by Abe Sauer

40 Slovenia vs. Italy
39 Cameroon vs. France
38 Algeria vs. England
37 Netherlands vs. Portugal
36 USA vs. France
35 Uruguay vs. Spain
34 Japan vs. England
33 Italy vs. Spain
32 Japan vs. Australia
31 Peru vs. Spain
30 Ghana vs. England
29 Portugal vs. Spain
28 France vs. Portugal
27 Mexico vs. France
26 Netherlands vs. Portugal
25 Italy vs. France
24 Italy vs. Greece
23 France vs. Spain
22 Argentina vs. England
21 Serbia vs. Slovenia
20 Chile vs. Spain
19 Nigeria vs. England
18 Chile vs. Peru
17 Germany vs. Anyone (even Italy)
16 Brazil vs. Portugal
15 Uruguay vs. Paraguay
14 USA vs. Honduras
13 Spain vs. USA
12 USA vs. England
11 Mexico vs. United States
10 Japan vs. USA
9 South Korea vs. Japan
8 Ivory Coast vs. France
7 Argentina vs. Spain
6 Mexico vs. Spain
5 North Korea vs. Japan
4 Paraguay vs. Brazil
3 North Korea vs. South Korea
2 Paraguay vs. Argentina
1 Algeria vs. France

Abe Sauer would watch the hell out of Algeria vs. France.

The whole notion of album cover art seems sort of silly these days, what with so few people actually buying albums. (Though I’m very interested in seeing what kind of numbers Drake puts up this week-half a million is projected, and 20,000 people is a lot of people to draw to South Street Seaport.) This makes me all the more pleased that Atlanta rapper T.I. put the effort he did into the picture which will adorn his new King Uncaged when it hits stores come August.

As he explained to hip-hop photography magazine Respect:

I went and told them, “Get me as close as you can to a lion.” He had a trainer holding him on a chain. They took the chain out [in post-work]. It really went down. I wanted to pet him. I said, “Let me get hands on.” They were like, “No. We could only let you do but so much.” So I did as much as they would allow me to do… I wanted it to be a a busy city street. My original idea was to lock down Times Square and let me and the lion do the same thing right there, but we couldn’t quite pull that off; they said it had to be in controlled environment. They tried to do a artsy kind of drawing. It looked good, but it didn’t serve my purpose-it was just a painting. I figured, if it got to be a controlled environment, we may as well just keep it all the way simple make it black and white, white background, me, him, cool chair.

And here’s a video trailer for the album that features more of the lion and a suitably exciting song snippet:

It should be an exciting time for album covers, now that they don’t matter! People can literally do anything.

Outfit that was already basically theft accused of more obvious theft! Since being raided by the feds last year, Taylor, Bean & Whitaker’s decade-long attempt to make money out of nothing at all has not gone unpursued. The company, which bought and packaged millions of dollars in residential loans, including servicing mortgage loans for Freddie Mac, “filed for bankruptcy in August…. The lender began to experience cash flow problems in 2002 and in an effort to cover the shortfalls, the company devised a scheme to misappropriate funds from a bank and eventually did so as well from the federal government.” To the tune of half a billion in TARP money. And another half a billion in fake mortgages presented to banks!

“I went up about an hour and a half before landing and talked at length to the captain and familiarized myself with the cockpit and asked him, ‘So, what if this?’ and ‘where are the brakes?’”
 — Flight attendant subs for American Airlines jet’s ill first officer on SF to Chicago flight and downplays her role and awesomeness in the way that women are traditionally expected to do.

Lest we forget just how immense Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is: “The company ended the quarter with $8.2 bn cash, up from $7.3 bn sequentially, and $13.5 bn debt, down from $15.3 bn sequentially.” Yowza! That’s from the new Goldman Sachs analyst paper on the giant. The cable networks are growing-and various newspaper wings are up significantly over last year-but it’s Fox that’s struggling.

Newspapers, you say? Why yes!

Newspaper operating income for the quarter was $131 mn, up about 340% yoy, on a 21% increase in revenue…. Ad revenue at the Wall Street Journal and UK papers increased 25% and 10%, respectively.

Who knew?

If you really care, here’s what Fox’s trouble is said to be:

For 3Q, television revenue was 3% below, and operating income 21% below, our estimates. Station revenue grew 18% yoy (versus commentary of up 19% yoy when News Corp. last reported) on advertising momentum (category strength in autos and telecom) and retransmission revenue (we estimate 3 point benefit from Time Warner Cable), and station revenue growth flowed through to OI growth. But FOX network revenue fell about 4% yoy, and FOX network costs rose mid single digits yoy. We attribute the FOX network revenue shortfall in the face of an improving advertising environment primarily to non- sports ratings; total FOX network ratings were up about 9% yoy because of NFL games, but non-sports ratings were down about 10% yoy because of weakness at shows such as Idol, 24, and Bones.

It’s always American Idol’s fault!

And then it was gone. So long, Bros Icing Bros Dot Com. We’ll maybe never know why you appeared, and why you left.

Is there anything more wonderful than the resort-wear fashion mini-collections? Mostly because pretending you need clothes for a “resort” (what a great word, too!) is so hilarious. And, now that everyone’s showed their “looks,” we can see that the best part is that it’s all blatantly mid-season sales driving, wholly unnecessary and also not very attractive.

Chanel (“UM WHAT AM I WEARING?”):

Proenza “I’m on a boat and I’m saaaaad” Schouler:

Burberry (“I’m on a boat and I’m staaaarving”):

Lanvin (“I’m on a boat and I have a black friend!”):

Louis (“I’m on a boat and HAVE I TOLD YOU I ONCE SLEPT WITH MICK JAGGER?”) Vuitton:

Marc (“…”) Jacobs:

Givenchy, however, I can kind of get behind!

“This amendment is a way to help people get off of drugs to become productive and healthy members of society, while ensuring that valuable taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted. Too many Americans are locked into a life of a dangerous dependency not only on drugs, but the federal assistance that serves to enable their addiction.”
-Senator Orrin Hatch has proposed legislation requiring that applicants for unemployment or welfare pass a drug test as a condition of receiving benefits.

by James Joyce

Finnegans Wake is a lot of wankrubbishwordspew. I can’t believe I got it over on anyone either.

Oh, yeah, Science, tell me what I want to hear:

People with high levels of a vitamin found in meat, potatoes, fish and whole grains have half the risk of developing lung cancer, irrespective of whether they smoke.

The finding, from the largest study of the link between diet and cancer in the world, suggests that the risk of lung cancer might be dramatically affected by the food we eat.

Okay, wait, so I should eat more meat to reduce my chances of getting lung cancer from the cigarettes I smoke? Who’s funding this study, me? I’m sure the article goes on to suggest that there is still more research to be done, but whatever; between this and the “drink all you want, we can make you a new liver” news from earlier this week, it is clearly a great time to be someone who makes terrible health choices. I know how I’m going to celebrate!