Fresh Loaf

Kids today don't respect beards like they used to.

Hot dog! My dad wasn’t planning on attending SXSW, but he just might have to now!

THE OAK RIDGE BOYS TO PARTICIPATE IN 2009 SXSW MUSIC CONFERENCE  FESTIVAL MARCH 19

Through decades of mainstream success, the Oak Ridge Boys continue to reinvent themselves, meeting the challenges of the changing nature of the music industry. As their era of radio dominance wound down, they forged unique marketing partnerships and sought out innovative concert bookings. …

The Oak Ridge Boys will sit down for a SXSW Interview on Thursday March 19 at 3:30 p.m. at the Austin Convention Center. The group will expound upon their experience, offer advice to new artists, answer audience questions, and possibly offer an a cappella song or two. For the first 200 registrants, there will be a giveaway of free Oak Ridge Boys Blu-Blocker Magnum sunglasses.

(Photo courtesy www.oakridgeboys.com)

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The Jacob Javits Center was the epicenter of the American comic book industry last weekend, as editors, creators, and business types from almost every major publisher congregated at the fourth annual New York Comic Convention. They were surrounded by an at times impenetrable wall of fans, as several thousands of comic book and pop culture obsessives clogged the convention center hallways. It was as if the economy wasn’t halfway through a Triple Lindy.

One thing overshadows all else at a comic convention, though, stealing the spotlight from the panels, the creator signings, the video game demos, the dealer tables, even the 50-minute previews of unreleased Pixar films. I’m talking about costumes, and the fully grown individuals that spend exorbitant amounts of time, money, and effort on them. They call it cosplay, and it was inescapable at the NYCC.

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Lady Tigra, one-half of the legendary novelty rap duo L’Trimm, recently recorded an ode Michelle Obama with Jon Ruff.

In the song, titled “First Black First Lady,” Lady Tigra sings from the perspective of Michelle Obama during the couple’s early courtship.

Here’s Lady Tigra’s Michelle singing about the couple’s first date:

Not so fast, bromeo
Take me to Baskin-Robbins
For a scoop of rocky road
Got a deep-ass voice, like a man should
Talk so smooth
Must be able to hear real good
With your intelligent eyes
And your teeth like ivory
Telling no lies
I might give you a try, B.

The song is available as a free download. Trust me, it’s worth every penny.

And while I’m at it, here’s the song that made Lady Tigra a novelty hip-hop legend, 1988’s always delightful “Cars With The Boom.”

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Australian blogger Hugh Atkin recently found the following un-aired footage of Sen. John McCain during the Republican National Convention:

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My heart lets out a tiny squeal of joy when I read Women Against Sarah Palin, a blog where women can vent their despair, defiance and outrage at the selection of the Alaskan governor for Republican VP candidate. Check out the 100,000 and counting responses of women across America.
One succinct example:

Palin is pro-coathanger. I am not.
—Joanie D., 42, Washington DC

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The Atlanta Critical Mass ride last month received a lot of attention because city police shadowed the slow-rolling gathering and ticketed cyclists out of the blue. That sucks, yes, but turn your eyes for the moment toward New York City, where police and Massers have never really had a peaceful go of things.

A video recorded during Friday’s Critical Mass in the city shows cycle-riding revelers pedaling through Times Square. Fun and games until a police officer pushes you off a bicycle for no reason.

According to Gawker, who gets the thanks for the video:

City Room reports that the unidentified officer was puts on “modified assignment” while they investigate; the AP says they also took away his badge and gun for now. (He should be fired.) Meanwhile, Gothamist reports that the cyclist was arrested and held in jail while being charged with assault.

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In less than a decade, Pabst Blue Ribbon has gone from dying, old brand, to hipster dive bar icon.

In addition to being cheap, PBR is popular because the brand connotes an anti-corporate , anti-establishment ethos.

To its fans, PBR is the cool antithesis of Budweiser. Bud spent $1.35 billion last year begging Americans to drink its beer. PBR is a little company embraced by savvy young people who reject and resent being targeted by cheesy ad campaigns. PBR’s popularity is a small triumph for authenticity over marketing.

Or not.

In his new book Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, author Rob Walker explains that PBR’s status as an unmarketed beer is the result of, you guessed it, clever marketing.

From yesterday’s New York Times review of Buying In written by Farhad Manjoo:

Like “some kind of small-scale National Endowment for the Arts for young American outsider culture,” Pabst paid the bills at bike messenger contests, skateboarder movie screenings, and art and indie publishing get-togethers. At each of these events, it kept its logo obscure, its corporate goal to “always look and act the underdog,” to be seen as a beer of “social protest,” a “fellow dissenter” against mainstream mores.

Pabst’s campaign was designed to push beer without appearing to push it.

