1. Typhus, by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Chris Turner.
Ah, Sartre...that dour existentialist Frenchman who taught so many disaffected American teenagers to stare out of windows during their (very boring) 11th grade chemistry classes and, though they may never have been to Europe and may not know the difference between Pinot Grigio and Chablis, wonder whether they should start drinking wine and, though they smoke only Marlboro Reds (for the Marlboro Miles) or maybe Camel Lights in a pinch, whether they should start smoking Gauloises, and whether the weather is better in Paris than in Northeast Philadelphia... Sartre, Sartre...well, turns out he wrote an unproduced screenplay. I'm laying 100-to-1 odds that, whatever it's about, it's not as funny as Summer School starring Mark Harmon.

2. The Wagon and Other Stories from the City, by Martin Preib.
A Chicago rookie cop's first assignment: riding the meat wagon that takes dead bodies to the morgue. A cop who's also a writer: a man who's got street-smarts, but also feels comfortable with his nicotine-stained fingers on the home row of a beat-up old typewriter that's in need of a ribbon change. The colon: a tough, muscular punctuation mark that drinks hard liquor, likes fast women, and wouldn't hesitate to tell an off-color joke (indeed, a joke about blowjobs, or a joke about Jews, or maybe a joke that employs the "N-word") in front of your mother.

3. The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History, by David Farber.
Absolutely must read this if I'm going to hang out this summer at any happy hours on Capitol Hill in Irish pubs with balding dudes wearing khakis, white socks with black shoes, and short-sleeved polo shirts despite the frigid (nay, Arctic) air-conditioning. And why, despite their casual attire and exposed forearms, are these dudes sweating? Can they, for some unfathomable reason, not feel the icy blast of that wretched A/C? Is their body-mass index totally off the charts, or what? And do they think it's weird that I'm wearing a wool sweater and watch cap in July?

4. The Carrie Diaries, by Candace Bushnell.
I saw the Sex in the City movie in the summer of 2008 at "The Strand, a beat-up 1970s-era movie theater on the boardwalk in Ocean City, N.J., that Bruce Springsteen could have written a song about. The film played at the Strand long after it had left theaters in, say, Washington, D.C., or New York, playing hot summer night after hot summer night to a devoted crowd of female, 50-something Philadelphia/N.J. natives who deserved a break from their sunburned husband and kids—a vacation within a vacation while Daddy took the brats to play mini-Golf or to a gift shop to buy "Who Farted?" T-shirts. The sound in the theater was fucked-up—I think it was supposed to be in Dolby stereo, but half of the speakers didn't work, so it was like Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, and Kim Cattrall were screaming in your right ear while your left ear, inexplicably, didn't function, but no one cared. I saw a bunch of other movies in 2008, but this was the best.

5. Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff, Christine S. Richard.
Huge idea: I'm going to design an intricate financial derivate to sell on the OTC. Investors will bet that the emerging (nay, emergent) publishing bubble of books about the financial crisis will continue to expand and line the pockets of authors and booksellers with unprecedented profits; meanwhile, I'll be betting that the bubble will burst once Dog the Bounty Hunter writes a new biography. Check back in six months, and see who's in the red.

Morning, y'all! At the top of the news pile: WaPo's Dave Malitz almost missed his date with Bob Dylan, but then didn't! Also, my niece, who is 4 years old, does not "get" VHS.

Tony Millionaire's potty mouth, the legacies of Leo Strauss and Lemmy, the scarcity of female comedy writers, Trace Adkins: Comic Book Hero, free vinyl, music for writing about the Simpsons, and more, after the jump.

- Millionaire, the mind behind Maakies (a very good comic strip that runs in many fine alt. weeklies, but not this one, unfortunately) and the Drinky Crow Show (a terrible, terrible TV show based on Maakies that ran for far too long on Adult Swim), is not just funny with pencils, but with words. As evidence, read this excerpt from his new book, in which Millionaire tells a Village Voice editor, "Fuck you," then, "I'm sorry I said that," then, "Fuck you," again.

- Writings by Leo Strauss were not allowed at my university (I don't think), but they're hot shit at Kenyon College, and apparently, the upper echelons of Washington, D.C. This is both fascinating and terrifying, as Leo Strauss seems to be directly responsible for everything bad that ever happened under George W. Bush. Him, and the makers of water and terry cloth.

- Urb.com, a music site that used to be a magazine, is testing a beta site design. Check it out.

- Things that I would buy with $43.7 million: a place closer to the metro, better bike tires, a reprieve from late-night collection agency calls, clean water for people who have to walk a long way to get it, and, possibly, a complete dinosaur skeleton. Things that I would not buy with $43.7 million: a painting.

- Why did it take David Letterman confessing to the world that he bones his few female staffers for anyone to care that he has so few female staffers?

- Great point here: More people care that the story about trash island was financed by "the crowd" or "the community" than care about the fact that what the New York Times published was not a very good story.

- I am not the only person who cried multiple times during The Way We Get By.

