NME: Ron Asheton, the guitarist and bassist with The Stooges, has been found dead today (January 6). He was 60. Asheton was found at his home in Ann Arbor this morning, according to police. A cause of death is yet to be confirmed, although initial reports suggest that Asheton died of a heart attack. Detective Sgt Jim Stephenson told local paper Ann Arbor News that foul play is not suspected. He added that Asheton‘s body was found on a living-room sofa, and that he appeared to have been dead for at least several days. Autopsy and toxicology results are pending. […]
HEAR YE: Minty Fresh Beats Jaydiohead
Selected tracks now playing on Phawker Radio! Complete download HERE. Yes the pun is painful — Jay-Z + Radiohead = Jaydiohead, DUH! — and at this late date, the mash-up is best left to the pros — people like Girl Talk and, well, pretty much just Girl Talk. With the last coupla years having seen a deluge of fuck-and-run digital smashmouth, patience for the mash-up to mature as an art form is running thin. Pitchfork has already dismissed this with one of their patented I-didn’t-really-listen-to-it-but-this-vague-dis-should-cover-my-ass kiss-offs, but we beg to differ. Granted, we haven’t actually made it to the end […]
DIRE MAN: Nutter Shutters Seven Fire Companies
Philadelphia Fire Department, circa 1913 [photo courtesy of PhillyHistory.Org] DAILY NEWS: Seven Fire Department companies were closed and 130 firefighters reassigned to other parts of the city yesterday as part of Mayor Nutter’s budget cuts. Nutter announced plans in November to eliminate five engine and two ladder companies to deal with a more than $1 billion hole in the budget over the next five years. MORE FIREFIGHTER HOURLY: Having visited fire departments all around the country, having ridden with very busy companies, I can say with a straight face that Philly faces some of the toughest conditions this side of […]
UNRELIABLE SOURCES: Did NBC Ban Ann Coulter?
DRUDGE: The nation’s top selling conservative author has been banned from appearing on NBC, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT. Banned for life! “We are just not going to have her on any more,” a top network source explains… MORE UPDATE: UNDER PRESSURE, NBC EXECS RE-THINK COULTER BOOKINGS… DEVELOPING… TV NEWSER: Late today, NBC News denied the story with this statement: “We’ve had Ann Coulter on ‘Today’ many times, but because of the news in Washington and the Middle East, we decided to cancel her appearance tomorrow. Understanding the media as well as she does, we are sure she knows this […]
MY SPY: Obama Taps Ex-Clinton White House Chief Of Staff Leon Panetta To Lead Central Intelligence Agency
NEW YORK TIMES: President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday. Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been […]
WE WILL ROCK YOU: BeardsBirds Crush Vikings
PHILADELPHIA 26 MINNESOTA 14 *** WHOOPSIE: Pay-To-Play Probe Ends Richardson Commerce Secretary Bid WASHINGTON POST: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to be commerce secretary, withdrew from consideration yesterday, citing an ongoing federal “pay-to-play” investigation involving one of his political donors as a significant obstacle to his confirmation. Richardson, 61, who competed unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, becomes the first political casualty in Obama’s Cabinet, and his withdrawal marked the first visible crack in what had been one of the smoothest presidential transitions in modern history. MORE RELATED: Picture of Richardson Beating Up […]
EYELESS IN GAZA: Death From Above
[Photo slideshow at: BOSTON GLOBE] [WARNING: Graphic content.] EDITOR’S NOTE: Let the record show that Phawker has no dog in this fight. We are posting these pictures [CLICK TO ENLARGE] as neutral observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because we believe that sanitized reportage of conflict is a gross distortion of reality that only serves to enable conflict to persist. Setting aside for a a moment the convoluted tit-for-tat that stretches all the way back to 1947 and serves as the bloody preamble to what is happening right now, the chain of recent events goes something like this: enraged by Israel’s […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Gay
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Frankly, I’d be lying if I said 2008 was a good years for gays. First, there’s the case of Senator Larry Craig: Mr. Whoopsie footsie nudging tootsies with the undercover cop in the airport restroom. Uh, whoopsie! Exactly. The Idaho senator just couldn’t keep his homosexual tendencies to himself, could he? According to the police report, Craig was caught propositioning a man in the stall next to him in the Minneapolis -St. Paul airport restroom by way of foot nudging. To Craig’s misfortune, the man he propositioned turned out to be an undercover cop. Whoopsie! […]
ARTSY: Dancing With Yourself
[“Billy Idol On Wood” by SHEPARD FAIREY] ALTERNATIVE PRESS MAGAZINE PRESENTS: “Side Show” – Art by Musicians Friday January 2nd, 7pm at T&P Fine Art Gallery. RELATED: A Hip Gallery Grows In The Dirty South (Details after the jump)
REWIND 2008: The Year In Movies We Loved
BY DAN BUSKIRK Looking over this list of favorite film experiences of the last year I’m stuck on the idea that my recommendations might be misleading. Particularly with Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely and with both the Van Sant films, the power of the experiences seem especially diminished by their transition from theater event to home video. Watching Diego’s Luna’s Michael Jackson impersonator break-out his best Jacko moves in front of a Paris skyline in the opening of Mister Lonely or Christopher Doyle’s breathless camerawork in Paranoid Park were visceral experiences in the theater. At home, what can I say: results […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Obama
[EDITOR’S NOTE: New and improved, with more content than ever!] Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Obama in the White House, the Democrats in control of Congress and the motherf*king Republicans down in flames. If this is a dream, we don’t wanna wake up. Join with us now as we stroll down the memory lane of our in-house commentary and analysis on the 2008 Presidential election (for our complete coverage CLICK HERE). Like Same Cooke prophesied in 1963, a change has come. Truly a once in a lifetime moment in this American life. […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Music We Loved
DEMOCRACY IS MESSY: Phawker Best of 2008 staff meeting. [Photo by PAUL PUGILESE, Copyright 2008] ***OUR FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2008*** (In No Particular Order) BON IVER For Emma, Forever Ago Classic story: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes to cabin in the Wisconsin woods and, over the course of three months of complete isolation and living on nothing but venison and Leinenkugels, records confessional folk/rock masterpiece with the hope of catching the ear of the girl he lost, and catches the ear of the world instead. This is pretty much the story of Bon Iver — AKA Justin […]