If you're a journalist in the trenches, chances are you're too busy and too poor to attend (and your publisher is too poor to send you to) SXSW Interactive, the annual to-do where all the smart, well-funded bastards go to interact with other smart, well-funded bastards who can afford to think for five minutes about how to get us all out of this goddamn mess we're in.

August means two things: it's ice cream weather, and Morrissey's just said something stupid.

Okay, the latter isn't really dependent on the time of year, but it's still true. Equally true is how the Ben & Jerry's truck is spending the month inspiring childlike glee by dispensing free ice cream, so there's no better time to answer the dual burning questions "What can Morrissey's unfiltered utterances teach me?" and "Man, how cool would it be to drive an ice cream truck?"

Author William Gibson has been called the father of cyberpunk and coined the term "cyberspace" back when Internet was little more than a twinkle in DARPA's eye. That's enough to mean that he's probably developed a fan base devout enough to build shrines in his honor, or at least commemorative iPad apps.

But if you ask Gibson himself -- like one audience member did during a Brookline Booksmith reading at the Coolidge Corner Theatre last year -- it still doesn't make him a celebrity.

^{Ben Potrykus, live at SXSW}

There may be no bigger gluttons for punishment than touring musicians -- and as proof, monthly storytelling series/cringefest "This Has Been A Disaster- Thanks For Having Us" returns for Round 3 tomorrow night at Toad. For this installment, the folks joining hosts Ryan Walsh and Steve Almond to grace the stage with their mortifying tales of gig hell will be Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine), Ben Potrykus (Girlfriends, Christians & Lions), and Amy Correia

"We are alarmingly unprepared for this," emcee Ryan Walsh announced to his audience on a Sunday night last month at Toad. As if to prove his point, co-host Steve Almond was still trying to figure out his stage persona mid-show. (He ultimately settled on "nonsexual criminal.") But there's no need to fear catastrophic awkwardness here -- welcome to "This Has Been a Disaster - Thanks For Having Us," a monthly storytelling series devoted to real-life tales of gigs gone wrong.

GOOGLE ATTACKS!

Scared? We are too. And so is author Siva Vaidhyanathan, who read from his recent release The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) at the Harvard Book Store earlier this afternoon.

But if you happened to miss it -- or if you walked out of there craving more, MORE -- we've got just the ticket for you, pulled from our own bottomless podcast vault: two readings from similarly tech-wary authors Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains) and William Powers (Hamlet's Blackberry):

Here's a campaign shocker: RACHEL MADDOW is still not running for Scott Brown's seat. Apparently that full page Globe ad last year wasn't enough for the Huffington Post, the Boston Herald, and eight zillion blogs. It wasn't really true until she showed up at Harvard on Sunday night and made an offhanded comment about it.

It's pretty safe to say that no one makes monsters quite like director Guillermo Del Toro makes monsters. I mean, not only did the dude's imagination spit out the gorgeously grotesque fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth, it was also responsible for the creepy crawly creatures of Mimic and the motley crew of do-gooders in the Hellboy movies

As our city girds itself for the tsunami of book boosterism that's about to sweep Copley Square this weekend (to refresh your memory on just how incredible last year's Boston Book Fest was, check out our 2009 podcast archives), it seems like this is the perfect opportunity to wax introspective on one of the greatest novels of all time.

A typical day in the life of Jason Schwartzman probably includes cocktails by the pool in the Coppola Compound. Cousin Sofia's boyfriend just might pop in and serenade him with a Phoenix song on the acoustic guitar. Then Kristen Dunst swings by and they go for a swim, and Wes Anderson shows up with his model train set, and Jarvis Cocker is there and they start playing together, and so's Gwennyth and she starts singing too, but she's fucking unbearable, so Uncle Francis busts it up by regaling them with stories about that one time he and James Caan drove to Tijuana, and then everyone laughs and there's wine and pink champagne and bubbles, lots and lots of bubbles.

It's no exaggeration to say that last weekend could go down as the most memorable few days in Boston hip-hop history (especially if you count the cherry-topping Public Enemy shebang at House of Blues last night). On Friday, Slaine shot the video for "99 Bottles" at a sold-out show at Church; on Saturday, M-Dot and Wiz Khalifa rocked for thousands on Government Center; and for three straight days and nights b-boys and b-girls from across the planet battled in the Floorlords-hosted United Styles 6, and celebrated the hometown crew's 29th anniversary.

Author Bret Easton Ellis didn't ask to be turned into a hot, sexy myth. But he's not exactly complaining about it, either.

"It's so interesting to see how the myth takes over," he told a Brattle Theatre audience, in response to a question about how it felt to be "young and hot" when he first tasted literary success.

^{Nick Flynn reads to daughter Maeve (courtesy of the WW Norton Flickr gallery)}