a pink-orange Fiestaware cup of coffee, half-filled

ITEM: The Allison Moorer album The Duel has just jumped up into the #1 spot, after I realized that it tells God and Nashville and America to all eff off. I'm reviewing this for Music-critic.com, and maybe for whoever else wants a long piece. Or maybe I'll just do it on The Freelance Mentalists.

ITEM: Yeah, Scott Seward and I have started a blog so we can just talk about records and songs we love, free of any editorial (or, as SS says, eddytorial) hand. That address again: http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com. Please go there today and read Scott's beautiful hilarious piece about getting really high and listening to Chubby Checker. (Big ups to Colin Barrow for the name, by the way.)

ITEM: I was in a school yesterday, which is what I do sometimes to help teach kids how to write. There were 25 fifth-graders in the library, an easy-enough gig; we were working on writing enuegs, a great old form from Provencal wherein the poet makes a poem out of everything that annoys him or her that day. (Samuel Beckett loved this form.) (Not Dr. Samuel Beckett, the top scientist from "Quantum Leap.") (Remind me to tell you the story of the OTHER Michael Jordan someday.) Anyway, the kids were making their lists, and I was walking around watching to see what they were writing on their lists of what annoyed them: "my brother" and "homework" and "little kids saying stupid stuff on the bus." Then I interrupted them so they could tell me out loud. One girl, dressed stylishly in some kind of peach silk-kimono-pants ensemble, shot her hand up. I called on her, and she said, in an even but resolute voice: "The President of the United States."

ITEM: My son stated, this morning, while urinating, that missing the bus wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I said, "That's right, buddy. What would be the worst thing in the world?" He replied, "GEORGE W. BUSH."

ITEM: I have been accused of brainwashing my children.

ITEM: Robi Draco Rosa's Mad Love is probably the second-best record of the year, or maybe third behind Pepito. The man who wrote "Livin' la Vida Loca" got some moody mad skillz, yo.

ITEM: I think I figured out a way to score an advance of the new El Gran Silencio disc, too. Aw yeah.