- Country music stud Trace Adkins has his own comic book. About goddamn time, is what I'm thinking right now. "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" is one of the greatest songs of the 2000s, blending the wah-wah stylings of Isaac Hayes, the pulsating back-beat of the worst Euro trash, and the twangy sensibilities of my former Sunday school teacher, who is taking a break from his career as a NASCAR radio commenter to serve 15 years in prison for serial rape. I will never forget the time I had to explain to all the Jersey transplants whose history papers I wrote what a "honky tonk" is, or that, in Florida, "badonkadonk" is not the diminutive form for "ma'am." Also, I did not know such a genre existed as "redneck noir." Fantastic.

- More free vinyl at the Vinyl District. The number of commenters vying for the Gossip album is up to three. Get in there and make your case ASAP!

- Did the Gospel of Wealth help bring about the mortgage crisis? Hanna Rosin makes a compelling case in the Atlantic that it did. Tell you what, y'all, the Prayer of Jabez sure did not keep the lights on or the fridge stocked at my house!

- Who is your role model? Chris Shonting prays at the church of Lemmy. When Shonting asks Lemmy why he joined a band, Lemmy says, "Women." Then he elaborates on his first experience with guitar-as-pheromone-enhancement: "I put strings on [my mom's guitar] and took it to school during the week after exams, when you don’t do anything. And I was immediately surrounded by chicks. It worked like a charm, and I couldn’t even play the fucking thing." I picked up the guitar for the same reason, then made the mistake of learning jazz instead of cock rock. Stupid, stupid me. Now, instead of spreading strange venereal diseases across the globe, I am missing out on snuggle time with the gf to write this roundup.

- One of my goals for the future is to read John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History before the show goes off the air. I am psyching myself out by reading this.

- Like a lot of things, this post, "America Loses Its Cool," went right over my head. For instance, author Ted Gioia says that, "in the 1990s the Age of Cool started to come to an end in the United States," and that "one of its dominant attributes was a laid-back personality style. It avoided confrontation, and instead made its points through humor and ironic distance." Gioia points to Glenn Beck-types and talk radio as examples of what has replaced cool. But here's thing thing: I thought irony was a relatively new phenomenon; like, late 80s to now. And that's the other thing: irony is still here. Right here. In this blog post. Somebody care to help me out with this?

OK, folks, seize the day!

For Real Estate's Martin Courtney, returning to his native New Jersey  last summer after graduating from college may have been a regressive move, but it also turned out to be a productive one.

"I almost exclusively hang out with people from high school these days," the singer and guitarist says, echoing that common post-collegiate experience of hometown dive bars and procrastinated job searches.

But Courtney also spent last summer writing songs and jamming in his parents' basement with guitarist Matt Mondanile, bassist Alex Bleeker, and drummer Etienne Duguay, laying the groundwork for what is, little more than a year later, one of 2009's most promising new indie-pop acts in a year replete with lo-fi fast-burners. Six months after its first gig, Real Estate—which plays at the Rock & Roll Hotel tonight with Japandroids and Neon Indian—was generating buzz at the South by Southwest festival in Austin and tickling the blogosphere with woozy, summery singles. Now, the band is about to release its self-titled debut on Woodsist Records.

The pitfalls of blog-fueled, late-oughts meritocracy aren't lost Courtney, who says he doesn't expect Real Estate to break down, Wavves-style, anytime soon. "A couple months ago, that really worried me and freaked me out," Courtney says. "But due to circumstances beyond our control"—intermittent access to a recording space and, later, a problem with the finished album's test plate—"our record got pushed back. Now there’s been time for shit to cool off. I hope that now it’s less of a buzz thing and more that we’re just a band that exists."

That music critics and bloggers have covered Real Estate almost as long as it has existed has been "a little nerve-wracking," Courtney says. "It’s kind of annoying when people ask us if we spend a lot of time on the beach."

He says songs like "Beach Comber" and "Atlantic City"—as well as the band's tropical, laid-back vibe—can't be chalked up to a strategy or ethos. They're simply the result of a summer spent writing music by the ocean. Seeing his band boiled down to one-sentence narratives and minute-old labels "can be frustrating," Courtney says. "You cringe a little bit. But I’m starting to realize that some people that write about music just need something to clutch on to as a reference and to make it clearer."

Courtney says he's somewhat vexed by Real Estate's reputation as a lo-fi act—a distinction undoubtedly reinforced by the fact that several more of his high-school classmates, Julian Lynch and the guys behind the Underwater Peoples label, have also released nostalgic-sounding records that are heavy on tape hiss. "If we could record in the studio, I would do it in a second," Courtney says. The Real Estate album, out on Nov. 17, "has definitely got a demo vibe. I think it sounds good for sure, but it’s not a choice we made to sound that way. It’s just the way it is."

Real Estate performs tonight with Japandroids and Neon Indian at the Rock & Roll Hotel at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, and $12 at the door. Photo courtesy of Real Estate's MySpace page.