The World Needs A Stronger Blog...: 12/1/07

31 December 2007

Douche Chill Theater

I haven't concerned myself with the concept of "selling out" since I was about 16. I think ever since bills began arriving in my name "selling out" became a silly concept. Once I was old enough to realise I'd have to buy the salt to boil my pasta, I no longer gave a fuck about the childish condemnations of the privileged and naive.

Now some 14 years later that childish concept comes rushing back and I think I finally know what it means. Keep in mind these are real bands with real songs and real dreams. Gasp.

The pop-rock band is called Early Edison. The other band is called Future 86. It's kinda like having dreams of being a big Hollywood actor and being cast in a Fig Newton commercial.

So embarrassing.

I Love Cable - 1-800-OK-Cable commercial

Actual douche chills...

al di là

not only is their musical name nearly a wonderful palindrome but the food is insane. its always packed here and with good reason. on the corner of fifth and carroll. Fat Venetian malfatti. these handmade Swiss-chard gnocchi are so popular, they're actually closed every Tuesday so they can make more of these gorgeous little things. supply and demand. ieri sera i had the red beet ravioli which was so good, i think it killed a few brain cells. we had an orgasmic 3 orange salad, the winter white salad, oh and for dessert we had the black pepper and earl gray gelato. "are u fucking kidding me?!" thats my restaurant review. i'm sure you all know about this spot if you live around here. while you're waiting for your food, look up and marvel at that original ceiling.

Happy New Year, Mofo's

Check, Please!

Roxanne Basandella is a teacher from Whitestone. She teaches at Drexel Avenue School in Westbury.

Roxanne was recently awarded the 2007 New York State English Council's Elementary School Teacher of the Year Award.

For what? You ask.

Roxanne used Bon Jovi to teach her students about literary devices and grammar.

Roxanne said while more traditionally taught literature can often be too complex, Bon Jovi is just right.

"Things like English idioms to them are completely over their heads. It doesn't matter how they try to explain to them," she said. "But when Bon Jovi says 'on a steel horse I ride,' they immediately say he means on a tour bus."

Thank you, and goodnight.

27 December 2007

The Deans stumbled upon this 16-room mansion in the Bronx last year. They paid $675,000 and were told it very well may be haunted.

The mansion was built from European granite that was shipped by boat and then carried from the Manhattan docks by horse and buggy. The workers and their families were said to have pitched tents in the backyard for a year as they worked.

It will cost at least $200,000 to bring the mansion back to its original grandeur. But all in all, that's under $1M for a mansion in New York. Not bad.

The Times has a gorgeous slideshow.

Let It Transcend And By Transcend I Mean Have It Hauled Off To A Staten Island Landfill

New Year’s Eve is a time of new beginnings, and if I hear that again, I'm going to take a hostage.

In keeping with the spirit of second chances, starting anew and letting go of old baggage, the organisers of New Year’s Eve in Times Square tourist trap are baiting the public to say goodbye, once and for all, to those bad memories of 2007.

For tomorrow is the first annual, “GOOD RIDDANCE DAY”; a chance to, literally, incinerate your bad memories into a giant bonfire. Umm...

Here's their pitch:

“We’re inviting New Yorkers and visitors from around the world to join us in mashing a year’s worth of bad hairstyles, loathed music, fashion disasters and ill-fated romances into an unrecognizable pulp of bad karma and negative vibes – which will then be carted off, never to be seen again.”

Oh, how cool. Like the early christian converts at Ephesus torched the Sorcery scrolls? The writings of Priscillian and the repeated destruction of Alexandria libraries? Sorta like Anthony Comstock's New York Society for the “Suppression of Vice” back in the day! How fabulously Joseph McCarthy! How utterly Adolf, and there for Will Smith! Will Salman Rushdie be there?

God, do you know how much awful poetry there'll be?

It's all going down tomorrow from high noon until one o'clock at the Times Square Info Center @ 1560 Broadway on 7th Avenue between 46th and 47th.

From China's 3rd century BC Qin Dynasty (You'll Not See Nothing Like The Mighty Qin?) to the present day, the burning of books has a long history as a tool wielded by authorities both secular and religious, in efforts to suppress dissenting or heretical views that are perceived as posing a threat to the prevailing order.

When books are ordered collected by the authorities and disposed of in private, it may not be book burning, strictly speaking — but the destruction of cultural and intellectual heritage is the same.

According to scholar Elaine Pagels, "In AD 367, Athanasius, the zealous bishop of Alexandria... issued an Easter letter in which he demanded that Egyptian monks destroy all such unacceptable writings, except for those he specifically listed as 'acceptable' even 'canonical' — a list that constitutes the present 'New Testament'".[citation needed] Although Pagels cites Athanasius's Paschal letter for 367 CE, there is no order for monks to destroy heretical works contained in that letter.

Thus, heretical texts do not turn up as palimpsests, washed clean and overwritten, as pagan ones do; many early Christian texts have been as thoroughly "lost" as if they had been publicly burnt.

In his 1821 play, Almansor, the German writer Heinrich Heine — referring to the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, during the Spanish Inquisition — famously wrote:

“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.” or “Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.” )

One century later, Heine's books were among the thousands of volumes that were torched by the Nazis in Berlin's Opernplatz in an outburst that did, in fact, foreshadow the blazing ovens of the Holocaust.

