hmm...i thought La Grande Jatte wasn\\\'t at the Chicago Museum anymore...i heard it was moved or on display for a limited time...hmmm...

1. kissing the cross: don\\\'t remember that from my days in the church Catholic or Protestant, very creepy.

2. Chicago was awesome, thanks for coming out and huge thanks to Jennifer.

3. According to interview with the writer of the rap it\\\'s just a spoof (maybe more like revisionist history?):

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-christian-side-hugnov30,0,6899998.column.

4. @No E Mahony
-It is still at the Art Institute, 2nd floor, Gallery 240 (spent an enormous amount of time there when I lived in Chicago). I did a bit of researching and the only time it left Chicago was in 1958 when it was loaned to MoMA and barely escaped a fire.

As always a great show

Thanks for being George and condolences to you and your family.

Wow, weird. I\'ve been to many funerals, mostly religious, but I\'ve never seen any sort of cross-kissing... Ew. Not only pushing-the-religious-ew but sanitation-ew, too. Blehh.
People find solace and closure in different ways, I guess, but none of that works for me. My cousin died of a brain tumor when he was seventeen and the funeral was absolutely ridiculous -pomp and circumstance and spending-money-no-one-had... For me, his death was a relief because there would be no more suffering for him, and I didn\'t feel badly about being sad for losing him, but the only thing that really helped at all was time.

As for death metal... Let me pimp my friend Tim Yeung, who won the World\'s Fastest Drummer title in 2006 and has played for a number of death-y type metal bands (Hate Eternal, Vital Remains, Nile, Decrepit Birth and currently Divine Heresy). I don\'t go for death metal in general, but he really is a fantastic drummer -and Divine Heresy\'s first album was, I thought, pretty darn good. But maybe I\'m biased.

...Zombie Butterflies would make a great band name, though.

It\'s funny, I came here to suggest that Robert listen to a couple Opeth songs to get a feel for how well-constructed death metal should sound. Technically it\'s not \"death\" metal, but that\'s only because we metalheads have to come up with a subgenre for just about every band that exists. Opeth is prog metal.

If he listens to prog, I\'d suggest \"The Lotus Eater\" as a slightly more accessible one. Growling vocals are mixed with clean moreso in that one than in most of their others. However, anyone could pick up and enjoy their entire \"Damnation\" album, which isn\'t a metal album. It\'s just solid songwriting from talented musicians.

Dry-cleaning tips: Very handy.

Thanks again for the show, George. I hope you\'re still doing this forty years from now. I\'ll still be listening.

Oh Jebus, but that Xian Syde Hugg (they totally missed the hiphop-spellz-things-rong dynamic is so, so wrong. It just doesn\\\'t take much to entertain a christian youth group does it?

Thanks for being George and condolences to you and your family.

TAM Australia - confirmed.
Hear it from Richard Saunders at 3.25 min into the video:
http://podblack.com/2009/11/briskepticon-first-day/

More news about who is appearing at TAM Australia also features on the Australian Skeptics site at http://www.skeptics.com.au/latest/announcements/australian-skeptics-announce-tamaustralia2010/

The Urban Dictionary defines \\\"Rough Rider\\\" as :

1 - Rough Rider

1: a condom covered with spikes enhancing sexual experience for the female, sometimes pain
2: Someone who prefers dry anal or vaginal sex, or is extra rough with intercourse

Examples:
1: dude, bobby wore that rough rider, holy sh*t! i had multiple climaxes!
2: man! sarah\\\'s a rough rider!

2 - Rough Rider
n., Adj., (sexual): A person who excels in sex, a good lay, a ride, a sex god.
Oh man, Jodi is a rough rider. I should tap that again tonight.

Wait, pancetta-laced brussels sprouts?

Oh, oh, oh, fuck yeah. I\'m writing that down right now.

(scribbles)

Re: Kissing the cross. I remember once when I was a kid, at a Good Friday service the priest decided it wasn\'t enough just to drape the cross over the altar in a purple veil; he wrangled a life-sized monstrosity into the central aisle of the church and, in place of communion, told everyone to line up and kiss the foot of the cross. That was some creepy, unsanitary shit.

Re: Death Metal. DM is tricky because classifying a band often takes more words than the songs. Kind of like skeptics, in a way. \"My band does Melodic Viking Death Metal.\" \"Really? I\'m an secular humanist igtheist skeptic.\"

I always suffer a bit of guilt when I enjoy death metal, though. I can\'t help imagining that my head might be banging right along with a bunch of white-supremacist neo-pagan jackasses. Doesn\'t stop me rocking out to Amon Amarth, though.

Re: Christian side-hug. I\'m willing to bet this is for real. It seems to me that in order to be a parody, someone would have to take side-hugging seriously in the first place, in which case, why not these guys? Still, that\'s an excellent use of the Imperial March in the song: because nothing says \"accidental cock collision\" like Darth Vader\'s dance mix.

The Bean (proper name, \\\"Cloud Gate\\\") is by the Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor. I lucked out in seeing an exhibit of his work at the National Gallery of Canada a few years back, and loved his stuff. A lot of it works by exploiting limitations in human perception (and not just visual perception) to trick the viewer in extremely clever ways.

I was also fortunate enough to see \\\"Sky Mirror\\\" in Manhattan while it was up -- another amazing piece.

Toronto has a Kapoor sculpture, \\\"Mountain\\\", downtown, but unfortunately it\\\'s not one of his better pieces.

There are some good photos of some Kapoor pieces at http://flavorwire.com/49064/daily-dose-pick-anish-kapoor, but a lot of his works just can\\\'t be photographed effectively. Some of his pieces actually work by fooling your ears while you\\\'re looking at them. His personal site is at http://www.anishkapoor.com/.


My favourite discussion of the ins and outs of Death Metal comes from Strong Bad at Homestarrunner.com.


The Montreal comedy team Bowser & Blue have a great song about three-chord rock & roll that does a great job of illustrating your point about similar chords. Unfortunately, it\\\'s not represented on YouTube, but you can find it on iTunes under the name \\\"Three Chord Rock \\\'n\\\' Roll\\\".

Great death metal... OPETH!! (and more) Check out something from Opeth\\\'s Blackwater Park.

Shitty... tons of them... I usually turn those off too early to get the name.

~Dan

The side-hug appears to be real, not a parody.

As someone with actual humor credentials, I can offer my professional opinion that yes, it\\\'s real.

My main evidence? It\\\'s not funny enough to be fake. Not enough laugh lines in the lyrics.

Thanks Geo and Ms. I\\\' ! The Icepick\\\'s now have something to listen to when they\\\'re sitting on I-95 with about 3 million of their closest friends this Sunday.

Hope you\\\'re enjoying your tryptophan hangover.

The \\\"Christian Side Hug\\\" song HAS to be a parody.