Um, remember when Shaq was a rapper/actor and people just wanted him to focus on basketball? There was a good reason for that and the recently surfaced clip of him dissing Kobe Bryant at a club is reason number one. Shaq ain’t much of a free styler and one fears for his life if the Black Mamba sees this. Because deep down inside Kobe is a killer and Shaq is just a fun-loving seven-foot child.

Still, if Shaq reworked the chorus of his tune into something a bit better than “Kobe how my ass taste” and added a few decent chorus’s on top of such great lines like “I had a vasectomy and now I can’t breed’em” he might be onto something. MORE »

Director DJ Caruso’s techno-thiller Eagle Eye has been banished to the wasteland of September, which is odd given the movie looks like it could be a first rate action flick; it stars Shia LeBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Chiklis, Rosario Dawson, and Ethan Embree (shockingly good on Showtime’s Brotherhood).

LeBeouf and Monaghan are pawns in a terrorist cell’s plot to assassinate a political figure.  There’s a mysterious woman controlling the action and we now know why the flick is titled Eagle Eye. It’s based upon an original idea from Steven Spielberg.  The trailer will, in all likelihood, be attached to prints of Wanted this weekend.

I never got to go to Chuck E. Cheese often enough as a kid.  But when I did it was quite a treat.  But one of the things that bugged me even at a young age was the creepy rock band.  The music was terrible and was more scary than anything else.

But imagine if that band played awesome tunes and filled people with joy?

So these guys in Alabama named Chris Thrash and Aaron Fletcher bought one of those animatronic bands from Showbiz, which is a version of Chuck E. Cheese in the midwest. And they christened them Rock-Afire Explosion and now he programs them to play tunes from MGMT, Usher, Madonna and Shakira.  Actually if you send him an email they’ll set up the band to play any song you want.

As Ren and Stimpy would say, “happy happy joy joy.”

Check out more videos at their YouTube page.  Okay, okay, we’re going to share one more because, crap, I can’t stop laughing at how funny this is.  Here’s Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.”

While searching Portfolio for the recent article about Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, I stumbled into this article about superfan Cameron Hughes.  He’s paid by team owners to whip the fans into a frenzy during the games.

Teams like Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs and numerous minor-league teams pay him on average $2,000 to show up and rile up the crowd.  Which could mean anything from dancing with old ladies to screaming his lungs out to spinning his shirt wildly in the air.

In other words, Cameron Hughes is the guy everyone hates at sporting events and he’s getting paid two grand to be there.  Do the math, but by Hughes’s estimates he works about 80 to 90 games a year to bring in a very comfortable six-figure salary.  All because he’s the annoying “drunk” guy at your teams sporting event.

“I basically just play myself,” says the 36-year-old Ottawa native. “It’s just amazing when you put on a team jersey that people are loyal to, how much they’ll cheer you and how much they’ll support you.”

Not surprisingly, Hughes started out in L.A. trying to be an actor and ended up doing something else, fortunately it wasn’t porn.  He booked some gigs through a specialized agent and then word of mouth spread and he’s been booking gigs ever since.

“It’s not just a job, it’s something I live to do, so I get antsy sitting in the dugout,” says Hughes.

It almost goes without saying that these teams are wasting their money.  For the cost of two tickets, teams could probably find their own local superfans and have them attend the game for the same effect.

[Portfolio - Superfan Cameron Hughes]

Beck has put out a trailer for his upcoming album Modern Guilt. It’s streaming on Amazon, but it didn’t take long for it to pop up on Youtube.  The video comes off like a French new wave film from the 60’s or like a clothing Ad from Andy Warhol.   But there’s also the music, featuring snippets of new tunes like “Gamma Ray,” “Youthless,” “Modern Guilt,” and “Walls.”

Modern Guilt is set to drop on July 8.

Boston.com has rolled out a new photo blog during the past month called, appropriately enough, The Big Picture.

For those who were fascinated by Life Magazine or National Geographic as kids, and let’s be honest who wasn’t?, what Alan Taylor is doing over at the digital domain for The Boston Globe is nothing short of amazing.

Andy Baio of WAXY interviewed Taylor to get some behind the scenes information regarding one of the best new blogs on the internet.

Tell me a little bit about your curating process. Are you browsing the wire randomly for amazing photos and building a post around it, or do you start with the story you want to tell?

A little of both. Browsing the wire is really fun, and leads to some incredible finds. If there’s a specific story I want to tell, I’m at the mercy of what I can find. Sometimes there’s a lot, other times, not. For instance, I’m dying to do some “daily life” entries about Iran, but the wire feeds I have available have almost no images from there at all, other than photos of Ahmadinejad — but that’s not what I’m after. I try to stock up for a rainy day too. I have some stored searches, some favorite photographers, some perpetually interesting subjects, and so on. I’m trying to automate the gathering as much as possible.

How’s the response been? I’ve seen the buzz in the blog world and the over-the-top positive comments in every one of your posts.

