I get defensive when people ask me about the Mountain Goats. I distract them with pedantry. I tell them it's really just the Mountain Goat, singular, plus a rotating cast of better-looking accompanists. Or I deprecate; I tell them the Goat has a dumb voice and incredibly close-set eyes and grins psychotically when he's singing. I don’t tell them that Mountain Goats songs occupy about 80% of the space on my iPod.

Do you remember how, in The Cider House Rules, Homer says: "Let us be happy for Fuzzy Stone. Fuzzy Stone has found a family"? Fuzzy Stone had not, in fact, found a family, he was dead from a respiratory infection, but was, at least, no longer an orphan. Let us be happy for Gwyneth and Chris. They have found release. Did I know them? No. But they seemed miserable and bored and lonely together, and…