I was catching up on reading some Carolyn Hax advice columns in the Washington Post today, and meandered over to her chat this afternoon. This all had the usual effect of making me brood about my relationship issues, but I was also amused by one question in the chat session.

A reader asks: "What's it mean when a man tells you that you are out of his league[?]" The consensus from Hax and other readers was either (a) the guy has a self-esteem problem and isn't worth sticking with on that basis, or (b) is just spouting a version of the "it's not you, it's me" routine to make her feel better.

My thinking is that the best remedy for the woman is to simply tell his next girlfriend why he broke up with the woman: "Yeah, he said I was too good for him, so I guess that means you're...not...according to him."

And I'm not even getting paid for this awesome advice!

This week I picked up the new album from Old Crow Medicine Show, Big Iron World. (You can buy it here or here.) I reviewed their major-label debut album O.C.M.S. back here.

On the previous album, OCMS described themselves as "an old-time string band," and that's about as good a definition I can come up with. I said two years ago that they "play some old stuff in a new way, and some new stuff in an old way," and that's still true. Listen to the clips at the links above to get a sense of what they're all about. The instruments can be primitive, but their playing is anything but. These guys can do some amazing things with stringed instruments, and the vocals can go from tender harmonies to throat-rending yowling odes to drinking and cocaine abuse.

The hardest part about writing a review of Big Iron World is not repeating my review of O.C.M.S. And that's because of the most significant quality of the new album, one I'm not sure is a positive or a negative: It's really more of the same thing. On the one hand, that's great because I love their work, they're unique, and I don't think they've finished carving out their niche. On the other hand, it doesn't feel like the band took many (any?) chances with the follow-up.

On a follow-up to a breakthrough album, I think you need to add either breadth (exploring different styles or themes) or depth (exploring the same styles and themes in a different way). Yes, sometimes that alienates fans who just want more of the same. (See, e.g., Weezer's Pinkerton.) But ideally, the follow-up album shows the range of the artist and proves he or she is more than just a one-trick pony. (Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen's follow-up to his star-making Born to Run, is the first to come to mind, but I'm sure you'll think of better examples.)

I don't want this to sound too critical of OCMS. I'm happy to have more music like the O.C.M.S. album, and I've scoured the internet for random Medicine Show tracks to get my fix. But what's frustrating is that all of Big Iron World sounds like it could have been on the earlier album -- and they both would have fit! It would have been easier to swallow a two-year wait for O.C.M.S., part 2 if either album had been more than forty minutes long. For efficiency's sake, I burned both albums on to one blank cd (with room left over for one of those internet finds, a sweet ballad called "Caroline"). I mixed the order up a bit, and I wonder if, two years from now, I'll be able to remember which songs came from which album.

None of this is to say that Big Iron World isn't worth having if you liked O.C.M.S. The song-writing is just as strong, the covers are well-chosen (a couple of spruced-up traditional rambles and Woody Guthrie's jaunty "Union Maid" -- who was "wise to the company's spies"), the production from David Rawlings is deft and smart enough to avoid over-doing it, and as I said above, these guys can pick and sing. A note on Rawlings -- he co-wrote several of the tunes, and he and his cohort Gillian Welch appear on a few songs, with Welch sitting in on drums. As I suggested when reviewing O.C.M.S. (which Rawlings also produced), the Medicine Show is a nice counterbalance of energy (both kinetic and potential) to Gillian Welch's more languid sound.

While I don't think any of the songs on Big Iron World are as good as the best songs on O.C.M.S. (the wonderful "Wagon Wheel" chief among them), overall it stands up well against the predecessor. "Tell It to Me" from the first album, a singalong recommending corn whiskey over cocaine, has grown into the new album's "Cocaine Habit." That song has maybe the strangest line in their repertoire: "If you don't think cocaine is mighty good/ Ask Karl Rove and Elijah Wood!"

I'm especially fond of "I Hear Them All" (reminding me of "We're All in This Together"), "Bobcat Tracks," "James River Blues," and my favorite song on Big Iron World, "My Good Gal." That one makes me imagine the sad version of "Wagon Wheel" -- as if the narrator of that song made it to his woman, only to find out "my good gal ain't no good to me." But all the songs are catchy and listenable, and maybe the more I hear it alongside O.C.M.S, I'll discover that Big Iron World is broader or deeper than the debut. I know I'll be happy if the biggest complaint I ever have is that it lacks length. And here's hoping I don't have to wait two more years for Old Crow Medicine Show's next forty minutes of music. I'm glad I have this album, and I may revisit this rating down the road somewhere, but right now I think I'm frustrated enough to give Big Iron World four Pepsis out of a possible six-pack.

