The Useless Critic 2.0

I am not this cool.  If you know me, and I don't expect you know me all that well, you would realize one of my longtime dreams is to travel across America a la Jack Kerouac. Well, I did that. Recently. In a Greyhound. (Not quite the dream, per se).  I traveled to Phoenix from Erie, PA in a two-day journey we could only call "hellish." Originally it would have been roundtrip, but a work emergency caused me to miss my first bus. I flew home, but not without somehow losing my glasses in the progress. (Luck? What's that?) I'm about to describe to you this journey in the only way I know how:  vaguely passive-aggressive blogging. Chapter 1: Yelling At Old Women And Fixing Some Lady's Blackberry I left Erie on a cold and brisk Friday afternoon. I was sick to begin with- the weather took a toll on my now warm-weather-acclimated system, so I didn't even have much of a "vacation" to begin with. Plus, I had romanticized my whole trip home. Y...

(corniness ensues) You may not have heard of Chicago-based new wave/power pop band Hey Champ yet, but that's about to change. The band of friends from Princeton University are hot on the rise and by September, when people are like "OH I LOVE DIS BAND I READ ABOUT ON DE INTERWEBS" you can be like "oh hey! I read about them on the Useless Critic some odd time ago."  MTV just declared them a buzzworthy band and MTV is still kind of relevant to some degree.  Their EP "Anything At All" was released in May and is worth a few good 100 listens. It was produced by heavyweight producer Eliot James, who has previously worked with the likes of Two Door Cinema Club and Bloc Party, who you may have heard of.  Also, it's worth to say this:  they were discovered by Lupe Fiasco.  Saam Hagshenas and I recently corresponded via email about playing LOLLAPALOOZA (!!!) and amazing beer (BUDWEISER), and what this eclectic group of boys are up to next. Yo...

LARRY HAS A BLOG http://steelcityreflections.wordpress.com/ BEER

So I was watching CNN last night, and I do not normally watch CNN, it is just one of the few channels in my country that speaks English. But I noticed that all they were talking about was beer. Every single program they had some major tie to beer. They had some world culture shows that practically only showed the inside of the bars and taverns. They are promoting a show next month that will be in some country that has the 3rd largest beer consumption in the world. They will not tell us where it is, and they are using it as a mystery. And of course Ricky Gervais was on Piers Morgan Tonight, and that was 43 straight minutes of beer drinking. Oh Oh, that Ricky. Ricky G was extremely entertaining, and I doubt he would have been as good without the pint, but.......... QATFYG : Do like watching beer?

Erie has recently gotten some positive buzz. please take note: - Waldameer's premiere/only roller coaster, the Ravine Flyer, won some kind of national accolade from the best paper that has ever existed in the history of declining journalism, USA Today. claps for Waldameer! I rode the thing last year- let me reenact for you how that went- JON, JON, WHAT THE FUCK, WHY AM I ON THIS THING, Brittany calm down and look at the water look there's Lake Erie, WHAT THE FUCKKKKKK - And I guess the Erie Brewing Company's PREMIERE beer, Railbender, won an accolade itself at a big beer festival out west in 2009. I know I am late on reporting this, but I steal my news from the Erie Times, which has made clear never wants me working for them. somehow, I think I'm okay with that. I have to tell you, beerdrinkers of the world, I've been experimenting with the Erie Brewing Company for the past month because I figure I need to expand my tastes past lite beers and Guinness. it's not ...