Well, glad you asked. Or rather we asked. A while back we mentioned that Feist would be adding some hipster indie cred to Sesame Street on the 39th season premiere. And guess who’s going to be there with her? That’s right. It’s the Doogster*.

He’ll be playing a shoe fairy. “Not the shoe fairy – the fairy shoe person. It’s quite a different connotation. I was asked by Sesame Street to be a part of a song and I just leapt at the opportunity. Jim Henson was the only person I ever wrote a fan letter to as a kid and I’m a wild fan of puppets and the Henson Company in general,” he told After Elton. “They wrote a song, wanted me to sing it. There are all these different mythical characters this season. Sandra Oh plays another type of fairy that Abby Cadabra creates and so we got to do this big musical number with puppets and dancing. It was a great, great afternoon. It’s one demographic that I have yet to win over.”

Well consider them won over.

*Joss has the best line about people calling NPH “Doogie.” When he said that Doogie has a name and it’s “Barney.” That just kills me. Always quick with a joke that Joss Whedon character. [via]

So Candace Parker was just one of man players involved in Tuesday’s “brawl.”

“I have been covering women’s basketball for 18 years and the WNBA since its inception in 1997, and I have never seen anything even close to this,” ESPN game analyst Doris Burke said. Look, girls will be girls and it was nice to see them take a break from layups and midrange jumpers, but it’s not like there were any good punches landed.

What’s up with the water in Detroit?  Between this and Ron Artest reigning hellfire on the Palace crowd there’s got to be something going on right?

“I’ve played mothers to heroes and mothers to zeroes. I’ve played Irish mothers, Jewish mothers, Italian mothers, Southern mothers, mothers in plays by Neil Simon and Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. I’ve played mother to everyone but Attila the Hun,” she said famously about her career. It was the role of Bea Arthur’s mother that made us fall in love with.

I might be able to think of a reason or two why you’re crying buddy. And it doesn’t have anything to do with Brittany Spears playing as background music. Dude, man up. I know we’re all gonna miss Estelle Getty, but seriously. He’s probably crying because we’re about seven days too late with this lame obituary.

Which I forgot how awesome that show is because it’s the only place you’ll get to hear a guy nonchalantly ask about his girlfriend possibly giving him chlamydia - dude she cheated on you! - and then have an 18-year-old girl call in and ask if masturbating with a dildo five to ten times a week is safe. Five to ten times! My god. It might be safe but holy crap that can’t be healthy. I mean I know she isn’t going to end up blind. The best part was during her entire call, Dr. Drew is trying to give her honest advice and help her through her problem and Seth Green is in the background munching on In-And-Out Burger and saying things like, “Yeah Matilda it’s all good! You’re just trying to find out how you like it” in this creepy pederass voice.

Funniest show on the radio.

What stopped me on the dial, oddly enough however, was Seth Green promoting Robot Chicken and talking about Family Guy and doing much of the interview in his voice he uses for Chris and imitating Soundwave from Transformers. I’m convinced that Hollywood is the least cool place on Earth. It’s basically a cesspool for all the theater dorks in high school only with more money, better makeup and fancier clothes. And before you jump all over me, I’m the least cool person I know I was both a band dork and a theater dork and several other doses of dorkitude in high school.

Anyway, the topic turned to Matthew McConaughey because Green also does the voice for McConaughey whenever he is on Family Guy. His impression was stellar and his insight into the life of McConaughey had me chortling uncontrollably.

So when I got home, of course I was flipping around YouTube for some clips of McConaughey on Family Guy, then I wanted to find the trailer for his new movie Surfer Dude, which in turn led to this clip below which just about made my night.

And yes, I realize that this might be the only post that scatologically jumps from Emmylou Harris to Dr. Drew to Seth Green to Matthew McConaughey to some surfer guy in California. Six degrees of fun!