Last year I wrote a post about a woman who was the victim of a radio station stunt. The station offered callers a chance to win "100 grand," but when the winner arrived to pick up the $100,000 she believed she had won, the station gave her a 100 Grand candy bar. She sued. Here's a story about it, and here's the complaint. I wasn't able to find a resolution after a few minutes' surfing, so if anyone knows how that one turned out, please let me know.

I was reminded of that incident (and another, more famous one I mentioned in the post, where a Hooters waitress expecting a new Toyota car received a toy Yoda doll) when I saw this story from North Carolina. (registration probably req'd) The basics: Last week Fox Sports broadcast a preseason football game between Miami and Carolina. Now, if you know anything about preseason NFL games, you know they're a joke. As CNNSI's Peter King noted this week, the Patriots didn't even make their starting quarterback make the trip for a preseason game. So, the tv networks carrying these games have to pretend like they matter in order to keep viewers glued to the screen for all those commercials.

The Fox folks came up with an ingenious plan to keep viewers interested even after the starters were resting and the game was nothing more than a glorified practice. The announcing crew announced in the third quarter that they would be giving away a car. They repeated the tease several times while sideline reporter Tony Siragusa went looking for a winner. They chose "Catman," the Panthers superfan pictured above (in the wig --photo from the linked article -- and I don't think he ate the kid).

You've probably already guessed where this is going. Alas, Catman didn't. He thought he was winning a real car. As it happens, he drives a 15-year-old minivan with 130,000 miles on it, so he needs a new car. And Siragusa presented him with one: a toy Porsche. Ever classy, Siragusa joked that Catman (real name: Greg Good), a big man at 6'4", 340-pounds, would need "oil" or "butter" to squeeze into the car. What makes that such a bad joke is that Siragusa looks like they have to bring him to work on the back of a flatbed truck.

Anyway, Catman initially thought that the toy car was a symbol of an actual car with his name on it, presumably outside the stadium. So it took him a while to catch on that he had been had. In Scott Fowler's column in the Charlotte paper, Catman sounds pretty stoic and forgiving about the whole thing, with about a million times more class than the yokels at Fox Sports who thought that making fun of one of the Panthers' biggest fans was a good idea.

However, the readers weren't as forgiving, and the anti-Fox reaction was pretty fierce. Most commenters wanted Fox to give Catman a real car. (Interestingly, a lot of commenters took the Panthers organization to task for not standing up for a fan so identified with the team that he was part of a Pro Football Hall of Fame exhibit on superfans. Of course, the Panthers count on Fox for a lot of money as part of the tv deal.)

So I was getting ready to write this post, harkening back to the 100 Grand fiasco, and speculating about litigation if Catman was of a mind to sue. I thought the 100 Grand victim had, depending on the facts of the case, a potential claim for breach of an oral contract or fraudulent misrepresentation. Catman was in a tougher spot because he was just a random "winner." There was no detrimental reliance on his part, and he never really did anything to enter a contest. It's not a lot different than if someone walked up to you on the street and pulled the same prank. But I thought he might have a decent case for intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress, given that his humiliation was broadcast nationally.

That claim would have been a bit of a stretch, but it probably would have been a case where the negative publicity would have been worse than any judgment or attorneys' fees Fox might have to pay. And, the happy result is that Fox executives seemed to have had that same thought. They announced today that they're giving Catman a brand new truck. So, all's well that ends well. Maybe other people in the market for a car should try getting humiliated on tv to get a free car!

Look, I don't have any problem with practical jokes or shows like "Punk'd" or "Candid Camera." And I'm not saying that the victims of these pranks should necessarily be able to recover large damage awards. But maybe events like this one and the ones I mentioned above will make jokesters realize that whatever chuckles they get while making fun of someone in this way aren't worth the headaches and bad publicity that will come later. Companies should know that good will and reputation are worth something, too, and it's kind of funny to me (funny strange, not funny ha-ha) that they'd want to act in a way that they rationally should realize will diminish those assets.

As the Fox Sports CEO understood, "We are morally obliged to correct what was an appalling piece of misjudgment....I take the reputation of Fox Sports very seriously, and I don't want it to be sullied." Okay, so it's not as big an entry on the "good will" side of the ledger as Oprah giving away a few hundred cars, but it's the best move for the balance sheet.

I'm not really qualified to opine on the psychological aspect of all this, but I wonder how much the inclination to pull a prank like this is part of a bullying mentality. It takes a certain kind of person to enjoy humiliating another. As Mr. Poon knows, it take a Nelson Muntz. Or, apparently, a Tony Siragusa. So does that mean that people who side with the victims of these stunts were the victims of bullies, or empathize with them, while those who side with the pranksters were/are bullies themselves? Maybe one day a nerdy doctor will get revenge on Siragusa by telling him he's getting a bypass, and then instead of much-needed heart surgery, presenting him with a stretch of interstate highway. Ha-ha!

Tuesday is Be Late for Something Day.

I observed it religiously.