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The Knife’s Karin Dreijer out gagas Gaga on Swedish awards show
01.25.2010
11:44 pm
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Karin Dreijer of the Swedish sibling duo The Knife, also known professionally as Fever Ray, shows Gaga how it’s done.

Via Bob Lefsetz

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.25.2010
11:44 pm
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Caribou Goes Disco
01.25.2010
11:10 pm
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Caribou announced the release in April of their new album “Swim” today and released the above lead-off tune “Odessa” into the world. Main Caribou Dan Snaith is an absolute sonic master, dealing mainly in muted and worn textures. This song is somehow both awkward and hypnotic simultaneously, a subtle grower with lots of interesting little bits coming and going amid the repeated hooks galore.
Bonus clip : To my eternal delight Snaith had the questionable taste to sample a big chunk of my guitar madness from the first Medicine LP on the below song “Barnowl” from their 2005 LP “The Milk of Human Kindness”.
 

Posted by Brad Laner
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01.25.2010
11:10 pm
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Man Castrates Himself To Avoid Cheating On Wife
01.25.2010
08:30 pm
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“I put some pressure on it and cut them, to remove them by force.”  To avoid cheating on his sex-refusing wife, Luis Alfonso Sanchez found the decision to castrate himself an “easy” one to make.  And, since he’s already castrated pigs, cats and dogs, what’s three days of healing time?  The stunt sent Sanchez to the hospital where his wounds grew infected.

 
Bonus: Castration Squad’s A Date With Jack (Kennedy)

(via BIOTV)

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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01.25.2010
08:30 pm
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Extreme Voiceover At The Christian Broadcasting Network
01.25.2010
07:09 pm
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I’m absolutely certain that the tale (below) of Guatemalan orphan, Aury, is a harrowing one.  What’s far less persuasive?  The Christian Broadcast Network‘s decision to translate Aury’s voice using English that’s as chirpy as it is stereotypically choppy!

What’s creepier here, of course, is that the English-speaking “voice” of Aury was most likely that of a professional actor directed to “translate” that way, so as to better play upon the sympathies—and wallets—of the CBN faithful.

 
(via Sociological Images)

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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01.25.2010
07:09 pm
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You Can’t Always Drink What You Want: Keith Richards goes stone cold sober!
01.25.2010
05:41 pm
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Who saw this one coming? The NME reports that Keef is giving up the hooch!

Keith Richards has given up booze. The legendary drinker ?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.25.2010
05:41 pm
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Britcom genius Marc Wootton’s U.S. debut: ‘La La Land’ premieres tonight on Showtime
01.25.2010
05:30 pm
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It used to feel like Showtime was the also-ran when its original programming was pitted against HBO fare like “The Wire,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Sopranos.” But in recent years the pay-cable TV titans have been running neck and neck, with Showtime’s excellent “This American Life,” “Dexter"and “Weeds” coming up from behind. After tonight, it may be that Showtime pulls ahead—in my household at least—with the premiere of “La La Land,” a new series starring the absolutely brilliant British comedian Marc Wootton.

If you’re a fan of “Borat” then you’ll love what Marc Wootton does too. But as good as Sacha Baron Cohen is at pulling the wool over people’s eyes, Wootton may be even better at it. In his guises as Borat or Bruno,  Cohen can keep his victims guessing for some time, but can he do it for several days? Wootton can, as evinced in his 2003 game show series “My New Best Friend” where contestants have to convince their family members that Wootton, playing some of the most obnoxious characters ever seen on television, is indeed their “new best friend” as he attempts to humiliate them. We’re talking grinding humiliation (The “winners”—and I use that term loosely—got a cash prize, but few stuck around long enough to collect, so horrifying were the paces that Wootton’s characters put them through).

And then there is Wootton’s most famous character, Shirley Ghostman, the flamboyant spoof tele-psychic. “Shirley”—who is in fact a man, an extremely effeminate man with poofy hair and nail polish who’ll have you know he’s not gay, okay?—is the Liberace-esque host of “High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman.” Shirley makes contact with the spirits of Elvis Presley and Princess Diana, reads the minds of pets and takes hapless contestants through a maze of humiliation in a reality show-within-the-show called “Spirit Academy,” the “American Idol” of psychic talent. The people Shirley interacts with—and the dumbfounded studio audience—have no idea they’re being put on. I’ve inflicted “High Spirits” on many a friend and everyone agrees: This is one of those pee-in-your-pants-funny shows. An absolute must-see if you are a fan of ill-at-ease comedy.

