A dozen reasons not to hate the rain

A rainy Labor Day Weekend (at least here in Greater Boston) is enough to make you hate the rain.

Don't hate the rain; listen to these 12 Great Rain Songs instead.

Know your "mid-period" Beach Boys: A 5-song primer

For most casual music fans of the 20something variety, the history of the Beach Boys is a 3-chapter saga that breaks down something like this:

1.  The candy-striped, surf & car-obsessed Beach Boys.

Four Guys Midsummer Madness

In honor of the 2013 MLB All-Star Game, Four Guys has cooked up a (admittedly half-baked) Midsummer Classic of our own.  Filling out all nine spots, plus a manager, we each assembled All-Star teams of our all-time favorite fictional characters from the big and small screen.  The only restrictions?

1. No more than one (1) athlete-character per team.
2. No more than one (1) "super hero" per team, defined as a character with supernatural powers (e.g., Bruce Wayne wouldn't fill the quota.)
3. No one gets Superman.  DQ'd on account of excess awesome.

Next, we each ranked each others' squads on a scale of 1-100 based not only on our All-Stars' abilities, talents and personalities, but also on the justification of our picks.  And finally, we averaged those peer scores and came up with a "winner" – who, of course, will receive home-field advantage at the Four Guys TV & Movie Character World Series.

Understand?  Good; we're still not sure we do either.  But we had fun with this anyways and we hope you do too...

Doing right by Francis Scott Key

In 1814, 35-year-old amateur poet Francis Scott Key composed a poem titled "Defence of Fort McHenry" (the eventual lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner") after witnessing the bombardment of said fort by the British Royal Navy.

In 2013, 20-something-year-old amateur bloggers Four Guys composed a blog post titled "Doing right by Francis Scott Key" in advance of grilling things and drinking things and watching fireworks.

Happy Fourth of July, folks!  Before you get on with your grilling and drinking and firework-watching, enjoy a few of our favorite renditions of our national anthem...