Yes, I’ve fallen in love with them so much that I am taking time out of my studying for my two consecutive (I’m not kidding! 12-1:05 and then 1:10-2:25!) exams (for which I am royally screwed) to post about them (betcha didn’t think I could fit that many non-sequiturs into a single sentence!). I’ve been intending to research them for ages, but after finding–or rather, not finding–a dearth of information on the Internet, I bookmarked them on Pandora and left it at that.

They’re called the The Peanut Butter Conspiracy and they were a late 1960s psychedelic California band with a cult following. The song for which I initially fell head over heels is called Free off their album “Spreading From the Ashes,” which I am buying–a rare event for such a dedicated music pirate. Oh yeah. Listen to those harmonies. Tell me they don’t OWN the wall of sound.

As for the supposed dearth–it’s not so bad as I thought. You just have to get the right Google search terms. On a side note, apparently Jimmy Buffet has a song called The Peanut Butter Conspiracy but I didn’t want to get near those sites to see if it was a tribute.

Well, dear readers, go forth and conquer. The internet is waiting, those midterms will wait.

Eight ten Democratic Congressmen received images of the military recruitment center right before it was attacked, and, now, we have more details about what exactly the congressmen were sent.

Oh, and it turns out, the perps were anti-war zealots or “activists,” as the Left calls them. Who’s surprised?

The manilla envelopes contained a photo of a (now identified) man standing in front of the recruiting station — like the kind one might receive over the holidays — and it said, “Happy New Year. We did it.” The packets also contained about ten pages of anti-war rhetoric, which he signed, and some type of a booklet.

However, MSBNC says that the letters and the bombings are unrelated. How they can discount the anti-Iraq manifesto … who knows?

But this is a classic MSNBC response. I think “We did it” pretty much clinches it. Most likely, it was this guy and whoever else was with him — somebody had to take the photo. [Could these guys be making a comeback? -ed.]

As all music blog junkies probably know, this month marks the 10th anniversary of one of the best albums of the ’90s. If Sublime’s What I Got is the musical common denominator for every college student in America, then surely every indie kid can sing along to the eponymous song from Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea.

Slate calls Jeff Mangum, the front man of Neutral Milk Hotel, the J.D. Salinger of indie rock because after the critical success of the band’s second album, he disappeared, resurfacing only for the occasional acoustic show.

Neutral Milk Hotel’s brilliance lies in more than their songwriting, though they have written some of my favorite songs: they’re really gorgeous and ethereal. In the Aeroplane is a concept album dreamed up by Mangum after reading Anne Frank’s diary. The lyrics are mysterious and captivating and the sound is distinctive, featuring combinations of instruments that I can never quite pin down. The album–like every single one of my favorite albums–is cohesive, with one song flowing into the next with little fanfare. And the songs are simple: guitar lore has it that the album uses only four chords (G, C, D, Em), but I don’t buy it, having played many of the songs over and over again in the privacy of my room.

No, part of the band’s magic lies in their live performances, which I was never able to see. It takes versatile musicians to perform equally well in live and studio recordings. One of my boyfriend’s favorite songs by the band was never laid down in a studio, only played live. (Blatant self-promotion: we’ll be covering that song together at my Postcrypt Coffeehouse concert on Friday, March 7. 10pm.)

I plan on listening to the album straight through tonight. If you haven’t heard it, I recommend you do the same.

[Commentariat newbie Corydon Shea takes a personal look at this month's production of the Vagina Monologues.]

The Vagina Monologues is one of those plays that most people have seen or, at least, know about. Arguably, it is famous for being a beacon of womanhood and sexual liberation. Personally, having seen The Vagina Monologues a few times, I have always supported Eve Ensler’s aspiration to put an end to violence against women.

However, having been born a woman who felt more like a man, I found I could support the ideas represented in The Vagina Monologues but not make them my own. Then, I heard that this year’s production was going to include new, original monologues and I knew I had to be part of it. I would call the director’s decision to include original pieces daring, because three months ago, when we started the writing process, most of us had not written anything. I wrote three other monologues before settling on the poem that I performed.

