from the LA Times

Lena Waithe and Melina Matsoukas don’t want you comparing ‘Queen & Slim’ to ‘Bonnie and Clyde’

By SONAIYA KELLEY

For “Queen & Slim,” screenwriter Lena Waithe’s meditation on race relations and police brutality, director Melina Matsoukas drew visual inspiration from sources as diverse as Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 dramedy “Y Tu Mamá También” and Spike Lee’s 1989 classic “Do the Right Thing.” But the biggest influence came straight from YouTube.

“One of the key references for me has been real life, authentic struggles in the black community,” said Matsoukas, who makes her feature debut with the movie, in theaters on Thanksgiving. “I watched a lot of YouTube videos of black people being pulled over by the police or encountering law enforcement and it not necessarily ending well. Unfortunately, there are so many of those videos, but they were a major influence in how I wanted to approach shooting the opening scene.”

Starring Daniel Kaluuya and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith, our protagonists (known simply as Slim and Queen until the end) are forced on the run within the first 10 minutes of the movie. “A Million Little Pieces” author James Frey pitched the idea for the opening to Waithe at a party.

“He was like, ‘Yo, I have this idea for a movie that I can’t write,’” she remembered. “And I was like ‘What’s that?’”

Frey described a scenario in which a black couple driving home from a first date are pulled over by a cop and forced to kill him in self-defense. “I was like, ‘You’re right, you shouldn’t write that,’” said Waithe. “But then we exchanged information. I think he thought he was never going to hear from or see me again, but it just stayed with me.”

[ click to continue reading at LAT ]

from AFP via Yahoo! News

50 years after internet conception, dark side stirs fear

by Glenn CHAPMAN

San Francisco (AFP) – On October 29, 1969, professor Leonard Kleinrock and a team at the University of California at Los Angeles got a computer to “talk” to a machine in what is now known as Silicon Valley.

The event gave birth to a network that later became known as the internet — hailed at first as a boon to equality and enlightenment, but with a dark side that has emerged as well.

As UCLA marks the anniversary, Kleinrock is opening a new lab devoted to all things related to the internet — particularly mitigating some of its unintended consequences on the internet which is now used by some four billion people worldwide.

“To some point it democratizes everyone,” Kleinrock told AFP.

“But it is also a perfect formula for the dark side, as we have learned.”

[ click to continue reading at Yahoo! News ]

from Variety

Robert Evans, ‘Chinatown’ Producer and Paramount Chief, Dies at 89

By RICHARD NATALE and CARMEL DAGAN

Robert Evans, the Paramount executive who produced “Chinatown” and “Urban Cowboy,” and whose life became as melodramatic and jaw-dropping as any of his films, died on Saturday night. He was 89.

Even though Hollywood history is filled with colorful characters, few can match the tale of Evans, whose life would seem far-fetched if it were fiction. With his matinee-idol looks, but little acting talent, Evans was given starring roles in a few movies and then, with no studio experience, was handed the production reins at Paramount in the 1960s. When he left the exec ranks, his first film as a producer was the classic “Chinatown,” and he followed with other hits, like “Marathon Man” and “Urban Cowboy.” Eventually, his distinctive look and speaking style turned him into a cult figure, and he had the distinction of being the only film executive who starred in his own animated TV series.

[ click to continue reading at Variety ]

from Sky News

Garden of Eden in Africa: Humanity’s first home traced to Botswana 

A study provides a window into the first 100,000 years of the history of modern humans.

The real Garden Of Eden has been traced to the African nation of Botswana, according to a major study of DNA.

Scientists believe our ancestral homeland is south of the Zambezi River in the country’s north.

The conclusion comes after the study of maternal genetic lineage of anatomically modern humans, finding it was closest to those living in the area, which includes northern Botswana, Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the east.

[ click to continue reading at Sky News ]

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from The Daily Beast

The Secret Battle Over Mona Lisa’s Prettier ‘Twin’

Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre. But a second, earlier painting is at the heart of a multi-million-dollar battle to prove its authenticity and ownership.

by Barbie Latza Nadeau

ROME—When the long-awaited Leonardo da Vinci exhibition celebrating the Italian master’s life opened in the Louvre in Paris this week, two paintings were noticeably missing from the exhibit hall—and they are both of the same woman. 

