WELL, THE LICENSE SAID YOU HAD TO STICK AROUND UNTIL I WAS DEAD. BUT IF YOU'RE TIRED OF LOOKING AT MY FACE, I GUESS I ALREADY AM:  Ready to feel old(er)?   Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville was released twenty years ago today. Rather than repeat myself, I'll make myself feel older still by pulling up what I wrote about it here a full decade ago, calling it

that magnificent, magical, intimate, introspective, nuanced, low-fi, completely awe-inspiring document of a complicated woman and her sexuality, one that sounded better than anything else out there, was better-written than anything else out there, with its worst track from its eighteen ("Never Said", imho) still leaps and bounds ahead of anything else. On Exile, girl-with-a-guitar Phair was sometimes vulnerable ("Divorce Song", "Canary"), sometimes triumphant ("Girls! Girls! Girls!), sometimes wistful ("Strange Loop"), sometimes horny ("Flower"), always compelling.

Here's "Strange Loop."   [This post has been edited to include "twenty years ago today," which was the point.]

YE SHALL HAVE A CHILD:The spawn of Yeezus and Kim "Why Am I Famous Again?" Kardashian is apparently named North West.

ALL DUE RESPECT: Multiple outlets are reporting that actor James Gandolfini has passed away at age 51 while on vacation in Italy.

The Sopranos would not have transformed television without his iconic leading performance—menacing, joking, sometimes tortured, sometimes gleeful, usually cocky, always complicated and fully human. Gandolfini made you understand why others saw him as a leader, why Carmella could never break away from that life, and the toll that life took on him. It seems like an impossible acting task, making an audience feel empathy for a brutal mobster, and yet he pulled it off. What a terrible loss.

SELDOM HAS THE LYRIC "THIS IS REALLY AWESOME" BEEN MORE MISPLACED: Yes, there is a Kidz Bop version of Macklemore's "Thrift Shop."  Personally, I'm holding out for them to cover Kanye and demand their croissants.

QUESTION ONE IS WRONG BECAUSE BEN REVERE NEVER MAKES IT TO SECOND BASE. COME ON: A ten-question baseball rules quiz from Jayson Stark. (I scored 3/10; among active players, 4 was the mode and 5 the median, while managers ranged from 5-9 points.)

JUST SAY THE WORD:  I did not previously know that "Sussudio" was a ripoff of "1999."  (So are many other pairs of songs.)

SKEE-BALL! The Gameological Society (AV Club's video game side) visits Chuck E. Cheese as an adult to determine what machines give you the best bang for your buck in winning tickets.  Frankly, I'll stick with the Super Trivia machine at Dave & Buster's, which might actually have a positive expectation on value, particularly if you're playing with a full slate of players.