You want updates? I got your updates.

I was once trying to describe Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish, to my wife, when she had asked "what's that all about" or something to that effect, and my reply went something like, "well, he writes about politics and torture and gay stuff and Sarah Palin and occasionally there's a completely unrelated funny video." Not that that wouldn't be plenty, but there's certainly more to his blog than that. And I don't know that "gay stuff" was a particularly clear representation of his writings on the fight for marriage equality. Anyway, it's a great blog, and if you've discovered my blog -- where I post less than monthly and have a whopping two "followers" at this writing -- then I imagine you've seen his already anyways.

When I started this blog, I thought I would write about pop culture. Because there's a lot of it, and people seem to like it, and I supposed I had my opinions on the Duggers and Bjork and Dan Brown and what have you. That said, if a reader of my blog were to try to encapsulate it, based on the only occasional posts they have to go on, they might fairly say, "well, he writes about loss and death and Vic Chesnutt and kittens and the Egg Babies Orchestra and his old car and Michael Jackson ." Fair enough.

That being the case, this is a big week for this blog. Most of the subjects my blog would suggest I care about came into play this very week. Here are your updates:

• The kittens, known to the Interwebs as "Trubz and Chubz", were left at the Maryland SPCA of Baltimore earlier this week. I suspect they will be adopted out soon, if that hasn't happened already. My wife was asked to name them upon handing them over to the SPCA, -- she decided "Chubz" and "Trubz" might not be the most adoptable monikers -- and she chose the name Pammy -- after a pet cat of her youth -- for Chubz. Looking at the paperwork she received, my wife later observed that the intake person at the agency had christened the cat "Panny". That's quite possibly a less appealing name than "Chubz" even. So I make this special appeal to anyone reading and giving thought to adopting your very own kitten in Baltimore: please be on the lookout for Panny, and please give her a better name. "Spotz", as you may remember found a new home some weeks ago, and has since had a lovely time, enjoying chewing on her owners' Wii cable as I understand it.

• Discovered earlier this week that my old car -- donated to the very same SPCA -- sold at auction. And for a price that exceeded what I thought it would for its assumed hopeless condition. Which, on the one hand, gives me some second thoughts about my mechanic, but which also makes me pleased to consider that (a)I'll get a bigger-than-expected tax break, (b)there will be that much more money to help Chubz...er...Panny continue to bulk up while she awaits a new home, and (c)that my entirely-too-anthropomorphized old hunk of junk may indeed ride again, albeit with someone else behind the wheel.

• I have little further to say about Michael Jackson, but am surprised to see some solid reviews of "That's All Folks" or whatever that new concert-rehearsal movie of his is called. The reviewers I've read have been taken by how fascinating a performer he could be. I may want to see it after all.

• Went to see Vic Chesnutt and his current band at the Ottobar on Thursday, and it was as good a show as I've seen from him -- though quite different than anything I've seen from him before. When I told my coworkers that I'd gone to a concert and they asked who I'd seen and then they asked who exactly is Vic Chesnutt, I was left to try to describe the music, and all I could come up with was that it was really slow, really loud rock -- and that probably also describes Nickelback. This was nothing like Nickelback, which just goes to show that I do not have much of a command over language. While he did dip way back in his catalog for "Sponge", the set was mostly stuff from the last few years or so -- with bunches of cuts from the excellent North Star Deserter, including an ear-splitting and plodding (and masterful and inspiring) encore of "Debriefing". To describe the music as heavy conjures up sort of the wrong associations. But this was heavy alright, heavy in the sense of something sitting on your chest. And I liked that? Yes.
  

• Saw the Egg Babies Orchestra again last night. It was their Halloween show, and it was awesome.*
  

Thanks for reading, and Happy Halloween.

*Origininal post incorrectly stated that the EBO duplicated many songs from previous sets. This is thoroughly false. In my defense, it was late, and I was stone cold sober. It seems I heard a Hall-and-Oates song, and an Alice Cooper song, and a Cat Stevens song and remembered having heard songs by those artists before, and conflated the pairs of, as it turns out, non-identical songs into single songs. I extend my deepest and sincerest apologies to the EBO, to their families, and to anyone else inconvenienced by my shoddy journalism.,