The article is about smoking, and how even after laws were passed and anti-smoking signs hung, Beijing remains a city of smokers. One in four people smoke. Doctors smoke in hospitals. “… a 2004 government survey of 3,600 doctors found that 30 percent did not know that smoking could lead to heart disease and circulation problems.”

Holy shit, right?  Still: coolest city ever, as evidenced by this headlining pic:

Look at that guy.  Leaning back, puffing on a cancer stick with no less than eight empty beer bottles in front of him.  Who knew Beijing was the Party Capital of the World?  I do, now.

The Times article also shows a mother smoking in front of her two-year-old, telling the reporter it’ll “make [him] stronger,” and people laughing in the face of a year-old ban on smoking in taxis, even after the taxi driver politely says something, even if the taxi driver is, himself, a non-smoker.

Okay, so a lot of the article is disgusting, and paints residents in a ghastly light.  But for all the stories you’ve heard about cancer, death, disfigurement, miscarriages and other light family fare, the mythos of badassery still surrounds smoking.  And because Beijing flaunts its hard-drinking, chain-smoking cowboy ways, you’ve gotta give respect where it’s due.

The poster was sorta meh?, but the viral videos on YouTube providing lots of background for the show are promising, or maybe the right word is intriguing.

Still, it stars Anna Paquin, as a barmaid in Louisiana who can read people’s minds. It’s based on the “Southern Vampire” series of books by Charlaine Harris. We’ll at least be checking it out when it debuts on Sept. 7. Since we love all things vampires.

Hopefully, some sort of slayer or big corporation conspiracy will take place, or at the very least Kate Beckinsale will show up in some leather outfit.

In an eye-opening report from eSchool News, grades K - 12 still haven’t grasped the crucial nature of personalized technology assessment programs to individually foster a child’s education.  Without these technologies, children may find themselves struggling to keep up with classmates and overwhelmed and unprepared for postsecondary education.

Tailored and adaptive educational technology can pinpoint deficiencies in a student’s learning and work to strengthen weak areas.  If struggling students must rely on standardized tests, they risk the possibility of failure, devastation of the self-esteem, a lowering of the school’s NCLB scores—and, ultimately, the amount of funding President Bush’s program wants to dish out to difficult schools.

The good news is that huge strides have been made in the arena of wide-reaching Internet access and security tools to protect student data, applications and documents.

In the meantime, educational publishers are working hard to create these materials to distribute to schools.  The marketplace is booming with technology.  Publishers are less reliant on traditional manufacturing plants, all in an effort to broaden the eBook phenomenon.  Facebook, Amazon’s Kindle, the iPhone and various other personal technologies all make their way into corporate consideration.  But if public schools cannot afford these tools, or are not made aware of them, the nightmare that which is NCLB may continue unabated.

That’s how you spell it.  Now, this is coming from The Sun and here’s the basis for the story.  Bale’s mother and sister went to lodge a complaint at a Hampshire, UK police station yesterday.  Today, Bale will be brought in for questioning regarding the undisclosed matter.

A Met Police spokesman said: “We can confirm we have received allegation from another force in relation to an alleged incident in central London.”

Then the story is rounded out with quotes from an unnamed source, never a good thing, and some bullshit background about Ledger’s death.  Still, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Their debut album Elephant Shell clocks in around 30 minutes. Which is the ideal length for an album in this ADHD musical world we live in. It’s over before you know it. The only problem is that the songs kinda song samey - they bleed together.

“Graves” gets the video treatment with the band playing in an antique store. The people are frozen and the lights have a mind of their own. It’s scary in the same way getting dragged to antique stores as a kid is scary. “Don’t touch anything!” or um, “You break it you buy it!” were two of my favorite condescending sayings. And no Mom, those were from the shop owners, so don’t worry. Strange that after all these years, I’m only now just appreciating those kind of stores. This video, though, we can appreciate now.

Mp3: Tokyo Police Club - “Graves”

Despite the quality of his comedies trailer off sharply, we still have a soft-spot for man child Ferrell and when John C. Reilly does goofy comedy like this, there is hardly anyone better.

