Niche-Hunting

1) I can't tell if Muse is brilliant or obnoxiously cliche.

2) I was thinking that it would be a real nice poetic metaphor to compare potholes to continents, but then I realized that would be misread as Pothole Complaining.

3) I sometimes try to steal without stealing.

4) Harper's leaves in awe even my oldest, wonder-numbed self. Mostly it's the writing.

5) There are too many good stories I can't tell.

6) They say drunk words are sober thoughts, and that sober thoughts are funny words.

7) I can't tell if Ted Leo is brilliant or obnoxiously didactic, but only in track 07 of this album.

8) My columns make me feel like I did at the start of events in track and field. It's terrifying.

9) After reading some real Hunter S. Thompson, I can only be more impressed with Johnny Depp's depiction. It's more than just Unconventional Capitalizations and drugs. There's his

a. unconventional but articulate use of adjectives
b. colorful, strange metaphors
c. obsession with weirdness itself
d. novel generalizations ("When a man quits drugs, he wants big fires in the hearth...")
e. frantic, flighty mind that races from one subject to the next, forming an organic structure of argument (and more amazingly, one that's usually still strong)
f. complete merging of personal and political - Kurt Vonnegut praised him as "vulnerable"
g. delightful style of insult (e.g. "dingbat," or just plain "scum")
h. subtle sarcasm
i. football references
j. bitter political nostalgia that many relate to

Depp didn't cover all of those, but he got enough that when I first started reading Thompson, I kept thinking I'd seen him in a movie. What's more, he did it (mostly) within the limits of what's acceptable in a motion picture!