ASSOCIATED PRESS: Edwin O. Guthman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the infamous “enemies list” prepared by aides of President Richard Nixon and who served as press secretary to Robert F. Kennedy, has died at 89. Guthman was the Los Angeles Times’ national editor from 1965 to 1977, then served for a decade as editorial page editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1950 for his stories in The Seattle Times on the Washington Legislature’s Un-American Activities Committee. His reporting cleared a University of Washington professor of allegations that he was […]
BIG TENT: The Knocked Up Teens Of Pro-Life Mothers
REUTERS: The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child. Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said. […]
All This Happened While You Were Sleeping
WITH APOLOGIES TO ANDY WARHOL: Live Forever, The Barbary Last Night [Photos by TIFFANY YOON]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
EMPIRE OF DIRT: Nine Inch Nails, Wachovia Center, Friday Night [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Industrial music is all about the intersection of man and machine, drawing sonic tropes from the pneumatic wheeze of moving parts, and taking lyrical cues from the existential exigencies of life in a mechanized world. Trent Reznor made it speak to the punkish angst of youth trapped in dead-eyed factory towns in the dawn of the Information Age — and became the new Man In Black. Twenty years on, Reznor may have lost some of his cultural cachet — Friday […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
EXILE ON MAINSTREAM: Liz Phair, TLA, Last Night [Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA] 1. On the whole, it was a tidy kind of show. Liz Phair went onstage shortly after 8, rolled through Exile In Guyville and a three-song encore, during which she played on three different guitars and an electric piano, engaged in some truly priceless audience participation (more on that later), patted the show on its butt and had everybody home before curfew. 2. I was kind of disappointed not to see more college-age and twenty-something females in the not-quite sold-out TLA audience, though I guess these days the […]
TONITE: Some Assembly Required
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45 YEARS AGO TODAY: A Man Had A Dream
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former […]
INSTA-REVIEW: The New Nas
BY JOE WARMINSKY Nas dutifully hyped his ninth album during the height of summer, because that’s what you do when Lil’ Wayne is everywhere: You make sure the season’s hot-shit rapper has a little competition. But the untitled disc is really a back-to-school piece. This is Nas as essayist — and although the rhetoric is thoroughly familiar, his grip on it is firmer than ever. Even when he’s rapping about aliens, it’s tough to simply laugh it off as a conspiratorial rant: “I’m-a tell you what I seen with my three eyes/Word to me, not a hoax, back in 9-9/A […]
MILE HIGH: Live And Direct From Denver
SEMPER FI: Marine at Rage Against The Machine concert, Denver, 2:49 PM. [Photo by NICK POWELL] BY NICK POWELL DNC CORRESPONDENT My knees are throbbing, my shirt is drenched in mile-high perspiration, and I’m a little cranky after spending the afternoon with the iron-fisted leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against The War and following their attempt at an anti-war protest through the streets of Denver. The IVAW, who sponsored this afternoon’s concert with Rage Against The Machine, The Flobots, and others, sucked all of the protesting spirit out of the march by refusing media access to some of the vets […]
THE EARLY WORD: Return To Forever
TOON TIME: City Suckers, starring BoyCatBird The iconic BoyCatBird characters, created by Michael Segal for Ghostly International, appear in their very first animated short. This short was originally made to accompany the free Ghostly Swim compilation from Ghostly International and Adult Swim. [Hat tip to TIFFANY YOON]
TONITE: F*ck And Run
Exile in Guyville, 15th Anniversary Edition! Now playing on Phawker Radio!* DEAR DIARY, It’s been 15 years, but nothing’s really changed. It’s hopeless. I loved her then and I love her now for all the same wrong reasons: Because she’s a cunt in spring. Because I was a hero in a long line of heroes looking for something attractive to save. Because she gets away, almost every day with what the girls call, what the girls call, what the girls call murder. Because she writes with a number two pencil, she lives up to her potential and she’s clean as […]
LIVE FROM DENVER: Me And Spike Lee
BY NICK POWELL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES DENVER — Black activists and celebrities alike gathered this morning at the Movies With A Message Brunch at Earl’s Restaurant in downtown Denver to celebrate the progress made by Senator Barack Obama in his quest for the White House. But while the theme of the party was celebrating the past, Oscar-nominated director and producer Spike Lee focused on the present, particularly the sometimes-tenuous relationship between the hip-hop community and the Obama campaign. Mr. Lee, who has often uses hip-hop music and casts hip-hop stars in his films, said that rappers should, well, […]