Has the long-lost album by the scrappy NBA player Allen Iverson — which has been in turnaround for some 10 years — been released to digital-music outlets for the low price of $2.99? Maybe! If you really want to hear A.I. over a hot beat, there’s always this, too.

Has NBC brought the gavel down on the original-formula Law & Order after 20 seasons of telling the stories of the police who investigate crimes and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders? Nikki Finke’s site is saying yes! This is terrible if it’s true — not because of the dumb “longest-running show ever” record that Dick Wolf was trying to set (if the cancellation goes through it’ll have tied Gunsmoke in longevity) but because the show was just starting to get really good again in both quality of acting and tightness of storylines after a bunch of seasons suffering through the morass of bad plotlines and even worse acting that characterized The Röhm/Thompson/Farina Dark Period, which still dominates the reruns on TNT to this day. And to add insult to injury, the show’s Los Angeles-based spinoff is still set to premiere this fall as planned.

by Charlie

An unlikely couple in California is writing the next chapter of the LGBT marriage movement. Clay M. Greene, 78, and his partner Harold Scull, deceased, are at the center of a legal battle gaining national attention. Two months ago Greene filed a civil action lawsuit against Sonoma County for placing him and his partner in separate nursing homes after Scull suffered injuries from a fall at the couple’s home in April 2008. The County claims the decision, which resulted in the auctioning of Greene and Scull’s possessions, as well as two homeless kitties, was in response to domestic violence charges against Greene reported by Scull during his hospitalization. Greene’s lawsuit charges the county with willful neglect of legal documents naming Scull and Greene as each others estate executors. Of course, the legal recognition of same-sex couples in California is nebulous at best. Activists are using Greene’s case to help galvanize support for same-sex marriage.

What I find most fascinating about this case is not its potential as a benchmark for the LGBT marriage movement, but the lack of attention we give to the very serious problem of same-sex domestic violence-the double closet. To establish what little authority I have on this subject, I’d like to point out that, from a purely mathematical standpoint, I’ve slept with more black women than black men. I am therefore part lesbian, even if I don’t always admit it. Nevertheless, I shall use this experience to illustrate myths about same-sex abuse. For example, who do you think would kick whose ass here? My money’s on Rosie, but it’s a tough call. Unlike heterosexual relationships where the victim is usually female, it’s difficult to know who the abuser is in homosexual couples. I learned this the hard way.

Imagine my surprise when, after a handful of casual and fun dates with a woman half my size, I was 86’d from a bar because my new “girlfriend” discovered me there with a male friend, accused me of “cheating,” pushed me and began to demonstrate frighteningly authentic UFC sparring techniques. I was in total disbelief. Lesbians don’t fight other lesbians! Purebred or not, we should all still stick together, right? The next thing I knew two burly black men were escorting me to the door while she was being coddled by a gaggle of dykes. I looked through the bar’s foggy glass windowpanes and wondered to myself why I was outside in the cold and she was still inside sipping Dewar’s. More importantly, why did I still care to be near someone who would do such a thing?

But I did. I did care to be near her and I forgave her because, well, that’s how these things go, right? Naturally, there was more to the story. She had been abused, unloved, unwanted, undone, uneverythinged all her life. Parents? None. Friends? Few. Education? Little. Purpose? Ill-defined. Goals? JUST MAKE IT THROUGH THE FUCKING DAY! Every morning she would open iTunes and listen to her daily affirmations; the kind of self-help hokum that makes you-the functioning, well adjusted if jaded and cynical human being-want to stick wire hangers in your ears. She believed in its power to help her. She believed in my power to help her and was capable of convincing me that I possessed that power.

Only a ninny would think that after what happened on Ludlow Street things would get better. Judge me. I’m a sucker for a good cook. It’s the simple things, after all. We fell into a new routine, distanced ourselves from others. Stayed in, cooked dinner and watched movies. She would sing and dance, I would drink and laugh. It was nice. It was short-lived. It was only a matter of time before our domestic bliss was over and we found ourselves at another familiar bar getting drunk and stoned, making our way through the blurry hours of a twisted night. It happened again. I felt like Ellen Ripley: I had the best intentions but somehow I still deserved all the bad shit that was coming my way.

She accused me of not “paying enough attention to her” and started getting more aggressive. I offered to take it outside hoping she wasn’t too far gone to think I wanted to fight instead of talk. If only she were “more beautiful” I would like her more, she said. If only she could make me see. I wanted to point out that I was desperately trying to be supportive and make her happy, that she was the one hampering the entire process, but I realized that there was nothing I could do to help this person. She believed the only way for us to be together was for me to share her suffering, to be mutual victims. I calmed her down in the outdoor vestibule of a dingy apartment doorway, placated her to avoid further conflict that evening, and severed all ties with her thereafter.

