BY MAVIS LINNEMANN No mommy hang-ups here. I love my mother, even when she does take on that Joan Crawford-like persona. Most of the time, though, she’s a real peach. Unfortunately, I won’t be making her a mother’s day feast this year. I will, however, be cooking for my friend Emily’s family, and I wanted to make something really special, something that just screams spring, so I stepped into my kitchen to test out possible recipes. There’s one vegetable that’s earthy and bright at the same time, that has the ability to stand on its own and blend in with the […]

TELEVISION SKY: I started 3 different bands in college. In each one, we dreamed of making it big, landing a record deal, and having hot Japanese chicks scream our song lyrics at us when we toured Asia. Now that I’ve made it through grad school, and my band mates are off having kids and working their lives away 9-5, my dreams have crossed over to a different platform. I’m building tech startups and dreaming of making it big, landing VC funding, and having geeky Rails programmers whisper as I pass them in the hall at NerdCon. Perhaps it’s not as […]

COLUMBIA TRIBUNE: A police SWAT team entered Whitworth’s residence around 8:30 p.m. suspecting a large amount of marijuana at the location, police spokeswoman Officer Jessie Haden said. SWAT members encountered a pit bull upon entry, held back and then fatally shot the dog, which officers said was acting in an uncontrollably aggressive manner. Whitworth was arrested, and his wife and 7-year-old son were present during the SWAT raid, Haden said. A second dog, which Whitworth’s attorney Jeff Hilbrenner described as a corgi, also was shot but was not killed. Police discovered a grinder, a pipe and a small amount of […]

The Hand of Fatima dir. Augusta Palmer, US, 2009, video, 75 mins Wednesday, May 5 at 7pm Director Augusta Palmer in person   The Hand of Fatima is a double portrait of a rock critic and his favorite band. Robert Palmer (1945 – 1997) was America’s pre-eminent music writer, best known for his book Deep Blues and his work for The New York Times. Morocco’s the Master Musicians of Jajouka play music older than history, and jammed with Ornette Coleman and Sonic Youth. Using Palmer’s writing about the band as her guide, his daughter Augusta set out for Morocco in […]

FRESH AIR Lyricist Hal David and composer Burt Bacharach began their collaboration together in 1957 after meeting in New York City’s legendary Brill Building — the home of dozens of music publishers, as well as songwriters such as Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Paul Simon. Only a year later, their song “The Story of My Life” hit the U.S. country music charts. Soon afterward, Perry Como recorded their song “Magic Moments,” which also climbed the charts. But it was in 1961, when Bacharach and David started their collaboration with the sultry pop star Dionne Warwick, when they had their biggest […]

TORRENT FREAK: With this shift from physical to digital, another important change hit the industry, one that may in part explain why the labels’ revenues in the U.S. continued to decline. With the introduction of paid downloads, consumers no longer had to buy a full album if they were only interested in two or three songs. This new freedom for consumers has dramatically changed the music sales landscape. According to statistics taken from the RIAA shipment database, between 2004 and 2008 the number of single tracks sold in the U.S. increased by 669 percent while the number of album sales […]

NEW YORKER: Last week, before the Times Square incident, I was talking with a former U.S. intelligence officer who worked extensively on jihadi cases during several overseas tours. He said that when a singleton of Shahzad’s profile—especially a U.S. citizen—turns up in a place like Peshawar, local jihadi groups are much more likely to assess him as a probable U.S. spy than as a genuine volunteer. At best, the jihadi groups might conclude that a particular U.S.-originated individual’s case is uncertain. They might then encourage the person to go home and carry out an attack—without giving him any training or […]