Johnny Cash, bless ‘em, ain’t got nothing on Fred Hibbert (aka Toots as in “and the Maytals”) for adding fictional elements to a song about a non-fictional past. He up conjured a number, 54-46, as his id for imprisonment, charged with possession of marijuana. He did, in fact, go to jail but he was set [...]

I got a chill when I opened this week’s Economist mag to find Mr. Gorbachev peering nervously at the Berlin Wall from a backseat car window and — what? — a Louis Vuitton bag prominently displayed, tacky as ever, bulging with pamphlets in Russian and whatever else Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last president of the [...]

The NYT, one of my few near-daily online stops, will finally enter the 21st century as of midnight tonight New York time and remove the “Times Select” paywall that sequestered editorial writers like Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Nicholas Kristof and (fortunately) Satan’s neoliberal, Thomas Friedman. Archives back to 1987 will also be opened, [...]

I was bummed (but, okay, not that surprised) to hear that HBO cancelled John from Cincinnati after its first season, even by the time it had started to pick up a respectable 3m viewers by the end. Schade. It had a lot going for it: a cast of gleefully weird characters the likes of which [...]

From a collection of historically significant covers — like the Rolling Stone issue with a naked John Lennon climbing a clothed Yoko Ono or the Esquire with Andy Warhol sinking into a giant can of Campbell’s tomato soup — at fishki.net. Update: thanks to wikipedia, I just learned that Lennon was shot the same day [...]

Here are some Berlin exhibition dates borrowed from this month’s KulturSPIEGEL magazine (p. 56-57). It’s a decent round-up. Apparently Cindy Sherman has been extended for another week. If true, you should definitely check it if you haven’t yet — esp. if you’re into thought-provoking/ative modern art. In this case “staged” photographic art. Believe me, you [...]

Who woulda thunk it? That irony-free political protest punk rock would be an endangered species, especially in these days of plentiful sources for righteous outrage, on a seemingly hourly basis. This band from Floriday, Against Me, has been accused by some of selling out on its new album because they’ve added things like sound effects [...]

They (the band I mention below with da Tuna) won the Mercury Prize — even though Dizzee shoulda won it — but didn’t he already get one a few years ago? Kudos krazies!
Powered by ScribeFire.