Newspaper Lulz

for a dark week:




Both via Newspaper Death Watch.

Trivia team names for the week

Ok, so I haven't actually gone to a trivia night since moving to NY, but it's not like I should be using my brain for other things like, you know, looking for a job or something.


Kafka's Proctologist
Enter This Boy Soul*
Shellfish is an Obamanation
That Baby is a Dick
Liquid Meat
What Will Movies Spin for Dramatic Points Once Newspapers Die?
Tryptofurky
Just What In the Hell, Illinois?
Bill Murray Washed My Dishes
Brown Bagging is the New Cosmopolitan
Give Us Our New Bike Already
Hobo Fire Building 101
The Great Depression: Now in Color!


And, one of the best I've heard in a long time, from team Hilton Head in my absentia:
One and a Half Thumbs Up




*Say it quickly now

Bustin' makes him feel good

An important day of Ghostbuster-related news, as all days of Ghostbuster related news are.

First, there's this, the trailer for the Ghostbusters video game, which looks slightly more than 1,000 times better than the old Ghostbusters video game for the NES, probably the only game I played for excess of 2 hours at a time and still hadn't the slightest idea how to get anywhere besides the first two screens. It's also probably about as close to a Ghostbusters sequel that we'll ever get (or EVER NEED DO YOU HEAR ME HOLLYWOOD MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP. Honestly, how many more Lucas films will it take to prove that messing with a legacy just isn't worth it?)



Then, this interesting tidbit that is bizarre and unexplainable, cats and dogs, living together, and confusing and probably has something to do with bribes being offered for open senate seats and threats made against other web sites, but somehow this blog for the past few days has been the No. 1 Google image search result for the word "Ghostbusters." Go on, try it, I'll wait. [EDIT 9:03 p.m.: of course a few hours after I wrote this, the google search results are drastically different, but trust me when I say this was true for several days.][EDIT2 1:30 p.m. 1/12: We're back to No. 1. I guess it just fluxuates]

for this image here, from this throw-away post in September.


Is everybody getting this?

Finally, there's this story, which is starting to make a buzz around the Brooklins, about Bill Murray nonchalantly dropping in on Brooklyn parties Lost in Translation style (until, of course, some Wsburg hipster tries to give him life lessons). My favorite part of the story:

The previous fall, he landed in Britain's tabloids when he followed a 22-year-old female university co-ed to a house party in St. Andrew's, Scotland, where he had been playing in a celebrity golf tournament. Students told the papers he helped them do the dishes when it turned out there were no glasses left to drink from.

So if this whole "job" thing or whatever doesn't come together for me soon, I have a new life plan: designing parties with the specific intent of enticing Bill Murray to appear. It seems like the main ingredient is either hip new indie band or, um, chicks. Lots and lots of chicks.

"No, no, no. I have all new cheap moves."

Recommended additional viewing: One of Bill Murray's best roles in recent years, in Fact Checkers Unit from Funny or Die.

Pour one out

for Tribune.

The first big one to take the hit. But, tragically, it's surely just the first casualty of a bloody body count to come. Hoping for the best for all my buddies at Trib papers today.

Interesting and somewhat related interview with Nick Denton of Gawker in MarketWatch today, talking about discovering young writers:

But not the old-fashioned media, that is. In fact, Denton, again, takes the opportunity to rip the mainstream newspapers and magazines for their inability to spot promising young journalists. "People say I have an eye for talent," he scoffed. "That's bull____. The only reason is that newspapers and magazines haven't been doing their jobs, bringing on young writers."

This essentially what I've heard from a lot of our generation of journalists. When newspapers had the opportunity to embrace young talent and make them an integral force of reshaping news coverage for the new media landscape, they instead created an environment that was frightened of new ideas and too reverential to an old architecture, even as it was rapidly buckling under new pressures. The result has been many young journalists who have deemed this attitude to be too unrewarding to bother investing time in, and an exodus followed.

My last newspaper job did me very well experience wise, but by the end, with cutbacks and little new investment, it practically became an endurance test for how long the staff could justify being there for clips alone.

Blind Boys of Alabama still preaching the gospel

(From The Guide, 12/4) --The Blind Boys of Alabama have succeeded in doing something nearly unheard of in the music scene: They’ve taken gospel music — real gospel music, ripe with references to Jesus and salvation and all that Sunday morning fare — and parlayed it into a career that has shattered the longstanding boundaries between rock and church music and won a great many mainstream fans along the way.

