Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Linkin Park “put their bodies upon the gears”
If you are at all familiar with the snippet of the quote that’s in the title to this post, you know it comes from Mario Savio’s famous oratory from the Sproul Hall Steps of UC-Berkeley as part of the Free Speech Movement in 1964.
The Free Speech Movement was aimed at the leaders of the university in an attempt to get them to remove the ban on on-campus political activities, and Savio’s wise, impassioned words have been remembered and recalled ever since. He said,
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
Now that is a quote.
For their upcoming album, A Thousand Suns, Linkin Park has made no mystery of the fact that they are thinking big. The title itself comes from a speech by J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, in reference to the atomic bomb. And now we see that they’ve nabbed Savio’s genius as well, using his speech as the intro and outro to their new song “Wretches and Kings.” This song has all the elements that you associate with Linkin Park – serrated-knife guitars, hip-hop rhyming mixed with angsty screams, and DJ scratch flourishes – but it’s put together like never before (does Chester have a reggae tinge to his voice?). Throw in the fiery context of Savio’s words and this song is nothing if not exciting – I can see it going over really well live. Check it out:
-Sam
Target ain’t people
Many Constitutional scholars can’t agree whether or not corporations are recognized as persons in the eyes of the law. But somehow, over time, it has become the accepted standard that under the 14th Amendment, corporations are to receive virtually all of the rights that actual, individual human beings have.
This is fucking ridiculous. A corporation is not a person. Anyone who argues that it should be treated like one simply because it is made up of many is willfully ignorant. Here’s an appropriate quote from an essay that explains this nonsense better than I can:
People may not know exactly what Goldman Sachs is, but they know it is not a person. A person doesn’t have unlimited life or limited liability. A person is responsible for her decisions. If she makes a decision that kills or maims people she will go to jail. If a CEO makes such a decision she, at worst, receives a golden parachute.
Unlike a real person, a corporation lacks a conscience. It is guided neither by ethics nor morality but rather by laws that required its Boards to elevate the maximization of profits above all other concerns.
A real person is an independent actor, subject to many influences that affect how he votes. Warren Buffett, for example, thinks it is in his and society’s best interest for him to be required to pay more taxes. A corporation that made this decision could be taken to court by its stockholders.
Well, the Supreme Court upped the ante back in January when it ruled that corporations can spend an unlimited amount of money in our elections. Fan-fucking-tastic. Say hello to a new era of companies buying electoral results (well, moreso than they already do). And big companies have wasted no time in taking advantage of this ruling. In July, Target donated $150,000 to the campaign of the right-wing candidate for governor in Minnesota who happens to be anti-gay and oh yeah, anti-worker. (Wait, isn’t the Target corporation made up of thousands of workers? Oh yeah, those worthless peons are just necessary annoyances standing in the way of ever larger profits. So fuck ‘em.)
Well, a boycott against Target has been initiated by MoveOn.org and best of all, a small group of brave citizens brought the protest directly to Target, all in the form of a song. Rock on guys!
-Sam
Gaga’s Occasional Drug Use
Well, things are getting interesting. Like every other artist Lady Gaga has recently admitted that she’s an “occasional” coke sniffer. During an interview with Vanity Fair, Gaga expressed that she was an occasional coke sniffer. Occasional, right.
Even famed Boy George casts some doubt onto Gaga. He states that if she offered this tidbit of information on such a whim, then she must actually be more engaged to coke sniffing tn she lets on. Boy George feels that the word “occasional” can be more generous than one would think when you’re talking about drugs.
Even further, Boy George ponders if Gaga has a grip on things especially with her huge rise to fame. Boy George stated, “One has to wonder how much of a grip Gaga has on things,” he wrote. “Up until now she has seemed almost annoyingly professional and focused and this seems out of character! Isn’t saying your an ‘occasional’ drug taker a bit like saying you’re bisexual? That usually means you’re raving!”
It’s August. Football is in the air. Players are sweating through training camps across the NFL. And Brett Favre continues to play his annual six years in the making will-he-or-won’t-he-retire routine.
I can’t put this any more bluntly – if you are still a fan of Brett Favre after all of his charades, then you are a either a moonshine-swilling hillbilly from eastjabumfuck who gets off by repeating the phrase “he’s just having fun out there” while sitting in your Wrangler jeans or you’re just a retard.
Honestly, he is one of the most selfish players I’ve ever seen play in the NFL, throwing away critical game after critical game because he just can’t help himself from lobbing a wounded duck off his back foot in the face of heavy pressure. But hey, “he’s just having fun like a kid out there” right?
Well now there’s even more potentially terrific news for Favre-haters everywhere. A New York Jets sideline reporter claims that Favre sent her pictures of his dick over the phone, multiple times (by the way, what is with NFL players and snapping shots of their junk? These links are absolutely NSFW, but you’ve got Santurdio Holmes, Dinkie Boy Chris Cooley, Jeff Reed, and Sean Salisbury). Not only that, but to add to the embarrassment, she claims that in one of the pictures, he’s playing with lil’ Brett. . .while wearing Crocs. To make matters worse, the Jets girl looks pretty darn similar to Brett’s wife, Deanna. He must have been really lonely in New York.
