Collision course? Maybe it's time to repost Chicago Magazine's July 2002 profile of then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, The New Face of the Law. He's formidable.

Clapton production: Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play The Blues

Quicktime audio samples of all 23 tracks.

Legend has it that Junior Wells and Buddy Guy first met in 1958, when recent Chicago transplant Guy beat Wells in a Battle Of The Blues competition, even though Wells was the established player on the Windy City scene. The two played together at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival and opened for The Rolling Stones on their 1970 tour. That tour was the catalyst for the recordings on this album, originally released in 1972...

When the Stones played Paris, Guy-Wells disciple Eric Clapton came over for a visit, joining Guy onstage for a few numbers. Backstage, Clapton suggested to Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun that he sign the two bluesmen. Ahmet agreed if Clapton agreed to produce the record. The deal was struck, and sessions got underway at Criteria Studio in Miami. Unfortunately the album took two years to be released, during which time some of the post-Woodstock blues buzz had subsided.

This two-disc Rhino Handmade edition of Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play The Blues presents the original 1972 Atco album in its remastered entirety, plus 13 previously unreleased tracks from the Clapton-produced sessions. New liner notes and track-by-track commentary by Mark Humphrey.

Paris revolts over morbid artwork: In the Guardian,

An incomprehensible screed of words carved by a grief-stricken schizophrenic French farmer into his bedroom floor has become Paris's most controversial new art exhibit.

Since the Plancher de Jeannot (Jeannot's Floorboards) went on display last week, it has created an unprecedented stir. 'People are terribly disturbed by it. Some feel it should not be on public view,' said Claudine Hermabessiere, spokeswoman for the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand. The carving - 80 lines of text, in capital letters with no punctuation - contains references to Hitler, to Popes and to an infernal machine that controls humans....

The pointer comes from Follow Me Here, the blog of psychiatrist Eliot Gelwan of Brookline, Mass. Another post there blogs precautions and more in the new age of influenza.

Bonus link: The Art Lover blog at the paris daily Le Monde. Ignore the words.

Tim of Travelers Diagram spent three full days at the Metropolitcan Museum of Art and put his photos on flickr.

The thumbnail collages of works in the collections are enticing together, and browsing the galleries of his larger versions is a great escape from the negativity wire: "Have a look at my photos, ordered roughly as I saw them: Day 1 (68 photos), Day 2 (71 photos), and Day 3 (67 photos)."

Among them, he slips in the portrait of the artist above.

Robbie Robertson proud of The Band: New boxed set documents one of rock's seminal acts. Toronto Sun's Bill Harris writes long on Dylan's famous backup band.

The Guardian critic hates The Band. He spits two mean paragraphs through tight lips.

There's audio and video of older stuff at the official site, but just track lists of the new six-CD set.

go anywhere disposable scrabble game. Print and play.

New York Hack is a the blog of a cabbie in the City. She photographs what's in front of her: cars that cut her off, receipts, her odometer, a sign in the US Airways taxi lot bathroom at LaGuardia. She vents. Not for the easily offended.