Short CD reviews are a semi-regular feature on this blog. However, I haven't been paying much attention to new music this year and I'm very lazy. So I've asked Today Show movie critic Gene Shalit to contribute a guest column of music reviews. (Please note: Mr. Shalit was awakened from an afternoon nap to write this column, plus he hasn't liked a new album since REO Speedwagon's You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish back in 1978, so please excuse any crankiness.)

Kanye West - The College Dropout
Kanye? The answer, after listening to this album: he kant. The title of his debut may be The College Dropout, but I doubt that even a vocational school would take this clown after releasing this report-card-with-4-Fs-and-a-D of an album. West's career is headed south, so dropout this CD from your stereo and put on something better.

Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination helped set World War I into motion, and we can only hope the same fate befalls these Scottish snots. Even four years of global bloodshed would be worth it just to never hear another note from these haggis-chomping hipsters. Glasgow away before I have the whole lot of you kilt.

The Magnetic Fields - i
i hated this tuneless pile of crap. The Magnetic Fields are the polar opposites of quality music, and I am positive that you'll be negative after hearing this CD. And the vocals! There is no Merritt in Stephin's endless droning. Hopefully someone will be killing Fields in the near future so we never have to suffer through another one of these albums.

The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free
A grand may not come for free, but even if you get this CD for free, you'll feel like you overpaid. Mike Skinner should be skinned alive for making this grand sham of an album. Even Principal Skinner has better lyrical flow than this Cockney cockhead. The US Air Force should be called in to bomb these Streets to oblivion like the streets of Tikrit.