• Radiohead with Michael Stipe

    Once upon a time, that would’ve been a dream walk-on for me. Real­l­ly hard to imag­ine Radio­head and R.E.M. togeth­er live now. Their forth­com­ing album, Col­lapse Into Now, strikes me as the most des­per­ate attempt at rel­e­vance since their last. What­ev­er hap­pened to aging grace­ful­ly, guys? I get hav­ing Pat­ti Smith and Eddie Ved­der aboard, but Peach­es?…

  • My Musical Comfort Food

    Now that I’m not mon­i­tor­ing news feeds across the web for the lat­est break­ing music news, I’ve been set­tling in with some old favorites. They’re beyond pre­dictable, but I find it so refresh­ing to tune back in with music I was lis­ten­ing to non­stop when I first start­ed get­ting inter­est­ed in music crit­i­cism. Let’s just…

  • Goodbye Playoff Beard

    I start­ed grow­ing this beard the day the Phillies clinched the NL East. Sure, I jumped the gun a lit­tle bit, but when I look back on last year’s scrag­gly play­off beard, I’m glad I did. Now I look like this. Loved the beard, but I’m feel­ing human again.

  • Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me

    Went to see a record­ing of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! at the Acad­e­my of Music last night here in Philadel­phia. If peo­ple think that this week­end’s Ral­ly to Restore San­i­ty is like the Gath­er­ing of the Smug­ga­loes, then they would­n’t know what to make of this. Let’s just say that Helen and I real­ly love the…

  • Rally to Restore Sanity

    Feel like this sums up the day pret­ty well, but hear­ing Yusuf, Ozzy and the O’Jays pret­ty much blew my mind. Pol­i­tics, schmol­i­tics. This served as a friend­ly reminder that we have a lot more in com­mon with strangers than we think.