That means instead of playing church picnics or small Southern music halls, the Blind Boys have belted out soulful lyrics about conversion and faith to the mud-covered hippies at Bonnaroo, heard their cover of a Tom Waits song appear on HBO’s “The Wire” and shared the stage with Prince.

But it took a staggering seven decades — a preposterous span in music today — to get there. In those years the band adapted its style, said singer Jimmy Carter, shifting from traditional church songs to something more contemporary. But it’s all still gospel, he said, with the same core spirit.

“As time went on, gospel changed. You have contemporary gospel, you even have rap gospel now,” Carter said in a phone interview from his home in Montgomery, Ala. “You have to learn to please anybody. We sing different kinds of music, but its all gospel.”

The crossover success with mainstream artists has helped the band stay relevant and
attract young fans, but it’s those other artists — such as Ben Harper, who cut an entire album with the band in 2004 — who usually seek out the Blind Boys, Carter said. Harper, for instance, approached the band overseas and told them he had some gospel tunes they might be interested in.

“You got to understand now, most of these guys we work with, they came out of the church, they are gospel people,” Carter said. “They just chose to do another kind of music. They have gospel roots.”

The Blind Boys formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939, with Carter as one of the original members. But it’s in the past decade or so that the band has seen mainstream success, playing different festivals, working with Aaron Neville and Peter Gabriel and lending their music to soundtracks from Disney’s “Brother Bear” to the TV show “Lost.”

“This is not a brag, but there are not too many people now who do not know about the Blind Boys,” Carter said.

Carter attributes their success to the broad appeal of a spiritual message. The lyrics may capture Southern-roots gospel, but all crowds, from Los Angeles to Bonnaroo, can identify with spirituality.

“Everybody has a little bit of God in them. When people hear gospel, they think about God. Everybody has his own religion, or his own what-he-wants-to-believe. We sing gospel, and we might not make a believer out of (people), but we have a message, and they receive the message,” he said. “As long as we can tell somebody about the goodness of the Lord, that’s what we’re all about.”

Link: Official Blind Boys of Alabama site.

Mommy, can I go out and golf tonight? The Misfits come to Hilton Head

(From The Guide, 12/4)

Hilton Head Island still has its baby teeth when it comes to this whole “punk” thing, seeing as the island’s first major punk show took place just two months ago when Against Me! and Ted Leo blew through town.

But now that the Misfits are on their way, it’s time to grow up fast, kids.

The Misfits are responsible for one of the most recognizable symbols in all of punk rock: the “fiend skull,” the grinning white skeletal outline on a black background that’s become a keynote symbol of the genre, right up there with the three-chord riff, the Ramones’ seal and the purple-highlighted mohawk.

With their performance at the Shoreline Ballroom this week, the Misfits will bring to the island a 30-year history as one of the most theatric, macabre and long-lasting names in all of rock. It probably will be the most hardcore show in Hilton Head history, with the emphasis on themes of horror, sci-fi and gore (very rarely, for example, does the island host bands with lyrics like, “Your future is in an oblong box”).

It’s the hardcore fan base — the Fiend Club, as they’re known — that has kept the band going all these years, lead singer Jerry Only said in a phone interview before a Dallas show on the day before Thanksgiving. The Misfits’ music never got much radio play, but it was always relevant to their fans, he said.

“It’s out there, even though it’s not really extremely visible to the eye. It’s something that’s well known, well-established,” Only said. “(The fans) kind of tend to hold on to it and make it their own. We have one of the most loyal fan bases out there.”

Only was the band’s original bassist, but he took over lead singer duties following a lengthy legal battle over the rights to the band with former lead Glenn Danzig, who left the group in the early 1980s. Since reforming in the mid-’90s, the new incarnation of the Misfits has released three albums, appeared in films and continued to tour.

“I think that we’re a very well-rounded package. We have a little bit of everything. The sound is unique, (so is) the material and the way we do what we do,” Only said. “I think that’s one of the things that have allowed us to float through the changing of the musical guard.”

Only said the band plans to take a few years off soon to work on new music and prepare a new show.

