BY MAVIS LINNEMANN Laura and I had our second annual holiday bash this past Sunday, and overall it was a great success. As anyone who’s planned a party knows, it’s super important that the people who RSVP actually come, so the hosts don’t get stuck preparing food for no-shows. Unfortunately, out of the 25 girls who RSVPed, only 10 showed, apparently because of the weather. However, if you ask me, if you’ve lived in Chicago for more than a year, you should be more than accustomed to trekking through snow drifts to visit friends in the winter months. Hrrumph! But […]
Cliff Lee Signs With The Phils For 5 Years And $100 Mil
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Turns out the Philadelphia Phillies do have enough money for both Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay – and Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels, too. A year after Phillies traded him away, Lee chose to rejoin them and form a fearsome foursome that is the envy of all of baseball. The free-agent pitcher passed up an extra $50 million from the New York Yankees and reached a preliminary agreement on a $100 million, five-year contract with the Phillies on Monday night, a person familiar with the deal told The Associated Press. MORE
RIP: Richard Holbrooke, Statesman Emeritus, Is Dead
[Illustration by KERRY WAGHORN] NEW YORK TIMES: Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2009 and a diplomatic troubleshooter who worked for every Democratic president since the late 1960s and oversaw the negotiations that ended the war in Bosnia, died Monday evening in Washington. He was 69 and lived in Manhattan. Mr. Holbrooke was hospitalized on Friday afternoon after becoming ill while meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in her Washington office. Doctors found a tear to his aorta, and he underwent a 21-hour operation. Mr. Holbrooke had additional surgery on Sunday […]
WILL FERRELL & J.C. REILLY: Little Drummer Boy
Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly from Will Ferrell Hilarious spoof of this Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s duet (circa 1977) on “Little Drummer Boy”, which remains one of the most beloved Yule Tide memories of our gloriously misspent youth. Bing Crosby & David Bowie – Duet Uploaded by beautifulcynic. – Explore more music videos.
SPORTO: About Last Night
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY Apparently it’s cool to obliterate Michael Vick as he’s going out of bounds. Cowboys linebacker Anthony Spencer got away with it in the 2nd quarter Sunday night. Never mind that every quarterback in the league gets that call. A tight end would get that call. Is it that referees see how quick Vick is and can’t help thinking of him as a running back (and thus less protected)? Or is it possible that there is a bias against Vick, subconscious or otherwise? Later there was the play where two Cowboys defenders delivered consecutive helmet-to-helmet hits […]
ROLLING STONES: Child Of The Moon
Rolling Stones – Child Of The Moon Kev | Myspace Video NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards can add one more item to his list of rock-star excesses: killing a library plant. A delicate orchid at the New York Public Library’s main branch died a few days after an encounter with the bad seed, staff said Wednesday. Marie d’Origny, deputy director of the library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, said the saucy Brit borrowed her office before he gave an Oct. 29 talk about his new book, “Life.” Before the talk, Richards’ representative asked d’Origny […]
NEWS CLUES: Like The Grandmother Of All Truth
MAN STABS WIFE TO DEATH, IS THEN KILLED BY SNOWSTORM An argument between a husband and wife Sunday led to a stabbing and traffic accident that left both people dead, police said. Melissa Field, 44, was stabbed to death at her Far-Southside home, according to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. While officers were on their way to the residence, they were alerted that a car had crashed into a tree a few blocks away [NOT pictured, left]. The driver of the car was Kevin Field, 51, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Police believe Kevin Field stabbed his wife […]
The Awful Truth About The Espionage Act Of 1917
NAOMI WOLF: The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 — because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens — educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists — who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted ‘crime’ of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the […]
ALBUM REVIEW: The Blues Explosion Orange
BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD Rejoice! Fans of Junior Kimbrough, Beastie Boys, Captain Beefheart and even my beloved (swoon) R.L. Burnside rejoice, I say! The rerelease of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Orange is just as chock full ‘o balls as it did, presumably, when it was first released in 1994 when I was all of seven. This is the type of blues-rock that makes The Black Keys sound like the Wiggles, and Carlos Mencia sound somehow even less funny. Jon Spencer uses the dugga-duh-dah of Elvis’ voice, with a spice of Mick Jagger, as a centerpiece of his electric twang circus, and […]
CINEMA: Black Swan Down
BLACK SWAN (2010, directed by Darren Aronofsky, 108 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC They say if things are going well at the job, you can stand friction at home, and if things are good at home you can stand friction at the job. But if there is stress at both work and home, well, that’s when people crack. In Darren Aronofsky’s latest film Black Swan, Nina Sayers, the Swan Queen at the center of a new production of the ballet Swan Lake, finds that neither work nor home is a sanctuary. As the stress builds, Aronfsky’s […]
Confessed Sabina Killer Changes Mind On Guilty Plea
INQUIRER: Donte Johnson, the 18-year-old who was expected to plead guilty today in the rape and murder of waitress Sabina O’Donnell, has instead hired a new lawyer to review his case.Johnson has confessed to the June killing of the 20-year-old O’Donnell, who was beaten and strangled to death in a vacant lot behind the 4th Street building where she lived with her stepfather. Police have also collected DNA evidence from the crime scene that they have said came from Johnson. […] His new attorney, Douglas Dolfman, said Friday that Johnson and his family wanted to get a “second opinion” before […]
Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To An Empty Chair
WASHINGTON POST: The blue-and-white upholstered chair reserved for him was empty. His words were spoken not in his own voice, but by the Norwegian actress and movie director Liv Ullmann. While the Nobel committee honored him with its prestigious Peace Prize in Oslo on Friday, Chinese dissident and intellectual Liu Xiaobo sat in isolation in a jail cell, some 4,000 miles away. Yet his campaign to bring individual freedoms and democracy to China was recognized at a ceremony made more visible, in many ways, by Beijing’s efforts to suppress it. MORE CBS NEWS: Liu Xiaobo is hardly a household name […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR It will forever remain a pivotal moment in rock ‘n’ roll history — but the reality is, it might not have happened. Florida’s clemency board conceded this week that there was inadequate evidence to convict Doors singer Jim Morrison of indecent exposure at a Miami concert in 1969. The incident and its aftermath sent Morrison and the group into a tailspin that ended with Morrison’s death — though the legend is alive and well. So what did happen? Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek was on stage that night. In a 1998 interview on Fresh Air, he recounted the […]