The New York Times reports, Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as an activist, race car driver, popcorn impresario and the anti-hero of such films as “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Color of Money,” has died. He was 83.

I Called My Wife A Cunt In Front Of Reporters
It Was Really Fun To Cheat On My Car-Injury-Disabled First Wife

Photographer Jill Greenberg (dubbed The Manipulator, known mostly for her highly retouched images of bears and crying babies) was hired by The Atlantic to shoot a hawkish heroic portrait of the Republican Presidential nominee, she delivered (see PDNPulse), but also snuck in a few shots when Grandpa wasn’t looking.

A pause in the photo-shoot provided the opportunity for Greenberg to ambush McCain and quietly snap a few extra shots and nab the classic Hollywood horror movie shot; shadows across the face and on the wall right behind him. The stunt which in my opinion approaches sheer genius resulted in a horribly diabolical shot illustrating McCain’s seemier side. See the McCain Horror Shot from Greenberg and Buzzfeed’s gruesome mock-up.

The extra shots were used to create the following works of art courtesy of Greenberg’s site; I Called My Wife A Cunt In Front Of Reporters, and It Was Really Fun To Cheat On My Car-Injury-Disabled First Wife respectively. Some might question Greenberg’s professionalism; I say Republican’s set the photo manipulation precedence, and seem to have no trouble perpetuating myths and racial stereotypes.

An Italian comic faces jail for saying Pope will be tortured by gay devils. Comedian Sabina Guzzanti faces a prison term of up to five years for what Italian prosecutors say is “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person Benedict XVI” Addressing a Rome rally in July that was called to protest interference by the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Italian affairs, from abortion to gay right, Guzzanti warmed up with a few opening lines before moving on to religion, The Times reports; “warning everyone that within 20 years Italian teachers would be vetted and chosen by the Vatican, she got to the punchline: “But then, within 20 years the Pope will be where he ought to be — in Hell, tormented by great big poofter devils, and very active ones, not passive ones.”

Beautiful Stefan Elf Landscape Photograph Speaking of adjusting the Qi, reading through John’s site, he mentioned Ernie (someone whose writing I’ve long admired) Ernie put into words some of the things I’ve been thinking about regarding this site, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, I have to crawl over the finish line for year 8, but other formats are starting to look inviting.

Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain by Dr. Phillip Butler. “Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals.

After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace,” Here is why he won’t be voting for John McCain.

Roger Fisher from Heart has pledged he’ll give the royalties earned from his song Barracuda being played for Republicans straight to the Obama campaign. Sarah Palin porn-a-like, totally straight, totally straight up not safe for work in the least. (Via Popbitch)

This concludes any and all talk of politics, especially regarding the 2008 Presidential election. I’ve grown weary of discussing it on my site, there’s already far too much static, rhetoric and propaganda and I have nothing further to add. If you’ve been reading, if you know me personally, you already know where I stand on the issues, you know I’m a liberal, you know I’m voting for Obama and working toward change in other ways. So, I’ll leave it to those who are a bit more adept at cutting through the bullshit and occupy this space with other items of interest. Anyone for Navy Seals?

At At Hangar 17, Pieces of Ground Zero. Steven Weintraub, a consultant to the Port Authority on the preservation of 9/11 artifacts, and Jan Ramirez, the Chief Curator and Director of Collections of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, describe artifacts from the World Trade Center now held in an 80,000-square-foot hangar at Kennedy Airport. The museum is to open in 2012.

To honor the citizens who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attacks, a 6 month anniversary was held with a “Tribute in Light” memorial from March 11th to April 13th 2002. From dusk until 11 p.m. each night two beams of light rose into the sky from a site near Ground Zero.

Jook Leung’s panorama from the Tribute in Light 2002 was made the last day and published at panoramas.dk In Sept 2002 he got the Fuji film Masterpiece Award for this panorama. The Tribute in Light memorial continous and Jook Leung has made panoramas each year from the event.

Looks like we Mac users will have to wait awhile before we see a version of Google’s Chrome Browser, it’s still in the “pieces build and pass” phase, which means no application exists, yet. I hope by the time we see a Mac version, Chrome will have created something to control that CPU hog known as the Adobe Flash plug-in. Perhaps Google will do something like the Firefox add-on Flashblock which suspends those annoying Flash animations on banners, splash pages, youtube videos etc, slowing down your browser (especially if you have more than 20 tabs open) it’s a simple click to load to view the dynamic content, works great.

