Low

• Low: Surfer Girl
  Alan and Mimi from Low used to sing their daughter to sleep with this before they started playing it live, and it’s such a perfect lullaby. Mimi’s been gone almost three years and her voice still puts a lump in my throat.
• Devo: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
  I dunno, “I can’t get no girl reaction” (or “girly action” in the Devo version) just seems more believable coming from the bespectacled guy… See more →

Maude

Leah and I became dog parents early in 2022, adopting a 15-pound, two-year-old Jack Russell / Chihuahua mix. Knowing Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned, we named her Maude, after the Bea Arthur character, who in 1972 was the first sitcom character to have an abortion. Living with Maude has been a big adjustment, but after getting over the initial hump, I’m not sure how we ever lived without her. She loves belly… See more →

On October 17, 2001, Low played a show in the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. Underground bands had been playing the church’s basement for years, but this was the first time anyone had ascended to the main room, and even in a secular music scene, the milestone seemed to take on a sacred significance. I didn’t go to the show, but it put Low on my radar, and after listening to Things… See more →

Not in the upper echelon of the many Low shows I’ve been to, mainly because I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the new record, Hey What, which I think they played in its entirety. And the rest of the setlist was a bit too familiar, made up mostly of songs they play at pretty much every show these days. Some are classics I’m always game to hear (“Sunflower”) and others not as much (“Monkey,” “Plastic Cup,” “No… See more →

My immune system didn’t do me many favors in 2019. I was sick on five or six separate occasions in the first half of the year, including an obnoxious bout of bronchitis that lasted the entire month of February. Luckily that didn’t stop me from having an adventurous and fulfilling year, and for the first time in my four years at ProPublica, I used every single one of my vacation days.

Projects

My first three… See more →

This is about the zillionth time I’ve seen @lowtheband and I think the first time I’ve seen them play “Do You Know How to Waltz?” What a gift. My favorite moment of 2019 so far.

A lot happened in 2018. The ruinous Trump administration continued doing its ruinous thing. I finally deleted my Facebook account. I had a stressful couple of months caused by something that rhymes with “head hugs,” which I would gladly trade the life of any loved one to avoid going through again. I visited the UK for the first time. I published 33 blog posts, including several well-received posts on design and development.

Projects

Let’s check in… See more →

Hello, dear reader!

September is gone, but its links remain.

It was a big month for me, as I finally finished the project I was preoccupied with for most of the summer: Incomplete Open Cubes Revisited, inspired by Sol LeWitt. I also wrote about why and how I did it.

This month’s newsletter is a few days late because I wanted to include Robtober 2018, my annual deep dive into horror films which always takes… See more →

It’s been a shitty week, but luckily @lowtheband came to town tonight to wash off the muck.

Just got tickets for pretty much the best possible seats to see @lowtheband at @NyseC in March.

Oh, just seeing my favorite band (@lowtheband) with my favorite person (@ChamberMonster). No big deal.

Great room. Great sound. Great set list. Great band. My eighth @lowtheband show in eleven years was the best one yet.

To my Philly people: I’m not saying I hadn’t been to an R5 show in ages, but the last time I saw the sound guy, he was clean shaven.

I was recently involved in a music exchange with a handful of friends, in which we each put together a compilation of songs, and everyone involved got a copy of all of the compilations. Aside from giving me a good excuse to put together a fun mix, it allowed me the ever-cherished opportunity to do some unsolicited philosophizing, and I thought both were worth sharing with a larger audience.

Here’s an excerpt of an e-mail… See more →

We have a pretty rad AirTunes setup in the Pixelworthy office, and we all take turns sending selections from our MP3 libraries to the speakers hooked up to it. Amidst the variety of tastes on display, some of us have taken to choosing a theme for the music we play on a given day. If yours is a musical office like ours, you might want to give it a try. Here are a few theme… See more →

A musical baton has been passed to me by Stan and Ethan. Who am I to refuse them?

Total Volume of Music Files on My Computer

• 74.79 Gb

The Last CD I Bought Was

• Big Bear: Big Bear
  Throat-shredding shrieks and mathy metal guitar chugging that somehow owes more to Slint than the Dillinger Escape Plan. Amidst all the starts and stops and time changes, it still manages to swing. Refreshing stuff.

(See an up-to-date… See more →

I’ve been back from Ottawa for nearly a week now and the annoying cold I contracted while I was there is on its last leg, so I am finally getting around to reporting on the festival. This was the third bi-annual Ottawa International Animation Festival I have been to; I counted seeing 162 short films in just about three days and for the first time there was nothing that really blew me away. Which is… See more →

Last night I went to the Philadelphia Ethical Society in Rittenhouse Square to see Mark Eitzel and the beautiful, beautiful Low. I was previously unfamiliar with Mark Eitzel and I really enjoyed his performance: intense, occasionally humorous acoustic folk, and his voice reminded me of the late Mark Sandman from Morphine. Low was awesome. Given their somewhat extensive discography, the set was perhaps a bit uneven with material almost exclusively from their last two albums,… See more →