Eat your heart out, Dave Grohl

John Davis, former frontman of Superdrag, has a new solo album out, and it's quite excellent. If you like Superdrag, loud buzzsaw guitars and hooks by the boatload, "Arigato!" delivers in spades.

Additionally, it features "Lamentation vs. Laughter," arguably the best song Foo Fighters never wrote.

Top Albums of the 1990s

As this has apparently turned into a music blog, here's a year-by-year rundown of my top ten albums for each year of the 1990s. As you can see, I clearly didn't start becoming obsessed with music until closer to the middle of the decade. I find it kind of incredible that I couldn't come up with 10 albums for the year 1998, but I guess I was so obsessed with "Phantom Planet is Missing" that I didn't bother to listen to too much else.

1999

10) Dr. Dre: The Chronic 2001
9) Muzzle: Actual Size
8) Fountains of Wayne: Utopia Parkway
7) Blink-182: Enema of the State
6) Stroke9: Nasty Little Thoughts
5) Lit: A Place in the Sun
4) Showoff
3) Eminem: The Slim Shady LP
2) Cherry Twister: At Home With Cherry Twister
1) Foo Fighters: There is Nothing Left to Lose

Definitely a strong year, highlighted by my personal favorite Foo Fighters album, "There Is Nothing Left to Lose." Yes, I know "The Colour and the Shape" is better, but that doesn't mean "Lose" can't be my favorite. Other highlights include Showoff's self-titled debut (of all the cookie-cutter pop-punk bands to emerge in the 1990s, these guys were actually quite good; it's a shame they didn't stick around longer. They actually recorded a never-officially-released second album, "Wish You Were Her," which is also excellent, and worth digging around for on the interwebs if you can find it), Eminem's debut, Lit's first record ("My Own Worst Enemy" was probably the best song of the year) and Stroke9's debut.

1998

8) Eve6
7) A Tribe Called Quest: The Love Movement
6) Home Grown: Act Your Age
5) Fastball: All the Pain Money Can Buy
4) Pernice Brothers: Overcome by Happiness
3) MxPx: Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo
2) Marvelous3: Hey! Album
1) Phantom Planet: Phantom Planet is Missing

I listened the hell out of the top three on this list. As outrageously good as "Hey! Album" is, "Phantom Planet Is Missing" single-handedly turned me onto power-pop and I never looked back. It was basically the "Dookie" of 1998. Whereas Green Day's brilliant major label debut introduced me to a world of music I'd never known, "Is Missing" was essentially a graduation of sorts, having such a profound impact on me that it literally changed the way I listen to music.

I've written about it before, but I'll still never forget the first time I ever heard "So I Fall Again." I had never heard anything like it, and I still haven't to this day. Unfortunately it seems unlikely that Phantom Planet will ever go back to the pure, unadulterated pop goodness of their debut, but a boy can dream. Either way, were I to ever create a list of my top albums of all time, there's an excellent chance that "Is Missing" would be at the very top.

1997

10) NOFX: So Long and Thanks for all the Shoes
9) Apples in Stereo: Tone Soul Evolution
8) Everclear: So Much for the Afterglow
7) Green Day: Nimrod
6) Harvey Danger: Where Have all the Merrymakers Gone
5) Bracket: Novelty Forever
4) Goldfinger: Hang-Ups
3) Fig Dish: When Shoves Goes Back to Push
2) Kara’s Flowers: The Fourth World
1) Foo Fighters: The Colour and the Shape

Without doing any serious research, I would've guessed that 1998 or 1999 would've been the hardest top tens to pick, but '97 proved to be the most difficult. Surprisingly, a lot of quality music came out 11 years ago. In any other year, albums #2 and #3 could easily make cases for #1 status, but it's tough to edge out the Foo Fighters' seminal album. Still, the criminally underrated "The Fourth World" makes one wish Adam Levine & Co. would ditch Maroon 5's boring adult-contemporary and go back to the power-pop genius of Kara's Flowers.