This was my first skirt in a physically abusive relationship. I’m hoping Yahweh makes it my last. Even to a discerning eye, it is not always possible to know if a person is violent. More importantly, abusive relationships are most certainly not limited to heterosexuals and no relationship is easy peasie.

The case of Greene and Scull is particularly interesting because on the one hand it could mark a great achievement for the legitimization of same sex couples in America. On the other hand, if Greene was indeed abusing Scull, could manipulating the case to suit the purposes of the LGBT marriage movement be indirectly interpreted as the negation of same sex domestic violence? Shouldn’t we use this case to call attention to alarming statistics that show domestic violence among same sex couples may occur just as often or more so than it does in heterosexual relationships? The reality of same sex domestic violence deserves a more prominent place in LGBT discourse.

‘’People feel, ‘Why should we air our dirty laundry? People feel so negatively about us already, the last thing we should do is contribute to negative stereotypes of us,’” LGBT advocate Dave Shannon pointed out in the Times. Although the article was printed almost a decade ago, it seems gays are still fearful and reluctant to address this type of abuse. But if the gays won’t do it, no one else will. The problem is only exacerbated by silence.

Marriage equality is a major battle we deserve to win, but not at the expense of ignoring the chance to bring to light one of the many issues that concerns both heterosexual and homosexual couples. We are so bitter and bent about Proposition 8 that we’re willing to overlook the death of man who may have suffered from physical abuse at the hands of his partner. We are so enraged that we would petition the Supreme Court on gay marriage when a loss is a foregone conclusion given the political leanings of our current Justices. Although I am only part lesbian I am still in favor, completely and totally, of same sex marriage. I would also like to see the gay community calling more attention to victims of violence in same sex relationships.

Charlie, whose real name is Lauretta Charlton, is a TEMP LEZ.

The new single from the British MC Professor Green, who just happens to be a veteran of Knifecrime Island’s brutality, is the self-referentially titled “Just Be Good To Green.” It is a hypercompressed track that is mostly notable to these ears because it features the ever-chiding voice of Lily Allen on the hook, although she’s not singing her own keenly observed material; instead, she’s taking on the hook from Beats International’s “Dub Be Good To Me,” which is itself an early-’90s remix of the S.O.S. Band’s stone classic “Just Be Good To Me.” And yet… Lily’s voice here sounds a little too pitched-up and wheedly — like if the whole thing was tuned down by maybe a half-step, it would sound a little better? Although Green’s voice is a little high, too, so sigh. Maybe it’ll be fine to ears less sullied by nostalgia. After the jump, the source material, for purposes of comparison.

Beats International, “Dub Be Good To Me” (1990):

The S.O.S. Band, “Just Be Good To Me” (1983; seen here on Soul Train):

Either way, it’s clear that the nostalgia mines are running even lower than normal these days. I haven’t even mentioned the Professor’s first single, “I Need You Tonight,” which sampled GUESS WHICH SONG?

[Via]

What would want for your welcome home dinner after six months in prison? How about a great salad of peekytoe crab served with crispy breadsticks and a little buttermilk dressing for your first course? And then, how about going surf-n-turf, with pecan-crusted all-natural chicken and grilled salmon medallions in yellow shrimp sauce with brown-butter-spiced sweet potatoes? That’s what the Georgian Terrace Hotel’s chef Gary Mennie hooked up last night for Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane and a star-studded party that included Big Boi, Shorty Lo and former Xscape singer and “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Kandi Burruss. But nothing, absolutely nothing tops that theme music.

The harrowing films of Todd Solondz force viewers to confront the possible limitations of their own principles; he is a great and subtle moralist (whose new film, Life During Wartime, comes out this summer). Okay then, you liberal internationalist, Solondz might say, you who believe that each human being is of equal value, that people are the victims of their circumstances; please check out this ghastly, sadly unreconstructed pederast I’ve got here, and now pity him if you can. Let’s see if you can do it. Show me the pity.

Tolerance is a virtue (and a word, and an abstract concept) much loved by those of the left. In politics, this term is most often used to mean a respectful attitude toward those who differ from ourselves; it means support for the right of all to marry, for example, or to speak, live, work or study however and wherever they please. That part is easy for every member of the U.S. left to subscribe to. Easy! But it becomes complicated when we consider that there are also a lot of highly intolerable things out there-besides pederasts, I mean-such as mosquitoes, Sarah Palin, “martinis” made with vodka, underwater oil volcanoes, etc.

My question is, how much tolerance is the right amount? Where and how is it best applied? When do we dispense with the tolerance and start gathering up the pitchforks and torches instead? When does tolerance reduce harm, and when does tolerance increase it?