Creepy and awful.

Anthony Comstock's New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded in 1873, inscribed book burning on its seal, as a worthy goal to be achieved.

Comstock's total accomplishment in a long and influential career is estimated to have been the destruction of some 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing such 'objectionable' books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures. All of this material was defined as "lewd" by Comstock's very broad definition of the term — which he and his associates successfully lobbied the United States Congress to incorporate in the Comstock Law.

The Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451 is about a fictional future society that has institutionalised book burning. In Orwell's 1984, the euphemistically-called "memory hole" is used to burn any book or written text which is inconvenient to the regime, and there is mention of "the total destruction of all books published before 1960".

I Know All There Is To Know About The Choking Game...

I remember a few fools playing this game back in junior high school. We were in music class and they were making each other pass out. It was creepy. I couldn't remember how the F they did it so I looked it up.

The fainting game or the choking game, also known by a million other nicknames such as Airplaning, America Dream Game, Black Out Game, Breath Play, Breathing the Zoo, Bum Rushing, California Blackout, California Choke, California Dreaming, California Headrush, California High, California Knockout, Choking Out, Cloud Nine, Crank, Dream Game, Dreaming Game, Dying game, Fall Out Game, Flat Liner, Flatline Game, Flatliner Game, Funky Chicken, Getting Passed Out, Grandma's Boy, Halloween, High Riser, Hoola Hooping, Hyperventilation Game, Indian Headrush, Knockout Game, Passing Out Game, Pass-out Game, Purple Dragon, Natural High, Redline, Rising Sun, Rocket Ride, Sandboxing, Sleeper Hold, Space Monkey, Speed Dreaming, Suffocation Game, Suffocation Roulette, Teen Choking Game, Tingling Game, Trip to Heaven, Wall-Hit, is not technically a "game" but more an activity whereby a state of unconsciousness or near unconsciousness is produced by restricting the supply of oxygenated blood to the brain.

For some reason, adolescents love them "choking games", the attraction perhaps owed to the erotic nature of the body's response to oxygen deprivation. O, my.

There have been many reports of death from the game, but it is expected that this is under reported due to being mistaken as suicides. A host of variations have been responsible for a large number of deaths and permanent neurological disabilities.

I suppose curiosity in an altered state of consciousness, the experience of a brownout, an imagined approximation to a near death experience or more recently, copycatting elements of the film Flatliners could all be reason to try it. I never did though. I was too scared I'd never wake up. I let Jose, and Sergio and Mouna do it. Not me.

Most likely its the belief that it will induce a brief sense of euphoria and may enhance erotic feelings; the prospect of intoxication, albeit brief, at no financial cost a.k.a. cheap drugs, dood!

I guess when you're young and dumb you don't realise the physiological mechanisms involved and the real dangers playing the game presents. I learned it from watching you, dad!

Almost all forms of the game begin with some form of hyperventilation, which can be done sitting or lying down, but it is very common to start squatting or bent over, and quickly standing up before the next part, which increases the effect. (Hyperventilating can cause hypocapnia which is a state of reduced carbon dioxide in the blood and the feeling of pins and needles which is actually called Paresthesia)

After the hyperventilatin' is done, your good buddy grabs both sides of your neck with his thumbs and index fingers and squeezes. Sorta like momma cat picking up baby cat.

And then you pass out and Jefferson Airplane plays for about 5 seconds before you wake up. Big fun, huh?

Thumbs or wrists pressed on the sides of neck compresses the internal carotid artery. This causes a direct restriction of blood to the brain. Well, that sounds charming. Pressing on the carotid arteries also presses on baroreceptors. These bodies then cause vasodilation (dilation (widening) of the blood vessels) in the brain leading to insufficient blood to perfuse the brain with oxygen and maintain consciousness.

A message is also sent via the vagus nerve (a message to you, Vagus! Fuck you Vagus!) to the main pacemaker of the heart to decrease the rate and volume of the heartbeat, typically by up to a third. In some cases there is evidence that this may escalate into asystole, a form of cardiac arrest that is difficult to treat. There is a dissenting view on the full extent how and when a person reaches a stage of permanent injury, but it is agreed that pressure on the vagus nerve causes changes to pulse rate and blood pressure and is dangerous in cases of carotid sinus hypersensitivity.

I was never dumb enough to try so I have no idea what it feels like but hey, its almost Friday!

Teenager Casts Light on a Shadowy Game {Ny Times}

British Luxury Made By Germans

The always amazing Jalopnik looks under the hood of the new BMW-built Rolls-Royce Phantom. And they search the trunk and under the seats and up in the wheel wells...

“For generations, Rolls-Royces were the automotive equivalent of a white wedding dress. Pretty, but who you trying to fool, honey? Yes, the badge said Rolls-Royce, but wink-wink, nudge, nudge, Elton John covered his in rhinestones, but come on — they weren't very good cars. Sure, we'd love to get our mits on a Phantom IV. Or better yet, a Camargue! But even then you're talking 189 hp from a 6.75-liter V8 coupled to a GM 3-speed autobox. Woo frigging hoo. And at least the Camargue was kinda nifty looking. Most Rollers are frumpy, bulgy looking things. But they had a lot of leather and walnut and wool and odds are you weren't doing the driving anyhow, so did it really matter that the emperor was wearing little more than a pair of speedos? To BMW it did.