1996

10) Reel Big Fish: Turn the Radio Off
9) A Tribe Called Quest: Beats, Rhymes & Life
8) Sublime
7) Muzzle: Betty Pick-Up
6) Fountains of Wayne
5) Nada Surf: High/Low
4) Stone Temple Pilots: Tiny Music
3) Goldfinger
2) MxPx: Life in General
1) Weezer: Pinkerton

An interesting mix of music on this list. Nothing really truly outstanding, although "Pinkerton" is obviously excellent. MxPx's classic "Life in General" really set the group apart from the pop-punk pack, especially since I was so heavily entrenched into the pop-punk scene at this point that I was practically buying everything that Fat Wreck Chords put out that year, not realizing that 99% of the bands were fucking terrible.

1995

6) Rancid: …And Out Come the Wolves
5) Green Day: Insomniac
4) Zoinks: Bad Move Space Cadet
3) Foo Fighters
2) Bracket: 4-Wheel Vibe
1) Fig Dish: That’s What Love Songs Often Do

Fig Dish's debut is probably the most obscure #1 of all these lists, but for fans of straight-up melodic rock, it doesn't get much better than this. I discovered the band after hearing "Seeds" on the radio (in retrospect it's pretty amazing that such an under-the-radar band even scored radio play, but I'm pretty sure I heard this on Q104 back before the station switched formats to classic rock, and I seem to recall Q104 actually being a pretty good place to hear a lot of new, relatively unknown bands. Also see "Stars," by Hum), and to my utter joy, the entire album was filled with hook after hook. I also can't say enough great things about Bracket's "4-Wheel Vibe," a true gem of a pop-punk album. To this day, I still don't know of any other bands that can take a highly limiting genre like pop-punk and make it sound fresh and original on every new outing. Also, Dave Grohl's initial Foo Fighters offering is just as good as the two albums that succeeded it, making the band's continued inability to release anything worth listening to in the present decade extremely frustrating.

1994

5) Soundgarden: Superunknown
4) Stone Temple Pilots: Purple
3) The Offspring: Smash
2) Weezer
1) Green Day: Dookie

I already touched on the significance of "Dookie" to me, but I'll reiterate that this was probably the most important album of my life. In addition to just being flat-out amazing, it not only drove a full-on obsession with pop-punk for years to come but inspired me to learn how to play guitar. In fact, the first song I ever learned how to play was "Basket Case." Not only that, but I still wear my guitar with the strap on the lowest setting possible thanks to Billie Joe Armstrong, for Christ's sake.

1993

4) Snoop Doggy Dogg: Doggystyle
3) Nirvana: In Utero
2) Jellyfish: Spilt Milk
1) A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders

It's funny; I didn't even discover the top two albums on this tiny list until nearly 10 years after they each came out. For all the props and name-checking Jellyfish receives among power-pop die-hards ("fathers of modern-day power-pop" and all that), I don't even think "Spilt Milk" is really that great. I know, blasphemy and all that, and I should probably check my power-pop-lover's membership card at the door, but truthfully, I would put many of the power-pop records I've written about during the last several years ahead of this album. Not that it's a bad album by any stretch -- were one to look power-pop up in the dictionary, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more representative song than the incredible "Joining a Fan Club" -- but despite repeated listens, it's never quite sunk its claws as deep into me as I would have hoped. Fortunately it's alumni have gone on to do some pretty amazing things, including 2008-Album-of-the-Year contender "Catnip Dynamite" by Roger Joseph Manning Jr. Seriously, the album is fucking ridiculous. First Bryan Scary, and now this. If you have any interest in power-pop whatsoever, please get yourself a copy of "Catnip Dynamite."

1992

2) Dr. Dre: The Chronic
1) Stone Temple Pilots: Core

1991

2) Teenage Fanclub: Bandwagonesque
1) Nirvana: Nevermind

1990

1) They Might Be Giants: Flood

I didn't really start seriously listening to music until 1994, hence why the early years of this decade are significantly underrepresented.


