LOS ANGLES TIMES: The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the recall of 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef from a troubled Chino meat-packing company, deeming it unfit for human consumption because of lapses in required inspections. Agriculture Department officials called this the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing the ban in 1999 of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat. The USDA said there was “a remote probability of adverse health consequences from the use of the product.”Problems at the plant first went public following the release of a video (SEE BELOW)showing treatment of animals at […]
DICK CHENEY: No You Can’t
From the clever folks that brought you Billionaires For Bush.
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
HAIRWAY TO STEVEN: Gibby Haynes w/ Paul Green School Of Rock, Trocadero, Sat. 1. Despite recently turning 51, Gibby looked relatively healthy, trim — trademark beer gut not withstanding — and positively boyish with his hair cut short in the style of the day. His voice remains the full-moon bullfrog croak of yore. And his only concession to age or the passage of time, aside from a pair of stylish frames and thick corrective lenses, was a sheet music stand with all his song lyrics, which he utilized like a teleprompter. Between every song, with a Yuengling lager in his […]
KILLADELPHIA: 5 More Dead Since U Went To Bed
DAILY NEWS: In West Philadelphia, the body of a woman who had been stabbed to death lay facedown amid trash outside a vacant rowhouse. In Crescentville, construction workers found a dead man with a gunshot blast to the head.It was all part of a bloody breakfast hour for Philadelphia police yesterday, who hurried to investigate two bodies found within 20 minutes in separate incidents just after 7 a.m. Detectives already were juggling one homicide and two other deaths from overnight. The five deaths came after a three-day homicide hiatus; yesterday’s carnage boosted the city’s murder tally for the year to […]
MEDIA: Morale Shits The Bed At Courier-Post?
The Gannett Newspapers chain has a miserly rep in the biz for buying up papers, sending in the bean counters and subjecting staff and management to brutal belt-tightening: freezing wages, killing bonuses and slashing newsroom jobs. This just came in over the transom from something called the Gannett Blog, which appears to be a gathering place for the disgruntled: I couldn’t make this up if I tried. A reliable Gannett Blog tipster says Corporate sent a human resources representative to the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J., yesterday after the Big Cheeses in McLean, Va., got a letter describing a serious […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
GET IGGY WITH IT: Mgmt., Johnny Brendas, Last Night [Photo by TIFFANY YOON]
WORTH REPEATING: The Perma-Profits Of Perma-War
From Howie Klein’s Down With Tyranny: “I think that the Republicans, from top to bottom, are genuinely trying to change America into Amerika with a ‘k.’ They want America to be a place where ordinary workers cannot organize, where everybody tries to undercut everybody else in the labor market, and where the people in charge are the people who can best tap into war profiteering profits… These people want to change America and change it to make it something that Eisenhower warned us about half a century ago. They want everything in America to be under the control — and […]
MAILBAG: ‘I Also Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas’
LIGHTNING STRIKES THE POSTMAN: Flaming Lips, 2006 Allentown Fair John– Nicely done on the Surfers articles. Great reading. Saw Gibby and the kids Tuesday night here in DC. Also, saw them numerous times ’round the same time as you ’87 through the early ’90s. Then had the privilege of touring with the Surfers when I was the Flaming Lips tour manager back in 1993. Good times. Anyway, I’d be curious to know if Gibby thinks the Surfers had more work left to do. I’ve read in various places that a reunion of any sorts is a moot point, but what […]
OH GOD: Sir Charles Gnarls GOP, Stumps For Obama
Charles Barkley spoke truth to pussy power on CNN today. He may be wrong but we doubt it, and he does too. If we didn’t think it was too soon and he’d probably just gamble it away we’d send him a check for his threatened 2014 Alabama gubernatorial run. And not because we love the Charles Barkley Straight Talk Express, even though we do — but just because Alabama fucking has it coming. And Jesus Christ on a crutch, Wolf Blitzer is SUCH a pussy! BARKLEY: Well, I just bought a house in 2007. And in 2014, I promise you […]
JUNK SCIENCE: Mr. Peanut Goes To Washington
BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Not just one, but TWO different strains of fungi and a submarine are named after him. He was a man of great spirituality and faith, but subscribed to no specific church. He was recruited by Booker T. (though the MG’s weren’t around yet) and started out growing green onions. Aids to both Gandhi and Stalin asked for his advice. There are rumors that in an unimaginable act of racially-motivated violence he may have been castrated, and other rumors that his disinterest in female companionship simply implied that he was gay. Either way, he was doing […]
EARLY WORD: A Brown Reason To Live
Tomorrow we will run the third installment of hazy-crazy-mary-and-dirty-larry memories of our gloriously misspent ’80s youth, specifically the time we following a band called the Butthole Surfers around like the Grateful Dead. We would have posted it today, but the statute of limitations doesn’t run out on some of that stuff until tomorrow. You know how it is. Anyway, we will also — God willing — have a PHAWKER TV interview with Gibby up by sometime Sunday or first thing Monday. If you have any specific questions you need answered — you know like, ‘Were you really Kurt Cobain’s roommate […]
PAPERBOY EXTRA: Dead Man Whining
BY AMY Z. QUINN Courtesy our friends at the Washington (D.C.) City Paper, a cautionary tale about how to make make your newspaper’s online and print operations hate each other with only the contempt that bitter mid-career journalists can muster (hint: moving them to a different building might dilute the whole ‘we’re on the same team’ thing). Many people in the Post newsroom would prefer that their peers at washingtonpost.com restrict themselves to technical stuff. Post the brilliant news stories that come from 15th and L, put together slide shows, edit the videos, and go home. But it doesn’t work […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Czech-born filmmaker Milos Forman is an Academy Award-winning director, but his life story, as Forman tells Terry Gross, is no less dramatic than his cinematic success. Born in 1932 in a small town near Prague, Forman experienced war at a young age, when Nazi armies marched on his country. Though Forman continued to live in Czechoslovakia under Gestapo rule, his Jewish father and Protestant mother were sent to Auschwitz, where they perished. After the war, Czechoslovakia came under communist rule, and Forman attended the Prague Film Institute. He began his film-making career during the “new wave of Czech […]