Pennsylvania

I genuinely appreciate when a movie I know is going to be wretched proves to be significantly worse than I thought possible, so I have no regrets, but this was truly painful all the same.

I’ve got a table at @phillyzinefest from 12–5 today. Come by and say hello!

After having to cancel my plans to attend last month’s Ottawa International Animation Festival at the last minute, I was glad the Philadelphia Film Festival’s animated shorts program gave me a chance to get my fix. This was a pretty solid collection of films, encompassing a variety of styles and narratives. The overall tone was fairly dark, which is always fine with me, but several of the films also made a habit of just stopping… See more →

This was a bucket-lister for me, long overdue and worth the wait. It was also the second incarnation of Weird Al’s Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, in which he plays all original songs rather than the pop parodies he’s famous for. And I realized at the show that I think I generally prefer his originals! Don’t get me wrong; it was super fun to hear the parody medley in the encore, especially the extended “Yoda”… See more →

That rare four-band bill where everyone’s great. And as always, it is impossible to overstate how thoroughly @melt_banana rules.

I’m all for the post-A24 let’s-get-gnarly thing, but can we please do it with some more imagination?

I’ve been waiting a long time for this night, and it did not disappoint!

I may be living in a backsliding democracy, but at least I finally got to see the mighty Def Leppard!

Another one checked off the bucket list!

Some stray notes:

• Upchuck’s frontwoman is a powerful performer, but part of her schtick is taking swigs of water or beer and spraying them from her mouth onto the audience. Punk rock abandon or not, I’m astonished anyone doesn’t understand how the events of the past two years have made that kind of behavior 1,000 percent unacceptable.
• Not to say any of their songs are bad, but Amyl and the Sniffers’ set list made me… 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 →

I had seen theatrical screenings of The Godfather maybe two or three times before, and while the blemishes on those aging prints may have spoken to the ruin-porn enthusiast in me, there’s no denying they were a distracting real-world intrusion on a landmark work of fiction. For the 50th-anniversary restoration, it’s tempting to include the standard caveat about the magic inherent in film projection that’s lost in digital projection, but I’ve never been more convinced… See more →

I’ve never been less worried about Steve-O, and it feels good.

Let me begin by saying I promise this post is mostly good vibes. Skip ahead if you like, but if you’ll momentarily indulge my pessimism: What a stupid time to be alive.

2021 was supposed to be the year the vaccine gave us our lives back, and while it did for some of us to some degree, its international distribution predictably favored wealthy nations, and the long-simmering anti-vax movement here in the wealthiest nation of… See more →

No one can say Baroness aren’t professionals. After two years away from the road, an all-request tour where everything in their roughly 80-song catalog is on the table? Impressive. Ticketholders for each show were able to vote for which songs they wanted to hear, but I unfortunately missed the link in the ticket confirmation email, so I was at the mercy of my fellow audience members, who apparently prefer newer material than I do. The… See more →

Note to self: Look for Mary Lattimore interviews discussing her composition and documentation process. I’ve enjoyed her music casually for a few years, but after now seeing it assembled in real time in front of me—with her hands constantly moving back and forth between the massive harp in front of her and the delay pedal on her lap—I’d love to know more about her mental model for her music. Most other delay-oriented performances I’ve seen… See more →

Before the pandemic took hold and when I still lived in Brooklyn, I had been planning to check out Human Impact’s first-ever show at Saint Vitus in mid-March of last year. I’m lukewarm on the records they’ve put out since, so I wasn’t going to bother with this tour, especially since their tour mates Child Bite (who I’ve previously seen and enjoyed) weren’t playing the Philly show, but my friend Matt invited me to come,… See more →

I know, I know, you’re probably like, “Oh great, yet another martial-arts-infused ripoff of E.T. and Indiana Jones where the MacGuffin is a telekinetic rock that loves to eat ice cream,” but hear me out