As you may have seen, Boston.com whipped up a slideshow titled "Poutin' Peyton" for Super Bowl 44, in which Peyton Manning's Indianapolis Colts lost to the New Orleans Saints. My first thought: "Hey, good for Boston.com! Way to take advantage of Patriot fans anti-Manning animosity!" (Or something like that.)

Today, though, I finally checked out the slideshow in question.

Globe arts editor and Phoenix alum Scott Heller will be leaving the paper for the New York Times at the end of this month. The memo sent last week by Globe editor Marty Baron and features editor Doug Most follows; Baron tells me they'll be naming Heller's replacement "in the next few weeks."

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To all:

We are sad to report that we will be losing one of our most creative

. . . he gets weirder. New album promo for his "lost" third album Close Calls with Brick Walls contains no music -- probably not a bad idea; it was released a few years ago in Japan, and we recall it being pretty just OK. But the video does include Andrew's interpretive-dance recitation of the Darth-Vader-uses-the-dark-side-to-throw-shit-at-Luke scene from The Empire Strikes Back, this time starring a toy santa, a blow-up lobster, and a big white dog.

Last September, New Yorker staffwriter (and former Phoenix staffer) Susan Orlean laid out the case for keeping fresh poultry in the backyard: it's cheap, it's safe, it's fun, and it's environmentally sound. You would think that would be enough for the city fathers of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In my ongoing coverage of the rapid extinction of GOP women holding elected office, I have more bleak news. The NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) has added 14 new candidates to its "Young Guns" program, and promoted 15 of its Young Guns to "Contender" status. Of the 14 added, one is a woman; of the 15 promoted, one is a woman.

Say what you will about Vampire Weekend - and really, so many people have given their opinion that there really isn't anything new to add at this point - but, despite their generally preppy aesthetic, they're pretty legit punk and hardcore fans. So it shouldn't have been much of a surprise when they covered Rancid's 1995 classic "Ruby Soho" over the weekend at a Radio 1 session.

For the second year in a row, a Boston Phoenix staff writer was named Journalist of the Year, and the Phoenix took home 18 awards -- including 11 first-place prizes -- at the annual New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) Awards.The mammoth haul included awards for design (including overall design, photos, illustrations, and photo illustrations), writing and reporting (in arts, news, editorials, and features), and multimedia (a convergence award for best mix of print and web storytelling).

Wasn't that Google Super Bowl ad sweet? Boy meets internet search engine, boy travels to France, boy meets French girl, boy marries French girl, boy and girl have a baby. As virginal forays go, this was not bad: and by virgin, we're talking about Google's dip into television advertising, which in cultural terms is perhaps bigger than the Saints winning the Super Bowl.

Even if you knew in advance about the deal that ARCADE FIRE cut with the NFL Network, it was still really odd -- during a Super Bowl geared towards showcasing fogey rock -- to hear "Wake Up" nearly once a commercial break. Arcade Fire frontman (and former Porter Square shoe salesman) WIN BUTLER allowed the cable-network arm of Jock USA's largest corporate entity to use the band's signature hit to hype such upcoming indie-friendly programming as .

Put another feather in the cap of the ART-affiliated OBERON THEATER (up for a Boston Best 2010 award if you're in the voting mood), which last night played host to JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, in town to receive the Hasty Pudding's annual goofball Man of the Year award. Click above to watch Boston Foodie's paparazzi clip, or jump over to YouTube to watch Channel 5's embedding-disabled (booo!) recap.

^{One of the Macmillan titles pulled from Amazon.com}

Right on the heels of Steve Jobs promising to change the way geeks read forever and ever, the first skirmish in the e-book wars hit the blogosphere this weekend when Amazon yanked the “Buy” buttons for all books published by Macmillan as a hardball negotiating tactic against the company's plan to raise prices on electronic editions.

We're not sure exactly what provoked it (perhaps someone borrowed Pete Wentz's eyeliner without asking?), but it seems that the members of Fall Out Boy are on the outs. The four punk-poppers are currently embroiled in a furious Twitter feud -- an online battle the likes of which we haven't seen since Courtney Love challenged her own daughter to the Facebook equivalent of a schoolyard tussle this past December.

When the tome on Boston hip-hop finally gets written, there will no doubt be a thick chapter on The Kreators. They're one of the few Bean crews that warrant a best-of album (they actually dropped one a few years ago), and the work they've yielded separately has also impressed.

All of that might begin to explain why so much top notch Boston talent is swinging through The Western Front tonight in support of XL, who has a rare and costly health condition (read excerpt below for an interview he did with promoter Edu Leedz).

At this point, it seems, absolutely no one is disputing that Scott Brown was, at first, totally cool with being sworn in to the US Senate on February 11. So what changed?

The letter sent yesterday by Dan Winslow, Brown's attorney, says Brown decided to hustle after learning about "a number of votes scheduled prior to that date."

VIKESH KAPOOR has been popping up in these pages over the past couple of years as one of the busier bodies in an auspicious young folk revival. No, wait, scratch that — “Am I a folk singer then?”, Kapoor wondered in a note to us about the title track of his new Newspress Scare seven-inch (Good People). He’d rather call it “a contemporary story song set against an Old World backdrop.