Shannon McArdle, "Poison My Cup" (MP3 via P4K)
The Mendoza Line, "30 Year Low" (MP3)
The Mendoza Line, "Since I Came" (MP3)

Few weeks ago, I wrote about my time spent with local singer Shannon McArdle, formerly of Athens-to-Brooklyn band the Mendoza Line, a band that'd enjoyed marginal success throughout this decade by negotiating the indie-rock/alt-country Venn diagram. Years of dating founding member Tim Bracy led to marriage, but one day in February 2007, he was gone. The Mendoza Line's final release, 30 Year Low, came last summer, and although all the material was written and recorded before there were any inklings that their marriage would be striking out, it clearly presents two people who're not so happy.

Earlier this month, McArdle released her solo debut Summer of the Whore, a striking, guitar-centric, whispery debut that documents her divorce, the inevitable depression she spiraled into thereafter, her subsequent recovery process, and all the loaded, convoluted feelings you get while moving on from anything. In the time we spent together, McArdle was extremely candid with me―she spoke frankly about her divorce, the last Mendoza Line record, and Summer of the Whore. ― Michael D. Ayers

Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Lee Israel (Simon & Schuster, 127 pp., $19.95)

Ex-forger, ex-letter-purloiner, and ex-con Lee Israel tells all in this deliciously canny little book. When Israel (formerly a feted biographer) found herself on welfare and unable to pay her cat's medical bills, she began visiting libraries, stuffing famous people's letters into her socks, and trading the epistles for cash. Soon Israel was writing letters of her own, using vintage typewriters to knock out faux-correspondence from the likes of Louise Brooks, Noel Coward, and Dorothy Parker. And until the FBI came knocking, Israel pulled it off. When The Letters of Noel Coward was published last year, guess whose letter was included?

The Last Theorem
Arthur C. Clarke & Frederik Pohl (Del Rey, 299 pp., $27)

British sci-fi author Sir Arthur C. Clarke hinted that The Last Theorem would be his final work. And indeed it is. Back in March, a few days after reviewing proofs of the novel, Clarke died at the venerable age of ninety, leaving co-author and fellow sci-fi giant Frederik Pohl to see the book through to publication. Hit by a dearth of inspiration and the onset of illness, Clarke had enlisted Pohl to invigorate Last Theorem; together, the writers produced this novel about a Sri-Lankan math whiz who discovers a shorter proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The book features appearances by the CIA, aliens, and an elevator that travels into space. Clarke is notorious for having come up with the idea for space stations, so don’t knock those space-elevators.

Pharmakon
Dirk Wittenborn (Viking, 416 pp., $25.95)

Attic Greek lesson for the day: the word pharmakon means both 'remedy' and 'poison' (and also 'artificial coloring'). Tuning in to the ambiguity of the Greeks, Dirk Wittenborn's third novel, Pharmakon, describes an experimental depression drug that turns out—wonder of wonders—to be both remedy and poison. Said drug is messed around with by Dr. Friedrich, a Yale psychologist, who administers the stuff to a woeful undergrad. After reveling in 1950's Yale, giving off (as The New York Times points out) a David Lodge academic-high-jinks vibe, Pharmakon segues into the story of the shrink's son, a likely Wittenborn surrogate (the writer's father was a big-deal shrink himself). Like Dr. Friedrich's pills, Pharmakon successfully imparts "that tingling sensation…"

Violence
Slavoj Zizek (Picador, 272 pp., $14)

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek (the z's are pronounced as in zhuzh, as in what Queer Eye did to sleeves) tackles Abu Ghraib, 9/11, and other brutally pertinent topics in what he calls a "bric-a-brac of reflections on violence." Violence is heavy stuff, and it's not a handy gift for the faint of brain (Zizek's chapters get names like "Antinomies of Tolerant Reason"). But it also promises not to be a boring, unfathomable slog: The pages are tiny, Zizek's syntax is clear, and humor occasionally shines through. Even Terry Eagleton, genial captain of the Literary Theory for Dummies team, called Zizek a "formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general."

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir
Haruki Murakami, Translated by Philip Gabriel (Knopf, 192 pp., $20)

Murakami takes a jog down memoir-y lane in this slim volume about the Japanese writer's obsession with long-distance running. The book is a debut venture into the genre for Murakami, whose novels Norwegian Wood (2000) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997) (plus scores more) have earned him a devoted following among fiction-readers. Detouring into Murakami's thoughts on writing itself, Running likens no-nonsense marathon training to the discipline required of a novelist. Speaking of discipline, Geoff Dyer of The New York Times ripped Murakami a new one, bemoaning the fact that Running's descriptors seem to be wandering aimlessly around, as though shot up with horse tranquilizer (as in "pretty decent," "sort of laid-back," "kind of confused"). Could it just be the translator? —Ruth McCann

