Last night I stopped into the Treehouse to grab some coffee and Jerzy Jung was playing. She’s got a great voice. She usually plays the piano, but sometimes she picks up the guitar, too. I didn’t get a chance to stick around for long, so I missed the set by Johnny Miles but maybe I’ll…

Damn, if you live in South Jersey and haven’t been to Aunt Berta’s Kitchen you don’t know what you’re missing. They have amazing fried chicken, ribs, turkey wings, and pork chops along with the standard home-style sides like macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, collard greens, etc. It makes Boston Market look like your high school…

After seeing them on Conan, I finally got up off my ass and bought the Arcade Fire’s album, Funeral. It was Pitchfork’s best album of 2004 and made the top 10 almost everywhere else. Does it live up to that hype? So far, definitely. Their music sounds like it came from ex-drama club geeks who…

Always looking for ways to help out parents, the good people at Microsoft wrote a guide to help understand their kids’ chats. It’s amazing how serious the author takes the subject.Key points for learning leetspeek Numbers are often used as letters. The term “leet” could be written as “1337,” with “1” replacing the letter L,…

Not that I’d been there on a Tuesday night in a while, but Grape Street will no longer host the Y-100 Tuesday Night Music Club. This news came to me in an email from Dan Fein. I have no idea how I got on his list.February 17, 2005 Dear valued member of the Philadelphia local…

Like this post, Beck’s new video is almost entirely in ASCII.

On August 25th, 2003 I went to an open mic at the Fire and met Alex Ounsworth. He gave me a copy of his demo and I probably listened to it about 100 times that year. I was pissed because I wanted to invite him to the treehouse open mic, but his name and email…

Looking for an impressive dessert? Check this out. It’s raspberry and lemon sorbet with champagne poured over it. Add two mint leaves and it’s perfect. Then you can drink the rest of the champagne. Can you tell I’m going for more photo-intensive posts at bengarvey.com?

This is why I love Mozilla Firefox. Somebody came up with a browser extension that keeps you updated on the status of Abe Vigoda. Currently, his status is “alive.”

This is a great Valentine’s Day post by the amazing Hanzi Smatter blog where the author deciphers the (mis)use of chinese characters in American culture. Think of it as a reverse engrish.com (except in Chinese, not Japanese).

It’s your last chance to join the next game of Odd Man In, A View to an Autokill. Right now there are 71 players signed up! Update: The game is underway!

One Shot is Not Enough was won by BigExit, aka Mr Gold, who easily takes the title of best new Odd Man In player. In his first game he made it to the final three and then followed it up with a solid win in the 12th round of One Shot is Not Enough. Once…

The Onion’s latest issue featured an article about product placement in the Superbowl. They go overboard, even for the Onion, but at least it has local interest.”This is great for the league, but I’m not sure it’s the best thing in the world for the players,” McNabb said. “The anxiety made me throw to [wide…

About a year ago they knocked down the Capas costume store on the White Horse Pike in Audubon to build an Eckerd Drugs. You could tell it used to be a theater of some sort because of the design. Today I found this history of that building:Opened in 1921, many vaudeville acts entertained on the…

Final Three! This will probably be the last round of One Shot is Not Enough or as it’s refered to by the dead players, THE GAME THAT WOULDN’T DIE. I can’t wait to find out who the finalists really were. They seem to understand the game and used some interesting strategies to get to the…

Last week I stopped by the all new Tree House open mic hosted by Johnny Miles. It was a fairly quiet night. John Shaughnessy and John Brennan played some songs. I played a new song tenatively titled “Ship 9” about a guy who is stuck on a spaceship keeping an eye on things. Everyone else…

Thanks to all the traffic generated from Odd Man In, bengarvey.com just hit 400,000 page views since I started the site. Also, this site is currently the featured blog over at phillyfuture.org!bengarvey.com gets the pick for our current Featured Blog. I’ve been a fan of his online efforts for a long time now: whether it…

I’ve talked about my chipotle chili recipe a few times, but it’s time to retire the recipe. I didn’t make any changes in the last two batches and it came out perfect both times. The only thing different from the previous recipe is that I upped the chili powder from 5 tbsp to 7 tbsp…

I rented the first disc of The Office. I’m through the first four shows and it’s fantastic. Every episode seems to get a little better, but the 4th was so good I watched it twice. Ricky Gervais is great in almost every scene, but Tim and Gareth, played by Martin Freeman and McKenzie Crook, play…

After what seemed like an endless number of rounds, One Shot is Not Enough has reached the final four! This is an interesting situation because the game could end in this round if two people are killed. When two players are left, the player with the most points wins. Let’s meet our final four players:…