Reports of a poop-filled McCarren Park are all over the blogosphere today after Brooklyn Paper posted a story on “Greenpoint’s liquored up vagabonds” pissing and shitting all over the park playgrounds. Gothamist credits New York Shitty for identifying the issue months ago and reporting on the deeper problem since.

According to New York Shitty’s Heather Letzkus:

“This isn’t a poop problem, it’s a homeless problem. There is a substantial homeless population here that is not being helped. Many of these people are alcoholics, or addicts, and they don’t speak English [most of them are Polish], and they have a serious problem.”

According to Gothamist, Letzkus believes the homeless population is drawn to the corridor along Lorimer St between Bedford and Driggs because Abate Playground and Jerzy Popieluszko Square are not locked at night and are relatively secluded.

Although North Brooklyn Parks administrator Stephanie Thayer claim that maintenance workers lock up Abate Playground on weekend nights after dark and parks workers clean up the play areas vigilantly, it appears that local residents posting to New York Shitty and the Friends and Families of McCarren Park Facebook Page feel children continue to be in constant danger of playing in feces.

Ew.

On September 7, Nitehawk Cinema will be screening a film presentation of TV on the Radio’s latest album Nine Types of Light.

According to the venue website:

The movie is meant to be a visual re-imagining of the record, and includes a music video for every song on the album. The band personally asked their friends and the filmmakers they admired to help direct the music videos. Tunde Adebimpe, the director for the full Nine Types Of Light movie, storybooked the music videos together with interviews from local New Yorkers on various topics, including dreams, love, fame and the future.

Following the film will be a Q&A session and an intimate live performance by the band.

Unfortunately, tickets to the event just sold out. BUT you can see the entire film below (sans the cool live extras). And don’t forget - TV on the Radio performs with Broken Social Scene at the Williamsburg Waterfront on September 8. Tickets are still available.

With the October opening fast approaching, Hotel Williamsburg has just launched their website. Among the higher end amenities suited for places like The Standard and Ace Hotel, the full-service “urban resort boutique hotel” will apparently also offer the following:

• Hotel suites with “in room, vintage-style record players and complimentary vinyl library”
• Pilar & Plough restaurant serving “New York neighborhood food”
• A lobby cafe serving coffee from “the oldest family-owned artisan coffee roasters in New York City”
• A private pool with poolside cabanas
• A classic cocktail lounge serving “artisan cocktails”
• A rooftop bar featuring a view of the Manhattan skyline

So if you’re willing to brave the onslaught of media hipster mockery to house your loved ones in local luxury instead of Times Square, Hotel Williamsburg is accepting reservations now.

So if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably still got Future Islands last album playing on repeat — and luckily for all of us, Thrill Jockey will be bringing us the Baltimore synth-pop trio’s newest, On The Water, on October 11th.

To visually capture these heart-breaking and simultaneously soothing tunes is our good friend and previous Future Islands music video director, Jay Buim, who takes us on a stroll through what feels like endless summer in some of New Jersey’s hidden gems. So go ahead, play it over and over and over again until you get mad at your make-believe boyfriend for not pushing you around in a shopping cart and gently sweeping the hair out of your eyes. Oh, is that just me? Le sigh.

Future Islands – Balance from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Check out Buim’s video for “Tin Man” after the jump and, since he’s a man of many talents, be sure to swing on by Good Company this Saturday to get a taste of the this one half of Rude Dudes’ DJ skillz.

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Our friends over at popchips have teamed up with Spin Magazine to bring us Pop Up Live — a fan driven competition designed to expose new music in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle featuring 250 up-and-coming bands!

Exclusive tracks from each are artist can be found over on the popchips Facebook page, so head on over to cast your vote by downloading your favorite song by Sept. 12th to enter the band of your choice to win $500 plus the opportunity to play at one of Spin Magazine’s always awesome parties in Austin… but only if they impress some of the industry’s most influential folks first!

Not to toot our own horns, but we’re excited to announce that yours truly will be sitting on a panel along with Tom Windish of, you know, Windish Agency, David Marches, Senior Editor of Spin, and Jesse “The Devil” Hughes of Eagles of Death Metal to help decide which band makes it to Austin.

On Halloween this year, the five finalists from each city will be announced and go on to the final voting round where the fans will be invited to vote again on popchips facebook page for the grand prize winner. The winning band will be announced November 16th and will be Austin bound come March 2012.

