I’ve Come to Wish You a Happy Birthday, Morrissey!

My apologies for the title, I couldn’t resist.  Moz turns 53 years young today! Never heard of Morrissey?  I’d put money on some of your favorite bands/artists listing him, and his former band The Smiths, among their influences.  For a solid three decades Morrissey has provided an intelligent, dark humored soundtrack to unrequited love, regret, loneliness, and the [...]

Music Matters

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC” ― Kurt Vonnegut Music is amazing.  I mostly just listen to it, but lately I’ve been picking up my guitar a little more often to play.  For a while now Ive [...]

A Global Jukebox Goes Digital

If you’re a music lover like me, you probably spend a lot of time building playlists in your iTunes library, browsing random music videos on YouTube, checking out new artists with Pandora or Spotify, and scrolling through thousands of songs on your iPod. From Drake to dubstep, from Lady Gaga to some random guy playing [...]

Books and Music Have More in Common Than You’d Think: Drake & “Where She Went,” by Gayle Forman

Warning: This blog post contains spoilers for the books If I Stay and Where She Went, by Gayle Forman. Do not read past this warning if you do not want critical plot details spoiled! On Monday, I finished re-reading two of Gayle Forman’s critically-acclaimed novels for teens, If I Stay and Where She Went. I [...]

Madden, Skrillex, Cupstacking, and reCAPTCHA: A (Surprisingly) Literary Journey

On August 30th, like a lot of people, I walked down to my local video game store over my lunch break and forked over some change for the next iteration of EA Sport’s Madden NFL, which we now have available at the Main library for any of our gaming programs! I turned it on, ready [...]

Free & Affordable Fridays In the ‘Burgh

I live in the suburbs. I know, I know– it is supremely uncool  to live anywhere other than the city. And sometimes, I really agree.  Besides the ever present city construction, the detours, and the unfortunateness of rarely having a backyard, there are some true benefits to living in an urban area– public swimming pools, [...]

Saying Good-bye

Something that I learned when I was a teenager is that saying good-bye is not easy but it is an inevitable part of life. People come into our lives sometimes briefly, sometimes forever. We move from place to place. We graduate high school and then college and later grad school saying good-bye to the friends [...]

Nursing a New Found Love…

So, I’m a little nervous to tell you this, but… here it goes.  Ever since this winter, I’ve been nursing a new found love of classical music.  Call me a nerd, a dork, whatever.  I embrace my nerdiness and I love classical music!  I mean, c’mon, how could you not love this?!? Vivaldi’s Spring. The [...]

Record Store Day 2011

This Saturday is one of my all-time favorite “holidays” — it’s Record Store Day, the day when music lovers all across the world patronize their favorite record shops and plunk down a little bit of money for some exclusive and awesome deals. It’s a way of letting your local brick-and-mortar record shop know that you [...]

My First Post

Hi everyone, I’m Denise.  Like Michael, I’m new to CLPTeensburgh, but I’ve been working at the library for a while.  For the last few years, I’ve been a part of the Job and Career Education Center (JCEC), where you can get help with standardized tests, the college application process, starting a job search, and more.  [...]