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First of all, if you read this blog through a feed, I think for some reason you may have missed my post celebrating the 20th anniversery of License to Ill. So read that. And more importantly, read my new What's Left? column on The Fake Life about Song of the South and "The Censored Eleven." I put a lot of work into it. I wrote the rough draft nearly two weeks ago, but I kept tweaking it. It's a serious subject (these cartoons, and the way people perceive them, are like a microcosm of how we deal with race in America), so I wanted to do it justice, but I reckon it also speaks to how stressful it is to actually accomplish something, how fucking nerve-racking it is to put it out there, knowing that people are actually going to be reading it and picking it apart. So far, response to this seems to be pretty good. Read it and post a comment, or better yet, register for The Fake Life Message Boards and join the discussion.

While you're at it, check out some of the other great stuff posted on The Fake Life, like Andrew Clarke's awesome examinations of truck movies (Any Which Way But Loose and Smokey and the Bandit) or Doug Slack's look at rip-off movies (Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and Galaxy of Terror).

L.A. Weekly has an overview of Stones Throw Records, which reveals that their headquarters are on Figueroa in Highland Park. How cool to find that the office of the best hip hop label on the west coast is right down the street from me! And Jonathan Gold is digging Dino's chicken, which is amazing, but really nowhere near as spicy as he makes it out to be. He's correct that the fries that have soaked up the chicken's grease are the best part, though.

Oh yeah, I have to tell you...we went to a Christmas party saturday (one of four we were invited to that day) and did karaoke, which is not something we do often. Bobbie sang "Santa Baby" in convincing floozy vamp, then I did "Viva Las Vegas," and although I didn't hit a single right note, I think the presentation of my Elvis impersonation was enough to make up for it. Then we both sang "Welcome to my Nightmare," which I think we did pretty well--that's one of the few songs that's right in my range, and Alice Cooper isn't that much of a singer in the first place. And at the end of the night, we did "Fight For Your Right To Party!"