BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Today we set the Wayback Machine to September 11th, 2001, which will forever live in infamy as the day I was expelled from the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA). Freshman year at ASFA, I boarded in the high school dormitories, until the dorm directors permanently banned me for illicit acts of sodomy. By the time my sophomore year rolled around, I had accepted the mantle of ‘delinquent in the making.’ And so, one afternoon, September 10th, 2001 to be exact, I snuck back into the dorm to have one last romp in the sack […]
TRAILER: Che
The new 257-minute Che Guevara biopic is being released in two parts in January 2009, but a special single-picture engagement starts December 12 in New York in LA.
TONITE: South To Rise Again
Southern rock-and-roll may have started with Skynyrd, but thankfully it didn’t end there, and some bands with down-home roots have got enough passion and polish to make “Sweet Home Alabama” sound downright sour. Tennessee’s Kings of Leon are the current, well, kings of the region’s rock, with a couple albums’ worth of delightfully scuzzy boogie topped with an aching drawl. At the other end of the spectrum of what Dixie can dish out is the arty, inscrutable jangle of Athens, Georgia’s REM, who add space to their riffs where other acts add swagger. Fresh out of Atlanta, The Modern Society […]
WE SHALL OVERCOME: Folk Icon Odetta Dead At 77
NEW YORK TIMES: Odetta, the singer whose deep voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was 77. The cause was heart disease, said her manager, Doug Yeager. He added that she had been hoping to sing at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Odetta sang at coffeehouses and at Carnegie Hall, made highly influential recordings of blues and ballads, and became one of the most widely known folk-music artists of the 1950s and ’60s. She was a formative influence on dozens of artists, including Bob […]
WSJ: The WTF On The Mumbai Attacks
WALL STREET JOURNAL: MUMBAI — India has accused a senior leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of orchestrating last week’s terror attacks that killed at least 172 people here, and demanded the Pakistani government turn him over and take action against the group. Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India’s financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire […]
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 […]
OBAMA: ‘Ello Guv’ner!
NEW YORK TIMES: President-elect Barack Obama turned from national security to domestic concerns on Tuesday, telling the country’s governors that his administration would not delay in pushing an economic recovery plan that would bring relief to the states, 41 of which are forecasting budget shortfalls this year or next. Speaking at a conference of the National Governors Association in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama said his background in the Illinois state senate made him particularly sympathetic to the needs of state and local governments. And he declared himself open to good ideas that work, whether they come from Democrats or Republicans. “We […]
NEWS CLUES: Like A Drunk-Ass Mascot Of The Truth
GUNCRAZY: Shooter On The Loose, 4 Schools Locked Down INQUIRER: An argument between a man and his girlfriend at a Kmart store at 8800 Frankford Avenue today left a 35-year-old store worker in critical condition with three gunshot wounds. Police issued an arrest warrant for Anthony Birch, 30. Birch fled the scene after arguing with the unidentified woman, another Kmart employee. The victim was trying to intervene in the argument, which occurred around the store’s loading dock, police said. The argument occurred around 9:45 a.m. at the Kmart in Northeast Philadelphia. Police requested that four schools in the area be […]
PHOTON BAND: Where Did The Love Go?
[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN]
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS: Whatever Happens In Room 315 Stays In Room 315, Part 4
BY JEFF DEENEY As the morning wears on in room 315 cabin fever sets in. The students don’t leave the classroom at any point during the day except for brief staff-accompanied bathroom visits and for a short lunch break that doesn’t come until 1:30. On some days the group’s restlessness builds to a breaking point right before lunch that results in dangerous outbursts like students throwing furniture across the room out of frustration with their confinement. On other days the boys spirits’ are worn down enough by the slow passage of time that they become briefly willing to listen to […]
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, […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER There are few greater pleasures in this American life than watching a young, gifted rock band in the prime of its youth burn through its set before an adoring hometown crowd with the confidence of five young men who’ve come to realize that — after all the blood, the sweat and the tears that got them to this point — they are making their mark on the world. It’s even better when the young, gifted band is local. Such was the case Friday night at the way-sold-out Starlight Ballroom, where Dr. Dog staged an […]