“We’re not looking to become big commercial success. But at the same time, we are looking to become a force to be reckoned with,” he said. “I’d love to go head to head with Iron Maiden and hold our own.”

Plus, Only wants to spend time with his 2-year-old daughter, who, unlike other children, isn’t scared by his make up, spiked leather stage outfit or his trademark hairstyle. “She doesn’t even notice it,” he said.

So as a part of one iconic band, what does Only think of the much-discussed exploits of Guns N’ Roses, a band that has covered Misfits songs in the past? Guns N’ Roses this month released “Chinese Democracy” after years of anticipation.

“I don’t buy the hype. I could give a (blank),” he said, adding that any band that takes that long to put out an album is just out for money. The Misfits’ 1983 album, “Earth A.D.,” for example, was recorded in about six hours, Only said. “I’m out there playing and taking it to the kids every day,” he said. “We’re out there beating the streets and making it real.”

Link: Official Misfits site.

Giving Secret Santa a new meaning

My impression about New York so far is that the best things are hidden. Not just out of the way or hard to find, but literally hidden, secreted, stashed away behind some false edifice daring you to crack the shell of mystery and find whatever tempting nut is inside. It gives the whole city a tantalizing layer of urban scavenger hunt, keeping the best things out of the probing pages of the tourist guides and, naturally, allowing us to quote "Swingers" incessantly as we shuffle down a street towards another bar deep in an alleyway, not even bothering to look for a sign.

Best examples of this so far are, of course, the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store, and the bar Chris the Giant brought me to the other night called The Back Room that's deep in a back alley on the Lower East Side under a thinly veiled front as a toy store. It's got prohibition chic (speaking of which: Happy Repeal Day!) with all drinks served in tea cups presumably to fool the Rex Banners of the world, were there still any, and if there were, they would have the following conversation:

Rex Banner: What kind of toy shop is filled with rambunctious yahoos and hot jazz music at 1AM?
Bartender: The best damn toy shop in town!

There's even supposedly a double secret back room where, at one point or another, co-owners Tim Robbins and Mark Messier must have had lengthy conversations about the fundamental socio-economic inequities inherent in the Islanders 2007 draft picks.

But the best secret stash in the city I've heard about so far may be SantaCon, an event that, as far as I can tell from the clues given, is just a gigantic goddamn mass of Santa Clausi cavorting about the city in a drunken, jolly sea of red jackets and nog fumes. Even its Web site maintains a secretive, yet unpretentious, demeanor:

SantaCon is a not-for-profit, non-political, non-religious & non-logical Santa Claus convention, organized and attended for absolutely no reason.

SantaCon (also known as Santarchy in some places) was first brought to our attention at a gallery opening of Patriot Day photography on Thursday night, thanks to a man wearing a revolutionary war era outfit, complete with tri-cornered hat and metal mug for whichth to containeth his mead(th). He ordered a Red Stripe.
"Shouldn't you be drinking Sam Adams?" I asked.
"Ha! That's a good one. That's funny. Boy, that's a good one," he said, genuinely amused.

It was not a good one, really, and I was aware of this, but maybe humour was different in the 18th century and he was quite committed to the bit. He struck up a conversation with us anyway. The patriot costume was from his own personal collection, as he's part of a costume cult, a group that, as you would imagine, just really, really likes costumes. He also is a devoted Burning Man fan and goes to SantaCon each year (naturally).

SantaCon, coming up next Saturday, starts at a secret location, he said. It's part street theater, part surrealism, and a big part sloppy, carolling holiday mess.
The "Santa" part is key to the whole thing. "You have to dress up, though," he said. "Santa suit, elf, something, but you must be in a costume."

At the end of the conversation, having decided he liked Robin and I, he asked for our e-mail addresses and said he was going to find us on Ye Olde Facebooke and invite us to the con.

Robin and I both looked at each other with an understanding that there's really no way we could turn down an invitation to semi-secret event featuring more Santas than all the malls in New Jersey could churn out (though with probably about the equal amount of stale alcohol smell in their beards). Ok, so it probably isn't semi-secret for very long, just look at this picture from last year at Grand Central. But it's still cool to be in on the ground level.



I haven't heard back from the guy yet. But if we do I may have a very important question -- can you tell me where -- because I know there's one somewhere in New York City -- is the secret Santa Claus Clothing Supply Store, and how do I find it's hidden entrance?