How "Lost" Will End @1:10 PM
"We are ending this story with these characters, and that's all we have planned. We're not setting up a sequel. We're not planting elements for future shows. We certainly understand and absolutely respect that ABC and Disney have an incredibly valuable franchise and they want to do more things with 'Lost,' but the story we're telling ends in May."
—"Lost" executive producer Carlton Cuse discusses the show's final season. There are no spoilers for how the series will end, but the producers "praise the ambiguity" of "The Sopranos" finale, which may indicate that things will be left unresolved. Also, "Hurley dies." 24
"Massholes are not just an economically and educationally diverse bunch. They're also more ethnically varied than Guidos: There are Jews, Irishmen, WASPs, Italians, and Portuguese who will happily cut you off on the Bourne Bridge and then give you the finger." Awl pal Jess Grose suggests the next tribal culture the ethnographers at MTV should chronicle. @1:15 PM 34
I'm of the opinion that Spoon is flat out the best rock band in America, but I am still warming up to their new one. Reviewing it for Pitchfork, Awl contributor Matthew Perpetua says, "Following the creative strides made on their last few Merge releases, the only big surprise on Transference is that they've become willing to let their hair down a bit. It can be a bit of a let down if you come in expecting another blockbuster like Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but something of a revelation if you meet them halfway." So I guess I'll try that! 7
Apparently they are coming out with a videogame based on The Inferno? There's even a book tie-in! You play a bad-ass version of Dante, who is on a quest to prevent Lucifer from taking over the world (and, if the preview is any indication, grope the ghost of Beatrice). Okay, I guess! 15
Soon you will not even need to reach for the remote to change the channel on your TV! Which is great news except for that whole thing about how watching TV will KILL YOU DEAD. @4:00 PM 11
Remember When "Spider-Man 4" Was A Movie That Was Going To Be Made? @6:47 PM
Making for a busy first day on the job, Mike Fleming reports for Deadline|New York (so bi-coastal!) that Spider-Man 4, a movie that just this morning had John Malkovich tapped to play lead villain the Vulture, is now apparently not going to happen at all. READ MORE 34
"Thanks for 20 wonderful years. Now stay tuned for three Seth MacFarlane shows." @1:35 PM 7
"A terminally-ill volunteer is being sought to donate their body for a reality television show backed by Channel 4 that would see them mummified and possibly placed on display in a museum." @9:00 AM 5
I don't care about Jay Leno. Choire doesn't care about Jay Leno. Cho probably cares about Jay Leno, but neither Choire nor I care what Cho cares about. Do you care about Jay Leno? You may. It's a free country. All sorts of things interest all sorts of people, and thank God we've got a big old Internet on which you can probably find something about which you care. So, if you do in fact care about Jay Leno, here is something you might find interesting. It's actually pretty good even if you don't care about Jay Leno. 25
Old Man Who Was Once Little Boy Thrilled By "A-Team" Trailer @11:40 AM
You wanna talk about enjoying awesome things? Let's talk about this trailer for The A-Team. Rather than bitch about there being no new ideas or complaining that Bradley Cooper is in no way fit to fill the shoes of whoever it was played the pretty boy in the original show, I am giving in to my inner nine-year-old and declaring that I am going to watch the fuck out of this movie. [You should probably click the clip as soon as you can; the odds are fairly good that it will be pulled at some point.] 53
In a memoir she plans to publish in 2015, Yoko Ono is apparently set to reveal why the Beatles broke up. For those of you who are worried that you might not be alive five years from now to learn the shocking truth, we provide this brief spoiler of the reason for the band's dissolution: They weren't really getting on well with each other at the time. Now you know! @1:49 PM 15
What Is The Deal With: Ke$ha? @1:18 PM
It's official! Singer/co-songwriter Ke$ha is the first Number One Hot 100 artist of the decade with her song "TiK ToK." In fact, she just had the second biggest sales week of all time on iTunes (first biggest by a female artist). But if you're anything like me—even though you pay a decent amount of attention to trivial pop culture things like this—you still have no idea who Ke$ha really is (other than that she brushes her teeth with Jack Daniels). Not to worry: I've done all the research for you. And, upon further review, I think she might be this generation's pre-Federline Britney Spears. READ MORE 141
The roots of Krautrock—or, if you prefer, motorik—examined. 6
Sir Christopher Lee's symphonic metal concept album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross is pretty clearly gonna be something special. @1:30 PM 8
The End of the 00s: Bad for Humanity, but Great for Horror, by Melissa Lafsky @10:00 AM
