I've always liked the idea of Beck slightly more than his music; I liked Odelay a lot but never got around to buying the album back in the day, and "Loser" was my favorite song when my only musical exposure was the daily top 10 countdown on MTV. To this day, the only Beck album I own is Sea Change, which I bought about two years after it came out.

Still, the first songs I heard leaked off Guero struck me as good but not particularly compelling; they were perfectly fine to listen to, but I didn't go out of my way to do so. Beck could make a pretty cool-sounding song out of a garbage can and a whoopee cushion, but that doesn't mean it has a long shelf-life. So I bought the album thinking I would give it to Alex (who really liked everything that was leaked), but when I gave it a listen I found I really liked it. None of the songs are incredible, but there are a lot of very good ones. DL the album courtesy of whoever posted them HERE. While "E-Pro" and "Hell Yes" are the more obvious singles, my personal favorites are:

Beck / "Missing"
Beck / "Scarecrow"

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The guitars in this song kind of remind me of James (as in the band of "Say Something" and "Laid"). [karo/PF find]

Cloud Room / "Hey Now Now"

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Louie CK: Have another doughnut, you fat shit.

Louie CK's HBO pilot has been shot and now we cross our fingers that it makes it to air. For the uninitiated, Louie's sitcom is basically a "family" sitcom about him, his wife and young daughter, only they say fuck a lot because it's HBO. Check out some details about how it went here.

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What does your car say about your politics?

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I love tennis, but I freely admit it's not the most heterosexual of sports.

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The story of translating Fever Pitch from a British soccer book into an American baseball movie. I read the book a couple years back after Al gave it to me--good stuff.



NB: So I went out and saw it, and it was good, as the reviews are indicating. It's not too sappy, consistently funny, and Jimmy Fallon actually pulls off his part to a large degree. A lot of people (read: Bill Simmons) seem ready to tar-and-feather him because he's an admitted non-baseball fan (from NY no less), but he's good, and a lot of the praise probably should go to the Farrellys, who ARE lifelong Sox fans and who sprinkle the film with the little touches--references to the Jimmy Fund, appearances by local broadcasters, *real* game action, and Farrelly brother mainstay and Bostonian Lenny Clarke as Fallon's uncle--that make it feel authentic.