The Apples in Stereo will be at the Middle East Downstairs tonight at 8:00 pm. It's hard not to smile when you hear the music of the Apples in Stereo. The band's music is relentlessly sunny and irony-free. Yet Robert Schneider and company have managed to win over skeptical hipsters with sheer joy. The Apples in Stereo are already stars in the Ist-a-Verse - check out SFist's interview with bassist Eric Allen and DCist's concert......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

In preparation for tonight's big night, you might be concerned with how you'll feel on New Year's Day. No one wants to start the New Year crouched over a toilet bowl, clinging to the cool porcelain throne. NPR's "Morning Edition" aired an informative piece about how people wind up in so much pain after a night of overindulgence. Basically, if you're hungover, you just "pickled" yourself: "The second theory of hangover involves a type of......