Your guest editor, about to be eaten by Pac Man

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Good morning. Your friend and mine Maura Johnston is currently overseas, enjoying grog and mead (I'm assuming) and generally being awesome. When you hear about the show she is seeing, in all probability you will die of jealousy. Expect a full recap on that next week, and let us pray that the inevitable Tyler, The Creator and Lana Del Ray duet does not drop while she is out of town. We all know how much she would hate to miss that.

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The loneliness of a former property owner. Photo by Raquel M. Horn.

​Rap mogul turned downtown striver Damon Dash may be resurrected in the pages of this week's Voice, in which Ben Detrick chronicles the executive's self-reinvention as a cuddly Warhol figure, but the past isn't quite through with him. In 2008, the bank moved to foreclose upon Dash's 25 N. Moore Street duplex; though he's tried frantically to sell the place in the interim, it looks as though the loft is finally going to auction tomorrow. This is not the Duane Street space Dash is currently running his DD172 operation out of: there, we know from experience (because he once begged us by proxy to stop getting him in trouble with his landlord), he pays rent. Let's recap, as per our story this week:

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​Lynn Hirschberg was adamant in an interview Tuesday with the Observer's John Koblin that, although M.I.A. had tapes that seemed to show that Hirschberg misquoted her in Sunday's now-famous Times Magazine profile, she'd gotten her reporting right. At issue? A disputed quote involving the Grammys and Bono, which Hirschberg had as self-aggrandizing-- "I'm tired of pop stars who say, 'Give peace a chance.' I'd rather say, 'Give war a chance'"--and which M.I.A.'s covertly recorded tapes, later posted on her website, seemed to reveal as more self-deprecating: "It wasn't about accolades or fame." Hirschberg explained the discrepancy away by claiming M.I.A. was prone to repeating herself, implying that the quote she used was drawn from another exchange entirely: "She didn't just say that once or twice or three times. She repeated things constantly." Now, however, the Times has come down on M.I.A.'s side of the issue, appending a correction to Hirschberg's story:

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So Urb caused a sizable kerfuffle yesterday afternoon by breaking the news that the stupendously volatile Lauryn Hill would headline the annual hip-hop nostalgia tour Rock the Bells by performing 1998's classic The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in its entirety, triggering equal amounts joy and fear. (Lauryn's shows can be harrowing.) Urb had a sizable scoop here, as the official RTB lineup-unveiling event was set for Monday night in L.A. Well, that happened, and the lineup was officially announced. You'll never guess who wasn't on it.

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​Because PlayMPE--"one of a handful of technologies that record labels use to distribute advance, watermarked albums, to blogs, magazines, and a variety of other publications," reports AbsolutePunk.net--was hacked last week. PlayMPE is the preferred industry vehicle these days as far getting records to critics ahead of the official release date. But all it took was one clever teenager to get himself on the company's distribution list, and the rest was RapidShare history. The kid was caught after bragging about his exploits online, which just goes to show that internet fluency is not even remotely equivalent to internet IQ.

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Well, that took a dispiritingly short amount of time. No sooner did future-of-rap-in-2010 goddess Nicki Minaj announce a summer tour with Ke$ha and Rihanna--this literally happened on Monday--did she call the whole thing off, tweeting: "Barbz I'm sorry 2 say I will not be going out on RiRi's tour. I've decided 2 use that time 4 the completion of my album. Hope u understand." Thus the meaning of an ominous tweet she posted yesterday is revealed, and Rihanna's summer tour gets 100% worse. On the plus side: an actual Nicki Minaj album, maybe actually happening! Just as soon as they finish pushing back Drake like seven more times, anyway. [@NICKIMINAJ]

Look, OK, we've done our share of Dame Dash shaming--probably more than our share, if we're being honest--but can we just kind of all make a pact to let dude live? You know your hustle is a wrap when the three talking heads on Good Day New York are making fun of your divorce and your tragic estrangement from the artist who made you famous. Worse, they sent Julie Chang down to DD172, the gallery-cum-illegal-performance-space-cum-goofy-artless-takeoff-on-Warhol's-Factory space Dash runs in TriBeCa, to ask the tough questions. Like does Dame own any art? Or rather, "What's the most expensive piece of art you own?"

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​As per the notice that just went out in South Florida, warning the masses that a little band called the Who is coming to Miami to play the Superbowl Halftime Show. For the record, though we do share an astral sign, he's got about forty pounds of fat and an inch of height on me. [Gawker]

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"What's it like working for me?," says Sean Combs in the trailer for tonight's season premiere of the mind-boggling I Want To Work For Diddy 2. "It's a little like working working in Hell." So what we have here is the group photo of all the aspiring contestants for VH1's hip-hop ripoff of The Apprentice, dressed in blazers and yellows and freshly pressed outfits, looking uncharacteristically civilized for a group of people about to get emotionally abused on national TV. "I'm gonna take a hands-on, foot-in-the-ass, all-over-your-brain approach to finding this assistant," Diddy also informs the camera here. "I'm gonna mind-[bleep] them until they orgasm." Okay, then! [I Want To Work For Diddy 2]

​Buried in yesterday's New York Times comprehensive John Edwards infidelity retrospective was an extremely uncomfortable anecdote about just what kind of promises a desperate would-be president makes to his ticking time-bomb of a mistress. Namely:

The notion that Mr. Edwards is the father has been reinforced by the account of Andrew Young, once a close aide to Mr. Edwards, who had signed an affidavit asserting that he was the father of Ms. Hunter's child.

Mr. Young, who has since renounced that statement, has told publishers in a book proposal that Mr. Edwards knew all along that he was the child's father. He said Mr. Edwards pleaded with him to accept responsibility falsely, saying that would reduce the story to one of an aide's infidelity.

In the proposal, which The New York Times examined, Mr. Young says that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. He wrote that Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.

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