Pepsi actually paid somebody good money to do this? Reminds us of that dream date with Madonna back around the time of the Sex book that went horribly awry. Let’s just say it left a bad taste in our mouth.* *Just to be clear, we were being facetious. We have never had a dream date, nor any other kind of date, with Madonna, nor has she ever urinated on or in us. We apologize in advance for any distress this misunderstanding might have created.
THANK YOU DOM PILEGGI: Harrisburg Budget Impasse Chases Shyamalan Movie Shoot To Toronto
INQUIRER: With uncertainty about whether Pennsylvania’s film tax credit will be authorized in the state budget — now in Day 56 of limbo — the [new M. Night Shyamalan] supernatural thriller [Devil] has relocated production to Toronto. Though the filmmaker has shot eight of his nine features in the Philadelphia region — for an estimated economic impact of $375 million, according to the local film office — his backers couldn’t wait any longer for legislators to approve the incentive that brings filmmaking and jobs to the state. “Last week, at the 11th hour, Devil withdrew its application for credits because […]
BREAKING: Michael Jackson Death Ruled Homicide
MSNBC: The Los Angeles County coroner ruled Michael Jackson’s death a homicide, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press on Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings have not been publicly released. Dateline NBC’s Josh Mankiewicz confirmed that Dr. Murray is the target of a manslaughter probe. Meanwhile, a search warrant affidavit revealed that Jackson had lethal levels of the powerful anesthetic propofol in his system when he died in his rented Los Angeles mansion on June 25. MORE HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP: 82 minutes. That’s how much time passed before anyone called 911 after Dr. Conrad […]
BUSTED: What Ever Happened To Annie Leibovitz?
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Despite being a compulsive perfectionist whose shoots cost a fortune to produce, Leibovitz was very much in demand. People spoke of a fabled “contract for life” from Condé Nast, thought to bring her as much as $5 million annually. (The estimate didn’t seem far-fetched; a decade ago, the Times reported that Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse had instructed Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter not to “nickel and dime” Leibovitz over the issue of an extra quarter-million dollars in her contract.) She was said to earn a day rate of $250,000 just to set foot in a studio […]
AMANDA BLANK: Might Like You Better
PITCHFORK: In Romeo Void’s hands, the line “I might like you better if we slept together” is a casual diss as much as a come on, and it’s delivered with a detached, arch wit, making it a subversive punch line within a dark post-punk song. With Blank, it’s the whole song, one idea– Blank is horny–stretched well past its breaking point. Crazy thing is Blank’s song is less danceable, less subversive, far lighter, more PG, and just flat out more boring than Romeo Void’s. She doesn’t sound sexy, she sounds like she’s going through the motions. MORE NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Amanda Blank first […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Journalist and author T.R. Reid set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors’ offices, all in the hopes of understanding how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care. The result: his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. Reid is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post — in whose pages he recently addressed five major myths about other countries’ health-care systems — and the former chief of the paper’s London and Tokyo bureaus. Reid was the lead correspondent for the 2008 Frontline documentary Sick Around […]
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: Suing Illegal File-Sharers Back To The Stone Age Is Perfectly Constitutional
[Image via NCSC] ZDNET: Jammie Thomas-Rasset was hit with a $1.9 million verdict for filesharing 24 songs — roughly $80,000 per song. Is that even constitutional? Thomas-Rasset’s lawyers filed an appeal saying it’s not. Friday, the Justice Department weighed in with an opinion that it is. Under the Copyright Act’s statutory damages provision, the jury had a wide berth to assign damages – anywhere from $750 to $30,000 for standard violations and from $30,000 to $150,000 for “willful violations.” The argument is basically that such high numbers are punitive in nature and punitive damages need to bear some resemblance to […]
REPORT: Vast Network Of Security Cams Across London Yields Paltry Crime-Fighting Results
BBC: Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: “It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.” He added: “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. “It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in […]
Authorities Break Up Germantown Dog-Fighting Ring; Michael Vick Not Involved, But Still Will Be Blamed
INQUIRER: Officers from the Pennsylvania SPCA Sunday uncovered a dog-fighting ring at an East Germantown home and rescued several badly injured pit bulls found there. Following a tip to an animal cruelty hotline, the officers discovered two dead dogs and five others at the home, in the 200 block of East Bringhurst Street. Three men, including the property owner and the alleged ringleader, are facing charges. The bust comes in the wake of the Philadelphia Eagles’ signing of quarterback Michael Vick, the country’s best-known former dog-fighter. Vick, who served 18 months in federal prison for running a dog-fighting operation, has […]
Justice Department Ethics Office Formally Recommends Prosecution Of CIA Torture
NEW YORK TIMES: The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter. When the C.I.A. first referred its inspector general’s findings to prosecutors, they decided that none of the cases merited prosecution. But Mr. Holder’s associates say that when he took office and saw the allegations, which included the deaths of people in custody and other cases of physical or mental torment, he began to reconsider. […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN: Asteroid #4, Kung Fu Necktie, Last Night [Photo by TIFFANY YOON] BY WILL HANNAN Drugs make for better music. Whether you’re playing in a stoner metal three-piece ripping bongs and noodling on your Gibson or you’re in a throwback psychedelic band eating acid and drooling on a friend’s vinyl collection, the introduction of psychotropic substances will inevitably make your music more interesting. If you don’t trust me, take it from the two bands that played Kung Fu Necktie last night: The Asteroid #4 and Gondola. Gondola, a Sabbath-inspired bass, guitar, and […]
SEPTA GIRL: A Touch Of Evil
BY PHILLY GRRL The thing about night school is, you’re practically brain dead when you get out from class. A typical workday coupled with three mind-numbing hours of lectures can leave one in a daze. At least that’s the excuse I use when people ask me why I almost got myself killed on the subway this past Monday. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I didn’t almost die. What I did do, however, was violate one of my number one SEPTA subway rule: Always exit in groups. I tend to get lost very easily when it comes to the orange line. I’ve […]
SUFJAN STEVENS: The BQE
ASTHMATIC KITTY: Back in October of 2007, Sufjan Stevens debuted The BQE — a visual and musical homage to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Howard Gilman Opera House in downtown Brooklyn. Originally commissioned by BAM for the Next Wave Festival, The BQE featured three simultaneous film projections, a 35-piece band and orchestra, and live hula hoopers for a 3-night run. One week following the performances, Sufjan and his orchestra went into the studio to record the soundtrack, but afterwards, feeling disenfranchised by the magnitude of the universe, Sufjan decided to shelve the project. Until […]