When I was 16, I saw Avail and Citizen Fish at the Black Cat. It was the best show I've ever seen and probably will ever see. I'm 25 now, and an Avail show doesn't mean the same thing to me. But holy god I had a good time last night. I was feeling all miserable and out-of-place, standing around all mopey during the boring opening acts and wondering where all my peoples were at. But then Avail stepped onstage, said, "hi, we're Avail from Richmond, VA," and then launched into "Southbound 95" and that was it. It was over. I lost my shit. I have nothing but good feelings for Avail, especially since they're all like mid-30s with beer guts and fading tattoos and their crowds are shrinking and they aren't touring with Rancid anymore and it's been a while since every band they knew was blowing up but they still tour like nobody's business and play their hearts out and go off and just bring the heart-on-sleeve deep-dynamics unpretentious everyday-dude hardcore and then go back home to their day jobs. I will always rep Avail, man.

Speaking of crunk, I am totally going to the Ravens game tonight, dudes.

I did not write this. I swear to God.

One of my P-Fork colleagues gave the Travis Morrison record a 0.0. That is not how it goes down. Travistan isn't a great record. It's not as good as any Dismemberment Plan albums except maybe !. But it's still a good record. Travis set out to do a studio-pop singer-songwriter record, and he succeeded on his own questionable terms. He's still the same dude, still writing the same kind of songs. And many of Travistan's pleasures are entirely sensory: a multitracked vocal, a bubbling synth bit. It sometimes gets too cutesy for its own good, and Travis doesn't really have the voice for some of the notes he tries to hit, but he hasn't lost me yet.