Until now, life as a would-be dancer at Georgetown was not unlike life in the state of nature: nasty, brutish and — if you were not among the best of the best — ego-crushingly short.

Have you ever found yourself at the Rosslyn Metro station, losing a fight with the farecard machine, only to look up and see a sprawling array of twisted objects mixed with unnaturally bright colors and asked yourself, “What the hell is that?”

If you have, then welcome to the world of one of D.C.’s most prominent beautification initiatives.

It was an era of dueling extremities. Distinguished voices striving to be heard roared in the conflicts between faith and skepticism, brightness and shadow, optimism and pessimism, promise and hopelessness, the saved and the damned.”

Sound familiar? What if this read more along the lines of, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

In an age dominated by television and the Internet, this past Saturday, the eighth annual National Book Festival gave Americans the opportunity to renew their dedication to reading.

The mix tape is not dead. The yearning, angst, love and hope embodied in the tapes of the ’80s and ’90s have merely evolved into a new medium. In Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Nick (Michael Cera) funnels all his energy into mixes he creates that include bands such as Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, We Are Scientists, The Submarines, Rogue Wave and the Shout Out Louds.

We’re all familiar with the story of the struggling writer who gives up his morals in order to make it big in the competitive real world. In How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) plays a fish-out-of-water British journalist who is thrust into the cutthroat world of celebrity pop journalism in New York City.