Erika--I'm so glad you're enjoying it! It has a profoundly modern sensibilty, which is why peeps who don't like traditional Westerns might dig it. It only gets better as it goes along--the second half of thr season is INCREDIBLE.

Yeah, it holds my attention and, yes, feels like a modern show, but I can believe that the people are also acting 1870s too. The language has been...an education, too, but after watching all those "Wires" I'd feel like some hypocrite claiming to be scandalized, although I really do feel shocked sometimes.

Looking for kinda cheap things to add to my Amazon order, I think I'm finally going to pick up a Will Bradley/Ray McKinley disc. [link]

The difficulty with this that they're one of those groups that people release highly-overlapping CDs of. So you end up buying the same tunes over and over again just to get a couple new ones you didn't already own. But I *adore* orchestral boogie woogie and they were the best band for it, with the possible exception of Freddie Slack's band. I love the compositions of Raye/DePaul. I wish someone would put out a songbook entirely of their stuff. They're unjustly forgotten.

The difficulty with this that they're one of those groups that people release highly-overlapping CDs of.

That's why I love the Chronological series of swing stuff out of France.

I love the French Classics label too. Unfortunately, some of the stuff I had on my Amazon wish list (like the Fats Waller) seems to have gone out of print. Somehow I never though that stuff would disappear. I'll be working the Down Home inventory tomorrow and hope I'll find some in their backstock. When I did a preview on Thursday, they were out of any P-Vine stuff either. I was underwhelmed so I have no obvious choices for trade credit right now. Unless I want to compromise my usual rules and by a Proper box.

I'm also glad you're liking Deadwood, Erika. I don't know if we've mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm happy that Veronica Mars is giving work to some of the actors from The Wire, too.

I backed out on the McKinley for now because I've suddenly got a bee in my bonnet to buy either the Oscar Schmidt OE40 or the Kona Electrics KEL5 with my Christmas moolah. I'll need to resell my Oscar Schmidt OE30 and case, though.

The video for Malkmus's "Baby, C'mon" is creepily good. It's a semi-stop-motion HP ad that had weird dreams after eating too many chili dogs.

I heard that, Corwood, though I'm hopelessly out of touch with Veronica this year...(oops, almost used the name your mama gave you, well at least I didn't call you "Snot") Maury Levy got to be a good guy although the temptation to write, say, I got the stun gun, you got the grade book, would be REALLY hard to pass up. That's why I write for no-money, isn't it, bunk? Such. a . geek. I just called somebody I hardly know "bunk"...this is how street names get started. It just fell out, lj being kind of the Fells Point of fannishness and all... still, groan."Babe" is enough of a habit. Dag.(Crap, there's another one.)

Did you hear that Michael what's-her-name who plays Brianna Barksdale was in the last episode?

In other news, if any of y'all haven't read Kim Cooper's book on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, well, then you should.