Monday night is not usually the weeknight to blow your mind, but this Monday will. If you head over to Main Hall to catch Apples In Stereo.

Promoting their new album, New Magnetic Wonder, which has, by the by, put music critcs' into a hyperbolic giddy-lovefest of praise, AIS are back in Montreal after an amazing but sparsely attended show in the summer of 2003.

I don't know how else to say it, but if you do not see this Monday's show, you will hear everybody who did see it talk about it for the next 5 years and it will drive you mad.

Oh yeah, AIS frontman Rob Schneider is the one who wrote an anthem for Stephen Colbert and performed it on the now-famous Colbert-Decemberists Green-Screen-Off show.

Nihilistic and nasty, but hilarious and surprising, too, BuffaloBeast.com�??s list of
2006�??s 50 Most Loathsome People (and the suitable punishment for each) is worth checking out.

Read it and see if you made the grade at:

http://www.buffalobeast.com/113/50_most_loathsome_2006.htm

Save Saturday January 20th to go and see Joel Plaskett (sans his band, the Emergency) at Sala Rossa. He's been rightfully getting raves for his albums and his live shows. (MP editor John MacFarlane is a huge fan [ed. note: that will convince everyone]) and a night spent with him is exactly what we all need now that winter is getting serious.

Plaskett's earnest love for dorky rock riffs and his delightfully non-ironic lyrics are matched only by his on-stage enthusiasm. If you miss it, you�??ll be sad.

Read on for MP�??s exclusive and scintillating interview with Joel Plaskett.

He wins.

Lake Superior State University has posted its list of 2007�??s banished words (the most dire, overused or just damn incorrect).

Compiled by what appears to be a jury comprised of 99 angry US Weekly readers and 1 old-school grammar aficionado, the list is uneven and, at times, painfully stupid, but today's a slow one on the information superhighway and I do love a list.

Here it is:

http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php

My family has all of the repression and avoidance of the best WASPS, without, unfortunately, the ritualized alcohol intake to make the situation feasible--even heady.
Yes, Happy Holidays.

The solution with the family is often to watch some videos. Here are 10, almost family films, to get you through the Holidays in style.

Does not Internet radio have 1 billion-trillion possible stations? And, if so, how has my coworker managed to light upon one that likes to get its rock on every once in awhile--when it's just totally givin�?? er--with The Stones' �??Sympathy For The Devil,�?� before getting down and funky with Eddie Murphy�??s �??My Girl Wants To Party All The Time.�?�

I am not saying that hell is other people. I am saying that hell is all the other people I work with�?�who are not, you know, me.

Any internet radio station suggestions would be greatly appreciated.