Some shows I've seen lately:

Girlyman - Always a good time. They do smaller venues, have *great* rapport with the crowd, and do fascinatingly interesting encores (they also have a version of Hey Rose that melds Genie in a Bottle to bizarre and wonderful effect). They'll take a request or two every show, and they make up charming little songs onstage while tuning, hee. Highly recommend; I've seen them 7 or 8 times, and they never disappoint.

World/Inferno Friendship Society - It helps to know the venue. I've seen them twice now; the first time they absolutely blew me away with their frenetic cabaret punk. The second, the show was in the basement of a church, and you really couldn't hear the excellent musicianship for the crap acoustics.

Dar Williams - What a sweetheart. She will try to make the crowd dance, which is difficult to her particular brand of folk music, but she has great rapport with the audience, loves what she does, and sounds wonderful on stage. A good time.

New Model Army - I love this band, and they mix up their playlists between tours (and even a little between shows); they're not a slave to their hits, and they have some really interesting songs, and the playing is excellent. They don't interact with the crowd much, though, and don't even think about trying to request a song; they won't listen (particularly if it's "Justin! Justin! Play 125, Justin!").

VNV Nation - Go expecting to dance. A great time, the one time I saw them, and the singer was (unintentionally) incredibly entertaining in his continual injunctions to the crowd full of goth/industrial types to "feel the moment! Be a *part* of this!"

Dan Bern - Oh, what to say. He's fascinating, but do not go if you do not want to see a Dan Bern Show that may or may not involve music. I've heard that he tours with a band now, and they've hauled him in a little? But my sister once went to a show that was entirely him watching the baseball game at the bar, and rushing through a song every commercial break. Also, if people try to request the best-known songs (or sing along), he'll make them sing, or stop playing, or make up a song about idiot audience members. Funny, but could be frustrating.

Depeche Mode - The last time I went to a big stadium show. Meh.

But boy am I glad it was!

I got hooked on the anime when my sister sat me down and forced me to watch it; I'm planning to get the manga at some point soon, now it's all in English. The plot was tricky and fun, but it was the characters that really drew me in, particularly once Light and L began the cat-and-mouse in earnest. There was a careful, ambiguous dualism there, a resolution to ask morally tricky questions and not give firm answers, and to let the characters mirror the better and worse parts of each other, that I loved; and everybody, including the grating-at-first Amane Misa, has their own motivations for what they're doing, which may or may not be immediately apparent. (She did grow on me, for exactly the kind of cleverness that the reviewer notes.)

I had to stop watching the anime after episode 25 (not sure what issue in the manga, but if you've read it, I'm sure you know). I continued on a little while, but just couldn't get behind some of the changes; it felt like a whole carefully orchestrated theme had been scrapped for the sake of extending the run a little longer (which, I guess, is what happened. Sigh.). I'm hoping to go back to it at some point; maybe by treating it like a sequel, and not the original work, I can get past the changes.

In the meantime, I'm just glad to see Death Note getting some attention. It's a thoughtful, intense work with a lot of flash-bang to it -- not something that I find often. And whatever my personal feelings about when it should have ended, it's still phenomenal. (After all, I couldn't feel so grumpy if I hadn't been so awed and invested in the first place.)

This was exactly the post I needed today.

-- American Abroad