Dead Meadow's new album is sleepy woozy nodded-out psychedelic woosh; there's pretty much no metal in them at all anymore, hardly even any Sabbath. Onstage at the Ottobar last night, they were even more oceanically blunted; they sounded like the screwed-and-chopped version of Jane's Addiction or someting, like kickass stomp riffs coming through walls of mud and murk and swamp, bending the air and folding around them. I really liked it for like 45 minutes, and then I got tired and bored. They'd be a lot better as an opening act. The actual opening act, Jennifer Gentle, would be better as silent dead people. Jennifer Gentle may be my new least favorite band in the world. Every chipmunky screech, every wackly little oomaph riff, every doinky-doink drum fill made my skin crawl. It's like soundtrack music for hobbits playing duck-duck-goose, and it makes me want to die.

Does it make me a bad person that I still hate Alonzo Mourning even after he donated his entire year's salary to kidney research? Is it terrible to wish he'd pull a muscle next time he tries the flex-and-roar thing? Am I going to hell now? Part of me hopes the Heat and the Rockets make the finals so Jeff Van Gundy can run out and grab his leg every single night. This same part of me wants Phil Jackson to take the coaching job in New York just to piss Kobe off.