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Morning, readers.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rSqsT33MXk]
*Above, please find your morning Afrobeat fix: Ikebe Shakedown on “Don’t Contradict.” [Full disclosure: That guy on the congas? That’s Dave Bourla, college associate of mine. Further disclosure: Ikebe is a dirty, dirty band. Bourla says they’ll hit Bossa Bistro, right around the corner from City Paper, in late March.]
*The Guardian is all over the high-profile-writer-polling beat. Last week, the pub solicited writerly tips from the usual luminary suspects. Today, different luminaries choose the best books of the decade. Ballot-getters include Zadie Smith, Cormac McCarthy, and Bryson.
*Elsewhere at the Guardian (which, yeah, a lot of links, but man, they’re keeping it vivid today!): Gorillaz have taken over the music blog! And it’s borderline awesome. Meanwhile, the Hurt Locker/Avatar feud has spawned some totally incendiary memos.
*Related: The Los Angeles Times reports that the new Gorillaz record, arriving March 9, will feature a Snoop Dogg collab. Bruce Willis, fresh from what was by all accounts a wretched turn in Cop Out, appears in the video for the first single.
*Avatar! Yes, we note it above. But did you know that the Koreans get to see it in 4D?!
*Seth Grahame-Smith, author of such undead-pastiche classics as Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Sense & Sensibility & Seamonsters tackles an all-American subject: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Reasonably awesome trailer here.
*Wednesday Wordplay Corner: Coudal Partners share their blackboard habits. The game: mash up the name of a book with the name of a band. (Some of them, come to think of it, recall Grahame-Smith.) “The Things They Might Be Giants Carried”; “Necronomiconway Twitty”; &c. The studio’s blog has a comprehensive catalog, to say the least.
*The @criterion Collection is sponsoring a Kurosawa trivia competition in honor of what would have been the cinematic titan’s 100th birthday. Every weekday this month, Criterion’ll give away some swag—DVDs, posters, t-shirts, &c.—to the savviest cinephiles. Follow their (collective) ass on Twitter to get involved.
*Tonight in City Lights: “On/Off the Grid” at Irvine Contemporary.