Flush with cash and hubris BMW purchased Rolls-Royce in 2003 and set about modernizing the moribund brand. Volkswagen had gobbled up Bentley and was planning to stick two turbochargers into a 2-door Phaeton and call it a Continental. Mercedes was busy breathing life back into the Maybach name with an elongated S-Class fitted with... twin-turbos. BMW then had every reason and right to stick a massive grill on their 7-Series, plumb in a couple of turbochargers and pray that the NBA takes a liking to their new Rolls. Only they didn't. Instead, BMW took a chance.”

Read the entire article, here.

bags of groceries in movies

I do realise there's a lot of shit in movies that doesn't exactly happen in real life but why do bags of groceries in movies always have a giant baguette peeking out and some sort of unwrapped green roughage pouring over? In all my years, I've never carried home a sack of goods that looked anything like this.

Alba 77

Anyone else remember this stuff?

Before protein shakes, before diet shakes, before all that shit, there was Alba '77. I'm assuming the "77" referred to the caloric content and not the glory days of punk rock.

Alba came in vanilla and chocolate. I never fucked with strawberry and I got out before they started making the fruit flavours. But back in the day my mum used to rock Alba 77's.

I can still hear my mum's old school Oster blender grinding up the ice and the faint smell of burning metal from the cutter blades thirsty for oil.

Alba 77 + ice + milk? Fuggedaboudit!

I was hard pressed like a panini trying to find a pic of Alba 77. All I found were pics of Jessica Alba picking a wedgie out of her bikini on the beach. Classy.

Paris May Need A Spot On The Baguette Line

All the gelt that Paris Hilton thought she was going to get from her Hilton family inheritance could be gone thanks to her grandfather, Barron.

Barron Hilton said yesterday that he would be giving 97% of his $2.3 billion fortune to charity, specifically to the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Foundation.

Thus putting Paris' reported $30 million windfall in some doubt.

Grandpa Barron has been quoted as being "embarrassed" by Paris' behaviour and supposedly even threatened to yank her inheritance entirely a few years back.

Book Review: The Scent of Desire by Rachel Herz

That dude Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But if you cannot smell, does the rose lose its sweetness?

Rachel Herz has written a book called The Scent of Desire. It's the first and definitive book on the psychology of smell which traces the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation to our relationships with the people closest to us and the world at large.

Smell was the very first sense to evolve and is located in the same part of the brain that processes emotion, memory, and motivation. To our ancestors, the sense of smell wasn't just important, it was crucial to existence and it remains so today. Our emotional, physical and sexual lives are profoundly shaped by both our reactions to and interpretations of different smells.

Why do some people like a certain smell and others hate it? Is smell personal or cultural? How does smell affect our choices and our daily lives? Rach explores these questions and examines the role smell plays in our lives, and how this most essential of senses is imperative to our physical and emotional well-being.

Rach investigates how our sense of smell functions, examines what purpose it serves, and shows how inextricably it is linked to our survival. She introduces us to people who have lost their ability to smell and shows how their experiences confirm this sense's importance by illuminating the traumatic effect its loss has on the quality of day-to-day living. She illustrates how profoundly scent and the sense of smell affect our daily lives with numerous examples and personal accounts based on her years of tireless research.

The wonders of our sense of smell are all explored in a compelling and engaging manner, from emotions and memory to aromatherapy and pheromones! For anyone who has ever wondered about human nature or been curious about the secrets of both the body and the mind, The Scent of Desire is a fascinating, down-to-earth tour of the psychology and biology of our most neglected sense, the sense of smell.

HOLLA!

Lady walks by me on Lexington this morning, gabbing on her cell phone. She had on one of those knit hats with the mouse ears. Strike One.

So as she passes by I hear her say, "Wait, so you were the one that was mauled by the tiger?"

One Reporter's Opinion

Ya gotta love TV newspeople. The talking head anchorman/woman is of an entirely different breed of human being. They're always, and I mean ALWAYS, looking for their big break. They're always hoping for that rare exclusive which will instantly catapult them into the stratosphere of media fame, make their name household, and land them a cushy job at a sterling network in a top market. And in the never-ending "post 9/11 world" sometimes the stories are handed to these reporters on silver platters.

If Dick Johnson just so happens to be anchoring the 5 o'clock news when the next bomb hits, then there ya go, Dick! Congratulations, it happened on your shift and now you can patiently await your very own Edward R. Murrow Award.

The whole time a reporter is, well, reporting he's hoping this is "The Big One"; the story that will seal his fate.

So then let us talk about Ravi Baichwal. Ravi is the weekend anchorman for Chicago's WLS-TV news.

Weekend people are normally producers and reporters with training wheels. It's the murky battleground for the dreamer production assistants and the annoying, aspiring segment producer.

If you make your bones, step on the right heads, and grease the right palms, eventually you'll end up working on the weekend shift doing graphics, producing a segment or maybe even doing the sports. See how you do when they throw you into the fire on a Sunday night at 10.

So let's say you're Ravi Baichwal. You've worked your way up from being a tape operator to a segment producer, to the guy they send out to stand on the side of the highway during a Lake Effect blizzard and now you're at the anchors desk on a Sunday night on ABC Chicago. Your heart is fucking pounding.

