>> ERIC T. MILLER, Editor & Publisher
Philly Soft Pretzel Factory
Forget cheese steaks and Tastykakes. The one Philly food staple I can’t live without is the soft pretzel. You can buy one pretty much anywhere around the city; my dad has long maintained the pretzels from street vendors are the way to go, because dirt makes them taste better. My favorites come from the Philly Soft Pretzel Factory, a 10-year-old company with more than 150 stores in the area. I go to the 11th Street shop the most, not just because it’s so close to the MAGNET office, but also because their pretzels seem bigger (and, therefore, better) than the ones from the other Factory locations. While I was buying a pretzel there this morning, one of the workers asked me, “How many times a day do you come in here?” Given that Philadelphians consume 12 times more pretzels each year than the average American, the fact that he noticed I frequent his store often enough to comment on it made me feel like a glutton. (For the record, I limit myself to one pretzel per day, though last Sunday, I had two.) I defy anyone to show me a better way to spend 65 cents. 

10 Albums I’m Digging Right About Now
Boston Spaceships Brown Submarine (Guided By Voices Inc.)
Lindsey Buckingham Gift Of Screws (Reprise)
Calexico Carried To Dust (Quarterstick)
Crooked Fingers Forfeit / Fortune (Red Pig)
Death Vessel Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us (Sub Pop)
Jolie Holland The Living And The Dead (Anti-)
Shannon McArdle Summer Of The Whore (Bar/None)
Mogwai The Hawk Is Howling (Matador)
Port O’Brien All We Could Do Was Sing (Port O’Brien)
The Rosewood Thieves Rise & Shine (The Rosewood Thieves) 

>> MATTHEW FRITCH, Senior Editor
Two Podcasts I Like:
The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe
I like to geek out on science stuff from time to time, and this podcast does a fine job of analyzing new developments in technology, medicine, physics and astronomy. Problem is, the hosts are under an aggressive mandate to debunk pseudoscience, crackpot medicine, psychic phenomena, etc. This approach is sometimes enlightening (a recent segment on disproving the autism-vaccine link, for example) but also can devolve into tiresome arguments to combat obviously bogus stuff like acupuncture and creationism. Not surprisingly, James Randi is often referenced as a kind of skeptic godfather to the podcast. Nevertheless, The Skeptics’ Guide always gives me something to think about. If you wonder whether the Large Hadron Collider will cause an Earth-destroying black hole when it’s turned on later this year, this podcast is for you. (If you don’t even know what the Large Hadron Collider is, boy are you missing out on some fun!) 

The Best Show On WFMU
This one is a no-brainer. Host Tom Scharpling does the best free-form/call-in radio program in the country. I’m not saying The Best Show is perfect or funny all the time (many of the regular callers are really dull), but it’s got a genuine, almost sweet, quality that the morning-zoo-style shows wouldn’t know anything about. Jon Wurster (drummer for Superchunk, Bob Mould, Marah, GBV, etc.) almost always calls in as a “plant,” playing characters such as Philly Boy Roy and Marky Ramone. It’s Scharpling, though, who captains the three-hour program and fills time with cranky monologues and genius call-in topics. Go to iTunes and download (it’s free) the episode dated 7/5/07: The topic is “the worst song in the world,” and you’ll be surprised how clearly the winner is Neil Diamond’s “Porcupine Pie.” 

 >> JUD COST, Contributing Editor
Lee Konitz at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, April 27, 2008
My oldest friend, Bob Norbut, and I went to see alto sax legend Lee Konitz play in a long-forgotten Burlingame, Calif., club in the summer of 1964. It was a Sunday matinee performance, and it didn’t last long. Details are hazy, but Konitz got into an argument with the drummer, blows were exchanged, and Konitz stomped out of the place. Norbut and I finally got to scratch that 40-year itch last summer when Konitz played a terrific set in a classroom setting at Stanford University. And now, validating the “when it rains, it pours” maxim, here he was again, performing in San Francisco, eight months later.
Only 22 when he played on Miles Davis’ seminal 1949 Birth Of The Cool sessions, Konitz has been improvising tirelessly on the same menu of classic American ballads for 60 years. His recent SF Jazz set included familiar chestnuts “I’ll Remember April,” “Stella By Starlight,” “Body And Soul” and “All The Things You Are.” Of course, Konitz never dwells on the original melodies. You identify fragments of a tune as though watching a building under construction while walking by a fence with an occasional knothole.
After brief introductory remarks by famed sessions producer/liner annotator Orrin Keepnews, the professorial Konitz stuffs a towel into the bell of his horn (“I do this when I practice at my apartment in New York,” he grins. “It keeps the neighbors from complaining.”) and lights into “Solar,” a tune he later explains has been credited to Miles Davis but was really written by guitarist Chuck Wayne. Accompanied by a pair of seasoned pros—lanky upright bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Joe LaBarbera (whose white T-shirt enhances a passing resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald)—Konitz thrills a crowd of longtime fans with his fertile inventions. You get the feeling he never plays the same phrase twice. Konitz’s jagged improvisational lines seem like love letters set on fire and tossed from a window to someone standing five stories below. It’s a fleeting, Zen-like experience. Ironically, the player once described as the only alto sax man of his generation who didn’t try to sound like bebop legend Charlie Parker, Konitz ends his set with a simmering version of “Cherokee.” But it isn’t anything like Parker’s 90 mph, midnight-express version cut for Savoy Records in 1945. This was more like the milk train making all the stops in broad daylight with plenty of time to enjoy the scenery. And if his set didn’t leave the faithful agog, the twittering of the patrons as we hoofed it back to the 5th and Mission parking garage reinforced the fact that Lee Konitz is still playing with as much wit and passion as he ever did. 

 >> MATT HICKEY, Contributing Editor
The Baseball Project Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes And Dying Quails (Yep Roc)
The thought of an album devoted to our national pastime might conjure visions of a lame series of drippy, “Talkin’ Baseball”-esque odes that would drive even the most ardent fan of the game crazy. It becomes more appealing when the brains behind Frozen Ropes are Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows frontman Scott McCaughey and the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn (with help from some guy named Peter Buck and drummer Linda Pitmon). The music is typically catchy and winning in ways fans of McCaughey and Wynn’s will expect, and the lyrics, while brimming with humor and nostalgia, are also fairly pointed. In particular, Wynn’s “Gratitude (For Curt Flood)” lacerates today’s players for not appreciating what the man who challenged baseball’s reserve clause meant to their fat wallets. Check out the Baseball Project’s Letterman appearance for further proof that this project is short on vanity and long on smarts.

 >> HOBART ROWLAND, Contributing Editor
My Top 5 Reality Shows of the Moment:
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (BBC America) Forget the shrill Hell’s Kitchen or KN’s dumbed-down stateside cousin, on which Britain’s most celebrated chef comes off like a masochistic ass. Here, Ramsay actually has a heart, expressing genuine empathy for the hapless restaurateurs he (mostly) ushers out of the red and into the black with his considerable culinary skills and marketing acumen. Could it be that, deep down, he hates Americans? Would you blame him?
Supernanny (ABC) What I’d pay for a sliver of Brit Jo Frost’s kid-taming expertise.
Parking Wars (A&E) Anyone who dares question the entertainment value of issuing meter citations and booting cars should spend a half-hour with the Philadelphia Parking Authority. Funnier than Cops—even without the gunplay.
Wife Swap (ABC) I’d been losing interest in this show of late—until the belly dancer swapped families with the pig farmer.
Little People, Big World (TLC) They laugh; they cry; they grow pumpkins; they vacation in exotic locales; they get pulled over by the cops. See—little people are people, too.