Stereo Total photo by Cabine

Hugs and Kisses

The Relocated Outbursts of Everett True

This week: Stereo Total and the live scene in Brisbane

Stereo Total, "Carte Postale" (MP3)
Stereo Total, "Party Anticonformiste" (MP3)

Folk dance like it's the Eighties here—all uncoordinated arms flailing at their sides, feet moving on tiny imaginary bike pedals, heads shaken furiously from side-to-side. The girls all dress in pleated skirts and Olympia tops: the boys, straggly and occasionally bearded, struggle to keep up (as always). There's a semi-pogo happening in spots—or at least the energy of one: a fair amount of grabbing another dancer and swinging round for three seconds or so, raising the occasional arm in the air. No hair-slides sadly, but a few badges pinned to lapels—dude, this is Brisbane, after all. The crowd at the front is resolutely mid-twenties. Behind, the age shoots up by several years. It's making me very happy, watching this bustle and giggle of enthusiasm being exerted stage-front: it's making me feel far more at home than anything this side of our local ice cream vendor; it's making me begin to think that I've definitely chosen the right city to stop in, that there's no way Sydney or Melbourne would support this sort of unabashed support—too cool. And you know what? The band on stage is as un-cool as I've seen for many a long year.

And they're glorious! Recently, I've been having mainstream Australian TV folk poking fun at my taste because I admit to a fondness for The Spice Girls. But, but, but, they're entertainment! They have great pop songs, and harmonies, and voices you can recognise in a darkened lift. And these folk are mainstream…Jesus, they probably think Bono is cool! Are The Spice Girls un-cool? Is Stereo Total? Should there be any sort of differentiation simply 'cos the last time I saw one was at the front of an Italian stadium packed with 20,000 screaming pubescent girls and the other one was at the front of Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art packed with a couple of hundred of reasonably excited arty and lesbian and hipster sorts? Both are great. Both dress ridiculously, in clothes that just can't exist outside of punk designer hovels. And both are top-class entertainment.

Those who spent this summer listening to a certain New Orleans-based rapper's "A Milli" crank out of NYC car stereos could be excused for feeling a bit cheated. It was not so long ago that we had our own indigenous ways of making hybrids thump—years after rap crews from Wu-Tang to Roc-a-Fella fell, New York still had the Diplomats. Cam'ron, the leader, prone to pink chinchilla coats and rhymes of dazzling internal intricacy; Juelz Santana, the young heartthrob; Jim Jones, the braying capo. They were flamboyant, and their records ruled New York.

Credit: Piera Gelardi/Refinery29

The Non-Motivational Speakers Series: Popular Culture
Thursday, August 28, 8 p.m.
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street, 212-334-9676

The Non-Motivational Speakers Series, hosted by Adam Rosen, seems to be all about. . . well. . . non-motivation, and this month's installment takes aim at a suitably discouraging topic: pop culture. Joining Rosen for what promises to be a wholesomely skeptical take on modern times is Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker's pop music critic, who is presumably hoping not to stand trial for nailing Coldplay to the wall two weeks ago. He's joined by Amelie Gillette, a commentator for The Onion's culture-grilling A. V. Club, and Robert Galinsky, a self-proclaimed actor, writer, musician, director, and mastermind behind "the only training center for Reality TV in the country." Check your "A Paler Shade of White" questions at the door.

ZZ Packer / New Stories from the South
Thursday, August 28, 7 p.m.
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street, 212-334-3324

Short story maven ZZ Packer is stopping by Housing Works for a reading from New Stories from the South 2008, a twenty-story collection edited by Packer and published on August 12 by Algonquin Books. The Georgia-born ZZ, who made a solid debut with her own collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, has applied her Southern sensibilities in compiling this haul of below-the-Mason-Dixon-line fiction, a fresh addition to the Faulkner/O'Connor-heavy world of Southern lit. New Stories showcases "some of the youngest and freshest voices" south of the Mason Dixon, shaking up notions that "[Southern] men are either Cavaliers, brought up on a diet of buttermilk biscuits, bourbon, and cigars, or the redneck yeomen whose enormous wads of snuff are rivaled only by the more impressive enormity of their goiters." —Ruth McCann

Sound of the City whipping-boy and all around social butterfly Moby is blogging the Democratic Convention over at the Blender Blog. The insight, as you might expect, is powerful:

Music journalist and author Elisabeth Vincentelli will kick off this new series with a brief reading from her book, Abba's Abba Gold, and will then screen vintage clips of both the beloved Swedish quartet in action and parodies of its inimitable visual flair. Expect your retinas to be permanently seared as she digs deep into her archive of German TV shows and Australian spoofs.

