My greatest regret of CMJ week, which just blew through New York in a whirlwind of panels and open bars and late-night Kanye sightings, was missing the almost-dozen performances by Marnie Stern. Marnie’s self-titled album, which came out earlier this month on Kill Rock Stars, is my favorite record of the year — brash but vulnerable, energetic but melancholy, and full of . Plus, “Female Guitar Players Are The New Black” is not only a great title that sorta-forces critics to deal with their “OMG a girl is playing guitar really fast that’s like so weird” biases, it’s a whirlwind of a track, with an army of Sterns leading the assault over Zach Hill’s pummeling drumming and guitar bursts that sound like they were inspired by the “pew! pew!” sounds people make when they’re playing Finger Lasers. READ MORE

It’s the definition of a soft opening. The Miami Heat is kicking off the NBA season tonight in Boston, versus the Celtics, instead of in “South Beach”, where the franchise’s love of towering flames would have made for great TV, and where three of the NBA’s ten best players could bask in the certain love of the home crowd.

But NBA schedule makers aren’t clueless. Having media outlets ripping a tasteless pyrotechnic display in a relatively tasteless city would start the Heat off on the wrong foot, and not be at all helpful in rebranding the team as less of a prefab Eastern Conference power and more of a Stand by Me minus the dead body.

I just can’t see it. People don’t hate the Yankees because of who they are, but because of what they represent: gluttony and greed. The same brush bastes the Heat. Individually, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are likable enough, with talent to spare, but collectively, they’re a bully, at a time where we’ve finally all decided that bullies are the greatest menace facing this country.

The “David vs. Goliath” paradigm resonates because, unless someone is personally invested, he or she is predisposed to root for the underdog. The next time this Heat team will be considered an underdog is two days after never, no matter how confused and apologetic some of its players try to seem.

Regardless, the travelling circus begins tonight and, appropriately enough, it is already on the road. Reporters will hang on every word, scrutinize every missed shot, and attempt to identify broader themes in their columns while making regrettable snap judgments with their tweets. Gossip bloggers in each city will lurk outside of PF Chang’s hoping to get a glimpse of the players and their entourages. Bottle servers at clubs will be keeping an eye and ear out for evidence that young rich men are behaving like young rich men. And if a Kardashian is within 100 miles, there will be linkage.

The players had to know that it wasn’t going to be easy, upsetting the natural order of the league. Still, no one could’ve expected the critics to bang the drum so loudly as to drown out the cheers for what will be some really entertaining basketball. It remains to be seen if the level of vitriol and scrutiny can be maintained throughout the long season.

Either way, the tip-off’s at 7:30. Not sure if you’d heard that.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Xynn Tii, from Flickr.

Paul the psychic octopus is dead, but there’s a new hope: “’Behind the scenes, a young Paul is already acclimatizing himself, he was meant to be trained by Paul the First in the coming weeks,’ aquarium officials said.” That is some crazy-ass Dalai Lama-type shit going on over there in Germany.

In the latest installment of what is somehow the Internet’s only cooking and book chat show, Emily Gould interviews Lukas Volger and they create a whole new food paradigm. Lukas is the author of Veggie Burgers Every Which Way. And he does mean EVERY! Cooking the Books is directed by Valerie Temple and shot and edited by Andrew Gauthier. You can see all the Cooking the Books episodes here or even subscribe via iTunes. Previously: Emily Gould and Tao Lin Make Raw Salad, Jennifer Egan makes macaroons.

It’s pretty easy to disparage the High Line. In a lot of ways, it’s a tour de force of ostentatious dickheadery: it’s funded by the mega-rich to have a mega-rich-looking place close to their homes and offices. Nearby restaurants sell overpriced incarnations of street food. It’s constructed with the intent to be charming and loved (I’m looking at you, preserved railroad tracks with benches on them!) in the same way that Miley Cyrus songs are constructed so that you can’t help but enjoy them in spite of yourself. So it’s a testament to the park’s awesomeness that, in the face of all of these nuisances, it is indeed still insanely awesome.