More photos at Brickshelf.  [via]

There will be baggage with this show, simply because of the greatness of Battlestar. Still, the premise about two families who bond over a tragedy and help create the first Cylon model looks like it will raise some fascinating questions and moral dilemmas. We all know by now how this story turns out, well, those that watch Battlestar do anyway.

Joseph Adama (Admiral Bill Adama’s father) uses his dead daughter to build the first Cylon. That’s some heavy shit right there.

According to this interview show creator Ron Moore gave with the Chicago Tribune, “Caprica” is set 51 years before the events of “Battlestar Galactica.” According to a March press release from Sci Fi, “’Caprica’ follows two rival families – the Greystones and the Adamas – as they grow, compete, and thrive in the vibrant world of the 12 Colonies. Enmeshed in the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe.”

Moore also said during the interview that Caprica is, “shot very different, and I think I was particularly attracted to the idea of doing a science fiction piece that was not built on a foundation of action adventure. It wasn’t about Vipers and it wasn’t about the Cylons attacking every other week. It was really a character piece. It was really a drama, and you can infuse with a lot of political commentary and a lot of religious overtones and really dig into a people and a society and how and why it all came unglued.”

Here’s a promo for the new season with Liz and Raimy lip-synching the new theme song that Uh Huh Her wrote on the last episode.

(Man that’s a clever headline.  I am so witty.)

The Death of Entertainment—or, as some call it, the date Jimmy Fallon takes the “Late Night” reigns from Conan O’Brien—will begin a bit earlier than expected.  Lorne Michaels decided to put Fallon on the Interwebs to “work out as many of the rough spots in his presentation as possible in performances on a website.”

Read: Try his damndest not to suck so terribly that no one watches “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”  I don’t think it’s possible.  I think Fallon is going to suck hard.  He’s worse than the Iraq War.

If this were any other host—or, indeed, anyone else in the entire fucking world—it’d be an interesting idea.  Michaels intends on posting Fallon’s abortions at 12:30AM every night to get the audience in the menstrual flow.  It affords the unfunny comedian a unique opportunity to generate a “voice” and begin compiling an audience.

However, I find it hard to believe anyone will boot up their PCs during Conan to watch Fallon giggle at his own jokes to the backdrop of a silent, resentful audience.

It’s understandable that John McCain wouldn’t use a computer, but when he admitted he didn’t know how to use one, well, shit.  That’s just confounding.  My grandma uses a computer regularly to check email, surf the internet, play scrabble, etc.

She’s not alone:

How unusual is it for a 71-year-old American to be unplugged?

That depends how you look at the statistics. Only 35 percent of Americans over age 65 are online, according to data from April and May compiled by the Pew Internet Project at the Pew Research Center.

But when you account for factors like race, wealth and education, the picture changes dramatically. “About three-quarters of white, college-educated men age over 65 use the Internet,” says Susannah Fox, director of the project.

“John McCain is an outlier when you compare him to his peers,” Fox says. “On one hand, a U.S. senator has access to information sources and staff assistance that most people do not. On the other, the Internet has become such a go-to resource that it’s a curiosity to hear that someone doesn’t rely on it the way most Americans do.”

But the best part, and I’m not making this up, comes a bit further down in the article.  “”He’s fully capable of browsing the Internet and checking Web sites,” Brooke Buchanan, McCain’s spokewoman said. “He has a Mac and uses it several times a week. He’s working on becoming more familiar with the Internet.”

Ah, let’s get him a cookie and some milk and pat him on the head before putting him down for a nap.  You’re so cute, yes you are.  Yes you are.  You can check websites!

Actually, that’s about all I use the internet for.  Well, that and porn and stealing music so you know.  We have that in common.

Buzz is we’re headed toward another economic stimulus check, perhaps as early as September 2008.  This is the work of Democrats, and, if I’m 100% right 100% of the time, will happen.