And just then, while you're live on air, a silver Mazda MPV with Indiana plates crashes into your studio, jarring you and the building...

and instantly you think, “O my god, is this it? Is this my big break unfolding before me?!”, they say every journalist gets his one story and you think, “Is this mine? Has our station just been attacked by terrorists? God, I hope so!”

The screen goes blank.

Moments later you're back on the air. You've counted your fingers and toes and you're alive, you're OK. So now it's time to throw it in overdrive. The world, your delusions hope, is watching.

Ready? Action! Ravi, we're back on the air...

Give us some panic. Make us fear the unknown. Rule out, or gently fail to mention, that this could be, and probably is, just a freak accident. Instead, cryptically insinuate the incident may have been deliberate. Yes!

Yes! The terrorists are in Chicago and they're gunning for ABC's Sunday evening news anchor, Ravi Baichwal. The terrorists plan to plow their silver Mazda MPV into the studio's reinforced glass wall while Ravi's live on air.

When we return from commercial Ravi has finished shitting his pants and now appears to be channeling Cronkite reporting The Tet Offensive.

Suddenly Ravi is very serious, he's calm, he's cool, but he's grave. Ravi is our backbone now. O, sweet, fearless Ravi. He's deadpan and deliberate. He's using weighty parlance now; phrases most famously tied to New York and 9/11 such as “first responders” and “deliberate act”.

Suddenly ABC Chicago is Ground Zero and Ravi is first on the scene, rolling up his sleeves and burying himself in the facts and the truth and the dirt and the grit and grime. Ravi is seven-years old again playing reporter in his parents basement.

It all boils down to a culture of fear, perpetuated by the media. Stations televise each bit of news of murder and mayhem because it delivers ratings. By now we should know panic sells. And no matter how much we're hoping for transparency and truth; integrity and veracity, what we're seeing is egoistic individuals wrestling with their own narcissistic agendas which are laser-focused on glory, no matter how it comes or what it takes. I thought Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine did a pristine job of showing what I mean here. Go back and watch the footage of all the reporters in a row doing their live feeds from Columbine and you'll see what I mean. That one dude, Jeff Rossen, actually turned up on ABC-7 here in New York. Rossen was the guy freaking out about his hair while reporting on the Columbine shootings. Ironic, no?

Sadly, the days of Edward R. Murrow are long gone. It's Jeff Rossen and Ravi Baichwal's world now.

Enjoy.

Car Runs Into Studio During Broadcast - Watch more free videos

Merry Christmas, From Belle And Sebastian

DOWNLOAD: Belle and Sebastian - Are You Coming Over For Christmas? (MP3 courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan)

The lovely new song that is streaming on the home page is called 'Are You Coming Over For Christmas?' and was recorded this week in Glasgow, being completed with three days to spare!

It is a brand new recording and the band's first studio output since last year's 'The Life Pursuit' album.

As well as the band members, it features guest vocals by Celia Garcia, double bass by Dave McGowan, saxophones and clarinet by James Swinburne and harp by Helen Macleod. It was arranged by Mick Cooke, engineered by Steven Clark and mixed by Stuart McCredie.

The track can be streamed from the homepage or the band's MySpace profile. As a special Xmas present, we will switch on the download function on the MySpace from midnight 'til midnight on Christmas Day. Happy Christmas! [Belle and Sebastian]

Boxing Day: Poor Man's Christmas

So today is Boxing Day. Chances are your calendar says it and you always wonder what the fuck it is. Well, wonder no more.

Boxing Day is a holiday of particularly British origin, but in many other countries worldwide, December 26 is also a holiday under various names.

Boxing Day is celebrated in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Wherever Queen Elizabeth is Queen, it's celebrated and observed.

The tradition actually dates back to the Middle Ages when people would give out gifts to their servants, the poor, and/or to people in a lower social class.

The holiday's name has numerous folk etymologies:

Boxing Day was the day when people would give a present or Christmas box to those who had worked for them throughout the year.

In England many years ago, it was common practice for the servants to carry boxes to their employers when they arrived for their day's work on the day after Christmas. Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts. This can be compared with the modern day concept of Christmas bonuses. The servants carried boxes for the coins, hence the name Boxing Day.

Because the staff had to work on such an important day as Christmas by serving the master of the house and their family, they were given the following day off. As servants were kept away from their own families to work on a traditional religious holiday and were not able to celebrate Christmas Dinner, the customary benefit was to "box" up the leftover food from Christmas Day and send it away with the servants and their families.

Similarly, as the servants had the 26th off, the owners of the manor may have had to serve themselves pre-prepared, boxed microwavable meals for that one day. Hence the "boxing" of food became "Boxing Day".

"Boxing Day" also had to do with the way in which the dogs, commonly now known as boxers, reacted to the donations in the church. If they barked, it was said that the church would receive a great sum of money and the town would have a prosperous New Year. Kinda like Groundhog's Day but with dogs. Got it?

It is tradition in most families to spend the day with other family members as a sort of 'second' Christmas Day, where presents are exchanged, the left-overs of the previous day are eaten or another family meal is prepared in celebration. Great, now I'm starving... in midtown. This sucks!

Boxing Day in the UK is traditionally a day for sporting activity, originally fox hunting, but thats been banned so they just play football and cricket and eat beans.

