Amuuurrrrica (or: you ain't supposed to die on a Saturday night )

I have pretty much exclusively been listening to old hardcore bands lately with one extreme exception: THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM. Normally I think I would find something like this corny and tooly and not be into it but inexplicably I am hooked. All of the hype is true. They really do sound like a cross between 1970's-era Bruce Springsteen and the Bouncing Souls, somewhere between the Jersey turnpike and the endless highway Americana of Lucero's That Much Farther West. Truly fantastic -- and just SO awesomely Jersey. (Dad, give it a shot.)

As I said, usually "youth anthems" about love or life/death/transcience make me roll my eyes a bit but this is perhaps the epitome of what happens when former hardcore kids grow up and make grown up rock music all while maintaing some semblance of Kevin Second's Young Till I Die and not being total tools. The whole album, The '59 Sound, is just awesome for all audiences. I assure you that if you are reading this you ought to listen because you will enjoy.

IFFFFF you really can't hang with rock music, I suggest partaking in this different but equally wonderful slice of Americana -- This American Life #328: What I Learned from Television. Although it made me feel like a latte liberal, I couldn't keep myself from laughing pretty much the whole way through.

As for slices of America in my life here:
Friday night my friends and I went to Disco, hit up the imported foods aisle, and made ourselves some super tasty burritos in Silvia's kitchen. Saturday we continued our culinary adventure with sheets upon sheets of M&M cookies, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter M&M, and PB oatmeal cookies. Mmmmm. Then yesterday I went again to Jumbo, the huge American-style supermarket (somewhere between Stop&Shop and Target) that I like to call "Amuuuurica," with Alana. What does that say about the States that I relate most to American when I am eating absurd amounts of terrible-for-you food or when I am in places where they sell it?