‘Holmes.’ And why. You know you wanna know. Directed by WOOK.
SONGS TO REMAIN THE SAME: Zep Reunion D.O.A.
MUSICRADAR: Despite published reports indicating otherwise, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham have abandoned plans to record and tour together. MusicRadar spoke exclusively with Peter Mensch, Jimmy Page’s manager, who stated categorically, “Led Zeppelin are over! If you didn’t see them in 2007 [when they played a one-off reunion at London’s O2 Arena], you missed them. It’s done. I can’t be any clearer than that. Mensch confirmed that last fall, when singer Robert Plant made it known he was continuing his partnership with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss and had no intention of returning to Led Zeppelin, replacement vocalists […]
UNCOOL: Obama Puts Record Company Pitbulls In Charge Of Copyright And File Sharing Regulation
CNET: As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, the doyen of the “free culture” movement, endorsed the Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate Party. That was then. As president-elect, one of Obama’s first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America’s favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama’s pick as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the Copyright Term Extension […]
DIRTY DEEDS: The Trouble With Harry Reid
BRENDAN CALLING: So on top of refusing to honor the holds of fellow democrats while upholding the holds of racists like Tom Coburn, doing the GOP’s bidding on FISA in return for campaign donations from Verizon and AT&T, working on behalf of the billboard industry to undermine Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act, we can add running defense for convicted felons, suspicious discussions with a soon-to-be-convicted governor, and also unconstitutionally trying (and failing) to turn away the duly appointed Senator from Illinois (shades of Little Rock Arkansas). And there is so much more, from his support for Joe Lieberman, to […]
PAPERBOY: Special ‘Gamble & Bluff’ Edition
BY DAVE ALLEN 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 steer […]
THE ECHO CHAMBER: Like Porno For Pyros
[Photo: Hatem Moussa/Associated Press via New York Times] L.A. TIMES: Reporting from Cairo and Beirut — Face splotched in blood, eyes closed, mouth aslant, the child seems slumbering, but she is dead. The only part of her you see is her head tilting in ash and rubble above the caption, “A day of massacres in Gaza.” She is nameless, but her face, peeking from a black-and-white photograph spread like a flag of horror across the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper, is unforgettable. In the Gaza Strip, Israel maneuvers with sophisticated tanks, missiles and planes. But the Arab media possess a potent […]
2008 THE YEAR IN DEENEY: Why I Had To Kill VALLEY OF THE SHADOW Before It Killed Me
The Valley of the Shadow is was an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney, the man who brought you Today I Saw, knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is was to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather-and-share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. BY JEFF DEENEY Initially the Valley of the Shadow series was conceived as a documentary effort aimed at exploring the street memorial phenomenon that has become […]
UNAMERICAN ACTIVITIES: You Are Being Watched
TEXAS OBSERVER: Allen Hamilton kept his files secret until his death in 2005, long after his retirement as campus police chief for the University of Texas at Austin. His son discovered them while cleaning out his father’s office. The boxes of documents and photos from the 1960s included records of the most horrific event in Chief Hamilton’s tenure—the August day in 1966 when Charles Whitman perched atop the UT Tower with a high-powered rifle, killing 15 and wounding 33. Graphic photos from the Whitman archives were made available to newspapers to mark the 40th anniversary of that bloody day. But […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Although the Bush administration has stated that the interrogations techniques used at Guantanamo Bay came from the bottom up, British lawyer Philippe Sands disagrees. In his 2008 book, Torture Team, Sands argues that the harsh interrogation policy that emerged after Sept. 11 came from high-ranking government officials and top military figures. Sands warned in a June 2008 Fresh Air interview that the impact of the Bush administration’s conduct would be felt internationally: “The terrible tragedy of these memos and that dark period is that they have migrated into the hands of people who now say, ‘Well, Americans do […]
ALMOST FAMOUS: Adventures In Rock Criticism
EDITOR’S NOTE: Recently, Magnet asked me to do one of those Behind The Music-style navel-gazers about some of the cover stories I wrote for the magazine back in the day, with all the behind-the-scenes sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll dirt and gossip that could not be printed in a family indie-rock magazine back in the less-permissive 20th Century. The hard copy came out around Christmas, and last week they posted it to their new-and-improved web site/blog/thingee. I have included this ginormous photo of me, suitable for framing or dartboard-use, which they assured me was going to be the cover. […]
EYELESS IN GAZA: Israel Maintains Media Blackout
[Photo Source: BOSTON GLOBE] NEW YORK TIMES: And so for an 11th day of Israel’s war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it waited in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering, but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel. Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one the […]
Obama Taps CNN’s Sanjay Gupta For Surgeon General
CNN: The Obama transition team approached Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, about becoming U.S. surgeon general, according to sources inside the transition and at CNN. Gupta was in Chicago, Illinois, in November to meet with President-elect Barack Obama on the matter, sources said. Gupta has declined comment. The transition team is impressed with the combination of Gupta’s past government experience, as a White House fellow in 1997 and a special adviser to then-first lady Hillary Clinton, along with his medical career as a neurosurgeon and his communication skills, the transition source said. Gupta is a member of the […]