Seriously, just go with your friends, hang out, sit on one of the oversized benches and play cards (I like Euchre!) or something. I’ve never had a bad time here! Maybe it’s the idea of faux nature, or how clean and new everything is, but for whatever reason, even though the primary view is Hoboken, it’s still gorgeous and relaxing. Is there anything better than sitting somewhere that overlooks the water? Has anyone ever had a bad time sitting somewhere that overlooks water? Okay, maybe some dock workers who got in trouble with the Mob, but other than that probably not.

Also, it’s huge! So while there might be a lot of people there, it almost never feels overcrowded in the way so much of this city can feel. In fact, they’re opening “Section 2” sometime next spring, so there’s going to be a whole new part of the High Line to enjoy. In fact, today is gorgeous. Fake sick and go there right now. You’ll thank me later.

This content series is brought to you by the All-New 2011 Kia Sportage. Welcome to the Next Level.

There still don’t seem to be any arrests in the matter of Rand Paul supporters detaining and stomping on a liberal lady. Then Paul rather shrugged it off on the TV.

Here’s a cool thing for revolutionary minded rappers to do: take the beat to a club hit that celebrates not much more than material success and excess and the easy sex it can provide (which, you know, that’s okay — there’s room for everything in this great big world) and turn it into an instructional recommended reading list for overthrowing the capitalist power system.

Here’s the original version, Lloyd Banks and Juelz Santana’s “Beamer, Benz or Bentley.”

Also, if you’ve never listened to Dead Prez’ biggest hit, “Hip Hop,” which is ten years old now, you should. It’s totally excellent.

Letters to the Editors of Women’s Magazines.

“Sperm is a hot commodity in 21st-century Britain,” writes Alice-Azania Jarvis in the Independent, which, go ahead, have a good laugh. HOT SPERM! It’s the perfect SEO lead! While you’re chuckling, let’s also get these out of the way: the article mentions the “grey market” for sperm and also talks about “how the act of donation is rather opaque.” Okay, got it all out of your system? Great.

Jarvis’ piece uses Britain’s sperm sparsity — you will recall that the situation is so dire that random sperm vigilantes are going out on their own to seek semen — to ask a larger question: What sort of man donates sperm? Well, the helping kind, mostly. But there are also other motivations.

Mark Jackson first learned of the sperm shortage six years ago. Sitting at his computer, reading news of the Boxing Day tsunami, he was made aware of his own mortality. “I realised that you could be wiped off the earth without having left any impact,” he reflects. “My eye was caught by a ticker running across the screen. It said that there was a shortage of gamete donations. I didn’t even know what that was, but I clicked on the link. I realised that maybe I could make a difference after all.”

Jackson is not alone. Hundreds of British men are showing their spunk in a period of sperm austerity. The number of registered donors nearly doubled in a four year period in response to a series of awareness campaigns that hopefully used the slogan “Keep calm and fill your palm.” But there is another part of the donation experience, the previously mentioned “grey market.” Let’s meet Ed.

Ed Houben of the Netherlands has been donating sperm since 1999, and doing so privately since 2002. He is Europe’s most prolific sperm donor. Head to his website and you are directed towards an upbeat missive in which he explains his willingness to offer “a good sperm cell” to needy couples around the world. He has fathered some 70 children, several in his home country, and others as far flung as Australia, Canada and Israel. At present, he has another eight on the way.

While this situation seems ripe for some sort of Sophoclean tragedy down the road, it’s hard not to see Ed as another altruist whose charitable acts just happen to involve spreading his seed all over the world. Also, he sometimes gets to do sex to his donees — “I would never have mentioned it. But then people began asking. I was amazed at first, but there are people who find artificial insemination lacking in intimacy. For many, [natural insemination] is the closest they get to being normal.”

This is very clearly a case of doing well by doing good. While this topic naturally lends itself to some nervous laughter, it’s actually rather moving, and it makes me reassess my own life. I’ve been so busy getting this website of the ground over the last year and a half that I’ve haven’t really had much of a chance to contribute to the community which has done so much for me. I think maybe it’s time I started giving back.

“In 1987, he missed the chance to accept his Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters because he was off filming Jaws 4. ‘I haven’t seen it, but I did see the house it bought for my mother,’ Caine says. ‘It was very beautiful. They said, here’s a million bucks for a week’s work… fine.”
 — Michael Caine, am I right???