Yeah — totally unreal. Over-the-top positive response. More than I expected for sure. Internally, externally, everywhere, people are being really thankful to me. I need to make sure (with some link-love in my upcoming blogroll) that the response gets directed to the photographers as well. I’m just a web developer with access to their photos and a blog — they’re the ones out there working hard to get these amazing images. “Photographers” here is a loose term, encompassing photojournalists, stringers, amateurs, scientific imaging teams and more.

Taylor spends about 2-3 hours putting together a post, which usually includes a collection of photos and a short background blurb.  He posts 3 times per week on current events like Sadr City, the floods in Des Moines, Ethiopian food shortages, The Boston Celtics victory parade, California wildfires, etc.  What he does is surf the wire for the best photos and puts together a collection. The technical side of how he does it is fascinating as well, but you should really read the entire interview and go look as his blog.

It’s not hard to believe that a programmer has tapped into one of the best innovations in online publishing this year.  It’s just a shame more newspaper sights aren’t trying new things.  [The Big Picture]

Weezer stopped by Portland’s Oak Park Fairgrounds back on the 19th and held a good ole fashioned hootenany. The local radio station 94.7 invited like 200 people to play instruments and jam out with Rivers Cuomo.

I’ve always wondered what it was that makes Weezer so damn embraceable; they seem to want to go in the opposite direction of what’s cool and now. Their strategy for being rock’n'roll icons, for lack of a better term, seems counterintuitive. Maybe that’s their appeal, but still, you’ve got to hand it to a band that keeps chugging along and giving fans something special.

Pampelmoose was on hand to get the video of the band rehearsing and eventually covering Radiohead’s “Creep.”

Radiohead’s “Creep”

The Portland Mercury’s Erik Henrikson has a great write up about the day. Henrikson is relatable because he comes from the same place every Weezer fans does: loves The Blue Album unquestionably, bows down before the greatness of Pinkerton and then sort of wonders what happened to the band. I wish I knew. Though I don’t think any of their post-Pinkerton efforts are bad and the thing to keep in mind is that Weezer is a singles band. When all is said and done my future-kids will be listening to Weezer’s greatest hits on whatever format they will listen to music on.

On entering the pavilion, everyone gets a booklet autographed by Rivers Cuomo, Brian Bell, and Scott Shriner (Patrick Wilson, pulling a Greg Oden, isn’t around thanks to a knee injury). Inside are lyrics to the setlist: “Pork and Beans,” “Island in the Sun,” Radiohead’s “Creep,” “Say It Ain’t So,” “El Scorcho,” “Beverly Hills,” and, in addition to the lyrics on these Xeroxed pages, there are hand-scrawled notes in the margins, written in some sort of bewildering and frightening foreign language: “In the key of F# minor (after tuning town 1/2 step),” says the one for “Island in the Sun,” while “Creep” is annotated with “Chord progression: G major - B major - C major - C minor.” I ignore this bizarre stuff, and contented myself with singing, because I know four of those six songs by heart. I probably should not admit how much I enjoy singing “Hip hip!” during “Island in the Sun.” But fuck it: “Hip hip!” is fun to sing, and “Pork and Beans” is really fun to hum along to, and yes, “Beverly Hills” is a terrible fucking song, but it’s still a great song to stomp your feet along to, provided, I guess, that it’s Rivers Cuomo telling you to do the stomping, and there are 200 other people, aged 11 to 40, all around you, equally excited about doing the same thing.

Damn, I wish I was there.

Damn. Just damn. Maybe he’ll get showered with the love Tim Russert did. His cantankerous old man routine never got old. He was 71.

Carlin was to be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on November 10th. He’s the award’s 11th recipient and it should be a teary affair. Previous winners include Richard Pryor, Carl Reiner, and Bob Newhart.

Carlin will best be remembered for his “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television” routine. Of course, those seven words, still to this day can’t be uttered, I think. Though I could be wrong. Regardless, he was full of piss and vinegar and the world loved him for it.

“When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

“When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he told The Associated Press earlier this year.“

Stand up routine highlights after the jump. MORE »

Gloucester High School in Massachusetts, a fishing town on the North Shore, had 17 pregnancies this year.  Usually they average about four.  The jump in pregnancies is attributed to a group of eight girls who supposedly made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

Since the story first leaked it’s made Time and been on Good Morning America.

By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, “some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” [Principal Joseph] Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. “We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” the principal says, shaking his head.

Now, however, with the national spotlight upon them, many of the adults and authority in this situation are back peddling.   At first these people were merely “skeptical” of this pact.  And now they are in outright denial.

Mayor Carolyn Kirk plans to meet Monday with school, health and other local officials after Gloucester High School Principal Joseph Sullivan was quoted by Time magazine saying girls made pregnancy pacts.

Kirk said Sullivan has told officials in this hard-luck New England fishing town he can’t remember his source of information.

The thing here is that most of these girls are all Sophomores in high school, so that’s like 15 years old.  It’s not unusual for this to happen, just look at Jamie Lynn Spears, but it’s unfortunate that no one can get to the bottom of what exactly is going on.  The girls in question won’t talk.  The school and town officials are now in cover our asses mode.

