Just… everything about this one: “A wedding photographer was accidentally shot dead after he asked the happy couple to pose with guns as part of the big day celebrations, Italian police have revealed.”

Festering American Hellhole Claims To Be Marginally Less Odoriferous Than Generally Acknowledged

“Deserved or not, making fun of New Jersey is practically an American tradition. And a crop of recent TV shows that revel in Garden State stereotypes, such as MTV’s Jersey Shore and Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, hasn’t helped matters. But now, some in the so-called Armpit of America are fighting back with ‘Jersey Doesn’t Stink’ — that’s the name of a month-old campaign that aims to dispel the “Dirty Jersey” stereotype. Its centerpiece is jerseydoesntstink.com, a website that features videos of impassioned New Jerseyans standing up for their state; form letters protesting Jersey Shore, Real Housewives of New Jersey, and the Style Network’s Jerseylicious; and a ‘digital fight kit’ that includes T-shirt iron-ons, fliers, and picket signs that read, ‘We Smell Better Than You Think.’” [Via]

“Even if Steve Jobs designed a really cool-looking syringe and started distributing free heroin on street corners, not everyone would try it. But who among us doesn’t already check his email more often than necessary? As the Internet weaves itself more and more tightly into our lives, only the Amish are completely safe.”
-Reason’s Greg Beato looks at “Internet addiction” and what its classification as a psychiatric disorder might mean.

As of today, we’ve made nearly ten buckson the one share of BP we bought as a gift for the lucky person who will have guessed its value on this coming Christmas Eve. We bought at $29.67 on June 23-and it’s trading at $38.18 this morning. We’re not the only ones making out like bandits: “anti-big-government” Wisconsin Senate candidate Ron Johnson plans to sell his BP holdings to finance his campaign! Nifty. BP reported major losses in the second quarter of 2010, unsurprisingly; in the 2009 second quarter, they reported a profit of $4.4 billion. Yes, that’s right! $4.4 billion in three months.

• It is a pretty wonderful mess that Man Without Portfolio Jeb Bush appeared in support of Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul last night-because it was the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Which Jeb’s father, as president, signed. Which Rand Paul has spoken against, on the grounds that it is “federal intervention” in Americans’ lives-and has also distorted its requirements, so as to inflame “anti-government” Tea Party sentiment.
• A letter to the editor of the Boston Globe: “Do we really want to go down the road of the dynastic politics of India, Pakistan, and other Second and Third World nations? Will we all find ourselves holding our breaths, waiting to see whether Chelsea Clinton or either of George W.’s twins or the next generation of Kennedys go into politics?” Too late! Closer to home, even the very capable administrator and also Chief Consort, the Lady Bloomberg, Ms. Diana “The Future Madame Chiang” Taylor, is apparently now getting the political respect due, in as-yet unknown parts, to her talent, current dynastic status and abundant household cash.

Let Me In footage shown at ComicCon is getting very good reviews. It’s smart that the studio is putting out these bits from the American remake of the excellent Swedish film, Let the Right One In, this early, and for that core audience, so as to wear down our suspicion, mistrust and general sense of “why are you messing with a good thing?” The film’s new trailer is… okay? Mostly we are all just left wondering: will the cat scene be included?

Good morning. I have a feeling this is pretty much how the day is going to go. Enjoy.

by Natasha Vargas-Cooper

With this introduction, we begin a brief series on the recent life of the American musical. No, for real! The hideous, hilarious, wonderful, big-business of musical theater. This series is guest-edited by our own Natasha Vargas-Cooper.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: Julie! Are musicals, as a genre, dead?

Julie Klausner: You startled me! What are you doing in my home? Wearing my favorite shirt-dress!

Natasha: Nobody expects the musical inquisition.

Julie: As long as there is music, there will be musicals.

Natasha: Some would argue differently.

Julie: Despite this years morbid Tony award telecast, and the feeble state of the music industry, there will always be both things. Who would dare argue with me?

Natasha: Have they been ‘ruined’ by the Shreks? And the ‘Addams Families’?

Julie: Look, it’s been a bad year for Broadway. But look at “Glee”-look at all the theater fags prancing about. LOOK AT THEM! I RUB YOUR FACE IN YOUR OWN DIRT, DOG! YOU’LL DO IT BEFORE YOU MESS IN YOUR CRATE AGAIN!

Natasha: I feel like musicals as a GENRE have had a LOT of dirt kicked in their face for a very long time now.

Julie: Based on the mid-70’s barometer of popular culture right now, meaning that the stuff that’s on network might as well be on network in the 70’s in any country — “Dancing with the Stars,” “Amazing Race”… Who is anyone to turn their nose on ANYTHING set to music and written down by somebody who isn’t called a story consultant?

Natasha: True. But people who perhaps would have been raised with a fine love of orchestrated song bursts and boxsteps chafe at this VERY IMPORTANT genre.

Julie: So tell me more at the mouth-breathing chodes that still kick dust in an easy target’s eyeballs.

Natasha: Oh these people.

Julie: Bullies.

Natasha: THE CHODES.

Julie: Comic-conners.

Natasha: SOULLESS.

Julie: Well, it’s like saying “I hate movies!”

