WARNING: GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING CONTENT NBCDFW: Two police officers shot and killed a 23-year-old black man who came within several feet of them brandishing a knife Tuesday in St. Louis, several miles from where Michael Brown was killed last week in Ferguson, police said. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson told reporters that the suspect shot Tuesday had brandished a knife at officers and refused to drop it when police ordered him to, instead saying, “Shoot me now. Kill me.” Just after the shooting, a crowd of at least 100 people gathered, some of them chanting “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” […]

  BY SEAN CALDWELL Ishmael Butler was once better known as Butterfly, who, along with Doodlebug and Ladybug, helmed the beloved jazz-inflected hip-hop trio Digable Planets, who were among the select few hip-hop outfits offering a credible alternative to the bitches-bullets-and-bling ethos of then-ascendant gangsta rap. In 1993, the band released Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), which spawned the group’s best known single, “Rebirth of the Slick (Cool Like Dat).” With its titular nod to Miles Davis and infectious blend of Kind Of Blue horns, crisp snare, descending upright bass and beatnik word-jazz, the single earned Digable […]

“Homer Simpson” by REMEMBRANDT FRESH AIR If you’ve ever been a fan of The Simpsons, here’s your chance to see all 552 episodes of the show in the longest single-series marathon in TV history. They’ll be shown back to back, in sequential order over 12 days and nights on the FXX cable network beginning Thursday.The Simpsons holds the record as the longest-running scripted entertainment series in TV history. In 1987, cartoonist Matt Groening’s yellow-skinned Simpsons family — father Homer, mother Marge and the kids, brainy Lisa, bratty Bart and baby Maggie — began on TV as interstitial segments on Fox’s […]

  INQUIRER: Sitting in his hotel lobby, 20 miles from the stadium, Davis’ stepfather takes a phone call. “Are you serious?” asks Mark Williams, who has been part of the family since Mo’ne was 6. On the phone is coach Steve Bandura, whose son Scott plays for Taney. The girl, he says, will be on the cover of the next Sports Illustrated. The first Little Leaguer ever. Williams shakes his head, drags a hand over his face, and smiles. This is the same girl who used to cry when her mother braided her long hair at age 6; whom he […]

ROLLING STONE: Leonard Cohen has confirmed the September 23rd release of his new album Popular Problems, set to be unveiled just two days after his 80th birthday. The album will feature nine new songs and was produced by Patrick Leonard, who worked with Cohen on his 2012 album Old Ideas. Fans that pre-order the album will receive an instant download of Cohen’s new song “Almost Like the Blues.” MORE PREVIOUSLY: The Great Man glides onstage in black pinstripes and a fedora like a gangster cantor, double-breasted and tie-less, his crisp creamy blue shirt buttoned-up to the neck David Lynch-style. He […]

The excellent title track from the new album, which drops next Tuesday and is currently streaming in its entirety at iTunes Radio. They play Union Transfer November 20th. And just because we LOVE this “Myriad Harbor” video [see below] from 2007’s Challengers so frickin’ much, we’re posting a double-shot of New Porno for you lucky ducks. C’mon, get happy!

NEWSWEEK: Start with militarization. While this might seem like a “boys with toys” problem—cops playing dress-up as they search for their inner G.I. Joe—it’s really about bad law enforcement tactics. One thing sometimes forgotten is that there are decades of research on policing tactics, and competent officers and their bosses rely on this research to guide them because they are want to maintain law and order, instead of just pretending the movie RoboCop was a documentary. Research shows that militarization rarely works, and usually makes things worse. Studies also show that police have the power to either lessen the tensions […]

Brazilian psych-rock juggernaut heroically defending the axis bold as love with epic sunshine super bossa novas that prove incontrovertibly that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.* They play Boot N Saddle on 8/21. Get tix HERE. *All due apologies to Bill Hicks

NEW YORK TIMES: Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was killed by a police officer, sparking protests around the nation, was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, a preliminary private autopsy performed on Sunday found. One of the bullets entered the top of Mr. Brown’s skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury, according to Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York, who flew to Missouri on Sunday at the family’s request to conduct the separate autopsy. It was […]

  FRESH AIR When author Stephan Eirik Clark read Fast Food Nation in 2001, he didn’t know it would inspire him to write a fictional account of the food industry. “Flavorings were like gravity or electricity — something that was all around me but that I had never paid any attention to,” Clark tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “And as soon as I read that book and its chapter on food product design, I started to ask myself, ‘How important are these to the foods?’ I started to question if I was really eating food or just the idea of […]