I don’t know, is ANY Faulkner easy to read? He supposedly wrote Sanctuary for the money in the midst of all those other classic books of his, and it’s frankly not that much easier than the big stuff. And that it was a “lurid potboiler” meant to make money? Were people really that interested back then in the story of the impotent gangster raping the heroine with a bloody corncob? And he wrote a friggin’ SEQUEL to it in 1954.

I think George W. Bush was a bad president, like I said, but I don’t know that his awfulness was really fully on display in 2000. Obviously a lot of people were heartbroken that Gore lost and we had the whole hanging-chads controversy (probably something today’s kids don’t know about) but I also remember a lot of people shrugging–yeah, okay, this guy sort of sucks, I didn’t want him to win, but back to my Tony Hawk Pro Skater, huh?
I really think it was Sarah Palin in 2008 that the whole “ridiculous candidate” thing really kicked in. Don’t like Dubya, but he wasn’t any big surprise to get nominated.

Oh, I agree that the Paranoid hits were still big in the 90s too. And Soundgarden obviously owed even more of a debt to Sabbath than Nirvana. I seem to recall ex-guitarist Jason Everman (was in Nirvana in 1989, in Soundgarden in 1990, in neither when both bands got big, went to Iraq) saying that he just saw Kurt listening to Sabbath albums non stop back when he (Everman) was in the band, even some of the more hated albums like Technical Ecstasy.

Lars Ulrich likes Born Again. Talk about a ringing endorsement. I will hold that BA is at least an interesting failure.