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WIRED: The owner of an internet service provider who mounted a high-profile court challenge to a secret FBI records demand has finally been partially released from a 6-year-old gag order that forced him to keep his role in the case a secret from even his closest friends and family. He can now identify himself and discuss the case, although he still can’t reveal what information the FBI sought. Nicholas Merrill, 37, was president of New York-based Calyx Internet Access when he received a so-called “national security letter” from the FBI in February 2004 demanding records of one of his customers […]

RELATED: What Darren creates could be loosely defined as outsider music, the audio equivalent of outsider, or naive, art–a guileless tradition of untrained far-flung visionaries creating homespun works that defy the precepts of the academy and fly below the radar of the gallery circuit. Unschooled, idiosyncratic and often drug-damaged or clinically insane, outsider musicians are also blissfully unaware of the limitations of pitch, rhythm and melodic order–a freedom that sometimes enables them to break on through to new realms of sonic expression. Planting their freak flag in deep left field, outsider musicians command tiny yet rabid cults of fandom with […]

Susquehanna Center, Camden, Friday, 6:32 PM by Scott Colan RELATED: Original Kiss members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons have always, and quite unashamedly, positioned themselves as entertainers rather than musicians, and Kiss as a brand as much as a band. So to them, sticking to the makeup, spandex, and platform boots they put back on in the mid-1990s and the pyrotechnics they’ve been peddling since the ’70s isn’t a lack of progress – it’s giving the people what they want. It’s good business sense. And considering the pitiful summer concert business of 2010, maybe it really is good business sense […]

SLATE: Tina Fey’s caricature of Palin as an unprepared high-school student trying to bluff her way through an oral exam by mugging and flirting hit its mark not merely because of the genius of the mimicry, but because of its fundamentally accurate diagnosis of Palin as bullshit artist. Palin’s exuberant incoherence testifies to an unusually wide gulf between confidence and ability. She is proud of what she doesn’t know and contemptuous of those “experts” and “elitists” who are too knowledgeable to be trusted. This curious self-regard echoes through her book, Going Rogue, described by the critic Jonathan Raban as “a […]

JUSTIN PIZZI: Breaking news: drpa cop car slams septa bus, which gets speared by light pole then crashs into monks cafe just before last call. [via TWITTER] UPDATE: Miraculously, nobody hurt. MORE

BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT How deep should first musical impressions cut? Is there more in a track than may have first caught my ear? Do I clutch too tightly to the romantic notion that no record should ever sound different than how I first heard it, or more accurately the collective power of the record’s first 100 spins? It’s not like I listen to my childhood vinyl on the same record player I had as a kid, but I run up against such questions any time I pick up a reissue of a beloved album that’s been remastered or […]

WONKETTE: THERE HAVE BEEN GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN RHETORIC. Yet there has been only one occasion of pure, unadulterated genius. That’s what happened last night: a debate staged between the Internet’s favorite Tennessee gubernatorial candidate, Basil Marceaux, and two other crazies. After Marceaux became a viral hit, you see, a guy named James Crenshaw and some other people decided they wanted to be his campaign staff. Why would any sane people do this? It seems to us that they perhaps want to exploit him. America is fun like that! These ruffians are filming a “possible documentary” about […]

HUFFINGTON POST: Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself? In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.” Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed […]

BY MAVIS LINNEMANN We’ve all reached for a box of Duncan Hines brownie mix when that irresistible urge for something sweet and chocolate-y hits us. And while they’re tasty, out-of-the-box brownies are never quite as satisfying as their homemade counterparts from the local bakery (or from your home oven). Why do we buy box mixes when making brownies at home is as easy as saying your ABCS? Well, laziness and convenience mostly, but these can easily be changed. With a well-stocked pantry, making a batch of brownies will be almost as easy as dumping that box mix into a bowl […]