BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Hey pals and gals. Got a quick one here for ya. Editor-in-chief JV shot me an email the other day (thanks boss) alerting me to a new development in the Christian coteries: apparently, it’s not enough now to censor the sex (nudity), violence, substance abuse, and demonic images (oh lord) in video games, homosexual content is now on the chopping block. According to Tumeroks, a blog dedicated to covering the development and growth of online games (Warhammer online, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, etc) a Christian conservative investment firm called The Timothy Plan has just […]
THE WIRE: Councilman, Is That A Justice Department Wire Under Your Suit Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?
DAILY NEWS: CITY COUNCILMAN Jack Kelly secretly recorded for federal investigators conversations with his chief of staff and a generous campaign contributor, according to documents obtained by the Daily News. Former chief of staff Chris Wright goes on trial Jan. 27 for corruption charges along with brothers Ravinder and Hardeep Chawla and their attorney, Andrew Teitelman. In an August indictment, the U.S. attorney accused Wright of using his City Hall post to help real estate development companies run by the Chawla brothers and Teitelman, who was also Kelly’s campaign treasurer. In exchange, Wright got cash bribes, free legal advice and […]
GHOST OF D.B. COOPER: On The Verge Of Financial Collapse, Man Fakes Death In Spectacular Plane Crash
NEW YORK TIMES: A financial adviser from Indiana disappeared into the Alabama woods early Monday after faking a distress call and parachuting from a small plane that crashed in Florida. The police in three states were looking for the pilot, identified as Marcus Schrenker, 38. No one was hurt in the crash. According to the police in Santa Rosa County in the Florida Panhandle, where the plane went down, Mr. Schrenker turned up safely about 220 miles north of there. And there is evidence that Mr. Schrenker was an experienced pilot who might have been trying to fake his own […]
HOT DOC: It’s A Man’s World After All
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Videotape The Israeli Army Doesn’t Want You To See
Facts4idfnadesk: From the CBC Website * THEY WOULD VASTLY PREFER YOU TO PAY ATTENTION TO THIS FOOL INSTEAD: SDEROT, Israel — Joe the Plumber has set aside his wrenches to become a rookie war correspondent, covering Israel’s side of its two-week-old military offensive in Gaza. The Ohio man, who rocketed to fame during the U.S. presidential campaign for asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, was in the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Sunday to tell readers of the conservative pjtv.com Web site about the rockets that rain down from the neighboring Gaza Strip. The people of Sderot “can’t […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR After 44 years as a newspaperman, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. is making his debut as a fiction writer. His new novel, The Rules of The Game, features an investigative reporter on the beat of a hotly contested presidential election. Downie joined the Post as an summer intern in 1964, and retired in Sept. 2008 after serving 17 years as the paper’s executive editor. In his last year as editor, the paper won six Pulitzer Prizes for work done in 2007 — the most it had ever earned in one year. ALSO, John Yemma, the […]
HEAR: Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavillion
Now playing on PHAWKER RADIO! THE TIMES OF LONDON: There is cheap music, potent and conducive to an easy sentimentality (and, often, none the worse for that), and there is music that produces in the listener a more complex and gradual reaction, which combines bafflement, the playing of a shy smile on the lips, a rush of heat to the face, a sensation of being once more a child, unsure quite how to respond to or process the experience. Merriweather Post Pavilion, named after an open-air concert venue in Maryland, is a glorious example of the latter. MORE BY JONATHAN […]
WE WILL ROCK YOU: Birds Kick Giants To The Curb
PHILADELPHIA 23 NEW YORK 11
STREET FIGHTING MAN: By Any Means Necessary
NEW YORK TIMES: JERUSALEM — The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks. Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say. Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police […]
RUINATION: No Country Left Behind
[CLICK TO ENLARGE] THE ATLANTIC: Barack Obama assumes the presidency this year amid a similar sense of national crisis, and having made similar promises of change. And, like Roosevelt, he’ll be leading a country very different from the one his predecessor inherited: as the statistics on this map show, change itself is one thing we’ve seen in abundance in the past eight years. Making sense of that upheaval will be the first responsibility of the new administration. Since 2000, America has changed in small ways, in big ways, and in ways that seem innocent enough now but no doubt herald […]
OBAMALAMA DING DONG: The First 100 Minutes
COMEDY CENTRAL: As Barack Obama prepares to take office in less than two weeks — still seems like an eternity, doesn’t it? — There’s been a lot of talk about how he’ll spend, and what he’ll achieve, during his first 100 days in office. Even though he’s warned against expecting miracles during that time period and has tried in vain to consider instead his first 1,000 days in office (yeah, right), the speculation does not end. Mad Magazine has a different question: What will Barack Obama achieve during his first 100 minutes in office? In an exclusive timetable that they’ve […]
CINEMA: The Last Train Outta Palookaville
THE WRESTLER (2008, directed by Darren Aronofsky, 105 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I know we’re in Rocky’s hometown but I’ve been taken aback at how many folks have voiced tingly anticipation about seeing ’80s tough guy heart-throb Mickey Rourke as the washed-up title character in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. When he kickboxed with Jean-Claude Van Damme a decade ago no one cared but now that Rourke’s hit his fifties the idea of him dressing up like David Lee Roth and jumping off the top rope has big city audiences rushing to the Art Houses? What gives? It […]