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Besides being pals with Tori Amos, Neil Gaiman has worked with Douglas Adams on his companion to A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, created the enormously successful Sandman comic book series, and written for children (Coraline), the silver screen (Beowulf, in production by Robert Zemeckis), and fantasy-horror fans (American Gods). And he dwells among us, … Read more

Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel made him the darling and the whipping boy of the literary world. Brilliant and pretentious, and at times completely impenetrable, the book chronicled the adventures of a geekish young collector of family ephemera named Jonathan Safran Foer (pure coincidence, of course) who travels through the Ukraine in search of the … Read more

One day, when Mike Watt was thirteen, he was standing under a tree when D. Boon fell out of it and landed on him. Thus began one of rock’s great friendships and collaborations. With George Hurley, they formed the Minutemen, a pioneering punk band that lifted motifs from all over the musical spectrum, took its … Read more

Dead people? Check. Black humor? Check. Johnny Depp? Check. Yep, it’s another Tim Burton film, and this one’s a love story. A young man on his way to his wedding stops to practice his wedding vows. He puts a wedding ring on a stick poking out of the ground, and waxes eloquent upon it. Turns … Read more

The Heights is one of the things we love about these cities: It regularly screens silent black and white classics accompanied by a live Wurlitzer organ, just the way your great-granny saw them. Even the folks at the Heights have to agree that sound was a pretty great invention, though, and to celebrate seventy-five years … Read more

Short and googly-eyed, cackling and sniveling, Bela Lugosi played the perfect piteous wretch in some of the greatest horror films ever made. He became a distinctively dank and unseemly type, one with no modern equivalent, not even Tom Cruise. Although he is best remembered for acting as sidekick to more commanding actors like Boris Karloff … Read more

As a musician, you ought not name yourself after one of the wonders of the ancient world unless a) you’re damn sure of yourself and b) you’re going to be playing for a long time and assume iconic status. Taj easily meets both criteria: His ego’s as big as the stogies he smokes, and his … Read more

You’d think we’d stay on top of these things: Sigur Ros, the superhip ambient slow-core band from Iceland, has a new record coming out this week, and we never got our secret-handshake-nudge-nudge-wink-wink advance copy, the better to let you know whether you should buy it when it becomes available to the masses. But when it … Read more

It can be hard to find the blues in these parts, unless you’re also looking for joints with a bunch of crazy crap nailed to the walls frequented by tipsy grandmothers. But this event promises to give the blues lover a real feast for the ears, and in a fancy-pants setting to boot. In addition … Read more

The strange phenomenon of classical cheesecake is not limited to nubile females posing naked behind their cellos. Violinist and conductor Joshua Bell only has to toss sweat off the ends of his long hair and the band geeks all swoon. Bell debuted at age thirteen with the Philadelphia Orchestra and has since played with many … Read more