The White Album Listening Party DAVID SREBNIK: “The White Album Listening Party: Revisiting The Beatles’ Top-Seller” celebrates the 40th anniversary (Nov. 22, 1968) of the release of the Beatles scary-new, scary-wonderful, scary-ambitious new recording. The “Listening Party” puts the Beatles White Album in the center of a circle of non celebrity, smart, non-fanatic, well-spoken and knowledgeable Beatles experts, who share their memories, opinions and stories behind the stories and the recording. The discussion proceeds by track order, usually two tracks at a time, followed by both songs. Almost each segue from discussion to music generates both a musical “AHA” moment.It […]
INDIA 9/11: Murder & Mayhem In Mumbai, Gunmen Kill 172, 370 Wounded, Americans And Brits Targeted
UPDATE: A team of FBI agents was ordered to fly to India to investigate the militants who killed four Americans and injured at least two others during a wave of assaults that ripped through a commercial center of Mumbai. The investigators aim to learn more about the origins of the militants who carried out the lethal strikes on luxury hotels, a train station and an Orthodox Jewish center where a New York rabbi and his wife were among five hostages slain. An American and his teenage daughter traveling with a Virginia-based spiritual group were also among the 150 people killed […]
ABATTOIR BLUES: A Thanksgiving Story
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Every Thanksgiving for the last 50 years, the Jaindl family turkey farm has been putting the bird on the dinner table at the White House. A Jaindl bird also goes to George Clooney, Michael Jordan, J. Lo, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger courtesy of Warner Bros. Studios, which has a standing annual order with Jaindl for 500 turkeys to be doled out to its sundry stars and VIPs. Meanwhile, some 350,000 families from Maine to Florida and as far west as the Mississippi — flyover country, as it were — will sit down today to […]
OUR REASON TO GIVE THANKS: Peace & Quiet
PREVIOUSLY: Ann Coulter Defanged? LOS ANGELES TIMES: I know, I know. If the report is true, it’s almost as if our prayers have been answered. MORE [Illustration by ALEX FINE]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff helped pioneer the sound of Philadelphia soul. Their renowned record label, Philadelphia International, produced the hits “Love Train,” “Backstabbers” and “The Love I Lost.” Together, Gamble and Huff were responsible for 15 gold singles and 22 gold albums, eight of which went platinum; they were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. “We wanted to take social themes and translate them to commercial recordings,” Kenny Gamble said in 1988. “Philadelphia International was about spreading love.” Gamble and Huff have a new box set called Love Train. RADIO TIMES […]
CYBER BULLY: MySpace Mom Guilty On 3 Counts
LOS ANGELES TIMES: A Los Angeles federal jury today convicted a Missouri mother of misdemeanor charges in the nationally watched MySpace cyber-bullying case involving the suicide of a 13-year-old girl. But the jury rejected more serious felony charges against Lori Drew. Drew, 49, was accused of violating federal computer statutes and one count of conspiracy for creating the MySpace account in the name of a fictitious 16-year-old boy and using it to engage in an online relationship with 13-year-old Megan Meier. Meier, of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, after the fictitious boy, “Josh Evans,” told her the […]
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: Stranger Than Fiction
[Photo by JOHN DONGES]
CINEMA: Get Milk
MILK (2008, directed by Gus Van Sant, 128 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC Just last month Josh Brolin starred in W, the Oliver Stone biopic, utterly inhabiting the the dim, destructive id of incurious-ness. Now a month later Brolin pops up as the dark id of intolerance, political assassin Dan White in Gus Van Sant’s Milk. Where W seemed designed to hammer a stake into the heart of Bush’s legacy, Milk, which chronicles the life of slain gay activist Harvey Milk, uses the past as a map to inspire the future’s possibilities. If Stone’s film was dismissed in […]
International Press Goes GaGa For Mendte-Gate
Not just the British press, either. Germany and Australia picked up the story as well.
NEWS CLUES: Like A Friendster Of The Truth
Facebook Spammer Fined $873 Million, Now All They Have To Do Is Catch Him Facebook has won $873 million judgment against a Canadian man who bombarded the popular online hangout with sexually explicit “spam” messages. The victory, sealed with a judge’s order issued last Friday, probably won’t yield a windfall for privately held Facebook Inc., whose revenue this year is expected to range between $250 million to $300 million. Court records indicate the alleged spammer, Adam Guerbuez of Montreal, has been difficult to find since Facebook sued him four months ago. But Facebook is hoping the size of the judgment […]
INQUIRY: Congressional Committee Wants To Know If Spitzer Sex Bust Was A Federal Takedown
NEW YORK TIMES: Eight months after a federal investigation into a prostitution ring brought about, the question persists in some circles: Was the federal government out to get Mr. Spitzer? No evidence has surfaced to support such an assertion, and the prosecutor in the case has said that politics played no role in the pursuit of Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat. But that has not put to rest suspicions, expressed on left wing blogs, that Mr. Spitzer, a zealous pursuer of Wall Street wrongdoing who some thought could one day be president, had been singled out. Now, a congressional committee is […]
HELLS BELLS: Sarah Palin Is Coming To Town!
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS: The governor is planning a trip to Georgia to campaign on behalf of Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss early next week on her way to Philadelphia to meet with her old foe, President-elect Barack Obama. Obama is meeting with governors of both parties in Philadelphia to talk about the ailing economy. It’s not clear how many governors are going to attend the Obama event, which the National Governors Association helped put together. “I don’t know if she has a one-on-one with (Obama),” said Palin spokesman Bill McAllister. “It may be, given that they were both involved in […]