Miscellaneous Unranked Albums from the Aughts that I either Liked a Lot But Didn't Quite Make Top Tens or Discovered After Establishing a Given Year's Top Ten

A: Hi-Fi Serious (2002)
American Hi-Fi (2001)
Ash: Free All Angels (2002)
Bleu: Redhead (2003)
The Davenports: Hi-Tech Lowlife (2004)
Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)
Handsome Devil: Love and Kisses from the Underground (2001)
Jackdaw4: Gramophone Logic (2004)
Motion City Soundtrack: I am the Movie (2003)
Steve Ward: See and Be Seen (2003)
Student Rick: Soundtrack for a Generation (2001)
Sugarcult: Start Static (2001)
The Tories: Upside of Down (2001)
Verve Pipe: Underneath (2001)
Weezer (2001)
Yellow Second: Still Small (2002)


Miscellaneous Unranked 1990s

Blink-182: Dude Ranch (1997)
Moby: Play (1999)
Smash Mouth: Astro Lounge (1999)
Stir: Holy Dogs (1999)
The Tories: Wonderful Life (1997)

Top Ten Albums of 2000 and 2001

For whatever reason I've been in a hugely musical mood as of late. This, coupled with the fact that I recently realized that I never officially cataloged my Top Ten Albums for the first two years of the aughts, has compelled me to pull together two more top ten lists for your viewing pleasure. This way when the decade comes to a close, I'll have complete top ten lists from every year from which to cull my "Top 100 Albums of the Decade" post. Of course, that presumes that this blog will still be around in 2010, which seems unlikely, so depending on whether I continue to stay on this music kick, perhaps I'll do a premature "Best Albums of the Decade" list through the present day.

Anyway.

Top Ten Albums of 2000

10) Eve 6: Horrorscope - An album with a handful of excellent songs, although it has more than its share of weak spots. Unfortunately I don't have anything else to place in the tenth slot.

9) Mest: Wasting Time - A near carbon-copy of Showoff's outstanding also-produced-by-Goldfinger's-John-Feldmann eponymous debut from the year prior, Mest's debut was nevertheless a brillaint exercise in hyper-catchy pop-punk, filled with insanely addictive melodies and choruses. Sadly, everything they've released since has pretty much been pure garbage.

8) NOFX: Pump Up the Valuum - An outstanding effort following 1997's relatively weak "So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes," this record shows why NOFX is still one of the all-time greats at disgustingly catchy pop-punk.

7) Yellow Second: June One - The debut album from the band that released my favorite record of 2005 (and almost certainly one of the top five discs of the decade, I might add), "June One" finds Yellow Second honing their unique power-pop sound. It's a tad rough around the edges and not quite the masterpiece that "Altitude" is, but it's still a terrific debut that sets the stage for the band's excellent sophomore record, "Still Small." You know a band is special when you can toss their first three albums on shuffle and be outrageously happy song after song after song.

Interesting sidenote: According to Yellow Second's MySpace and Wikipedia pages, they are apparently playing a reunion show on May 9 in Denver, which is mind-blowingly awesome. If anyone can provide any further information, i.e. whether this means the band is officially getting back together and recording more music, and/or plans to attend the show and can somehow record it or at least provide a rundown of events, please let me know.

6) Caviar (self-titled) - This album was not on my radar in 2000, but came to my attention two years ago and very much deserves a spot on this list. See my mini-review here.

5) The Drowners: Is There Something on Your Mind - A huge find. For some reason this record was sitting in one of the listening stations in the Circuit City in Union Square, and something compelled me to give it a whirl. From the opening one-two punch of "Think of Me" and the title track, I was hooked almost instantly. Sadly the band's never really come close to this level of brilliance on its hard-to-find subsequent releases.

4) New Pornographers: Mass Romantic - It took a little while to fully appreciate, as I'd never really heard anyone who sounded quite like the New Pornographers before, but as anyone who's heard this brilliant power-pop tour-de-force can attest to, it's pretty fucking spectacular.

