FLAG DAY: If Betsy Ross Worked At Staples

DESIGN & INNOVATION: What do you get when you combine Flag Day, the home of America’s most famous flagmaker and 8,000 Post-It® Super Sticky Notes? The world’s largest American Flag made of Post-it Notes, say officials at Philadelphia’s Betsy Ross House — and you can be a part of the action. This Flag Day, Saturday, June 14, the Betsy Ross House will be the site of a Guinness World Record attempt. The Post-It Note flag will be assembled on panels that will then be laid out to form the traditional “Betsy Ross Flag” with 13 stars arranged in a circular […]

ACQUITTED: The Last Temptation Of R. Kelly?

NEW YORK TIMES: CHICAGO — It took more than six years for prosecutors to get the R&B star R. Kelly into court on charges of child pornography. It only took a few hours for a jury to declare him not guilty on all 14 counts. Mr. Kelly had been accused of making a 27-minute sex tape with an under-age female. But a high-powered defense team convinced the jury of nine men and three women that the identity of the girl was not conclusive. As the verdicts were being read on Friday, the singer started crying and whispering “Thank you Jesus, […]

IOWA: Wake Of The Flood

ASSOCIATED PRESS: CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) – Hospital patients in wheelchairs and on stretchers were evacuated in the middle of the night as the biggest flood Cedar Rapids has ever seen swamped more than 400 blocks Friday and all but cut off the supply of clean drinking water in the city of 120,000.

CINEMA: WTF Is Happening?

DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD: Also beaten up badly has been the other newcomer this weekend, M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-rated horror thriller The Happening from 20th Century Fox. The Mark Wahlberg starrer started out No. 2 Friday even after film critics and writers alike seemed intent on reviewing the writer-director-producer instead of the movie. (Only 11% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.) With a nasty tell-all book and several film flops behind him, Shyamalan no longer is the popular suspense moviemaker celebrated for his early hits like The Sixth Sense and Signs. Instead, he’s been branded as the hopelessly arrogant has-been, with media outlets […]

OFFICE SPACE: How To Go Off The Reservation

Back in the olden days, men in white suits and butterfly nets would be dispatched to reel a guy like this back in. READER WRITES: For a few weeks now, a grainy video has been circling the Internet of an office worker going absolutely insane. It originated on Break.com, and I’ve included it after the jump for your critical enjoyment. Those fearing that their cubicle neighbor might engage in similar hysterics can breathe easy — it was all a sly bit of viral marketing from Timur Bekmambetov for Wanted. He revealed the stunt over on his personal blog, where he […]

NPR FOR THE DEAF: Get Smarter

FRESH AIR Actor Steve Carell has elicited laughs with his deadpan humor in films like Little Miss Sunshine and The 40 Year Old Virgin. Now, the star of NBC’s The Office takes on a vintage role for the summer blockbuster season: Carell plays the always eager Agent Maxwell Smart in Get Smart, based on the 1960s television cult classic. Carell talks with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about awkward moments on film and his unexpected fame. PLUS, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews Evil Urges, the new album by the Kentucky indie-rock band My Morning Jacket. The band moves away from their […]

LIBERTY MEDAL: Goes To Ex-Commie Stooge Turned Lifter Of Iron Curtain Turned Louis Vuitton Pitchman

WIKIPEDIA: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, born March 2, 1931 in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai), is a Russian politician. He was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1985 until its collapse in 1991. Gorbachev’s attempts at reform — perestroika and glasnost — as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan, contributed to the end of the Cold War, and also ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was awarded […]

He Was Against It Before He Was For It & Vice Versa

CARPETBAGGER REPORT: Confronted with the inconsistencies in McCain’s record in March, the senator’s aides told the New York Times that the senator “has evolved rather than switched positions in his 25-year career.” That’s a perfectly sensible spin — when a politician holds one position, and then, for apparently political reasons, decides to embrace the polar opposite position, it’s only natural for his or her aides to say the politician’s position has “evolved.” But in McCain’s case, the spin is wholly unfulfilling. First, McCain sells himself as a pol who never sways with the wind, and whose willingness to be consistent […]

LAST SPLASH: No More Teachers, No More Books

DAILY NEWS: Girls from Center City’s Hallahan High School celebrated the last day of school in the traditional way today, with a dip in Swann Fountain at Logan Circle. Rising sophomores, juniors and seniors are the ones that take the splash. The tradition is believed to be at least 50 years old, and it’s a durable one – in 2001, when a drought led the city’s fountains to shut down, the Hallahan girls arranged for the Philadelphia Fire Department to shower them from a fire hose. MORE [Photo by ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS]