The Good News Flower Hour #3 Folks, here’s the third installment of The Good News Flower Hour, wherein I provide the voice for a flower that reads the news. The debut is HERE and the last one is HERE. We are still tweaking the concept and streamlining the production schedule on these — it takes a LONG-ass time to make these little three-minute suckers — but we hope to make this a weekly feature in the very near future. Enjoy.
O.J. Simpson Sentenced To 15 Years In Prison
ASSOCIATED PRESS: A broken O.J. Simpson has been sentenced to at least 15 years in prison for a Las Vegas hotel armed robbery by a judge who rejected his apology and said, “It was much more than stupidity.” Simpson stood stone-faced Friday when Judge Jackie Glass quickly rattled off his punishment after he pleaded with her that he didn’t mean to steal from anybody when he tried to retrieve memorabilia. He appeared ready to break down in tears as he told that he was “sorry and confused” before going into a rambling and emotional 5-minute declaration. “I didn’t want to […]
UNCONFIRMED SOURCES: Luke Wilson’s Twitter?
VALLEY WAG: Stars — they’re just like us, if by “us” you mean “people who use the Internet too much.” Luke Wilson, the Hollywood B-lister best known for playing a schlubby everyman, also appears to be a typical user of Twitter, the blogging service which sanely limits its users’ oversharing to 140 characters at a time, when it’s not actively destroying the news business. Someone signed up for a “LukeWilson” account back in April. Here’s why I think it’s really the actor. It’s not the autobiographical details, like a love for Austin or Blue Moon beer, which any pretender could […]
PAPERBOY: Special ‘Who Hit Hickey?’ Edition
Brian Hickey at Citizen’s Park in better days [Photo by MICHAEL T. REGAN] “Brian Hickey was managing editor of City Paper from 2003 to 2008. He sat in a corner office, usually wearing his ratty Cubs hat or a Broncos knit cap (Brian is too stubborn to root only for local teams), and listening to Springsteen, classic rock, hair metal, or — sorry for putting this out there, Hic — Top 40. He slicks back his long hair, shaves irregularly, chose a rumpled white suit on his wedding day, and spends a lot of time in a bar called Krupa’s, […]
SHRINKAGE: Newspaper Ad Revenue Down $2 Billion
ASSOCIATED PRESS: U.S. newspaper advertising revenue collapsed by nearly $2 billion, or 18 percent, in the third quarter, according to the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group. Even online ad revenue made a small U-turn for the second quarter in a row. The year-on-year quarterly percentage decline is the worst since since the NAA has been keeping such records and represents an increasingly rapid deceleration that began in the third quarter of 2006, when total ad spending dropped 1.5 percent. The figures, updated on the day before Thanksgiving, show total ad spending at newspapers fell 18.1 percent to $8.94 […]
THE NEW DEAL: Obama Announces Nat. Sec. Team
NY FISHBOWL: Barry Blitt, the cartoonist responsible for the New Yorker‘s controversial terrorist fist-jabbing cover, among others, returns this week to “vet” Barack Obama. Of course this time around “Vetting” refers to the all important decision of picking a “first” puppy — thus far we know they want a mutt, but that it needs to be hypoallergenic and won’t be a girly dog. MORE LOS ANGELES TIMES: Reporting from Chicago — President-elect Barack Obama unveiled his national security team today, including formally announcing his intention to nominate his onetime rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, […]
Ex-City Paper Editor Gravely Injured In Hit And Run
Brian Hickey (pictured above with Danny Devito, on the set of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia), formerly editor of the City Paper and spokesman for John Dougherty’s unsuccessful bid for Vincent Fumo’s state senate seat (not to mention a trusted colleague during our staff writer days at PW), was seriously injured by a hit and run driver in Collingswood last night, according to his wife Angela. He is currently in the Trauma-ICU of Cooper University hospital and in stable condition after emergency surgery to alleviate swelling of the brain. INQUIRER: Hickey, 35, was walking to the PATCO station on Atlantic […]
WORTH REPEATING: To Live And Die In Mumbai
BY SUKETU MEHTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness. Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim […]
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]
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 […]
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 […]
DEFANGED: Ann Coulter’s Jaws Wired Shut?
BREAKING: Literally. The interweb is atwitter with reports that right wing vampire Ann Coulter has broken her jaw and doctors have wired it shut. Repeat, ANN COULTER’S JAWS HAVE BEEN WIRED SHUT. PHAWKER: This sounds too good to be true: Obama is elected president and Ann Coulter gets her jaw wired shut. If this is a dream, we never wanna wake up. DRUDGE: Bestselling author and controversialist Ann Coulter plans to crash Obama’s inauguration party with her new work, GUILTY. Set for release first week of January, the book exposes and mocks, in graphic detail, the media’s love affair with […]
WORTH REPEATING: My Life In The Ghost Of Bush or The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One
MOE TKACIK ON HOW WE GOT HERE: For years, Wall Street has exhibited only contempt for anyone on the government payroll who did not work for the Fed. This attitude was abetted and enabled by a Republican leadership that did not trust its own party members on the Financial Services Committee. They saw this coming — when Long Term Capital Management almost exploded the markets as a direct result of the “counterparty risk” that bound us to bail out AIG, when Enron touched off a wave of 30 or so separate multi-billion-dollar accounting restatements that killed Arthur Andersen and made […]