the upstate life, who is on top of all the motherfucking shizznit (yes, i just said that), follows up on tommy's discovery a while back and announces that the arcade fire are definitely coming to d.c. the date: january 30. the place: 9:30 club. the tickets: you can buy them here. i just purchased four - one for me, tommy, possibly my brother, and an extra for whoever might like it in case it sells out. i suggest getting them now - you can't buy tickets yet on the 930 club page (hell, it's not even announced on their site yet), so you'll be getting in ahead of the game.

update: while TUL is where i caught it, i see the ghost of gordon sumner actually reported the arcade fire date and location first this past saturday. in any case, props to everybody for being more on top of this than i, even though i tried to make a point of looking out for the date/location. i suck. except at liking the arcade fire. we liked them back in june. take that, pitchfork!

tommy was surprised that the band was playing the 9:30 club - we had definitely pegged them for a black cat show. if they can sell out the 1200+ person 9:30 club, then they are more than buzz-worthy. of course, that's contingent on the 9:30 club ever officially announcing the date. they seem to be dropping the ball lately on the calendar announcements.

last week i mentioned to tommy that i had heard marissa from the O.C. was going to (gasp!) have a steamy lesbian kiss. apparently the O.C.'s ratings this year are good, but nowhere near as stellar as last year's. magic formula to boost ratings: insert a hot lesbian makeout! and voila, you've got boys tuning in, the media covering it, and probably crazy rightwing groups who will make a shitstorm and give it all even more publicity.

well, to follow up: seeking irony points me to an article that says not only will marissa kiss a girl, she will also be having a lesbian relationship. and the lipstick lesbian on the receiving end? alex, seth's new girl (who, despite looking like she's 30, is actually only 20).

i can only imagine the spirals of neuroses that this will cause seth to suffer. maybe he'll finally admit his erotic love for ryan. anyway, creator josh schwartz sez:

"Alex is someone who's emancipated from her parents, and is a little bit of a free spirit who becomes Marissa's mentor — she takes her under her wing and all of a sudden Marissa finds herself connecting."

Reports began to surface last week about the upcoming storyline, although just who Marissa would end up with in this new relationship left everyone scratching their heads — until now.

"Marissa is at a place where she's willing to try [a lesbian relationship] and she's open to that," Schwartz says. "We'll build it up to a kiss [between Marissa and Alex] and then a relationship develops."

Schwartz says the "big kiss" between the characters will be shot this week.

The hot new story arc begins next month on the Thursday-night Fox drama and will last for "multiple episodes" into the spring.

"We've already started shooting a lot of scenes with their relationship," he said. "Everybody is really comfortable with it, and the girls are really game and excited to play off of each other."

Schwartz says he is not thumping for ratings, insisting he formulated the storyline last summer.

"We're trying to figure out bigger arcs for our characters," he says. "This felt like a really interesting way to go. It's something that felt organic to the character.

"I've been surprised by the reaction, but I'm thrilled — we'll take it."

Thanks to Catherine for pointing this out: the teacher who wrote in to Gawker about Clay Aiken being -- surprise! -- a showbiz phony, has been suspended by her school district.

Okay, she used profanity in the message she sent to Gawker. But the email was submitted anonymously and the facts of her account don't seem to be in dispute, so it's tough to see why the district bothered to track her down and exact their admittedly not-so-terrible vengeance (a one-week suspension, with pay). I guess Clay did threaten to "make trouble" if anyone went to the press, so maybe that sent them running scared.

A crooner prone to vague threats and acting like an asshole, huh? Is it too early to crown the new Sinatra?

well, i sent off application #2 into the ether. or wherever grad school applications go to die. looking it over, i realized i have no shot of getting in. anywhere. ever. excuse the fatalism. i know it's heavy-handed, but it's, for some reason, how i deal effectively with reality.

i don't feel much like blogging; anyway, tommy is doing a better job of taking care of the blog than i could. i'm having some fun over at blogissimo, though i have about 12 daily readers. over the weekend i did an interview with fritz hahn, nightlife editor of wapo.com, for dcist.com and i think it turned out pretty well. also over at dcist this morning is a post about a local guy who broke a world record for treadmill marathoning. this has got to be the stupidest thing i have ever heard of. still, it reminded me about running, and that i should give it a shot again, so i registered for the cherry blossom 10 miler in april. you should, too; it's supposed to be a great local race. in case you care, the rest of the weekend was spent with all the usual suspects, getting drunk beyond comprehension while playing trivial pursuit, and spending some good quality time at the meat market that is the clarendon grill.

don't forget that this friday is the holiday party at our hot little apartment! check the evite here. if you haven't RSVPed yet, please do, so we can make sure we have an adequate amount of libation for your drunken holiday experience.

I'm prepared to admit that I'm not the most objective person to comment on this story. I distrust corporations. I download mp3s. I spin elaborate justifications involving copyright extension, artificially induced market scarcity, and utopian internet bullshit. So my reaction to this might be a little more knee-jerk than is warranted.

But does it rub anyone else the wrong way that the movie industry is being allowed into elementary school classrooms in order to train a generation of kids to be more reliable revenue streams? This has got to top even DARE in terms of uselessness and deliberate lying. They have a robot named "Safety Bot" to help teach kids that downloading songs will destroy their computers! Fantastic.

It's tough to conclude a trend from three data points, but between this, the resurgence of the Intelligent Design debate and the recent dust-up over abstinence-only education, it sure feels like we're spending more educational resources than we ought to indoctrinating children to conform with the normative standards of narrow, self-interested constituencies. I'm not sure what the answer to this is, but it seems like we'd better figure it out before the SAT includes an essay question about comparing and contrasting brand-name colas.