This is a mind-blowing interview David Bowie did with the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman back in 1999, when he keenly predicted how profoundly the Internet would change culture and society. The man was absolutely brilliant.
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David Bowie utterly humiliated Ricky Gervais on Extras · Great Job, Internet! · The A.V. Club
This bit David Bowie did on Ricky Gervais’s Extras is hilarious, as is his explanation for doing the show.
Fans and critics will undoubtedly spend the upcoming days debating which of David Bowie’s many memorable songs should be considered his very greatest contributions to the canon of Western Music. While titles like “Life On Mars?,” “Changes,” and “The Man Who Sold The World” will be bandied about, some consideration should also go to “The Little Fat Man With The Pug-Nosed Face,” an impromptu ditty with which the erstwhile Ziggy Stardust joyously serenaded Ricky Gervais on a memorable 2006 episode of Extras. In the episode, actually titled “David Bowie,” Gervais’ character, self-involved actor Andy Millman, is already starting to chafe from the notoriety he’s gained from starring in a hacky, catchphrase-laden BBC sitcom called When The Whistle Blows. Spotting Bowie in the supposed “VIP” section of a bar, Gervais’ character makes the spectacularly ill-considered decision to accost the musical legend. Then, with no prompting whatsoever, he proceeds to spill his guts to this unwitting stranger. A gentleman to the last, Bowie actually listens politely as Gervais whinges about his own, hopelessly trivial “problems.”
Source: David Bowie utterly humiliated Ricky Gervais on Extras · Great Job, Internet! · The A.V. Club
The 19th Century plug that’s still being used – BBC News
The BEEB covers Apple’s rumored plans to kill off the phono plug. The story includes a quote from an Apple analyst:
“It feels painful because you’ve got hundreds of millions of devices out there that are using the old standard,” says Horace Dediu, a technology analyst with in-depth knowledge of Apple.
… and …
“Studying Moore’s Law and the history of technology, it’s clear we’re not going to stick around with something analogue for long,” he says. “It’s almost puzzling that it’s taken so long.”
Maybe because analog phone jack technology Just Works? Any guesses why an Apple stock analyst might like this move?
The Sum of Us petition is here, if you care to sign it.
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The Beatles Rarity » #askNat – concerning John Lennon’s contribution to David Bowie’s “Fame”:
I love this story of how John Lennon came to work on David Bowie’s first #1 song, Fame.
By late 1974, David, having moved to RCA Records, had already recorded most of his ninth studio album, Young Americans, but the record was in a holding pattern while David went through the necessary legalities to break all ties with his shady management contract with Tony Defries. Staying in a New York hotel during this period, David had a little party that John Lennon, together with his girlfriend May Pang showed up for. Record producer Tony Visconti was also in attendance and recalled later that both John and David were high on cocaine and Cognac and while sketching caricatures of each other were having a dark discussion about “what does it all mean?” – with “it” being “life.” As a side note, it was at this party where May Pang first met Tony Visconti and the two would eventually marry in 1989.
After the party, the ice was properly broken between John and David and a week or two later in early January 1975, John got a phone call from David who explained he was at New York’s Electric Lady Studios working on a cover of John’s Beatles classic “Across The Universe” for his Young Americans album. Unbeknownst to John, Young Americans didn’t need any further material. David was apparently seizing the opportunity to get a Beatle on his record and make a replacement or two of some of the tracks – if it turned out okay, that is. John obliged David and came down to the studio to sing backing vocals and play acoustic guitar on “Across The Universe” with David and his band. John was later to comment that Bowie’s version of “Across The Universe” was the best one. After jamming with the band on a 1961 hit by The Flairs called “Foot Stompin’,” they teamed up with guitarist Carlos Alomar, who had been playing with David since the previous year, and the three of them wrote “Fame” on the spot.
Source: The Beatles Rarity » #askNat – concerning John Lennon’s contribution to David Bowie’s “Fame”:
Singer David Bowie dies at 69; mesmerizing performer of many alter egos – The Washington Post
I’m sad to hear that David Bowie died yesterday from cancer. He was an amazingly-talented musician and artist.
David Bowie, the self-described “tasteful thief” who appropriated from and influenced glam rock, soul, disco, new wave, punk rock and haute couture, and whose edgy, androgynous alter egos invited fans to explore their own dark places, died Jan. 10, two days after his 69 th birthday.
The cause was cancer, his family said on official Bowie social media accounts. Relatives also confirmed the news but did not disclose where he died.
With his sylphlike body, chalk-white skin, jagged teeth and eyes that appeared to be two different colors, Mr. Bowie combined sexual energy with fluid dance moves and a theatrical charisma that mesmerized male and female admirers alike.
Source: Singer David Bowie dies at 69; mesmerizing performer of many alter egos – The Washington Post
How U.S. gun ownership became a ‘right,’ and why it isn’t – The Globe and Mail
Here’s a great commentary on what a fiction it is that Americans have a right to own guns.
