Cultivating music that be captivating me.

I was just reading Chris Rock's Top 25 Rap Albums (at his site) and I was very pleased to see that he listed Snoop's Doggystyle at #2. At the time it came out, its main competition was Dre's The Chronic (which also featured Snoop) but I always thought Doggystyle was the better album. It's one of the rare few albums that I can listen to in its entirety and in fact, have done so to the extent that I've had to replace copies* multiple times. I'm not saying it's for everyone and if you don't already love hip hop, I don't advise you go pick it up--I'm just saying that I'm glad to see it get the respect I always thought it deserved. It's made countless critics' top album lists but it seems like I never hear people talking about it like they talk about The Chronic. But like Chris Rock points out, it's held up better: "The Chronic is sonically incredible, but it's hard to drive around singing songs about [Eazy-E]. But I got a feeling I'll be singing 'Gin and Juice' when I'm ninety." And as he points out in one of my all-time favorite bits, not only can it be hard to find hip hop you want to listen to continuously as you get older, it's even harder trying to defend it [NSFW]:

EDIT: If you hit the fast forward on the video screen on Rock's site, the next video after the golf video is a chat with George Carlin from the old Chris Rock Show.

*See also: the (cassette) copy of Fear of a Black Planet that I listened to so much it snapped in half

Advice Puppy would not approve.

Dane Cook is not happy with the poster for his upcoming movie.

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A poet's advice.

How I spend my free time: Drawing artfully rendered maps of the US (and Canada!).

Also, gordonzola introduced me to a vocation that sounds fantastic: cheese educator! Somehow I don't think that's how it's really like, though.

Also also, Russell Brand has beaten us all and invented a time machine, judging by his new commercial for the VMAs. It's like the past few years never happened: