Concert Review: The Afghan Whigs @ Mr. Smalls, Millvale, PA (4.14.18)

My love for The Afghan Whigs is well known. I had already seen the band live twice before, but it's been almost two decades since I attended their "farewell" show at Bogart's in Cincinnati in 1999. I never felt robbed by their reunion. Yes, by the end it made sense, and the Twilight Singers seemed to be taking Greg Dulli in a new and exciting direction. The end of the 1990s seemed like a logical place to put the breaks on the band, who while finding devoted fans never achieved mainstream success they some of their odder brethren did during the decade.

It may be a blessing in disguise that Dulli & Co. didn't score one of those out of nowhere massive hit singles. Living up to that success has done damage to other artists, and in some cases after failing to find a follow-up, putting them on ice permanently. With the Whigs, they were always on the precipice. For whatever reason, it just never happened.

My First Science Fiction Story

Recently I spent time with my parents on vacation, and while discussing some quirks of my childhood with my wife (apparently I missed several weeks of first grade with illness, of which I have no recollection), I mentioned that when I was in grade and high school, I often watched the local and national news very intently, much more than intently that I was studying based on my grades. I was deeply invested in Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, learning about the Iran-Contra Affair, junk bond king Mike Milken and the invasion of Panama.

Review: Ready Player One

I read Ernest Cline's book Ready Player One years ago and enjoyed it. Somehow, this has become a bad thing. I'm not sure when the tide turned, and one man's ode to 80s pop culture and geekdom became something to be sneered at and ridiculed, but I saw the exasperation appear on social media shortly after the first trailer was released. I found that odd, because nobody I knew who read the book prior to that first trailer seemed to be all that riled up about it. They either dug the book, or they didn't, but most dug it.