On a recent Sunday, the crowd at the Brooklyn Flea was dangerously under-caffeinated. Blue Bottle Coffee, the only coffee vendor at the popular flea market, had just that weekend decamped, with little fanfare, until spring. The marble counter where their coffee wares were usually arrayed sat empty. The crowd—the weekend shoppers for costume jewelry and vintage iron-on decals—became indignant when told that they would have to go across the street—to a Starbucks—to get their caffeine fix. “Are you serious?!” a woman demanded of the hapless cupcake vendor who had the misfortune to have a spot next door. “Yes, I’m serious,” he replied, affecting the blankness of an airline representative with a line of stranded holiday travelers. “You’re not the first person to ask me that today.” READ MORE

Last night at Le Poisson Rouge, Ben Lear was wearing a wetsuit that made him look like a Starfleet Medical Officer and shaking hands. The 23-year-old son of 89-year-old television mogul and activist Norman Lear (you might know him for producing "All in the Family" or founding progressive advocacy group People For The American Way) had just finished performing Lillian, a show that's like an epic blend of Arcade Fire, Feist, a Muppet adventure and rock opera (although Lear prefers the term "folk opera," for its lower pretentiousness quotient). The story, which is by turns touching and bizarre, follows a young man’s search for his lost love, which takes him to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a soup of plastic that's about twice the size of Hawaii. While there, he meets a group of jellyfish (played by a gospel choir wearing shiny robes, plastic bottles, and Christmas lights) that attempts to baptize him in a pocket of air. Sample lyric from this section: “You little jellyfish, come to me/ You hold the key to a secret place/ With all the things/ That’ve gone to waste.” After an argument with a sea captain, the young man comes to accept that the past is “not lost, just plain dead.” READ MORE

John Flansburgh is never at a loss for words. Well informed and quick with a funny line, he's able to talk intelligently about pretty much any subject under the sun. He’s also, of course, spent more than 25 years writing witty and esoteric songs as one half of the band They Might Be Giants, along with John Linnell. This wry sensibility also made him a good fit to produce Artificial Heart, the new record from Internet favorite Jonathan Coulton. During his Thing A Week project a few years ago, Coulton wrote a song every week, covering everything from life in the suburbs to memos from zombies. He’s also Popular Science's Contributing Troubadour and a frequent collaborator of John Hodgman's. As producer, Flansburgh has overseen Coulton’s evolution from the guy-alone-with-a-guitar-while-the baby’s-asleep aesthetic of his earlier work to a more muscular, properly produced rock sound. READ MORE