New recommendation for your reading list: Guerillassance

My friend Evans Mehew (the man who, several years ago, introduced me to this brand newfangled thing called “blogging”) has launched a site called Guerillassance (as in guerilla + renaissance). Evans is a very smart guy and lately he’s been thinking a lot about our addiction to things, to stuff, and more generally, what the hell has happened to the

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Mitt Romney, Man of the People® Tour mysteriously blows an opportunity to score points with the womenfolk

We know that the Romney campaign is ramping up its attempts to lure female voters, and we were optimistic about the entertainment prospects of these efforts when, a few days, Mitt garnered the much sought-after Gene Simmons endorsement (which, now that Wilt Chamberlain is dead, is pretty much the gold standard of playa cred). So we weren’t surprised to see Mitt

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Castro and Miami’s Cuban community and what the hell was Ozzie Guillen thinking?

Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen recently lost his freakin’ mind. He told Time that I love Fidel Castro…I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that [SOB] is still there. Predictably, the world then stopped spinning on its axis. South Florida’s vocal Cuban exile community vowed to

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RIP Jim Marshall: “These go to eleven.”

Legendary amplifier maker Jim Marshall is dead. April 5, 2012 | 8:54 am Jim Marshall, who was known as “The Father of Loud” for designing the amplifiers that became ubiquitous in the rock world, has died at 88. We talk about the guitar gods, the screaming vocalists, the idiot drummers, the groupies, the stylemakers, the partiers… We don’t often pay

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The Good, the Bad and the Butt-Ugly: NYU names its 100 outstanding journalists in the US in the last century

You know how every so often somebody will publish a list of the greatest rock bands in history? Those usually make for interesting reading. Beatles, check. Rolling Stones, check. Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix Experience, U2, The Who, Nirvana, Celine Dion, REM… Wait, what? Back up. Always happens. You have your obvious picks, you have some fresh blood that

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Heads up, Denver: Hot Coffee director in town for Wednesday night screening

American propagandists and PR hacks have developed remarkably innovative ways of making words lie. Back in the ’80s we had “freedom fighters,” which was the way we described death squads who were friendly to America. “Pro-life” can be used to describe those who bomb clinics and murder physicians. “Enhanced interrogation,” of course, means “torture.” And so on. In some cases

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This just in: the surviving members of Aerosmith sell out (BIG TIME), and can somebody get Mr. Perry a tissue?

It has been observed, here and elsewhere, what a fucking embarrassment Steven Tyler has become. Once Aerosmith was among America’s greatest bands, and today they occupy the #5 spot (with a bullet) on my Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen list. It was refreshing, then, when Joe Perry brought the hammer down on his silly-ass 64-going-on-14 Teen Beat bandmate. Reports TMZ:

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Dear “small government” conservatives: that Thoreau quote doesn’t mean what you think it means

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, they say. How true, how true, especially when it comes to reducing the wisdom of brilliant, complex minds to their pithiest quotes. In a recent thread on what has become of the GOP, one commenter went all-in with Henry David Thoreau’s famous (and greatly abused) edict: that government is best which governs the

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Saturday Video Roundup: deconstruction angels (mash my bitch up)

The Internet era (and the age of PostModernism in general) has given the world a lot of garbage. But damned if the proliferation of electronic technology hasn’t produced some freakin’ awesome moments, too. Like this, which was sent my way by our buddy Frank Balsinger. One of the absolute best mashups I’ve ever seen.

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What the hell happened to country music?

Friend: Hey, Yogi, I think we’re lost. Yogi Berra: Yeah, but we’re making great time!  It’s probably clear to anybody who pays attention that I’m a rock & roll guy. But I was raised by my grandparents, two country folks who were born in 1913 and 1914 respectively and grew up through the Great Depression. There were two kinds of

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