Thursday, June 30, 2011


In today's Baltimore Sun, I have an interview with Charlie Wilson of The Gap Band, who's in town headlining AFRAM this weekend.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011


A new local site called BaltimoreFishbowl.com recently launched, and I've started doing a little writing for them. My first feature for the site, Let's Make A Deal, is about the proliferation of Baltimore coupon and 'deal' sites.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011


I reviewed the new Limp Bizkit album, Gold Gobra, for the Village Voice Sound of the City blog.

Monthly Report: June Singles

Monday, June 27, 2011


1. Lady Gaga - "The Edge of Glory"
This has been one of my favorite songs of the year since the moment I heard it, and I think I only held back from putting this at the top spot of the last list was because it was the same month I had Gaga as the #1 album and felt kind of redundant. But now it feels all the more huge and poignant because of the heartbreaking passing of Clarence Clemons, who's a huge part of why this song is just perfect to me. I made a remark a couple weeks ago on Twitter about how I want to start a campaign to have Gaga perform the song with Bruce and the E Street Band at next year's Grammys or something, and I would still really love to see that, but obviously no E Street performance will really be complete from now on.

2. Katy Perry - "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"
As far as leftfield sax solos on hits by current pop stars go, this is a distant 2nd to "Edge of Glory," but it's still a really fun song, and nice to have a tolerable song from the behemoth Teenage Dream singles campaign after songs as horrible as "Firework" and "E.T." topping the charts.

3. Lloyd f/ Awesome Jones - "Cupid"
I have a weird experience with this song because I liked it a lot when it first dropped and I listened to it on YouTube, and since then I've watched it climb up the charts but still haven't heard it on the radio or gotten a chance to really appreciate it as a 'single' the way I usually do with hit songs. Like seriously, it peaked at #13 on the R&B charts, but somehow I hadn't heard it once on any of the three urban stations in Baltimore and D.C. that I listen to in the car every day until I finally heard it on Friday, after the song had started to drop down the chart. Why did radio never pick up on the song here?

4. Sade - "Still In Love With You"
As much as I loved "Soldier of Love" and the album of the same name last year, I wasn't really in a rush to hear the single from Sade's new best-of until I heard that it was a Thin Lizzy cover, because that's just kind of badass. Turns out, the song is believed to be (although not officially credited as) written by Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore, who just passed away in February, so this beautiful recording of the song is kind of a nice if unintentional tribute.

5. Alter Bridge - "Ghost of Days Gone By"
As much cheesy commercial rock as I am known for defending, I will generally not go to bat for Creed, although I halfheartedly enjoy a couple of their singles. And I've definitely never given much thought to Alter Bridge, the band the non-Scott Stapp members of the band formed after they broke up, which is bizarrely still going even since the Creed reunion. But the singer, a guy who spells the name Myles with a Y, has always had a pretty impressive voice and even played with the members of Led Zeppelin a few years ago when they were thinking of forming a new band after Robert Plant opted out of a reunion tour. And now there's an Alter Bridge single I've found myself really liking, my favorite post-grunge power ballad since Shinedown's "Second Chance."

Saturday, June 25, 2011


About 5 hours before U2 took the stage in Baltimore on Wednesday night, I had no idea I had any chance of going to the show, and then my editor at the City Paper e-mailed me about tickets at will call. The show was great, and I enjoyed writing my Noise review, but being able to call my wife and tell her that she could cross seeing U2 off her bucket list pretty much made my year.

(photo by Jefferson Jackson Steele)

Friday, June 24, 2011


My Radio Hits One for the Village Voice this week is about Foster The People bumping the Foo Fighters from #1 on the Alternative Songs chart.

The 2011 Remix Report Card, Vol. 4

Thursday, June 23, 2011
"Blow (Remix)" by Ke$ha featuring B.o.B
I guess that sellout style is still working for Bobby Ray, then. Apparently B.o.B's hero Andre 3K is on a remix of a deep cut from the same Ke$ha record, though, so who am I to judge? Anyway this barely feels like a remix because B.o.B raps over a completely different beat and then the original track comes back when Ke$ha sings, feels very glued together.
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: F

"Motivation (Remix)" by Kelly Rowland featuring Busta Rhymes, Trey Songz and Fabolous
Recently I've stated my desire to hear a) a remix of "Motivation" without Wayne on it and b) Busta rapping doubletime on something on the radio besides "Look At Me Now." Despite filling both those criteria, I can't say I especially like this, though, if anything Jeremih's version is my favorite remix of this song so far. But the fact that Kelly went in and did some more melodic runs on this version that weren't on the original.
Best Verse: Busta Rhymes
Overall Grade: B

"Racks (Remix)" by YC featuring Bun B, CyHi Da Prynce, Young Jeezy, B.o.B, Big Sean, Cory Gunz, Cory Mo, Nelly, Trae Tha Truth, Wacka Flocka Flame, Wale, Wiz Khalifa and Yo Gotti
The original song is barely there for me, so any addition to it is an improvement, even if it's an insane 13-minute remix with 16 guest MCs. I don't know if Waka using AutoTune is a good look or a bad look or just hilarious. I still can barely tell Wiz Khalifa's voice from Wale's, when the former's verse started at first I thought it was the latter. Wale's actual verse and Cory Gunz's are the most depressing because they're both trying really hard and are still just awful. I also thought Cory Mo was Trae, which makes me think I should check out Cory Mo. Nelly kinda goes in! How the hell does Ace Hood bat cleanup on this? Is that just done because they know most people won't listen that long?
Best Verse: Cory Mo
Overall Grade: D

Wednesday, June 22, 2011


I wrote a post on the City Paper's Noise blog about the exciting lineup that was just announced for the 5th Annual All Rap Round Robin happening in Baltimore in August.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011


It's tempting to be sentimental and say that Move Like This, the first Cars album by all the living members of the band's classic lineup, suffers from the absence of Benjamin Orr, who died in 2000. But the truth is that c'mon, half the time you couldn't tell his voice from Ric Ocasek's voice to tell who was singing on the old classics, and throughout the album Orr's bandmates play a bass he once owned. Move Like This is short, slight and brisk, but that's true of all Cars albums -- they've never topped their 1978 self-titled debut, but that album is perfect because of how wonderfully slight and brisk it is, all hit singles and coulda-been singles, even its darkest deep cut custom built for an iconic teen flick scene. In an age when punk and new wave were seen as the edgy antidote to stadium rock, they were the band that was so well suited to bring new wave to AOR radio that nobody called them sellouts, because obviously they didn't have some other artistic impulse they were suppressing.

Coming so soon after the New Cars debacle, it's tempting to say Ocasek is merely proving he can do a pastiche of himself better than Todd Rundgren, but there's something to be said for the guy knowing his strengths. And he kept his crisp, economical sound alive in productions for Weezer and a host of other alt-rock radio bands well in the '90s and well into the new millenium, so Move Like This feels like a very mild ProTools era update of the Cars sound rather than an attempt at keeping up with the times or sticking stubbornly to familiar territory -- it says a lot that the self-produced tracks are sonically indistinguishable from the ones produced by modern rock hitmaker Jacknife Lee. There are occasionally moments that stick out initially -- "Keep On Knocking" features a "Rockin' In The Free World" soundalike riff with a sludgy distortion pedal tone, but it's not that much of a stretch. And I don't much care for "Soon"'s slow-mo power balladry, but then "Drive" was never my favorite of their '80s hits. For the most part, though, the album just proves that The Cars understand their own innate, timeless appeal better than anybody else.

Saturday, June 18, 2011


This Monday there's going to be a town hall meeting for the Baltimore hip-hop community at 5 Seasons, and I wrote a brief announcement about the event on the City Paper's Noise blog.

My Top 50 TV Shows of 2000-20009

Monday, June 13, 2011
I started doing my decade-end retrospectives in late 2009, and didn't want to drag them out too long -- but I ended up finishing my lengthy series on favorite singles of 2000-2009 a few weeks ago, and now it's almost a year and a half out from the end of that timeframe. So doing this TV list, which is a bit less important to me than the music lists, feels even more unnecessary and indulgent now that it's kind of tardy. But it was still fun to put together and in a way I've already got a little more perspective on that era.

This list leans pretty decidedly towards the second half of the decade; generally speaking, shows that were on the air from 2005 to 2009 are represented about 50% more than shows from 2000 to 2004. I could say that it's because I think TV has gotten better the last few years -- which I do kinda believe -- or that the first half of the decade was too full of the later years of shows that were better in the '90s (like, I almost thought about including "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Friends" but I'm not sure I even watched them at all past 1999). But mainly it's a result of me being in college during the first half of the decade and not watching as much TV then -- moving in with my girlfriend (now wife) in 2005 and her getting me into "Veronica Mars" and "Lost" and some other shows kinda got me back into paying attention to primetime, and around that time I also started writing about TV on this blog, renting old shows on DVD, etc.

As per my tradition here, I'll be posting each of the 50 entries in the list one at a time throughout this week, 10 a day, and you can follow me on Twitter as I unveil each choice:



50. "The Riches" (FX, 2007-2008)
The shows on this list basically fall into two categories: shows that stayed on the air long enough to flourish and/or jump the shark, and shows that didn't last long enough to entirely fulfill their promise (or fail to do so). Dmitry Lipkin's tale of Irish travelers and con artists was thoroughly entertaining for most of its two seasons, but also tended to paint itself into narrative corners so often that when it didn't get renewed for a third, that felt like a good place to leave it off. Lipkin went on to create HBO's "Hung," which is still going and hopefully won't lose direction in the same way.

49. "Sealab 2021" (Cartoon Network, 2000-2005)
"Sealab" encapsulates two of the major threads running through the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming: repurposing characters or footage from older cartoons, and chatty, awkward dialogue. I'm not as much of a fan of Adam Reed's particular ear for dialogue as I am some of the other Adult Swim showrunners, and on later shows like "Frisky Dingo" and "Archer" he just plain annoyed me, but at the time "Sealab 2021" was one of the first post-"Space Ghost" shows working its particular concept and still felt fresh and weird and frequently hilarious.

48. "The Late Late Show" (CBS, 1995-present)
The 12:35 spot on CBS has never generated as much excitement as on NBC, but there's always been something there after Letterman worth tuning in for. In the '90s, Tom Snyder had the most calm and intimate hour of talk on TV this side of Charlie Rose, and by the end of the decade he was replaced by outgoing "Daily Show" host Craig Kilborn, who's kind of ended up with a legacy of being the vapid, fratty precursor to Jon Stewart but really could be hilariously funny, especially in the goofily surreal early days of his "Late Late Show" tenure. And then another Craig, "Drew Carey Show" alum Craig Fergusion, became the unlikely heir to the show and made it better than ever, with a completely unique mix of broad comedy and the kind of moments of real face-to-face honesty and candor that you don't almost never see on TV before midnight, and only rarely after.

47. "Late World with Zach" (VH1, 2002)
Years before breaking box office records in The Hangover, or even really before he had built a major following as a standup, Zach Galifianakis spent 9 weeks on VH1 being their gineau pig for a short-lived experiment in late night talk shows. And he treated it like a true experiment, running the entire hoary format through his now signature mixture of deadpan absurdity and unbridled whimsy.

46. "Andy Richter Controls The Universe" (FOX, 2002-2003)
I thought about including "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" alongside the talk shows I just mentioned, but the fact is Andy Richter's departure from the show five months into the decade kind of put a damper on the second half of the show's run. But during those years before Andy returned to the Conan fold he starred in three short-lived shows, two of which were really great and hilarious ("Andy Barker, P.I." was a gem, "Quintuplets" not so much). My favorite was "Andy Richter Controls The Universe," a brisk and odd workplace comedy created by Victor Fresco, who went onto create another great, brisk, odd, short-lived workplace comedy that deserved a longer run, "Better Off Ted."

45. "Ace of Cakes" (Food Network, 2006-2011)
There will always be people in Baltimore who gripe about the unflattering image it gets from the David Simon shows best known for depicting the city on television, as if the essential truthfulness of some of the greatest shows ever made could ever be a bad thing. But for those people,there's always "Ace of Cakes," an incredibly charming workplace reality show about a bunch of loveable punk rockers making absurdly ornate desserts.

44. "Family Guy" (FOX, 1999-2001/2004-present)
I don't really put much stock in the concept of 'guilty pleasures,' but if there's any show on this list that falls under that category, it's "Family Guy." Because with each passing year that Seth MacFarlane takes over more of FOX's primetime schedule with other, increasingly terrible shows, and "Family Guy" continues to gobble up more syndication space once occupied by "The Simpsons" and other superior shows, I feel guilty for ever having been even passively complicit in this depressing TV phenomenon. But I really have laughed my ass off at this show, at least before it got too predictably 'unpredictable.'

43. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (CBS, 2000-present)
"CSI" just made headlines with the departure of Laurence Fishburne, but I still can't even fathom the idea of the show without original star William Petersen. Another show that has a lot to answer for in terms of lousy spinoffs and a bar-lowering influence on its genre in general, but at its best it was really a pretty great procedural with a uniformly strong cast.

42. "Jackass" (MTV, 2000-2002)
This is a strange thing to say about a show like "Jackass," but I respect it more than I enjoy it. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've deliberately opted to watch the show when nobody else was holding the remote, but aside from the excruciating Bam Margera, I think just about everyone on the show is entertaining and they more often than not were doing pretty inspired things.

41. "MythBusters" (Discovery, 2003-present)
I'm the kind of person that runs to Snopes every time I read something vaguely unbelievable and opt for documentaries over fact-based fiction whenever I can, so this show is endlessly watchable just for satisfying my curiosity about various urban legends, movie stunts and internet memes. Plus Adam and Jamie are probably the best comedy team in the world of contemporary TV hosts, and Kari is just too hot for words.



40. "Being Human" (BBC, 2008-present)
Although I like the American adaptation that debuted on SyFy earlier this year, I've probably gotten more enjoyment out of it introducing me to the British original, which has of course been on the air longer, so I've been able to delve into a couple years' worth of episodes and stories. In a post-Twilight world it's a little hard to believe anyone can do a soapy story about vampires and werewolves that feels light, clever and genuinely affecting, but they're going a pretty good job. Honorable mention to the also enjoyable "True Blood," but I couldn't deal with having two vampire shows on the list.

39. "Malcolm In The Middle" (FOX, 2000-2006)
It's kind of silly to say, but I was completely unsurprised by Bryan Cranston's later dramatic breakthrough on "Breaking Bad" because even when he was mugging at a fish-eye lens on "Malcolm In The Middle" I always thought he was the true talent of that cast. The show may have dragged on too long and man is that Frankie Muniz creepy, but it had some real moments of hilarity.

