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Last Saturday, Annie and I (along with Ray) emptied the living room of the furniture that — according to a reliable source — could have been on the set of That 70s Show. Seriously, the couch and matching chair were about as old as my parents, and have been in the family for as long. We hauled them to my uncle's garage and then proceeded to pick up some newish furniture that a real estate agent had alerted us to. The coffee table looks like marble, and as such, appears to weigh 400 lbs. The entire setup is definitely an improvement. All I have to do is get a nice widescreen TV and we can start having decent parties.

Reuters Photo Fraud

The recent discovery that the Reuters news agency released a digitally manipulated photograph as an authentic image of the bombing in Beirut has drawn attention to the important topic of bias in the media. But lost in the frenzy over one particular image is an even more devastating fact: that over the last week Reuters has been caught red-handed in an astonishing variety of journalistic frauds in the photo coverage of the war in Lebanon.

Also: Malkin's Fauxtography

Paste Magazine's article "100 Best Living Songwriters" (June/July 2006) places Tom Petty in the top thirty, citing his "...unerring songwriting instincts." Yet, in the August 2006 issue, the magazine takes him to task for his shallow songwriting in a review of his latest album, Highway Companion. Music critic Geoffrey Himes even named his full-page review "The Writing is the Hardest Part." Ouch. Himes intimates that Petty's lyrical weakness is not a new phenomenon, but has been with him since his early hits. Granted, Petty's inclusion on the "Best Living Songwriters" list may be the result of over thirty years of consistent material, not for one recent album. However, the very songs cited in June/July as being classics ("American Girl," "Refugee" and "The Waiting") are more or less looked down upon in August as lyrically "shallow" and memorable only for their classic rock sound.