BREAKING: People Really Like The Shins

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER The Shins are the consolation prize for people like you and me. We may not get to be Ken or Barbie, the quarterback or the homecoming queen, or for that matter CEO or Anna Nicole, but we do get some damn pretty music to help us lick our wounds and accept our status as the runner-up in our own lives.

POP IN TAPE: Hot Wax In The 215

BY MICHAEL FICHMAN I’ve worked on and off in sports journalism (professional, then amateur) for about seven years now. Periodically, the small-mindedness of a niche-interested group becomes apparent. For example, when a talented football player like Barry Sanders retires before his time, sportswriters lose their fucking minds. “How could he do that? He’s just walking away?!” When Michael Jordan came back for the umpteenth time (or decided to play baseball for that matter), people whined that he was tarnishing his legacy, as if MJ himself hadn’t created it. Most sportswriters and hardcore sports fans were once aspiring athletes, moon-shooting idealistic […]

REVIEW: The Shins, Electric Factory, Last Night

EVA SAYS: So, you’d think after all these years of waiting to see The Shins, my first show would have been some meaningful notch on my concert bedpost or something. What a silly expectation that was. At best, maybe I got excited for the first ten seconds of each song. But then the initial thrill of recognition would fade and I would be back to underwhelmed. Mostly I blame myself. After all, my friends did try to warn me off: “The Shins suck, you loser Zach Braff fan!” (For the record: I do not like Zach Braff nor was I […]

NY TIMES: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ABU GONZALES

UPDATE: “I think for the sake of the nation, Attorney General Gonzales should resign.”–Sen. Charles Schumer NEW YORK TIMES Editorial The Failed Attorney General During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference. He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s […]