It’s Open! And Maybe Tolerable!: Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks went back to the Foxwoods Theatre on Broadway to see the revamped, overhauled, surgically fixed hullaballoo known as Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. And he didn’t totally hate it: “You can’t go so far as to declare that ‘Spider-Man’ has found its voice, but at least now you can understand what it’s saying,” Marks writes. But when you’re even taking shit from Sesame Street, faint praise from Marks has got to be a relief.

Keep it Aerated: TBD’s Sarah Godfrey checked out some grass, specifically the kind trampled upon by audiences at Wolf Trap and Merriweather Post Pavilion. How do they keep those abused patches of turf alive and green? Merriweather uses the same crop of grass as the NFL, while Wolf Trap horticulturalist Philip Goetkin tells Godfrey it’s all about poking tiny holes in the soil to let it breath under the crush of thousands of, say, Indigo Girls fans. Says Goetkin: “Everyone was dancing. That’s tougher on the turf, but we encourage it.”

Sockets for the Summer: Summer begins in six days. Sunscreen rated at SPF 80 might be off the market, but you can still get ready for the hot days ahead with the Sockets Records Summer 2011 mixtape, a surfy mix of echo-chamber rock like Deleted Scenes‘ new single “Bedbedbedbedbed” and some beach-appropriate electro-pop from Bluebrain‘s Record Store Day EP. Macaw, Skeletons, Hume, and Buildings round out the mix, which is available as a free download, though without track breaks.

Yesterday on Arts Desk: Abrams and Wetherbee on the Source Festival. Kolowich on Colin Meloy. Baca on the pitfalls of voting-rights tattoos.