It’s weird–I’m only recently finding out about that thing where “Harness Your Hopes,” a B-side the band themselves didn’t think much about, suddenly became a latter day “hit” on some platform or another (Spotify? TikTok? I don’t remember) But it gives me hope that Pavement won’t be forgotten. Malkmus himself just seems to turn up in a Popmatters article or something like that every now and then, at least.
Yo La Tengo are still going. I plan on doing the rest of their discography next year.
I have never heard a Pavement song in public, not then and not now. The closest is when Beavis and Butthead made fun of “Rattled By The Rush.”

The Malamud novel you’re thinking of is The Fixer. The Victim is a novel by Saul Bellow and is not at all about a guy imprisoned in Russia. I kinda want to read The Tenants after hearing you describe it.

When I watch an entire SNL show I’m also keeping my eye out for the really terrible sketches, I’ve been compiling a mental list of those for a long time now. But yes, Youtube has made sitting through the entire sketch show irrelevant.

What did you hate about the Tubes? I’ve never had a discussion with anyone else about them ever–I tried to get people here to listen to Remote Control but nobody would bite.