As for the actual beer — it turns out Pabst doesn’t even brew any.

In reality, Pabst Blue Ribbon’s anticapitalist ethos is, as Walker puts it, “a sham.” The company long ago closed its Milwaukee brewery and now outsources its operations to Miller. Its entire corporate staff is devoted to marketing and sales, not brewing. “You really couldn’t do much worse in picking a symbol of resistance to phony branding,” Walker writes.

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Sen. John McCain is about to announce his running mate, according to the Washington Post.

I’ll mail $5 cash to the first person who correctly guesses the identity of McCain’s running mate AND the city from which McCain makes the announcement.

Make your guess in the comments section below.

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Memphis police director Larry Godwin has sued to uncover the names of anonymous contributors to a blog harshly critical of the Memphis Police Department.

The lawsuit asks AOL to produce all information related to the identity of an e-mail address linked to MPD Enforcer 2.0, a blog popular with police officers that has been extremely critical of police leadership,

I don’t know much about the Memphis Police Department, but it looks like its leaders have adopted Chinese Communist tactics to bully its force into silence. This only makes me more inclined to believe the nastier allegations on MPD Enforcer 2.o.

I hope the bloggers identities are kept mum. Imperfect as anonymous blogging is, blogs like MPD Enforcer and, closer to home, Dekalb Officers Speak, provide important information about otherwise opaque institutions.

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American lawmakers waste our time and money on banning baggy pants.

Russian lawmakers waste their country’s time and money on this b.s.:

Russian lawmakers last month gave broad approval to a broad “concept for the spiritual and moral education of children,” including plans for curfews, bans on “emo and goth” fashions in schools and censorship of text messages.

For the record, I’d be totally fine with a global ban of My Chemical Romance.

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Never let a reporter film your Nazi-themed, S&M orgy.

From The Guardian:

The News of the World chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, told the high court today that he needed to film the orgy involving motor racing boss Max Mosley because of the “very, very high” standard of proof required by his newspaper.

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George Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in Augusta.

Seriously.

(Tip o’ the crack pipe to Rogue109 at Peach Pundit)

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Obama wins. So reports the Associated Press.

The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments. It also included a minimum number of delegates Obama was guaranteed even if he lost the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.

The 46-year-old first-term senator will face Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the fall campaign to become the 44th president.

Don’t let the fact that Obama’s been ahead in the delegate count since February distract you from the enormity of Obama’s win. He bested his party’s most experienced and powerful political operation.

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“We must have zero-emission vehicles. Nothing else will prevent the world from exploding.”

— Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, speaking to The Economist about the importance of the electric cars his company plans to sell in the U.S. starting in 2010.

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This has absolutely nothing to do with Georgia, Georgia politics or anything related to Georgia. But you rarely see talk radio hosts called out for puttering out talking points of which they have no real knowledge.

Kevin James — no, not that Kevin James — appeared on Hardball to debate Mark Green of Air America. The Un-King of Queens parroted Pres. Bush’s supposed jab at Barack Obama comparing the presidential candidate’s expressed desire to meet with America’s adversaries to Former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler prior to World War II. Problem: James doesn’t seem to have any idea what Chamberlain did.

And Matthews rips into him for it. “When you are going to make a direct historic reference, get it straight,” he says. Cringeworthy and refreshing.

(Keep in mind that Matthews also makes a gaffe when he incorrectly says the U.S.S. Cole bombing occurred under Pres. Bush’s watch.)

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Yo! Satan called and wanted to let everyone know that Hell’s getting frigid.

According to the Washington Times, the venerable right-leaning publication owned by a verifiable God, the Bush administration may push the U.S. Congress to pass a bill this week calling for action on global warming. The article says it wouldn’t be toothless resolution either, but a specific proposal aimed at reducing the nation’s contribution to the phenomenon. Better late than never?

So sayeth the paper of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon:

Bush administration officials have told Republicans in Congress that they feel pressure to act now because they fear a coming regulatory nightmare. It would be the first time Mr. Bush has called for statutory authority on the subject.

“This is an attempt to move the administration and the party closer to the center on global warming. With these steps, it is hoped that the debate over this is over, and it is time to do something,” said an administration source close to the White House who is familiar with the planning and who said to expect an announcement this week…”

Still, Republican members of Congress who were briefed last week let top administration officials know that they think the White House is making a mistake, according to congressional sources and others familiar with the discussions. Opponents said Mr. Bush could be setting off runaway legislation, particularly with Democrats in control of Congress.

Rumors vary as to whether it’ll be sector specific — say, forcing utilities to adopt a cap-and-trade system similar to that used in Europe — or a broad sweeping plan. Critics quoted in the article claim that the United States is already at the front of reducing CO2 emissions — something I find hard to believe — and that because of Europe’s system, the nation has been plucking manufacturing jobs because its less-regulative milieu is less harmful to the economy.