Despite being one of Leonardo’s most famous works, the Louvre decided not to relocate the “Mona Lisa” from her recently renovated viewing room to the exhibit space created to mark the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death. Visitors will instead have to traipse across a hall through the selfie-taking crowds to see her where she normally hangs. 

The second painting that Leonardo aficionados will miss is what many believe is an earlier version of the “Mona Lisa,” which shows a much younger—and dare we say—prettier version of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, who commissioned the work in the early 1500s. 

The existence of an earlier “Mona Lisa” has dogged art experts for centuries. 

[ click to continue reading at TDB ]

from InsideHook

Porsche Is Designing a New Vehicle for Star Wars

The starship will be unveiled at the “Rise of Skywalker” premiere

BY ALEX LAUER

This week, Porsche announced its most futuristic design of all time. No, we’re not talking about a new version of its Taycan EV. This is a vehicle so far, far away from everything they’ve designed before that it won’t be measured in something as earthly as miles per hour — it’ll be measured in megalight per hour. 

That’s right, the German marque is working on a new vehicle for Star Wars. “Designers at Porsche AG and Lucasfilm Ltd. are collaborating on a fantasy starship design that will be presented at the world premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” according to a press release. 

[ click to continue reading at InsideHook ]

from Page Six

Grace Farms Foundation fundraiser brings stars to Connecticut

By Page Six Team

“It’s time to open the dance floor — like open sesame,” jazz pianist-turned-“rockjazz” composer and in-demand DJ Elew instructed the crowd at the Grace Farms Foundation’s fourth-anniversary celebration in New Canaan, Conn., on Saturday night.

Attendees enthusiastically obeyed and got down as Elew spun tunes from rap to AC/DC, with saxophonist Marcus G. Miller blowing his horn live on the dance floor.

Among the VIP crowd of 300 at the upscale humanitarian shindig were foundation founder Sharon Prince, event co-chairs Abby Bangser and Amanda Martocchio, former Esquire editor Jay Fielden, author James Frey, jewelry designer Monique Péan, skin-care guru Tata Harper, Blum & Poe partner Matt Bangser, “Chopped”-winning chef Silvia Baldini and British socialite Lexi Bowes-Lyon (cousin of William and Harry).

[ click to continue reading at Page Six ]

from ESSENCE

‘Queen & Slim’ Star Jodie Turner-Smith Has Us Under Her Spell

BY SYDNEY SCOTT

IN THE BLACK LIVES MATTER–INSPIRED LOVE STORY “QUEEN & SLIM,” NEW STAR JODIE TURNER-SMITH TAKES OUR BREATH AWAY.

When it was announced last year that Lena Waithe and Melina Matsoukas had tapped a relatively unknown Jodie Turner-Smith to star in their film Queen & Slim, playing opposite Daniel Kaluuya, fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in Get Out, the Internet began chattering about the striking British-Jamaican actress. Some remembered Turner-Smith from her star turn as Melantha Jhirl in SyFy’s Nightflyers and her appearance in Zayn Malik’s “Pillowtalk” video. But in Queen & Slim, directed by Matsoukas, written by Waithe from a story by James Frey, the actress is poised to make her mark as a leading lady.

In the flick, there’s a scene in which Turner-Smith glides slowly into frame after her uncle’s girlfriend-—played by Pose’s Indya Moore—takes out her braids so as to be less recognizable to the authorities chasing her. At Turner-Smith’s arrival, the audible gasp from the audience at an early screening dispelled any notion that the actress was someone who would shrink into the background. When the film hits theaters on November 27, viewers won’t be able to take their eyes off her. 

Turner-Smith has a powerful presence. A captivating beauty whose sultry energy makes her a scene-stealer, she’s thoughtful when speaking. And while she began her career playing a siren on HBO’s True Blood and popped up in projects like TNT’s The Last Ship, it was only a year ago that she caught our attention in the adaptation of the George R. R. Martin novella Nightflyers.

