Do You Harm: Gang of Four playing Armalite Rifle in 1978.

And tons of lens flare.

Theme song for a miserable Monday: Disorder.

Y'all missed out if you didn't make it down to DC9 last night! You probably got more sleep than I did though.

When a friend emailed me the initial lineup announcement of ATP New York, I'll admit, I plotzed. Tortoise playing MNLWND?! MBV?! The rest of the lineup is great too, and they haven't even announced all 30 of the bands! OK, I'll stop it with the exclamation marks. Anyone want to go? I am seriously considering this.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, I can (publicly) congratulate DJ, Finn, Mike and Steve (and the others I don't know) for getting bought out by Six Apart for what I can only hope was some big money. Good work, guys!

Small pleasures: Driving with the windows down on a beautiful day while blaring Archers of Loaf at an absurd volume.

This week has been all about listening to Polvo's Cor-Crane Secret.

While flipping through movie reviews this weekend, I couldn’t help but notice the production still used in many of the reviews for Smart People. In the photo, Dennis Quaid’s character¹ grasps a copy of the Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams (with the cover displayed prominently) while staring down/flirting with Sarah Jessica Parker, thereby proving an easy shorthand proof of his status as a Smart Person for the viewer. I wonder, what other books did the filmmakers considered before deciding on WCW as the visual signifier of intelligence in the photo? They probably didn’t want to go with anything too old-school canon, but also didn’t want to get into post-modern lit to avoid being too obscure for middlebrow tastes, or anything to contemporary for fear of being outdated within moments. But a modernist poet? Pretty much right on the nose, I guess. Probably a little too on the nose, which is probably why the photo kind of stood out for me, I suppose. As for the movie, I doubt I’ll see it, at least not in theaters. When it comes to quirky movies about middle-aged English professors in Pittsburgh, I’d recommend the superior² Wonder Boys³.

¹A crusty English professor at my alma mater.
²While I have not seen Smart People as of yet, many reviews of Smart People compare the two, mostly to the detriment of Smart People. Plus, I know that I already really like Wonder Boys, so I feel pretty safe in figuring that will still be the case once I see Smart People.^4
3Also shot at my alma mater, but takes place at a fictional college, unlike Smart People, which is actually takes place at Carnegie Mellon.
⁴Yeah, kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy there.^5
5Just kidding.