I went to a wedding in Sweden last weekend and can attest again to the salutary Obama Effect, by which I mean that our European brethren still appear to be very pleasantly relieved to find that we are not uniformly a nation of belligerent, fat, ignorant savages hell-bent on plunging the earth into a new Dark Ages, as many of them seem to have feared during the Bush years. How narrowly we avoided a President McCain-that very nearly happened!-and I for one would never regret one iota of my own efforts to see President Obama in office, if only for that worthy result. Really, I wonder if the Swedes would have even let us into their castles and whatnot to attend this very lovely, if freezing, wedding, if we hailed from the Real America of President McCain. I would probably have been too depressed to go, anyways.

Obviously this is not the only reason I’m glad that Mr. Obama is in office; I am a staunch supporter of our president, and he is behaving in exactly the manner in which I always expected him to behave, even though my own politics are well to the left of his. Is this because I have become an unprincipled “moderate”? A giver-away of the store to the ruthlessly “effective” Republicans? A “progressive in name only,” or, I suppose, PINO? No. It is because our president is the rare man who fully demonstrates the bedrock liberal principles of tolerance and fair play.

Much as I disagree with Republicans in general over practically any issue you care to name, it cannot be denied that there is something in it when they are yipping against the hypocrisy of “liberal elites” who claim to be open-minded and tolerant but only extend that tolerance toward those with whom they already agree (cf. the many Daily Kos diaries demanding that the Teabaggers emigrate, in a mirror display of Redstate demands that we treacherous liberals all move to Canada during the Bush years). There is a real and implacable bind, here. If the thing you want most in this world is personal freedom and equality (“liberty and justice for all,” as in really, literally that), if you believe that each person should be in control of his or her own destiny, then that conviction will lay a heavy burden on you, the kind of burden that requires, for example, that the ACLU defend even the Ku Klux Klan’s right to free speech. If their commitment to free speech didn’t go all the way, it wouldn’t mean a thing.

President Obama is a steadfast, indeed an obdurate follower of pragmatic moralists from Christ to Niebuhr, and, as I was saying, a man who has consistently demonstrated liberal principles. By “demonstrating liberal principles” I do not here mean becoming shriekingly incensed at the Teabaggers. I mean demonstrating liberal principles by showing tolerance to those who cannot bear the sight of you, and inviting them to join in a constructive dialogue, as evidenced, for example, by the health care talks the President had with the Republicans in Baltimore last January. That is real tolerance-tolerance toward those who not only disagree with your every syllable, but who would also quite obviously prefer to see you thrown in front of a speeding train. That is tolerance with teeth. Because in exchange for that broadminded, patient foray into the lion’s den, the president got quite a lot in return, even aside from his enviable and apparently permanent spot on the moral high ground.

If you want to claim to be tolerant, then you are bound by that conviction to tolerate pretty much everyone, a group that will include hedge fund managers, George W. Bush, Justin Bieber, and all your exes.

At some point, though, you’ll snap, and not be able to tolerate something. Something will transgress too far against other deeply-held values, something that really impinges on the freedoms of others, or on your own. I guess this is a matter of weighing out which outcome is more important to you, and acting on it; necessarily a complex calculation, and one easy to get wrong. Some people and things really do just need to be stopped (thinking of that terrible Children of God business); the line in the sand is drawn in a different place for everyone. But usually, for the most part, I suspect you gain more from letting people be.

This is not to say in the slightest that you ought to agree with every Tom, Dick and Harry, or become a doormat. You might simply ask to talk to those with whom you disagree, and find out why they think what they think, an exercise which can be surprisingly illuminating, and stimulating; you can offer your own reasons for believing the opposite way. One may be able to persuade the other, or else you can “agree to disagree.” This is of course not possible or even desirable with everyone, but it is almost always a good idea to try, for a thousand reasons.

For one thing, it’s good for your own blood pressure to internalize the real reality, which is that some people are always going to have crazy ideas, and that is okay, that is their right. “They get to fuck up,” as my old friend Alison used to say (an AA-derived philosophy, I believe.) Plus, it sometimes turns out that you yourself are the one who has fucked up! This has happened often enough to me, at least, that self-doubt, together with a healthy regard for conflicting opinion, turns out to have a huge value. Anyway, it is marvelously liberating to know and accept that some will always disagree with you absolutely, unequivocally; that some are so out-there that they are no longer capable of a civilized conversation; and finally, that your own principles and ideas can only be strengthened by the give and take of discourse.

It is a wonderful thing, too, the rarest of pleasures, to persuade someone who didn’t agree with you before, to agree with you now.

