After talking with Luke about his mash-ups (read Sasha Frere-Jones’ primer from the New Yorker for a catch-up) at a Tim & Mari party a few months ago, I’ve been meaning to hit a Mash Ave night at River Gods. It’s a last-Tuesday-of-the-month affair, and last night worked out. Aimee and I met at around […]

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I enjoyed a fairly low-key solo show from former Blur guitarist Graham Coxon last night at the Paradise. Theirs is not a relationship in which a former member might bring out an old song from the band to play at his solo show; mercifully, most people knew this and there were precious few shouts of […]

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It’s about time for a new computer, and after two PowerBooks, I think it’s time to go back to the desktop. My PowerBook is doing fine, but it’s out of HD space and is on the slow side, so I think I’ll hold onto it and replace it with a desktop model this summer. I […]

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Though a new LED-powered version of the fabled Citgo sign was unveiled just over a week ago, all is not well with the Kenmore Square landmark. Against the backdrop of a gorgeous sunset, one of the sign’s red, horizontal elements seems to be stuck in the ‘on’ position. I wonder how long it will take […]

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Sometimes things are really busy at work, and sometimes, it’s really slow. This week was one of those times, and things got so slow that by the time yesterday rolled around, I decided to take the day off. Conveniently, Aimee also had the day off for the Good Friday holiday, so I surprised her this […]

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I’m getting started on the bad puns early; I predict they’ll be flying when Darwin’s Ltd. opens its second location on Cambridge Street sometime in the near future.I happened upon it today on my way to work; it’s in the old Tiny Bubbles building at 1629 Cambridge, and it looks like they’re busy in there […]

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Who knows where we’ll be next year – maybe we’ll be in Boston, maybe we won’t. So this weekend, we took the opportunity to do a couple of those things we’d always wanted to do but never had the chance before. Saturday morning, we hit the road, briefly, for a day trip to Providence. Aimee […]

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The following things, I learned last night, are all associated with a period of history known as “medieval”: bawdy limericks, Shakespeare, monks, chastity belts, the Irish, and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair.” Thirteen of us ventured (and that is the correct word) through the heart of the Big Dig to The Medieval Manor Theatre Restaurant, […]

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Last evening, we caught the third installment of Aimee’s birthday present from last year, an evening with The Chieftains at Symphony Hall in Boston. They’ve been around 43 years, they’ve released nearly one album a year over that time (including the one mentioned above), and I think this was my third time seeing them. They […]

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It’s time for my yearly National Opinion Survey, apparently. Last year, I took one on paper and then actually got a visit from a pollster, who sat with me in my hallway showing me magazines, asking if I ever read them. This time it looks like it’s a bit simpler; last week I received a […]

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Another winter weekend (this has to be one of the last, right?) began with the Friday night’s Main Event, DJ Spooky at Sanders Theater. Our seats were in the third row, which meant that not only were we as close together as sardines in a tin (bye, Dan), but we had to crane our necks […]

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I’m looking forward to finally seeing “Rebirth of a Nation” tonight (thanks to Bostonist for a nice preview of the event). I almost ended up going to Mass MoCA for a ‘work-in-progress’ screening awhile ago, but this will be better. An article in The Crimson today shows how close the HFA came to getting Paul […]

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Once a year, I step back in time to the days when I taught 8 year-olds, and I pay a visit to Aimee’s class to tell them about the Iditarod. Even before I started co-teaching at the school in Connecticut where I worked for three years out of college, the second grade classes there studied […]

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I always seem to pick shows at the Middle East that go on during bad weather, making the trip there and back as interesting as the show itself. Last night that was certainly the case as I trekked across a deserted, wind-blown, snow-drifted Central Square to see Keren Ann. A line had formed by the […]

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I spent my lunch hour today walking in the rain to the Middle East to get tickets for tonight’s Keren Ann show (thanks to Sasha Frere-Jones‘s piece in The New Yorker a few months ago) and for the upcoming M. Ward show in April. I love the fact that I can walk into the Middle […]

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