Good morning, y’all! Did you miss us yesterday? Bet you did! Especially the theater trolls! Top of the news pile this morning: According to the Student Press Law Center, the University of Maryland’s Board of Regents opted to not make a constitution-violating anti-porn policy for the university. “The students couldn’t be happier,” Sarah Elfreth, the student rep on the board, told the SPLC. Good on the board, I say, and good on the students for defending what’s important; free speech is the shit.

The one band everyone–save for me and NME–forgot to put on their best of the decade list, how to solve a Rubik’s cube, more still on Dave Eggers’ foray into newspapers, and more, after the jump.

- The “Best of the Decades” lists are EVERYWHERE. Here in the U.S., there’s a lot of Brooklyn on these things. But in the U.K., where the taxes are higher and trust-fund rockers have to do more with less, the lists are also better. Why, just yesterday I was telling Ted Scheinman, “Someone should include Queens of the Stoneage’s ‘No One Knows’ on a best of the decade list. It’s timeless, even though it’s like, seven years old.” Lo and behold, NME includes the entirety of Songs for the Deaf on its 50 best albums of the decade. So, high-five, self! At least you’re in touch with the Brits!

- Here’s a step-by-step for solving a Rubik’s cube.

- Hermione Hoby interviews Dave Eggers about that fancy ass newspaper he’s putting out. It. Is. Surreal. On what newspapers do best: “Paper is a uniquely beautiful format, more so than the web, I think: you need to invest in the aesthetics. We’re resurrecting practices from 100 years ago – like printing full-page comics. We want to give young people ways to engage with it, feel ownership of it.” TRANSLATION: Make newspapers prettier, to hell with the costs! On how papers can survive: “[T]he main way they can continue to exist is to differentiate themselves as much as possible from the internet.” TRANSLATION: Be slower, less amenable to correction, and more expensive, and everyone will love you!

- The new Call of Duty has sold twice as well as the last GTA game. I’m impressed.

OK, folks. Shorter roundup, I know, but it’s Tuesday. I’ll give you something big and fatty tomorrow.

To judge by their tightly wound, country-tinged pop songs, Olivia Mancini and the Mates aren’t shorting their craft. But even the most polished band needs its R&R, and this local act—featuring two former members of Washington Social Club—loves to curl up with a good book. That’s the impression, at least, left by “Graphology,” a rollicking gem from the group’s new album in which Mancini lists maybe a dozen book titles. Apparently, her bookshelf (including 50 Years of Fender, 1776, and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles) is pretty heavy on nonfiction, although some Dashiell Hammett sneaks in (noir does not make its way, it only sneaks). Pretty eclectic stuff: too bad, then, that Mancini concludes each verse with “those are not enough to make me smart.” But we’ve all been there.

Olivia Mancini and the Mates perform tomorrow at the Black Cat with Stripmall Ballads. $8. You can download “Graphology” at the group’s Web site. Here’s another song:

More literary pop songs after the jump, including a nonsensical (what else!) Pynchon tribute, a lucrative (?!) Brontë homage, and Dan Bejar being Dan Bejar!

“Gravity’s Rainbow” by Klaxons (2007): This ravey U.K. lad band named a song on its 2007 album, Myths of the Future, after Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 postmodern masterpiece, although the lyrics (something about Tangier deserts and the year 4000) share little with the namesake, save denseness. No clue if Pynchon would approve, but the song is probably a lot better than Laurie Anderson’s proposed (and rejected) Gravity Rainbow opera would have been:

“California Zephyr” by Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar (2009): This rose-tinted cut leads off One Fast Move or I’m Gone, an album inspired by Jack Kerouac’s 1962 novel Big Sur. Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) and Farrar’s (Son Volt) lyrics draw from Kerouac’s prose, and the two more or less match their vocal styles (earnest and weather-worn, respectively) to the book’s opposing tones (romantic and nightmarish).

“Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush (2008): The first single by the fey, experimental pop singer, which in 1978 made her, at 19 even, the first woman to both record and write a No. 1 single in the U.K. (This after her label wanted to introduce the singer with a safer song, but relented. Go lit!) She penned the song after watching a movie adaptation of Emily Brontë’s tragic novel, which has bedeviled AP Language classes ever since its 1846 publication (OK, it took a few years for it to enter curricula). As weird as it is, the song is pretty restrained for Bush, who continues to make great, challenging music but is utterly to blame for nonsensical ’80s videos like Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

“Your Blood” by Destroyer: Dan Bejar mentions a couple of Albert Camus novels in this cut from his excellent Rubies album. This being Destroyer, though, there is ostensibly no logic as to why.

Arena Stage wants your children, grades 5-12. Specifically, they want your children’s ten-minute plays. If your child’s play wins, he or she “will receive playwriting master classes and participate in further script development with professional playwrights, directors and dramaturgs,” according to an Arena Stage press release. The winning children will receive $250, to be spent on pogs and therapy.

If pleased by the idea of turning your child into the most serious, self-conscious, over-worked kid in the 8th grade, you can find the guidelines for the competition after the jump.

Guidelines for competition:

Who: Playwrights must be students in 5th through 12th grades. Students must attend school in the District of Columbia, the City of Alexandria or one of the following counties: Loudon, Prince William, Fairfax, Arlington, Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Howard, Montgomery, Prince George’s, or St. Mary’s. Home-schooled students must be residents of the aforementioned cities and counties.

When: Entries must be received at Arena Stage by Friday, December 4, 2009 to be eligible for competition.

What: Submitted plays must be the original, unpublished work of one playwright. Pieces written by more than one student will not be accepted. Suggested length is 6-10 pages. Plays longer than 12 pages will not be read.

Submission process: All submissions must include an Arena Stage cover sheet, which may be downloaded at www.arenastage.org. Plays will not be accepted without a cover sheet. All plays must be typed, double-spaced, in 12 pt. font, with page numbers. The title of the play and the playwright’s grade should be listed on each page of the play. The playwright’s name, contact information, or school should not appear anywhere on the play except the cover sheet. Submitted scripts will not be returned. Playwrights wishing to confirm receipt of their submission should enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard. Winners will be notified by Arena Stage and the list posted at www.arenastage.org in January.

Three copies of the entered play, with the required cover sheet attached to the top copy, should be mailed to:

Student Playwrights Project
Arena Stage – Community Engagement Division

1101 Sixth Street, SW Washington, DC 20024

1. When Will the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Run Out Of Mainstream Acts to Induct?
2. Meet New Moon Cast Members at Fair Oaks Mall
3. Clip Job: Five Bands with at Least as Many Members as Songs
4. Photos: Miley Cyrus @ Verizon Center
5. Photos: Bruce Springsteen @ Verizon Center

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., held an old-fashioned book burning last week (above is an AP video on the same).

Now, my people didn’t burn books when I was growing up, but my youth pastor did ask me to toss my copy of Pyromania, and my grandfather, an Episcopal priest, refused to allow books written by Carl Jung inside his house. Also, I once had to scribble an ode to masturbation on a slip of paper during mass and throw it into a cauldron of fire.

Based on these criteria, I feel qualified to offer the following FAQ for attending a book burning.

Is it OK to swing by the grocery store on my way to the burning and just buy a new book? Or should I bring something from home?

Serious book burning is as much about purging one’s soul of evil influence as purging America’s retail shelves of the same. That said, only bring a book from home if you’re sure that fellow congregates have read it, or skimmed the dust jacket in a moment of doubt. A book burning is a family event, not a chance for you to strut your perversions.

If the only irreligious book you have at home is Madonna’s Sex, leave it there and pick up the new Dan Brown book on your way to the burning. Otherwise, your pastor will think you are making a mockery of the entire thing.

I have a lot of dog books at home, and not much else. Should I burn my dog books?

Novels about people who form emotional connections with their dogs are fucking disgusting, and the Lord will not abide. Where the Red Fern Grows? Go ahead and roast the copy you read to your kids. Your fellow burners have probably read these books too, and as such, are just as on the fence about it as you are. Remember: It’s one thing to use a dog for sexual pleasure, it’s an entirely different and unholy thing to write a book about it. Same goes for Shiloh, My Dog Skip, and–my personal favorite–the Lad series. Burn them all.

