This morning, we were roused from sleep by the sound of a loud beeping. It wasn't our alarm clock; this was more of a slow, mellow beeping with a laid-back hip-hop beat and Tricky rapping overtop. "Son of a DJ Shadow!" we exclaimed. "It's our trip-hop detector!" We ran to our closet and started rummaging, tossing aside the unpaid ticket we got from a cop for ghost-riding our whip in 2006, along with the zoot suit we purchased in earnest during the ill-fated swing-dancing revival of 1997. And there it was!

Sitting atop our rejected application for Mexican citizenship (filed during 2000's Latin-music explosion) was the device we'd had custom made in 1995 to alert us to the on-sale dates of new trip-hop albums (trip-hop itself mellowed us out so much that it was difficult to keep up with the release schedule). Since it hadn't beeped since 1998, we'd assumed it was broken or out of batteries, but we guess it still works! Turns out Portishead have a new record (Third, their first in a decade) out today. We'll see you at Tower Records!