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Two weeks ago, all of our lives were enriched by Gawker's casual post about a mysterious animal corpse that had reportedly "washed up" on the shores of Montauk. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here, or here, or here.

Two weekends ago, faced with boiling heat, excessive humidity, and no cash, a friend and I partook in the summertime sensation of 2008: the staycation. It involved relatively little investment: $11 for a blow-up kiddie pool from my neighborhood 99 Cents Store, $10 for a 6-pack of Corona, and a few watts of electricity for the iPod dock.

I've been supplementing my income by working at a glossy weekly tabloid which shall remain nameless. It's great and I love it. Seriously. But it's hard to ward off the "what has the world come to" thoughts when you're smack in the middle of celebrity journalism. It's hard not to become Joel McHale of The Soup, who so wonderfully ridicules the state of television but is more aware than anyone that it's what pays his bills.

This summer in New York is abuzz with tragic "lasts" -- last year of the McCarren Pool being used as a music venue, the impending last season of baseball in the old Yankee Stadium, and the last year of Coney Island in all its pre-war glory.

My alternate program during the rain delay of the Wimbledon men's championship match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was Casablanca on TCM. During my usual Wikipedia/IMDB background search, I stumbled across this tidbit: Bogey was reportedly the first actor to ask, "Tennis, anyone?" on stage in one of his early Broadway performances. Aha!

Every media outlet from Rolling Stone to NPR's All Things Considered to the wee-est music blogger in Kenosha, Wisconsin (made that up, but I am certain there is one) has recently issued their "Best of 2008 So Far" list. Even The Soup offered up a steaming bowl of "Half-year Clipdown" this weekend.

Last week, while perusing the network morning shows, I came across a trio of screeching blond girls bleating what sounded like a re-worked ABBA song into a trio of three little microphones. They had to have been about ten years old. Immediate Thought: don't you have to be able to sing to be on a morning show?

This week's mix is for all the fathers out there, inspired by my dad, my friends who are new dads, and the passing of Tim Russert, which had me staring at MSNBC all Friday night in tears. Russert had the utmost respect for his dad, Big Russ, and listening to his words about fatherhood and sacrifice got me thinking about how my dad has sacrificed and contributed to everything I do, have, and am. One of the many things I give him credit for is my love of music.

One of the cultural shifts that has happened since 9/11 is that instead of dwelling only in the present or obsessing about the future, people are getting back to their roots--by reading other people's life stories in memoirs, documenting and unpacking their own experiences in blogs and on YouTube, or singing the songs their grandfather sang on the front porch.

Since last year, Memorial Day has taken on new meaning for me. A dear friend of mine passed away in February 2007, and his birthday was May 25. So every Memorial Day will be spent with thoughts of Jim, and in honor of him and his excellent and deep knowledge of music, I thought I'd share a mix he made a few years before his death. A mix that, upon first listen, I considered amazing, in that it was filled with weird and wonderful songs, half of which I had never heard.

So I've kind of been MIA lately because I've been face-to-screen for a month and a half writing my graduate thesis. Now that I've lovingly placed that mess into the hands of my advisors, I feel a sense of relief mixed with exhaustion, a dash of nostalgia, and side of blinding fear. (From what I hear, this sounds about right.) Now it's time for the rituals: thesis readings, something called a "hooding ceremony," the graduation itself.

I've been steering clear of MTV's new reality show Rock the Cradle, which is odd, because I usually eat reality TV up with a shovel. Who Wants to Marry My Dad? Check. Groomer Has It? Check. And the list goes on.

After the glory that was the recent weather in New York (74 degrees, sun full enough to get a burn, which I did, on the light-deprived skin on my shoulders, exposed to the elements for the first time in six months), I'm feeling...how should I say it.....anxious, if you know what I mean.

I'm assuming we all survived April Fool's Day this year--unless you were that poor sack I saw on The Soup last night who was blindfolded and wrapped in duct tape (sticky side out) and told by the Denver Nuggets or some other NBA organization that he was rolling around in a pile of money and that he could keep whatever he collected. The joke? There was no money, and the guy was left to flip like a dying fish in front of thousands of people. How amusing.

I recently found out about 33 1/3, a series of tiny little 100-page books about albums, authored by various musicologists, superfans, fiction writers, rock critics, and musicians. One, about Let It Be by the Replacements, was written by Colin Meloy of the Decemberists. There is even a cheeky little tome dedicated to Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love.