Pope Receives More Than 56,000 E-Mails
Hit the pope up on the low: benedictxvi(at)vatican.va
Speaking of popes, I saw Sin City. It is rad. If you don't agree, at least admit their promotional materials are fresh:
Note: Do NOT go to sincity.com thinking you'll find info about that movie there.
liveplasma, are you psychic?
musicplasma becomes liveplasma. Now you can "discover" what music and movies you'll probably like. Search by actor and director, too, along with a host of other cool features.
I have to admit that Love Don't Cost a Thing is a not horrible remake of Can't Buy Me Love. It could just be that my affection for that P. Dempsey vehicle in particular makes me feel that anything that recognized and attempted to duplicate its genius is worthwhile regardless of the end product. Furthermore, it was very craftily adapted-- few liberties were taken and, best of all, whole scenes and pieces of dialogue were lifted wholesale from the original. It doesn't stand up to the original, but it's a great try.
Almost, but not quite, in the ballpark of:
It's like that y'all (that y'all), that y'all (that y'all)
It's like da da da da, I like that y'all (that y'all)
It's like that y'all (that y'all), that y'all (that y'all)
It's like da da da da, I like that y'all (that y'all)
-- by Mariah Carey, excerpted from "It's Like That," from her opus "Emancipation of Mimi" (2005)
Behold. Tiger:
It's coming out on April 29.
That whole dressing up as Gandalf for the premier of Lord of the Rings thing seems so much more reasonable to me now.
20 Whitest Girl Names/20 Blackest Girl Names
20 Blackest Boy Names/20 Blackest Boy Names
20 Most Popular "Crossover" Names for Girls and Boys
The above is some info gleaned from the Slate article "A Roshanda by Any Other Name: How do babies with super-black names fare?"
This article has nothing to do with whether or not having a "black" name will effect anything. What it is really about is naming trends among African American parents, as opposed to those among white parents. Slate just wants you to think there is some sociological benefit to reading the article. There isn't.
Never have I seen (call me unobservant) so much music journalism about what music journalism has said about an artist. Okay, that's a lie. Clearly everyone's favorite thing is not necessarily to read about an artist and his/her music, but rather to read about what other people think about that artist. Myself included. I would much rather read Noz's or Oliver Wang's or Sasha Frere Jones' much more developed, reasoned, researched, and contexualized comments, rather than stew over my own half-baked, knee-jerk reactions to a song or album. That said, the M.I.A. craze is crazed. Most of it I sift through but there has been some absolute brilliance in the mix. I'm far from blown away by M.I.A.'s music-- take that with a grain of salt. I love both Motley Crue and Fat Joe's "What's Love Got to Do With It" with a fierce passion that is anything but ironic-- and I feel similarly about the "political implications" of her ethnicity, multi-lingualness, or relation to a Tamil Tiger. The way I feel is, as B. Siegel and J. Smooth would say, everything is already real. So, I say, let's not overdo this. Making every single thing or nothing at all of M.I.A. isn't going to explain anything. Nor will it make her music more enjoyable to listen to.
Having lived in New York City and living on what I would like to believe is that cusp of hipsterness-- I know what hip is, I understand hipsterhood, I aspire to many of its aesthetics and ideals, but I will never truly be there, as I find much of it truly disgusting and masturbatory, (yet when I go to a bar am overwhelmingly attracted to the girls who are wearing white belts, old ass track shoes, and way too much indifference)-- I like to watch these things explode from afar. Call it M.I.A., call it Hollertronix, call it Mooney Suzuki, call it Dipset, call it grime, call it trucker hats. Either way. A fad is a fad is a fad is a fad.
Jon Caramanica's recent article in Slate says the most and least that has been said or needs to be said about M.I.A., better than anything else I have read on the topic. It seems to me that with music journalism it is challenging-- just how meta can you or your conversation get before your audience is annoyed and you've rendered your point of view stupid? This article is really good. To wit:
Away from the beats, however, M.I.A.'s politics begin to appear featherweight. She uses them in a way that feels calculated—a little bit of radical chic for the in-crowd. At the end of her set at the Knitting Factory, M.I.A. found a $20 bill on the floor of the stage. She picked it up, waved it at the audience, and said, "We're refugees. We can make 20 dollars go a long way." Although it was a delicious inversion of the familiar hip-hop practice of blithely throwing money into a crowd, it felt studied, more an idea of what the crowd might expect to hear than what she herself actually thought or felt. After de-arching her eyebrow, she closed her hand around the bill and quietly walked off stage.
Deliveryman stuck in elevator for days
Ming Kuang Chen, a Chinese immigrant and restaurant deliveryman was stuck in an elevator in a Bronx high-rise apartment building for three days after making deliveries in the building. The story is that police "conducted a door-to-door canvass of the apartment complex over the weekend in search of Chen," but it makes one wonder how hard authorities searched for this person, who happens to be a Chinese immigrant. They didn't find him in their "search" and he turned up only after firefighters received a call about a broken elevator, despite the fact that
An investigation determined that the security camera and alarm system in the elevator were working. But security officers told police they never heard nor saw Chen until Tuesday.
The Drudge Report is consistently genius, but I think he has outdone himself.
Oral Sex Safe and Not Really Sex, Say U.S. Teens
However, at least they're planning for their futures:
In addition, one-third of the multi-ethnic 9th graders surveyed said they intended to have oral sex within the next six months and nearly one-fourth planned to have intercourse during the period.
Jane Fonda regrets 1972 visit to Vietnam gun site, and calls it, "The largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine."
