The Foo Fighters played a surprise show last night with Queens Of The Stone Age, thrown together by Verizon to celebrate the release of the new Blackberry Storm. To get in, you had to play that game where you text some retarded phrase to some weird five digit number. If you got a reply and jumped through a couple hoops, you ‘won,’ but then you had to be one of the first 800 ‘winners’ to beat the traffic into Hollywood to be there by 7:30…

After the text message game, I expected the Avalon event to be a corporate whorehouse, but I’ve gotta admit, Verizon handled it pretty well.

I’m so going to hell for this one… But like laughing at retarded people, sometimes you just can’t help it. I’ve been hearing about original Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler’s ‘performance’ on the new season of Celebrity Rehab…

I finally got around to hitting YouTube, and you know what… It’s not really that funny. It’s sad. The obvious question had crossed my mind: Is it worth some commentary on Antiquiet? And, well, by itself, no it isn’t. But there’s been so much talk about it- maybe not on music sites, but around the nation’s water coolers, and on the radio- yet, Steven Adler was not the biggest human spectacle this week. At least not in my opinion. Check out these two competing disasters, and tell us what you think.

A couple of weeks back, we covered the return of underrated 90s alt-metal / ‘emocore’ band Far, under cover of pseudonym Hot Little Pony. We had fired some emails into the band’s general direction, trying to get an interview. When we didn’t hear back, we gave up, winged it, sneaking a camera into their sold-out Troubadour show and rocking it guerilla style, ’cause that’s how we roll.

But after the show, those emails managed to find their way to their marks, and we got ourselves an interview with frontman Jonah Matranga and guitarist Shaun Lopez. While it was being set up, I found myself cruising the message boards, as a fan, on the lookout for recordings, video, photos, whatever. In my travels, I stumbled upon a vast wealth of hilarious shit-talking being done amongst the internet’s ruling class… I couldn’t help but laugh and wonder how the band would respond if “professional” interviewers were anything like the real fans. I gathered up the best of these completely ignorant, baseless accusations, I emailed them to Jonah and Shaun, and I prayed. I prayed that they wouldn’t think I was a complete fucking asshole for doing so.

I had gone out with a bunch of friends to the Bigfoot Lodge in Los Feliz, one of my favorite bars on the planet. On the way back we stopped at someone’s friend’s house, and I went straight to the hi-fi stereo system, which happened to be nearly identical to the one I had put together when I was eighteen or so, the one through which I first played most of the best albums the 90s had to offer. The architect of the system was more than happy to show it off.

Every hardcore audiophile has their go-to album to sample the range of a sound system. It’s the one they’ll use most while calibrating for room dynamics, the one they’ll take with them when shopping for an amp or speakers, the one they’ll reach for when music is the only thing that can clear their head after a harrowing day. Mine, for instance, is Dirt, by Alice In Chains. Particularly track four, Down In A Hole. Well, this kid’s was a live Donny Hathaway album, titled simply, Live. He dropped the needle on track two, The Ghetto, and instantly I was completely entranced.

Johnny occasionally posts silly videos from Saturday Night Live, as he’s one of like, a dozen people left on the planet that still watch it regularly. They’re never funny, but Friday night I was out drinking absinthe in Hollywood Cemetery with Jeremy from Mongo Nation, and he was telling me about a great Andy Samberg skit that aired last week, where he talked to animals as Mark Wahlberg. It sounded pretty fucking hilarious.

I was amazed to find the actual clip as funny sober as Jeremy’s re-enactment was while tripping balls on glowing booze that tasted like cat piss.