The Good News Flower Hour #5 After a holiday hiatus, The Good News Flower Hour returns with all the news of the week that fits — in a five minute cartoon narrated by a flower that sounds JUST LIKE ME! You’re welcome.
PHAWKER TAWK: Department Of Eagles
DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES began in 2000, when New York University assigned freshmen Fred Nicolaus and Daniel Rossen to share a room. To pass the time during an uneventful spring semester, the two began making music together, collecting samples and turning them into songs. In 2004 Daniel joined the group Grizzly Bear as a singer, guitarist and songwriter. In the meantime, Fred was working a 9-5 job and opening a savings account. However, after work he would record ideas and email them to Daniel, who was also working on a new batch of material between tours, much of which felt far […]
USELESS INFORMATION: You Need This In Your Life
[Click image to activate Internet] Just what David Lee Roth always needed: An ON/OFF switch. More fun than yarn ball in a room full of kittens!
CINEMA: Big Pimpin’
Notorious (2009, directed by George Tillman Jr. 100 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Get a jump on mid-90’s nostalgia and catch the new biopic of slain hip-hop icon Biggie Smalls, Notorious. It’s 1994, George Foreman is the heavyweight champion, Tonya Harding and O.J. Simpson dominate the headlines. West Coast-based artists Tupac Shakur and Dr. Dre are at the top of the game when Sean “Puffy” Combs and The Notorious B.I.G. drop Biggie’s debut Ready To Die, drawing attention back to the rap game’s East Coast roots. Over the next few years this East Coast versus West Coast feud […]
PROM 1984: Jennifer Aniston
[via BUZZFEED] Funny, we also went to the prom in 1984 and our date looked a lot like this. It pains us to admit it, but we looked like Duran Duran. Or tried to. Man, this is like the time we went to see Jon Stewart at the Tower and he comes and says,’Man, it’s great to be back. Last time I was here I was third row for the Alarm.’ Fuck! We where at that show! Christ, we were hoping to take that to the grave. Oh well, live and learn. Sooner or later, we all 86’d the mousse […]
FADE TO BLACK: Don’t Let The Door Hit Your Ass
CNN: As President Bush prepares to leave office, three quarters of Americans have a parting thought: “Good riddance.” Asked their view of President Bush at the end of his presidency, 75 percent said they are glad he is leaving, according to a CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll taken in December. Only 23 percent said they will miss him. MORE TOM SHALES: Only his remaining ardent supporters would probably classify last night’s TV appearance by President Bush as reality television. On the other hand, detractors — a sizable group, judging by popularity polls — would likely say George W. Bush‘s farewell to […]
IN THE DRINK: Send Lawyers, Guns And Money!
[Photo via TWITTER] NEW YORK TIMES: A US Airways plane that took off Thursday at 3:26 p.m. from La Guardia Airport landed in the Hudson River five minutes later, where it remains mostly submerged. Ferries and other boats converged to help with a rescue effort, as the plane drifted south in the water. Initial reports from police and people at the scene suggest that many of the people on the plane appeared to have escaped. MORE UPDATE: FAA reports that all passengers have been rescued, with no fatalities. Initial reports indicate a flock of geese may gotten sucked up in […]
HEAR YE: Coconut Records Davy
Now playing on PHAWKER RADIO! Get it HERE. ALL MUSIC GUIDE: Three years after his departure from Phantom Planet, musician/actor Jason Schwartzman returned to L.A.’s pop-loving circles with the solo project Coconut Records. Schwartzman had launched Phantom Planet in 1994 and served as the band’s drummer for nearly a decade, simultaneously furthering his acting career with roles in Rushmore, CQ, Slackers, S1m0ne, and Spun. The offers increased once he left Phantom Planet‘s lineup in 2003, but Schwartzman nevertheless had trouble shaking music from his system. With Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger serving as producer, he decamped to Malibu during the summer […]
PAPERBOY: ‘The Passion Of The Nutter’ Edition
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
JUNK SCI: Airborne Toxic Event
FAREWELL TO HARMS: U.S. Military personnel toss everything from unexploded ordinance to amputated limbs onto the burnpit at Balad Air Base in northern Iraq, creating a near-constant toxic plume that can be seen and smelt for miles. BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Balad, the largest military base in Iraq is home to about 25,000 U.S. military personnel as well as several thousand civilian contractors. In December 2006, Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, a bioenvironmental flight commander for the base, reported that there is an acute health hazard with possible chronic implications associated with the disposal of waste, via a […]
PIT AND THE PENDULUM: Turns Out We DO Torture
WASHINGTON POST: The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.” “We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And […]
WORTH REPEATING: Inhale To The Chief
THE HILL’S CONGRESS BLOG: Voting ended late last week on the President-Elect¹s website Change.gov. As was the case in December, questions from the general public pertaining to marijuana and drug policy reform proved to be extremely popular. Of the more than 76,000 questions posed to Obama by the public, the fourth most popular question overall called on the incoming administration to cease arresting and prosecuting adults who use cannabis. And in the sub-category “National Security,” the most popular question posed by the public pertained to amending U.S. drug policies as a way to try and halt the ongoing violence surround […]