3) Tsar (self-titled) - Another amazing debut album, chock full of catchy-as-hell power-pop songs with an emphasis on the power. Lead singer Jeff Whalen's voice is amazing on this record, and the pop hooks are equally huge. I saw this band open for Marvelous 3 at Bowery Ballroom in September of 2000, and I can still say to this day that it was one of the best concerts I've ever been to. Sadly, the group's long-awaited 2005 follow-up was pretty awful, making Tsar's eponymous release yet another debut album on this list in which the band failed to follow through on its incredible promise.

2) Deathray (self-titled) - This was another record that took several spins to latch onto my brain, but once it did, it never let go. The entire album, spearheaded by Cake's Greg Brown, is outstanding all the way through, highlighted by album opener "My Lunatic Friends," the Beatlesque brilliance of "What Would You Do," the poppy pleasantness of "Now That I Am Blind" and awesome album closer "Happy New Year." Basically, if you're into power-pop in any way shape or form, this album needs to be in your collection.

1) Marvelous 3: ReadySexGo! - The final album from the quintessential late-90s power-pop band, Butch Walker & co. deliver a balls-to-the-wall power-pop manifesto, featuring some of the catchiest rock songs you'll ever find. While maybe not quite as hook-laden as predecessor "Hey! Album" (although really, the catchiness bar was set so damn high with that one that it's unlikely to ever be surpassed), "ReadySexGo!" is still astounding. Kicking off with the rollicking "Little Head" and culminating with one of the best album closers of all time, "Cigarette Lighter Love Song," the record is near-flawless, and makes one pine for the days when Butch Walker was actually good.


Top Ten Albums of 2001

10) Lit: Atomic - I don't think this album is quite as good as Lit's debut, but it's still an outlandishly hook-laden affair, and a great album to blast with the windows down on a beautiful sunny day.

9) Gwenmars: Driving a Million - This now-defunct band's last album; it's kind of tough to label, but you could probably call it power electro-synth pop. Hooky as hell, I've never really heard another record like it. As usual, AMG sums it up quite nicely: "Big choruses, big melodies, and big guitars -- nothing here is particularly discreet. To be sure, those looking for an unpretentious big rock sound will certainly not be disappointed."

8) Dashboard Confessional: The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most - As the years have passed I seldom listen to this album anymore, but when it came out I loved it, so I have to give it its due. A great collection of over-the-top emotionally sappy yet hooky-as-hell songs that - for a brief period of time - made it O.K. to sing along to some of the pussiest lyrics imaginable as loud as possible while you aimlessly drove around after being dumped.

7) Big in Japan: Destroy the New Rock - An extremely underrated pop-punk album from Zac Damon, former lead singer of seminal '90s pop-punk band Zoinks! Damon's surfer-dude voice always had a unique catchiness to it, and his ear for melody and pop songwriting chops have never been better than on this spectacular effort. Every song is a winner, and even though I barely listen to pop-punk anymore I can still toss this record on at any time. Listen to "New Dead Boyfriend" and "Everyone's a Scientist," and then try to get 'em out of your head. Don't say I didn't warn you.

6) Jimmy Eat World: Bleed American - This was my introduction to Jimmy Eat World, and they fucking blew the roof off with this album. I know a lot of JEW fans cite their first two albums as their best, but to me this is the quintessential Jimmy Eat World album - powerful, raw, emotional, and catchy-as-all-get-out. Super album all the way through, and as good as it is, follow-up "Futures" is arguably even better. Unfortunately last year's "Chase This Light" felt wholly uninspired, so it remains to be seen if the band can regain its former magic.

5) Steve Ward: Opening Night - Though I didn't discover Cherry Twister and the group's mastermind Steve Ward until 2004, this gem of a record is highly deserving of placement. This aurally beautiful power-pop feast is almost impossible to sum up succinctly, so I'll direct you to the fawning customer reviews page on Amazon - these folks say it just as well if not better than I could.

