Brawny Beantown ska staples The Mighty Mighty Bosstones have been skanking in and out of style since 1983. Absent a two year hiatus back in the middle of the aughts, that’s 29 freakin’ years of wearing plaid and pork pie hats while running in place! So enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. They play The Troc on Saturday and of course you wanna go, because everybody remembers their first pair of Converse. And pork pie hats will never be uncool. Seventh reader to sign of up for our mailing list wins a pair of tickets. Goodluck and godspeed, […]
DICK-FIL-A: Christians Who Think Jesus Told Them That ‘God Hates Fags’ Are Doing It Wrong
LOS ANGELES TIMES: The chicken sandwich became a political statement for a day as supporters of the Chick-fil-A president’s stance against gay marriage caused traffic jams at the fast-food chain’s restaurants nationwide. Baking in the Southern California summer heat, lines of Chick-fil-A fans snaked around the eateries and down streets Wednesday as patrons ignored gay rights advocates armed with “Cluck Off” signs and vuvuzelas urging them to eat elsewhere. Crammed drive-throughs caused traffic jams on nearby streets, often requiring attendants to direct cars. At several locations in Orange County and Long Beach, lunchtime crowds swelled to more than 100 […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Kristin Hersh @ WCL
Photo by PETE TROSHAK The Kristin Hersh that showed up at the World Cafe on Tuesday was a woman at peace with her ghosts, making them swirl and dance around the stage as she commanded them with her guitar. Hersh alternated between reading from her published diary and playing songs. The former concerned, by turns, an eerie meeting with an old lady on the bus, squatting in a dead person’s house, hanging out with faded movie star Betty Hutton and the verities of being a pregnant pregnant indie rock star.The latter were strummed into being with a black hollow body […]
SIDEWALKING: Floundering Fathers
Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis [plus some sort of sports guys] sign the U.S. Constitution while promoting their new movie The Campaign at the NCC yesterday BY ROBIN ODLAND
RIP: Gore Vidal, Sickle In The Garden Of Idiocy
NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Vidal was, at the end of his life, an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent. He published some 25 novels, two memoirs and several volumes of stylish essays. He also wrote plays, television dramas and screenplays. For a while he was even a contract writer at MGM. And he could always be counted on for a spur-of-the-moment aphorism, putdown or sharply worded critique of American foreign policy. Perhaps more than […]
Top PA Election Official Admits Under Oath She Doesn’t Know What The New Voter ID Law Says
CBS PHILADELPHIA: Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth was on the witness stand today, during day five of the court hearing on Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law. And her testimony just added to the confusion over exactly how many voters need ID. Secretary of the Commonwealth Carole Aichele is the top state official in charge of implementing the voter ID. But when she took the stand she was cagey, even making jokes in some instances in her response to plaintiffs’ attorneys. At one point, when lawyers asked her about the details of the voter ID law, Aichele responded, “I don’t […]
THIS JUST IN: The President Of The United States Of America Is A Direct Descendent Of Slaves
Artwork by RON ENGLISH WASHINGTON POST: President Obama’s extraordinary family story gained a new layer this week as a team of genealogists found evidence that he is most likely a descendant of one of the first documented African slaves in this country. The link to slavery, which scholars of genealogy and race in the United States called remarkable, was found to have existed approximately 400 years back in the lineage of Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. It was discovered by a team of four genealogists from Ancestry.com whose findings from two years of work were released in a report Monday. […]
GUNCRAZY: Where Pennsyltucky Meets Killadelphia
Photo by JOE KAZCMAREK DEENEY: The black market for guns itself remains mercurial, shifting and changing and hard for researchers to accurately quantify. It’s amazing how little we know at this late stage about the illegal gun market in America. Johns Hopkins’ Webster says that straw purchasers—legal buyers who then turn the guns over to drug dealers or stick-up artists (a federal felony)—play a role. Yet drug dealers in Baltimore (as elsewhere in the US) can also go to gun shows in nearby Virginia to take advantage of the circuit’s freewheeling, unregulated cash-and-carry policies, but according to Webster, the extent […]
ABOUT LAST NIGHT: Cherub Rock
Sigur Ros, Skyline Stage at the Mann, last night by JONATHAN VALANIA It’s official: The Mann’s just-unveiled Skyline Stage is now the go-to concert venue when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars and you and 5,000 of your closest friends want to see/hear widescreen, state-of-the-art indie-rock on the grass, under the stars, with yummy food trucks and ice-cold craft beers and a panoramic view of the emerald city skyline over your shoulder. That Sigur Ros should break the seal on this newly-minted venue is kinda like a teenage boy losing his virginity to a […]
INCOMING: Live From Hopelandia
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR MAGNET Iceland isn’t the end of the world but you can see it from here. This is both a blessing and to a lesser degree a curse. Much less. It is the land that time forgot, which is why it is a place of such uncommon purity. Primeval is the word that comes to mind: smoldering volcanoes, black sand beaches, towering geysers, geothermal hot springs, epic waterfalls, vast lava fields that recede infinitely out to the horizon, bumping up against glaciers thousands of years old. Elves. Not for nothing did Ridley Scott select the hinterlands […]
CINEMA: Blowin’ In The Wind
NEIL YOUNG JOURNEYS (2011, directed by Jonathan Demme, 87 minutes, U.S.) POSSESSION (1981, directed by Andrzej ?u?awski, 123 minutes, France/West Germany) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC On paper, Jonathan Demme directing a new Neil Young music doc seemed predictable if not redundant — another music documentary from the man who has chronicled The Talking Heads, Robyn Hitchcock, and Springsteen, no to mention his third film with Young, having previously lensed him during a string of Nashville concerts in the 2006 film, Neil Young: Heart of Gold and in 2009 with his rock band in Neil Young Trunk Show. Now […]
GEEK SQUAD: Beyond The Dark Knight
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Every Batman fan is wondering what comes after The Dark Knight Rises. Will Warner Brothers continue the series without Christopher Nolan (who repeatedly stated he was only making a trilogy)? Nolan did leave room for the possibility of a fourth movie. The current Batman trilogy is the complete story of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and fittingly ends with his retirement away from Gotham. Of course, Bruce did not leave Gotham unprotected but in the hands of former Police Officer Robin John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt). If there is a sequel to Nolan’s trilogy, it […]