I sat down at the piano and played through Pictures at an Exhibition (well, the easy parts of it) as an act of contrition for today's episode. Mussorgsky did not have a happy life, dying an underappreciated, diseased alcoholic whose own supporters viewed his works as novel but horrendously sloppy and mistake-ridden. For a really awesome recording of the Pictures, by the by, check out Sviatoslav Richter's Sofia recording from 1958. It is way rad.

Oh, and in two short days, on August 7, my brand new comic, The Vocate, will launch its first episode, so drop on by! It's about a fellow whose profession is doing odd jobs for minor deities and kicks off towards the beginning of the Roman Empire, as polytheism, his bread and butter, is starting to shudder. It's like Frederick, except with mythology and religion in place of history and differential equations. It updates every Saturday, so please oh please read it lots!

And here in California a bit of history all its own was made today, it seems.

- Count Dolby von Luckner