In South Africa, Boxing Day is known as Day of Goodwill. It is a day on which food, left over from Christmas Day, is 'boxed', (in picnic baskets, bags, cake tins, etc.) and family and friends head to the beach to enjoy these left-overs.

Pinup Girl Jeanne Carmen Has Died

Jeanne Carmen was born in August of 1930 high above Crowley's Ridge in Paragould, Arkansas.

The city's name is a portmanteau, combining the last names of J.W. Paramore and Jay Gould, the owners of the two railroads that originally crossed there.

Jeanne picked cotton on her family's farm before running away when she was 13.

She came to New York City and, despite having no show business experience, immediately became a dancer in a Broadway show called "Burlesque".

Jeanne later went into modeling, gaining a measure of success with a series of cheesecake shots in men's magazines. One gig turned into a new career as a trick golfer. On tour with golfer Jack Redmond, she would perform stunts such as hitting a ball out of a man's mouth. O, my. She claimed that she went on to hustle golfers with Las Vegas mobster Johnny Roselli.

"I was just a little country girl that wanted to be a movie star," she told the Orange County Register in 1996.

Jeanne was tight with Marilyn Monroe and it was widely rumoured Jeanne had sordid affairs with everyone from Old Blue Eyes and Elvis to The Kennedys and swashbucklin' Errol Flynn.

Jeanna also knows where a few bodies were buried...

Infamous Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana was shot in the back of the head on in June of 1975 while frying sausage and peppers in the basement of his home in Oak Park, Illinois. After falling down, Sam's body was turned over and shot six more times in the face and chin.

It was believed by investigators that his murderer was a close friend whom he had let into the house. At the time he was scheduled to appear before a Senate committee investigating CIA and Outfit collusion in plots to assassinate Fidel Castro so the conspiracy theories flew. For it was widely reputed and partially exposed in the Church Committee Hearings that Giancana and other mobsters had been recruited by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. However, Jeanne Carmen it was Johnny Roselli who murdered Sam Giancana and it was a fight over Marilyn Monroe!

Jeanne died Thursday in her Orange County home.

She was 77.

Jeanne Carmen

Madonna's video for "Cherish"

Sixteen Years Later, Boston's Big Dig Done

As the December sun sets on Tommy O'Neill's tunnel and the clock expires on 2007, The Hub will quietly mark the end of one of the most tumultuous eras in it's history: The Big Dig, the nation's most complex and costly highway project, will officially come to an end. Some 16 years since construction began in 1991.

Don't expect any champagne toasts.

After a history marked by engineering triumphs, as well as tunnel leaks, epic traffic jams, last year's death of a motorist crushed by concrete ceiling panels and a price tag that soared from $2.6 billion to a staggering $14.8 billion!, there's little appetite for celebration in the City of Notions.

Civil and criminal cases stemming from the July 2006 tunnel ceiling collapse continue. Other lawsuits are pending against various Big Dig contractors, and Powers Fasteners still faces a manslaughter indictment for their faulty tile glue.

December 31 will mark the official end of the joint venture that teamed megaproject contractor Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to build the dizzying labyrinth of underground highways, bridges, ramps and a new tunnel under Boston Harbour — all while the city remained open for business.

The project was so complex, it has been likened to performing open-heart surgery on a wide-awake patient. Some Beantown residents didn't know if they would live to see it end.

R.I.P., Del Valle

Everything Dies

This may very well be the most depressing thing I've ever seen.

Fruit Decomposition Time Lapse - Watch more free videos

So What You're Telling Me Is Will Smith Is Down With Hitler

If I were Will Smith, The Fresh Prince of Hollywood, the name “Hitler” would never leave my mouth. Ever. Don't even give the bloodthirsty media the chance to take your words out of context or rearrange them. Do I have to teach you everything?

No matter, your boy, ever charming and sly, still managed to stick his foot in his mouth on Christmas Eve, telling a Scottish newspaper that Hitler “didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' ... I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was good” .

Umm. Yeah... About that.

The story went out over the wire with the headline: SMITH: ‘HITLER WAS A GOOD PERSON’

So now the Jewish Defense League is calling on Barack Obama? (what's he got to do with this?) to repudiate Smith's comments, and wants theaters to pull “I Am Legend” from their screens.

The JDL said Smith's words, “spit on the memory of every person murdered by the Nazis. His disgusting words stick a knife in the backs of every veteran who fought (and sometimes died) to save the world from the intentions of Adolf Hitler.”

Smith, always eager to learn, please, and be heroically helpful and romantically obliging had his rep send out a response, which said:

“It is an awful and disgusting lie. It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. Adolph Hitler was a vile, heinous, vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet.”

DJ Jazzy Jeff couldn't be reached for comment.

Look, Will, my man, we hear what you were trying to say, but bro, next time, don't even bother. Just keep shooting aliens and doing whatever you do that everyone seems to love. Keep it milquetoast.

Tigers Don't Belong In Cages

Tiger Escapes San Francisco Zoo Cage and Kills 1 {Associated Press}

Newborn Babies Are Not Snakes!

You know for Christmas people send around these Season's Greetings/We Had A Baby cards?

Well, I'd always wondered why we measure babies in length rather than height.

It'll say:

Little Baby Jeremiah Bullfrog Johnson.
Born December 12.
8 lbs. 7 oz.
23 inches long.