See, it’s election season, and we teeter of the precipice of a hardcore recession.  If the Democrats slide this through the cogs and Republicans reject it, guess who looks like insensitive dicks.

Republicans, of course, are wary of this tactic.  They’re also seemingly onboard with the proposal.

We friggin’ need it, folks.  The last stimulus check did nothing—nothing! I paid off a bit of a credit card and that’s it.  What I really wanted was an iPhone, or something awesome I could flash around and say, “Guess what George W. Bush bought me?  This!”

So if this next stimulus check goes through, I promise to invigorate the economy with it.  But for those with cars, is this even possible?  Won’t this additional $600 goes to paying off the credit cards you bogged down with gasoline debt?

No matter how these dice are rolled, no one worth a damn would ever reject “free” money.

The producers had a chance to do so last season, where instead of a season where Jack Bauer skips around town doing the same old thing, battling the same old plot twists, they should have made the entire season about Jack Bauer breaking out of a Chinese prison and attempting to get back home to America.  It would have been the perfect ending to the show.  Jack on the run, out numbered and facing the heat in Southeast Asia.

Anyway, this time Jack Bauer plays the White savior for the fictional dark continental country of Sengala.  Can’t say this trailer makes me want to see the new season, but I know I’ll watch.

Trial of the century, is what it was called. Scopes agreed reluctantly to the ACLU’s insistence on going to trial. He was cajoled into being a guinea pig to challenge the Constitutionality of the law.

Scopes was represented by Clarence Darrow and the State of Tennessee and the fundamentalists were represented by super-duper lawyer William Jennings Bryan - three-time Democratic nominee for president and a paradoxical blend of progressive conservatism.

At stake was the legitimacy to teach the theories of Charles Darwin. Ironically, no one knows if Scopes actually taught his class the theory of evolution. After all these years, Scopes isn’t some noble crusader but more of a reluctant participant.

One of the enduring debates concerning the Scopes trial revolves around whether Scopes ever actually taught the subject of evolution. George Rappalyea posed the question, holding up a copy of George W. Hunter’s Civic Biology, at Robinson’s drugstore. “You have been teaching ‘em this book?” he asked. Scopes answered, “Yes,” then went on to explain that, while substituting for the regular biology teacher in April 1925, he had assigned his students Hunter’s chapter on evolution. Illness the next day, however, kept him home and, to his recollection, no class discussion of the evolution materials ever took place. Scopes, however, remembered teaching the topic in a general way earlier in the same month to his general science students.

Still, the trial went forward over eight sweltering days. National newspapers swarmed the small town (can honestly say I’ve been to Dayton and it’s charming and remote and they have a small plaque dedicated to the event) dubbing the trial “The Monkey Trial.” No reporting was more important than that of Baltimore Sun reporter H.L. Mencken, who with cynicism provided accounts back north. It’s almost difficult reading his reports that that was journalism at one point. Far different from the septic and innocuous even-handed reporting that is in vogue today.

Scopes was found guilty by a jury of his peers and ordered to pay a $100 fine.

His team appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court and though his conviction stood, his fine was overturned.

Bryan, meanwhile, died only five days after the conclusion of the Monkey Trial.

The Butler Act, as the anti-evolution law was known, remained on the books in Tennessee until its repeal by the state legislature in 1967.

It’s hard to say what the aftermath of this event had. Obviously, it paved the way for real science education in America, but the anti-evolution laws stayed on the books for nearly forty years and to this day science is still under the gun from fundamentalists seeking to teach God (and not just god but a distinctly Christian one at that) in the science classroom. It’s a thin line and it can disappear easily if people aren’t willing to stand up to those corruptible forces.

Source: University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School & Wired

Photo: Rebel Scum

Books about substance abuse are often the most talked about books because they take place in a world that many people begin to travel down at 18-25, but most people make an abrupt U-turn when the realize the stakes involved with continuing down the darkened alley. And let’s be honest, to a certain extent for those who have never been habitual drug users, it’s a fascinating world. One that 80% of people are not privy to.

