We know that many of you have spent the entire day yawning at your desk, struggling to keep your heavy eyes open and bravely refusing to give in to your hangover. This is the problem with having the Super Bowl on a school er, work night. Anyway, that’s why we want to apologize ahead of time for showing you this short HD film by Simon Christen, a San Francisco-based photographer who spent a year shooting time-lapse footage of the waves of fog that envelop the city each night. It’s basically a soothing visual lullaby, and the fact that it’s set to one of Nick Cave’s lush instrumentals from The Assassination of Jesse James soundtrack is just icing on the cake. Sweet dreams everyone!

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1. Last night Jon Stewart stopped by The Colbert Report to sign paperwork that legally makes him the head of Stephen Colbert’s super PAC — a move that will allow the late night host to pursue his “possible candidacy for the president of the United States of South Carolina.” [via Huffington Post]

2. Surprise: There’s another film project about Abraham Lincoln in the works! This one, which will be produced by Ridley Scott, is a documentary based on Bill O’Reilly‘s recent book Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever — source material that, as The Playlist points out, is “so factually inept, the National Parks Service has banned it from being sold at the Ford’s Theater.”

3. Kenneth Branagh will direct Kate Winslet in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a juicy-sounding period drama about a magazine reporter’s relationship with the residents of a Nazi-occupied island off the coast of Normandy. [via Vulture]

4. The Flaming Lips’ next album, which we already knew would feature collaborations with the Plastic Ono Band and Bon Iver, will apparently also include contributions from Nick Cave, Ke$ha, Lykke Li, and Erykah Badu. The LP is set to be released this coming April. [via NME]

5. The Daily reports that, thanks to a multimillion-dollar deal to be the spokeswoman for a pharmaceutical company, Paula Deen is about to reveal to the world that she has Type 2 diabetes. Does this mean no more deep-fried Twinkies for breakfast, y’all?

Bonus Buzz: 21 Examples Of Bizarre Furniture

The Sailor Jerry Presents concert series sails on, and the most recent addition to its roster has been most excellent Detroit garage stalwarts the Dirtbombs. We nominated the band’s latest album, Party Store, as one of the most underrated of 2011 during a mid-year wrap-up, and our opinion hasn’t changed — if you haven’t heard it, it’s a collection of covers of old Detroit techno tracks reinvented as garage-rock tunes. It’s also a fantastic and original piece of work, and still gets a regular workout on the Flavorpill stereo. Plus, it catalyzed various discussions about other great covers records from over the years, inspiring us to round up ten of our all-time favorites, starting with Party Store itself.

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Last week we started a semi-regular feature wherein we look at how different cities have been immortalized in song over the years, from celebratory anthems to warts-and-all depictions of seedy urban underbellies and the dark corners where good folks just don’t venture. We got some excellent suggestions and feedback from our readers when we started the idea right here in New York City, and this week we head to the Midwest to choose our five favorite songs about Chicago. Let us know your suggestions after the jump! Read More »

In case you were wondering why fans of both The Hold Steady and Friday Night Lights have been losing their shit all week, here’s what happened: the band’s frontman has announced plans to release a solo album called Clear Heart Full Eyes, an homage to the show that was recorded in Texas and whose title is a play on FNL‘s most memorable catchphrase (“Clear eyes, full hearts can’t lose”). The news got us thinking about how wonderful it would be if our favorite programs were scored by bands we love, which led us to compile the following wish list of TV shows and the musicians who were born to soundtrack them. Add your pairings in the comments. Read More »

As the weather gets colder, we’re beginning to appreciate our neighborhood bar more and more. After all, there’s nothing better than sipping a warm-you-up drink in the fading autumn sunlight. Nothing, that is, except doing that while listening to one of your favorite tunes. There are a million songs about drinking, it being one of man’s favorite pastimes, but here we’ve collected ten of our favorites about bars, pubs, and other drinking establishments in particular, so as to celebrate those fall and winter hideaways. And just for fun, we’ve added a drink suggestion to go with each spot. Click through to have a listen to our list, and let us know which of your own favorites we’ve missed in the comments!

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There’s a new Stephin Merritt compilation out this week — it’s called Obscurities, and its contents are just that, a selection of non-album tracks and outtakes from the early years of the Magnetic Fields main man’s career. It’s interesting listening, and it also got us thinking that these sorts of collections are becoming rarer these days — B-sides are, of course, a dying breed for the simple reason that people don’t release 45s or CD singles any more, and in this age of file-sharing and album leaks, most tracks end up seeing the light of day one way or another. It’s a shame, because getting unreleased tracks used to be a reason to buy a single, and some bands used to specialize in putting out fantastic B-sides. Anyway, here’s our selection of B-sides/rarities/outtakes/otherwise unreleased-track compilations that actually deserve your attention. What did we miss?

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This week saw the release of the music video for “Otis,” Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Otis Redding-sampling single from their new album Watch the Throne, and all their jocular tomfoolery got us to thinking about the other gents we know who have teamed up to bring us great duets, bro-on-bro style. Because after all, no girl will ever love you as well as your homeboy, right? Right. From the wonderfully cheesy to the just plain wonderful, we’ve collected some of our favorite all-man duets in music history here (you can also check out our feature on classic lady-on-lady musical collaborations, if we’ve gotten you in the mood). Click through to take a listen to our picks, and let us know which of your favorites we’ve missed after the jump!

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If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Cruella de Vil, of Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

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One of the most depressing things about the whole sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll mythology is how persistent and pervasive it remains in 2011. We don’t buy into hands-over-ears “Just say no” sanctimony here, but equally, there’s something sad about the fact that musicians still buy into Baudelarian mythology about drugs driving creativity. Equally, however, there’s the  uncomfortable fact that plenty of musicians have a) made great music while on drugs and b) made mediocre music after going clean. Here at Flavorpill, we have a theory about this — that musicians’ drug-taking coincides with the early stages of their career, and they often get clean at about the same stage they run out of ideas. But clearly, this isn’t always the case — so join us after the jump as we put this theory to the test by looking at ten artists who’ve been very, very bad, then eventually got clean, and evaluate their work before and after the change. The results are… interesting.

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