It's that last part I have a beef with. 23 inches "long". Long?! Is it a baby or a fucking boa constrictor?

You wouldn't say I was 6 feet long, right? So what's the deal with the baby shit? It makes them sound like reptiles.

I realise the baby isn't standing up and walking at 3 days old, but we can announce their measurement as a height, like a normal human being and not a length!

Couldn't you just say "23 inches tall"? That sounds adorable! Little munchkin.

23 inches "long" sounds like you just gave birf to an electric eel.

Water birth is a method of giving birth, which involves immersion in warm water. Proponents believe this method is safe and provides many benefits for both mother and infant, including pain relief and a less traumatic birth experience for the baby. However, critics argue that the procedure introduces unnecessary risks to the infant such as infection and water inhalation.

Old Soviet Christmas Cards

Holy Atomic Christmas, Batman!!

Christmas in Russia is actually more like an amalgam of Christmas and New Year's rolled into one.

From the 1917 Revolution until the fall of Communism, Christmas had a rather tenuous status in the Soviet Union—although the holiday was officially frowned upon, many enterprising citizens turned it into a New Year’s festival, complete with a Santa-like figure called “Grandfather Frost.”

For after the 1917 Revolution, Christmas was banned throughout Russia, along with all other religious celebrations and it wasn't until 75 years later, in 1992, that the holiday was openly observed.

Today, Christmas is in favour again and celebrated in grand fashion, with the faithful participating in an all-night Mass in incense-filled Cathedrals amidst the company of the painted icons of Saints.

But as with many things in Russia, there are some slight differences—such as the fact that Russian Christmas is observed on January 7 and sauerkraut soup is delicious.

“Grandfather Frost, The Russian Santa Claus” brings gifts to the children at New Year's Eve. His grand-daughter, the “Snowmaiden” accompanies him to help distribute the gifts. Well, naturally.

And apparently, as these cards teach us, “Grandfather Frost” doesn't use the typical American reindeer-driven sled but an actual kutya-powered moon rocket! Those Russians, always gotta show off their toys...

I came across a bunch of old Soviet Union Christmas cards... Enjoy!

The role of Santa Claus will be played played by Grandfather Frost. Please note this change.

Click "Read More" to see the rest!

Christmas Cards...From The Grave! AGGHHHHHH!

Chet Fitch was from Oregon. Ashland, to be exact. Ashland sits in the foothills of the Siskiyou and Cascade Mountains about 15 miles north of the California border on Interstate 5.

Chet Fitch died this October at the age of 88.

So as you can imagine Chet's friends and family freaked the fuck out when christmas cards began arriving written in his hand with a return address of “Heaven.”

The cards said:

“I asked god if I could sneak back and send some cards. At first he said no; but at my insistence he finally said, 'OK'. Wish I could tell you about things here but words cannot explain. Anyway, I'll probably be seeing you all soon - some sooner than you think. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, Chet Fitch”

Unfortunately, that's where the story goes from creepy to silly, but it ends eerie.

The christmas card mailing was a joke Chet Fitch worked on for two decades with his barber, and his close friend, Patty Dean.

Patty told the Ashland Daily Tidings this week that Chet kept updating the mailing list and giving her extra money when postal rates went up.

However, this fall, she said, Chet Fitch looked up to her from the barber chair one day and remarked:

“Patty, you must be getting tired of waiting to mail those cards. I think you'll probably be able to mail them this year.”

Chet Fitch died a week later.

merry xmas, y'all

Well tonight thank God it's them... instead of you! (Reprise)

"And the Christmas bells that ring
They are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you"

Ah, yes. Lyrics from Sir Bob Geldof's Christmas compendium of gut-bustingly gross generalisations about Africa circa 1984. I don't think any other Christmas carol features the phrase "chimes of doom" making this Christmas song a bona fide classic!

"Do They Know It's Christmas" (MP3)

As trends in radio go, the All-Christmas, All the time format arrived in New York long after it had swept through places like Salt Lake City and San Diego, boosting ratings but leaving some listeners wondering how many more times they would have to listen to "Jingle Bells."

Christmas music was "a feel-good format" that grew in popularity nationally after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Programmers felt that psychologically, people in their markets could use a lift, and apparently Burl Ives is a cure-all.

As usual Lite-FM (106.7 WLTW) lead the charge, flipping to their now famous all-Christmas format about three whole seconds into Thanksgiving day.

Laying in bed on Sunday morning we had it on for a few hours as we drifted in and out of sleep and still we managed to realise Lite-FM were spinning the same 10 or 15 songs, over and over, already.

If we heard "Do They Know It's Christmas?" once we heard it four times. Honorable mentions go out to: Bill Haley's "Jingle Bell Rock", Burl Ives' "A Holly Jolly Christmas", Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" by the oft-maligned Ronettes.

It's not easy keeping an all-Christmas format fresh for a whole month before the actual day but let's start with a broader spectrum of holiday hits, shall we?

Speaking of which, I unearthed an old NY Times article about the rise of all-Christmas formats in NYC and lo and behold they interviewed Lite-FM's program director, Jim Ryan. Ryan was pounding his holiday sweater covered chest that Lite-FM has a library of "3,900 versions of holiday songs to choose from."