He’s the rub for The Night of the Gun. David Carr doesn’t trust his memory of those events, so rather than embellish them and become embroiled in some James Frey-type of shit (would you want Oprah bitch-slapping you?) he went out and thoroughly investigated his own life. Pouring over court documents and arrest records and interviewing over sixty people connected to his life at that time. It sounds like heady stuff. Stuff that I can’t wait to dig into.

The New York Times Magazine ran an excerpt this morning of the book titled “Me and My Girls.” It’s breathtaking, simply one of the most outstanding things I’ve read in quite some time.

When memory is called to answer, it often answers back with deception. How is it that almost every warm bar stool contains a hero, a star of his own epic, who is the sum of his amazing stories?

If I said I was a fat thug who beat up women and sold bad coke, would you like my story? What if instead I wrote that I was a recovered addict who obtained sole custody of my twin girls, got us off welfare and raised them by myself, even though I had a little touch of cancer? Now we’re talking. Both are equally true, but as a member of a self-interpreting species, one that fights to keep disharmony at a remove, I’m inclined to mention my tenderhearted attentions as a single parent before I get around to the fact that I hit their mother when we were together. We tell ourselves that we lie to protect others, but the self usually comes out looking damn good in the process.

The arc of the addict, warm and familiar as a Hallmark movie with only the details pivoting, is especially tidy in the recollection:

I had a beer with friends.

I shot dope into my neck.

I got in trouble.

I saw the error of my ways.

I found Jesus or 12 steps or bhakti yoga.

Now everything is new again.

In the convention of the recovery narrative, readers will want to scan past the tick-tock, looking for the yucky part so that they can feel better about themselves. (Here’s a taste: When I got to detox for what I thought was the last time, they took one look at my arms and brought me a tub filled with lukewarm water and Dreft detergent to soak my scabrous, pus-filled track marks. They dropped pills into my mouth from several inches away as if feeding a baby bird, and even the wet-brain drunks wouldn’t come near me. See how that works?)

The book comes out August 5, 2008.

“The most amazing thing is that he is blind,” says the reporter. Um, no. The most amazing thing is that instead of ending up a coked out shadow of his former self lying in a pool of Hepatitis C, Lidsky went on to graduate from Harvard Law and become a clerk at the SJC.

Kudos to him. Good story all around. Suck it Screech. Probably helped that no one watched The New Class to which Lidsky was a part of.

I can reasonably tell the difference between the most popular varietals - if you were, say, to put a glass of Viognier, Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay and told me to tell which is which four out of five days I’d be able to and the same goes with reds. I’m discerning in my likes and dislikes, can sorta pair wine with foods and have reached a point where I know there is a significant difference between your mass produced dreck like Yellow Tail (the $5-7 bottle) and something tasty in the next price range ($12-18).

However, if you were to ask me to tell the difference between a $18 bottle and something more heady, something in the $35-50 range I would be hard pressed to offer what exactly the difference is. Or rather, why the supposed sophistication and quality of the more expensive bottle justifies it’s price. And in this sense I am like most wine drinkers.

My theory, not that original and backed up by a new study (pdf) in Journal of Wine Ecomonics, is that there isn’t a remarkable enough difference for most wine consumer’s palate to justify the splurge. If you stay in the $12-18 range both your wallet and your taste buds will benefit. You’ll be able to drink more, and thus, consume from a wider selection of wines than just Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Merlot and the big whites.  As a result you will learn more: you’ll be able to talk about other offbeat varietals with confidence.  And even though you will still feel like you know nothing when you talk about tannins, acidity, mouthful, front-forward fruit, after taste, hints of whatever (fill in with appropriate descriptor) you will impress others.

Most people, waiters included, are just faking it when it comes to wine tasting.  So do not be intimidated.

