Kid Cudi – New Music – More Music Videos DAILY SWARM: If you boil it down, Kid Cudi’s nascent hit “Make Her Say” is about gettin’ good head, plain and simple. Yeah, it’s got an elegant sample of Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface,” and if you get swept up in her vox—or the nifty throwback beat—you’d almost think that the Kid was trying to make another “Hard Knock Life”—a tough pop hit that deftly deploys cuteness. (The classy video, meanwhile, is a total bait-and-switch.) But “Make Her Say” ain’t cute at all; Gaga’s melody gets served up as a convenient double entendre, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In the film Cold Souls, Paul Giamatti plays … Paul Giamatti. And this version of Paul Giamatti is every inch what movie audiences might suspect from the actor’s most frequent screen persona: an anxious, neurotic mess. Cold Souls is set in an alternate-universe America in which souls can be put into deep-freeze to relieve their human bearers of psychological torment. Giamatti (the character) undergoes the procedure when his onstage role as Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya cripples him emotionally. He plans to restore his soul when the run ends, but then a smuggler spirits his spirit off to Russia, and […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
Grand Jury Clears Cops In Televised Beatdown
ASSOCIATED PRESS: A Philadelphia grand jury won’t recommend charges against police officers involved in the videotaped beating of three suspects after a car chase. District Attorney Lynne Abraham made the announcement Thursday, a month after the three suspects were acquitted in a 2008 shooting. Video taken from a television news helicopter on May 5 that year shows police cars pursuing the suspects’ car for more than 2 miles before the driver pulls over. Officers smash a window and pull the men out and onto the ground. Several officers beat and kick them. The city police commissioner later fired four officers, […]
GAYDAR: My Life In The Ghost Of Bush 2
BY AARON STELLA This time around in GAYDAR we’re revealing the climactic conclusion of our last life story post, which told of my plans to emancipate myself from my Christian-crazed parents and begin life anew. Here’s a brief recap: My family and I moved to Alabama in 1999 to escape the impending apocalypse of Y2K, which, as apocalypses go, turned out to be a big disappointment. Later I was kicked out of high school for a clandestine dalliance I had with a schoolmate, then out of my house six months later. Now, living with my friend’s family, the magnitude of […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Diary Of A Madman
EDITOR’S NOTE: George Sodini, the gunman that killed four and wounded 10 before taking his own life at a Pittsburgh fitness club yesterday, left behind a bizarro online diary explaining his twisted motives and his constantly changing timeline for committing his atrocity. WARNING: OFFENSIVE CONTENT. Why do this?? To young girls? Just read below. I kept a running log that includes my thoughts and actions, after I saw this project was going to drag on. November 5, 2008:Planned to do this in the summer but figure to stick around to see the election outcome. This particular one got so much […]
DARK PRINCE: Blackwater Boss Implicated In Murder
NATION: A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince [pictured, right], may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the […]
NEWS CLUES: Like A Tyrant’s Pardon Of The Truth
FOUR DEAD, TEN WOUNDED IN PITTSBURGH FITNESS CLUB MASSACRE Police say they’ve confirmed four people were killed in a shooting at a suburban Pittsburgh health club — including the gunman — and at least 10 others were wounded. A hospital reports one other person also has died. Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt says the gunman didn’t say anything and just walked into the room where shooting occurred at the L.A. Fitness Center in Bridgeville, a community of about 5,000 residents not far from downtown Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh International Airport. Debi Wozniak, of Dormont, a suburb of Pittsburgh, is […]
CHARMED: Bubba Frees Jailed U.S. Journalists
NEW YORK TIMES: SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, pardoned two jailed American journalists, the official KCNA news agency has reported, according to Reuters. The report came after former President Bill Clinton met with the reclusive and ailing Mr. Kim in Pyongyang on Tuesday. Mr. Kim granted “a special pardon,” KCNA said in a statement. It was not clear how rapidly the two journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, might be allowed to leave the country. They were being held near Pyongyang after having been sentenced to 12 years at hard labor for entering […]
GREATEST HITS: Today I Saw… Revisited
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Today I Saw was a series of short imagistic non-fiction narratives I did back in 2007. I didn’t even conceive it as a series for publication, it was really just a bunch of scenes and images I jotted down while doing field work as a social worker. It ran twice a week for a year straight. Each installment begins with the same phrase, “Today I Saw” because I was literally writing down things I was seeing in the neighborhoods, as I was seeing them each day. BY JEFF DEENEY Today I saw a fire fight break out on […]
ARTSY: Calling All Artistes!
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ON THE DOWNLOAD: New Raveonettes
First finished track from new album set to drop this fall on Vice Records. Have at it. DOWNLOAD: The Raveonettes “Suicide” [mp3] *** Alela Diane – “Lady Divine” (DUMBO West Session) WIKIPEDIA: Alela Diane Menig (b. April 20, 1983, Nevada City, California, USA) is an American singer and songwriter, who is associated with the psych folk and New Weird America musical genres.She grew up singing with her musician parents and performing in the school choir. She taught herself guitar, and began writing songs which blend tense, trance-like arpeggios with warm vocals and meditative lyrics about family and nature. Alela Diane […]
BORN IDENTITY: Happy Birther Day, Mr. President
[Illustration by SEAN KELLY] BOSTON GLOBE: Barack Obama turned 48 today, bringing to an end a huge year for the commander in chief, one in which he accepted his party’s nomination, handily won the general election, and took office as the nation’s first African-American president. MORE CHUCK NORRIS: Mr. President, as more and more people realize that you are refusing to release your original birth certificate, further questions will fuel the fires of debate or at least hinder the embers from ever being snuffed out. Questions such as, “Does it really contain the Hawaiian physician’s name?” “Does it disclose something […]