Click It. BEAT picks of the week.

On a rainy (or, in NY, snowy!) weekend, staying in and reading is the best thing to do.

Simon Doonan, of Barneys fame, just released his fifth book, Gay Men Don't Get Fat.

A few other books in my "queue": Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century, Then Again (Diane Keaton's memoir), and The Beautiful and Damned (with the fancy cover!).

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in the February issue of GQ, out now.

If you're heading to the movies, I recommend Contraband.

Girls in New York City generally wear darker nail polish than L.A. ladies do ... I followed suit yesterday with a manicure of Essie's Devil's Advocate. My favorite pale polish is Adore-a-Ball, also by Essie.

If you like Lana Del Rey, despite her much-discussed sort of awkward SNL performances last week, you can pre-order her album Born to Die on Amazon, out January 31.

If you're making snacks for the football games today, read these essential guacamole tips from Rick Bayless.

-- Leslie Anne Wiggins

Photo credit: Fragments via Dolly Rocker Girl

Do It. Celebrate John Lennon's 70th birthday.

If John Lennon were still around, he'd be turning 70 years old this Saturday. What would he think of the world? Would he still be making music? Would he and Paul have ever made up, officially?

It'd be weird to imagine him in this world, but it'd be even harder to imagine this world without him, or his music and influence. And so to celebrate the unforgettable singer-songwriter are a few events going on around town. First up is the Grammy Museum's new exhibit called "John Lennon, Songwriter," and which just opened this week and features artifacts like handwritten lyrics, his infamous wire-rimmed round glasses, his uniform from the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and rare film footage. There are also plans for a candlelight vigil for fans on Saturday at noon at Lennon's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Furthermore, this week marked the release of a slew of rare and previously unreleased Lennon recordings, including remastered versions of all his post-Beatles songs, a compilation of his greatest hits paired with a DVD of music videos, and remixed versions of his work with Yoko Ono. And beyond that, look forward to the new biopic, Nowhere Boy, being released later this month that'll follow the beginnings of Lennon's musical career.

Happy birthday, John!

**UPDATE: look at this super cool Google doodle of the day!

-- Chau Tu

Check It. Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait" video.

Arcade Fire just released an amazing, chart-topping new album, The Suburbs. And while it's not a concept album, per se, the record focuses immensely upon feelings of disillusionment, frustration, boredom and listless repetitiveness--the feelings many closely associate with the suburbs.

But the suburbs also remind people of their childhoods, and the neighborhoods where they grew up before venturing off to bigger, grander lands. This memory is what Arcade Fire has now tried invoke with its new, crazily-inventive music video for The Suburbs' "We Used to Wait."

To call it a music video is nearly insulting, though. The interactive experiment was created by Chris Milk and uses video technology mixed with Google Street View and Google Earth to give everyone a personal experience. How personal? To watch the video, you have to type in the address of where you grew up. The video does the rest.

(It's not as creepy as I just made it sound, I promise. Especially if you can get over your fear of pop-up windows and Boxcar Racer-like graphics.)

But before you click!: close everything else you may have running (including the BEAT, sadly), and if you're not on Google Chrome, you might as well download it because it barely works on Firefox and crashes on Safari. It's worth it. You may even get a little emotional. Now, go!

-- Chau Tu

Check It. Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs.

Ray LaMontagne is one of my favorite musicians, and thankfully his albums age really well. Trouble is still great all the way through. It's always nice to have some new music, though, and today his fourth studio album is out, God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise.

The album cover reminds me of Ryan Adams & the Cardinals' Cold Roses - and LaMontagne with the Pariah Dogs are like Adams and the Cardinals. Talented touring bands backing great singers of today - but sometimes you kinda just want the singer on their own. Nevertheless, both are CDs worth having in your collection. You can listen to album tracks here on NPR music, including "Old Before Your Time", which I recommend.

Ray LaMontage is playing the Greek Theatre with David Gray September 10.

-- Leslie Anne Wiggins

Photo credit: stereogum.com

Check It. Sheryl Crow's 100 Miles from Memphis.

Sheryl Crow has an undeniably awesome voice, and she's always great to listen to and has an element of freshness, although she's been around awhile. I saw her in concert in 1996 or 1997, and more than ten years later, she seems about the same. Sure her hair is blonder and straighter, and she's had her share of pictures in the weekly gossip magazines, but she's still singing quality music that people want to hear.

Her latest album, 100 Miles from Memphis, came out last Tuesday. I thought about not writing about it today as "new music" since it's not a new release today, but then found it appropriate that Sheryl Crow music doesn't have to be brand new to be appreciated, because all her songs feel like classics. So here are 12 more classics for the Sheryl Crow collection. With a country influence, of course--something I think serves her music very well.

-- Leslie Anne Wiggins

Photo credit: A&M