Morning, folks! I normally do this thing on Mondays, but over the weekend I saw a trailer for The Human Centipede and have spent the last two days reconciling my sense of the world with the existence of such a film.

Speaking of horror flicks, the BP’s live feed of the ruptured oil well is pretty harrowing. Hank Steuver at WaPo pens a “review,” drawing such comparisons as Andy Warhol’s The Empire State Building and the smoke monster from Lost. The BP oil rig at the epicenter of the crisis is called Deepwater Horizon—which is exactly what James Cameron would have called the Hollywood adaptation. On the other hand, while the monotonous, inexorable gushing of civilization’s lifeblood into the cradle of nature might jibe with Cameron’s environmental sensibilities, it’s not exactly his speed. I’m waiting for the Werner Herzog voiceover.

On a more wholesome front, it’s about time children had their moral compasses calibrated by a Jewish cowboy sheriff!

Speaking of cowboys pushing morality lessons, Neil Young played Constitution Hall on Monday. Dave Malitz at WaPo has a review of the show, in which Young reportedly kept banter sparse and confusing and sang mostly new songs that the audience could not sing along to. Then again, Neil Young hates his audiences.

From farther down the folk lineage: Tallest Man on Earth covers “Graceland.” And Blitzen Trapper is packaging its forthcoming album, Destroyer of the Void, with beer coozies. Look for my review of that album, and possibly the coozy, next month.

In case you missed it: Farhad Manjoo wrote last week about Google’s effort to end the infuriating inconvenience of syncing your mobile device to your music library, and Apple’s coming attempt to end the problem of limited disk space by letting iTunes users store music online.

What a time to be alive, my friends. May your workday be as coyly ironical as Paul Rudd’s. Godspeed!

This Saturday, hipsters nationwide will saddle up their fixie riders and head down to their local vinyl outlet for Record Store Day. The holiday, created two years ago by a coalition of well-connected romantics (presumably while smoking a peach hookah and watching Empire Records), celebrates the culture of indie record emporia in the face of encroachment from "corporate behemoths." In order to participate, a store must be a "physical retailer whose product line consists of at least 50 percent music retail, whose company is not publicly traded and whose ownership is at least 70 percent located in the state of operation."

The event is a fine idea. It promotes community and a healthy disdain for corporate homogenization, which is what a lot of good music is about. But big-box music retailers aren't exactly going gangbusters these days. Trans-World Entertainment Corporation, the exquisitely evil-sounding conglomerate that owns Sam Goody, F.Y.E., and Strawberries, has seen its stock price fall by 92 percent in the last five years. Really, these stores and your local Championship Vinyl analog are similar inasmuch as they share a common foe: the iTunes Music Store.

Record Store Day implicitly condemns iTunes, and official event ambassador Jesse Hughes (from The Eagles of Death Metal) even goes so far as to liken buying music online to playing Guitar Hero instead of guitar. But as New York Times blogger Verlyn Klinkenborg notes in a 2008 post, iTunes, with its vast catalog of far-flung artists and user-generated reviews, is far from an indifferent, imperial merchant. Local bands can get their self-recorded album on iTunes just as easily as they can get it on the shelves of their local indie shop. Even artists are grateful for iTunes's astounding ability to lure customers away from free-download sites, which seemed destined to cripple not only indie music stores, but musicians as well. Sure, a lot of them are using Record Store Day as an excuse to put out a bunch of b-sides; but how much you wanna bet those go right to iTunes, with the bands' blessing?

Those who bemoan the decline of the indie music stores shouldn't villify iTunes. If anything, they should be thankful, on an aesthetic level, that it has driven many of the big chain stores out of business. Indie shops, meanwhile, will always be around, just like vintage clothing stores and antiques dealers. They serve a niche market, and that market is entirely justified in gathering to celebrate them. But celebrants should not be too hard on iTunes: It may be a huge corporation that wants your money; but it may let you hang on to your soul.

Be sure to check out Jason Cherkis' upcoming roundup of local Record Store Day events.