38. "Grounded For Life" (FOX, 2001-2005)
To a lesser degree than Cranston, Donal Logue also was able to parlay a gig as a dad on a silly FOX family comedy into showcasing serious dramatic chops on one of the best cable dramas of the current decade so far, "Terriers." But "Grounded For Life" is itself a pretty enjoyable program that I always assumed was terrible, until one summer I ended up watching every episode in reruns and kind of really caring about the saga of the Finnertys.

37. "Monk" (USA, 2002-2009)
"Wings" was one of the most rightfully ignored comedies of the '90s, but as unremarkable as it was, it did have a pretty strong cast, and it's been nice in the past decade to see Thomas Haden Church jump into movies and Steven Weber kind of quietly become a consistent character actor, while good old Antonio Scarpacci has had the best career of them all. "Monk" stayed on the air way too long and I never got over the loss of Bitty Schram (although her replacement Traylor Howard's name is almost as much fun to say), but it was always nice to see Tony Shalhoub get some well deserved spotlight.

36. "House" (FOX, 2004-present)
"House," like "Monk," is a show that has lots of supporting characters and procedural storylines but ultimately rests entirely on the appeal of the star's performance in the title role and the basic idea of that character. And also like "Monk," "House" has gone on far too long with cast changes hurting the show -- I got off the bus during the fourth season after House fired his original team, but before that it was definitely appointment television.

35. "Entourage" (HBO, 2004-present)
Of all the shows on this list that have fallen off or worn out their welcome after entertaining early seasons, there's perhaps no greater culprit than "Entourage," which is about to air its 8th and final season after being on a steady downhill slide after peaking in its 2nd season. There's been a couple dead cat bounces of quality in recent seasons, but mostly it's just been one long futile attempt at trying to remember how hilarious I thought Johnny Drama was those first couple years.

34. "Meerkat Manor" (Animal Planet, 2005-2008)
They're weird-looking little animals with funny names, but the scientists studying them had evidently found that the social world of meerkats made for a great soap opera, and the narration of Sean Astin made the struggles of Flower and Zaphod and the rest of the clan feel like an epic worthy of Frodo and Samwise.

33. "The Simpsons" (FOX, 1989-present)
All but the most generous fans generally place somewhere in the late '90s or early '00s at the latest as the point of the Simpsons' irreversible decline, if not necessarily its shark jump. But every now and again, I do still see a surprisingly funny recent episode that makes me a little less annoyed that this show will stay on the air until someone from the cast drops dead, if then.

32. "Futurama" (FOX/Comedy Central, 1999-2003/2008-present)
"Futurama" didn't immediately live up to its pedigree and I lost interest in it pretty quickly, but the reruns on Adult Swim and later Comedy Central, plus being married to a huge "Futurama" fan, brought me around to its charms, its fantastic animation, and its endless supply of misdirection jokes. I should note, by the way, that it's completely unintentional that half the shows I've unveiled today were on FOX.

31. "Breaking Bad" (AMC, 2008-present)
I just recently finished watching the second season of "Breaking Bad" -- so essentially, all of the episodes in the timeframe under consideration for this list -- and I have to admit, it left a bad taste in my mouth. In a way, I can feel the show painting itself into corners much the way I complained about "The Riches" earlier. And in general, I just don't feel it lives up to the hype. But when it's good, it is pretty damn good.



30. "The Loop" (FOX, 2006-2007)
Philip Baker Hall's role as Bookman the library cop on an early episode of "Seinfeld" is one of the greatest one-off guest star turns in sitcom history. And the closest Hall ever came to recapturing the hilarity of Lt. Joe Bookman was as the boss in this goofy, improv-heavy single camera workplace satire, which FOX dumped two short seasons of in the spring of 2006 and the summer of 2007 before unceremoniously canceling. It was the first headlining gig for "Grounded For Life" co-star Bret Harrison, who went on to get canceled in the also enjoyable "Reaper" and was canceled twice this year as a cast member of "Breaking In" and "V."

29. "The Office" (BBC, 2001-2003)
I don't love the original British version of "The Office" that much. But I do acknowledge that it is pretty good, and when I compare it to the American version, or almost anything Ricky Gervais has done since, it seems great.

28. "Sons of Anarchy" (FX, 2008-present)
While I appreciate the the trail "The Shield" blazed for gritty macho FX dramas, the network really hit a sweet spot of shows I enjoy with their biggest current hit "Sons of Anarchy" and more recent shows that debuted in the current decade, "Terriers" and "Justified." The 2009 season with Alan Arkin and Henry Rollins as two very different villains has probably been the show's peak so far.

