WASHINGTON POST: In 2009, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as a senior adviser for the FDA. Consumer groups protested the appointment because Taylor had formerly served as a vice president for Monsanto, the controversial agricultural multinational at the forefront of genetically modified food. In recent days, a petition calling for the former Monsanto VP’s ouster is gaining steam. “President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor,” the petition on Signon.org reads. “Taylor is the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when genetically modified organisms were allowed into the U.S. food supply without undergoing a single […]
RIP: Don Cornelius, Soul Train Engineer, Dead At 75
NEW YORK TIMES: Don Cornelius, the producer and television host who created the dance show “Soul Train,” was found shot dead in his Los Angeles home early Wednesday morning in what appears to be a suicide, the Los Angeles Police Department and the county coroner’s office said. He was 75 years old. A person called the police from Mr. Cornelius’s house on Mulholland Drive in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood just before 4 a.m. and reported shots had been fired, a police spokesman, Chris No, said. When officers arrived, they were let into the house and found Mr. Cornelius lying lifeless […]
MYSTERIOUS WAYS: Bevilacqua Transferred To The Big Witness Protection Program In The Sky
[Artwork by JAY BEVENOUR] INQUIRER: Cardinal Anthony Joseph Bevilacqua, 88, whose 15 years as shepherd of the 1.5 million-member Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia was marked by both celebration and crisis, died in his sleep Tuesday night in his apartment at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood. After retiring in 2003, he left the cardinal’s residence on City Avenue for the apartment at the seminary and rarely appeared in public. Cardinal Bevilacqua was emblematic of the church to which he had devoted himself since age 14: progressive on some social-justice issues, staunchly orthodox on matters of doctrine and sexuality, and […]
TONITE: ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky
BY ZIVIT SHLANK Guitarist, composer, educator and 2011 Guggenheim fellow David “Fuze” Fiuczynski is the quintessence of authentic artistry. The self-proclaimed “black, funky, German expressionist,” by his own admission, tried tirelessly to fit into pre-ordained boxes early on. However, he soon realized that the music he was pursuing, despite feeling the opposite, didn’t exactly have the widest appeal. No matter, that hasn’t stopped him and in fact, it further fuels and intensifies his fire. He moved to NYC post-collegiate in the early 90s, and went on to record and perform with countless artists across the musical spectrum including John Medeski, […]
FATHER JOHN MISTY: Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:Once upon a time, many months and Lana Del Rey posts ago, we asked Aubrey Plaza what was on her iPod. The Parks and Recreation actress tipped us off to the then-unreleased “Hollywood Forever Cemetery” from J. Tillman, formerly of the Fleet Foxes, and mentioned that she’d be starring in its video. Under the moniker Father John Misty, Tillman has released the song (now titled ”Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”) as the lead single off his forthcoming debut Fear Fun (out May 1), as well as a video to match. Named for one L.A.’s oldest burial grounds, the droney psych-rock dirge is a bit of […]
BLOOD SPORT: The Crucifixion Of Lana Del Rey
NMA TV: Lana Del Rey’s new album Born to Die has been panned by Billboard, Spin, Pitchfork and Stereogum. Video Games, voted best song of 2011 by the Guardian, was the first we heard of Lana Del Rey, but subsequent performances, including an appearance on Saturday Night Life, have been terrible. Her performance on SNL was so bad Brian Williams wrote an email to Gawker calling her a “Brooklyn hippster [sic]” and her performance “one of the worst outings in SNL history.” Juliette Lewis also tweeted negatively about her performance. Del Rey fans say her songs are good and she […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Once the drummer for the grunge band Nirvana, Dave Grohl formed Foo Fighters after the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in 1994. Foo Fighters’ sixth album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, includes a song Grohl wrote for two miners who, trapped in an Australia mine collapse, asked rescuers to send down an iPod loaded with Foo Fighters songs. Grohl sent them a note, then met with one of the miners after they were rescued. Grohl is a percussionist, guitarist and songwriter — and an actor, having appeared both on Tenacious D’s debut album and in the 2006 movie […]
Is Special K The Miracle Cure For Depression?
TALK OF THE NATION: Almost as soon as it was introduced in 1987, the antidepressant Prozac, which selectively targets the chemical serotonin, became a blockbuster. “Prozac just blew everything else out of the water,” Frazer says. This had less to do with the efficacy of Prozac (it is not better at treating depression than tricyclics, the earlier generation of antidepressants) than with the fact that the drug had relatively few side effects. “It was very free of side effects,” says Pedro Delgado. “And so it began to be used very widely, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for it.” […]
SIDEWALKING: Caveman Blues
From Gomez + Gonzalez, Presented By Philagrafika, Galleries At Moore, Moore College Of Art & Design, Friday 7:01 PM by JONATHAN VALANIA
ARTSY: The Afterlife Of Vivian Maier
BY MIKE WALSH In 1951, at age 25, a young woman named Vivian Maier moved from France to New York City, where she worked for some time in a sweat shop. Maier also had a camera, and she spent much of her free time walking around NYC working class neighborhoods taking photos of people, places, and buildings. She used a Rolleiflex camera, the type you look down into a two-inch lens to aim and focus. It used 120 mm film, a large format that, in the hands of someone like Maier, can capture incredible richness, detail, and depth of field. […]
SIDEWALKING: Horse Latitudes
48th & Lancaster, 5 PM Sunday by JEFF FUSCO
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: The Dark Art Of Convincing White Middle Class America To Vote Against Itself
[Click to enlarge] BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Rarely has a political party so craftily cozened a majority of its naive yet trusting adherents as has the current Republican edition with its sham economic policies. Take for example convincing their blue- (and even many white–) collar disciples that a further lessening of the already absurdly low tax burden on the wealthy — many of whom for nearly a decade have paid an unconscionably lower percentage of their income in taxes than middle-class wage earners — will assuredly result in a mutually beneficial “trickling down” of vast improvement to their already-shattered-by-the-VERY-SAME-POLICIES lives. No doubt, but watch […]