This Week in the Voice

Conservatives say cheap mortgages killed the economy; President Obama blames "the collective failure to make hard choices." But the problem's really corporate players gone wild and often illegal, analyst James Lieber tells the Voice. And without a raft of subpoenas, we may never get to the bottom of it.

A third of New Yorkers say they don't know enough about Kirsten Gillibrand to pass judgment. Tom Robbins is here to help.

Who's not interested in a band called Fucked Up with a shirtless 300-pound frontman named Pink Eyes? Rob Harvilla caught their act in Bushwick. Also: Matt "narrates with the wild, rapturous glee of a lottery winner," Kim "kicks the shit out of her drum set and smiles so adorably she makes babies jealous," and together talk to Camille Dodero, who is impressed enough to make an Indie Cribz video of their adorable, shit-kicking pad with Jeremy Krinsley.

An aquarium installer who "looks like a lost member of Pharcyde" has made a movie called Medicine for Melancholy. He loves indie culture but notices that "Everything about being indie is tied to not being black." Ernest Hardy investigates.

Plus! J. Hoberman on Serbis and The Panic in Needle Park, Scott Foundas at Sundance, Nick Pinkerton on Positif's filmfest; R.C. Baker on David Haxton, Mie Yim and Erin Rachel Hudak; Michael Feingold on The Cherry Orchard at BAM and The American Plan; Eric Grode on Edmund White's Terre Haute; Deborah Jowitt on the Miami City Ballet and Balanchine's birthday. And, oh yeah, some guy reviews Adam Gopnik's new book.

Still more Plus! Musto chats up entertainment legends Scott Nevins and Joan Rivers, Dan Savage talks socks, strap-ons, and same-sex techniques, and Brian Parks pores over a year's worth of New Yorker cartoons and picks the winners. View the whole buffet at the front page.