Drew Lazor on Philly Pizza

I’ve doc­u­ment­ed my strug­gles with piz­za here in the City of Broth­er­ly love. It ain’t easy to find a good pie in town. Philly food­ie phe­nom Drew Lazor has a great look at all the best spots to get a slice in town in the most recent issue of City Paper and it’s worth check­ing out. Read it here.

N.B. he does­n’t high­light any spots that deliv­er or even are known for take-out. For what it’s worth I’m thrilled that he did­n’t pro­file the exe­crable, over­priced Rus­ti­ca in NoLibs either. Do I even have to men­tion that I’m absolute­ly in love with Zavi­no’s Ken­nett pie?

Want more Lazor in your life? Fol­low him on Twit­ter. He’s a hoot. He also con­tributes to City Paper’s Meal Tick­et, which has swept me off my feet since Kirsten Hen­ri left for Philly Mag. Now with Adam Erace! They’re a powerhouse!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

This Feels Like Home

I think I’ve final­ly set­tled on my ide­al Word­Press theme. I love the fonts, even if the main head­er is wonky on arti­cle pages. I got peo­ple who have insight into fix­ing stuff like that. (Yes, I’m look­ing at you, Roz.) I’m also gonna total­ly cop the fol­low suite from the bot­tom of Eric Smith’s blog short­ly and plant it right over there atop the right rail. Should be pret­ty sweet actually.

I’m debat­ing a few oth­er fea­tures. Feel free to sound off on them if the spir­it moves you.

  • Should I both­er adding a blogroll of any kind? I know they’re real­ly just there to gen­er­ate rec­i­p­ro­cal links and that very few peo­ple actu­al­ly click on them. I’m sure that like­li­hood decreas­es tremen­dous­ly when put on a sep­a­rate page, even if that page is clear­ly labeled and in the top nav that hov­ers over the right rail. Thoughts?
  • Tag cloud. They’ve always hor­ri­fied me. I just added one called “What I’m Talk­ing About,” which seemed pret­ty cool until it barfed up pret­ty much every tag I’ve ever used. I checked to see if I could lim­it the num­ber of tags with the out of the box Word­Press wid­get. No dice. Do I have any recourse?
  • Archives. I’m not pre­ten­tious enough to think that any­one real­ly trawls through the back pages here and I real­ly hate that they’re bro­ken out month­ly by default. I wish they could be orga­nized by years just for the sake of ele­gance. Is it worth the hassle?
  • Var­i­ous and sundry wid­gets just clut­ter up the place, right? I’m over hav­ing my Twit­ter feed post in the right rail. The fol­low suite will take care of that mess. I like the Flickr inte­gra­tion, but feel like that could go in the fol­low suite as well. Is there a Last.fm wid­get any­where in the wide world that gen­er­ates album art thumb­nails from your scrob­bles with­out total­ly stink­ing up the joint? I have yet to find one and I’ve looked high and low.
  • Last, but not least: what do you think of Kens­ing­ton Blues? I chose the name because I live in the Kens­ing­ton neigh­bor­hood and am a fan of the late great Jack Rose. But some­times I ask myself if it’s too imper­son­al for a blog that’s real­ly just about beer, babies, and base­ball for the most part. Feel free to offer sug­ges­tions on such things as per­son­al brand­ing if you are so moved.

By the way, I snagged this theme from Woo Themes and it was total­ly free. I’m as shocked as you are. Thanks, Internet!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 1

The Trade Deadline

A co-work­er said that it was “depress­ing” that I was already talk­ing about look­ing for­ward to the Phillies next sea­son. I told him that once upon a time I’d have felt that way in April!

Times cer­tain­ly have changed for the Phillies. Watch­ing the media cir­cus around their acqui­si­tions of Cliff Lee and Roy Hal­la­day were the sort of spell­bind­ing moves Philadel­phia teams sim­ply don’t make. We’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly been per­ma-sell­ers, unload­ing super­stars like Charles Barkley and Curt Schilling and get­ting noth­ing in return. We’re the sort of town where teams move into a rebuild­ing year that lasts a decade or more. In short, the Phillies are spoil­ing us by being so competitive!

I don’t know if the Phillies can make the play­offs this year, but I like that they’re try­ing to piece togeth­er a top-notch rota­tion that will be here for the next sev­er­al years. I still think they could make a strong run at the play­offs this year. They’ve shown they can do it in the past and if a team like the Rock­ies can go on a tear and snag the wild card the way they did in 2007, then why not us?

Make it excit­ing, Rube. Show us you’ve got what it takes to pull togeth­er a team for the ages with­out Pat Gillick look­ing over your shoul­der. I won’t even men­tion that you’re work­ing with your old boss Ed down in Hous­ton. It shows that you have the desire and will to build a cham­pi­onship team and that’s what this city wants as much as the cham­pi­onships them­selves. Go get Roy Oswalt for the 2010 run and see where we end up.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

My Part in the Spiral Stairs Snafu

I had no idea that any­thing I’d ever writ­ten, least of all a review of a mid­dling album by Spi­ral Stairs, would ever gain this degree of infamy, but then this sto­ry broke this week. Turns out Spi­ral Stairs is upset at Pitch­fork for their appraisal of his body of work post-Pave­ment. That’s total­ly his pre­rog­a­tive, but would­n’t it have helped if he did­n’t insist on rewrit­ing “Coolin’ by Sound” and just giv­ing it new titles?

For the record, that review stands as one of the most puerile pieces of crit­i­cism I’ve ever writ­ten. Bear in mind that it was writ­ten at a time when peo­ple actu­al­ly wrote neg­a­tive reviews about music, and those reviews were often long than 140 char­ac­ters. Want to know a secret? The orig­i­nal was longer AND mean­er. Hard to believe, right?

For what it’s worth, I loved Pave­ment. I’m not a hope­less nos­tal­gic for the band, how­ev­er, and I’ve felt that both Kannberg and Malk­mus over­es­ti­mat­ed their tal­ents in their solo efforts. I lis­tened to Mon­soon hop­ing to hear some­thing dif­fer­ent from Kannberg. How do you root against the under­dog? The unfor­tu­nate thing was that I did­n’t find any­thing to like and he’s been shock­ing­ly con­sis­tent in under­whelm­ing crit­ics and con­sumers. This may be why he was so frus­trat­ed in Pave­ment. Malk­mus was too shrewd an edi­tor to allow him to con­tribute mate­r­i­al like this.

I’d be remiss if I did­n’t note the praise I lav­ished on Kannberg for real­ly work­ing to pre­serve Pave­men­t’s lega­cy as one of the great acts of the ’90s. I meant what I said about him under­tak­ing the thank­less task of unlock­ing gems from old tapes that he had to lit­er­al­ly cook before they could be pre­pared for remas­ter­ing. I think I can speak on behalf of Pave­ment fans every­where when I say that effort was appreciated.

It’s a shame he can’t get past these bad reviews and just move on. He should­n’t be dis­cour­aged by a hand­ful of bad Pitch­fork reviews. At least some­one’s lis­ten­ing to these albums and pro­mot­ing them at all. Will he ever play sold out tours across mid-sized venues as a solo artist? No. But he’d do him­self a favor by low­er­ing his expec­ta­tions and maybe enjoy the fans who do come out to see him per­form. Is that so much to ask?

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0