from MediaBistro.com

Jeff Koons Redesigns CT Scanner Hospital Rooms for RxArt

By Steve Delahoyde on Aug 25, 2010 07:03 AM

No matter your opinion of Jeff Koons (we’re looking at you, angry French men), here’s something you’ll have to give the guy credit for. The non-profit group RxArt, which was founded by art dealer Diane Brown to help redesign hospital interiors to make them less sterile and fear inducing, had long considered Koons the one artist they’d love to work with, having already commissioned pro-bono work from people like R. Crumb and John Margolis. While they thought it would be nearly impossible to talk him into it, given his celebrity, the artist agreed readily.[ click to continue reading at MediaBistro ]

with thanks for the tip to W.T.A. Cameron

with thanks to Dave Bussan

recap of The Fabulous Beekman Boys Finale

Finale Recap

By James Frey

Dare to dream. When I was a little kid, I used to hear it all the time. Dare to dream. You can be a lawyer or a doctor or even the President of the United States. I dared to dream. And I became me. Hahahahahaha.

Sometimes though, if you dare to dream, things can work out beautifully. I dared to dream of double digit episodes of the Fabulaous Beekman Boys. And motherfuckers, it came true. We’re on episode 10. Woohoo, woohoo. Episode 10!!! As usual, the goat scale will be used.<

Tension in the relationship. Josh lives in the city making the money. Brent lives on the farm making the soap and the cheese. Tension isn’t fun. Working isn’t fun. Two goats.

Brent gives us his relationship philosophy. Let your partner think they have a say, but they really don’t. I think Brent might be Lex Luther. I like Lex Luther. Four goats.

Brent wants to open a store.  Josh is skeptical. Brent shows him the site. It’s mess. Josh is more skeptical. Brent is a force that cannot be stopped. If you try, you get turned into one of his bars of soap. Josh intelligently relents. Because I like Brent’s relentlessness, five goats.

Brent goes to open a soap shop across the street from his soapmakers soap shop. He goes to talk to her about it. It looks like it is going to go poorly. Cut to commercials. Perfect editing. Cut back. It’s tense as fuck. She’s actually not mad. Awesome sequence. I was almost shaking. Four goats.

Farmer John brings the goats out into the spring air. The goats go crazy. They roll around in the grass and make noise. Even Pokey, the annoying llama is in a good mood. When I was younger, I rolled around in the grass and made noise. It was fun. And it put me in a good  mood too. Four goats.

Brent cleans out the new store, preps it for the opening. Looks like awful work. Fuck that. One goat.

Josh is in a good mood. Spring has arrived. Brent wants him to work at the store. Josh wants to grow potatoes. Me, I’d rather sit on the porch and read a book.  Two goats.

Josh gives tutorial on planting potatoes. It’s interesting. I’d still rather be on the porch. Two goats.

We hear the story of Josh and Brent meeting. Online chats, picture exchange, Chinese food in NYC. Very cute. Very 21^st Century. Four goats.

Josh gives relationship advice. When partner is in a bad mood, put them in a worse mood so they are forced to get into a better mood. This is some Machiavellian shit going down with these dudes. I sort of dig it.  Four goats.

Brent surprises Josh on their anniversary by coming into the city. Surprises are great. They are great great great. Four goats.

Brent takes Josh to lunch and tells him they aren’t making enough money to quit his job. Josh is pretty upset. He gives a great speech about how we move through life. He cries. Actually a really moving moment. Four goats.

Brent gives store philosophy. He sounds like Martha Stewart so I almost immediately tune him out. One goat.

Store opens. All nine of the people who live in their town show up. They give a nice funny speech. The store looks great. Four goats.

Josh gives another speech after none of the locals buy anything, and after a few glasses of champagne. He cries again. Man, that Josh is a sweet dude who likes to cry. We need more of those in the world. Five goats.

Total number of categories: 15

Total number of goats: 48

Average number of goats:  3.2

Looks like I’m moving.

[ click to read at Beekman1802.com ]

from The NY Daily News

Dead Weather front man Jack White blows up at ‘hip motherf-ers’ at concert

FRANK DIGIACOMO

Bedder/Getty

Jack White of Dead Weather unleashes fury at his audience Wednesday night.

- Too cool to let your freak flag fly? Then stay out of Jack White’s audience. The Dead Weather front man unleashed some breathtakingly funny abuse on the star-studded but tight-assed crowd at Don Hill’s Wednesday night when they didn’t respond to the hot licks he and the band were laying down.

