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Yeah I prefer the early days of a bottle of it to the late ones, but I adjust my use of it downwards to compensate. I do like to taste the food... and also my stomach and really *hot* hot aren't often on great terms. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This stuff just gets hotter the more you deplete it. Starts off hot and sweet but by the end of the bottle it's scorching.

I liked Cholula a lot in the '90s for burritos and tacos, but it has really no heat. My buddy Dave makes his own hot sauce and it's kinda my go to now, which ain't real helpful cuz it's limited quantities. Basically every hot sauce I try is me hoping to find a consistently available version of it.

Interesting! I've tried the Momofuku brand chili crisp, but that's the only one so far. It was fine? I think I like a slightly sweet hot sauce more, but I might just need to try a different variety of it.

By taking one of these with me everywhere, basically.

Hey they sound fun!

For your klezmer-leaning jam tribute band, I suppose we have to go with Gefilte Phish

I used to be more of bagel purist, but now I'm mostly just like... hey, *I'm* not gonna order that cranberry walnut bagel, but you do you. The explosion of flavored schmears seems like a solid end around on the whole traditional bagels only purist thing.

I grew up Jewish with suburban DC bagels, which were good but really just fine, then had real NYC bagels, which were mostly better. I eventually experienced Panera bagels, which are poofy rolls cosplaying bagels. Those moved DC's bagels up many levels. You gotta go to war with the bagels you have.

Uh-oh, which songs? Is there a Gin Blossoms thing happening there?

It's all the same up here in Tenleyville.

I think Low is probably objectively better but it's also kinda slow and overly long, and Cake is objectively more fun and much shorter, so... much as I'd rather be voting for Ben Folds or Roots Manerva here, I guess I'm going with Cake on the "catchy short songs are songs too" theory of goodness.

Meanwhile, Low sent me down a rabbit hole of reading about Band of Horses *incredibly* numerous personnel changes. Much like The Shins, Band of Horses turns out to be a one man show masquerading as a band. Cake are sort of a 2-man band given their own line-up changes. Anyway, I dunno on this one.

Why do I instinctively cringe at the notion that Cake might have the 16th best album of 2001? It's a pretty catchy album. I like previous Cake albums and plenty of Cake songs. But somehow this feels like calling American Pie one of the best movies of 1999. Maybe it is, but it still feels dirty.

Some of this could be attributable to Gen X growing up with media with a clear arc in how it changed over time and Gen Z growing up with Gen X-derived media accustomed to treating and recreating those looks as choices, which flattens all eras into being simply different available palettes.

Oh nooooooo

I think the '77 tournament will be more upset-laden for 2 reasons: 1) Some extremely classic albums in highly disparate genres will lead to unexpected splits and results; 2) I'd bet it attracts some new folks and a wider audience for the tourney once it starts than are there for the seeding votes.

There've been some narrow wins. Guides by Voices was one vote away from taking down Jimmy Eat World. Drive-By Truckers and Ted Leo won squeakers too. But yeah - to some extent, vote-based seeding should be expected to hold, especially with wider seed disparity matches.

Just calling out the predictable complaining in an attempt to stave it off.

Excited for another day of people complaining that a fantastically good, interesting, deeply contemplative and innovative album is sooooo boring while it crushes an honestly pretty good but clearly less interesting/experimental album.