GET IGGY WITH IT: Mgmt., Johnny Brendas, Last Night [Photo by TIFFANY YOON]
WORTH REPEATING: The Perma-Profits Of Perma-War
From Howie Klein’s Down With Tyranny: “I think that the Republicans, from top to bottom, are genuinely trying to change America into Amerika with a ‘k.’ They want America to be a place where ordinary workers cannot organize, where everybody tries to undercut everybody else in the labor market, and where the people in charge are the people who can best tap into war profiteering profits… These people want to change America and change it to make it something that Eisenhower warned us about half a century ago. They want everything in America to be under the control — and […]
MAILBAG: ‘I Also Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas’
LIGHTNING STRIKES THE POSTMAN: Flaming Lips, 2006 Allentown Fair John– Nicely done on the Surfers articles. Great reading. Saw Gibby and the kids Tuesday night here in DC. Also, saw them numerous times ’round the same time as you ’87 through the early ’90s. Then had the privilege of touring with the Surfers when I was the Flaming Lips tour manager back in 1993. Good times. Anyway, I’d be curious to know if Gibby thinks the Surfers had more work left to do. I’ve read in various places that a reunion of any sorts is a moot point, but what […]
OH GOD: Sir Charles Gnarls GOP, Stumps For Obama
Charles Barkley spoke truth to pussy power on CNN today. He may be wrong but we doubt it, and he does too. If we didn’t think it was too soon and he’d probably just gamble it away we’d send him a check for his threatened 2014 Alabama gubernatorial run. And not because we love the Charles Barkley Straight Talk Express, even though we do — but just because Alabama fucking has it coming. And Jesus Christ on a crutch, Wolf Blitzer is SUCH a pussy! BARKLEY: Well, I just bought a house in 2007. And in 2014, I promise you […]
JUNK SCIENCE: Mr. Peanut Goes To Washington
BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Not just one, but TWO different strains of fungi and a submarine are named after him. He was a man of great spirituality and faith, but subscribed to no specific church. He was recruited by Booker T. (though the MG’s weren’t around yet) and started out growing green onions. Aids to both Gandhi and Stalin asked for his advice. There are rumors that in an unimaginable act of racially-motivated violence he may have been castrated, and other rumors that his disinterest in female companionship simply implied that he was gay. Either way, he was doing […]
EARLY WORD: A Brown Reason To Live
Tomorrow we will run the third installment of hazy-crazy-mary-and-dirty-larry memories of our gloriously misspent ’80s youth, specifically the time we following a band called the Butthole Surfers around like the Grateful Dead. We would have posted it today, but the statute of limitations doesn’t run out on some of that stuff until tomorrow. You know how it is. Anyway, we will also — God willing — have a PHAWKER TV interview with Gibby up by sometime Sunday or first thing Monday. If you have any specific questions you need answered — you know like, ‘Were you really Kurt Cobain’s roommate […]
PAPERBOY EXTRA: Dead Man Whining
BY AMY Z. QUINN Courtesy our friends at the Washington (D.C.) City Paper, a cautionary tale about how to make make your newspaper’s online and print operations hate each other with only the contempt that bitter mid-career journalists can muster (hint: moving them to a different building might dilute the whole ‘we’re on the same team’ thing). Many people in the Post newsroom would prefer that their peers at washingtonpost.com restrict themselves to technical stuff. Post the brilliant news stories that come from 15th and L, put together slide shows, edit the videos, and go home. But it doesn’t work […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Czech-born filmmaker Milos Forman is an Academy Award-winning director, but his life story, as Forman tells Terry Gross, is no less dramatic than his cinematic success. Born in 1932 in a small town near Prague, Forman experienced war at a young age, when Nazi armies marched on his country. Though Forman continued to live in Czechoslovakia under Gestapo rule, his Jewish father and Protestant mother were sent to Auschwitz, where they perished. After the war, Czechoslovakia came under communist rule, and Forman attended the Prague Film Institute. He began his film-making career during the “new wave of Czech […]
EYE SAW AN X-RAY OF A GIRL PASSING GAS Part 2: Remember Son, ‘Better To Regret Something You HAVE Done Than To Regret Something You HAVEN’T Done’
BY JONATHAN VALANIA [CLICK HERE TO READ PART 1] Admittedly it was hard to evangelize about a band called Butthole Surfers — the name itself took a lot of explaining. (“Yeah, I know, I know ‘stupid name’, but…not gay, no, nothing gay about them…well actually I guess the drummer is gay…but there is a naked chick dancing most of the time.” And that was just with my mother! It didn’t go any easier with the family pastor, let me tell ya.) But evangelize we did, because brothers and sisters, friends of the revolution, after 20 epileptic minutes under those strobe […]
Learning Japanese On The Internet Is Easy
Today we learn how to say ‘what food do you like?’. Hint: Don’t order the rhino. Trust me. Next time we will learn how to find out where the bathroom is. So lay off the liquids until then. Again, trust me.
PAPERBOY: ‘Duane’s Last Stand’ Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and […]
5 Things You Should Know About FOOD FOR ANIMALS
1. Founding members Vulture Voltaire (rhymes) and Ricky Rabbit (beats) began life as dutiful D.C.-area hardcore kids, but they could not ignore the gravitational yank of the funk, the skronk-appeal of free jazz, or the verbal clarity of hip-hop. Now they make crazy rap songs. Don’t even try to talk smack about Outkast around them. 2. Vulture V needed some lyrical yin to his yang, so the group made rapper Hy a fully vested member for “Belly,” their second CD, which has a home on Hoss Records. Hy is supremely confident about his microphone abilities: “But fuck bein’ humble/When it […]
CAMPUS MASSACRE: Ill. Gunman Kills 5, Shoots 18
DeKALB, Ill. — With minutes left in a class in ocean sciences at Northern Illinois University on Thursday afternoon, a tall skinny man dressed all in black stepped out from behind a curtain on the stage of the lecture hall, said nothing, and opened fire with a shotgun, the authorities and witnesses said. The man shot again and again, witnesses said, perhaps 20 times or more. Students in the large lecture hall, stunned and screaming, dropped to the floor. They crouched behind anything they could find, even an overhead projector. They scattered, the blood of victims spattering, some said, on […]