27. "That '70s Show" (FOX, 1998-2006)
I've always believed that casting is the single most important thing to a show, in general but especially with sitcoms -- writers come and go without the audience ever being conscious of it barring any major change in quality, but the actors either are fun to watch together or they're not. And"That '70s Show" is a testament to that, because the stories were shit, and the consistency of the jokes was up and down, but those were some good looking kids that really knew how to deliver their lines and seem like they were having fun in their weird half-assed version of the '70s.

26. "Two And A Half Men" (CBS, 2003-present)
"Two And A Half Men" was a symbol of what's wrong with mainstream TV comedy for years even before Charlie Sheen became America's favorite sideshow. But seriously, if you're gonna go for a show with blue humor and mean zingers, you could do much, much worse. Chuck Lorre is probably the greatest master of that particular brand of sitcom since "Married With Children" went off the air. And despite the show's reputation for dick jokes and misogyny, the Harper brothers are consistently upstaged by female characters who are funnier and often smarter than them, played by Holland Taylor, Conchata Ferrell, Melanie Lynsky, April Bowlby, Kelly Stables and Jane Lynch, among others.

25. "Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends" (Cartoon Network, 2004-2009)
Sometimes it feels like grown up cartoon fans of the Adult Swim era are so used to being catered to with animated shows full of dirty jokes, pop culture kitsch and naturalistic dialogue that sometimes it's easy to forget the universal appeal of a really well done kids' show, and that the Cartoon Network's daytime programming still has plenty of it. The episodes of "Foster's" with the character Cheese are some of the most insanely funny TV of the last 10 years.

24. "Deadwood" (HBO, 2004-2006)
I didn't have HBO consistently until around the time this show went off the air, so I've been slowly catching up on a lot of the network's most revered shows (spoiler: "The Sopranos" isn't here, mainly because I've never spent much time with it and to be honest haven't felt very inspired to by what I have seen). So I'm still only a few episodes into renting the second episode of "Deadwood," and I don't feel the devotion a lot of people feel for it, but it's definitely growing on me.

23. "Slings & Arrows" (The Sundance Channel, 2003-2006)
On "The Kids In The Hall," Mark McKinney always hinted at having the troupe's greatest potential for both writing and playing drama, and this Canadian series isn't exactly Shakespeare, but its darkly comedic look at a Shakespearean theatre company does give him a chance to show his range in something slightly more based in reality (if just barely -- much of the series centers on the main character talking to a hallucination of his dead friend). But while McKinney was my entry point for checking out the show, he's just a small part of a uniformly great ensemble cast.

22. "Scrubs" (NBC/ABC, 2001-2010)
"Scrubs" was never a cool show to like, and when its star became more famous for directing some stupid indie rock infomercial dramedy, it became just untouchably lame. But I'm glad that family members liked it enough to bring me around to it, and by the time Comedy Central started airing reruns every day I realized that it really was a strangely unique show, combining the broadest of comedy with the most sobering realities of the medical profession in a way that couldn't be more different from "M*A*S*H" but is a kind of achievement in and of itself.

21. "Damages" (FX/DirecTV, 2007-present)
I haven't seen the third season, but the second season of "Damages" was a pretty impressive achievement just for being anywhere near as enjoyable as the first, given that this show seemed so totally doomed to be a one season wonder that showed off all its tricks the first time around.



20. "Acceptable TV" (VH1, 2007)
"Community" is probably my favorite show of the current decade so far, but it debuted in the fall of 2009 and has gotten much better since then, so it doesn't really make sense to include it on this list. And the main reason creator Dan Harmon has been able to so inventively turn TV tropes inside out and make almost every episode of "Community" feel like a different show is his roots in the long-running Channel 101 film festival, in which 5-minute 'shows' were voted on to either come back and keep making new episodes, or were canceled. "Acceptable TV" was the attempt to turn that virtual television experiment into an actual one, and though it lasted only one season on VH1, it was one of the most unusual and exciting experiences I had watching TV the past decade. I've never voted for a singer on "American Idol" or any other reality show, but I logged onto the "Acceptable TV" site and voted for "Joke Chasers" and "Homeless James Bond."

19. "Pushing Daisies" (ABC, 2007-2009)
Although it often featured awful CGI, an overbearing score, and a flair for overflowing sentiment and offbeat characters, "Pushing Daisies" was so thoroughly excellent and original in its writing, acting and premise that I'd daresay it justified its preciousness and set a high water mark for the twee quirkiness that's become so ubiquitous in movies and television over the past decade.

18. "Wonderfalls" (FOX, 2004)
After I fell for "Pushing Daisies," I went back and checked out creator Bryan Fuller's other shows, and realized that he's one of my favorite minds in television, certainly one of the most talented guys who's never had a show get to a third season. He left the cable series "Dead Like Me" amid creative differences after a few episodes and it never quite recovered or retained enough of his sensibility, but the 13 episodes that "Wonderfalls" lasted on FOX stand as perhaps his greatest work to date, just a truly strange and unique and consistently funny show.

17. "Saturday Night Live" (NBC, 1975-present)
It's easy to take "SNL" for granted as a relic, or a factory, and it's inconsistent even at its best. But a quick glance at just a few of the highlights of its '00s run verifies that it belongs on any list of the best television of the decade: Tina Fey on Update and returning for Sarah Palin sketches, the Digital Shorts, the tail end of Will Ferrell's run including Bush impressions and "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketches, the bulk of the "TV Funhouse" cartoons, Chris Parnell and Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig at their best, great frequent hosts like Jon Hamm and Christopher Walken and Justin Timberlake, Jean K. Jean, Debbie Downer...shall I go on?

16. "The Colbert Report" (Comedy Central, 2005-present)
In the big picture, "The Colbert Report" is a spinoff from "The Daily Show" that wouldn't exist without its predecessor and timeslot lead-in, and in some ways will always be the fluffier, sillier of the two. But in a side-by-side comparison, I laugh more at the second half of the hour those shows are on just as much if not more than at the first half. Colbert may crack himself up onscreen now and again, but he has an amazing talent for never breaking character, even when the character is himself.



15. "Chappelle's Show" (Comedy Central, 2003-2006)
The way "Chappelle's Show" came to a sudden, unexpected early end and Dave Chappelle has yet to embark on any major TV or film project since has kind of unfortunately frozen the show's short run in amber as this moment in time when it was the biggest phenomenon in TV comedy. I'd love it if the show had gone on longer, and maybe if I hadn't burnt myself out on its most popular sketches being rerun over and over, but it remains a pretty undeniable show.

14. "Party Down" (Starz, 2009-2010)
I've always loved workplace comedies, and "Party Down," despite its trendy single camera documentary-ish look, honors a lot of the traditions of the workplace sitcom, with one inventive twist: we follow the adventures of the titular catering company from job to job, the same gang in the same stupid pink bowties at a different party every week. They had the best cast on TV, but since they were stranded on a pay channel that people were scarcely aware had any original programming, it was a matter of time before they started getting picked off for bigger (if not better) shows, and in a way I'm happy that they got those two seasons before that happened.

13. "Veronica Mars" (UPN/The CW, 2004-2007)
Before he co-created "Party Down," a guy named Rob Thomas who is not in Matchbox Twenty made this clever neo noir series about a high school girl detective. A lot of people feel like "Veronica Mars" was a one season wonder that jumped the shark by the end of its third season, but I really kind of wish they'd gotten to keep going, there was still so much they could've done with that character and the chemistry of the cast was pretty perfect.

12. "Home Movies" (UPN/Cartoon Network, 1999-2004)
I'm a fan of Loren Bouchards Squigglevision animation style and heavily improvised dialogue from way back in the "Dr. Katz" days, but I think "Home Movies" ended up being his real masterpiece, there's just so many adorable and hilarious and strange moments in this show. There's a good reason that H. Jon Benjamin stars in no fewer than three shows on TV right now, and that reason is Coach McGuirk.

11. "American Idol" (FOX, 2002-present)
"American Idol" is such a vast empire of broadcasting media that's taken up so many hours of primetime and has gone through so many peaks and valleys of watchability depending on who's competing or who's behind the judges' table. But at its best, it really is great, exciting TV.



10. "Planet Earth" (BBC/Discovery, 2006)
I grew up watching nature specials on PBS for hours and hours and just being amazed by the kind of footage they got of exotic animals in faraway lands, and seeing "Planet Earth" just top all those shows with the most incredible cinematography and storytelling that type of television's ever seen really brought me back and made me feel like a kid again.

9. "Lost" (ABC, 2004-2010)
As I've said, these shows are all ranked based purely on the episodes aired from 2000 to 2009. And I can't lie, the final season of "Lost" that aired in 2010 left such a bad taste in my mouth that maybe this is a few spots lower than it might have been before that, but I still stand by those first five seasons as genuinely great television.

8. "The Soup" (E!, 2004-present)
"The Soup," even more than its predecessor "Talk Soup," does a valuable service, in assuring me that I can focusing on watching shows I genuinely like and admire like the ones on this list, and don't need to spend any time watching daytime talk shows, soap operas, and reality shows, because they'll catch all the really crazy shit that happens on those shows and distill them to the funniest clips. I mean, seriously, they deserve some kind of award.

7. "How I Met Your Mother" (CBS, 2005-present)
No sitcom today bridges the genre's oldest conventions with the contemporary single camera approach better or more seamlessly than "How I Met Your Mother," even if that means using a laugh track to do it. So many of the laughs on this show are classic sitcom tropes, right down to Barney-as-Fonzi, but all the playful experiments with chronology and memory and self-censorship (joints as "sandwiches," etc.) always keep you on your toes and admiring how inventive the writers are.

6. "Freaks & Geeks" (NBC, 1999-2000)
It's almost overbearing how much "Freaks & Geeks" has been cemented in history as one of the most sentimentalized 'brilliant but canceled' shows, but I watched it when it was new, when I was going through my own senior year of high school, and it really was just perfect and relatable and resonates more with time, and it's been so cool to see the cast grow up and mostly go on to greater successes.



