Given the passion expressed for girl music on this site, I suppose it's not too much an affront to my masculinity to confess my obsession with the admittedly unmanly band Girls. Their debut record "Album" is forty minutes of melancholy bliss, late night break-up songs that will make you feel like a teenager suffering from a his first encounter with heartbreak. My introduction to the band's back-story came through Pitchfork (shut up!) whose review featured a little biographical information on the band's leader, Christopher Owens: "Christopher Owens grew up in the Children of God. His older brother died as a baby because the cult didn't believe in medical [...]

One of the familiar-looking strangers in my shared writing studio thinks I enjoy watching videos of barefoot women pumping gas pedals with dildos attached to them. I can't blame her since said video was on my monitor when she walked by this morning. I contemplated telling her I was researching a weird phenomenon known as pedal pumping, but realized this would sound about as plausible as suggesting that men read Black Tail for the articles-which incidentally are excellent.