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From NY Times:

If America doesn’t head on the right track soon, I might make like a tree and beat it.

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An altweekly that loves it some homegrown characters needs you!

The former U.S. Congresswoman from DeKalb County — who now resides in the heady hills of California and is running for president as a Green Party candidate — spoke at an event in the Golden State sponsored by Project Censored. Fun crazy talk was uttered!

From the Washington Examiner:

• “For those of you who know about the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, everything you think you know isn’t true. It’s a lie.”

• “Georgia isn’t the most advanced place. I’ll be like Hillary [Clinton], trying to retract that in a minute.”

• “Bush said he was clicking around on the Internet. Well, Spitzer was clicking around, too, all over America.”

• “I’ve learned so much on so many issues since I’ve been here in California about the forest fires and how the forest fires might not be unpurposeful events. That there is a purpose. A public policy purpose that comes at the end of a forest fire experience that allows developers to go into pristine areas where they were previously denied access.”

To be fair, I don’t know if I can fault her for that second statement.

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Two men have filed suit in federal court in Hawaii to stop a giant particle accelerator in Switzerland from starting up this summer. They’re concerned the accelerator might create a black hole that will swallow up Earth.

The science discussed in the story is beyond my grasp, but I do know that the following sentence doesn’t reassure me at all:

Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist whose work helped fuel the speculation about black holes at the collider, pointed out in a paper last year that black holes would probably not be produced at the collider after all, although other effects of so-called quantum gravity might appear.

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The Fulton Daily Report has a great story on how legal battles between states — such as the long-running brouhaha between Georgia, Florida and Alabama — are becoming more common across the nation.

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Horton Hears a Who! was the number-one movie for the second straight weekend. I might not have guessed that when my daughter and I attended the first Saturday show at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, since she and I were literally the only people in the theater. Then again, that was at 11:40 a.m. on a gorgeous Easter-weekend day. (As my wife suggested, “Maybe most of the Midtown residents were still at brunch.”)

Watching Horton for my second time during the neverending presidential primary season, I couldn’t help but look for contemporary political implications.

Find out which Horton Hears a Who! characters parallel presidential candidates at PopSmart.

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Don’t just watch the news for the sound bites from Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race. Take five minutes to read it. It’s direct, honest and unbelievably powerful.

The only other time I’ve felt so moved by the text of a political campaign speech was when I read this.

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UPDATE: A city spokesperson said in a phone interview that the bridge is showing signs of “major deterioration and section loss.”

Just arrived from the City of Atlanta Department of Public Works. (Emphasis added.)

Mitchell Street Bridge to Close Effective Immediately

Effective immediately, Mitchell Street between Northside Drive and Spring Street will be closed to all traffic. This closure will remain in effect until further notice.

The Department of Public Works’ Office of Transportation and Georgia Department of Transportation are responsible for the maintenance and inspection of the Mitchell Street Bridge and will close the affected area this afternoon. An inspection of the bridge revealed that it is in need of replacement and has been deemed unsafe for vehicular traffic at this time. “We will do everything we can to minimize the impact and inconvenience of this closure; however the safety of those who travel on our roadways is our priority,” said Sandra Jennings, Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Transportation.

The Department of Public Works suggests the following detour route: Northside Drive to McDaniel Street to Peters Street to Spring Street to Mitchell Street.

When a lobbyist recently told me we need to invest in infrastructure, he wasn’t kidding.

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The media scrum outside the Manhattan apartment building of Ashley Dupre, a.k.a. Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s alleged prostitute Kristen, has apparently irritated the building’s non-Spitzer-fucking residents.

So much so, the building’s management has dispatched its PR representative to ask the press to back-off.

AJC/AP:

On Thursday night, Richard Shea issued a statement indicating Dupre’s fellow tenants were fed up with the media circus and curiosity-seekers.

When he’s not doing PR for real estate clients, Richard Shea and his brother, George, are the brains behind the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the world governing body of stomach-centric sports.

If you know the names of gustatory gladiators Takeru Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut, Sonya Thomas, or Dale Boone — you have Richard and George Shea to thank/blame.

(photo of Dale Boone by Joeff Davis)

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What fools men are! To believe that our laws can dilly dally with the tortured souls wandering our realm, forever banished from the next! Fools, I tell you!

Actually, the case in question involves one Timothy Seymour, barn owner and all-around nice guy. He wanted to hook up the Comer kidfolk with a Halloween-themed house of frights, strobe lights and plastic masks. He thought the city council was cool with it. Turns out they weren’t.

May justice prevail! Full release from the state Supreme Court with all the details follows after the jump.

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