[ click to continue reading at ESSENCE ]

from AP

Louvre exhibit acclaims Da Vinci, 500 years after his death

By CLAIRE PARKER

PARIS (AP) — Much about Leonardo Da Vinci remains an enigma: the smile of the “Mona Lisa”; why the world’s most famous painter left so many works unfinished; and more recently, who bought the contentious “Salvator Mundi.”

A new exhibit at the Louvre, however, opening Thursday and marking the 500th anniversary of the Italian master’s death, tries to sketch out as complete a picture of the artist and thinker as possible.

Drawing from the Louvre’s permanent collection and institutions around the world, the exhibit brings together some 160 works. They include Da Vinci masterpieces, dozens of studies and scientific sketches, and pieces by other artists in Da Vinci’s orbit. Visitors can also experience a virtual reality portion of the exhibit that delves into the story behind the “Mona Lisa.”

[ click to continue reading at AP ]

from The Guardian

What happens if your mind lives for ever on the internet?

by Michael Graziano

Imagine that a person’s brain could be scanned in great detail and recreated in a computer simulation. The person’s mind and memories, emotions and personality would be duplicated. In effect, a new and equally valid version of that person would now exist, in a potentially immortal, digital form. This futuristic possibility is called mind uploading. The science of the brain and of consciousness increasingly suggests that mind uploading is possible – there are no laws of physics to prevent it. The technology is likely to be far in our future; it may be centuries before the details are fully worked out – and yet given how much interest and effort is already directed towards that goal, mind uploading seems inevitable. Of course we can’t be certain how it might affect our culture but as the technology of simulation and artificial neural networks shapes up, we can guess what that mind uploading future might be like.

Suppose one day you go into an uploading clinic to have your brain scanned. Let’s be generous and pretend the technology works perfectly. It’s been tested and debugged. It captures all your synapses in sufficient detail to recreate your unique mind. It gives that mind a standard-issue, virtual body that’s reasonably comfortable, with your face and voice attached, in a virtual environment like a high-quality video game. Let’s pretend all of this has come true.

Who is that second you?

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

from Nautilus

Why You Keep Dreaming About Being Naked

Are the common elements in our dreams the result of basic biology, or something deeper?

BY ELIZABETH SVOBODA

I was naked. So was Laura,” begins one dream of the more than 20,000 collected in G. William Domhoff’s DreamBank. “I was re-stringing an unvarnished electric bass, so I guess it was naked, too. At one point I put a screw in to secure a string, but then realized I wasn’t holding the bass but Laura…” The dream is one of many “naked” entries in the database, and Domhoff says dreams about being naked or exposed in public in ways that betray a fear of embarrassment are widely reported. But why?

Domhoff, a distinguished professor emeritus specializing in psychology at the University of California-Santa Cruz, has spent years collecting self-reported dreams in journals and laboratory settings, meticulously tagging and cataloguing each one. An outdoor setting, for example, is marked with an OU, a familiar character with a K, and physical activity with a P. Individual dreams can then be described with their own idiosyncratic combination of labeled elements. Domhoff calls this coding system “quantitative content analysis.” He’s concluded that at least some dreams have universal elements related to common human preoccupations and concerns.

The psychoanalysts have a vested interest in destroying my argument.

Some “typical” dreams long studied for their figurative meaning—such as dreams where you fly under your own power, or where your teeth fall out—don’t occur nearly as often as people think (flying dreams, for example, make up only about one-half of 1 percent of all dreams). But many people dream about being naked, or about physical journeys that might stand in for fraught everyday dilemmas, such as being thwarted in a quest for success. “We are walking down hall after hall,” one of the dreams in Domhoff’s database reads. “We are looking for a restaurant. We climb laboriously up ladders and get to a top floor to find out the restaurant is closed. I am upset and afraid of going back down.”

[ click to continue reading at Nautilus ]

from CNN

Former NASA scientist says they found life on Mars in the 1970s

By Jessie Yeung

We may have already discovered the essence of life on Mars 40 years ago, according to a former NASA scientist.