And it also goes without saying that we had no idea she was this attractive. Cute yes, but in this picture she is bomb (click to see large version). When she shows up in some bad movie she always leaves an impression enough to say, “who was that?” Like an early Will Ferrell.  And we are constantly surprised to learn it is always Kristen Wiig who leaves that lasting impression. Chameleon? Possibly. Incredibly funny? Goes without saying.

Here’s to hoping she leaves SNL for bigger and better things rather than hang around until her flower has wilted (see: Amy Poehler).  [photo: via]

People always seem surprised when I tell them I’m from Boston (inside 128 gives me that privilege outside 128 no can do you have to tell people you’re from Massachusetts or the town you were raised in, sorry that’s the rules), born and essentially raised in a city just outside of Boston.

Because when I open my mouth there is some weird mismash of dialects working to obscure my home city.  I’ve had people ask if I was Canadian (enough times to actually think I may be from there!?!), from the midwest, the south but rarely if I am from Boston.  So they are surprised to find I am amongst the most common-type of proud Masshole.

It’s a mystery as to how this happened - possibly picking up words from here or there while traveling since I love language and its myriad uses or perhaps it was a conscious effort since the Boston accent conveys a sense of under-educated intellect.  Before you harp on me for elitism, in college I decided that it would be best to sound as intelligent as possible going forward.  It had more to do with preventing bias than anything else.

The language and dialects in New England is a treasure, it’s like understanding a foreign language and if you speak the code it doesn’t matter for you’ll be accepted.  This past week, WBUR aka “Radio Boston” broadcast an episode exploring the various accents of the greater Boston area.  Reporter David Boeri, he of Channel 5 fame (is he still with them?) worked on the piece.

I would love to see Boeri explore the accents of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut.  They are all unique and to the untrained ear all sound vaguely familiar.  [via]

Being a self-proclaimed word nerd, this book initially piqued my interest several months ago when I saw it on the shelves of the “Books about Books” section of my local booksellers.

I acquired the necessary funds (usually from the dearth of Bookstore Gift Cards I get for Christmas and Birthdays from relatives who know little about me beyond the fact that I read like a fiend), purchased the book, and finally picked it up.

The Professor and the Madman tells the interwoven tale of James Murray, editor for 21 of the nearly 80 years it took to produce the OED, and W.C. Minor, one of the Dictionary’s most productive and most mysterious contributors. Murray sets off to visit the man who has expended so much time and effort and contributed so greatly to the creation of the OED, and is shocked to discover once he reaches what he believes to be Minor’s vast estate that the estate is actually the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, and W.C. Minor is actually an inmate. Though the author, Simon Winchester, goes on to debunk the myth of Murray and Minor’s first meeting, he seems to find no problem in using it as a draw for the first few chapters and in the blurb.

Well, that’s the premise, but there’s not really much more to the story than that, though Winchester manages to pad it out to 230 pages. It’s an interesting story and very well researched, but Winchester seems to touch on things superficially and defer to speculation over hard facts to keep up the intrigue (perhaps a traumatic experience in the U.S. Army during the Civil War was the trigger for Minor’s delusions, maybe he had an affair with the wife of the man he murdered (after the murder, when she visited him at Broadmoor)).

The real shame is that this story is fascinating, for the right audience, but the facts should be able to speak for themselves. One of Winchester’s main problems seems to be that he doesn’t trust his readers enough to let them draw their own conclusions. His style is heavy handed at points, but didn’t bother me overmuch until the end. He spends a good portion of the last chapter and the entire postscript expounding on how tragic the story is. Well, had he conveyed that in the story, that whole treacle-y mess would be unnecessary.

