NPR Rocks! Also, McSweeney's Guide to the Presidential Candidates

If you have not yet subscribed to NPR's All Songs Considered podcast, I advise you to do so right away. Not only can you listen to new music from the White Stripes, Feist, and others, but every other week, they have excellent-quality concerts by artists like Andrew Bird, Ben Gibbard, and Björk! We're talking the whole shebang, too. The Andrew Bird concert alone is an hour and 50 minutes long!

In other news, online literary website McSweeney's has, for your convenience, lists of The Pros and Cons of the Top 20 Democratic and Republican Candidates. Prime candidates from both lists include Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Jimmy Carter, Ira Glass, Zombie Ronald Regan, Bigfoot, Robotic Super Bees, Optimus Prime, and my personal favorite in the Democrat list, Dick Cheney in an Elaborate Latex Disguise That Takes Five Hours to Apply.

Andrew Bird...for Kids!

Yesterday, Stereogum showed me just about the best thing ever. It's seems one Andrew Bird, the violin-playing virtuoso, made a recent appearance on a little-known (at least to me) children's television program called Jack's Big Music Show, another one of those "interactive" shows a la Blue's Clues, but with a slant towards music-making and suprise musical guests. Previous episodes have included musical performances by The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, blues guitarist Buddy Guy, and Steve Burns & Steven Drozd, the former host of the aforementioned Blue's Clues and the guitarist for The Flaming Lips, respectively. (If you watch the clip, you'll also catch a certain "fake news anchor" making a cameo appearance.)

Anyway, the Bird dropped by as the character "Dr. Stringz," and all I can say is I wish the TV shows I watched when I was a kid were as cool as this...