North Carolina Congressman Wants To Be All About The Ronalds 2010-03-03
A North Carolina congressman has announced new legislation that would put the smiling face of Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill, booting aside Ulysses S. Grant in favor of what Patrick McHenry calls "a modern-day statesman whose presidency transformed our nation’s political and economic thinking." McHenry also points out that Reagan is much more popular than Grant in opinion polls! Democracy in action! (READ MORE) 20
Super Size Everyone 2010-03-03
A blogger has put together a map that shows which fast-food chains dominate which smoke-choked highways of this vast nation. It looks like your normal heat map of the U.S.A. (complete with big lavenderish splat over Texlahoma that represents Sonic) until you realize: All that black space isn't neutral, but
Today's feel-queasy story: An employee of Lathrop, Calif., gave up her job in the city's finance department in order to save the position of a 60-year-old accountant who was faced with becoming one of 11 municipal layoffs. "I could cope with the loss of a job better than my co-workers," Patricia Overy told the Lathrop City Council during a meeting where the reductions in workforce were being discussed. The response from the mayor? "'Thank you' just doesn't do it." Uh, you think? 2010-03-03 5
Betty White: Not Dead 2010-03-03
The Internet's desire to kill any celebrity was at its peak last summer [Ed. note: "The Summer of Death"], in the wake of Michael Jackson's passing; in recent months, Twitter-borne rumors of dead celebrities had mostly gone dormant, perhaps waiting for the days to get longer and peoples' internal BS detectors to grow more sun-addled. The fake-death spectre did, however, rear its head last night, when some joker at the multiheaded gossip hydra Oh No They Didn't decided to mock up a TMZ screenshot claiming that Betty White had gone to the Miami retirement complex in the sky. (READ MORE) 10
NYPD Clearly Not Getting Its Coyote-Trapping Equipment From The Acme Corporation 2010-03-03
At around 3:30 this morning a coyote was spotted on the loose in far west Chelsea, presumably after it was turned away from the driving ranges at Chelsea Piers. This coyote is the third to be spotted on the streets of Manhattan in the past month. Does this mean that New York is getting "edgy" again, or is it just a sign that all those abandoned developments are being colonized by non-human squatters? [Via] 10
Hey, anyone want to go in and recolonize the increasingly user-free social-networking site MySpace? We can probably get some Blingees for cheap, if these numbers are any indication! "For the 30 days ending Feb. 19, it was only 18 million, a 6% decline from the previous 30 days. And the rate of decline only seems to be accelerating: The number of new unique users shrank 11%." 2010-03-03 7
Soon We Will All Just Be Living In Google 2010-03-03
For the next month, Kansas' capital city Topeka ("A Great Place To Live, Work, And Play") is calling itself "Google, Kansas" because it wants to become one of the Internet behemoth's fiber-optic broadband test cities. Topeka has even gone so far as to change every reference to itself on its official Web site to a reproduction of the Google logo, a job that must have driven some poor intern crazy for at least a week or so. (READ MORE) 21
"Buttermilk Channel in Brooklyn had rabbit on some menus shortly after it opened in late 2008. But after a table of guests walked out, it came off. Now the only rabbit served at the restaurant is disguised in a country terrine. 'It seems to me that the more you can make rabbit not look like rabbit, the easier it is to sell people on it,' said the restaurant’s owner, Doug Crowell." 2010-03-03 38
"Baby GaGa" Could Be The Next Susan Boyle, For Better Or Worse 2010-03-03
Laura Fontana is an eight-year-old from Brazil who loves to dance around to the music of Lady GaGa, at least judging by the video clip of her performing "Bad Romance" and "Paparazzi" on the Brazilian talent show Qual é o Seu Talento?. The outrage over her performance has already come from the usual quarters, and truth be told, the whole tableau definitely has its creepy aspects, from her mom's cheerfully singing along with the slightly menacing lyrics of "Bad Romance" to the half-hearted gyrations she's engaging in for the benefit of the Bruce Vilanch/Santa hybrid who I guess is the "Simon" of this show's judging panel. But is it really anything new? (READ MORE) 12
"Going Postal" Could Become Quaint Term By 2020 2010-03-02
The US Postal Service is once again pleading with legislators to allow it to make its service less efficient and more expensive. Postmaster General John E. Potter told an assortment of lawmakers that the Internet and organizations like FedEx are but a few of the ills plaguing this country's mail system, and that his agency will probably lose some $238 billion over the next 10 years if he can't make some cuts. (READ MORE) 9
The Probably Inevitable "Weird Al" Sex Tape Has Arrived 2010-03-02
It says something about pop music's place in the world that "Weird Al" Yankovic's bubblewraplicious "sex tape" is a joke that more people will get than, say, any sort of straight music-video parody he might unleash right now? (Too bad, because a food-based take on "Bad Romance" would be pretty epic.) [Via] 9
