Says the New Yorker's pop music critic:

Watching this video, you will wonder, briefly, if Chris Dane Owens “means it.” This is an ungenerous thought—dismiss it. You may also wonder why “Shine On Me” is modelled on early ABC and Spandau Ballet and padded out with an unnecessary layer of loud guitars. Irrelevant. What you need to know is that Mr. Owens will live forever—until the dragons rule the earth again (or the first time, whatever)—and that you are going to watch this video more times than you can imagine. You may dream of this video, but the dream won’t be as good because it won’t be this video.

As far as the genre... well, genre genre goes, this video from Hellx posted a while ago really takes the cake.

Muse - Knights of Cydonia

Sasha Frere-Jones once wrote an article about how alternative music has no soul. I thought it was interesting. Hellx thought it was stupid. We discussed. Then we argued. Bitterly. Things were said. Maybe too honestly. But the next day he took me in his arms, and everything was better.

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Gotta get back into a football frame of mind for tomorrow.

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Yesterday we checked out the Ten Thousand Buddhas. Pretty cool. This isn't marketing, like when you go into a McDonald's that says "10 billion served" and you look around and you're like, "whatever. I don't see 10 billion people." There are indeed more than ten thousand Buddhas on premises.

There are also monkeys. Wild monkeys. Mean bastards. And yesterday afternoon they decided to take the three of us on. An old male monkey elder with big haunches and a knotted tail joined up with a lithe youngster to perch on the wall along the stairs leading down from the temple area. I tried to get passed but the younger one hissed at me. The older one -- that's the guy in the photo above, taken by Dr. No -- kept that same volatile expression, like Marlon Brando for Vivian Leigh or maybe the local buffet.

We stood there, not knowing what to do, until a local woman whose job it was to sweep the steps took them on. She took her broom and metal dustpan and whacked them together and shouted at them in Cantonese until, frightened of confused (maybe they know only Mandarin?) the monkeys left. She got a standing O from us stranded visitors.

More photos to the left.

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I was at the gym this morning before work, and, as usual, I headed for the sauna when I was done working out. The two guys in there were dropping names of all sorts of musicians. Not just the headliners, but other people who were keyboard, trumpet or cowbell players for the headliners. One was talking about people he had played with in the past. The only thing I could add to the conversation was to tell about my encounter with Stan Sheldon, bass player on Framton Comes Alive.

As I was about to talk, the musician stepped out to cool off, and the other guy said, "See you in a minute, Stan." So I asked the other man what Stan's last name was. Sure enough it was THE Stan Sheldon!

When Stan came back to the sauna, the conversation went something like this:

Me: The last time we met, you said, "Cheese, mother f***er!" to me.
Stan: I said, "Geez, mother f***er?" In what context? Did I catch you with my girlfriend?
Me: Well, uh, no...
Stan: Did you catch me with your girlfriend?

I explained that it was "Cheese," not "Geez," and that it was while I was taking a picture of him for the Kansan while he and his trio were playing their weekly gig at the Souls' hang out.

It flattered me when he said he clipped that picture out of the paper and still has it. Too bad that sort of activity may be a thing of the past.

These days, he's playing bass for Delbert McClinton, who damn sure knows how to play a cowbell.

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Few posts these days as Dr. No and I are entertaining Mom -- or, as she signs her name in letters, Mommmmmm. Remember letters? She writes those sometimes. I think it's quaint.

We've eaten Portuguese food in Macau, saw Cirque du Soleil, hung out with the big Buddha and eaten lots of rice. Today she gets an acupuncture treatment, from a Brit! A British healer in Hong Kong seeing a patient from Georgia: There's gotta be a Thomas Friedman book in that somewhere.

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Former Black Panther and current U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush is leading the fight against the BCS.

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On Friday night I met this guy, who recently moved to Gowanus with his girlfriend. She's a KU grad and he's a KSU grad. He's originally from Colorado, though, so he doesn't have a reflexive dislike of Lawrence and actually had fun at this game:

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I wonder what Sam Zell's year end gift is going to be about this year...

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Everyone's favorite office linebacker was involved in this year's campaign.

Crazy Protester Interrupts Palin Interview - Watch more free videos

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The wiki of hot women, chickipedia features brilliant articles like "From Tot to Hot: child stars who grew up to be major babes."

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I recently googled myself to see what was out there and I noticed something interesting: the wikipedia entry for Stephenson Hall was no longer at the top of the results. Searching for "Stephenson Hall" or "Stephenson Scholarship hall" directs one to a page dedicated to all of the halls.

My first thought was that KU was standardizing and reclaiming wikipedia sites related to university programs. However, this appears not to be the case. After looking at the users involved in the discussion, it appears that the discussion was based primarily on content and was free of obvious biases (like living in Amini or working for Student Housing).

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