So I go to Amoeba (which if you haven't been there is a HUGE cd store in LA and San Franscisco, with a couple of floors and a place where you can sample thousands of albums any night and day; it's full of totally hooked-in-mondo-music fanatics and poseurs and honest to god working musicians) to buy Keren Ann's first cd which was mentioned in our music picks a week or so back, and it immediately turns into an exercise in character assassination.

I find the cd and a collection of French chanteuse and also another recommendation from our contributor Alan -- the Kaiser Chiefs, and an album by Death Cab for Cutie that has a song I know my kids will like and will finally get them out of their exclusive addiction to the Talking Heads. I'm standing in line and the guy next to me begins a critique of my selections which becomes a stream of consciousness soliloquy on my class affiliation, personality and likely professional status (UPS driver or PR account supervisor!?) and before I can stop myself, I'm defending my right to like bad music and to listen to derivative alt-rock on public radio to all eighteen people in line with me including a guy who only spoke Serbo-Croatian, as far as I could tell.

I always want the show to spark conversations but these aren't the ones I had in mind.