Dear Stephen Malkmus,

Sorry if I came off like a stalker when I told you that I'd sort of named my child after one of your songs.

Jarvis Cocker, of Pulp fame, is taking up residence next week in an art gallery in Paris. There will be open rehearsals, bring your child day, and yoga and pilates classes! No seriously. If I were in Paris, I would be there every day. (ALSO? Orbitz says it's a cheap time to fly NYC to Paris!)

I was in 10th grade when this decade started. I learned something that year, that spring specifically, that I'm glad to say I've never forgotten.

It started, as so many things did this decade, with an IM. The IM was from my friend Bennie, a guy who lived in Milwaukee that I knew from nerd camp the summer prior. Bennie was home-schooled and wore a floppy red knit hat all the time. Bennie and I kept in touch after camp via AIM and had taken the Amtrak to visit each other a couple of times at our respective homes. He was in a band called Road Reviews, and they were [...]

Rock legend Lawrence Hayward, of Felt and Denim fame (or something like it), is not a young man, as he turned 48 yesterday, and we relate to that. Relatedly, he has had it up to here with the kids today and their atrocious clothing. "If I tried to give these young kids advice like 'You shouldn't wear those shoes. You look like you've just come out of Topshop,' they wouldn't listen to me. These kids were 15 when I met them, and they looked like slobs. They all had great hair but they wouldn't do anything with it. Now if you're a kid, your dad listens to the same [...]