Bissell is no fanboy, and he spends more time exploring his frustrations with video games than his fascination with them.

Ever since buying his first MiniDisc recorder in 1997, Scott Slimm has personally bootlegged and amassed well over 2,000 hours of audio. The man goes to fringe music shows in this city like the Bible Belt goes to church.

With every other blockbuster for the last 10 years having been a comic book adaptation, it'd be easy to forget that the concept of the superhero actually goes back millennia. So goes the logic behind "WOW! Superhero Day," a celebration and evaluation of superheroes past and present at Penn Museum.

We talk to some of the remaining independent booksellers in Philadelphia — an eclectic group representing local shops of all shapes and sizes, from new books to niche markets, from old veterans to spring chickens — and check into how they're getting through these hard times.

Brandishing traditional bachi sticks, the 15 musicians circle and attack their wide drums with a violent, artful fluidity that harkens back to taiko's ancient roots in the martial arts.

Through Feb. 22, Art Star, 623 N. Second St., 215-238-1557, artstarphilly.com

Recently, SEPTA seems to be making sincere efforts to give weary passengers a break: This week marks the midpoint in its QuietRide pilot program, a two-month experiment that uses the R5 Lansdale/Doylestown line to examine how a quiet car might work on heavily populated commuter trains.

"It's all connected. Just one big experiment of looking at and communicating with the world."