THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

Some people ask me why I'm depressed and pessimistic. And I say the same thing: "Because George Carlin is right, and we're all fucked."

Some years are marked by significant transitions, and 1998 certainly qualifies as such a year. I started the year working at Michigan Wherehouse Records in Mt. Pleasant, shifting over to the Ann Arbor WHR store when I moved to Brighton in May, only to leave Brighton at the end of August to start my job at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey as a full-time faculty member, a job I hold to this day. What remained constant, however, was my love of music. Not a lot of shows, but quality over quantity: Rammstein [The Metro, Chicago 5.4] Beck [Pine Knob 6.2] Kraftwerk [State Theatre, Detroit 6.11] Ivy [Shelter 6.17] John Fogerty [Pine Knob 6.18] Curve [St. Andrew’s Hall 6.20] The Prodigy [State Theatre, Detroit 6.24] Lilith Fair ‘98 [Pine Knob 7.6] Tricky [Clutch Cargo’s 7.23] Smokin’ Grooves ’98 (Public Enemy, Cypress Hill) [Pine Knob 7.29] Dishwalla [Shelter 8.22] Esthero [St. Andrew’s Hall 8.22] Bauhaus [The Riviera, Chicago 8.27] The Tragically Hip [Orbit Room 9.24] F...

While it's been a few months, let's not forget one of the best albums of 2010 -- I'm Still Here -- has come from the creative well of a crack-smoking jazz-funk-blues singularity named Gil-Scott Heron, who was recently written about in the New Yorker . And now this, the first video directed by Chris Cunningham in almost half a decade for the album's centerpiece "New York Is Killing Me" (debuting at MOMA, of all places): Makes you rethink the creative powers of crack, don't it?

How unlikely is it that a moribund British band with one of the most pretentious names in pop history (ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK, for fuck’s sake) comes roaring back from the dead to make one of the more catchy and enjoyable albums of 2010? The core duo of Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys hadn’t even recorded together under the OMD name since 1989, when Humphreys (semi-acrimoniously) left the popular group in the capable hands of McCluskey. Their heyday together, of course, was a bright flourish of arty left-of-center synth tunes in the early ‘80s followed by an equally strong run of New Pop chart gems in the middle ‘80s, the pinnacle of which being their John Hughes-blessed instant eternal classic “If You Leave,” the soundtrack to countless gelled-hair gropefests of a generation. Bracket that smash with hits like “So In Love” and “(Forever) Live And Die” and you have a track record worthy of, if not the Hall Of Fame, at least a bold footnote in the tome of pop history. And y...

If there is one immutable fact about me that the passing years only intensify and heighten, it is this: I love candy. I love Mountain Dew Throwback and Ghirardelli milk chocolate & caramel squares and Coke de Mexico and Giant Chewy Nerds and, on more than one occasion, I've consumed all of them sequentially in a pancreas-blighting anti-purification ritual. So it was with great anticipation that, during a recent trip to eastern Ohio, I found Gingerbread Pop-Tarts for sale (right next to bags of Dove Easter Eggs made with milk chocolate and peanut butter, which I also snagged). I went conservative, buying only one twelve-pack, and immediately regretted such hesitation. Because. They. Are. Delicious. Should they be called candy? Of course, given that they have more sugar than the average Pop-Tart, which is laden with the sweet stuff. (The biggest giveaway is that layer of frosting/icing on the inside.) And they have great printed pictures on the surface, pictures that almost loo...

Needed: A love of the Arcade Fire. Google Chrome. The exact address where you grew up. And this URL . Put 'em all together, and you get a pretty amazing (and somewhat creepy) experience.

Infographic by College Scholarships.org