But Jim, if you've an arsenal of 4,000 songs why did I hear the same 12 repeat every other hour yesterday?

Oh, and Jim takes his holiday tunes quite seriously. If you're looking for the insufferable "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" maybe you should try 95.5 WPLJ because Jim says, "Our audience doesn't appreciate that kind of humor."

Yes, we've come to prefer Lite-FM's all-Christmas format for their no-nonsense holiday hits; we prefer a sort of staid joy.

You've gotta love Bob Geldof; the original cover to this single is fucking amazing! It reminds me of Napalm Death's "Scum" LP.

In late 1984, a BBC report aired highlighting the famine that had hit the people of Ethiopia. The Boomtown Rat's lead singer Bob Geldof had seen the report and was moved so much that he decided that a pop record should be used to further increase awareness of the famine and to raise money. Aware that he could do little on his own, he called Midge Ure from Ultravox and together they quickly co-wrote the song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?".

Geldof kept a November appointment with BBC Radio 1 DJ Richard Skinner to appear on his show, but instead of discussing his new album (the original reason for his booking), he used his airtime to publicise the idea for the charity single, so by the time the musicians were recruited (under extreme duress and guilt) there was intense media interest in the subject.

Using powers of persuasion which have since become a major part of the Geldof legend, he put together a group (Band Aid), consisting of leading Irish and British musicians who were among the most popular and recognised of this era.

wait a minute... is that Cameo?

Names like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club (who initially arrived sans Boy George,), George Michael (sans Andrew Ridgeley) of Wham!, Kool and the Gang, Sting, Bono and Adam Clayton of U2, Phil Collins, Paul Weller (though not Mick Talbot) of the Style Council, Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt of Status Quo, Motherfuckin' Jody Watley! of Shalamar, Bananarama, Marilyn (who was not invited but arrived anyway) and some of Geldof's bandmates from the Boomtown Rats all arrived. Only one of Ure's Ultravox colleagues, Chris Cross, attended.

Legend has it that Bob Geldof noticed Boy George wasn't there despite ringing him up in New York the day before demanding he sing on the record the next day. Geldof went back to the phone to get the Culture Club frontman out of bed and on to a Concorde. And the rest is history.

I stumbled upon a loving dissection of this rock happening from The Tris McCall Report:

"If you remember, Bob Geldof wrote some pretty decent songs for the Boomtown Rats in the late Seventies. His political agenda was never what you'd call sophisticated, but then nothing in it could have prepared us for this: the most fucked-up and condescending piece of patrician propaganda in the history of limousine liberal art.

Merit there was in the original Live Aid project, to be sure. But now it's twenty years later, Geldof and Midge Ure are M.I.A., Eritrea has officially broken away from Ethiopia, and we're still hearing this compendium of ridiculous generalizations about Africa in heavy rotation every Christmas season.

Let's recap: Africa is a "world of dread and fear," there's no water flowing, bells ringing there are the "clanging chimes of doom," nothing ever grows in Africa (what?!?), there's no rain or rivers or, um, water flowing, and above all and most importantly, NO SNOW!

Biologically laughable and factually preposterous, these misrepresentations still reinforce the nagging popular conception of Africa as a huge continental garbage can, populated by stone-age morons who have yet to grasp the rudiments of agriculture.

Geldof sums up his patronizing spiel with the staggeringly irrelevant title question: those starving Ethiopian victims of politically-induced famine, do they know it's Christmas?

Bob, is this really the issue?

Much has changed since '83; these days it's hard to imagine Phil Collins getting on MTV with a phony accent and a sombrero and singing "it's no fun-a/ being an illegal alie-yun." Yet during the holiday season, we're so busy screening for christian content that our ability to discern massive cultural slander goes on the blink."

Sorry; I got carried away with the Geldof thing. My main beef, and the reason behind this entire entry, was to be that it's been a few days into this rampant All-Christmas All the time format sweeping our fair city and still I have not heard the best Christmas song ever, which of course is "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses.

The Waitresses existed for the purpose of performing the witty, often female-oriented songs of guitarist Chris Butler, who had previously led a series of new wave bands in Cleveland. The personnel of the band as of its 1982 debut album, Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?, was, in addition to Butler, singer Patty Donahue, backup singer Ariel Warner, reed player Mars Williams, bassist David Horstra, drummer Billy Ficca (a once and future member of Television), and keyboardist Dan Klayman. The group recorded two albums and a mini-LP in the early '80s.

Their debut album was a unique and fairly important moment in early-'80s new wave, though the band failed to gain momentum from their success and effectively broke up within 2 years of releasing their first record.

Lead singer Patty Donahue's singing ranged from a playful sexiness on the well-known hit "I Know What Boys Like" to a half-talk, half-yell with shades of post-punk groups like Gang of Four and the Raincoats on "Pussy Strut" and "Go On."

The guitar and bass were bizarre and funk-influenced in much the same way as other well-known Akron groups like Devo and the Pretenders. Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? was, in a sense, the brainchild of Chris Butler, who wrote most of the songs and co-produced the album in addition to playing guitar. Butler's version of new wave was danceable and fun, certainly, but witty and insightful lyrics were also an essential ingredient. Ultimately, though, it was Donahue's attitude that gave the music its personality and made the album a critical and commercial success.

