DAILY BANTER: Let’s take a ride down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, shall we? Shortly after the Boston Marathon bombings when an InfoWars stooge crashed several law enforcement press conferences, I was speaking with The Daily Banter founder Ben Cohen about Alex Jones. We were joking about circulating a rumor that Jones was actually a government covert operative manufactured and trained to infiltrate the fringe conspiracy theory groups on the far-right. Ben and I speculated that perhaps the government had instructed “Special Agent Jones” to invent a roster of crazy over-the-top theories meant to deliberately distract conspiracy theorists from real-life […]
THE FLAMING LIPS: Look…The Sun Is Rising
From Letterman the other night. Possibly the coolest/weirdest iteration of live rock music on network television since, well, ever. Let the buyer be weird.
SCRAPPLE NEWS: With A.P. TIcker
On the subway psycho and guns gone wild!
REWIND 2012: The Year In Phawker Interviews
Talk is cheap, especially on the Internet, but at Phawker it’s totally free, baby — at least for you, dear reader. Trolling through the vast and dusty Phawker archives, we have dug up fat sack of conversations from the past year that are worth re-visiting: Dick Dale, King Of The Surf Guitar; graphic novelist Charles Burns, the Edgar Allan Poe of right now; photographer Joe Kazcmarek, who tirelessly chronicles the murder-scarred backstreets of North and West Philly; Jim Reid, lead singer of The Jesus And Mary Chain; Anton Newcombe, cult leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre; Hardball host Chris Matthews; […]
THE SOPRANO: Q&A With Writer/Director David Chase
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Last week we sat down with Sopranos creator David Chase to talk about his new movie, Not Fade Away, a weedy coming-of-age dramedy about being young, horny and trying to be the Rolling Stones in the teenage wasteland of suburban New Jersey in the mid-’60s. There’s sex. There’s drugs. There’s rock n’ roll, in the form of an impeccably-curated soundtrack and convincing scenes of the band trying to kick out the jams in garages and basements. There’s James Gandolfini as the hey-you-kids-get-off-of-my-lawn father, shaking his fist at the longhairs from the wrong side of the generation […]
THE AP TICKER TRIO: Winter Wonderland
Season’s greetings from The Least Trusted Name In News. And a Happy New Year!
NRA Totally Wastes Nation’s Time With Same Old John Wayne Fantasies, Gets Punked By Code Pink Patriot
ABC NEWS: The National Rifle Association stood its ground today in arguing that the answer to gun violence in schools is an armed security force that can protect students, while blaming the media and violent entertainment and video games for recent deadly shootings. “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in presenting the NRA’s first comments about the Connecticut school shooting since it occurred a week ago today. LaPierre offered no olive branch to gun-control advocates who have called for tougher […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Real ‘Cop Killer’
Artwork by Bunnyack “It was specifically designed for use by counterterrorism teams because it fires a very small but very high-velocity bullet that will penetrate body armor — what people call ballistic vests or bulletproof vests. When FN first manufactured this gun, they recognized how dangerous it would be on a civilian market and they claimed they would never sell it to civilians, that it would only be for police and counterterrorism units. In fact, it’s become a very popular gun on the American civilian market and is exported to Mexico, where it’s called the mata policia, or police killer, […]
Meet The Man Boy Currently Powning Westboro Baptist
BETA BEAT: Anonymous announced its intention to “destroy” Westboro Baptist Church this weekend following news that the group would be picketing the funerals of children who died in Friday’s horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Now, infamous 15-year-old hacker Cosmo the God of the Underground Nazi Hacktivist Group (UGNazi) appears to have joined the fray. The Twitter account of much-reviled Westboro spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper has been hacked, and Cosmo is claiming responsibility. Ms. Phelps-Roper is the daughter of Fred Phelps, who is the head of the WBC. Cosmo and the UG Nazi crew gained notoriety over the past year for […]
NOTHING IS REAL: The JFK Assassination
Illustration by PRINT MAFIA The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt He was the ultimate keeper of secrets, lurking in the shadows of American history. He toppled banana republics, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion and led the Watergate break-in. Now he would reveal what he’d always kept hidden: who killed JFK BY ERIK HEDEGAARD/ROLLING STONE EDITOR’S NOTE: Ordinarily we would tease a few paragraphs from the story and then send you to RS’s web site, but for reasons unclear this article is no longer there. Hence we have run it here in its entirety. It originally ran in the […]
MEDIA: Anderson Cooper’s First World Problems
The difference between Anderson Cooper flying to Gaza to get the ‘optics’ right for his reporting on the Israel Defense Forces’ bombing campaign — ducking off-camera when one lands a little too close for comfort — and the Palestinians that live in Gaza is that Anderson Cooper can leave any time he wants. RELATED: Death From Above
NPR FOR THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
Illustration by ROBERLAN FRESH AIR What did Jesus look like? The many different depictions of Christ tell a story about race and religion in America. Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey explore that history in their new book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. The book traces how different races and ethnic groups claimed Christ as their own — and how depictions of Jesus have both inspired civil rights crusades, and been used to justify the violence of white supremacists. The Ku Klux Klan could not rely on Christian doctrine to […]
EXCERPT: The Playboy Interview With Quentin Tarantino
“I just don’t want to be an old-man filmmaker. I want to stop at a certain point. Directors don’t get better as they get older. Usually the worst films in their filmography are those last four at the end. I am all about my filmography, and one bad film f*cks up three good ones … When directors get out-of-date, it’s not pretty,” says filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. Playboy’s November Interview sits down with the maverick director to talk about Django Unchained, facing 50 and why he’s no longer a Hollywood outsider (issue on newsstands and i.Playboy.com Tuesday, November 20, with the […]