If you're like me, and you have trouble keeping friendly frontal hugs from turning into full-on depraved bonefests, you'll appreciate the advice of these side-hug-advocating, Jesus-loving white rappers (h/t the Rumpus): 

Honestly, even though my Catholic-school teachers forced me to watch graphic abortion videos when I was a child, I had a hard time believing a big Christian group would really endorse something this misguided. Forget that even Bristol Palin knows that abstinence-only education is just silly; what's with the gunfire and sirens? But consider the matter fact-checked: "Mm-hm, that was us," the Encounter Generation Conference secretary told me this morning. "The side hug is just a little rule we have around here, to encourage kids to keep their hands off each other." Apparently they've also recorded songs set to the Phantom of the Opera theme and Queen's "We Are the Champions." Since those are, unfortunately, not available on the Internet, I offer you Christian punk band Lust Control's catchy anti-masturbation screed. My favorite part is where they remind you that Jesus "sees everything you do"—though it's a slightly less creepy deterrent than what I was taught in grade school, which is that if you touch yourself, Jesus AND your dead relatives will watch. 

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So this is what happens when you ask a bunch of wise-cracking MoJo editorial staffers, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, to name the artists, albums, and songs for which they would like to give thanks—and why. Feel free to post comments with your own selections.

Big Pun, "100%" — Because as much as I would like to give 110%, I just don't find it viable. Plus: Puerto Rico, baby!

NWA's "Gangsta, Gangsta" — Because journalism, like gangsta rap, is not about a salary, it's all about reality.

Pavement, Crooked Rain — Especially the wonderfully expressed lyric Lame driver, the Force is against you.

Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, A Larum — I will no doubt wear out my iPod listening to this British singer-songwriter's phenomenal debut as I eagerly await his second album. (Oh, hey! Look!)

Cast rendition of "Don't Stop Believing" from the TV show Glee — Double the cheese = Double the fun.

Roxy Music's Avalon — It's the best album to play when you're really hungover in an apartment with a great view of London. Plus, it got me laid in college.

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Dave Rawlings Machine
A Friend of a Friend
Acony Records

"Dave's gone and done it," was roughly what Gillian Welch announced a couple of months ago to 50,000 bluegrass fans in Golden Gate Park. "He's put out an album." Well, now he has. This week, Rawlings—that ephemeral, soft-toned siren who appears on all four of Welch's albums and accompanies her on stage—finally comes out with his debut CD, a jaunt through old-time, folk, country, and bluegrass. Raised in Rhode Island, Rawlings  picked up the guitar when he was 15. Somewhere along the way, string-band country music became his muse, and in the early '90s, Rawlings and Welch moved to Tennesee, where they've carried on the Nashville tradition.

A Friend of a Friend features Welch (she's also cowriter on some of the songs), members of bluegrass favorites Old Crow Medicine Show, Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers, and Nate Walcott of Bright Eyes, but the Dave Rawlings Machine is front and center. Rawlings' confident picking seems to emanate from a deep understanding of Americana roots. But like any great storyteller, he filters all that knowledge into something even an uninformed listener can get.

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The US Chamber of Commerce, the massive business organization that's taken a shellacking in the media lately for its climate-change stance (among other things), apparently can't take a joke. Last month, prompted in part by Mother Jones' coverage of the Chamber's shenanigans, the Yes Men held a phony press conference purporting to be the Chamber and announcing the group's about-face on climate matters; now, the Yes Men-turned-PR-flacks said, the Chamber would be eagerly supporting climate legislation on Capitol Hill. The real Chamber, however, was far from pleased—so much that they're suing the Yes Men for the stunt.

While the ensuing legal action may be novel, the spectacle of political prankery has a rich history. From Joey Skaggs' infamous New York "Cathouse for Dogs" to the phony pundit Martin Eisenstadt of the 2008 election, there's no shortage of memorable pranks in this country, as Dave Gilson describes in his new story "Jumping the Snark" in Mother Jones' November/December print issue. But more importantly, Gilson asks, are these kinds of clever hoaxes a dying art?

Gone are the days of Skaggs and cultural icon Abbie Hoffman; now we have the CollegeHumor "prank war" and Bruno and Borat—funny, but lacking the weight of the hoaxes of yore. Pranks, Gilson writes, "have morphed from an outlet for political and artistic outsiders into another form of popular amusement," where everyone can try to be a prankster and the better organized gags are used to peddle Taco Bell.

Which isn't to say the prank is dead; it's just evolving, Gilson says. "Just as Sacha Baron Cohen's first three personas have gotten stale and the Yes Men are searching for a new gig," he writes, "so will the current crop of predictable pranksters be pushed aside by a new batch of jokers who've concluded that it’s better to light a stink bomb than curse the darkness."

Find Mother Jones' ongoing coverage of the Chamber of Commerce here.

Read about how climate activist prankster Tim DeChristopher put one over on the Bureau of Land Management here.

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