FRESH AIR After 44 years as a newspaperman, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. is making his debut as a fiction writer. His new novel, The Rules of The Game, features an investigative reporter on the beat of a hotly contested presidential election. Downie joined the Post as an summer intern in 1964, and retired in Sept. 2008 after serving 17 years as the paper’s executive editor. In his last year as editor, the paper won six Pulitzer Prizes for work done in 2007 — the most it had ever earned in one year. ALSO, John Yemma, the […]
HEAR: Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavillion
Now playing on PHAWKER RADIO! THE TIMES OF LONDON: There is cheap music, potent and conducive to an easy sentimentality (and, often, none the worse for that), and there is music that produces in the listener a more complex and gradual reaction, which combines bafflement, the playing of a shy smile on the lips, a rush of heat to the face, a sensation of being once more a child, unsure quite how to respond to or process the experience. Merriweather Post Pavilion, named after an open-air concert venue in Maryland, is a glorious example of the latter. MORE BY JONATHAN […]
WE WILL ROCK YOU: Birds Kick Giants To The Curb
PHILADELPHIA 23 NEW YORK 11
STREET FIGHTING MAN: By Any Means Necessary
NEW YORK TIMES: JERUSALEM — The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks. Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say. Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police […]
RUINATION: No Country Left Behind
[CLICK TO ENLARGE] THE ATLANTIC: Barack Obama assumes the presidency this year amid a similar sense of national crisis, and having made similar promises of change. And, like Roosevelt, he’ll be leading a country very different from the one his predecessor inherited: as the statistics on this map show, change itself is one thing we’ve seen in abundance in the past eight years. Making sense of that upheaval will be the first responsibility of the new administration. Since 2000, America has changed in small ways, in big ways, and in ways that seem innocent enough now but no doubt herald […]
OBAMALAMA DING DONG: The First 100 Minutes
COMEDY CENTRAL: As Barack Obama prepares to take office in less than two weeks — still seems like an eternity, doesn’t it? — There’s been a lot of talk about how he’ll spend, and what he’ll achieve, during his first 100 days in office. Even though he’s warned against expecting miracles during that time period and has tried in vain to consider instead his first 1,000 days in office (yeah, right), the speculation does not end. Mad Magazine has a different question: What will Barack Obama achieve during his first 100 minutes in office? In an exclusive timetable that they’ve […]
CINEMA: The Last Train Outta Palookaville
THE WRESTLER (2008, directed by Darren Aronofsky, 105 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I know we’re in Rocky’s hometown but I’ve been taken aback at how many folks have voiced tingly anticipation about seeing ’80s tough guy heart-throb Mickey Rourke as the washed-up title character in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. When he kickboxed with Jean-Claude Van Damme a decade ago no one cared but now that Rourke’s hit his fifties the idea of him dressing up like David Lee Roth and jumping off the top rope has big city audiences rushing to the Art Houses? What gives? It […]
SUBSPACE BIOGRAPHIES: How ‘Homeboy’ Became…
‘Holmes.’ And why. You know you wanna know. Directed by WOOK.
SONGS TO REMAIN THE SAME: Zep Reunion D.O.A.
MUSICRADAR: Despite published reports indicating otherwise, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham have abandoned plans to record and tour together. MusicRadar spoke exclusively with Peter Mensch, Jimmy Page’s manager, who stated categorically, “Led Zeppelin are over! If you didn’t see them in 2007 [when they played a one-off reunion at London’s O2 Arena], you missed them. It’s done. I can’t be any clearer than that. Mensch confirmed that last fall, when singer Robert Plant made it known he was continuing his partnership with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss and had no intention of returning to Led Zeppelin, replacement vocalists […]
UNCOOL: Obama Puts Record Company Pitbulls In Charge Of Copyright And File Sharing Regulation
CNET: As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, the doyen of the “free culture” movement, endorsed the Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate Party. That was then. As president-elect, one of Obama’s first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America’s favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama’s pick as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the Copyright Term Extension […]
DIRTY DEEDS: The Trouble With Harry Reid
BRENDAN CALLING: So on top of refusing to honor the holds of fellow democrats while upholding the holds of racists like Tom Coburn, doing the GOP’s bidding on FISA in return for campaign donations from Verizon and AT&T, working on behalf of the billboard industry to undermine Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act, we can add running defense for convicted felons, suspicious discussions with a soon-to-be-convicted governor, and also unconstitutionally trying (and failing) to turn away the duly appointed Senator from Illinois (shades of Little Rock Arkansas). And there is so much more, from his support for Joe Lieberman, to […]
PAPERBOY: Special ‘Gamble & Bluff’ 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 […]