And the media is reporting mostly supposition and conjecture.  Is Gloucester a Roman Catholic community that supports teenage motherhood?  Hard to say, but it’s not unlikely.  This also brings up the larger issue of sex education and reproduction health for teenagers.  Hard as it may be to believe but teenagers like having sex or trying to have sex or at the very least trying to “get some.”

It does everyone, especially the teenagers, to put their collective heads in the sand and pretend that abstinence only education works.  You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t have poorly misinformed sex/reproductive education and then act surprised and shocked when young girls start showing up pregnant.

Maybe that’s a rant for another day, but it is related to what’s going on in Gloucester and shouldn’t be ignored.  After all, in the initial Time Magazine story, they attributed the spike in pregnancies to the stagnant fishing economy in the town (um, no), the kids growing up directionless (i.e. where are their parents?), but it only hints at the lack of proper sex education.

Currently Gloucester teens must travel about 20 miles (30 km) to reach the nearest women’s health clinic; younger girls have to get a ride or take the train and walk. But the notion of a school handing out birth control pills has met with hostility. Says Mayor Carolyn Kirk: “Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children.” The pair resigned in protest on May 30.

Gloucester’s elected school committee plans to vote later this summer on whether to provide contraceptives. But that won’t do much to solve the issue of teens wanting to get pregnant. Says rising junior Kacia Lowe, who is a classmate of the pactmakers’: “No one’s offered them a better option.” And better options may be a tall order in a city so uncertain of its future.

Strange, that the kids would view pregnancy as their best option.  Wonder what would give them that impression.  Anyone got a theory as to what’s going on or know anything?

Initially riding to the mainstream on the wave that carried fellow alternative country acts like Wilco and Bright Eyes to the public’s ears, My Morning Jacket have, through their past couple albums, deftly eluded sonic type casting.

Front man and chief songwriter Jim James is amusingly agile at connecting weird imagery to lyrical snippets meditating on love, innocence, and the other usual suspects of the country canon. And it is this very adept sense of juxtaposition that shines brilliantly on MMJ’s newest album, Evil Urges.

But let’s back up a bit. MORE »

Yesterday was a big day for me. A day that I had marked on my Fraggle Rock calendar for quite some time, not that I needed a reminder from the over-advertising they did, but Get Smart opened yesterday! Now, I know some of the reviews haven’t been that favorable and the trailer didn’t look all that promising either, but it’s Get Smart. You can’t pass that up, at least I can’t.
Nick at Nite was a major part of my childhood and Get Smart was always my favorite. In fact, I bought a bootleg copy of the series before it actually came out on DVD, to clarify I don’t encourage doing that at all. I also bought it again when it was available in the legit way. I’m a huge fan, let’s just keep it at that and leave my sordid past out of this. Honestly, that’s as seedy as it gets with me. Someone who has a Fraggle Rock calendar with “Get Smart opens today!” written on it can’t be too much of a badass, I’m not hiding anything from you guys.

The movie is exactly what you’d expect it to be. If you go in wanting to criticize it you probably will. If you just want to have fun and enjoy two hours, maybe have a few laughs, then you’ll do that instead. As you could have probably guessed I went in with the latitude (that’s the portmanteau of “latter attitude”). It’s obviously not the most profound movie ever and it’s not even the funniest, but it’s a good time and well worth the matinee price I paid.

The ending was typical Hollywood and left me feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Sometimes I like that though. Now that I think about it, the entire movie was oozing with Hollywood typicality. Boy meets girl, girl plays hard to get, but they end up together in the end, then you throw in some funny bits and action pieces and you’ve got yourself a big time Hollywood summer blockbuster. I’m sort of mocking it in that way, but I still liked it.

The best part was the casting. I knew Steve Carell would be the perfect Maxwell Smart. I can’t imagine any other current actor in that role. This is going to turn into me gushing over Steve Carell I can feel it happening already. Must fight the urge. He always plays the “endearing idiot that doesn’t know that he’s an idiot” so well. Two other small, but wonderful, performances were by Masi Oka and Nate Torrence, who play Bruce and Lloyd, two nerdy tech guys at CONTROL. On July 1st they’re releasing a spin-off DVD called Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, which follows what was going on with those characters while Maxwell and Agent 99 are off fighting the bad guys in Russia. It looks cheesy, but I’m sure I’ll watch it.

Yup.  This is the world we live in folks.  Tron Guy, aka Jay Maynard, a 47-year-old Minnesota residence, tricked out an airplane to resemble his Tron unitard he wears.  So a guy who achieved quasi-geek-celebrity made news by buying an airplane and it was reported by media publications and then regurgitated on this blog.

So yeah, we realize we’re part of the problem.  But still, that photo just makes me chortle.  In fact coffee came out my nose this morning when I saw it.

“I wanted a design that would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was Tron Guy’s airplane,” Maynard said in a phone interview Thursday.

Maynard afforded the $140,000 plane with money from his computer consultant business.  Contrary to what many might assume, he has made very little off of his costumed appearances, other than infamy.