Semisonic's Dan Wilson was my highway companion.

​Earlier this week, I drove 1,752 miles prior to my start as City Pages' new music editor. This three-day journey came right after I capped a two-year stint as the music editor at our sister paper in Fort Lauderdale and welcomed an able successor. And it also came after about 83 jokes from friends, colleagues, publicists, and gas station attendants regarding choosing to make the move at the worst possible time of year, weather-wise. As a Minnesota native, I'm built for our current frigidness, and watching the temperature sink from the 70s into single digits on my dashboard thermometer was an expected by-product of this career shift. However, I did not foresee that Semisonic's Dan Wilson would join me on this eight-state trek.
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B FRESH Photography

Prepare your party guests for a roller ghoster of a night

​It's that time again: finalizing plans for your Halloween party, and getting your scares in a row. City Pages has saved you the trouble of putting together a spooky mixtape, as we present our Halloween Soundtrack Vol. 1. 

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We admire his curly hair, his broad shoulders, and his deep, manly voice. But most of all, we admire his success despite any shred of talent, as well as his ability to persevere through the thick cloud of severe alcoholism. The Black Forest Inn also appreciates America's Lifeguard; they're having a whole night devoted to his Hoffness tonight, complete with Hasselhoff-themed prizes and decorations. To help them celebrate, we've compiled a list of the 10 most memorable Hasselhoff moments.
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Part 2

The best ideas are the simple ideas done perfectly, and that's precisely what Auto-Tune the News, a rabidly funny lampoon of cable news pundits, is. The players are Michael Gregory and his older brother Andrew Gregory (a touring songwriter of the Bright Eyes stripe, who even has his own Myspace page).

It's exactly what the title suggests-- the Gregory brothers apply the auto-tune vocal effect to the sounds of the nightly news, harmonizing with them whenever possible. The effect is magnificent and jaw-dropping, not only for its topicality but for its spot-on recreation of a fad that's still ablaze.

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Look, I said I was sorry, all right? Let's not turn this into a big thing.

Look, Earth, I know things haven't always been peaches and cream between the two of us. Sorry about those open pit mines, and the slash-and-burn. Ooh. And the oil spills and... well, let's not make a laundry list here. What can I say? I got a little carried away.

But you know I love you baby. Don't you? Baby? You know I do. I love you, baby. Fucking LOVE you. And I need you. And you know, a lot of the shit you said I did, I don't think I really actually did. Like when you told your girl I put that hole in your ozone layer. I know I was drunk and all, but I really don't think I did that shit. But I don't wanna start more shit between us. Today is about making things right.

Here. I made you a mix tape, just to prove I love you. And, you know, if anyone asks about that strip mining scar, just say you fell down some stairs.

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The more we grow up here at the Gimme Noise offices, the more we suspect that we may, in fact, be living in a ToeJam and Earl level, the absurdist and daringly misanthropic commentary on Earthly life that made a brief but heavy blip on the Sega Genesis.

The 16 bit classic wasn't just an absurdist's dream (two aliens, on an interstellar roadtrip from planet Funkotron, crash land on Earth, which is, of course, a series of 30 grassed planes populated by monster mailboxes, mad dentists and clouds of killer bees). And it wasn't just an inexplicably addicting and deep example of exploration and top notch design. It also featured some of the very best video game music ever composed-- music so maddeningly catchy and downright funky it still rings in our heads lo these many years.
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Punked!

Saran wrap on the toilet, a raisin in the toothpaste, and a whole slew of phoney baloney news items spread all across the world wide web-- April Fools Day is played out. Amateur hour. A day for budding Andy Kaufmans to foist menial pranks on the unwitting.

But April 2nd is the day for the true schemers, those who pulled off the truly hilarious pranks of all time. On this sluggish Thursday afternoon, Gimme Noise offers a modest list of the practical jokes that make April 2nd the day for true April Fools.

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Stink proof? We'll see about that.

Hey, we've got the time. It's nearly the weekend anyway, and between infuriating Joaquin Phoenix's slavishly devoted fan base and promoting local metalheads, we hardly have anything better to do than slap on a pair of Duluth Trading Company's Stink Proof boxers and stew in our own juices. By God, fair readers, if we can't crack these unmentionables, no one can.

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Nice try, Facebook, and no one can blame you for giving it a shot. If Gimme Noise ran a social networking site that was 150 million strong, we'd be writing ourselves a cut of all those juicy profile pictures too.

Early Tuesday morning, a new Terms of Use policy (the online document that explains, in plain legalese, what Facebook can and can't do with your precious status updates) was quietly foisted on its users, containing, among other things, a line deletion that discreetly granted Facebook ownership of anything its users post in their profiles, even after they close their accounts.

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He may sing and dance like Fred Astaire, but Axl Rose rarely represents himself gracefully. In a move of play-acted skepticism, Dr. Pepper announced in March of this year that they would give a free can of their soda to every American (excluding, oddly, Buckethead and Slash) should Rose's opus Chinese Democracy see light of day within this calendar year.More >>