As it stands, the entire thing comes off as mighty self-indulgent: the superficial exploration of schizophrenia (Minor’s most likely modern diagnosis; what is sanity anyway?); the Postscript in which he explains his somewhat cryptic dedication (to Minor’s murder victim. Why not just use his name instead of initials, then?); the Author’s Note; the Acknowledgements (6 pages); suggestions for Further Reading (which recommends books on tangential topics like the American Civil War, and little more about the OED); meet Simon Winchester; a Few of Simon Winchester’s Favorite Words; an excerpt from his forthcoming book (I find these much easier to stomach when it is the author’s style, and not his story, I want to read more of. Anyone can find a good story. Not anyone can write it well.); “Have You Read?” More books by the Author.

You get the idea. How much of this do we need?

Perhaps some of these unnecessary additions are the fault of the publisher trying to boost sales. But when you read some of the sensationalist titles of Winchester’s other books (The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology; Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded), I can’t help but think Winchester was at the very least complicit in all of it.

Amazon tells me Winchester has written a sequel of sorts (The Meaning of Everything: the Creation of the Oxford English Dictionary) that focuses more on the actual Dictionary (the part of this book I found more interesting, anyhow). Perhaps this would be a better choice for the hard-core word nerds that were attracted to this book for the OED’s sake, in the first place.

Final judgment: Interesting, but fluffy. A good beach read for a bibliophile, but borrow it or get from the library. Winchester’s ego doesn’t need the boost a sales spike might give him.

It isn’t of course.  But politics is as much about symbolism and knee-jerk reactions and being slippery enough to not get caught and ultimately to convince other people that you represent their hopes and dreams and the safety of their children and Obama does all of this better than most.  In many ways, Obama has become a symbol himself, ceasing to be an actual person.

Much of that is his own doing, but a lot of that is the doing of his passionate supporters and that Shep Fairey “Obama Hope” poster that is itself like propaganda.

So if people think a politician’s patriotism is inversely proportionate to the pin they wear, then what would be an appropriate pin for Obama?

Heller got a slurry of opinions, some good, some bad, some comically outlandish. The one we liked best came from Tamara Shopshin, who created an Abe Lincoln pin seen above.

“The flag pin has for the time lost its meaning because it has become part of a politician’s uniform,” she says. For her, Lincoln represents America at its best.

Other ideas suggested included wearing many pins, a la Jennifer Aniston in Office Space so Obama could show his “flare” for America; ripping off the lapels of his jacket so he doesn’t have to wear a pin; creating a series of Obama pins that would become the new American Flag pin; and, one even suggested created a scary Bald Eagle necklace so it would look like the bird was flying out of Obama’s chest. [via]

Their new album Stay Positive is out now on Vanguard Records and we like it a lot. We’re not sure if we like it more than Boys and Girls in America but it’s been on non-stop rotation all week. Pitchfork gave it an 8.4. And though we generally detest Pitchfork their review of the album was pretty good.

I love how Finn seems to be milking every moment of his new found rock star status. It’s always great to watch a band that never expected to have success find it the most; still, he needs to work on his stage moves. But he’s a rock star! Which he goofs on in the skit.

That aside, I’m still cautiously excited for the start of Season 3. Maybe it’s because it’s been so long since the end of Season 2, that I forgot just how much the show irked me or maybe because I’d like to get reacquainted with Kristen Bell, but perhaps I’m hoping that some characters will get killed off. Cough, Nicki, cough. Seriously.

The biggest issue I have with Heroes is that there are no stakes because no one gets killed off unless you are a henchmen, a cop or some third-tier character. There is no danger on the show. If they focussed on two or three characters (Peter, Claire and Hiro would be the obvs choice) and everyone else had the potential to be killed off then I’d be excited. <Lebowski impersonation>It would be like living on the edge, man!</Lebowski impersonation>

We’ll see if good really does battle evil on Sept. 22, 2008.

So Hellboy’s been added to the mix, except he’s with Dark Horse Comics (Milwaukie, OR!). It would have been nice if they made a Hancock toy and he could have shown up all drunk and then it would have featured every superhero from this summer, excluding Wall-E of course. Maybe the creators of this could work on that.