“F- you, you hip motherf-ers!” White screamed at the audience, which included Liv Tyler, rock royalty Alexandra Richards, Shaun White and Mary-Kate Olsen. “Why don’t you rock the f- out?! Maybe I should go grab those free drinks and shove them down your throats, you hip motherf-ers!”

After the outburst, which one concertgoer tells us elicited an eye roll from Olsen, the red-hot White stopped the show midset to insult and throw out a guy in the front row who’d been taking photos.

By the end of the concert, White had calmed down enough to offer an apology.  “I’m sorry I blew up at you guys earlier,” he told the audience. “Thanks for coming out.”

[ click to continue reading at NYDailyNews.com ]

from LA Weekly

CONFIRMED: Historic L.A. Punk Venue Madame Wong’s to Close for Good in August

By Chris Martins

​This just in: West Coast Sound has learned that the historic Chinatown punk venue, Madame Wong’s, will be closing for good on August 14.

“It’ll probably never be a music venue again,” said Aquarium Drunkard’s Justin Gage, who broke the news via a Twitter post this afternoon. “So anyone that wants to get a sense of that old L.A. punk rock culture, get in while the getting’s good.”

This was actually the space’s second run as an intimate host to some rather high profile performances. Founded in the early ’70s, Madame Wong’s was originally a Chinese restaurant with a Polynesian dance floorshow.

Co-owner Esther Wong was eventually convinced to become a punk promoter as a way to drum up customers, and wound up playing host to shows by an incredible spate of performers, from the Ramones and Black Flag to the Police and Guns N’ Roses.

The restaurant was closed in 1985 after a fire, and the so-called “Godmother of Punk” passed away in 2005 due to lung disease.

[ click to continue reading at LAWeekly.com ]

from MediaBistro

Apple Faces Class Action Suit Because iPad Not Like Book

By Dianna Dilworth on Jul 30, 2010 11:15 AM

Apple is a facing a class action lawsuit in California from consumers who feels that Apple’s claim that “reading on the iPad is just like reading a book,” is false.

Follow this link to read the complaint in PDF form. It was filed last week claiming that because the iPad overheats after prolonged use and its poor visibility in sunlight prevent it from living up to Apple’s marketing promise.

From the complaint: “Indeed, according to the www.apple.com website, ‘[r]eading on iPad is just like reading a book.’ However, contrary to this promise, using the iPad is not ‘just like reading a book’ at all since books do not close when the reader is enjoying them in the sunlight or in other normal environmental environments. This promise, like other portions of APPLE’s marketing material for the iPad, is false.”

Via Consumerist.

[ copied in full from MediaBistro - sorry, but we love you ]

from The Quietus

Michael Gira On Swans’ My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky 
The Quietus , July 30th, 2010 07:39

Michael Gira has reactivated his No Wave/industrial/apocalyptic folk project SWANS for the first time in 13-years, so who better to ask than him for a track-by-track review…

No Words/No Thoughts

Listen to ‘No Words/No Thoughts’ here

The Quietus says: What appears at first to be field recordings of church bells (but is actually percussion) and squealing, workshop band saws slicing through timber set the tone for what is a serious but beautiful album. A statement of labour and love.

Michael Gira says: “I think the intro to this song should have been longer. I showed cowardice here. it should have lasted 10 minutes at least, instead of the 3 1/2 minutes it is now.

Ideally this song would sound like a steady gale force wind of hydrochloric acid. The guitars should wipe your mind clean. the words state one thing, and also the opposite. sometimes all points of view seem equally true simultaneously. I wanted my voice to sound like the weightless vocals of certain very early Pink Floyd songs here, but it’s hopeless with a voice as cantankerous as mine
.

So now we’re off on a new journey, by reigniting swans I’ve unlocked the trunk where I’d trapped my demon brother. Now that he’s out again I am wrestling with him and am determined this time to not only kill him, but all his friends and family as well. I’ve enlisted my comrades Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Phil Puleo, Thor Harris and Chris Pravdica as the primary soldiers in this quest.

[ click to continue reading at The Quietus ]

from Treehugger.com

Babies, Recovery and No TV on The Fabulous Beekman Boys

by James Frey, New York  on 07.29.10

CULTURE & CELEBRITY

Image credit: Planet Green

Babies babies babies. Looks like this episode of The Fabulous Beekman Boys is all about babies. I love babies. Doesn’t everybody love babies? How can you not love a baby? Even a goat baby. Looks like this is going to be fun. As usual, I will rank the events depicted on the show using a scale of goats. Five goats is good. One goat is bad. At the end, the number of goats will indicate whether I am more or less likely to follow the Beekman Boys’ lead and leave New York City.

