Slate describes the decline and evaporation of the Musical Fadeout:

It's a fine historical review of the subject, in case you're wondering how it got started and how it because an artistic expression. (Because of the Beatles.) It took me a while to figure out why some bands could end songs, and why some couldn't: the more they played live, the more the songs ended. When they became creatures of the studio, they got used to the board man pulling down the sliders, and that was that. Playing in a bar you have to end a song. In the studio, you don't.

This led to the greatest lie of music television. Before MTV, artists with a hot single showed up on talk shows, often without a band at all. I remember watching Merv Griffin to see Gerry Rafferty play "Baker Street" - no band, just Gerry and a sax player, who may or may not have been Raphael Ravenscroft. The song faded out, as it did on the record, and they did what they always did: bring up the applause, as though the audience was so overcome with gratitude they couldn't wait for the song to end before they started cheering. And then eventually the musicians stopped pretending they were singing and playing. It's not easy to do. Takes perfect timing. Still looks completely fake.

Says one comment: "Composers should be inventive enough to come up with an actual ending. Fade outs are a cop out. For instance, it's never been used in classical music."

BZZZZT. Sorry, that's wrong.

ART The Flux Machine animates LOC GIFs for effects that are surreal, amusing, haunting, or all three together.

The artist has also put together a reasonable brief for renaming the Washington football team the Breadskins. His logic is impeccable. If you're wondering whether this might alienate those who have difficulty with gluten, he addresses the matter.

COMICS It may seem from the outside like a bastion of solidity, but the Family Circus drops the mask today and reveals a world of paralyzing insecurity and misinformation:

Is Mom taking away the kid because the other one's tableau of robots and airplanes holds some peril neither child can foresee?

VotD Let's go bungee jumping! It'll be fun. C'mon, these guys are professionals; what are you worried about?"