The Fiery Furnaces epitomize weird. The music sounds like rambling nursery rhymes over constantly changing sounds, from rock to electronic… weirdness. I mean that in the best way possible. This album takes the listener on a sonic adventure through someone’s brain during a particularly peculiar dream sequence. A number of tracks, such as Quay Cur, Chief Inspector Blancheflower and Spaniolated, stick out, but I think this whole album is one big masterpiece. Probably too weird to “rock out” to, but a perfect listen for riding the bus.

Adam Sanberg is a funny guy and only getting funnier. Hot Rod was a funny movie. I’d say fairly well put-together, too, for the kind of goofy movie it was. I’d say it was worth it.

The Faint definitely brings back an 80s sound, but there’s a reason 80s synth pop/rock died. I can’t get into this.

I really dig Cake and I’m impressed with the number of albums they have! The singers deadpan delivery combined with muted trumpets and piano hearken back to a big band or swing sound, but this is clearly a pop rock record. I won’t necessarily seek out Cake, but once its on, I can’t help but sing along.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is one of the best concept albums I’ve ever heard. This album flows beautifully, with soft songs and hard songs, acoustic guitars and trumpets and a powerful voice. The album is almost one long, amazing song in itself, but my favorite track might be “Holland, 1945,” but even that isn’t fair. This is an album and a treat for all music lovers. How do I describe their music? It’s definitely indie rock, but it’s both poppy and strange at once. I highly recommend it.

I really wanted to like this album, but The Shins don’t do it for me. I really dug two tracks in particular: “New Slang” and “The Celibate Life.” For the most part, I found The Shins to be a bit low key for my taste. They do light indie rock with some interesting modal changes throughout their songs. The vocals and the guitars remind me very much of something from the 60s. The Mamas and the Papas maybe. It’s totally acid music for the 00s. I won’t dent that this could be a sleeper hit for me. With a few listens, it might grow on me. Or not.

Choking Victim were the pioneers of their homemade brand of music they refer to as the “Crack Rocksteady Beat.” Mix equal parts ska, reggae, hardcore, death metal and punk rock and there you have it.

Choking Victim hails from the lower east side of Manhattan circa the 1990s, when it was still ugly and edgy. These guys were talented musicians with an aversion to school and cops and an affinity for crack, Satanism and leftist politics. It’s never clear where the social commentary stops and the sheer offensiveness begins. Lead singer Stza sounds like he means it when he urges the listeners to kill cops and worship Satan.

The album starts with the track “500 Channels.” The song has a quick, bouncy ska/punk beat verse with a four-chord punk rock chorus. It’s an anthemic song about post-modern despair that sets the tone of the album: nihilism, disatisaction with American values and glorification of drug use in general, crack cocaine specifically.

“In Hell” is an ultra fast hardcore punk rock song, also a singalong, anthem style. Go to a Leftover Crack show (the more recent adaptation of Choking Victim” and you will see hundreds screaming along to incoherent rants of unadulterated apathy.

Track three, “Crackrock Steady,” is a rough and ready ska song. Think reggae on… well, crack, I guess. The delivery is tinged with reggae and the lyrics are about killing cops. Make no bones about it, these guys sweat pure anarchy.

“Suicide (A Better Way)” brings back the super-charged ska/punk heard on “500 Channels” with dark, depressing lyrics about taking your own life. It’s obviously tongue-in-cheek with lyrics like “There ain’t no better way to kill yourself than suicide.”

“In My Grave” takes turns between blistering hardcore/metal and sinister ska in the same measure. This skacore sound is reminiscent of early Mighty Mighty BossToneS.

“Money” opens with a rant (speech?) from a ultra-left-wing speaker, who makes several appearances on the album. More than just pissed off punkers, Choking Victim has an agenda. Money is a minor key song with a ska verse/hardcore punk chorus.

“Hate Your State” starts out with a speech played backwards. It sounds evil as Satan, but played backwards, he says something about staying in school and eating your vegetables. I didn’t check, but someone showed it to me once. The song is a fun, singalong.

“Fuck America” introduces Choking Victim’s death metal style. The opening lyrics are distorted before a ska beat kicks in. The name says it all.

“War Story” is the perfect song for a circle pit. It’s pure hardcore/punk rock singalong music.

“Five Finger Discount” is another bouncy ska song about stealing shit.

“Praise to the Sinners” begins with a minute-long rant about socialism from said left-wing speaker. Then it goes into some impressive minor key Spanish music before blistering power chords give way to gut-wrenching screams.

The track gives way to “Living the Laws,” which keeps the death metal going. A bass solo leads into a creepy, slow ska beat that picks up and returns to death metal. A few minutes into the track is a slowed down, Carribean-ska style version of Crack Rock Steady.

Full disclosure: Chuck Palahniuk is my favorite fiction author. However, I’ve been disappointed by his books before (see my review of Haunted). Rant is the best Chuck book since Choke. The novel follows the life of Buster Casey. Beyond that, the content is hard to summarize. It’s about a gang of youths who crash cars for fun. It’s about a nationwide rabies epidemic. It’s about time travel. (Seriously). It’s about poisonous spiders. It’s about a future dystopia where people get their kicks off of plugging data into ports in the back of their heads and people are separated into two classes: daytimers and nighttimers.

The first thing you’ll notice when reading rant is the format. It’s told in first person by dozens of narrators. At first, it seems complicated, but read on. It makes perfect sense and understanding who says what comes naturally after a few chapters. Chuck takes the risk of having dozens of narrators describe one character instead of the other way around. Somehow, he pulls it off and creates a compelling story with everything you’d expect from a Palahnik book. Examples include mindfuck revelations in the last few chapters, anti-heroes with comedic ways of extorting money from people, half-true science fiction that will have you seeking out the truth to the wild claims.

Does snake venom really have such a dramatic effect on the male genitalia? Can someone with heightened senses truly figure out what a woman ate for dinner a week ago by performing oral sex on her? Do human rabies victims who refuse treatment eventually crave human flesh?

All this and more. Finally Palahniuk is back on track. Expect gruesome anecdotes and heaping amounts of anarchy. How does he come up with this shit?

I heard Milk was a great film, but it still exceeded expectations. Milk isn’t a gay movie about politics. It’s a political movie about gays. I feel as if I just left San Francisco in the late 70s. The movie began with the dire urgency of taking over Castro Street and ended with a semi-colon. While the grainy footage of Anita Bryant makes 1978 feel like history, the issues facing gays in America look exactly the same today. Gus Van Sant made a historical biopic centered on an issue that is anything but history. Having only finished watching this movie moments ago, I’m left pondering issues of civil rights and activism in a way that no movie has before. The noticeable lack of tie dye and peace signs makes me wonder if gay rights is civil rights final frontier. I recommend any movie that makes you think, so I obviously think everyone should check this out.

To me, Flogging Molly is the “other” Irish folk/punk rock fusion band. The Dropkick Murphys do it better. Fronted by an Irishman and backed by stellar musicians, my problem with Flogging Molly is the lack of urgency. Nonetheless, when “Boys on the Docks” starts to get overplayed on the jukebox on March 17, “What’s Left of the Flag” makes great filler.