5. "The Venture Bros" (Cartoon Network, 2003-present)
Where so many of the hip Adult Swim cartoon shows feature long stretches of dialogue between two barely moving characters, "The Venture Bros." is chatty yet relentlessly action-packed, with constant action, changes of scenery, an ever expanding cast, and an epic scope and rich subtext beneath all the clever quips and pop culture references. It's just so many light years ahead of its contemporaries that I almost feel like it's done an injustice by being in the same programming block sometimes.



4. "30 Rock" (NBC, 2006-present)
Every year, the internet produces a new mountain of handwringing thinkpieces about how "30 Rock" isn't as good as it used to be because of guest stars or Tina Fey not being a good feminist or something that has absolutely nothing to do with comedy, meanwhile the show continues to get faster and funnier and more inspired.



3. "The West Wing" (NBC, 1999-2006)
On a level playing field, "Sports Night" is my favorite Aaron Sorkin creation, and I wish it could've been on the air for seven years. But since "The West Wing" is the one that became a pop culture phenomenon with a nice long run, that's the show that really got to build its own little universe. And even as stylized as Sorkin's dialogue is and as goofy as some of the storylines are in retrospect, there's still something very comfortable and lived-in about that universe that rings true to me more often than not.



2. "The Daily Show" (Comedy Central, 1996-present)
In a way, the title of this show is a big part of why I rank it this high -- almost every other show in this list aired once a week, and those that aired more frequently generally weren't very scripted. But year in and year out, four nights a week Jon Stewart and his writers churn out an insane amount of topical humor, with the endless stream of ridiculous real world evens as their currency, and it continues to boggle my mind how they do it so well.



1. "The Wire" (HBO, 2002-2008)
In a cheesy way, I deliberately picked a top 3 on this list that are all shows that made me feel a little more engaged in the world around me, if not in a specific issue-driven political way than just in terms of giving me a different way to look at problems that I otherwise find it easy to feel apathetic about. But "The Wire" is an obvious #1, not just because everyone knows it's amazing or because I feel a bond to what the stories it told about Baltimore or saw them shooting around town for years or had some small role in helping local music get onto the soundtrack of the later seasons, but it just addressed so many things no other show has even touched, without ever sacrificing its capacity for drama and humor and tragedy and narrative. Not a perfect show, but definitely one of the all-time greats.

Saturday, June 11, 2011


This week I switched places in the schedule with my fellow Village Voice pop chart commentator Chris Molanphy, so my Radio Hits One is making a rare appearance for the 2nd week in a row, this time on the subject of how The Lonely Island's "3-Way (The Golden Rule)" allowed Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga to sidestep the crushing anticipation and bad luck that often accompany superstar duets.

Friday, June 10, 2011


I wrote a post on he Noise blog about King of Pops, the new solo mixtape by OOH from Brown F.I.S.H., as a little follow-up to my feature on him that ran in the City Paper a few weeks ago.

Movie Diary

Thursday, June 09, 2011
a) Grown Ups
I tried watching this and didn't get very far. I wish I could've watched a movie with some of the supporting players like Chris Rock and Maya Rudolph without them being under the pall of mediocrity that shadows every Happy Madison production.

b) Get Him To The Greek
For me the whole appeal of Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall was that he was a minor comic relief character, with a lot of amusing fish-out-of-water humor with the rock star in an un-rock star environment having banal arguments with his girlfriend. Making that character the center of a movie that places him back in his element is then a huge misstep from my point of view, but really Jonah Hill being the protagonist turned out to be a far bigger problem. That guy is simply not equipped to carry a movie, to an even greater degree than Brand. Diddy is so hilarious that it's still worth seeing though, and Rose Byrne is a nice surprise.

c) The Green Zone
I tried to watch this a couple times and probably wasn't giving it my full attention either time, but this just kinda washed over me. You'd think something from the Bourne people would be more attention grabbing.

d) Pirate Radio
I never knew anything about the British pirate radio scene until I read the 33 1/3 book on The Who Sell Out and found it all really fascinating, so the first time I saw the trailer for this movie I got really excited. Then with every subsequent ad I kept noticing how trite it looked and how much historically inaccurate music they used that wasn't recorded until years later. The actual experience of the movie was somewhere between that initial excitement and subsequent disappointment.

e) The Fourth Kind
This was alright, I liked the way they combined documentary-style 'footage' and more cinematic scenes, but the way they bent over backwards to sell the Blair Witch-style concept was just lame and unnecessary.

f) Powder Blue
I had a total lizard brain moment of 'oh hey this is the movie where Jessica Biel plays a stripper right?' when I decided to watch this, and I would feel guilty about that if the movie had any redeeming value beyond her amazing body. Basically it's just an especially miserable entry in the endless series of "interlocking narratives involving a bunch of seedy Los Angeles residents" movies we've been inundated with since Pulp Fiction.