A two-alarm fire at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse has resulted in the sentencing of Lil Wayne, which was already postponed for dental-related reasons, being delayed once more. (The "Fireman" joke that you wanted to make has probably already crossed the Twitter transom, but there's still time to get in a "Tha Block Is Hot" pun or two!) 2010-03-02 1
Baseball Inches Back, Casts Off This Terrible Winter 2010-03-02
Snow, slush, odd moments where one wonders if the world is really ending: This winter has been getting a lot of people down. But here's a reason to believe that there's light at the end of the tunnel! (READ MORE) 13
Joan Rivers' story about how a recent date was marked by her companion dropping dead in the middle of Le Cirque is probably best retold by the Hemingway of radio recapping who runs MarksFriggin.com, because only he can give the tale the clipped gravitas it so clearly requires: "Howard said that has to be tough at that age when you go out on a date and your date drops dead. Joan said that you rarely have a chance to tell people how much you hate them before they die." 2010-03-02 4
Listicle Without Commentary: The 16 Greatest YouTube-Embeddable Hard Rock Songs That Are Not By Guns N' Roses Or Van Halen 2010-03-02
"37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter." 2010-03-02 7
"Law & Order" & Juggalos: So Unhappy Together 2010-03-02
The NBC workhorse "Law & Order" has a history with the music business, having lightly fictionalized such pop phenomena as Diddy, Kevin Federline, and crappy East Village punk bands during its storied tenure. Last night, inspired by a grisly crime last year that was dubbed "the horrocore murders," the Juggalo subculture finally came under Dick Wolf's microscope. (READ MORE) 37
HIPAA privacy rules may prevent Miami dentist Dr. Virgil Mongalo from getting into the specifics of the dental procedure that resulted in the start of Lil Wayne's jail term being pushed back to today, but he's more than free to brag about how much bank he made: "When asked about the $150,000 price Wayne is quoted to have paid, Dr. Mongalo paraphrased Don Quixote: 'A tooth is worth more than a diamond.'" What this means for the relative value of a Google Trends-hopping press release remains maddeningly unclear. 2010-03-02 2
The Coffee Wars Will Not End Until America Is A Shaking Heap Of Overstimulation 2010-03-02
In hopes of recapturing the "bigger is always better" spirit of the previous decade, Starbucks has reportedly been test-marketing a new cup size that allows customers to guzzle 32 ounces of its iced beverages in one fell swoop. Called the "Trenta," it could provide the caffeine-needy with more than enough caffeine to power through their increasingly stressful days, or at least an hour or two of them. (READ MORE) 26
Everything Your Facebook Friends Said About The Grammys Is Probably Wrong 2010-02-01
Last night's Grammys caught up to Time's Person Of The Year declaration from 2006 and so they were all about You. You had the opportunity to cover Lady GaGa's "Poker Face" or Beyoncé's "Halo" and appear as a member of a YouTubeMosaic. You had the power to select which song Bon Jovi would exhume from its well-worn back catalog. You had the opportunity to watch the shaggy-haired founder of a cool blogging platform that You might use cover the awards, even if he wasn't 100% clear on who would be amenable to a red-carpet question about his service. And, most crucially, You were able to watch as the artists that You might enjoy were honored by the telecast—provided that the songs and albums You liked had come out before August 30. (READ MORE) 29
"People on the Internet Like to Argue About Music More Than They Like to Enjoy Music": Maura Johnston and Seth Colter Walls on Genre, 2009 and Pazz + Jop 2010-01-21
Seth Colter Walls: Maura! You have an excellent essay in the Voice this week, which accompanied this year's Pazz + Jop music critic's poll. Since you and I both submitted ballots for that—and since music critics like nothing more than to talk about what they've done and said—I naturally thought we should talk about what we've done and said! Let's start out by telling the people about your essay?
Maura Johnston: Well, ha. I don't like to start off with self-promotion, but let's give it a go…
Seth: It's called "Down With Music Racism," your piece. That's very provocative. (READ MORE) 38
The Internet, with Maura Johnston: Martha Stewart Show Embraces Twitter, Grills Founder 2009-09-30
Two weeks ago, MTV's Video Music Awards embraced the liveblogging concept, hiring Internet personality-construct iJustine to preside over mentions of the show on the microblogging service Twitter—and they reaped Internet rewards when Kanye West ran up on stage and sparked a million angry blog posts. Martha Stewart's eponymous TV show took a similar tack yesterday, when it taped a show to air this Friday devoted to what the domestic empress described as "all you need to know about tech and social netwworking" [sic]. Attendees were encouraged to Tweet and blog throughout the taping; there was even an official hashtag that the warm-up comedian confusedly announced to the audience between segments. Martha's studio is as well-apportioned and spacious as one might expect, and the combination of bright-eyed audience members and open laptops kept bringing to mind a particularly well-designed lecture hall on the first day of fall quarter. (READ MORE) 9
