Showing posts with label NYT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NYT. Show all posts

Sunday, September 23, 2007

And He Can Remember?

Hands down, the haziest years of my life were 1983-1987. And this dude, of all things a drummer for the Ramones for that time frame, claims he recalls being there. Ha! I'd toss out the lawsuit immediately on the grounds that it's impossible to verify what anyone operating in rock-n-roll from '83-'87 really did or did not do.

A punk-rock drummer who did a four-year stint with the Ramones in the 1980s filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Wal-Mart, Apple and the estate of the band’s lead guitarist, claiming that they violated his copyrights by making and distributing digital downloads of songs he wrote while with the band.

Richard Reinhardt — professionally known, in the band’s standard practice, as Richie Ramone — was with the band the Velveteens when, according to the Ramones’ official Web site, he “kept the beat” from 1983 to 1987 while the Ramones’ regular drummer, Marky Ramone, was “on hiatus.” Mr. Reinhardt claims that the rights to his songs were taken without his permission by Ramones Production Inc. and by the estate of John Cummings, better known as Johnny Ramone, the band’s lead guitarist, who died in 2004.

Click here for a great headline to this NYTimes article.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Things That Will Change You Forever


One thing surely was watching The Seventh Seal as an impressionable young college student right off the farm. I doubt I've ever been the same since. Then again, every Friday night for years was Film Club night at the College of Knowledge. For someone who could barely get to class most of the time, I never missed a free Friday night Film Club offering. I didn't have a whole lot of dates, but I had the best film education anyone could want when I saw, savored is more like it, the greatest movies ever that way, everything by Kurosawa, Hitchock, Bergman, Fellini, Goddard, Truffaut, Lean, Wells, Kubrick, Capra, Kazan, Sturges, well... you-get-the-picture.


But I wasn't unusual, in the big scope of things. Steven Holden of the NYT writes about the passing of Ingmar Bergman in absolute, revered tones here. As well he should.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Weirder Than You, So There

Furthering my long-held belief that fiction writers are all psychotic, here's the saga of one really batty lady. The snake-oil shrinks who encourage their sociopathic tendencies by telling 'em to "write it out" outta be prosecuted.

From today's NYT:

Ms. Albert’s (the writer being sued) lawyer, Eric Weinstein, began his own remarks with the memorably understated line, “Laura (Albert) is a complicated person.” He said she was physically and sexually abused as a child. He said she was institutionalized in psychiatric wards and in a group home as a ward of the state. He said she was in therapy for 13 years with a psychiatrist whom she spoke to by telephone while posing as a teenage boy named Jeremy, an embryonic version of JT Leroy.

By the time the psychiatrist advised her to write, the persona of the teenage boy had become engrained as Ms. Albert’s alter ego, what Mr. Weinstein called her “bridge to the world.” Ms. Albert herself, in conversations before the trial, called JT “her respirator,” an unreal, though entirely necessary, entity that allowed her to breathe.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Why We Heart The WWW. Reason #7692

Jesus might have died to save us from our sins, but Al Gore invented the Internets so that site like this one, Abovethelaw.com A Legal Tabloid, can now exist for pleasuring us little peoples. Their subsite, Legal Eagle Wedding Watch, which evaluates the marriage announcements, found exclusively in the NYT's infamous society Weddings section, of attorneys betrothing to other attorneys, is sheer clever clever clever fun at its snarky-delicious finest. Frighteningly delicious lines of withering copy such as this abound:
Although Eve and Richard have apparently eschewed kitchen-related wedding booty, Google reveals that you can make a donation in the couple's honor to MassEquality, an organization working for marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. (Isn't that a bit like joining Augusta National and asking your friends to make a commemorative donation to NOW? We're just sayin' -- we can think of more impressive displays of commitment to the cause.)

Abovethelaw.com rates the happy, over-achieving couples by which associate is obviously marrying up and which one is really marrying down, according to not only their pedigrees, but their law degrees. You don't even have to be Jewish, or a lawyer, or even a Jewish lawyer to appreciate the fun to be had.

Site comes complete with happy couples' gift registry links, and even takes you to the very homepage for certain select couples' personal wedding planning sites. They've thought of everything at Abovethelaw.com -- so you don't have to. Right down to the finest detail of the wedding announcement for the ATL's precious TB lawyer, Andrew Speaker. (Guess that "extended" European honeymoon got a little de-extended, eh?!)