Gilbert V. Levin, who was principal investigator on a NASA experiment that sent Viking landers to Mars in 1976, published an article in the Scientific American journal last Thursday, arguing the experiment’s positive results were proof of life on the red planet.

The experiment, called Labeled Release (LR), was designed to test Martian soil for organic matter. “It seemed we had answered that ultimate question,” Levin wrote in the article.

In the experiment, the Viking probes placed nutrients in Mars soil samples — if life were present, it would consume the food and leave gaseous traces of its metabolism, which radioactive monitors would then detect.

[ click to continue reading at CNN ]

from NBC News

Man walks out of San Francisco art gallery with Salvador Dali painting worth $20K

The suspect can be seen on security footage grabbing the painting, titled “Surrealistic Bullfight: Burning Giraffe,” off the wall and walking out the door.

By Janelle Griffith

A suspect who carried a $20,000 Salvador Dali painting out of a San Francisco art gallery while it was open and the director was present is being sought by police.

The painting, titled “Surrealistic Bullfight: Burning Giraffe,” was stolen Sunday from Dennis Rae Fine Art, the gallery’s co-owner David Schach told NBC News on Tuesday. It is worth an estimated $20,000, Schach said.

Security footage showed a man carrying a large frame on Geary Boulevard toward Union Square, Schach said.

[ click to continue reading at NBC ]

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from AdWeek

Lena Waithe on Why LA Was the Perfect Place to Make Her Dreams Come True

The prolific writer, producer and actor’s first feature film is debuting next month

By Lisa Lacy

Lena Waithe says she moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in 2006 knowing she wanted to conquer it. And with 22 projects in active development with some of the biggest names in the business—including Amazon, BET, Disney, HBO, Netflix, Showtime and Universal—as well as a star-making turn on the Netflix series Master of None, which earned her an Emmy, she’s arguably done just that.

Season 3 of The Chi, a drama Waithe created for Showtime about the South Side of Chicago, is now in production. She did a food tour of L.A. with David Chang for his new Netflix limited series Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, premiering Oct. 23 (the show also features Chrissy Teigen and Kate McKinnon). And next month, she’s bringing her talents to the big screen with the film Queen & Slim, for which she penned the screenplay (it’s based on a story she wrote with author James Frey). The movie, about what happens to a couple on a first date after they get pulled over by the police, stars Jodie Turner-Smith and Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya in the title roles.

[ click to continue reading at AdWeek ]

from The Daily Star

Psychopaths make the best doctors because they can switch off emotionally

Psychopaths’ ruthless nature and emotional detachment are perfect attributes for medicine

By Alex Brown

Experts have revealed their ruthless nature and emotional detachment are the perfect attributes for medicine. 

Leading cardiac surgeon professor Stephen Westaby claimed he developed his own appetite for risk after fracturing his skull playing rugby.

“I changed and I enjoyed the change.

“I could cope with anything in terms of the misery you face when you first start in heart surgery.

“When I first went to the Royal Brompton [in London] in 1974 operating on the children, one in four died.

“I think we are talking about selected tendencies that represent psychopathy.”

[ click to read full article at The Daily Star ]

from Variety

‘Queen & Slim’ Soundtrack Features Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Baby, Ms. Lauryn Hill, More

by LATESHA HARRIS

The soundtrack to the highly anticipated film “Queen & Slim” will be released by Motown on Nov. 15, it was announced today. The 17-song collection features new tracks from Ms. Lauryn Hill, Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Baby, Vince Staples featuring 6lack X Mereba, Tiana Major 9 & EARTHGANG and Coast Contra featuring BJ The Chicago Kid and Syd. Classic songs by Roy Ayers, Bilal and Mike Jones can also be heard.

Starring Daniel Kaluuya, who was nominated for an Academy award for his role in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” and Jodie Turner-Smith (“The Neon Demon”), “Queen & Slim” is a modern re-telling of Bonnie & Clyde that confronts race relations and police brutality in America. Melina Matsoukas (“Master of None,” “Insecure”) makes her feature directorial debut with the film. Lena Waithe, the first black woman to win the Emmy award for outstanding writing for a comedy series, is credited as a writer alongside James Frey, of “A Million Little Pieces” fame. 