La La Land” has been described as a reality-hybrid comedy, with Wootton playing three fish-out-of-water characters trying to make it in Los Angeles: Gary, an aspiring actor, Brendan an egocentric documentarian of the Nick Broomfield/Michael Moore “you-get-a-documentary-plus-me” school of filmmaking and Shirley Ghostman, who gets resurrected for his U.S. television debut.

“La La Land,” 11 p.m. Mondays, Showtime

Below, a clip from 2005’s “High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman”

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.25.2010
05:30 pm
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Dude Kills 51 Cows, Self
01.25.2010
02:33 pm
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From The Inquisitr:

Copake, NY, United States (AHN) ?

Posted by Jason Louv
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01.25.2010
02:33 pm
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Scorpions Disbanding!
01.25.2010
02:21 pm
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Wait, they were still going? Alas, the winds of change blow for all men… hopefully the Berlin Wall won’t try anything now that these rock centurions aren’t keeping it down.

The German rock band Scorpions is bringing down the curtain on a career spanning more than four decades.

The band, known for its early 1990s hit “Wind of Change” among others, said on its Web site Sunday that “we agree we have reached the end of the road.”

It said it would end its career with a final album ?

Posted by Jason Louv
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01.25.2010
02:21 pm
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Scientologists heal injured in Haiti using touch
01.24.2010
11:52 pm
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A wealthy donor has sent a group of 50 Haitian-American doctors and volunteers from the Church of Scientology to Haiti at the cost of $400,000. The church members are using a controversial healing technique to help relief efforts:

“We’re trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication,” she said.

“When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch.”

Okay. Let’s accept this at face value. If this works, why doesn’t medical science know about it?

“One hour ago he had no sensation in his left leg, so I explained the method to him, I touched him and after a while he said ‘now I feel everything’,” said Sylvie.“Otherwise they might have had to amputate his other leg. Now his sister knows the method and she can do it.”

Asked about the method being used on him, a smiling Elweels described it as “a sort of harmony between the nerves, a kind of exercise. I couldn’t feel at all, but then I could.” Does he know Scientology? “Yes, it’s a French organization,” he said.

“All the patients are happy with the technique,” said Sylvie. “But some doctors don’t like the yellow T-shirts. It’s a color thing,” she insisted. Another group of Scientologists distributed antibiotic pills. “The doctors said give everyone with wounds antibiotics,” said Italian volunteer Marina.

Some doctors at the hospital are skeptical. One US doctor, who asked not to be named, snorted: “I didn’t know touching could heal gangrene.”

When asked what the Scientologists are doing here, another doctor said: “I don’t know.”

Do you care? “Not really,” she said, wheeling an unconscious patient out of the operating room to join hundreds of others in the hospital’s sunny courtyard.

 
Scientologists ‘heal’ Haiti quake victims using touch

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.24.2010
11:52 pm
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Archive of Burroughs and Ginsberg Lectures at Naropa Online
01.24.2010
04:30 pm
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Recently seen (via, uh, the William Burroughs re-tweet bot), the mother load… Check out this HUGE online archive of audio of lectures given by William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and others at Naropa Institute in the 1970s. Naropa is developing an online browser of the material, but for the moment, it’s ALL on Scribd.

The Naropa University Archive Project is preserving and providing access to over 5000 hours of recordings made at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The library was developed under the auspices of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (the university’s Department of Writing and Poetics) founded in 1974 by poets Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. It contains readings, lectures, performances, seminars, panels and workshops conducted at Naropa by many of the leading figures of the U.S.literary avant-garde.

The collection represents several generations of artists who have contributed to aesthetic and cultural change in the postmodern era. The Naropa University Archive Project seeks to enhance appreciation and understanding of post-World War II American literature and its role in social change, cultural criticism, and the literary arts through widespread dissemination of the actual voices of the poets and writers of this period. Current interest in Oriental religions, environmentalism, political activism, ethnic studies, and women’s consciousness is directly indebted to the work of these New American Poets, writers and musicians.

Funding for this project was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Save America’s Treasures, the GRAMMY Foundation, the Internet Archive, the Collaborative Digitization Program, and private donors. If this collection is important to you please help us preserve it with your donations.

(Scribd: Naropa Archives)

Posted by Jason Louv
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01.24.2010
04:30 pm
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