We’ve been before and now it was time to go again. This past Saturday, the holidays received their annual R-rated makeover at SantaCon, a grownups-only event. From Tokyo to Los Angeles, Average Joes appeared as various incarnations of Saint Nick (spotted: an S & M Santa) and participated in what amounted to a glorified bar crawl, bringing cheer and an insatiable thirst for booze to their cities’ streets.

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Is it just us, or has fashion been doing a bit of a time warp lately? If the recent lookbooks for Rodarte’s collaboration with Target and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s Elizabeth & James line are any indication, fashion is shunning modernity in favor of some ’90s nostalgia. And trust us when we say that the ’90s have never looked so good.

During the past few years, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have managed to spearhead two lines, the couture label The Row and the “affordable” ready-to-wear Elizabeth & James, and become reputable names in the fashion industry, even earning a spot in the prestigious CFDA last year.

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Director Lukas Moodysson (Fucking Åmål, Lilya 4-Ever) makes his first stab at an English-language film with Mammoth, an intricate yet flawed portrait of class and globalization.

Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal portray Ellen and Leo, a bourgeois bohemian couple living in Manhattan with their young daughter, Jackie (Sophie Nyweide), and their live-in Filipino nanny, Gloria (Marife Necesito). When Leo leaves on a business trip to Thailand, the film begins to weave a tangled web of stories that involving family, ultimately showing that every action has a reaction.

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This week marks the release of new music from four pop heavyweights: Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Shakira, and that lover of eyeliner and PDF, Adam Lambert. Because we know that listening to too much bubblegum sweetness can be hazardous to your valuable indie cred, we’ve graciously previewed all four albums for you. Find out which ones are surprisingly worth your time, and which ones actually merit an eye roll.

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Just when we thought that we had become jaded New Yorkers and seen all the city had to offer, it threw us a giant bedazzled curve ball in the form of The Miss G Train Pageant. Held at the City Reliquary Museum in Brooklyn, the first-annual beauty pageant pays homage to one of the most temperamental subway lines in New York City. Running through the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, the G train is infamous for its countless delays, sketchy platforms and its ability to attract, ahem, colorful characters.

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At Flavorpill, we love food and we love performance art. So imagine our delight when the two forces combined during Performa 09 in the food art installation, Pasta Sauna. Inspired by the Italian Futurist Cookbook, which condemned pasta as a food that made humans lethargic and overweight, Dutch “eating-designer” Marije Vogelzang uses the steam from boiling pasta to create a sauna. That way, audience members can feel as lazy and heavy as the food they’re putting into their bodies.

“There is no material that comes as close to human beings as food,” she has said. “Food goes to the stomach, but it can also activate the brain and can rouse strong memories and emotions.”

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Is it just us, or has music been wrapped in a blanket of derivative fuzz lately? Seemingly now more than ever, an excess of “lo-fi” and “shitgaze” bands have invaded the blogosphere, unabashedly riding on the coattails of their elders, Wavves and Vivian Girls. With so many carbon copies, how is one able to discern between good fuzz and bad fuzz? We’ll guide you through the perilous world of lo-fi, and let you know about three bands actually worth the buzz.

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