[ click to continue reading at Variety ]

from STEREOGUM

Michael Stipe – “Your Capricious Soul” Video

by Peter Helman

One brief song-snippet aside, Michael Stipe hasn’t released any music since his band R.E.M. broke up in 2011. That changes today. A few months ago, Stipe performed new solo songs called “Your Capricious Soul” and “Drive To The Ocean” during a surprise opening set for Patti Smith, and he reportedly has at least 16 other tracks ready to go. Today, to coincide with the “International Rebellion” climate justice protests this week, he’s sharing his official debut solo single.

That would be “Your Capricious Soul,” one of the songs he debuted back in May. Although it won’t be on any of the major streaming platforms, at least immediately, it is available for a pay-what-you-want donation (or for free) on Stipe’s website. The download comes with master-quality audio version of the song, its accompanying video by Sam Taylor-Johnson, a lyric sheet, a print-ready poster, a stencil, and an animated flip-book portrait. For the next 365 days, all proceeds from the song will go to Extinction Rebellion.

[ click to continue reading at STEREOGUM ]

from artnet

Basquiat Designed an Album Cover for a Grimy Punk-Ska Band 35 Years Ago. Now, a Limited Edition of the Album Is Being Reissued

Originals of the record regularly sell for thousands of dollars, though oddly almost no one knows the band.

Basquiat’s 1984 design for the cover of The Off’s First Record.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a music fanatic and wannabe drummer who before he hit superstardom as a visual artist often needed cash—fast. Sometimes the two worlds collided. Once was in 1981 when the young Basquiat agreed to design an album sleeve for his friends in the punk-ska band, The Offs, in exchange for $400, which his mother needed to pay her rent.

Basquiat’s design for the album, called simply First Record, included some of the earliest examples of motifs that would come to define his work—a cartoon-like, black-and-white totemic figure standing atop a triangular mound with a crown of thorns hovering above his head. The punk band’s name appears written in Basquiat’s signature scrawl in three spots. Today, original copies of the album sell for thousands of dollars.

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

from the New Yorker

America’s First Taco Editor Says That Burritos Are Actually Tacos

By Helen Rosner

Twenty-two years ago, Texas Monthly, the venerable “national magazine of Texas,” published a ranking of the state’s fifty best barbecue joints. The magazine had named the state’s best barbecue before, but the Top Fifty was an extraordinary feat of carnivorousness—a giant inventory of smoked meat, involving hundreds of meals and uncountable thousands of miles—and it became a phenomenon, on and off the newsstand. Regularly revised and updated in the years since, the list drives tourism both to and within the state, names and shapes trends, makes kings of newcomers, and topples long-established empires. So tremendous is Texans’ desire to read about barbecue, so essential is the food to the very notion of Texan-ness, that in 2013 Texas Monthly appointed the food writer and meat savant Daniel Vaughn to the freshly created role of barbecue editor.

This week, the magazine announced the creation of a new position to stand alongside its barbecue editor: beginning September 18th, José R. Ralat will become the magazine’s and the nation’s first taco editor. Ralat—who was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in New York City, and now lives in Dallas—has been something of a professional taco-eater for more than a decade, first writing taco reviews for the New York Press, and then, after decamping from Brooklyn to Texas, ten years ago, launching a weekly taco column with the Dallas Observer. He’s the author of the blog Taco Trail and, until the end of this week, the food and drink editor at the Dallas-based magazine Cowboys & Indians. His new role sounds like an office drone’s daydream: a full-time salary, plus benefits, just to wander around Texas and eat tacos? Sure thing, kid, dream on. But, as with its editorial commitment to barbecue, Texas Monthly considers this job to be not only serious business but essential Texas journalism: in a state where more than forty per cent of the population is Hispanic, including Mexican and Mexican-American residents, tacos are part of daily life, and key to Texan culinary identity.

I recently spoke with Ralat by phone about his new gig; in our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also explored how to categorize burritos, why tacos are essentially Texan, and Ralat’s mission to correct the record on breakfast tacos.