I'm skeptical about this whole "decade from hell" business. I mean, just because financial karma finally arrived to kick the U.S. in its bulbous consumer-driven ass, that means the entire decade is somehow linked to Satan? The last four months of 2001 were from hell—that's certainly true. And the entire summer of 2009 (when hell's photogenic spawn ruled the media with her red heels). But seems to me this ten-year span should have been dubbed "The Decade We've Been Setting Ourselves Up For During the Three Previous Decades, and Now We Act All Shocked That We're Broke and the Rest of the Developed World Wants to Lob a Shoe Up Our Ass." Anyway, fuck politics—let's talk about horror movies. READ MORE 8
The End of the 00s: Augustine's Second Cat, by Julie Klausner @11:00 AM
I began the decade with a Kim's Video membership and an unslakable thirst for documentaries about crazy people. I'd rent their only VHS of Chicken Hawk, a doc about NAMBLA members, that featured a particularly memorable monologue from a yellow turtleneck aficionado about something he called "gentle time." READ MORE 48
Here you will find a collection of underground art inspired by the television program "Lost." Do with that what you will. 12
On Missing The Point @11:40 AM
This rather enjoyable little essay/art review by Colm TóibÃn begins, "From an early age, I have missed the point of things. I noticed this first when the entire class at school seemed to understand that Animal Farm was about something other than animals. I alone sat there believing otherwise. I simply couldn't see who or what the book was about if not about farm animals. I had enjoyed it for that." What's great about it is I think it speaks to a secret worry we all have about not seeing something that seems so clear to everyone else, that nagging feeling that we're not understanding the whole story. Or at least it's a secret worry of mine. I bet you guys get everything. 52
Here Lies Love, the David Byrne/Fatboy Slim collaboration "about Imelda Marcos and Estrella Cumpas, the woman who raised her," hits shelves on February 23. Guest vocalists include Santigold, Natalie Merchant, Steve Earle, Tori Amos, and Cyndi Lauper. @3:30 PM 7
Two good ones for all you theater people out there: New York talks to Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury about their collaborations over the years, while the New Yorker chats up Christopher Plummer, who says this about living in a hotel: "It's nice to have the bed done for you. That signals another day. The horror that happened yesterday is all over and forgotten. Clean sheets. You start life all over again." I can't wait until I'm old enough to say something like that with a sense of authority. 4
It's Been 30 Years Since The Release Of The Only Album That Matters @10:00 AM
The Clash's London Calling came out thirty years ago today. It still stands as punk rock's crowning achievement. In fact, it's probably as responsible as any other work for the fact that the term "punk rock" seems kind of silly now. The Clash were a punk band, coming out of England with the Sex Pistols in the late '70s. But the music on London Calling ranges from reggae to rockabilly to snazzy pop tunes. It's thoughtful and refined, even gentle at times, and delivered with as much subtlety as spit. It rages and sneers, too, to be sure, but even in that, it proves the futility of thin definition and sub-categorization. It's all just rock n' roll, really, right? London Calling is just some of the very best of the stuff ever recorded. (Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go do a tango about the use of flying buttresses in gothic cathedrals.) Oh, and for perspective, 30 years before London Calling's release, it was December 14th, 1949, Elvis Presley hadn't recorded any songs and no one knew what "rock n' roll" was. So now rock has been dead and reborn for longer than it was alive in the first place. Or something. 70
More Molly Ivins news: Kathleen Turner will star in "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins," a one-woman show premiering in Philadelphia this spring. I could totally see this working. @9:30 AM 2
Man, Herta Müller's 2009 Nobel Prize lecture is breathtaking. [Via] @1:20 PM 7
"How does one discern whether a given song is good or bad for karaoke?" REO Speedwagon's Kevin Cronin gets zen. @11:40 AM 7
"This won't end well," says Ad Age's Larry Dobrow of the new season of "Scrubs", which, holy hell, how in the world is this show STILL ON TELEVISION? You deserve everything you get, America. @4:00 PM 14
You probably won't be surprised by much in this story, but you probably will shake your head and sigh: "People in the record industry are very good at making bands believe they deserve the hundreds of thousands (or sometimes millions) of dollars labels advance the musicians when they're first signed, and even better at convincing those same musicians it's the bands' fault when those advances aren't recouped." @11:50 AM 3
Listicle Without Commentary: Names of Television Shows and Movies that Resonated With Me, While Channel Surfing on Sunday Between the Hours of 12-8 PM in an Empty House on the East End of Long Island, Drinking Bourbon and Contemplating the Dissolution of a Two-Year Relationship (Mostly My Fault), by Neel Shah @1:17 PM
"Doubt," Starz
"On Edge," ABC
"The Heartbreak Kid," TBS
"The Soloist," HBO READ MORE 19