Dear Readers: If you haven't yet partaken in the offerings of the Philadelphia Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festivals, this is definitely the year to do it. The two weeks of the festival, kicking off today (except for a few shows that opened last night—cheaters!), are absolutely my two favorite weeks to be in Philly. And even though I'm seeing fewer shows than usual this year (about 20, instead of my usual 30+), I thought......

We at Phillyist love animals. We check I Can Has Cheezburger daily, we frequently go to restaurants in Fairmount just so we have an excuse to stop and look at the kitties in the window at Fairmount Pet Shoppe, and we cried at the tragic end to Saturday's Kentucky Derby. A couple months ago, when we were liveblogging the Barking Beauty pageant, we met some of the good folks from Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, better......

Let's just say, heading into Sunday night's Mae concert at the Fillmore at the TLA, we didn't have the highest expectations. Former Phillyist and current SFist writer Spencer commented that he was less than impressed with Mae the couple times he'd seen him. Plus, we went to the show straight from doing our Barking Beauty Liveblog, and really, how could anything be better than that, right? On the plus side, one of our favorite......