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker ]

from The Daily Beast

by Nick Schager

s your child misbehaving? Well, if you’re a demented mother and father interested in traumatizing your little one for years to come, you can follow in the footsteps of a shocking number of other American parents and dial 407-734-0254—the phone number for Wrinkles the Clown, a Naples, Florida, creep who, for a small cash fee, will lurk around your kid until they get the message and straighten themselves out.

This is both not a joke and a hilarious gag, as detailed by Wrinkles the Clown (in theaters Oct. 4). Michael Beach Nichols’ simultaneously spooky and amusing documentary concerns the notorious circus weirdo, who became an internet sensation in 2015—and inspired a rash of nationwide copycat dangerous-clown sightings in 2016—thanks to a series of online videos (beginning with this one) and stickers featuring his name, face and phone number that he posted around his hometown. In an age of viral horror fads (Slenderman, Momo, etc.), Wrinkles, bolstered by local news coverage and, then, a 2015 story in The Washington Post, was a standout star, not least because you could actually call him and either leave a voicemail or, if you were lucky, chat with the gruff, curt clown himself.

[ click to continue reading at TDB ]

from The New York Post

The tragic story of Guggenheim architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s secret love nest

By Ron Hogan

On Aug. 15, 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright was overseeing the final stages of construction at Midway Gardens, a massive entertainment complex on the South Side of Chicago. John, the second of his six children, was helping out on the project, when his father went out to take a phone call.

When Wright came back, he looked shocked and had to lean on a table to keep from collapsing.

“What’s happened?” John asked.

The call had been from Wisconsin, where Wright had built an estate called Taliesin for himself and Mamah Borthwick, his mistress for the last five years. Her two children from her previous marriage were with her at the time.

“Taliesin is on fire,” Wright said. “Why did I leave them today? What if they’re hurt?”

[ click to continue reading at NYP ]

from NBC

We may be closing in on the discovery of alien life. Are we prepared?

New robotic craft bound for Mars should give us our best shot at finding life on the Red Planet.

By Seth Shostak

In the next decade or so, it’s entirely possible that you’ll see a headline announcing that NASA has found evidence of life in space.

Would that news cause you to run screaming into the street? An article that appeared recently in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph hints that Jim Green, the director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, thinks the public might be discombobulated by the discovery of biology beyond the bounds of our own planet. But that’s not really what Green believes. He’s concerned that we haven’t thought much about the next steps by scientists, should we suddenly confront the reality of Martian life.

Here’s the backstory: In 2020, Mars and Earth will once again be relatively close to each other in their adjacent orbits around the sun. To take advantage of this fortuitous orbital circumstance, space agencies will be lobbing a small brigade of spacecraft toward the Red Planet. Unlike the robotic explorers now prowling Mars’ dusty landscapes, these new craft — launched by both NASA and a European-Russian collaboration — will be engaged in a type of reconnaissance that hasn’t been tried since NASA’s Viking landers set down there in the mid-1970s. The new craft will go beyond merely scouting for locations that were once suitable for life. They’ll be on the hunt for life itself. Dead or alive.

[ click to continue reading at NBC ]

from THE SOURCE

THE BLACK BONNIE & CLYDE: ‘QUEEN & SLIM’ PREMIERING THIS FALL

BY SOURCESTAFF

Are you ready for a modern-day Black Bonnie and Clyde? Lena Waithe, the Emmy-winning screenwriter, already has everyone on the edge of their seats for Queen & Slim as she explains to Complex.

The film is “Bonnie & Clyde meets Thelma & Louis meets Set It Off. Waithe worked closely with writer James Frey as they adapted an original idea for the story. Universal Pictures will release Queen & Slim a romantic thriller film directed by Melina Matsoukas on November 27.

[ click to continue reading at THE SOURCE ]

from InsideHook

How World War I Led to the Creation of the NFL

We talked to Chicago sportswriter Chris Serb about his book “War Football: World War I and the Birth of the NFL”

BY EVAN BLEIER

Had U.S. soldiers not fought in the trenches on the battlefields of the First World War more than 100 years ago, offensive and defensive linemen may not be doing battle in the trenches of NFL game fields today. 

