Christ God.

In 19**, when I was at UCLA, I had a friend (last one I ever made, by my Rolodex's recollection). This friend, David P, had an interest in, a penchant for, and a fixation on the rock criticism of the Village Voice's Robert Christgau (or, as he was referred to by those less taken with the man, Robert ChristGod).

Personally, I didn't like Christgau. I agreed with a lot of what he said, but he was one of those writers whose sentences I frequently had to read twice and occasionally had to write down and diagram in order to understand what I was agreeing with. I began scanning his essays, looking for music I could bounce a check buying (my way past Statute-of-Limitations-expiration apology to the Wherehouse in Westwood village, which I think is long gone), skipping over all the wordy chaff.

I will not forget that Christgau introduced me to T-Bone Burnett's Proof Through the Night (an album inexplicably still not available on CD), but I will never forgive him for trashing Joe Jackson.

Cut to this morning.

There I am, lying in bed, sleepily listening to NPR, and on comes Robert Christgau. Hadn't thought of him in ages. Lo and behold, he shared my anger that that stupid Coldplay song (the one in all the commercials) had beat out OutKast's "Hey Ya" as song of the year. That piqued my interest. He talked up Fountains of Wayne. Okay, I thought, now we're talking. Always was interested in the music he was pushing. And now with the new-fangled, not-invented-by-Al-Gore "Internet," maybe it was time to give his writing another go. It has been (ahem) years, after all.

So I run (waddle) over to the computer, wipe the schmutz from my eyes, click some buttons, and start reading this.

See if you can make any sense of it. Maybe this will help. If you figure it out, e-mail me or drop me a comment, but don't wait by the computer for a reply. I'm off to buy the new Fountains of Wayne CD.