The Communism begins at the 3:14 mark when all the people of Bedford Falls rally to help George Bailey — who sacrificed all his hopes and dreams to protect the working class of Bedford Falls from the from the Capitalist predations of vampire squids like Mr. Potter — in his hour of need because he was there for each and every one of them in their darkest hours. Sick, isn’t it? Like we always say, when you’re children ask you who the Tea Party Republicans are, tell them they are the people who root for Mr. Potter when they watch […]
SNOWDEN: Mission Accomplished
WASHINGTON POST: “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch […]
REMEMBER: Whatever Happened To Lydia Lunch?
NEW YORK TIMES: At 54, Lunch combines the louche air of an Italian starlet with the authority of a den mother. She has alabaster skin and voluptuous curves and wears her hair in a strategically choppy cut. Some might find it difficult to reconcile the Lunch smiling at her assembled guests with the Lunch whom many of her fans remember best — the self-styled nihilist and lead singer of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, a seminal ’70s No Wave band whose songs featured lyrics like “Little orphans running through the bloody snow.” She lived in a loft in downtown […]
FREED PUSSY: Putin Releases Pussy Riot
BBC: Maria Alyokhina, a member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, has been freed early from prison under an amnesty. She told a Russian TV channel the amnesty was a “PR stunt” and she would rather have remained in prison. The release of fellow band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is also expected later on Monday. The women were jailed in August 2012 for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after performing a protest song in Moscow’s main cathedral. Their conviction was criticised by rights groups, anti-Putin activists and foreign governments. As soon as Maria Alyokhina stepped through the prison gates she […]
REMINDER: This Is Why We Still Miss Chris Farley
Let’s just get this out of the way: Nevermind the naysayers that mindlessly parrot the SNL HAS JUMPED THE SHARK meme, the incontrovertible reality is the show is funnier than it has ever been. Much funnier. Specifically the female cast members. You can check out some of the best bits from this past year HERE. But our hands-down favorite will always be Chris Farley. His comedy — hell his lifestyle — is best described as A Hippopotamus On Angel Dust In The Swarovski Crystal Shop Of Life. Which is why, of course, he was not long for this world. We […]
Mikhail Kalishnikov, Bringer Of Death, Dead @ 94
WASHINGTON POST: In late September 1941, the German juggernaut reached the outskirts of Bryansk, hard against the Desna River southwest of Moscow. In the battle, the Nazis destroyed about 80 percent of the town and killed more than 80,000 people. Kalashnikov, who was 21, was wounded in his left shoulder when his tank came under artillery fire. He eventually made it to a hospital on foot after a harrowing two-day trip. He suffered nightmares about the Germans slaughtering his comrades. Kalashnikov became obsessed with creating a submachine gun that would drive the Germans from his homeland. In his hospital […]
CINEMA: Do The Hustle
NEW YORKER: David O. Russell’s “American Hustle,” an intentionally overripe comedy about corruption, duplicity, loyalty, and love, is a series of astonishments. Russell, rewriting a script developed by Eric Singer, takes off from the Abscam affair—the bizarre criminal investigation of the nineteen-seventies in which the F.B.I. called on a swindler named Mel Weinberg to help ensnare public officials. (Six congressmen and a senator were among those ultimately convicted.) The bureau’s elaborate sting involved two “Arab sheikhs” (both F.B.I. employees) eager to invest in Atlantic City’s nascent casino industry and willing to bribe officials in order to procure operating licenses. […]
RIP: Al Goldstein, Dirtiest Man Alive, Dead @ 77
NEW YORK TIMES: Al Goldstein, the scabrous publisher whose Screw magazine pushed hard-core pornography into the cultural mainstream, died on Thursday at a nursing home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. He was 77. The cause was believed to be renal failure, his lawyer, Charles C. DeStefano, said. Mr. Goldstein did not invent the dirty magazine, but he was the first to present it to a wide audience without the slightest pretense of classiness or subtlety. Sex as depicted in Screw was seldom pretty, romantic or even particularly sexy. It was, primarily, a business, with consumers and suppliers like any other. […]
MOBY: Almost Home
The video was recorded at Best Friends Animal Society in Los Angeles. RELATED: This story starts in Moby’s apartment on a sunny pre-9/11 morning in New York city. Moby and his neighbor David Bowie are sitting on the couch strumming “Heroes” on acoustic guitars. They are prepping for a Tibet House benefit concert at Carnegie Hall organized by Phillip Glass. This is too good to be true, Moby thinks to himself. What if it isn’t? What if I’ve lost my mind and I’m institutionalized and just hallucinating this? Does it even matter? Just go with it. As hallucinations go, you […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
Artwork by BRANDON PIKE FRESH AIR
JACKSON SCOTT: Sandy
Sad, dark and beautiful. The ‘Sandy’ he is referring to is Sandy Hook. Sample lyric: “Little kids sitting all around / wishing they were sound asleep again.” Suffer the children. Fuck da NRA. Hard. RELATED: If, in the end, we do nothing to overcome the awful inertia of the status quo, if no good ever comes out of this evil, the wholesale slaughter of 20 six-year-olds and the educators that died trying to protect them will remain for all eternity just as mindfuckingly meaningless and endlessly heartbreaking as their killer intended. MORE
MEDIA: The Least Trusted Name In News
Psyched to see our former colleague and Scrapple News anchorman AP Ticker, aka Frank Baker, on the cover of PW this week. AP Ticker is, among other things, The Second Most Interesting Man In The World (after the Dos Equis guy). PW: Sounds like Ticker is quite the unsung pioneer of television news. “He actually coined the phrase, ‘We’ll be right back,’” continues Baker. “Until then, it had been very awkward for anchormen. Because they would say, ‘We’re going to be here, but we’re going to a commercial now, but we’re not actually going to leave.’ It was very long. […]