THE NATIONAL POST: Over the years, chess champ turned politico Gary Kasparov has suffered all kinds of indignity: famously undone at his own game by IBM’s Deep Blue more than a decade ago, notoriously arrested and jailed by Russian police for his activism last year. Yesterday, however, he faced his most surreal attack yet. While making a public plea for unity against nemesis Vladimir Putin, a mysterious dangling object from the ceiling distracted the room: an airborne penis with a helicopter attached to its testicles. Undaunted, a bodyguard advanced on the unwelcome member with his fist, neutering it with vicious […]
RIP: Sydney Pollack, Super-Mensch, Dead At 73
NEW YORK TIMES: Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73. The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family. Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking […]
PPA Finds More City Money In Old Pair Of Pants
INQUIRER: The Philadelphia Parking Authority will formally announce today that it has transferred $6.6 million more to the city’s general fund and the School District of Philadelphia then it did last fiscal year, thanks to cost-cutting spurred in part by Inquirer and Daily News reports that documented wasteful spending at the state-run agency. The authority has sent $25 million to the city’s general fund, $2.2 million to the cash-strapped School District and $33.1 million earned from airport parking lots to the aviation fund. Federal law requires airport parking profits be used to help defray the expense of running the airport. […]
WORTH REPEATING: A Little ‘Taps’ & Sympathy
BY JONATHAN VALANIA If you are the parent or spouse of a U.S. serviceman, Sgt. Anthony Dekanich is the last person you want knocking on your door. When Sgt. Dekanich pays a visit, it means only one thing: Your son or daughter or husband or wife is dead. Vested with the unenviable duty of notifying next of kin–or NOK–that their son or daughter has been killed in action and arranging their burial with full military honors, Sgt. Dekanich is responsible for seeing that spouses or parents get a properly folded American flag and that the dead get a little “Taps” […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
LOVE IS THE DRUG: The Flaming Lips, Jam On The River, 10:05 [by PAUL PUGLIESE]
WORTH REPEATING: The Sergeant Lost Within
[Photos by EUGENE RICHARDS] NEW YORK TIMES: In Iraq’s Anbar Province, in May 2005, Shurvon, who joined the Marine reserves seven years earlier at 17, partly as a way to pay his community-college tuition, was riding back to his base after a patrol when an anti-tank mine exploded under his Humvee. The Humvee’s other soldiers were tossed in different directions and dealt an assortment of injuries: concussions, broken bones, herniated discs. Along with a broken jaw and a broken leg, Shurvon suffered one of the war’s signature wounds on the American side: though no shrapnel entered his head, the blast […]
LIFE ON MARS: The Phoenix Has Landed
NEW YORK TIMES: “Follow the water” has been NASA’s mantra for its Mars exploration for more than a decade. Phoenix will be the first space probe to directly touch Martian water when its robotic arm digs down to the ice layer, expected a few inches beneath the surface, and scoops up some for examination. Phoenix reached its destination after a 422-million-mile journey that lasted almost 10 months. During the final, tense minutes of the descent, long stretches of quiet in the mission control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were punctuated by cheers and clapping as confirmation of crucial events […]
KILLADELPHIA: 4 Killed Since U Busted Out The Grill
INQUIRER: The four deaths in Philadelphia brought the city’s homicide toll through yesterday to 122. There were 163 murders as of May 25 last year. The first of the four Philadelphia homicides was discovered at 10:31 p.m. Friday, when police found Oanh Na Lieu shot multiple times inside a BMW parked on the 2600 block of South Seventh Street in South Philadelphia. Lieu, 22, of West Philadelphia, was pronounced dead at the scene at 10:45 p.m. * Three Philadelphia men were shot dead in separate incidents in the city in the early today. According to Homicide Sgt. William Gallagher police […]
THE PEARLY GATES: The Moon Is Waiting
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is my new old band, for those keeping score at home. [Hat tip to YANIM STUDIOS for loaning us this beautiful piece of animation & THE WOOKIFIED CREW for the assemblage]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
THINKING FELLERS UNION: Thinking Machines, Khyber, Last Night [by JUSTIN ROMANO]
CINEMA: Whip It Good
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008, directed by Steven Spielberg, 124 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITICWhen Raiders of the Lost Ark arrived in 1981, it was a 180-degree turn from the epics that the other New Generation Hollywood directors were making; let them have their glowering Colonel Kurtzes and their wife-beating Jake LaMottas. Spielberg and Lucas would reinvent the movie serials of ’30s & ’40s, with their iconic heroes and all the thrills of 13 chapters stuffed into a two-hour feature. Spielberg’s gift with pure action transformed Raiders into something transcendent, and in the […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Home Before Dark, the 46th album from singer-songwriter Neil Diamond, is No. 1 on the pop charts. It’s the first time Diamond has had a No. 1 debut in a career that’s spanned nearly five decades. For the new album, he enlisted producer Rick Rubin, who also worked on Diamond’s 2005 album 12 Songs — but who’s known more for his work with groundbreaking rap acts. Diamond’s guilty-pleasure hits include “Sweet Caroline,” “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” and “Cherry Cherry.” Writer Michael Chabon won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Diagramming The Mind Of Hillary
[via 236.com] THE GREATEST HILLARY IMPERSONATION ON EARTH! This woman is, like, Lucille Ball-talented, somebody give her a show, or the Veep slot. UPDATE: ABC News’ Kate Snow Reports: In an interview with the Argus Leader, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., took the unusual step of invoking the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy, D-N.Y., when discussing the continuing Democratic nomination battle.”My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.” Clinton said. Obama […]