Thinking Fellers Union Local 282; Jonathan Franzen; James Wolcott

I forgot that there's a reference to the Thinking Fellers in Franzen's The Corrections.

In 2001 author Jonathan Franzen referenced the band in his widely-acclaimed bestselling novel The Corrections. The character Brian, a snobby fan of "west coast underground bands," listens to the albums of Thinking Fellers Union while writing the music software that will make him a young millionaire.

I wonder if Franzen is a fan. Also, I hadn't realized they opened for the still-heinous-after-all-these-years Live. I guess that's the beauty and ugly of wikipedia. It's a great resource, but then, if when I look at another band that was a staple of my lonely awkward college years, Royal Trux, I can get all sorts of information, such as how objectively awesome they are. Really, as the tags at the beginning of the Royal Trux article indicate, the neutrality should be disputed. And the writer of this particular wiki page would never mention that the Trux had opened for Live--if they ever did.

Any way, here's Elvis doing Johnny Cash's classic: Hurt


And here's a message of love from James Wolcott to us Democrats: Stop being self-eating parasites. Stop destroying each other before we destroy ourselves. And in another article, he talks about the p-word, pacifism. Although Wolcott's seems on the defensive about Hillary in the autophagic orgy of destruction that is the primary process; so I'm not quite sure what his take is on the whole thing. Nevertheless, the man can use a thesaurus like nobody else. Look at how he lovingly paints a picture of Markos of Dailykos:

The epicenter of the blog rift between the Obama and Hillary loyalists, the gymkhana of high dudgeon and low blows, could be found at Daily Kos, affectionately christened “the Great Orange Satan” for its orange logo and the Che Guevara demonization of its founder, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, by conservative adversaries and other hecklers. Markos, as he is universally known, does not traffic in tweedy ironies.

This isn't from his blog, but for the magazine proper, so he has to mince it up a bit for their readership as he warns:

Apart from the late Steve Gilliard, a blogger whose untimely death left an unfillable void in the warrior class, few have set a healthier example of consuming concern trolls for breakfast than Markos. So the site that bears his name is not for the demure.

Anyhow, it's nice to have an astute cultural critic lurking the lib nets, so I know what to think about the sites that tell me what to think.