I really want to bring my friends to a book burning, but I’m worried that they’ll think I’m crazy. What should I do?

Ask your friends if they have ever touched a hot stove, perhaps a cookie sheet fresh out of the oven, or a warm drill bit. If they say yes, ask them if they can imagine what it would be like to feel that pain for an eternity. Then tell them about the book burning and its importance to you. Remind them that good friends should be GGG–good, giving, and God-fearing.

And remember: You are crazy–crazy for the eternal truth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Setting things on fire arouses me. Should I feel bad about enjoying a book burning in a way that my fellow congregates would likely disapprove of if they knew?

Yes.

Some people in my congregation have suggested that we simply burn a Barnes and Noble bookstore to the ground. What do you think of this idea?

That is a foolish idea. It would be much wiser to find the warehouse from which Barnes and Noble ships its stock of Dan Brown books and light that place on fire.

I am functionally illiterate. Can I bring a DVD or VHS instead?

Yes, so long as it does not star Charleston Heston or Kirk Cameron.

Bite Sized Sets at Comet: Shortstack from All Our Noise on Vimeo.

Someone should give Walken the treatment Chuck Klosterman gave Val Kilmer. By which I mean a nice thinky profile that makes you love him more than you already do.

This is the question Mike Conklin asks at L Magazine:

Right around the mid-80s, or 25 years ago, or the exact amount of time that needs to have passed since a band’s debut in order for them to be eligible for induction, when hair-metal came along and ruined everything, it simply became cooler for rock bands to exist below the radar of the mainstream. With the exceptions of a period of a few years in the early 90s, with Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and then again a decade later with the White Stripes and Radiohead, all the best rock bands have been, for lack of a better term, indie rock bands.

Are the Replacements going to be inducted? Sonic Youth? Husker Du? Joy Division? The Go Betweens? Pavement? Guided By Voices? If they’re not, it’s bullshit: for people who actually still really, truly care about rock and roll, these are the bands that have carried on in the tradition the Hall of Fame has always held dear. But if they are inducted, the Hall of Fame will surely lose the massive cultural appeal it so obviously strives for, considering barely any of those bands have sold as many copies of all their records put together as most current inductees have of even their least successful record.

While a good question on its face, a little historical digging says we can prolong answering this one for a while yet.

Conklin points out that the induction nominees for next year include “LL Cool J, along with ABBA and Donna Summer,” none of whom (perhaps excepting ABBA) fit even the broadest definition of Rock and Roll.

Besides the fact that we haven’t run out of mainstream rock acts to induct (Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t make it in until 2006. Buddy Guy and Leonard Cohen? 2005 and 2008, respectively), the admission of non-rock and rollers is not new: Isaac Hayes and Chet Atkins were inducted in 2002; Curtis Mayfield in 1999; Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1996; Bob Marley in 1994; The Four Tops in 1990. Sam Cooke in 1986.

Per Conklin’s observation, many of those bands existed as alternatives to rock and roll. But existing outside the system? That’s rock and roll in nature, if not in expression.

Perhaps Jann Wenner could be convinced to go in for “The American Music Hall of Fame”; that would certainly preserve the institution’s broad appeal and more accurately reflect its curatorial instincts. But really, it’s been inducting whoever and whatever it wanted for as long as its been around. Why sweat it?

At this rate, we won’t have to worry about Husker Du for another two decades, at least.

Elvis Presley: live at Madison Square Garden, taken on June 11, 1972.
Photo credit: Copyright George Kalinsky, taken from the exhibition Live From Madison Square Garden: From the Lens of George Kalinsky. Courtesy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

1. Area Code: The term “DMV,” brought to you by the hard work of local rappers. And phone cards.
2. Post Profile Brings Up Touchy Subject: What Claim Do Writers Have on Their Bylines?
3. Meet New Moon Cast Members at Fair Oaks Mall
4. Das Racist Goes After Sasha Frere-Jones For Being White ‘N’ Educated
5. Creed Was Never Underrated

Read the full City Lights pick here; deets below the jump.