I just spent a long-ass time updating my links section, so I'm keeping this short. For the week of 4/2/04:
Top 10 People

1 - Michel Gondry. It took me a minute to finally get around to seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it's an amazing movie. It's sad and beautiful and twisty and fascinating and impossible to get out of your head. It might be even better than Dawn of the Dead. This movie will break your heart. For the first time since Dumb and Dumber or maybe Ace Ventura One, Jim Carrey doesn't make me hate white people, and that alone is a monumental accomplishment.

2 - DJ Low Budget. Low Budget is one half of Hollertronix, the DJ crew whose aesthetics match my own to a frightening degree, and he just dropped four staggeringly great mix CDs. You should buy them all here. For my Baltimore heads, he'll be DJing at the Supreme Imperial with Cullen Stalin and somebody else on Saturday night. You can miss Britpop night at the Ottobar just this once. It won't kill you.

3 - Luke Jenner. Did I mention the Rapture might be working with Timbaland? Oh, I did. Well, I'll mention it again.

4 - Elena. Elena is a Ukranian girl who made this amazing site, a photo web diary of a motorcycle trip through Chernobyl. It's a completely stunning piece of work, a real-life Dawn of the Dead, evidence of an actual apocalypse that happened during our lifetime. It will make you dizzy. (Link courtesy JR Nelson.)

5 - Richard Clarke. How did I forget to mention this guy? Take em down, dude!

6 - Dave Eggers. Don't be a hater; you know you love him. I've been enjoying watching Eggers' global conscience kicking into high gear, becoming the first brilliantly self-conscious American writer to aggressively deal with the rest of the world. In the new(ish) Believer, he has an article about taking a young Sudanese refugee to see his village for the first time since he was a child. It's like whoa.

7 - The grandma on The O.C. Usually when teenage-type shows like My So-Called Life get too heavily involved in the parents' storylines, my eyelids get heavy. But the story about Seth's grandma, the New York socialist Jewish social worker who goes to see her partially estranged rich Cali family to tell them she's dying, well damn. It's just really good.

8 - Jay Smooth. Jay's site is essential reading. Dude is on fire. Schools banning pink clothes? Ghostface lyrics vs. spam text? Jay shutting down some conservative dickweed blogger in debate? You need this stuff.

9 - Morrissey. He's playing a set of shows at the Apollo Theatre? He's headlining Lollapalooza? Whoa. Dude is crazy.

10 - Lil Flip. I used to think David Banner was only good with Flip. Now it turns out Flip is only great with Banner. Flip's new album is OK, but it's nowhere near what it could be. For one thing, it's a transparent attempt to boost album sales by making it a double album when it would fit on one CD if it were even one song shorter. There's a lot of filler, a lot of songs with weak-ass or nonexistent hooks and leaden beats. But the two tracks with Banner and maybe four others are pure fire, hazey creeping horror-movie electro-crunk. And it's to Flip's credit that he survives the album completely intact, coasting on pure lazy charm. Now please do an album with Banner.