4) Actionslacks: The Scene's Outta Sight - Found these guys through Napster of all things, back when the site was providing free downloads of under-the-radar bands. Lead single "I Hope This Makes it Easier For You" was a nice pop-punky intro to the band, but the rest of the record revealed a far more mature and layered sound, and was dotted with introspective and emotional poppy tunes. Additionally, this was actually the first album I ever reviewed for The Brown & White at Lehigh, and the review is still up on the band's website (although you'll have to scroll nearly 3/4 of the way down the page to read it).

3) The Rosenbergs: Mission You - Another Napster special, I played the hell out of "Paper & Plastic" and the amazing Oasis-like "In Pursuit" back in 2001, but didn't get my hands on the full record until several years later. Still, this is top-notch power-pop of the highest order, and the only negative I can draw is that The Rosenbergs have shamefully only graced us with a mere two albums in their career, not including lead singer David Fagin's solo debut last year.

2) Pete Yorn: Musicforthemorningafter - This is where it gets hard. Having to choose between Pete Yorn's first album, almost certainly the best debut record in music history, and what I consider Pernice Brothers' - a band who musically can do no wrong - finest album, is essentially impossible. Though I've ranked them 2 and 1, respectively, you could easily flip them around and I wouldn't complain. Simply put, "Musicforthemorningafter" is a masterpiece. Every single song is utterly, jaw-droppingly incredible, and eminently re-listenable. I never get tired of hearing these songs, ever. I'm also not sure there's ever been a more apt record title, as "Musicforthemorningafter" sounds exactly like what it says it is.

1) Pernice Brothers: The World Won't End - Ah, "The World Won't End." This album came to my attention after a fawning review from The Onion AV Club (which sadly doesn't appear to have been archived), and from the moment I heard the opening strumming of "Working Girls," I knew I was in for a life-changing experience. Never had I heard a voice as heavenly as Joe Pernice's, all while singing some of the catchiest songs imaginable. The first four tunes on this album stack up against the best of anything ever recorded, and it's spectacularly solid throughout. I've often joked about how I could listen to Joe Pernice sing instruction manuals and it would sound great, but the man truly is a gift. And the fact that he uses his extraordinary talents to consistently arrange some of the flat-out best music being recorded today is a gift that is ceaseless.

Top albums of 2008 (so far)

I've been listening to some great new albums lately and my ears are burning enough that I feel it's time to share.

At this very moment, the album that has taken up full residence in my brain and refuses to let go is "Flight of the Knife," the new disc from Bryan Scary & the Shredding Tears. Some of you may recall Bryan Scary from last year's brilliant debut, and incredibly he's managed to outdo himself on this sophomore effort. It's almost impossible to describe everything that's going on here, as Scary literally runs the gamut through seemingly every possible musical genre imaginable - pop, rock, '50s doo-wop, glam, orchestral baroque pop, vaudeville, carnival whimsy, chamber pop, prog, post-punk, and probably several other genres that I can't think of right now - and somehow seamlessly melds everything together in an utterly brilliant hook-drenched pastiche of a concept record. Seriously, every single song tosses off about 8,000 hooks, and you could listen to each track several times and still catch new hooks that will quickly lodge themselves into your brain each time. The story has something to do with spacecrafts and other assorted flying vehicles, but as always for me, the lyrical content is secondary to the outstanding songwriting and musicianship. Scary manages to evoke the Beatles, Queen and Bowie to name a few points of reference, and as far as more recent bands, there's some Chris Brown (my #2 record of '07), Jackdaw4, a ton of Jellyfish and traces of just about every good power pop band I've ever name-checked. Even though we're only in April, it's going to take an absolute monster to surpass this album as #1 record of 2008. On a random side note, apparently the band has a big fan in Perez Hilton of all people, so perhaps for once one of my extremely underground bands will actually pick up some mainstream appeal.

