photo of the Fucked Up Inauguration Day crowd by Santiago Felipe

In the week we said goodbye to John Updike, twice, and Missbehave Magazine once, we said hello to American Idol judge Kara's cleavage, the U2 song "Get on Your Boots," and welcomed Hanoi Jane back.

Cold and poor, we also watched a shitload of television: MTV's The City, Flight of the Conchords, American Idol (again), the Real World Brooklyn, and Lost, and Lil Wayne with Katie Couric.

As for the week in other rappers' hijinks, Wale proclaimed that he doesn't listen to "Dischord Bands," Jeezy clapped back at Bill O'Reilly, then says he'd rather watch Jimmy Kimmell, Jim Jones went "Na Na," Kid Sister didn't take fanboys out on a Dream Date, Raekwon and Ghostface put out "Criminology 2," and 50 Cent embarrassed Rick Ross, and Biggie's kids continued to be damn cute.

What else did we do? We saw Kings of Leon, sat through Young Jean Lee's The Shipment at the Kitchen, watched Songsmith remixes, adored the hand dryers at the Stars Like Fleas show, listened to Stacy Peralta talk about Crips and Bloods: Made in America, and played Assteroidz, a fully functional arcade version of Asteroids wherein you fire bullets out of David Lee Roth's crotch so as to blow up Van Halen logos. Blam!

Last, but hardly least: THORNS OF LIFE!

In the annals of inadvertent viral humiliation, the Microsoft Songsmith ad falls squarely between Tay Zonday and the Numa Numa Guy--cringeworthy, but not permanently ruinous. In case you've missed this particular case of public humiliation, Songsmith is Microsoft's new music-making software, a GarageBand-for-babies program that composes tinny background music as one sings along. And so far its major promotional effort has been a long, ridiculously goofy commercial, starring Microsoft scientists who sing--and so poorly that the video plays like satire. Unbelievably, it's not.

You've gotta commend the effort--these guys wail with the earnest beseeching of Disney cartoon princes, peering with delight into their laptops (which are, apparently, MacBooks). Unfortunately, this only highlights that Microsoft's idea of the future is still 1988, as those beats have all the sonic alchemy of a Teddy Ruxpin taped to a Casiotone, and the stilted acting of everyone involves only underscores Microsoft's lumbering image next to sleek, shiny, my-phone-can-land-the-Concorde Apple. (My favorite parts is at 2:50 when the first consultant at the meeting, the schmuck who didn't utilize this bravura technology, lectures about vague 'demographics' while gesturing emphatically at a blank wall. And then the beaming inventor sings about being trapped in the closet and towels or something, and lands the job and gets the girl.)

Sound of the City roots for the home team and so does Impose Magazine's Jeremy Krinsley.

Impose is having a birthday party show on Saturday at Cake Shop. It's free if you were born in January.

O'Death mixtape. Unfortunately this doesn't include yodeling diss tracks aimed at Akron/Family. On that note, those other hippies have got some more news about their album and stuff.

Crazy Brooklyn vs. Baltimore blowout tonight! USAISAMONSTER apparently now performs as a four piece, These Are Powers are back from a long tour (and about to embark on another), Blank Dogs just signed to In The Red, and Dan Deacon will be there. The $3 show was recently relocated from Danbro Studios to the 1896, the address of which you'll now find on Todd P's website.

New Asobi Seksu video, "Me & Mary," off their upcoming album Hush, is out. Slow but steady, this will be their third album, released two years after their sophomore Citrus. Like many other bands who began in the earlier half decade, they've pinched up the excess in their pop and now present it clean and dressed for mass acceptance. We'll see where that takes them.

In a similar vein, Ra Ra Riot and Harlem Shakes, the two bands most associated with Vampire Weekend prior to their canonization, have both reinvigorated their indie rock careers. Ra Ra Riot was recently remixed by Passion Pit, and will be opening for Death Cab on their spring tour. Harlem Shakes are sitting on a new album, with a track released this week.