‘That,” we tell ourselves, “is just the way the Americans are.” We say it every time some firearms horror strikes a movie theatre or school or workplace. We say it when the U.S. President, reduced to tears, tries to use his limited powers to make minimal changes to laws that allow almost anyone to purchase and use an assault rifle.
After all, hasn’t it always been this way? Americans have always believed that they have a right to own and carry guns, we think. Strict gun control has never been an American option. That’s just the way they are.
Except that it isn’t. The American gun crisis, and the attitudes and laws that make it possible, are very new. The broad idea of a right to own firearms, along with the phenomenon of mass shootings, did not exist a generation ago; the legal basis for this right did not exist a decade ago.
Source: How U.S. gun ownership became a ‘right,’ and why it isn’t – The Globe and Mail
Steve Israel: Confessions of a Congressman – The New York Times
Congressman Steve Israel will miss many things about Congress. The constant need to raise money won’t be one of them.
This is why we can’t have democracy, America.
In the days after my first election to Congress, in 2000, I attended several orientation sessions in Washington, eager to absorb the lessons of history. I wanted to learn what Congressman Abraham Lincoln had learned, to hear the wisdom of predecessors like John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and Joseph Gurney Cannon. The romance was crushed by lesson No. 1: Get re-elected. A fund-raising consultant advised that if I didn’t raise at least $10,000 a week (in pre-Citizens United dollars), I wouldn’t be back.
Source: Steve Israel: Confessions of a Congressman – The New York Times
Oil, money, politics and evil: Our leading Middle East ally is the worst country imaginable – Salon.com
A great read on how America’s support for the Saudis is not always reciprocated.
American foreign policy is full of things we can’t see and things we don’t talk about. The drone war of the Obama years; the “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” of the George W. Bush years. Nixon and Kissinger’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. The overthrow of democratic governments we didn’t like: Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Once you get started with this stuff it’s hard to stop, and pretty soon your friends are giving you that look, like they’re wondering at what point you’ll start talking about your stormy personal relationship with Richard Helms, or the microchips implanted in your dental work.
But even by those standards, the case of Saudi Arabia is special. We love Saudi Arabia so much! The Bush family loves Saudi Arabia; the Clinton family loves Saudi Arabia. You and I are frequently told that we love Saudi Arabia, even if we aren’t exactly sure why. We write mash notes in Saudi Arabia’s yearbook, in pink Magic Marker with lots of hearts: BE-HEDDING ALL THOSE PPL! U R SO SEXY!!! We have never overthrown a democratic government in Saudi Arabia. It would admittedly be difficult to do so, since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has never had a democratic government and never will. Our tax dollars and Saudi oil dollars flow back and forth between Washington and Riyadh in a bewildering matrix understood by no one, ending up along the way in the handbags of hookers in Vegas and the tip baskets of croupiers in Macau.
How the FBI tracked down a Georgia woman tied to $4M in… | www.ajc.com
It turns out that Abby Kemp, the … um, babe jewelry thief, did some modeling three years ago. I wonder what drove her to a life of crime?
In 2012, a then-22-year-old Abigail Lee Kemp posed for a professional photo shoot. Young, pretty, brunette, she wore short dresses of black and red. Her high heels were steady on the balcony of a Midtown Atlanta high-rise, skyline stalwarts like the AT&T building standing tall in the background.
She bent over to touch the water flowing from a fountain, sat in front of an outdoor fireplace and stared into the distance. She smiled while a tattooed man suggestively touched her hips.
The same woman will be a few miles away Monday, in federal court at the Richard B. Russell building downtown. The FBI believes her responsible for a string of armed jewelry store robberies across five Southeastern states, crimes they say netted watches and diamonds worth millions.
Source: How the FBI tracked down a Georgia woman tied to $4M in… | www.ajc.com
Phone-crazed audiences and fed-up musicians? Yondr is on the case – CNET
A startup called Yondr is trying to sell concert venues on the idea of taking away their customers’ smartphones during shows. The company’s product is a bag that locks over the audience member’s phone, blocking it from being used unless taken to an “unlocking station.”
This idea is all kinds of wrong. As the reporter below describes, putting your phone into a bag will now make you obsess over the phone. Did it vibrate? If so, what was it? Guess what? Now I’m the distracted one, not the person who might have seen my phone’s display. And this happens to everyone else whose smartphone has been held hostage.
What if a desperate phone call comes in from the babysitter at home, but because my phone is kidnapped inside a Guantanamo-worthy hood I don’t hear/feel the call come in? Or what if I do but I can’t push the stoner metalheads out of the way to get to the “unlock station” in time to take the call? What if it’s a call to tell me my house is burning down? Can you say “lawsuit?”
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