So do your part and vote ensuring that when your favorite new band is all over the blogosphere you can totally pick up that hottie on the other end of the bar by saying something like “You know that band [enter Pop Up Live contestant here]? I totally discovered them…”

Is it too early for a little Irene nostalgia?

Can’t wait to hear the new album Bad as Me out October 25 on Anti- Records.

Pepper Rabbit

Sadly, our prayers from last week were not answered and the rain wiped out some of the best shows of the summer. Please take a moment of silence for the Afro-Punk Festival and the other shows that didn’t make it.

Now let’s get down to the business of this week. If you’re into hip-hop, you should already have tickets to our No. 1 show: Rock the Bells on Governors Island on Saturday with Lauryn Hill, Nas, Cypress Hill, Black Star, the GZA and many, many more. Electronic music more your thing? Luckily, Electric Zoo is going on all weekend at Randall’s Island with Tiesto, Moby, Diplo, Armin Van Buuren and a lot of other options to get your booty in the groove. Another great FREE option — with a mix of electronic and hip hop — takes place at City Winery on Labor Day: Fools Gold’s Day Off includes Juicy J, Danny Brown, Just Blaze, the Brothers Mackolovitch (A-Track & Dave 1) and others.

The pool may be dead, but Jelly is not! Check out our No. 2 show, Rock Yard at The Morgan with Pictureplane, White Hills, The Psychic Paramount, Wise Blood and the Realness on Saturday. Other indie options include Bright Eyes and Dr. Dog at the Wiliamsburg Waterfront tonight, and Twin Shadow and Daimond Rings at Maxwell’s on Tuesday.

TOP 10 SHOWS FOR THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS

10. Light Asylum @ Union Pool
Saturday, September 3rd at 4pm – 21+, FREE!

9. Wise Blood @ Glasslands Gallery w/ Cities Aviv, D’Eon and Supreme Cuts
Thursday, September 1st at 8pm – 21+, $10 -> tickets

8. Weekend @ Glasslands Gallery w/ Talk Normal, Brown Recluse and Grooms
Saturday, September 3rd at 8pm – 21+, $10 -> tickets

7. Electric Zoo @ Randall’s Island w/ Armin Van Buuren, Afrojack, DJ Snoopadelic, Calvin Harris, Boys Noize, Diplo, Richie Hawtin, Dubfire, Infected Mushroom and Gabriel & Dresden
Sunday, September 4th at 11am – All Ages, $249 -> tickets

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From last night’s performance at University of the Streets in Manhattan, the first song of Jen Shyu’s hour long set.

Sunday night MTV had their weird award show celebrating videos they don’t air and music they don’t play. Following that Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon posted his response to the event. It’s sort of vague, not quite angry, but somehow very poignant.

there are great moments in awards shows. bruno mars sounded really good doing ‘valerie’ for amy winehouse. i don’t think anyone is bummed that adele is killing everything. her voice was real and focused when i went thru and watched highlights from tonight. kanye and jay z are always murdering. beyonce is pregnant. yes this is awesome as shit, culturally speaking. but can i just ask, the reader, us, we … as non-rhetorically as possible: don’t we seem dumb? didn’t MTV lose the fight against themselves? Didn’t Rock’n'Roll STOP? Why are the lights so bright? isn’t our talent as artists enough? Why do we try SO hard? Does a moonman mean what it did back then? Should we feel pumped when we get one? Should our mom’s cry? I am not even thinking about it that hard. I will close my eyes in 90 seconds and have total peace… But, seriously. Why are we waving around so much? Why do we NEED this shit so bad? Why don’t we just have MUSIC? DO music? soul? I don’t know. I don’t mean to criticize. Anyone. Actually. Except for MTV. You might have had a very large opportunity to be stabilize your self as a global presence of culture and art about 15 years ago and you fucked the dog. Sorry. Im with my girls on this one. Its becoming increasingly clear as I think about it more and more, that the dollars, if they ARE apart of why you are doing something… they are apart of why you are doing something. that’s fucked to me. that’s the absence of spirit, glue, fabric of what makes us a person. it distracts us from what we could be doing: WORK. on EARTH. Better say this: Forget what I say. If you even read this, you’ll probably say to yourself, who is this ass saying shit? It doesn’t matter what i say. it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. But this one last thought: What would Bill Hicks say?

For more profound VMA reading, see Nick Cave’s open letter to MTV after being nominated for an award.