Anyway, this is all to preface the fact that an amazing song called “See My Dong” has surfaced on the web detailing Brett’s little foray into cellphone tomfoolery set to the tune of Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long.” So good.
-Sam
The Various, August 2010
Here are some topics I’ve been watching over as of late.
It’s looking like Wyclef Jean will, infact, announce his presidency campaign.
Lady Gaga has been nominated a record 13 times for this year’s MTV Video Music Awards. Videos? Artists are still creating these things? And people are still watching them?
Shit is hitting the fan with the Steven Tyler and American Idol rumors going around. Nigel Lythgoe is returning to the show and wants Paula to join him.
The Beach Boys threaten to sue Katy Perry for her, “I wish they all could be California Girls,” line.
Eminem is still leading the US Singles chart. How do you guys still like this depressive clown?
Some unreleased Michael Jackson songs will be released in the fall. Not exactly surprising.
Kings of Leon’s upcoming fifth album now has a name and a release date.
It’ll be called Come Around Sundown.
It will hit stores on October 19.
No word yet on whether the album will feature a song about the trials and tribulations of withstanding pigeon shit.
-Sam
After Slipknot bassist Paul Gray unexpectedly died a couple months ago from a drug overdose, the obvious question on many people’s minds was whether the band would carry on in his absence or simply call it a day.
Well, now we have word from two of the band members themselves. However, it looks like they haven’t exactly talked to each other to get on the same wavelength.
Here’s what drummer Joey Jordison had to say, according to Blabbermouth:
“There WILL be another record, no matter what. We already have kind of a timeline…We kind of know when we’re going to start. It isn’t going to be too long.”
And here’s singer Corey Taylor’s take on the matter (again, thanks to Blabbermouth):
“It’s too soon right now, but we’re still talking, all of us are talking and everything’s good but we’ll see.”
That’s two drastically different responses to the same question, no? In the end, I think it’s inevitable that Slipknot will continue on as a band, but with Stone Sour and Murderdolls occupying some of the band members’ time right now, any new music probably won’t come until 2012.
-Sam
M.I.A. really knows how to piss people off these days.
Most recently, the Sri Lankan rapper has managed to target both Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga — two powerful ladies who you probably shouldn’t be hating on; unless of course she’s just looking for some publicity.
Speaking of Lady Gaga, M.I.A. said, “Is it about numbers? About how much you’re selling? Is it truly the journey? Because Lady Gaga’s journey isn’t that difficult: to go from the fucking Upper East Side to a fucking performing arts school and onto a stage at the museum of fucking whatever. That journey’s about four miles.”
Yeah, it’s Lady Gaga’s journey that is making your album plummet 25 spots on the Billboard 200.
And then speaking of her encounter with Oprah, “Oprah seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder. She was dancing with Imaa. Imaa was always dancing with me, hugging and kissing me. Oprah seemed really pissed off with me.”
But hey, at least M.I.A. apologized for the fucking disaster of a show in New York City the other week. As a sign of her apology, she’ll come back to New York, after her tour, and perform a free concert.
Sorry for the language; it just seemed all too necessary.
Sometimes a Tweet is all you need to really sum up a situation.
This comes from Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill, in reference to the band’s recent show in St. Louis:
“So sorry St. Louis. We had to bail, pigeons shitting in [bassist] Jared [Followill]’s mouth. Too unsanitary to continue….Don’t take it out on Jared, it’s the fucking venue’s fault. You may enjoy being shit on but we don’t. Sorry for all who traveled many miles.”
That really sucks for both the band and the fans. It’s too bad there weren’t any umbrella hats on hand that the guys could have strapped on to protect them from the fecal showers. I wonder if, in the future, the venue will consider doing what the Cincinnati Bengals considered when they had a similar problem a few years back.
-Sam
Whatever your thoughts are about Lady Gaga, I can’t see any rational human being siding against her in this particular instance.
You see, according to Rolling Stone, this past weekend Gaga had a show in St. Louis which was protested by the Westboro Baptist Church. If you don’t know who the WBC is, they are the people who picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard (with signs that said things like “AIDS Cures Fags”) along with multiple funerals of soldiers killed in action. They’ve picketed the funerals of Michael Jackson and Dio. They’ve protested outside the Holocaust Museum, calling the Holocaust “minuscule” and saying “Jews are the real Nazis.” A few years ago, after the Sichuan earthquake in China, they released a press release praying “for many more earthquakes to kill many more thousands of impudent and ungrateful Chinese Communists.” And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The Anti-Defamation League has classified this “church” as a hate group. And it’s sad to say that this group actually is a church because in reality it’s nothing more than the giant inbred family of Pastor Fred Phelps. And yet it still receives the tax exemption from our government.
Anyways, according to these worthless abominations, everything tragic that happens in the world is directly attributable to homosexuality. And Lady Gaga is well known for having a devout following of LGBT fans. So naturally, as the attention-starved whores that they are, the WBC showed up to her concert to call Gaga a “false prophetess” and warn that she and her “gender-confused, self loathing, tone deaf” fans are headed to hell.