The Crayons: What's Wrong With You - "What's Wrong With You" is just a solid album of mostly mid-tempo power-pop, with great vocals and arrangements. Reminds me of the Tories in parts, and the Rosenbergs elsewhere. It starts off strongly, and then it surprisingly actually gets even better in the middle of the record (an area where, as we all know, a lot of records tend to sag), highlighted by the 1-2-3 punch of "Well," "Maybe" and "By the Way." Seriously, try to get "By the Way" out of your head, what with that little guitar lick throughout and then the sweet-ass lyrical shift and minor chord in the coda - that's great stuff.

Panic at the Disco: Pretty.Odd. - This is definitely the surprise of the year so far. If the Beatles were still recording albums in 2008, this might be a reasonable approximation of what they would sound like. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on here, between acoustic guitars, horns, string sections and creative arrangements. Panic has pretty much shed its entire emo sound but maintained its inherent catchiness, and the result is song after song of melodic goodness. This album's also been pretty well-received critically, but I'm not sure what the fan reaction has been so it'll be interesting to see if they keep up with this new, more mature pop sound, or feel forced to go back to what made them stars in the first place. Obviously the former would be ideal, as they've really taken a giant leap forward between their first two albums. A lot of bands fall back into pigeonholing themselves after releasing a successful debut album, so to really shift gears stylistically and come out sounding even better is truly impressive.

Previously: Top ten albums of 2007 (so far) [5.10.07]

Top Ten Albums of 2002

Unfortunately the Brown & White appears to have divested itself of its archival material; as such, there's no longer an internet home for my "Top Ten Albums of 2002" column that I penned six years ago.

However, rather than maintain a dead link on my sidebar, I figured the least I could do was try to recreate the list as best as I could from memory, just in case the few of you stalwarts that occasionally come by here and have appreciated my past music recommendations want to go back and see what I was loving more than half a decade ago.

If I find some time, I'll track down the hard copy (I can say with 100% veracity that it's located somewhere in my parents' house - between my mom's inability to throw things away combined with both my brother and I no longer living there, our old rooms have literally become life-sized hamster cages, featuring endless streams of detritus dating back at least two decades), and transcribe it into this blog post, but for now all you get are the album names in the order I'm pretty sure I had them in minus pithy commentary.

Top Ten Albums of 2002
10) Superdrag: Last Call for Vitriol
9) Midtown: Living Well is the Best Revenge
8) Bad Astronaut: Houston We Have a Drinking Problem
7) The All-American Rejects (self-titled)
6) Ben Kweller: Sha Sha
5) Butch Walker: Left of Self-Centered
4) Rhett Miller: The Instigator
3) Phantom Planet: The Guest
2) OK Go (self-titled)
1) Eminem: The Eminem Show

The best bar in New York City

Hooray!

Only three months until summer!

The funniest people in New York City

If you're anything like me, you thought you were a clever little bastard and started a blog in the halcyon days right before blogs went big (spring of aught-four, to be exact) and dreamed of one day being paid to be funny. You subsequently lost interest right around the time the whole personal blogging backlash occurred, and now you post sporadically at best with the painful realization that your comedic golden days are behind you.

Having experienced the dizzying highs and perilous lows of trying to make people laugh on a daily basis, it's easy to become immune to almost any new attempt at humor and eventually reach the sad conclusion that most comedy sucks. Sure, every now and then something brilliant comes along (see "Development, Arrested"), but as a rule, most TV shows and/or people just aren't funny. Making people laugh is a tough business, especially in New York City, where everyone's heard it all before, and especially if you were born here, like me, and think you're better and funnier than everything that ever happened.

Which is why I'm pleased to report that, even for jaded New York chumps such as myself, there is still laughter to be found, and it's in the form of improv comedy troupe Reuben Williams, performing at 10:30pm on Saturday nights at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. I had the pleasure of catching the incredibly talented octet this past weekend, and I was astonished at how excellent they were. As someone who misguidedly fancied himself an actor way back in high school, I am painfully aware of not only how tough improv can be, but how hard it is to actually be funny doing improv.

