The Gaslight Anthem break big, but that doesn't mean they want to talk about it. This despite the fact that the New Jersey band, which plays Music in the Park this Thursday, July 22, has become a bona fide hit in two short years. » Read More

WHEN you party with the coppers, you know you're going to be safe! Among the stellar acts playing this free weekend fest: BBW and big-voiced growler Candye Kane, who garnered an endorsement from B.B. King: "men like her voice because she's seductive and women like her voice because she's powerful." » Read More

LAST YEAR, the former frontman of Operation Ivy, Jesse Michaels, was looking for musicians to record some demos with. His sound engineer played him some songs by San Jose's Hard Girls, suggesting they might be a good match. When he heard their demos, Michaels said, "Do you think maybe these guys are too good for me?" » Read More

SEEKING a movie about the ancient world that isn't actually about people sticking swords into one another? Pity. Alejandro Amenabar's Agora is a beautifully dressed disappointment, highlighting a lovely but severely miscast Rachel Weisz as a pagan logician holding out against insurgent faith » Read More

SINCE The Kids Are All Right is getting a reputation as the lesbian Brokeback Mountain, it's interesting to draw a couple of parallels. The first is the superior job Focus Films did unrolling this small film, the same kind of effort they made for Brokeback. » Read More

Metro's Movies and TV blog hosts a wide-ranging discussion about new movies, cult films and classics, DVD releases, TV shows past and present, filmmaking in Silicon Valley, local film festivals and all aspects of the art of cinema. Richard von Busack, Michael Gant, Steve Palopoli and others will be posting critics' picks, next-day reviews and commentary. » Read More

IF YOU listen to Unbalanced Load, Doug Benson's second comedy album, recorded live on in 2009, you can hear the comedian introduce himself like a stoner Harvey Milk: "My name is Doug Benson, and I'm here to recruit you ... to smoke weed or not give a shit if other people smoke weed." » Read More

IN SUMMING UP his 19th and final season as Carmel Bach Festival music director, Bruno Weil said he has found himself "awed, inspired and transformed" by the genius of J.S. Bach. During his tenure, he has performed the St. Matthew Passion, one of Bach's greatest and most personal works, many times. The St. Matthew can now be viewed as symbolizing Weil's odyssey on the road to his transformation. No two productions over the years have been the same. Last Sunday’s performance of his final return to it in Carmel was in many ways the most fully satisfying of them all. » Read More

NOT SO LONG ago, I taught a graduate writing seminar in which I got caught in an argument about virtual vs. "real" experience. Two students-among the brightest in the class-insisted that they could go to Rome via a computer program through which they could view every street, turn this corner and that as they pleased, look at every ruin and work of art, and their experience would be as real, as engaged, as if they'd actually been there. » Read More

The search for intelligent life in the universe continues with the SETI Institute's new bank of telescopes. Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is funded by government agencies and private supporters including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Intel's Gordon Moore. Seth Shostak, SETI's senior astronomer and the author of Confessions of an Alien Hunter, says the group is accelerating its mission with the addition of its new Allen Telescope Array, located near the Lassen National Forest. » Read More

LITERARY TRAVEL is the rage these days, with more and more people jonesing to infiltrate the haunts of their favorite authors. That said, the ever-changing European cultural megalopolis of Berlin offers one such opportunity. On a nondescript side street in the central borough, Krausnickstrasse 23 to be exact, sits the Ramones Museum, a collection of more than 300 artifacts devoted the game-changing New York punk band that existed from 1974 to 1996. » Read More

I hate that your wife is so cool, because you entice me so. Please stop! You know it drives me nuts when you stand so close that I can feel your breath and smell your warm masculine muskiness. My heart flutters when you gaze intently into my eyes. Knock it off. You're killing me. It hurts. I want to get over you, but it's hard when you wink, smile and drop hints of possibilities. » Read More