For a long time, architecture wooed me with tales of utopia and romance; I believed that skyscrapers, steel girders and curtain walls would herald positive change in the world. The legacies of the most famous architects include visions of perfection – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin Pour Paris. But the reality of modern architecture is a far cry from these visions.

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, a NYC band, will be playing at Risley Theater on April 25. Kip Berman, lead vocalist and guitarist, spoke to Sun Staff writer Will Cordeiro about his influences and aspirations. Will Cordeiro is also the Artist at Residence at Risley Hall and was involved in booking the band for the event.

South by Southwest (SXSW) occurs annually in Austin, Texas. All of your favorite websites have liveblogged the event, millions of camera-phone photos are available to recreate each second of each show in panoramic vision and enough scratchy audio has been recorded to fill your 80-gig iPod. I myself was probably photographed several times by magazines, zines, blogs, police cameras, nightlife photographers and friends. And not because I'm particularly particular, or because I have friends. But because I was there, and it's 2009.

At an hour and forty-five minutes, this documentary might not be long enough to do justice to Patti Smith, this poet and musician whose career has spanned 40 years. But Patti Smith: Dream of Life, the culmination of 10 years of filming and shown last week at Cornell Cinema, provides a captivating look at the life and work of this artist of the spoken word.

It’s always a pleasant surprise to find a student band that doesn’t, well, suck, and it’s even rarer to find one that truly has its sound together. Enter Upstate Escape, a trio comprised of John Norwood grad on vocals and guitar, Chris Bentley ’10 (who also writes for the Daily Sun’s science Section) on bass and Ryan Silvernail, whom his bandmates describe simply as a townie, on drums.

Join arts editor Julie Block as she gives her take on television's latest shows, from Gossip Girl to the Daily Show.

For all students who have ever gotten bored in a class before, young or old, engineers or literary free spirits, there is good news. Your doodles, those things you sketch in the margins of your notebook as you struggle to keep your eyes open after a late night of partying, er, studying, are now considered art.

Arts Editor Julie Block is excited about the return of Californication — despite its overdone plotline involving a self-hating but noble writer who has lots of sex while pining after the woman who got away. Intrigued?

So Gossip Girl is back. And sure, it doesn’t have much of an effect on my life. But it’s back, and people are excited about it. In New York City, banners on top of taxicabs, posters at bus stops and giant billboards hanging from skyscrapers all featured shoulders-up shots of the Gossip Girl characters engaged in various sexually implicit positions — making out in the back of a car, having sex in a pool, and more. One ubiquitous catch phrase was emblazoned over each one of these snapshots: “OMFG.” Whatever you want to say about the show, you’d be kidding yourself if you didn’t admit that it’s pretty great advertising — concise, alarming and memorable. The ads demanded the attention of those walking by, and it got me thinking how marketing people might similarly employ obnoxious Internet vernacular to peddle other products.