It’s winter at the farm. I hate winter everywhere but in Southern California. Upstate New York is not Southern California. One goat.

Farmer John is going away for hip replacement surgery. Fuck that. If being a farmer and living in the country means your hips get destroyed, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. One goat.

Farmer John leaves instructions for Brent and Josh before he leaves for the hospital. The goats are all pregnant and might have the babies while he’s gone and it’s cold and he doesn’t want them to freeze. Brent asks about scarves for the goats. I laugh a little bit. Three goats.

[ click to continue reading at Treehugger.com ]

from EW’s PopWatch

Michael Bay signs onto yet another alien movie: He should have gone all space-y years ago.

by Keith Staskiewicz

Categories: Deals, News, Sci-Fi, Space, Transformers

Image Credit: Michael Kovac/WireImage.comMichael Bay loves aliens.

He’s currently directing his third film with those robots from Cybertron who somehow turn into American makes and models, he’s producing the extraterrestrial refugee adaptation I Am Number Four, and now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he’s set to shepherd yet another it-came-from-outer-space flick. Described as Cloverfield meets Paranormal Activity — which is code for shaky meets blurry — the script for the as-of-yet untitled project was written by first-timer Bobby Glickert.

Say what you want about Michael Bay, but he knows a fundamental truth: Aliens, like bacon, can help make everything better.

[ click to continue reading at PopWatch ]

from The Vancouver Sun

Spain’s Catalonia on verge of banning bullfighting

By Gilbert Grellet, AFP

Spanish matador Julio Aparicio performs a muleta on a Nunez del Cuvillo bull, on May 20, 2010 in Nimes, during the Nimes Feria Bullfighting Festival (Feria de la Pentecote), the day before he was gored in the throat and left in critical condition.
Photograph by: Pascal Guyot, AFP/Getty Images

MADRID - Bullfighting in Spain could suffer its biggest setback to date on Wednesday when the local parliament in Catalonia votes on whether to ban the practice in the separatist-minded northeastern region.

The assembly is scheduled to vote on the issue on Wednesday morning after animal rights activists campaigning under the platform “Prou!” or “Enough!” in the Catalan language, collected 180,000 signatures in Catalonia on a petition calling for the motion to be debated and voted on by the assembly.

The most recent indications are that a majority of the 135 lawmakers in the regional assembly are in favour of the motion to tighten Catalonia’s animal protection law to remove an exception for bullfights from a ban on the killing or mistreating animals in shows.

[ click to continue reading at The Vancouver Sun ]

from undercover.com.au

[ click to read at undercover.com.au ]

from The Washington Post

[ click to continue reading at WaPo.com ]

from The Huffington Post

Ghosts, Goths, and Galas at the Fabulous Beekman Boys Farm

The previews have been running all week. Previews that show the ghosts of Beekman. And it’s episode six of The Fabulous Beekman Boys. And three sixes strung together is the sign of the beast. I have been wondering if there is a connection. If the beast is lurking at the Beekman, maybe living inside a goat and waiting to reveal himself. Or if Pokie the Llama is the beast. Or maybe one of those dudes that runs the American Hotel in Sharon Springs. If one of them was, it would be incredible, reality TV history for sure. And even if the beast isn’t there, it looks like there’s some serious paranormal activity going at the farm. I like paranormal activity. Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts! The Beast! Potential history, maybe even the beginning of the Holy War that ends us all. I’ve been waiting all week. As usual, I’ll be using my goat scale to decide if what I see makes it more or less likely that I leave New York City for my own life in the country.

We get our first notion that Beekman is haunted! Go ghosts, go beast!!!! Five goats.

Josh and Brent talk about the year of sacrifice, which is the year in which Josh has agreed to stay in the city and work his day job at the ad agency while Brent gets the farm business up and running. Brent thinks he’s the one making the sacrifice. I actually disagree. I’d much rather be at the farm driving around on tractor than working at an ad agency. Brent seems to win the argument, but I’m on Team Josh. One goat.

[ click to continue reading at The Huffington Post ]

from The Arizona Republic

[ click to read recipe at AZCentral.com ]

from The New York Times

Steinbrenner Remembered as Despot and Hero

David Goldman for The New York Times

By JAMES BARRON and ALAN FEUER

He was an outsider from Cleveland who became one of those unforgettable New York characters: deep-pocketed and domineering, a victory-at-all-costs cutthroat, not shy about twisting arms — or the law. But he delivered: 11 American League pennants, 7 World Series championships. And as the years passed, it turned out that he even had something of a soft side, difficult as it was to see or believe.