Simply put, Reuben Williams knocked it out of the damn park. In the first half of the show they asked the audience for a piece of advice that they had received, and ran wild it with it for half an hour. The second half featured the group's "As Seen on TV" segment, in which they analyze the contents of an audience member's wallet and create several TV shows based on a 10-minute quiz with said individual regarding their wallet minutiae. My one gripe would be that the guy they chose ("Dustin") almost seemed like a plant, as the bizarre crap in his wallet and the stories he was telling were practically lubricated for Reuben Williams' comedy pleasure.

Regardless, every single member of the troupe was on point and there were almost no awkward pauses or unfunny moments. The group clearly has a comfort level with each other, and seemed to know exactly what each member was going to say or do and anticipated it perfectly.

I realize I'm describing exactly what it takes to run a successful improv group, but if you have any interest in laughing at all, please do yourself a favor and check out Reuben Williams. Additionally, it's only $8, which really can't be beat. What else can you do for eight bucks on a Saturday? Drink one beer. See three-quarters of a movie. Take a cab six blocks. And if that isn't sweet-ass enough for you, one of the troupe's members is Charlie Todd, the guy who created Improv Everywhere, and who, if I'm not mistaken, played "Rob" at that now-infamous Yankee game in September 2006.

The only surprising aspect of the show is that these eight talented performers aren't already household names. UCB owner Amy Poehler, herself often one of the only humorous aspects of Saturday Night Live, really oughta get Lorne Michaels' ass over to a Reuben Williams show and hire each one of the talented cast members on the spot. They'd almost certainly create a funnier program than the crap SNL's been diarrheaing out for years (though the last few post-strike episodes have actually been reasonably funny. Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Amy Poehler and the always-outstanding Kristin Wiig can all stay. Everyone else: vomit).

#76 Authoring witty self-referential blog posts lampooning one's cultural group's stereotypes

I know I'm way late to the party, but man, I wish I had thought of this.

Funniest thing I've seen on the web in a while, although painful to realize how easy it would have been to write that blog.

An excellent burger at Borough and an annoying New York Sun crossword puzzle

Last night I decided to check out Borough for my birthday dinner with my family, primarily due to the fact that New York Magazine ranked it as one of their favorite new burger places of 2007. My goal is to hit every spot on that list, although it's going to be an uphill battle for the other burger joints, because Borough set the bar pretty fucking high.

That's right, Borough's bacon cheeseburger not only lived up to the hype; it surpassed it. In addition to being one of the best burgers I've eaten in quite some time, the entire restaurant was spectacular. The food aside from the burger was also outstanding (I had the matzoh ball soup, fried calamari and some fried pickles), the tap was made up exclusively of microbrews from New York State (I tried the Checker Cab Blonde Ale, which was delicious), the ambiance and decor were perfect, our waiter was impeccable and the entire staff was incredibly gracious, with the hostess and manager coming by several times to ensure we were enjoying our meal and also seeming genuinely excited that I had chosen to celebrate my birthday at their restaurant. In fact, they even brought out three separate dessert plates on the house at the very end.

Now that's how you treat your patrons. It baffles me that someone could have had such a negative experience here, as everyone in my party loved the restaurant. If anyone reading this is looking for a great recommendation, you simply can't go wrong with Borough.

As far as the second point of business of this blog post, I call bullshit on yesterday's New York Sun crossword puzzle. I expect my Thursday puzzles to be challenging, but not full of theme answers that I don't even have a prayer of hazarding guesses for. Who under the age of 50 not only knows anything about Katharine Hepburn's film career, but can recall the first and last names of several characters she played in movies that came out 800 years ago?? Sure, you could make the argument that I should have been able to deduce the long answers from the across fill, but even those clues were causing me fits. Altogether a frustrating puzzle for my birthday, and I generally expect more relevant content from Mr. Gordon. At least Shortz had my back yesterday and gave me something reasonable for a Thursday.