WASHINGTON POST: With unrest growing in the Crimea over Ukraine’s political transformation, a group of armed men seized the local parliament and the regional government headquarters in Simferopol early Thursday morning, barricaded themselves inside both buildings and raised Russian flags, news services reported. They were reported to be wearing plain uniforms without designating marks. The Interfax news agency quoted a local authority as saying the men were from a Crimean self-defense group. Rival groups clashed in Ukraine’s Crimea, as Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered major military exercises just across the border. The unrest continues as Ukraine’s protest leaders propose […]
LEAVING BY BAD EXAMPLE: Alec Baldwin’s Beginner’s Guide To How NOT To Exit Public Life
Photo by MARK SELIGER via MEN’S JOURNAL ALEC BALDWIN: Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible. I used to engage with the media knowing that some of it would be adversarial, but now it’s superfluous at best and toxic at its worst. If MSNBC went off the air tomorrow, what difference would it make? If the Huffington Post went out of business tomorrow, what difference would it make? Arianna Huffington accomplished what she wanted to accomplish. She created this wonderful thing. And what have they done with that? They want clicks, I […]
THIS JUST IN: Die Antwoord @ Electric Factory 6/8
Fearlessly and furiously fucking the dark, moist seam between art and identity like it’s the vajayjay of God, these faux-Zef art/rap/provocateurs from the land of Nelson Mandela are not only punk-as-fuck and funny-as-shit, they are — or at least were — the greatest threat to the status quo since Marcel DuChamp ripped a dirty urinal off the wall and made it high art with nothing more than the power of Because I Said So. Having said that, the new “Rich Bitch” is a bit of a letdown visually and sonically, so instead of posting it we’re gonna revisit the in […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In the early years of World War I, as many as 1,000 American horses per day were shipped off to Europe to assist in the Allied war effort, even though the United States was officially neutral. Those horses became the target of germ warfare, infected with anthrax cultures on American soil; at the same time, mysterious explosions were rocking U.S. munitions factories, and fires were breaking out on ships headed to Europe. Journalist Howard Blum says this was all part of an aggressive campaign of spying and sabotage the German government unleashed on the United States soon after […]
COMEDIANS IN CARS: Seinfeld Vs. Howard Stern
The full name of the show is COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE, which pretty much sums it up. The concept is this: Every week Jerry Seinfeld drives around in one of the badass vintage rides in his crazy-expensive car collection (a $700,000 Porche? Oy, hate to be him when the revolution comes) with one of his A-list comedian buddies — Patton Oswalt, Chris Rock, Tina Fey, Louis CK etc. Oh right, it’s sponsored by *****. Jerry Seinfeld is like a high-end call girl and corporate America is his John. A hundred dollars makes it dark inside. Stern is a […]
WORTH REPEATING: How To Unfuck The Internet
THE VERGE: In a perfect storm of corporate greed and broken government, the internet has gone from vibrant center of the new economy to burgeoning tool of economic control. Where America once had Rockefeller and Carnegie, it now has Comcast’s Brian Roberts, AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, and Verizon’s Lowell McAdam, robber barons for a new age of infrastructure monopoly built on fiber optics and kitty GIFs. And the power of the new network-industrial complex is immense and unchecked, even by other giants: AT&T blocked Apple’s FaceTime and Google’s Hangouts video chat services for the preposterously silly reason that the apps […]
LIP SYNCH BATTLE ROYALE: Fallon Vs. Rudd
Rudd brings it, vamping diva-like on Tina Turner’s “You Better Be Good To Me” and then Fallon counters hard, throwing down on Foreigner’s “Jukebox Hero” with stars in his eyes. Can’t wait to see how it ends.
BROKEN FLOWERS: Bill Murray Vs. Harold Ramis
Artwork via RAMPAGED REALITY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: “Harold Ramis and I together did the ‘National Lampoon Show’ off Broadway, ‘Meatballs,’ ‘Stripes,’ ‘Caddyshack,’ ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Groundhog Day.’ He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him.” Murray’s statement is noteworthy since he and Ramis had a fruitful creative partnership which saw Ramis write the actor’s hit comedies “Meatballs” (1979) and “Caddyshack” (1980), and co-star together in 1981’s “Stripes,” 1984’s “Ghostbusters” and its 1989 sequel. But their friendship and professional partnership ended after the two had a falling out while working on 1993’s “Groundhog Day,” which Murray starred in and […]
TONITE: Shout At The Devil
VARIETY: Pope Benedict XVI’s unprecedented retirement and subsequent enthusiasm surrounding Pope Francis has certainly stoked interest in the Catholic Church, an organization (with apologies to Dan Brown’s readers) that remains shrouded in mystery. Yet PBS’ “Frontline” provides the documentary version of a page-turner with “Secrets of the Vatican,” a look at scandals that may have led to Benedict’s departure and could provide formidable challenges to Francis’ reform attempts. For all the coverage pertaining to pedophile priests, writer-producer-director Antony Thomas unearths fresh material, painting a portrait of an institution that still mightily endeavors to keep its secrets buried. Because so much […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR KEVIN WHITEHEAD: 1964 was a great year for cutting-edge jazz records like ‘s Spiritual Unity, ‘s A Love Supreme and ‘s Point of Departure. But none sounds as far ahead of its time as ‘s masterpiece Out to Lunch, recorded for Blue Note on Feb. 25, 1964. Half a century later it still sounds crazy in a good way. The organized mayhem starts with Dolphy’s tunes, often featuring wide, wide leaps in the melody and ratchet-gear rhythms. His composition “” was inspired by the careful walk of a drunk striving to stay upright. He improvised with that […]
How The U.S. Directed The Wholesale Murder Of 1,000,000 Indonesians Because Their Favoritie Economist Was Karl Marx, Not Milton Friedman
WIKIPEDIA: A top secret CIA report described the massacre as “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s”[1] MORE JOSH OPPENHEIMER (DIRECTOR, THE ACT OF KILLING): You can see that the United States made it very clear that, as a condition for future aid, the Indonesian army must go after the whole Communist Party. And they had guys in the State Department compiling death lists for the army—communist leaders, union leaders, intellectuals […]
EARLY WORD: The Geodesic Dome Of The Rock
Bringing indie rock to its waterfront stage for the very first time, FringeArts announces an exciting addition to its spring 2014 calendar: the documentary film The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, directed and live-narrated by Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green; and accompanied by a score performed live on stage by legendary Hoboken band Yo La Tengo. FringeArts will host two showings of the The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller on First Friday, April 4, at 7 and 9 p.m. A special member pre-sale will begin on Feb. 27, and general tickets will be on sale March 1 at fringearts.com or […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Investigative reporter Julia Angwin was curious what Google knew about her, so she asked the company for her search data. “It turns out I had been doing about 26,000 Google searches a month … and I was amazed at how revealing they were,” she tells Fresh Air‘s Dave Davies. From NSA sweeps to commercial services scraping our Web browsing habits, to all kinds of people tracking us through our smartphones, Angwin says we’ve become a society where indiscriminate data-gathering has become the norm. Angwin has covered online privacy issues for years, and in her new book she describes […]