And so, when George Steinbrenner died on Tuesday at age 80, he got a typical New York send-off: good riddance and God bless, accompanied by applause and anger.

“George and I had our differences, but who didn’t?” said Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame Yankees catcher whom Mr. Steinbrenner fired as the team’s manager 16 games into the 1985 season — and who refused to return to Yankee Stadium until Mr. Steinbrenner apologized, which he finally did, 14 years later.

But that was not all Mr. Berra had to say on Tuesday: “He built the Yankees into champions, and that’s something nobody can ever deny.”

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

from The San Jose Mercury News

Dodgeball! Underground game is sweeping the catacombs of Los Gatos 

By Bruce Newman - bnewman@mercurynews.com 

It will be midnight soon, and the mortgage underwriters have all gone home, taking their hybrids and Lexus SUVs with them. From the mouth of the building’s subterranean parking garage, a tongue of light is accompanied by a fluorescent hum so loud that it drowns out the whirring of crickets.

The night’s first game of underground dodgeball is about to begin, and Kenny Cox is warming up like a pitcher in the bullpen. In addition to limbering up his arm, this drill has the added benefit of terrifying opponents, who stand and watch as he hurls rubber heat at a concrete wall 50 feet away. Each throw produces a sickening, explosive splat.

Dodgeball experienced a brief rec-league renaissance following the release of the 2004 comedy “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” whose lovable losers were instantly recognizable to anyone ever forced to play the game in gym class. But this isn’t that. Underground dodgeball is closer in spirit to “Fight Club,” the 1999 film starring Brad Pitt in which young men release aggression by beating each other senseless late at night.

[ click to continue reading at the SJ Merc ]

from CNN’s Eatocracy

A day two pigs would die: ethical slaughter

There’s no pretty way to say this. I was present for the death of the pig pictured above.

It was a grim, sodden day on an upstate New York farm. A local meat sciences professor named Eric explained to the pig’s owners that the most humane method of slaughter was to shoot it at close range between the eyes with a .22 rifle - a stunning blow to knock its central nervous system offline - then slit the main artery so the blood loss would bring about swift, arguably less painful death. The blow would also supposedly reduce the stress on the animal, allowing for better meat quality.

The farmers, having researched the matter thoroughly and consulted with the Humane Animal Farm Care project, believed this to be true. Still, as they stood several yards from the slaughter, half sheltered in the doorway to their goat barn, they flinched at the stark crack of the rifle, and then they cried.

[ click to continue reading at Eatocracy ]

from RideAMoto.com

[ click to continue reading at RideAMoto.com ]

from the LA Times

Citing security concerns, HARD L.A. canceled

July 12, 2010

In the wake of a teenager’s death at the Electric Daisy Carnival last month, the electronic-centric HARD L.A. concert at downtown’s Los Angeles State Historic Park has been canceled due to security concerns.

James Valdez, a state park ranger and the lead coordinator for events in the Los Angeles sector who was overseeing Hard L.A., confirmed that the July 17 date is no longer happening. Valdez said the Aug. 7 Hard event, also set for the park, was still planned as of this morning. “From what I hear, yes,” Valdez said when asked if the Aug. 7 was scheduled to go off.

Valdez said he received an e-mail from Gary Richards, the festival’s promoter, that stated the July 17 date was “postponed,” but he had no further information.

Documents from sources connected to a number of the acts scheduled to perform at the July 17 concert indicate that the promoters behind HARD L.A. have canceled the show in light of the new scrutiny and logistics demanded of large-scale electronic music concerts in Los Angeles.

The annual festival this year was to feature acts including M.I.A., Die Antwoord, Flying Lotus, Sleigh Bells and others.

[ click to continue reading at The LA Times ]

from The Huffington Post

Thoughts On Making Soaps and Mating Goats At The Fabulous Beekman Boys Farm

In some cultures, three is considered a holy number. In others it is a lucky number. In still more, it an evil number. Whatever your particular beliefs, it’s clear that all of us everywhere, every single person in the whole wide world, has fascination with the number three. And guess what — last week was week number three of the Fabulous Beekman Boys. Woohoo, woohoo!!!

As I recap the episode, I will, as always, use the same scale of goats to indicate whether what I see makes it more or less likely that I follow Josh and Brent’s example and leave NYC for a simpler life somewhere else.

The episode opens with some sexy sex talk. My hopes soar that this might be the best episode ever, of anything. I realize, however, that it is not human sex talk. It’s goat sex talk.

[ click to continue reading at The Huffington Post ]