Sadly, I cannot claim to be as great of a success in the tolerance department as my husband, who is an absolute marvel, pretty much an Obama-level tolerator. When our elderly neighbor “Mr. B.” told us how he was hoping that a black burglar would break into his house so that he, “Mr. B.”, could shoot that putative burglar with a gun (!) it was all I could do to stagger back into my house without screaming. Whereas my husband just nodded noncommittally and said, “Mmhmm,” raising just half an eyebrow at me on our way inside, and thoughtfully adding later that he doesn’t believe “Mr. B”. to be even marginally capable of doing any such thing. People talk a lot of nonsense, he says.

All this came to mind last weekend in the course of studying the responses to The Awl’s resident “Ask a Republican.” The Republican in question got off on the wrong foot a bit by attempting the waggish, hyperbolic tone that characterizes quite a lot of the writing in these pages (an extremely difficult style to handle at all well). He seemed possibly the wrong Republican to be Asking. But here, perhaps, is an opportunity to forgo the temptation to trade insults, a practice that never reflects well on either side. There is a real benefit to hashing these things out in a friendly and serious way.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and

Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

Big-name reporter and plagiarist Gerald Posner has now hired a lawyer who believes that the act of reporting on reporters who plagiarize can “constitute tortious interference with a business relationship, tortious interference with a contractual relationship, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress.” That’s right: if you write someone’s publisher and ask what they are going to do about the author’s plagiarism, you are interfering in TORTS, baby. Which is a pretty amazing thing for an attorney for a reporter to suggest, but it’s okay, that is going to be a laugh riot in court. Except they haven’t filed anything in court. They’re too busy talking about doing so to do so. The Miami New Times, meanwhile, promises a fresh batch of reporting, though none of it interfering with TORTS, on Posner. Also they identify his attorney, Mark Lane, as “an 83-year-old Jonestown survivor.” Who needs a dance break after all this?

by Aaron Lefkove

• Dave Walker (replaced Ozzy briefly in 1977 for one TV performance)

• Ian Gillan (ex-Deep Purple, vocals on 1983’s Born Again)

• Glenn Hughes (ex-Deep Purple, vocals on 1986’s Seventh Star)

• Don Airey (ex-Rainbow and Hammer keyboardist, played on Never Say Die)

• Vinny Appice (Tony Iommi look-alike, drums on Mob Rules, Live Evil, Dehumanizer, and several ’90s reunion tours)

• Bev Bevan (ex-The Move, ex-Electric Light Orchestra, ex-Electric Light Orchestra Part II, drummer for 1983’s Born Again tour)

• Terry Chimes (ex-Clash, drummer for 1987–1988’s The Eternal Idol tour)

• Laurence Cottle (bass on 1989’s The Headless Cross)

• Bob Daisley (bass on 1987’s The Eternal Idol)

• Ronnie James Dio (ex-Elf, ex-Rainbow, frontman for Dio, vocals on Heaven & Hell, Mob Rules, Live Evil, and Dehumanizer)

• Ray Gillen (vocals on 1986’s Seventh Star tour)

• Geoff Nicholls (bass at Heaven & Hell rehearsals, off-stage keyboardist for Seventh Star, The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross, and sporadic live stints through 2005)

• Cozy Powell (preeminent British classic rock drummer, played on Headless Cross, Tyr, and Forbidden)

• Eric Singer (current drummer of KISS, played on Seventh Star and The Eternal Idol)

• Dave Spitz (guitar on The Seventh Star)

• Jo Burt (bass for 1987–1988’s The Eternal Idol tour)

• Dave Donato (vocals for 1985 and ’85 rehearsal and demo sessions)

• Tony Martin (vocals on The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross, Tyr, Cross Purposes, Cross Purposes Live, and Forbidden)

• Jed Woodruffe (offstage live keyboardist for the Never Say Die tour)

• Rob Halford (Judas Priest frontman, vocals for various one-off live performances in the 90s)

• Mike Bordin (ex-Faith no More, drums for 1997’s Ozzfest tour)

• Neil Murray (ex-Whitesnake, bass on Tyr and Forbidden)

• Bobby Rondinelli (drums on Cross Purposes and Cross Purposes Live)

Aaron Lefkove would most like to be remembered as the guy who coined the phrase “Summer of Megadeth.”

Congresscritter Arlen Specter reveals all! In a private meeting, Supreme Court justice nominee Elena Kagan suggested that the Court takes too few cases! Also Kagan suggested that the Court “ERRED” in the abhorrent and disgraceful pro-lobbyist decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Crucify her! Related: terrifying scandalous video of meeting released! (In it, they nod and make small talk.) We’ll see later today if, while roaming the halls of our nation’s capitol, this free-talking would-be justice will get served!

“State officials have said they receive roughly 50 requests per month for the president’s birth certificate, often from the same small group of people, and that processing the requests takes considerable time.”
–The BBC, on Hawaii’s new law, signed by the governor yesterday, allowing officials to ignore repeat requests from loons for President Obama’s birth certificate.