Music News You Can Use: Detour Fest, Crazy Comebacks, and Mixtape Madness

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

LA’s third annual Detour Festival is this Saturday, and the lineup looks delish! Come downtown to see a hodgepodge of over thirty indie and electro artists, including The Mars Volta, Gogol Bordello, Shiny Toy Guns and Cut Copy. The fest is from noon to midnight, best believe I’ll be there the whole time! For set times, a map, and tickets, go here. Also, check back with P+P Monday for my review of the all-day event.

Comebacks galore! Brit boys Oasis have issued new tour dates and are streaming their forthcoming album Dig Out Your Soul here. Also, Phish reunion rumors are confirmed; they have announced three shows in Hampton, Va. and will be announcing more shortly. Chris Cornell is collaborating with Timbaland for his upcoming album, Scream (bizaare, indeed). And finally, this one takes the cake: UK punk pioneers The Clash have a self-written biography coming out, which is less than a reunion, but more than I can ask for (yay!).

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Amuse Bouche: Is Palin a Figment of Walt Disney’s Imagination?

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

When Matt Damon compared the vice-presidential candidacy of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to something out of “a really bad Disney movie,” he got the jokesters over at College Humor to thinking. Would we? Could we? Should we? . . .They did, and it’s pretty much the “wackiest family comedy of the year!” My two cents? It may be funny on screen, but in reality—this sitch ain’t no comedy. Reik! Reik! Reik!

Classic Journalism: Martha Gellhorn’s “Dachau”

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Famed war journalist Martha Gellhorn reported from every major war zone in her lifetime. At 28 years old, she covered the Spanish Civil War from Barcelona. At 80, she was in Panama reporting on the American invasion.

She was Ernest Hemingway’s third wife, a fact which threatens to overshadow Gellhorn’s legacy as one of the greatest war reporters of the twentieth century. She died in 1998, at 89 years old, after a 60-year career in war correspondence and travel writing.

She also published 21 books, both journalism and fiction. Her well-honed writing skills and activist attitude made Gellhorn a compassionate asset to the wars she covered.
Her warfront dispatches were published in Collier’s Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly and the Guardian, as well as her most famed book of war reportage, The Face of War (1959).

It is this book that hides the gem of Gellhorn’s long career: a report from the first Nazi concentration camp, simply titled “Dachau.” It needs nothing more than this. Her writing is so intense, so perceptive, and so penetrative that it is impossible to read the story without feeling permanently altered by it.

“All I did was report from the group up, not the other way round,” Gellhorn told her editor at the Daily Mirror, Hugh Cudlipp.

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Palin and Couric: The Missing Transcript

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

CBS has been running Katie Couric’s interviews with vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin throughout the week. We just learned the network has one final interview it has declined to air. Fortunately, we have the transcript.

In Arizona preparing for her debate Thursday, Palin needed to do some last-minute grocery shopping at the local Safeway. Couric accompanied the governor to ask some more questions. Outside the store, they paused.

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Daily News Roundup: Republicans, Let’s Get Ready to Crumble!

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Letterman: Top ten things overheard at Palin’s debate camp. Letterman is obviously still livid about McCain’s cancellation last week. So when the going gets bitter, the bitter get—an easy target. Oh, Sarah Palin . . .

If only those darn podiums didn’t get in the way of the main event: Biden versus Barracuda. Watch the two veep candidates verbally beat it out in St. Louis tonight. Will Buffy the Vampire Slayer live up to her reputation for taking no crap from no one (except little ol’ Katie Couric and that Gibson fella), or will she, uh, “get back to us on that”? Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

This week’s very important poll: Is Sarah Palin’s lipliner a tattoo? Judge for yourself.

Money for bail—approved! The Senate finally got their shizzle together and agreed to take action on the country’s financial woes. A second Bailout Bill was voted on and approved, 74-25, last night. Some peeps (dressed in pink?) knocked on McCain and Obama’s senate office doors yesterday to vehemently protest the Wall Street bailout, but they were pretty much shot down; both presidential candidates voted in favor of the bill.

Baghdad: Mo’ bombings, mo’ problems. The fasting month of Ramadan came to a close today, but two suicide bombers killed the par-tay when they showed up to separate Shiite mosques. They collectively killed at least twenty people. Some peeps think Sunni extremists were behind the blow, but others suspect American involvement. Say wha?

Seriously—don’t vote. Leo DiCaprio produced a star-studded PSA aimed at the “don’t tell me what to do” crowd and released it on the net yesterday. The announcement uses reverse psychology to try to motivate young peeps to get out and rock the vote. From “nobody’s listening to you, so hey, you know what—f*ck it” to “who cares? the economy’s in the toilet. who gives a sh*t?” the PSA does a pretty good job of, well, cussing a lot.

Are you there Kate Moss? It’s me, your dignity.