The new video for “Lassoo” manages to capture the essence of their live performance, even though it’s not really a live performance. The song is one of the better ones of their dynamite sophomore album Neptune (Shangri-La Music). It sounds like it could fit comfortably off their first disc, which found the band more scuzzy, more Sonic Youth. However, their growth is evident with the subtle touch of horns sprinkled throughout the song and the more polished songwriting.

What the band does do, about as well as anyone, is tap into that emotional core in all of us. You don’t listen to this music so much as you let it surge through you and sweep you away.

Mp3: The Duke Spirit - “Lassoo”

U.S Tour Dates:
July
19 Mountain View, CA @ Download Festival @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
20 Los Angeles, CA @ Download Festival @ GIBSON Amphitheatre
22 Los Angeles, CA The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
23 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
24 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
26 Seattle, WA @ Nectar Lounge
28 Hollywood, CA @ Amoeba (instore)
30 New York, NY @ Webster Hall w/ Supergrass

August
1 Philadelphia, PA @ WXPN/World Café – FREE
1 Asbury Park, NJ @ The Saint (NEPTUNE Live From Neptune, NJ)
2 Camden, NJ @ Download Festival @ Tweeter Center
4 Baltimore,MD @ Ottobar
5 Boston, MA @ T.T. The Bear’s
8 Jersey City, NJ @ All Points West Festival @ Liberty State Park
9 Pittsburgh, PA @ New American Music Union Festival @ SouthSide Works
10 Nashville, TN @ 3rd & Lindsley
12 Columbus, OH @ The Basement
13 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick
14 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle

Also: The band will be on Leno on July 22, so you can set your Tivo’s to watch them if you don’t want to make it out to one of their shows. For all you budding rock photographers – submit your best live photo over at Buzznet and win a chance to interview the band and have your photos featured in their official TourZine, as well as a Nikon D40 6.1MP Digital SLR Camera [Enter Here]

Also, I’m a bit surprised that they showed Dr. Manhattan and featured him prominently as he’s the only character with super powers, but again he looks fantastic and that was always thought to be the most difficult thing to accomplish.

Also: EW has The Watchmen on their cover this week and they have a few new photos and an decent article about the movie. By the by it comes out on March 6, 2009.

Part of what makes Ryan’s poetry so accessible is its brevity and meditation on the more common aspects of the human experience. Often utilizing aviary metaphors, the sentiments in Ryan’s poetry are playfully witty and easily relatable. She employs irregular rhyming schemes and a characteristically sparse style.

“An almost empty suitcase, that’s what I want my poems to be, few things,” Ms. Ryan told the NY Times. Here are a choice few of her many poems, which have been published in six collections and boast numerous awards including fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts, as well as three Pushcart Prizes.

A Hundred Bolts of Satin

All you

have to lose

is one

connection

and the mind

uncouples

all the way back.

It seems

to have been

a train.

There seems

to have been

a track.

The things

that you

unpack

from the

abandoned cars

cannot sustain

life: a crate of

tractor axles,

for example,

a dozen dozen

clasp knives,

a hundred

bolts of satin—

perhaps you

specialized

more than

you imagined.

Paired Things

Who, who had only seen wings,

could extrapolate the

skinny sticks of things

birds use for land,

the backward way they bend,

the silly way they stand?

And who, only studying

birdtracks in the sand,

could think those little forks

had decamped on the wind?

So many paired things seem odd.

Who ever would have dreamed

the broad winged raven of despair

would quit the air and go

bandylegged upon the ground,

a common crow?

The Fabric of Life

It is very stretchy.

We know that, even if

many details remain

sketchy. It is complexly

woven. That much too

has pretty well been

proven. We are loath

to continue our lessons

which consist of slaps

as sharp and dispersed

as bee stings from

a smashed nest

when any strand snaps—

hurts working far past

the locus of rupture,

attacking threads

far beyond anything

we would have said

connects.

Also: Kay Ryan Named US Poet Laureate
and Poetry Foundation: Kay Ryan