Not long ago, we teamed up with our sister mag Stuff at Night to bring together eight of Boston's finest DJs to shoot the shit about the state of dance music in our fair city. It turned out to be far more interesting than we had any right to expect it would be, and may even have squashed some beef in the process.

Yes, boys and girls, it’s time once again for Santastic!, the third-annual installment of holiday mix-and-mash-ups performed and compiled by the redoubtable djBC. (Fresh from snagging the BMA for “Outstanding DJ.”)

As always, this year’s edition is a corker. For kids who’ve been waiting for the red-suited man all December, Divide and Kreate’s “Velvet Santa” sets up a rendezvous between a pre-creepy Michael Jackson and a very naughty Lou Reed on some dingy New York City street

If it's good enough for JoJo, it's good enough for emo.

Over the summer we brought you Foxboro's favorite teenage pop-tart launching her comeback with a cover/rework/response to Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls," itself a thinly-veiled cover of the Boomer national anthem, "Stand By Me." Stop the presses: now Casey Crescenzo -- formerly of the Receiving End of Sirens, now leading his own band, the Dear Hunter -- has issued his own cover of Kingston's chart-topper.

For those of you reading this at work: the weekend ain't over yet, snitches. Many of you will have Tuesdays bookmarked as Hearthrob night, but they're going early this week to accomodate a dude who we'd postpone Christmas to see. Even if you don't listen to SINDEN's UK radio show or have the funds to fly over the pond to catch his resident sets at Fabric, you've probably encountered his remixes, sets, image, and likeness on this blog and many others (those Mad Decent guys, for example, are obsessed).

For those of you reading this at work: the weekend ain't over yet, snitches. Many of you will have Tuesdays bookmarked as Hearthrob night, but they're going early this week to accomodate a dude who we'd postpone Christmas to see. Even if you don't listen to SINDEN's UK radio show or have the funds to fly over the pond to catch his resident sets at Fabric, you've probably encountered his remixes, sets, image, and likeness on this blog and many others (those Mad Decent guys, for example, are obsessed).

50 Cent will be eating crow -- and keeping his mouth shut, if he stands by his wager -- now that Yeezy put the squeeze on the biggest Billboard sales week in forever. (Music industry please take note: rap music is your last hope). The idea that Fiddy will suddenly disappear from the cluuuurb, however, is silly.

BIRD FLU: tonight at Enormous Room

Mr. Collipark, eight zillion kids with youtube accounts, four out of five bloggers, and Winnie the Pooh agree: teenage sensation Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat" (a/k/a "Superman That Ho") is officially the viral hit of 2007, has spawned a superhero dance craze that's even more fun than that whole Chicken Noodle Soup thing, and is probably the grimiest-sounding rap vocal ever to become a hit.

Between reading Cam's rhyme book and listening to new Avril, Hillary, Trent, and Arctic Monkeys -- don't even get us started on that Amerie joint and the Bjork/Timbo collabo -- we haven't had much time to blog.

We recommend the following fine remedial material, blowing up a summertime near you soon:

1. Finally, Tim reached into the goodie bag and delivered the goods.

That whole DJ Drama mess spooked the crap out of mixtape DJs, to the extent that hometown hero CLINTON SPARKS done closed up shop on Mixunit, started a blog, took a day job at VH1, and is giving away his entire mixtape library for free.

Latest: a collabo with . . . Tommy friggin' Lee?

We give you Hip Pop Rock Star

IF YOU GO:

Cousin Cole & Certified Max
Friday the 13th at Enormous Room
10 pm, $3

Cousin Cole is THAT DUDE. We've been geeking out on his shit for a while now, starting with his genius/hysterical/blog-meme-creating B-more-ish rework of the "Atlantic Records, T.I. Clearance" drop. But his new TOUGHER THAN FEATHERS EP on Flagrant Fowl is freshly-dropped and completely ace: if we DJ'd, we'd be dropping his Ignition-remix-remix every damn night.

Regular readers of OTD know we're all over Mark E. Moon's jock. Up til now he's focused on dropping Certified Bananas-style indie-rap smashups, but in honor of his joining the MySpace megaverse -- as good an excuse to revisit his way-too-slept on Neutral Milk Hotel remix -- he's put together a two-minutes-and-change minimix that throws gimmicks out the window and just kills shit, flipping the ubiquitous Justice/Simian track "We Are Your Friends" until it flips the bird at social networking.

When you've driven an entire metropolitan area into a state of talking-junk-food-induced panic, what the hell can you do for an encore? Peter "Zebbler" Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, the young men who punk'd Boston with lite-brite Mooninites and '70s haircut jokes, will attempt to answer that question tonight.

We’d like to apologize for what happened when we debuted Bang Camaro’s “Push Push (Lady Lightning)” back in June. It’s amazing what a little hyperbole (“mp3 of the decade”) and a catchy thumbnail description (“Polyphonic Spree meets Headbangers’ Ball”) can do in this town: all the sudden the band’s headlining awards shows and getting slapped on the covers of every fishwrap in town.

1. You always wanted to be at that party where Charlie Brown throws down with Jim Jones. So if you haven't already, point your browser at Lemon-Red, who's come out of hibernation to upload a dastardly X-mas mix from fellow Lab scientists Snack and C'mish. Elf people stand up.

2. Click 5, Christy Carlson Romano crash Q Division holiday bash