I have a bar exam to pass, so ... see you in August.

Sarah Palin is a quitter.

I'm not much of an Andrew Sullivan fan, but I agree with what he writes about it:

In the end, I think, the one thing to say is that the Republican party is in such a total state of collapse and incoherence that it actually believed she could be a future president; and that John McCain was so reckless, so cynical and so cavalier that he was prepared to rest the national security of this country on her shoulders if he, in his seventies, were to become unable to fulfill his duties or die. In some ways, this is a moment to reflect on McCain, and his irresponsibility, not Palin and her drama.

Sarah Palin is a runner.

Philip Glass used to have a Sideshow Bob hairdo.

The vocalist here is magnificent.

Last Days of Man on Earth says goodbye to the 70s.

The first tape I ever owned was Michael Jackson's Thriller. My parents bought it for me as one of my gifts for first communion. I had been asking my parents for that tape for quite a while. I am sure that the other gifts I received that day were sufficiently religious.

So, that was about 1983 or 1984, which means at the time my parents were about the same age as I am today. It must have been kind of cool to buy a tape for your kid of an artist you yourself had listened to growing up.

Just about every song on Thriller was ubiquitous on both the radio and on burgeoning MTV. One really did not need the LP or the tape to hear the music. It got to the point where Weird Al's "Eat It" seemed just as popular as "Beat It." Yet none of the pervasive Michael Jackson media saturation ever became annoying. The music was just too good - too perfect in light of what had come before it. You could tell that the music was real in a way that future pop acts attempting to follow the Michael Jackson Off the Wall/Thriller template were not.

Also, Michael Jackson was a truly odd and interesting character at this time. Eccentric, but not creepy. The creepy stuff came later.

For whatever reason, this is the image I first think of when I think of Michael Jackson.

I'm in Magic City Saturday night, June 27 at Mangia. Come on down. It's free.

My college friend Will Boast had his short story "Sidemen" featured in FiveChapters this week. FiveChapters is a neat site that publishes a full short story over the week days. (A full short story - that's kind of a strange phrase.)