"It was the stuff of legend. Regardless of how the surprising reunion of the Afghan Whigs turns out, their show last night at the Bowery Ballroom will go down as the '90s alt-rock heroes' greatest concert ever." READ MORE

Man, if Sleigh Bells had been around back in 1982, when I was taking guitar lessons from Chaz at Red Bank Music but never actually learning how to play guitar because it was too hard to memorize scales and twist my fingers into the uncomfortable positions required to make actual chords, so I just learned how to make power chords because you could do it with two fingers laying flat across the fretboard, and learned the riffs to just the hooks of only the biggest, dumbest Black Sabbath and Deep Purple songs, and how to get crazy distortion feedback sounds by hooking my guitar up through my stereo speakers instead of my amp, I would have played the shit out of this!

I was lucky enough to have been at Santos Party House on Monday night, where this great thing happened when Killer Mike came onstage at the release party for El-P's new album Cancer 4 Cure. They were going to perform a song called "Butane"—a duet from Killer Mike's new album, R.A.P. Music, which El-P produced—but there was a glitch with the music equipment. It turned out that El-P didn't have the R.A.P. Music instrumental tracks with him. So they did it a capella, and it ended up being even better that way. The whole concert was excellent. (I know I have been going on about these two lately. It really is a very exciting example of mutually beneficial collaboration, what they've been doing. They inspire one another, and it's fresh; they've both been making records for more than ten years, but they had never met before last year. And their music has been a bright spot in a pretty shitty month. Here's Rolling Stone's cover story about Adam Yauch.)

"Sometime early this summer, Felix Baumgartner will try from 90,000 feet. Then, later in the summer, he’ll jump from more than 120,000 feet... Baumgartner’s team says that its primary aim is to advance the science of survival at extreme altitude, not just to break records or publicize Red Bull. One contribution they expect to be useful to future pilots and astronauts is a new field treatment protocol for vacuum exposure. Called high-frequency percussive ventilation (HFV), the technique would help a victim of vacuum exposure breathe without further damage to the lungs. While the treatment is common practice for burn victims, no one has ever thought to use it on victims of sudden decompression. The threat of exposure to near-zero atmospheric pressure levels is one of Clark’s biggest worries. If Baumgartner’s suit fails, the fluids in his body will start to boil and bubble in a process called ebullism. The resulting tissue damage could kill him if not treated immediately, so Clark is determined to have an HFV machine on the ground in case something goes wrong." READ MORE

"I'm challenging and inviting the cryptozoologists to come up with the evidence instead of complaining that science is rejecting what they have to say. It would be wonderful if one or more turned out to be species we don't know about, maybe primates, maybe even collateral hominids." READ MORE

"Eventually, the players were escorted to the prison soccer field, which was lit for the night. Escobar came out in sweat pants and a soccer jersey, and played left midfielder, 'even though he was right-footed.' Pareja's teammate, Carlos Alvarez, had to guard him, a most delicate job. Guard him too lightly, and Escobar would feel disrespected. Guard him too closely, and Escobar would feel humiliated. Either way, it could mean his neck. 'Don't kick me,' Escobar told Alvarez with a grin, 'because (if you do) you will stay here with us.'" READ MORE

“The flush toilet may have been the most civilized invention ever devised, but the remote control is the next most important. It’s almost as important as sex.” READ MORE

Zach Braff must have been too busy to do the voiceover for this new Johnson's baby shampoo commercial that just made me gag and lurch towards the bathroom with my hand cupped over my mouth. I bet he's regretting it now, seeing how it came out. (The voice actually sounds a bit like that of "Mad Men"'s Vincent Kartheiser, who used to do a lot of voiceover work in commercials when he was young. But that couldn't be him now, could it?)