If you had­n’t checked it recent­ly, Alt-Week­ly Death­watch is pick­ing up steam. They point out David Car­r’s recent arti­cle cel­e­brat­ing a year’s worth of chaos at the Vil­lage Voice and its fam­i­ly of publications.

How long before there’s a death­watch on first gen­er­a­tion mp3 blogs? Or all the web­sites that emu­lat­ed Pitch­fork and did­n’t get on the adver­tis­ing gravy train ear­ly enough, at least not before those first gen­er­a­tion mp3 blogs snagged that cash [or payola?]

UPDATE: Some­one at the New Times home office total­ly checks all blogs that men­tion Alt-Week­ly Death­watch! This is me say­ing hul­lo dere read­er 66.235.245.2!

I’m not crazy about the “this is so rel­e­vant to our times” sen­ti­ment that seems to be the dri­ving force here, but peo­ple real­ly seem to enjoy crude hermeneu­tics by learned talk­ing heads more than stuffy, fig­ure-it-out-your­self exegesis.

Crit­ics! Eter­nal medi­oc­rity liv­ing off genius by den­i­grat­ing and exploit­ing it! Race of cockchafers slash­ing the finest pages of art to shreds! I’m so fed up with typog­ra­phy and the mis­use peo­ple make of it that if the Emper­or were to abol­ish all print­ing tomor­row, I should walk all the way to Paris on my knees and kiss his arse in gratitude.

-Let­ter to Louise Colet, July 2nd, 1853

Flaubert’s Par­rot may be the finest lit­er­ary biog­ra­phy and lit­er­ary crit­i­cism I’ve ever read. It’s been ten years since I last set foot in a class­room express­ly for the pur­pose of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, but I hope that new­er antholo­gies include Barnes, prefer­ably some­where in the back so as not to dis­rupt the steady diet of Arnold, Brooks and Fish, in keep­ing with the staid tra­di­tions of my alma mater.

Let me direct your atten­tion to one of the best pieces about women musi­cians that isn’t anoth­er “women in rock, don’cha know” arti­cle, fea­tur­ing BMIML fave Marnie Stern.

Since Philadel­phia emerged from Feb­ru­ary’s nuclear win­ter con­di­tions, I’ve been get­ting out more, which means spend­ing less time in movie the­aters. I need to get in to see Mafioso [check out A.O. Scot­t’s video review here] and prob­a­bly Zodi­ac, even though it smacks of also-ran Oscar refuse, jet­ti­soned safe­ly in the postseason.