All Intensive Purposes

Per usual, this week's column by Ron Rosenbaum in the New York Observer (note: link will be good for only a week, two weeks tops) is full of intriguing recommendations of things I know I like -- e.g., Greil Marcus's The Old, Weird America (a/k/a Invisible Republic) -- and things I haven't yet discovered I like -- e.g., Stanley Elkin's The Dick Gibson Show, the movie Ghost World (already in the queue). Rosenbaum's search for Weird America has him listening to late-night AM radio -- something I used to do quite a bit. Those pesky kids get in the way.

Or, for a change of pace, you could read this.