Best-of-the-year lists are built around the fallacy that the "year" still matters. YEARS ARE FOR OLD FARTS WHO LACK THE TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK THINGS MINUTE-BY-MINUTE ON TWITTER. I'll tell you this right now: I do not wish to see your Best Albums of 2010 list, because I know you will have spent lots of time [...]

Morning, readers.
*Elizabeth Berkley plans to write a self-help book to help boost young girls' self-esteem. Presumably it'll skip the whole section about doing a movie where you snort coke, have sex in a pool, and push the lead showgirl down the stairs so you can take her place in a topless Vegas extravaganza. Though hopefully [...]

It's covered in red. It instills fear in nearly everyone's hearts. It's coming, whether you want it to or not. It's Valentine's Day.
Valentine's Day is the cruelest of holidays among those both bitter and alone. Some use this day to express their love for their friends and family, but others—the more normal among us—typically find [...]

With the Academy Awards coming up in the next few weeks, the entertainment world is abuzz with who deserves what. And because of this year's expanded best-picture category, there are even more actors and films to fawn over.
Unfortunately, along with Oscar nominations comes the usual pretentiousness—"If you haven't seen An Education, then you're missing out [...]

Electro-pop band La Roux is playing to a sold out 9:30 Club tonight [Ed. note: Show's been postponed!], a sure sign that audiences love the duo made up of lead singer Elly Jackson and musician Ben Langmaid. However, La Roux — more specifically, Jackson herself — is known for being a bit of a... well, [...]

Yesterday, Douglas Wolk—whose byline I recognize and who, according to Beaujon and this online encyclopedia thingy, is sort of a dude—published an item on NPR's Monitor Mix blog to the effect that, dammit, AutoTune and Pro Tools and click tracks and, you know, Twitter are conspiring to kill rock & roll.
Holding up the 48th second [...]

In which the author makes snide remarks about HBO's For the People: The Election of Barack Obama

Wow, Barack Obama—what an inspiring figure. Do you remember how, against all odds, he got elected President way back in 2008? And then, despite an about-face in conventional wisdom re: the viability of Obamacare, how he jammed health-care reform [...]

I. The Perils Of *dom

Somewhere between stellastarr*'s self-titled semibreakthrough and Civilized, its latest, self-released effort, the New York band went from benign and enjoyable indie bubblegum to disposable Guitar Hero rock. That much was clear, anyway, at the group's packed show at Rock & Roll Hotel Friday with Wild Light and The Postmarks. Here is [...]

So I finally got around to listening to Ben Folds' new a cappella album, and I had some thoughts I wanted to append to last week's post. Those of you who are still in the process of forgiving me for bringing Ben Folds and a cappella in to this space to begin with will probably [...]

From the Cleveland Park listserv. Writer "Don" begs for vinyl:
"I have decided to go retro in my music listening and am trying to rebuild a collection of good old vinyl record albums. If you'd like to give a loving home to those lonely albums sitting around your house, I'd be happy to take them off [...]