Their subsequent EP further samples some of the Waitresses' smart new wave charm, including the silly but cute "Square Pegs" (theme from the short-lived TV show of the same name), the live recording of the ska-inflected title track Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?, and the priceless "Christmas Wrapping," one of the best holiday pop tunes ever recorded (and some say pre-dating Blondie's foray into rap, "Rapture").

After The Waitresses broke up for good, Donahue generally kept a low profile, though she is credited on Alice Cooper's Zipper Catches Skin with "vocals and sarcasm." She later worked for MCA A&R, finding other talented musicians.

A heavy smoker, Donahue died of lung cancer in 1996 after battling it for almost a year. She was 40 years old.

A leather jacket Patty wore during some of her shows is installed at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

In 1987, Chris Butler sold all of his musical gear, including "Bebe Blue", the Vox Teardrop electric guitar he used to record "Christmas Wrapping," to a Manhattan music store.

Over 20 years later the store owners told him that the guitar's latest owner, a woman in Belgium, wanted to sell it to someone who could appreciate its significance. Butler hopped on a plane and repurchased it, though he could not convince himself that the guitar was in fact the one he owned before.

Butler currently lives in Hoboken with his wife Morgan and their son Liam. He runs Future Fossil Records.

Butler majored in sociology at Kent State University and was among a famous crowd of students fired on by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970.

"Kent State University was placed in an international spotlight after a tragic end to a student demonstration against the Vietnam War and the National Guard on May 4, 1970. Shortly after noon on that Monday, 13 seconds of rifle fire by a contingent of 28 Ohio National Guardsmen left four students dead, one permanently paralyzed, and eight others wounded." Please read more about it here

Do they know it's Christmastime at all?

Back in the day, mum and I used to have breakfast every Christmas Eve at a little luncheonette on 86th Street called The Green Tea Room. It's now a GameStop, where they sell video games and whatever.

A few doors down was the Record Factory. I bought many of my first punk cassettes there. Record Factory is now a very orange cell phone store; Cingular, I think?

I'm just sayin, do they know it's Christmastime at all?

“Now let me take a trip down memory lane” —BizMarkie

“Start off the dice-rolling mats for craps to cee-lo
With sidebets, I roll a deuce, nothing below
Peace god — now the shit is explained
I'm taking niggas on a trip straight through memory lane
It's like that y'all it's like that y'all it's like that y'all”

“Uptown was Alpo, son, heard he was kingpin, yo
Fuck "rap is real", watch the herbs stand still
Never talking to snakes 'cause the words of man kill
True in the game, as long as blood is blue in my veins
I pour my Heineken brew to my deceased crew on memory lane”

The End Of The World As We Know It:
Queen Elizabeth On YouTube

Motherfucking Queen Elizabeth II is trying to spread the Christmas cheer to as many people as possible — religious or not — by hooking up with YouTube to broadcast her 50th holiday message.

The Fucking Queen, Tay Zonday and Techno Viking, all in the same place? Wow.

Her Majesty has been given her own "channel" on You Tube, where archive footage including her maiden Christmas Day speech in 1957 — when she addressed Britain and its former colonies —will start being posted sometime today.

The 81-year-old Queen of the Brits' annual xmas spiel is the only time during the year she writes her own rhymes without the governments advice.

Elizabeth II is the Queen regnant of sixteen independent states and their overseas territories and dependencies.

Though she holds each crown and title separately and equally, she is resident in and most directly involved with the United Kingdom, her oldest realm, over parts of whose territories her ancestors have reigned for more than a thousand years.

In addition to the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II is also Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, in each of which she is represented by a Governor-General.

Heidi Klum Freezing Her Buns Off In Aspen

Heidi!! Are you under there somewhere!? What the F are you doing!? Come home, babe!

Domingo Gigante In Bay Ridge

Sleepy, bucolic Bay Ridge was ablaze with high-octane pre-holiday action yesterday!

Apparently the old Kleinfeld's on 82nd and Fifth, which is now a Commerce Bank, was robbed. Dudes love robbing Commerce Banks. I wonder why?

O, and earlier in the day, some dude took a header off the 69th Street Pier. I guess he was fed up with the price of lobster tails in Bay Ridge and either couldn't take it anymore, or wanted to catch his own.

Ba Humburger: Veggie Castle Closes

NY Press has reported that Brooklyn's beloved Veggie Castle —named so because it was converted from an old White Castle— has suddenly closed without warning.

Housed in an old White Castle, with décor intact, Veggie Castle quickly became famous for their vegetarian twist on authentic Caribbean classics. HOLLA!

2242 Church Avenue was a place where 110-pound, snarky vegan warriors commingled fearlessly with dreadlocked druglords like a big, happy family.

For a moment, if but just a moment, we were all one; united by fake jerk chicken and savoury soul food. The buffet bar served up collard greens, sweet-potato pudding and, harmony.

And not only did they have a parking lot!, they also had a cure-all juice remedy for just about everything from the gout to impotence.

O, and apparently someone was shot there last week, but that’s not the reason they closed down. I guess Veggie Castle's 10-year lease expired and naturally now the landlord wants to sell the giant lot to someone who plans to tear down the building and develop a new commercial space. Yay, a bank!

Many a hot summer day was spent weaving our way through Church and Caton Avenue traffic just for a taste of some Veggie Castle.

Fare thee well, old friend.