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Is there any substance that elicits a more complex set of social consequences and reactions than alcohol? It is almost equally praised and vilified, promoted and banned, embraced and rejected. I personally was a drunk for most of my 20s, quit drinking entirely for almost 10 years, then gradually, cautiously, …

If you haven’t heard of Knoxville’s Jag Star yet, then soon you will. Their song “Mouth,” written by singer Sarah Lewis, won the USA Songwriting Competition Overall Grand Prize and Pop categories. The bouncy new wavish ditty reminds me of a spunky Go-Go’s workout and bodes well of the band’s …

PBS’ Media Matters show is featuring blogs in the episode debuting January 16, with two of our very own Blogcritics, Glenn Reynolds and Oliver Willis, securing heavy face time. Check out the cool video trailer for the show here, and BOW DOWN BEFORE THE ASSEMBLED MIGHT OF G AND O! …

James McReynolds dies of cancer at 75: Backed by their band, “The Virginia Boys,” their first single “The Flame of Love,” backed by “Gosh I Miss You All the Time,” spent weeks on the national charts. Other songs regarded as Jim & Jesse classics are “Cotton Mill Man,” “Diesel on …

Oscar-winning cameraman Hall succumbs to cancer at 76: the Oscar-winning cinematographer[‘s] … bold color experiments enriched such films as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “American Beauty” and 2002’s “Road to Perdition”… …An expert in the use of light, Hall filmed nearly three dozen movies in a career that stretched …

Image is everything in Hollywood, and one’s mate is among one’s most important accessories. Stars would never be as coldly calculating as this NY Post column suggests, would they? MICHAEL Douglas did it. So did Heidi Klum and J.Lo. We’re talking, of course, about romantic upgrades, a bona fide celebrity …

For a guy few outside of the British Navy know much about, Samuel Pepys is getting a lot of play these days. He is the subject of a new biography by Claire Tomalin, reviewed last week in the NY Times, and his daily diaries have been turned into a blog …

Yesterday you could have turned your TV on at 1pm and happily left it on broadcast TV until the 10pm news, with Fox being the big winner. CBS had the early NFL playoff game yesterday between the Browns and the Steelers, Fox the late game between the 49ers and Giants; …

When I am in the mood for an introspective, crystalline-voiced singer-songwriter, I very much enjoy Rosie Thomas’s When We Were Small: intimate, musical, emotionally honest without wallowing, her voice a lovely but not derivative combo of Sarah McLachlan and a young Emmylou Harris. This morning NPR speaks with Thomas and …

A new Harris poll confirms what most of us already knew: computer users are are really, really sick of email spam: The survey, conducted Nov. 22 to Dec. 2 on 2,221 adult Web surfers, finds that people detest spam by larger numbers than they did in March 2000. Eighty percent …