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We critics and editors should start considering DVDs along with CDs when making our poll choices, monthly best-of lists and whatever else. Now we’ve got DVDs banished to little box items, maybe two a month, somehow not warranting the kind of attention we give to CDs. Ari Hoenig’s Kinetic Hues (Smalls Records) is fantastically filmed and grippingly performed by the

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I went to the Canal Room last night, mainly because I have a piece pending in Slate about hip-hop’s “hidden” influence on jazz, in which I discuss the work of pianist Robert Glasper. The Canal Room event was in part a 15th anniversary celebration for Giant Step, the underground dance party series turned “internationally respected brand.” The Brit superstar DJ

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A curious item on the Harriet Miers/Dubya correspondence from TNR. I’m almost impressed that Bush knows the word “scatology.”

Jacob Weisberg has a good Slate piece about what happens when celebrities, politicians and corporations get “socially conscious.” Money quotes: If Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, Hollywood is Washington for the lazy.…When they have no idea what to do, celebs tell other people to tell other people what to do.

Some cretin with the tag “revie_perizh” has hacked Andrew Sullivan’s website. Clearly we’re all in the dark ages when it comes to cyber-security. Good luck, Andrew. Hope you’re able to resolve it soon. **Update: Resolved. That’s a relief.

Here is another relief link, from pianist Vijay Iyer.

Sullivan makes two important comments today. First, about For God and Country, the new book by James Yee, former U.S. Army chaplain at Gitmo. Falsely accused by the military of colluding with al Qaeda, Yee now tells of routine tactical desecration of the Koran by American interrogators and guards. Sullivan quotes Yee: I never heard of an incident where a

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The news from Pakistani Kashmir is unbearable. I have no words. Here is a list of relief resources via the NY Times. Many of the same nonprofits are probably handling Guatemalan relief efforts as well, in the wake of last week’s mudslides. Entire towns have been buried and abandoned as mass graves. Just try to imagine it.