Nahhh. Just kidding. How could anyone ever “damn” The Smittens? There just so darned . . . cute. Like, a puppy-eating-an-ice-cream-cone-in-a-sailor-suit kinda cute.  But they’re also a great band that’s continuing to gain notoriety beyond the currently gloomy borders of our insular little burg. (Note to Tom Messner: Seriously, dude. Snow or rain. Make up your fucking mind. If I fall on the ice one more time, I’m suing.)

Here’s a link to an article published yesterday in the Boston Phoenix about our hometown twee-ty birds. It’s one of the better profiles I’ve read on the band and I kinda I wish I’d written it first. Oh well. Still, it’s a good read and succinctly captures the quintet’s irrepressibly perk-tastic charm.

If chipper ain’t your bag, here’s a hysterical collection of celebrity obituary previews from David Thorpe’s latest Burn Unit column in The Weekly Dig.  I didn’t know this until I read it in Thorpe’s column — and promptly cross-checked the facts, of course — but apparently the Associated Press actually prepares obits ahead of time (prehumously?) so they can semi-eloquently break the news the moment a star passes away. They were busted when an early draft of a Britney Spears obit recently leaked to the mass media. For the utterly pop-ignorant, Spears is still alive. Totally nuts. But still alive . . . for now.

How creepy is that? Could you imagine knowing that somewhere, someone is eulogizing you while you still live and breathe? It sounds like a Stephen King novel: A struggling writer gets a gig penning celebrity eulogies and a funny thing starts happening: they die exactly as he describes. He goes mad with power and becomes a celebrity in own right for his uncanny ability to predict death. But then the AP hires a new celebrity obit writer . . .

Actually, that’s not bad. I smell a screenplay.

Really loading up on the Beantown rags today, for some reason. Must be a lingering subconscious reaction to the Super Bowl . . . sigh.

Dan Bolles is a culture coeditor at Seven Days. He joined the paper in 2007 as its music editor, covering Vermont's robust music, comedy and nightlife scenes for a decade before deciding he was too old to be going to the Monkey House on weeknights to see rock shows for a living. He became assistant arts editor in 2017 and culture coeditor in 2021. Bolles has received numerous local and national awards for his writing on Vermont arts, sports and the occasional celebrity canine murder mystery. He loves...

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