Richard Gere

Unless something crazy happens, Richard Gere will, until the day I die, be considered a straight-up class act.

This idea started at the 2003 Academy Awards. Notably missing from the nominees for Best Actor (Supporting or otherwise) was Gere’s performance in Chicago. I don’t looooove Chicago, but it is really good. Better than the sum of any of its parts was the one played by Richard Gere - charismatic, deft, and (in my opinion) scene-stealing, the role of Billy Flynn may not have been handled by anyone else any better.

Despite not being nominated, there he was at the gala event - tux, smile, and all. He simply could not have been any happier to be at this stupidly exuberant ceremony of pomp and circumstance to support everyone else around him. He clapped and smiled for his co-stars as they won awards, and - in an attempt to catch him off guard - was shown clapping and smiling for fellow actors nominated in the categories in which he should have been nominated. And not in a way that could have been perceived as fake, either; he was truly just happy to be there with his friends and co-workers, and happy for those winning beside him. Every time a cameraman (or woman) attempted to catch him off guard, they were instead treated to a view of him just being as happy as any golden retriever I’ve ever seen.

Regardless of the wide chasm of quality that his films surely fill, Richard Gere is, and forever will be, one classy mother fucker.

Zaireeka is an album by The Flaming Lips. It was released in 1997 and was released on four CDs. The idea was that you needed to have four stereos set up and had to start the discs at the same time to completely hear the eight songs contained on the album.

For Record Store Day (Saturday, April 20 this year), the band released the album on vinyl. Instead of doing a normal-human thing and buying the album on CD and compiling the tracks from a rip, or just torrenting the damn thing, I’m going through and digitizing all four records and editing it together that way.

I may or may not share the results of my work when I’m done.

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