g) Dark House
Very low budget horror flick with a few nice cheap laughs and gory deaths.

h) Still Bill
I finally got around to watching this after reading a lengthy and very engaging Bill Withers interview, and unfortunately the interview ending up feeling like a spoiler for most of the movie's charms. Nice flick about a really admirable musician, though, put forth some pretty interesting ideas about his whole attitude toward music and fame.

i) Rock Slyde
I love Patrick Warburton so much that I'll even watch him in some sketchy detective comedy with Andy Dick. This actually had some pretty prime Warburton moments though, among some of the dumber more obvious gags, and Rena Sofer is so beautiful it's almost unreal.

j) Birds of America
Nice if fairly cliched indie family dramedy but I liked the cast.

k) Motherhood
One of those movies that's all about the experience of having young children so I felt like I should identify and occasionally did but mostly found it kind of hollow and banal, although Uma Thurman carried the movie well, she could definitely do more light comedy like this.

l) I Hate Valentine's Day
This was terrible, I think I only put it on because it has Zoe Kazan in it and I thought she was very cute in It's Complicated.

m) Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
I've always really liked Stewart Copeland both as a drummer and as a personality, and it's really fun to see this history of the Police's tours through his eyes and Super 8 camera, it's very spastic and low budget but it's cool to see such a huge band play huge shows through that kind of lens.

n) Blue Velvet
I'm still slowly working my way through David Lynch's body of work and figuring out how I feel about it, and this was good but so much of his stuff features variations on the same themes over and over that the more I see, the more redundant it all starts to feel.

Monthly Report: May Albums

Tuesday, June 07, 2011


1. Lady Gaga - Born This Way
I, like most people, gradually came around to tolerating and then appreciating Lady Gaga's music during her long ascendancy to pop domination. But what I particularly like about this album is that she's increasingly as committed to an absurd over-the-top aesthetic in her music as in her videos or album covers or stage shows or red carpet outfits, the whole thing's just so loud and high energy. Sometimes it's wearying, on songs like "Government Hooker" that I feel like I should find fun and funny but am mostly annoyed by, but more often than not it works. At the moment I'm really loving "Bloody Mary" and "Highway Unicorn." I also feel like she's been getting if not better then closer to something I really like with this album, with the nods to '80s AOR both in the songwriting and in collaborators like Clarence Clemons and Mutt Lange.

2. Sloan - The Double Cross
Sloan have been having a really great late career renaissance, and while I don't wanna say it's because their '60s/'70s power pop sound is 'timeless,' I think maybe they are aging better than a lot of their '90s contemporaries because they didn't even sound contemporary in the '90s. Parallel Play was their shortest album yet, and this one's 3 minutes shorter, and these short records really emphasize the weightless charm of their best songs, "Unkind" in particular is just wonderful. I'm kind of annoyed that the copy of the album I bought on eMusic has these awkward gaps between the tracks that are supposed to run together medley-style, most albums don't do that on my iTunes generally.

3. The Lonely Island - Turtleneck & Chain
Incredibad held together pretty well as an album and there have been some pretty good SNL digital shorts since then, but I wasn't really clamoring for another Lonely Island album, and it really felt like their songs had been getting more lame and one-note lately, particularly "Threw It On The Ground," "I Just Had Sex," and "The Creep," which really just confirmed for me that these guys can't write joke raps for Nicki Minaj that sound remotely as good as even a mediocre Nicki verse she'd write herself. But "Jack Sparrow" was so great that it kind of got me excited about hearing the album, and it is pretty solid, if not as consistently funny as Incredibad.

4. Thurston Moore - Demolished Thoughts
I just wrote a Splice Today piece last week about Thurston and Sonic Youth's relationship with the acoustic guitar that was inspired by this album, but I'm not actually sure how I feel about the album itself. At first it felt really drab, but with each listen the textures have revealed themselves more and it's a really pretty record, whether or not the songs ever hook me.

5. Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs
I've always been tickled by the idea of the angst-ridden baritone Voice Of His Generation sitting around writing novelty tunes and silly love songs on a ukulele, and this is kind of light and entertaining in exactly that way, no more and no less. I do like that he reprises one of my favorite later Pearl Jam songs, "Can't Keep."

Saturday, June 04, 2011


I reviewed The Death Set's Michel Poiccard for MobtownStudios.com.

Friday, June 03, 2011


My third Radio Hits One chart column went up on the Village Voice site today, and the topic is Lil Wayne, who has a total of 15 songs on the Billboard charts this week.

Thursday, June 02, 2011


I wrote a post on the City Paper's Noise blog about Stop The Violence Baltimore's "Self Destruction 2011," which features appearances by Only, The Unstoppable Nuklehidz, Jade Fox, Ab Rock, Shy Lady Heroin, and many more.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011


I wrote an article for Splice Today detailing the history of Sonic Youth's sporadic but increasingly common use of acoustic guitar and Thurston Moore's new solo album Demolished Thoughts.