social! Take it away, Nanette!

If you wanna ascribe ai a personhood its that of a demon spirit, it can pretend to be human but it is not and you can never understand it and it will say and do things harmful to you that are perfectly normal to it cause it is an alien entity pretending at humanity to lure you in

You can pre-order my Rod Serling book now! My biography of 'The Twilight Zone' creator has a title, a cover and a publication date

I wrote more about the book in a free What’s Alan Watching? post:

Don’t just let it be terrible, LEAN INTO it being terrible, because no one’s going to see it.

I only bring this up because someone mentioned just this week that this trick is useful, but I *still* 30 years in, when stumped, write this on the top of the page.

Colour photo of the actor Dabney Coleman, mustachioed and grinning in a grey leather overcoat and backward-facing beret.

Inspired choices. All naturally accompanied, occasionally, by Brigadier General Maxwell McKittrick (pictured).

Nobody asked for this, but here are my ideas for 5-7 (credit to a commenter in the original thread for 5)

Everytime you think "ah finally, a good use for AI", you should step back and realize that such a response is exactly the kind of wedge corpos are trying to drive between laborers

Everyone's expertise and craft is "finally a good use for AI" to those outside the field.

Learn solidarity please

i will keep reiterating it but the mRNA vaccine is one of the most important human inventions in history, next to the printing press and the solar panel, and the fact america is abandoning it is frankly anti-human in all ways possible

And so I will circle around to my constant point: the instinct for a comforting aristocracy is endemic in the human populace, and the job of democracy is to ruthlessly destroy it whenever it appears. Not build a political, legal and moral (prosperity gospel) framework which fucking encourages it.

I caught the end of it when I was 9 or 10 on the daytime horror show, was genuinely disturbed. Watched the whole thing a few years back — it’s really weird!

PHASE IV (1974, Saul Bass)

Well now I know where episode 8 of TWIN PEAKS S3 took place

The Pitt: The Video Game YouTube video by Hotel Art Thief

🚨 ATTN "THE PITT" IDIOTS 🚨

HIGH QUALITY "THE PITT" SHIT TO LOOK AT:

youtu.be/ML0L20VOE2g