That’s one of the major takeaways from veteran Chicago sportswriter Chris Serb’s War Football: World War I and the Birth of the NFL, an impeccably researched work which details the time period during the Great War when football was being played at U.S. military bases at home and abroad by members of the Army, Navy and the Marines.

The majority of the players who took the field in those games, which were played against other bases as well as top colleges to raise money for the war effort, had played at the college level before WWI but had little chance at going pro after their service because a respectable professional league did not exist yet. 

There were some semi-pro leagues at the time, but they were looked down upon by the general public, at least partially because they took the Sabbath in vain by playing on Sundays (the only day all factory employees generally had off).

“Before the war, pro football had such a negative connotation that a lot of players played under assumed names because they did not want to be associated did not want their mom to see that they were playing for the Columbus Panhandles, or whatever the team might be, on a Sunday,” Serb tells InsideHook. “They were factory workers, regular guys who might have been good high school football players, but did not have the means to go on to college. They went out and got jobs and still enjoyed playing football and the only time they could play, because they had six-day work weeks, was on Sundays.”

Once the war began, some of these semi-pros enlisted and subsequently joined up with military football teams, mixing on rosters with experienced collegiate players who had also joined up. 

Though some of the pre-war semi-pro teams may have included a few guys who were relatively big names in college, the military teams which were assembled during WWI were football’s “first true All-Star teams,” according to Serb.

[ click to continue reading at InsideHook ]

from The Daily Star

Archaeologists stunned after unearthing 3,000-year-old penis statue used by cult

The girthy penis rock is 21 inches tall

A giant penis statue — measuring an impressive 21 inches — has been unearthed by archaeologists in Sweden.

The girthy phallus might even have been used in blood sacrifices to a pagan fertility god, researchers said.

Dated to be from the Bronze Age, between 1800 and 500 BC, the penis rock was discovered during an excavation near Gothenburg.

It has been linked to a fertility cult, having been found alongside a lot of animal bones which hints that the area was used for sacrifice.

The lack of any human bones ruled out the theory that the phallus was a unique headstone.

[ click to continue reading at Daily Star ]

from The New Yorker

By Doreen St. Félix

Songs of the summer should be crowned not in the giddiness of July but in the waning days of September, once the hot season has finished its business. A rearview perspective suggests that “Toast,” by the nineteen-year-old “singjay” Koffee, and produced by Walshy Fire, of Major Lazer, and IzyBeats, ruled this season. It was a mellow, cheery reign. At parties, I would watch eyebrows slacken and shoulders relax as the opening notes bounced into the room. “We haffi give thanks like we really supposed to,” Koffee advises nimbly; the song, about choosing optimism and practicing gratitude, is itself something to be thankful for.

“Toasting” also refers to a kind of vocal work—not quite singing, more like charismatic chanting over a beat, or “riddim”—that is deeply associated with mid-century Jamaican music. Koffee was born Mikayla Simpson and was raised in Spanish Town, outside of Kingston, Jamaica. She sang in the church choir, played guitar, and won a school talent show that she’d entered somewhat unwittingly. In 2017, an acoustic-guitar performance of a song called “Legend,” which she had written in honor of the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, went viral after Bolt reposted the video on Instagram. Alongside artists like Protoje and Chronixx, Koffee has emerged as a modernizer of the roots-reggae philosophy practiced by artists such as Beres Hammond, Peter Tosh, and Bob Marley. On her EP “Rapture,” her sound seamlessly blends reggae and dancehall, socially conscious messaging and free-spirit liveliness. On the track “Raggamuffin,” with liquid agility, she offers a critique of the Jamaican government. On “Throne,” she praises her own song-writing prowess: “Lyrics put your very welfare / Pon the death row, pon the wet floor.”

“Toast” was an explosive début single. Earlier this year, Koffee won a prize for single of the year at the Jamaica Music Industry Association’s annual awards ceremony and performed on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”; it’s been rumored that she was courted by Rihanna to write on her upcoming reggae album. To understand both the history and the future of Jamaican music, listen to Koffee.

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker ]