ASSOCIATED PRESS: Joe Paterno, who racked up more wins than anyone else in major college football but was fired from Penn State amid a child sex abuse scandal has died. He was 85. His family released a statement Sunday morning to announce his death. Paterno’s son Scott announced Nov. 18 that his father was being treated for lung cancer, which was diagnosed in mid-November during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. The storied career of “JoePa” included 409 wins in 46 seasons and two national championships. But his reputation for success with honor was shattered when a former assistant […]
MUST SEE TV: American Beauty
Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo. Stunning HD time-lapse sequence of Yosemite National Park — easily one of the most awe-inspiring, jaw-droppingly beautiful places on Earth — set to m83’s “Outro.”
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR Brad Pitt is aware that his portrayal of a baseball-team manager in the new film Moneyball is somewhat different from his previous roles. After all, the actor has played a Nazi-hunter, a vampire, a cowboy hitchhiker, a detective on the trail of a serial killer, the Greek warrior Achilles, a terrorist, an assassin and the outlaw Jesse James. He has ridden on horseback and dodged both flying glass and flying fists for physical roles in movies like Troy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Fight Club. Pitt began his own acting career in 1987, with roles on TV shows […]
NPR FOR THE DEF: Terry Gross On Colbert!
Just announced that Fresh Air’s Terry Gross will be on The Colbert Report on Wednesday January 25th! PREVIOUSLY: NPR FOR THE DEAF: Hey! That’s MY Name! RELATED: Q&A With A Man Called Francis RELATED: Q&A With A Man Called Francis, Part 2
THE MAN FROM MAN MAN: Q&A w/ Honus Honus
BY BRYAN BIERMAN In a parked car on some Saturday, summer of 2004, I fumbled through the radio stations, finally landing on WKDU, and this crazy noise they were playing. When I got home, I emailed the DJs to find the name of that ‘gypsy Tom Waits circus punk’ (or probably something similar to that—I was 15 and had just bought Swordfishtrombones, so I’m sure I wanted to show that off). I couldn’t get the music out of my head for days, but I didn’t know what it was. “The band’s called Man Man,” they finally wrote back, “they’re local.” […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Free Bradley Manning
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Never before has a supposedly sophisticated military establishment demonstrated such spitefully infantile behavior over a wholly contrived crisis brought on by its own colossally bungling incompetence. You guessed it. I’m talking about that back-in-the-news stupendously-exaggerated-harm-to-national-security Bradley Manning/Wikileaks saga the Pentagon is so determined to prove itself the fool over. No matter the number of embarrassing government-negative exposés, or the considerable public pressure being brought on Bradley’s behalf, the matter continues to prove itself a blatant travesty the injustice of which is exceeded only by the inability and/or unwillingness of its brass-laden pursuers to display so much as a smidgen of contrition or even canine-level […]
HALLELUJAH: A New Leonard Cohen Album!
[Artwork by LiezIS] THE GUARDIAN: By that reckoning, Cohen has been far more of a success than he could have predicted. There have been reversals of fortune along the way but 40 years later he enters an ornate room in Paris’s fabled Crillon Hotel to a warm breeze of applause. Looking like a grandfatherly mobster, he doffs his hat and smiles graciously, just as he did every night of the 2008-10 world tour that represented a miraculous creative revival. The prickly, saturnine, dangerously funny character witnessed in Bird on a Wire has found a measure of calm and, as he […]
TONITE: ‘Let’s Get High’
Who loves the sun? Bad Weather California. Three songs on their new album—“Stand In My Sunshine,” “Big Yellow Ball,” “Let It Shine,”—revolve around it (get it!?). Oh, also, the album is called Sunkissed. So it’s probably no surprise that all the elements of a good Beach Boys record are here—vocals harmonies, shimmering guitars, bouncy organ, psychedelic drugs. But the band doesn’t just peddle their own rehashed version of ‘60s sunshine pop; they’re too weird for that. Instead they mix in voice modulators, drum machines, feedback loops, and anything else you got, then take another sharp left with 30-second blasts of […]
RIP: Etta James, Legendary R&B Hellcat, Dead At 73
NEW YORK TIMES: Etta James, whose powerful, versatile and emotionally direct voice could enliven the raunchiest blues as well as the subtlest love songs, most indelibly in her signature hit, “At Last,” died Friday morning in Riverside, Calif. She was 73. Ms. James was not easy to pigeonhole. She is most often referred to as a rhythm and blues singer, and that is how she made her name in the 1950s with records like “Good Rockin’ Daddy.” She is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. She was also comfortable, and convincing, […]
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Feds Take Down Megaupload; Swizz Beatz Apparently CEO
NEW YORK TIMES: Federal prosecutors in Virginia say they have shut down one of the world’s largest Internet file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, and charged its founder and others with violating piracy laws. An indictment accuses the company of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment was unsealed Thursday [and] says that at one point, Megaupload was the 13th most popular Web site in the world. MORE RELATED: Spearheaded by CEO Swizz Beatz, Megaupload has issued a counter lawsuit against Universal Music Group to stop the record label from interfering with […]
JAZZER: Meet Nate Wooley
[Photo by Jim Newberry] BY ZIVIT SHLANK Trumpter and composer Nate Wooley has maintained a relatively humble profile on the scene while simultaneously creating a new harmonic language with his musical innovations. He’s played in a variety of settings: solo, duet, quartet and quintet. With each new context, Wooley strives to make us hear the trumpet in a whole new way and as such he has become one of the most mesmerizing figures on the ‘out’ jazz scene. His latest released, (Put Your) Hands Together, dropped last year and featured some of Brooklyn’s finest jazz and experimental players. Thanks once […]
THE REVOVLING DOOR: This Is Why We Suck
[Click image to enlarge] THE HILL: Corporate headhunters are sizing up the K Street prospects of the retiring members of the 112th Congress — and they like what they see. Twenty-five representatives and senators so far have announced they will retire from Capitol Hill after this year’s election. Executives who work to place ex-lawmakers at law firms, lobby shops and corporate boards are monitoring the outgoing lawmakers and discussing who could go where — and how much they would earn. “As a retiring class goes, this is a very valuable class. A lot of these members are marketable and will […]
Gene Ween To Release Rod McKuen Tribute Album
[Artwork by TODD SLATER] PHILLY DELI: Gene Ween will be releasing a new album on April 10 entitled Marvelous Clouds, which will be a 13-song tribute to poet and songwriter Rod McKuen (who has penned songs for the likes of Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra and Madonna just to name a few). All this will be done under his own name Aaron Freeman. MORE RELATED: The statistics involving McKuen’s career and work are staggering. He has recorded over two hundred albums and is the recipient of 63 gold and platinum records worldwide. His three-dozen books of poetry have been published in […]