Yo, the Jennifer Gentle album is just terrible, all the worst impulses of the entire freak-folk movement rolled up into one intolerable pile of tics. If you're in a band and you're thinking about singing a song entirely in chipmunk squeak, please reconsider.

I had jury duty on Monday, and it was simultaneously one of the most fascinating and most boring experiences I've had in ever. After waiting around for a couple of hours in the morning, my number was called and I went with about a hundred other people to a courtroom where a murder trial was about to start. I've never really been in a room with a hundred other randomly-selected adult Baltimoreans, and it was sort of fascinating to see Hopkins professors and lawyers and the deputy mayor of the city sitting next to toothless electricians and divorced housewives. I was next to a funeral director who dressed just like Kanye West. We all had to give our occupations and say how much education we'd had. And then we had to sit around for hours in uncomfortable chairs while we had to pee. And then the judge gave us all a 20-minute lecture on the history of the courthouse. And then the lawyers picked the jury (the defense attorney turned me down; I sort of wonder why), and everyone went and got lunch and sat back in the huge waiting room where they were showing Welcome to Mooseport. Welcome to Mooseport is really bad. I'm told that Baltimore residents get called for jury duty about once a year since this city has so many trials. This is not good news.