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Sunday Sports Page

Why do I do this to myself? Wake-up and turn right to the NYT Wedding section every Sunday? It's never a good thing when you allow other people's seemingly preposterous, yet quite real fairy tale romances to set that tricky-to-manuever winsome yet bitter tone for the day. Here's today's installment of "I Must Have Been A Hideous Person In A Previous Life To Be Stuck With The Cracker One I Have Now"...

The couple traveled to Biarritz to surf. “We would surf three times a day, have a big lunch, eat moules frites, and go back,” Ms. Mortimer said. And then, there was the light.

“It was incredibly cloudy,” Mr. Gaghan said of one evening the couple went surfing. “Then the clouds dumped two-inch raindrops, and the silver raindrops are backlit. And Minnie drops into a wave and disappears — the biggest wave of the day. She pops up surfing this wave, just flying, with incredible courage. Then she’s standing in the sand, holding her board, and behind her, from one end of France to the other, this rainbow appears. ”


Full torture here. Back to getting the hound dog out of the neighbor's dumpster for me.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Let The Great SC Dissing Begin

Trust the NYT's Alessandra Stanley to fire an opening shot at my ye 'olde home state. As if I could possibly have expected otherwise. I've been totally intimidated, dissed too, by seemingly scores of Ivy League women, given my dubious education credentials and pronounced accent.

It's really rather pathetic, in a Bridget Jones way. Those Ivy Leaguers of all genders could be so haughty and dismissive, and just kinda mean-girl when we used to rub shoulders in network news.

Then again, I could always drink their lipflapping, snotty, privileged, toned butts way under the table... in my day of course. And dissing SC is my territory, Alessandra. Not yours. Nobody really can do it better, if I do say so myself.

Least I can still go out drinking here in Georgia with whomever, wearing whatever, whenever I damn well feel like it, wearing only a comforter and a push-up bra maybe! Lord knows what the women of Iran won't be allowed to do next. This is sickening here. Just sickening. It knots my stomach in a billion different ways for the hell it implies. No need to wonder why I have always been an unapologetic feminist.

Bombing back to the stone age to free women from religious, nonsensical oppression? Sounds plausible, initially; but if I was for that, we'd have to start here in Georgia, given our own religion-inspired nonsensical legislation.

One other thing before you run away... congratulations to Mara Shalhoup at Creative Loafing for her Best Journalist in Atlanta award last night at the APC awards gala. She really deserves that recognition for being the hardest working, lowest-paid reporter in this city. I hope the NYT comes a'callin' for her kinda talent soon.

Sigh... I fear a total Bridget Jones kinda afternoon coming-on here for real. Bloggers must have so many self-esteem issues. Sigh... Know what could really pick me up though? Anyone got ANY good gossip from last night's APC soiree? Did anything remotely resembling monkey biz transpire without me there to blog it? Come on. The SGR needs some good 'ole schadenfreude-dirt right about now.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Find My Precious-y All Over Old Media

Look where my boy Shmuely is today... New York Times, baby. With a great photo too! Ari's trying to get through on the line now, hon. Whatever you do, just don't go with MetaCafe. Ugghhh... Stick with the one who brought you to this dance. Shmuel's YouTube channel is here.

P.S. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here. I gotta crank that YouTube product too, eh Buzz?

Wish Eddie Murphy had won last night. I haven't even seen but a clip or two of Dreamgirls, and he sure looked on fire, as always. Didn't stay up much past Cameron Diaz. She's such a great ditz. Loved The Queen. Loved it. Maybe since Ms. Mirren won, people will now discover the best show ever put on Big TV: Prime Suspect. That creepy Prince Philip dude sure pops up everywhere, eh? Especially all over our TVs. Like, tonight!

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Don't Expect Much In The Collection Plate This Christmas

So my church is offering an Adult Education session, a Sunday school class essentially, where you sit around and talk about finding God "in the news." What made me snort out loud in the pew today while reading a description of the class in the weekly bulletin is that they are using the New York Times for the discussion, not the AJC, as they've given the class the absurd-surrealistic title of "Praying The New York Times."

What a smack to the hometown paper fer sure, considering there are assorted Cox offspring present in these particular pews on any given Sunday. Wonder for how long after that little item! Hilarious. Maybe they should try incorporating blogs instead.

Monday, October 16, 2006

It's All Mainstream Now, Baby Blue








Just take your stupid tee shirt and back quietly out of the room.