ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION: It’s a little easier to understand why a Houston man who claimed to have thwarted a potential terrorist attack on a flight leaving Atlanta has not answered repeated requests to tell his story. He was not on the plane, AirTran Airways says. “After conducting additional research into this situation, we have verified, according to flight manifests [legally binding documents] that the individual that allegedly created a first-hand account of events on-board AirTran Airways Flight 297, a Theodore Petruna, was never actually on-board the flight,” AirTran said in a statement, which the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was the first […]
SECRET SERVICE: Obama Assassination Threat Count Down To Disturbing But Acceptable Level
NEW YORK TIMES: The young Marine’s rogue mission, laid out with maps and photographs, was as straightforward as it was chilling. He called it Operation Patriot. The Marine, Kody Brittingham, a 20-year-old lance corporal, wrote that he had taken an oath to “protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.” In a signed “letter of intent,” tucked away in his barracks at Camp Lejeune, he identified a “domestic enemy” he planned to eliminate last winter: President Obama. The details of this threat, which were revealed at his arraignment hearing in North Carolina, have not previously been reported. Mr. Brittingham pleaded […]
Not Quite Journalism, But An Incredible Simulation
NEW YORK TIMES: Welcome to the new world of Maybe Journalism — a best guess at the news as it might well have been, rendered as a video game and built on a bed of pure surmise. A computer-generated “news report” of the Tiger Woods S.U.V. crash — complete with a robotic-looking simulation of Mr. Woods’s wife chasing him with a golf club — has become a top global online video of the moment, perhaps offering a glimpse at the future of journalism, tabloid division. (No matter that the police said she was using the club to release Mr. Woods […]
RIP: Jack Rose, Kensington Bluesman, Dead At 38
SPINNER: Jack Rose, a renowned Philadelphia-based acoustic guitarist, has died of a heart attack at 38, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. Rose was considered instrumental in bringing ragtime into the modern era and transforming it into something that was both referential and original. But as a self-taught player proficient on the guitar, including the 6-string, 12-string and lap steel, he brought a wide range of influences to his music. Explaining his process in a 2007 interview, Rose said his favorite music was “anything that’s pre 1942; Cajun, Country, Blues, Jazz all that stuff… that’s my favorite kind of music.” Rose […]
MUST READ: ‘ClimateGate’ Nonsense Debunked
[Artwork by SHEPARD FAIREY] HUFFINGTON POST: A few weeks ago, hackers broke into the emails of one of the Climate Research Unit of The University of East Anglia, and climate skeptics have been having a field day making mountains out of molehills about what the emails contain. The verdict on global warming is in — it’s caused by humans and it is happening and nothing in the emails challenges that. However, with the internet abuzz about what has been labeled “ClimateGate,” we thought we should set the record straight about the rumors, lies and insinuations about what the emails actually […]
CINEMA: Fly The Friendly Skies
MANOHLA DHARGIS: For most people there’s no joy in sucking down recycled oxygen while hurtling above the clouds. The free drinks and freshly baked cookies in business might be nice. (I wouldn’t know.) For most of us, though, air travel largely invokes the indignities of the stockyard, complete with the crowding and pushing, the endlessly long lines, hovering handlers, carefully timed feedings, a faint communal reek and underlying whiff of peril. The skies rarely seem friendly anymore, but to Ryan Bingham, the corporate assassin played by George Clooney in the laugh-infused stealth tragedy “Up in the Air,” they’re so welcoming, […]
STYLE COUNCIL: Sidewalking
Brieanna Fuller, 24, Visual MIT, Free People King of Prussia Favorite Shops: Free People, various boutiques in Philly, Super Thrift, Circle Thrift Her Style: “Runway inspired, but definitely a rocker-chic edge to it. I love all different types of fashion so I incorporate them all into a cohesive look.” Favorite Accessories: Rings, gift from sister from Vienna and from her favorite salon in Harrisburg scarf: Urban Outfitters Current Look: Rocker accents. Prim and yet effortless. Mixing different textures with cut off Levi’s jean shorts, fun tights, bohemian/rocker inspired jewelry, and always a definitive apparel item like an ‘awesome scarf’ or […]
WORTH REPEATING: Needle Thru The Camel’s Eye
EDITOR’S NOTE: Anybody in a band should read this tragicomic dispatch from former Too Much Joy frontman Mike Quirk about the bizarro universe of major label accounting. The piece is called My $62.47 Royalty Statement: How Major Labels Cook the Books with Digital Downloads, but this end note about predatory lending practices of the royalty system is a good place to dig in. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner […]
CHINESE DEMOCRACY: Just Sayin’
ASSOCIATED PRESS: All in all, it’s hard to imagine how Woods could have handled the whole affair worse, but don’t look for any exodus from Wood’s stable of corporate backers. Tiger is too good, too dominant, too telegenic and his transgressions, to use his word, are too minor, to scare off the big companies. Not surprisingly, Nike, like his other corporate partners, is offering its unconditional allegiance to Woods, who is arguably the company’s most important athlete. “Nike supports Tiger and his family. Our relationship remains unchanged,” the Beaverton-area company said in a statement. Forbes estimated earlier this year that […]
BOOKS: John Brown Was A Slavery-Hatin’ Man
OBIT MAG: A hundred and fifty years ago yesterday, John Brown rode to the gibbet. He wore a black hat, coat, and pants, white socks, and red slippers. Unlike the wrathful, wild-eyed intensity for which he had become famous, Brown’s demeanor was the same as it had been during his trial and imprisonment: unflappably calm, courteous, and even courageous. His composure belied the crimes for which he would forfeit his life: treason, insurrection, and first-degree murder. He walked to the center of the gallows, thanked his jailer for his warmth and hospitality, and waited quietly while his executioners placed a […]
RAW FOOTAGE: Allen Iverson’s Trail Of Tears
He’s back, baby!
TONIGHT: No Sleep ‘Til Stonehenge
Back in 2002, Greg Weeks, a recent transplant folker from New York and a dead ringer for Woody Allen in Sleeper, together with Brooke Sietinsons, Ophelia-voiced Meg Baird and a revolving cast of red-eyed weird beards, formed the Espers, a strummy collective of whispery acid-folk that evokes sugar-plum visions of woodland fairies doing the maypole dance around Stonehenge. Last month the Espers released their third album, the aptly-titled III. As ever, the band’s warm wigwam of sound evokes blood-sugar-sex-magik rituals celebrated by the hangman’s lovely daughters on misty moonlit moors. In other words, this is what flowery noontides sound like […]
THAT’S COMCASTIC: Cable Giant Buys NBC Universal
[Photo by Vincent J. Brown] NEW YORK TIMES: After nearly nine months of negotiations, Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, finally reached an agreement on Thursday to acquire NBC Universal from the General Electric Company. The deal valued NBC Universal at about $30 billion. The agreement will create a joint venture, with Comcast owning 51 percent and G.E. owning 49 percent. Comcast will contribute to the joint venture its stable of cable channels, which includes Versus, the Golf Channel and E Entertainment, worth about $7.25 billion, and will pay G.E. about $6.5 billion in cash, for a total of $13.75 […]