Natasha: The suspension of disbelief is TOO GREAT for them. Because, you know, people don’t burst into song IRL.

Julie: Right. People don’t burst into song. Meanwhile, these are people who see movies about teenagers who can shoot spider webs from their wrists. Grown men.

Natasha: HELLO INCEPTION:BROSEPH GORDEN LEVITT FLIES.

Julie: But what about you where do you think the musical is going? Or where is it now? On stage? On screen?

Natasha: I feel good about the musical right now because it is soooo in the gutter. It’s like a Fosse whore before her big solo. But it needs to stay in the theater.

Natasha: She’s just beaten up by all the Hollywood tourists who have stamped all over her, used by the old Broadway hacks who just pump her for ticket money, scorned by all the theater fags for being too campy in the karaoke bars.

Julie: In other words, we need a new “Cabaret”? Because you know how pre-”Cabaret,” musicals were in the shitter. They were so out of touch with the popular culture.

Natasha: LIKE NOW IS THE TIME FOR SOMETHING MURDEROUSLY BRAVE.

Julie: Because like Pauline Kael OUR HERO says, “’Cabaret’ violates the wholesome approach of big musicals…it violates the pseudo-naturalistic tradition …which requires that the songs appear to grow organically out of the story”.

Julie: You know, with songs by Kander and Ebb, who may as well have been fucking David Bowie compared to what came before it-”George M.!”?

If you play the score of “George M.!,” you can hear musical theater’s death rattle.

Natasha: GOOD LORD I feel like I just watched a grave robber in action.

Julie: (crossing myself) It’s like Kander, Ebb, Liza, Fosse all said, “Okay, let’s start from here. let’s be Picasso. Even though this will look like Schiele.”

Natasha: Well let’s start with THE MOOD of “Cabaret.”

Julie: Yes — mood.

Natasha: I’d say that “Cabaret” is actually one of the best artistic narratives about WW2 and uh, the ‘CAUST, without ever really mentioning politics

Julie: The “Cooper” in your last name lets gets you away with that, gurl. Yes. well, it’s art being political. Meaning REALLY GOOD.

Natasha: It’s also ‘IMPORTANT’ unlike, say, “Cats,” because there is a huge urgency there.

Julie: Weimar Berlin put out the hottest shit ever, and it wasn’t a coincidence that those hos were working in the time and place they were. So yes, urgency!

Natasha: It’s all diminution, right?

Julie: James Ensor, George Grosz, I mean the dark shit. Decay.

Natasha: COLLAPSE.

Julie: Evil. Evil just, real encroaching evil; suffocating and perverse.

Natasha: Broken city =broken people.

Julie: The last shot of the distorted Nazis.

Natasha: And they said, LETS SET A MUSICAL HERE.

Julie: My favorite part in “Cabaret,” the movie — and you know how I feel about Fosse, he’s the most underapperciated film director-

Natasha: COMPLETELY.

Julie: So, Sally Bowles has an abortion and she’s singing her heart out to an empty room at the Kit Kat Club. Liza and Fosse had a big fight about it. She said, it was okay for her to shine like she did as long as nobody was there. AND SHE WON.

Natasha: Omg! Tell me about that moment.

Julie: So Brian, her lovah, tells Sally he’d marry her and take her to Cambridge but Sally’s like bitch, pls. Then he goes back to England and she’s wrecked. Yet, still, she goes on. Right before she goes on stage… Her face is so fallen..

Natasha: My heart is hurting!

Julie: And then right after the emcee intros her and the curtain opens, you can see her brighten.

Natasha: She’s electric!

Julie: BUT before she starts singing. Fosse does it in a medium shot. There’s no close up, no frying pan over the head.

Natasha: GASP! Oh you can see that transition

Julie: I like that Pauline said “she’d grown claws.”

Natasha: And this, Julie, is why I want musicals to stay in the theater! Look I’m all pleased with “Glee,” that people are singing stuff from “Dreamgirls.”

Julie: I’m just glad Jane Lynch is getting network salary.

Julie: It was better on “Cop Rock” though.

Natasha: BUT could you imagine seeing that moment when Liza grows claws?

Julie: Yes.

Natasha: GENIUS TALONS! In person and how theater gives you this ability to connect with art, like you create this third being.

Julie: Well, the intensity and intimacy of live theater is unparalleled because that’s how people fall in love, face to to face. And when you add music, it’s like bringing the romanticism of the artificial into the equation so, boom.

Julie Klausner will sing again. Also, she is drowning in pretzel chips.

“Someone would have fashioned Apple’s iPhone 4 out of gold and diamonds sooner or later,” notes Freshness mag. Correct! So the diamond version, by Stuart Hughes, is £12,995. His gold one is £21,995. The nice thing about having solid gold and diamond-encrusted iPhone cases is that when you flee your tottering regime of slaughter and despotism they can be scrapped or melted down into cash in some nice non-extraditing country.

In an absolutely shocking survey that will forever alter the way human beings relate to each other, USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s 2010 Digital Future Study discovered that a whopping zero percent of participants would consider paying for a service like Twitter. And that’s just one of the many kick in the balls to “new media” brought to light by the survey. It also found that 70% of participants find online advertisements annoying and 50% never click on advertisements. Good luck making money now, social media dweebs!