It's true! You'd never know if from the campaign trail, but WILLARD MITT ROMNEY was actually governor of Massachusetts for a number of years, a position he obtained by making a series of arguments to voters -- Bain Capital, business leadership, etc -- that are annoyingly similar to the ones he's made as an unsuccessful candidate for president.

My smarty-pants brother recently wrote at Salon that the average age of members of the United States Senate is rising, not so much because Senators hang around getting re-elected forever more than they used to, but because newly-elected Senators are older now than used to be the case. In additional commentary at his blog he ponders why this may be, but has no strong answer.

There's a whole world of great movies out there that we'll probably never see, not even in a cinema-savvy town like Boston, unless we have the means to go to, say, the Locarno Film Festival or the Istanbul International Independent Film Festival. French director Valérie Massadian won top prizes at both of those events for her debut film Nana (2011), and thanks to ArtsEmerson's "Festival Focus" series you can see why.

The xx are at the Wilbur on July 31

On Sale Thursday, May 24

AT NOON

Foxes | July 10 at Brighton Music Hall | $12 | On sale @ ticketmaster.com

Ana Tijouz | July 16 at Brighton Music Hall | $20 | On sale @ ticketmaster.com

Right Away, Great Captain! | July 19 at Brighton Music Hall | $15 | On sale @ ticketmaster.

The new Suffolk poll released late last night shows the US Senate race in Massachusetts as effectively dead-even, with Scott Brown at 48% and Elizabeth Warren at 47%. This is a big improvement for Warren over Suffolk's February poll, which had Brown ahead 49%-40%.

I'm going to make two quick arguments here: that the Cherokee-heritage story has helped Warren; and that the poll actually holds some good news for Brown.

In the four years since the Silver Jews toured with HALLELUJAH THE HILLS, Jews singer David Berman retired from the music biz to do whatever it is he does otherwise, and the erstwhile lo-fi stalwarts disbanded. Meanwhile, Jah Hills’ Ryan Walsh and Co. marinated in the latter half of the Jews’ oeuvre. The result is “Get Me in a Room,” the first track off new long-player No One Knows What Happens Next, Hallelujah the Hills’ first record since 2009’s Colonial Drones

I first heard about MEET YOUR BEAT several months ago, when co-founder AARON ESKEETS posted a video of Andre Obin's performance at Radio. It wasn't just a single-song video clip, shot by Flipcam or camera phone -- it was Obin's entire, 30-minute-long electronic-pop set, with quality audio and different angles to help break up the visual monotony.

The greatest revenge, in some ways, is persevering long enough to prove your detractors wrong. In the case of mid-'70s rock/punk/metal misfits The Dictators, they somehow went from being rock rejects to pre-punk legends, largely on the strength of their initial three-album run. 1975's Go Girl Crazy is a way-ahead-of-its-time juggernaut of riffs, jokes, and crushing rock.

The problem that most of the internet has with HBO’s Girls is that the showrunner, 24-year-old Lena Dunham, is the daughter of famous artist Laurie Simmons. Tons of the cast and crew are the children of people who are even more famous than her mom, and a lot of the angst regarding it has centered around charges of “nepotism” on the part of the network.

Success in rock and roll is often about being in the right place at the right time-- but sometimes it's also about adapting enough to eventually make your aesthetic matter in the ever-shifting tectonic surface of music culture. Ross Friedman, aka ROSS THE BOSS, is a Zelig-esque figure in the world of rock, in the sense that if people don't know his name, they know his influence: he not only changed punk with his way-ahead-of-their-time 70s project THE DICTATORS, but he switched to heavy metal and pushed it way way way over-the-top with 80s behemoths MANOWAR

It's been five days since ADAM 12's final broadcast last week on WFNX 101.7 FM, the result of the sale of the alt-rock station's FM frequency to Clear Channel, and people both online and IRL are still talking about it. Most likely a result of people constantly asking him what he played -- he's probably gotten a bunch of questions like "Hey, what was that awesome song you spun at 4pm?!?!"' -- this afternoon the on-air host posted his entire five-hour playlist

It seems like only yesterday that film fans first got a look at both The Princess Bride (1987; Thursday, May 24 at 7:30 pm, Friday, May 25 at 5:30 + 9:30 pm), the now beloved meta-fairy tale directed by Rob Reiner and written by William Goldman; and Mel Brooks's now classic Star Wars parody Spaceballs (1987 | Thursday, May 4 at 5:30 + 9:30 pm, Friday, May 25 at 7:30 pm).

Suffolk University is releasing a poll on the Massachusetts US Senate race tomorrow, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) just released its own poll, taken May 8-10 of likely voters, showing the race tied, 46%-46%.

The Elizabeth Warren camp tends to think that Suffolk skews to Scott Brown -- they had him ahead 49%-40% in February.

We'll most certainly have more deets on this in the pages of the Phoenix as the July date draws near, but here's a quick heads up: ALLSTON DIY FEST has released its 2012 band lineup. Looks pretty sweet on first glance -- everyone needs to see CreaturoS outdoors at least once before they die -- and this is certainly a fun way to spend a summer Saturday in beautiful and scenic Ringer Park in Allston.

There are a couple of interesting primaries today for those who share my interest in women GOP candidates.

But first, let me catch up, because I didn't update last week on this. There was a major plus for those interested in seeing more Republican women in high elected office -- in a surprise, Deb Fischer won the GOP Senate primary in Nebraska, likely meaning that she will become a US Senator.

Need a party remedy for the grey skies overhead? Disco + house music night PETROL celebrates its third anniversary tonight at Middlesex Lounge, enlisting New York crew Death From Above to keep the beat moving. DFA A&R guy and established DJ Justin Miller and the Juan Maclean crash Cambridge to help blow out the boogie candles, and resident DJs James Gerard, Greg Teves, and William John add some familiar flavor to the booth.

Richard Harding Wood was riled up before Occupy. Along with other friends from Malden, the then-20-year-old started coming into Boston on weekends early last year wielding placards to protest the Federal Reserve Bank. So when Occupy Boston settled across Atlantic Ave from the Fed in late-September, it was a no-brainer for Wood to get involved.

With one week to complete the ballot-qualification process, a total of 54 candidates had secured ballot positions in the 40 state senate districts as of yesterday afternoon. That includes 30 incumbents; another 7 incumbents who are running for re-election (as far as I know) have not yet gotten around to turning in their signatures: Robert Hedlund, Brian Joyce, Michael Knapik, Mark Montigny, Therese Murray, Bruce Tarr, and James Timilty.