"A regional music scene—hereafter, 'RMS'—furthers art in the same way that, say, Wisconsin furthered progressive politics under Gov. and Sen. Robert La Follette in the early 20th century. RMSes generate ideas. They lend music character…. Brooklyn has a downside. Those who abandon their RMS to come to Brooklyn risk co-option by an aesthetic Borg. Things get mushy. There’s too much input, and there’s not a lot that’s not known. Somebody’s band sounds like Howlin’ Wolf and ESG and Gang of Four, but also sounds like REO Speedwagon and Glenn Branca and The Pointer Sisters. There aren’t many secrets. There are no mountains to go over…. Artists wanted to live [...]

Today designer and illustrator Frank Chimero decides that Boing Boing sucks now, in implied form, by way of an "oh-so-shocked" list of that site's recent headlines. ("HOWTO make a motorcycle out of cigarette lighters"! "Insects made of human hair"!) Efficiency expert and consultant Merlin Mann chimes in: "I’m the last person to begrudge a talented person his success. But, it’s hard not to begrudge the deliberate perversion of that person’s talent in the service of gavaging a profitable but pathologically undemanding audience." He closes with an editorial observation on Boing Boing: "Yuck." He also makes the classic observation: "I haven’t deliberately visited the site in question in [...]

Seven or eight years ago, when I wasn’t yet old enough to feel embarrassed about it, I saw Conor Oberst play at a bar downtown. Before he went onstage—a stage that was really just a foot-high platform with a stool—he sat drinking in a booth with some friends. Having been drinking myself, I made my way to his table, where I stood as if I were a waiter, and, realizing too late that I ought never to have come over at all, I sputtered some combination of the words love and music and so much. He gave me a much friendlier look than I deserved, signed a scrap of [...]