The rest of the schedule below:

Young Jeezy
Blender Theater
Tuesday, August 26

"When you walk outside, don't see the stars" said Young Jeezy last night, in full motivational-speaker mode: "Just know the sky's the limit." It occurs, vaguely, that next week's The Recession, rather than an up-to-the-minute diagnosis of societal ills and the betrayal of America's working class, may in fact be another savvy marketing plan from a guy who’s looking to trade up on his demographic. Having already pitched the streets, Jeezy's headed straight for the comparatively easy prey of the paranoid, twitching, middle-management boardroom. "You make it here," he said, about halfway through, channeling his New York surroundings, "You can make it anywhere." Somewhere, rap's actual Sinatra—conspicuously absent from the Blender Theatre stage, even as Jeezy plaintively cranked his verse from "Put On"'s remix—was shaking his head. Kanye—another no-show, although the audience did his part on "Put On" for him (louder, it should be noted, than anything the crowd deigned to do for the ostensible man of the evening)—may well have been with him.

With Dave Grohl courting Grammys, Billy Corgan squashing his own legacy, and Chris Cornell aping Justin Timberlake, Trent Reznor is looking like a mighty respectable alternative-nation ambassador nowadays. Free from the major-label slaughterhouse, the doomy hothead is riding an Internet-fueled creative crest that includes meandering instrumental wank sessions (Ghosts I-IV) and brutal signs of fresh rage (The Slip). Though the Nine Inch Nails sound hasn't progressed much since H.W. swore in back in 1989, Reznor's wonky attitude toward technology, distribution schemes, and Chinese Olympics–style opening-ceremony LED blind-sides lend his enterprise a winning illusion of evolution. Reznor gets older, but his angst stays the same age. At 7:30, Izod Center, 50 State Route 120, East Rutherford, New Jersey, ticketmaster.com—Ryan Dombal

Herbie Volume One
Dark Horse Books

Where Demented Wented:
The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes
Edited by Dan Nadel and Glenn Bray
Fantagraphics

Procrastination, sloth, and a general slackosity—combined with sheer narcissistic omnipotence—were the primary characteristics of the first comics character I can recall falling head over heels for: Herbie Popnecker, AKA the Fat Fury, the Plump Lump, or, as his father, Pincus Popnecker, usually refers to him, "the little fat nothing." Like so many fathers, Pincus is unaware that his roly-poly, droopy-eyed son is mightier than Satan and a lollipop-fueled master of time and space. Tellingly, Herbie would eventually become Alan Moore's favorite superhero.

In this week's Village Voice, Peter S. Scholtes listens to David Byrne and Brian Eno's new Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

John Brenkman raves about Paul Auster's Man in the Dark.

Lynn Yaeger talks to Andres Serrano about his new show 'Shit.'

R.C. Baker reviews the MoMA's 'Looking at Music."

J. Hoberman checks out two new Carl Theodor Dreyer DVDs.

Scott Foundas gets freaked out by John Carpenter.

Andy Beta revisits ZZ Top's Eliminator.

Alex Rawls reports from New Orleans on the burgeoning field of "Katrina songs."

Michael D. Ayers logs some time in Nicolas Vernhes's Brooklyn studio the Rare Book Room.

Plus a Charlton Heston retrospective, a visit to Burning Man, and more.

Yup, this is the man who accidentally endorsed John McCain back in June (“No disrespect to my man Barack, but I fuck with John McCain. He greeted me like a god”). The Barack-big-upping “My President,” slated to appear on next week’s The Recession, should clear all that up; according to a recent video, the whole flap—coming as it did on the eve of Young Jeezy’s third album—finally taught the veteran rapper “the power of words.” He’s had a good year—a spot on Usher’s world-beating “Love in This Club” and a hot single, the Kanye-featuring “Put On,” that’s already got a decent Jay-Z remix—and though The Recession probably won’t touch Lil Wayne’s Carter III, it’s safe to say that Jeezy won’t have to mortgage the house anytime soon. Whether the record will be any good is another question—guys in his line of work aren’t exactly known for their reinvention skills, and he’s already one mediocre album past the debut that made him a star.—Zach Baron

Last week's prediction: countryish, young, female, American Idol-y.

Well, the prediction was way off here. But who could have known that Black Kids—who've essentially been the free iTunes single of the week for a whole year now, ever since this song trickled out onto MySpace nigh last August, and who self-released their CMJ-hysteria sparking EP Wizard of Ahhhs last October, and who've already received the adorable sad puppy treatment by Pitchfork on the occasion of their July debut, Partie Traumatic—would in fact be a free download from the most powerful music retailer in the world at this late date in August 2008?

So this one was a fairly well-kept secret, even among the Blabberddy McBlabbers of the blabosphere: dino-dance duo Japanther played a show on the Williamsburg Bridge Friday night. It seems to have gone (mostly) swimmingly, drawing the usual brown-bagging suspects: Franki Chan, Ninjasonik's Rev. McFly, Bikes in the Kitchen dude Carlos, Finger on the Pulse DJs, and everybody's favorite venerable Burger institutions Matt & Kim. But of course, the cops came to pay their respects and invariably curtailed the fun. Photos from Chicagoan sojourner Clayton Hauck, with lots more over here.

Japanther drummer Ian Vanek