In an otherwise fairly unremarkable e-mail dialogue with Don't Panic, illustrator Adrian Tomine offers a genuinely blunt, and for-once useful answer to this inescapable panelist birdie "What would be your advice to guys who're trying to break in these days?" a/k/a How can we be you? Tomine's response:

My honest advice would be: Shut the fuck up.

This is hardly on the level of calling Wall Street gluttons "shameful," but 2009 is shaping up to be the year of real talk, saying the uncomfortable things that need to be said, hearing the things that we've all been far too polite to admit out loud both to ourselves and everybody else. Tomine, nicely done.

"Your heart kinda goes out. Even though you know it's not a person, but still: It's a living creature. Everything should have its own right and feel to be who it is to the universe, 'cause that's its sole purpose in being here." [peta2 via Prefix]

After Jack Johnson's atrocious headlining slot at last year's Coachella it seems people pretty much gave up on the 3-day fest that was once highly regarded for its reunions and last minute surprise additions. Evidently, founder and organizer Paul Tollett took notice of the sluggish ticket sales and got McCartney to head up the first night of Coachella 2009, along with Leonard Cohen, Morrissey, and the Hold Steady. Suspiciously the Killers are headlining Saturday night, which most likely means a big name pinch-hitter or two should be announced a month from now. TV on the Radio, and Amy Winehouse are also set for Saturday. Sunday's set looks very promising with the Cure, Lupe Fiasco, Lykke Li, and Okkervil River. As past years it's not wise to lag on booking a room in Indio, so reserve now. The rest of the lineup is after the jump:

I was happy to finally get a chance to see Young Jean Lee's much-praised play The Shipment at the Kitchen this week. Though enjoying most of the show, I found myself leaving the theater in a somewhat sour state of mind, dismayed over the play's final moment, fretting about the piece's surprise ending. It's a finale the reviews haven't really explored in much detail out of spoiler fear, but which, well, we're about to--you're warned!

The Shipment is of course Lee's "black" play, a collage of vignettes, dance, and song that challenges and exploits black stereotypes and audience expectations of black theater. The project gets extra buzz out of the fact that Lee is Korean-American, though I don't think that matters very much here.

Kings of Leon
Madison Square Garden
Thursday, January 29

Here we have one of those Holy Shit We're Playing Madison Square Garden shows, always a charming event -- what little banter KOL frontman Caleb Followill offers is of the "This is one of the biggest, best moments of my life right here" variety. We are sincerely thanked for "Getting on your little websites and spreading the word" (no problem, dogg); most notably, there's the declaration that "We have the best fans in the world -- one of the last true fanbases, I think." Whoa now. Let's not get carried away.

While 50 Cent's sneering, self-righteous, conniving persona basically keeps him from making good music at all these days, he's still perfectly suited to go in on another rapper. And so: "Officer Ricky (Go Head, Try Me)." Making fun of Rick Ross for being a correctional officer is a little 2008, maybe, but then again, Ross supposedly started it. As always, 50 has a gift for the charmingly obvious (Ja Rule's terrible rap career was self-evidently wretched long before Curtis pointed it out, then ended it): "Every other word out your mouth's 'bout a bird/Like you sling cocaine, and this is absurd." And you know, it is. Next up, supposedly, Lil Wayne--but I think that guy's flying a little high for a 50 Cent ad lib to make much of a dent. [Via Nah Right]

"As for Wayne himself," wrote SOTC buddy Tom Breihan in a startling kicker to a startlingly empathic essay about Lil Wayne for this year's Pazz and Jop issue, "it is my great hope that he'll live to see the end of 2009." (Breihan put it slightly less delicately in an earlier L Magazine feature: "Wayne, meanwhile, probably does not have another great album in him, thanks to his debilitating cough syrup habit. He's looking more and more fried every day, and he should probably place just a few spots below Amy Winehouse on your celebrity death-watch list.")