What I learned through the writing process is that it’s not very easy writing about something, like gender, when your own is ambiguous and you’re still struggling to understand yourself, let alone trying to inform others in a transparent way. There were a few points in the writing process when I was unsure whether I could finish a final piece, yet I kept writing because I wanted to create a space for my experiences, which continually felt confined by expectations of femininity, which felt very different from who I was.

What is it about the celebrity that tickles the imagination so?  So many more human minds are flung into fever over what a certain starlet wore (or didn’t wear! zing!)  to dinner than whatever big social cause is supposed to be important to the youth.  In absence of cultic holidays, used in ancient times to unify a nation behind a structure presented by the spectacle, our society has substituted events such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. In the aforementioned shows, faces and dresses to which we can all assign our loyalty parade about, like gods from the mass media machine.  Declaring one’s allegiance to a specific celebrity is akin to joining the ranks of a deity’s elite devotees. Thereafter, one is quickly able to discover common ground in social interaction by simply turning the conversation to one’s celebrity of choice. Said exchange becomes a sort of social springboard. One gains the knowledge required to move fluidly through society; one acquires cultural capital (the ability to maneuver with ease through society).  Social bonds are seemingly immediately formed merely by common knowledge of celebrities. Since, through media, the cult of celebrity is inherently tied to mass appeal, and nearly all members of society seem to utilize it, the idea of fame has widespread social ramifications.  The question yet remains: what is the reason behind our society’s eternal obsession with the celebrity?  Aficionados of celebrities speak of them as if they are in possession of intimate knowledge only fellow fans may know.  They are the initiated.  However, in truth, they have no personal knowledge of their icon at all.  What possesses us to take hold of these stars and squeeze them for all their radiance is worth?It seems as though nothing differentiates the celebrity from the average individual with identity issues. After all as Warhol once said, one day everyone will have his fifteen minutes of fame. There are innumerable opportunities to become known in today’s world, that it is difficult to determine why celebrities are special anymore. Celebrities are only special inasmuch as they are special to society, a rare and therefore valued commodity. Their special status in our culture lies less with qualities we attribute to the celebrities that meet certain norms as determined by pop culture and even less with the unique achievements of the stars. Rather, the controlling will is, most paradoxically, held by those supposedly left most powerless in the panoptic schema. In fact, the entire institution of celebrity is born from the desperation of this position of “powerlessness.”  This interpretation is hinted at in the discussion regarding the apotheosis and lionizing of convicted murderers.  We create gods out of monsters because we need to feel as though we are retaining our sense of self, even as it gradually is eroded away, a sand castle at high tide.  The desperation we feel as our veridical self disappears births a similar desire to create a new frame of reference.  After all, if we can only exist as we are seen, then it is more than possible to be seen from a new angle, a new perspective.  Thus, we create celebrities, the epitome of a public persona lacking even the slightest shred of personal life.  When viewing one’s own life in comparison to that of a star, it seems almost private.  We moan our “oohs” and our “ahhs” to perhaps drown out the clicking and whirring of the shutters recording our own lives.  With our heads buried in People Magazine, we can easily ignore the ubiquitous presence of surveillance equipment.   The celebrity is the one entity until now not mentioned in the panoptic schema:  the one in power.  Or so they believe.  For surely, in terms of cultural capital, the celebrity is simply spoiled with wealth and fame.  He can easily obtain anything his heart may desire.  He sits in the tower, at the heart of the menagerie.  Like the Aristotelian god, he is an unmoved mover.  He sees himself in a position of incorruptible strength, as he sits above the rest of the world.  He is untouchable… until… he leans into the light, and as the grass naturally follows the direction of the wind, all heads turn to him.  He has become spectacle, a cross-section of the panopticon, and the people have their revenge.

[For those of you who don't know...that pic is the famous last shot of "Sunset Boulevard." -ed.]