In the week after CMJ laid total waste to our city, we turned our eyes once more toward the real world, a/k/a movies about Halloween and short videos depicting rappers voting.

Speaking of the election, Ice-T, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Richard Belzer, Richard Hell, and Eileen Myles all weighed in on it, as did M.I.A., again.

There’s a new Animal Collective record, Merriweather Post Pavilion; it may or may not be better than this Vic Chesnutt MP3, or this one, from Hermit Thrushes, a band we may or may not have invented.

Justice debuted their breast-baring documentary and played Webster Hall; NKOTB played Madison Square Garden a couple days earlier and girls took off their shirts there, too; the Last Shadow Puppets played Manhattan Center and acted like people cared; Howlin’ Rain, meanwhile, made no such assumptions and humbly played their own hotel room.

James Wood turned out to be a music critic—maybe he can come up with some rules for the rest of us? Or at least render something more substantial than the Love That Dare Not Croon Its Name?

Plus, Banksy’s pet store finally closed, Richard Gehr had his heart bled by I Live Here and Guy Delisle's Burma Chronicles, and Bones took in Olaf Breuning at Metro Pictures, where one drawing depicted “a man, a monkey, and what I suppose I'll call a sex act.” Sounds like a last minute Halloween costume to us.