NERDALERT(s):

It's no secret that Pitchfork has stolen the thunder of print media, and so quickly now there is this great secondary discourse about its impact not just in academia but among weirdo obsessives who do statistical analysis of things like how many times nitsuh abebe mentions adult..

Which reminds me of Randall Roberts' great paper on the Rolling Stone Record Guide and its impact on the formation of the rock canon. It is a scientific measurement of rockism in these passionately anti-rockist days. The kind of paper only a true geek could love.

Speaking of which, my dad is really excited to go to next year's crossword puzzle tournament, where he will be a "noncompeting puzzler." The real reason he writes that he wants to go is this:

There's a 15 minute limit on the puzzle and the finalists either finish it or come
> damn close. What makes it great though is the commentators who ridicule the answers, the behavior and the mannerisms of the finalists.

To which I was confused until I listened to this totally insane running commentary. The puzzlers work wearing the same noise-cancellation headphones that Eric from Black Dice used to wear back when Black Dice used to be loud (and good) and can't hear a word of it. There is something really, really masochistic about that and I'm not just saying it because I saw the crossword puzzle documentary trailer before the bettie page movie (a better match never there was).