Very handy, Dial Directions is a free phone service that automatically beams routes to your dash GPS. Make a phone call from your mobile, speak a destination, receive it on your GPS device, service available immediately, dial DIR-ECT-IONS.

iTune 8 available now with a new playlist generator called “Genius” and a host of other browsing options. Genius examines what music you’re listening to, then generates a playlist according to what songs it thinks are complementary. This not only works with music, but television shows and movies as well. As expected the Genius sidebar also makes recommendations from the iTunes store, I usually find those sorts of recommendations annoying but we’ll see. There’s also a “grid view” which simply displays rows and columns of album art as icons. Kudos to Apple for embracing Accessibility on this update.

Scientists at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, have switched on their giant particle collider and so far the fabric of space and time is still intact, although you might want to check if we’re in a black hole. Photos of the mammoth Super-Collider.

Google News Archive: “Today, we’re launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. Let’s say you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon. Try a search for [Americans walk on moon], and you’ll be able to find and read an original article from a 1969 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you’ll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed — photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all.

Top 10 Apps Worth Jailbreaking Your iPhone to Get

Fitbit automatically tracks your fitness and sleep. Carry the stylishly designed Fitbit Tracker, walk near the provided base station and your data will be automatically downloaded to the Fitbit website where the data can be analyzed. The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed.

Not exactly new technology, but it’s time to forget the flesh colored Band-Aids and opt for the manly Duct Tape Bandage, more durable and even longer to wrap around guys fingers.

Big Brother indeed, NYPD sued over spycams, The New York Police Department is happy to talk about its plans to ring lower Manhattan with thousands of security cameras. But the Department won’t say exactly where the cameras are, or what will be done with the data. So now the New York City Liberties Union is suing the NYPD, to force ‘em to fess up on the spycams.

I’m coming up on the 8th year anniversary of my blog and I’m looking around to see what changes I’d like to make. Weblogs seem to be going in two directions, micro magalogs if they are news and content heavy, and lifestreams if they are more personal, social network based. Soup, much like Tumblr (I’m partial to Tumblr) aggregates everything you create online into one place, in your own style, at your own address, free and very very easy. I’ve been testing SweetCron too, which is incredible, (A bit like FriendFeed but less noisy) Sweetcron is a free and open source solution for creating a self-hosted lifestream; a blog-like website that shows your activity across the various websites like twitter, facebook, flickr etc. In public beta, you can take a look at the developers demo here simple no? Swurl (which I have yet to try) automatically brings a user’s web life together into a rich Tumblr-like format, with a focus on blogging as opposed to rss feeds.

Someone told me Veer had iPhone Wallpapers, much like Poolga I suppose. Still trying to get past all the space age ringtones at KidRobot. Kraftwerk’s Computer World provides endless source material for all my own iPhone ringtones.

Obama: “You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig - It’s Still A Pig… You Can Wrap An Old Fish In A Piece Of Paper Called Change, It’s Still Gonna Stink After Eight Years” Funny, until I remembered how thin skinned Republican’s can be…Oh, and sorry to scare the hell out you so early in the morning.

I have to say that I count Charles Burns as one of my all time favorite illustrators and artists. From his work for the Sub-Pop fanzine to his amazingly creepy and fantastic work for Art Spiegelman’s comic magazine RAW, his high contrast meticulous style burns a whole right through your head into your subconcious. His is the world of nightmares and kinky science, psychological horror comics filled with teen angst, mutants and physical transgressions. He’s a masterful cartoonist and storyteller setting his work apart from others with a dark and wicked sense of humor. His first New York solo show (I find that hard to believe) is up now at The Adam Baumgold Gallery (74 East 79th Street) and runs through October 5th. Click the gallery link, they have an incredible sneak peak at the work of Burns, all your favorites are included like Dog Boy; a red-blooded all American boy, who has the transplanted heart of a dog and is unable to control the urge to lick other peoples faces and El Borbah, a 400 pound private eye who wears Mexican wrestler’s tights and mask. Borbah subsists entirely on junk food and beer.

I Want Him - The Pandoras (1984) It’s About Time

S & M Party - Red Cross (1981) Red Cross EP

Daddy’s Gone Mad - Legal Weapon (1981)
Hell Comes To You House Volume 1

“In a scene of no values…Where climbing to the top means climbing into bed…Where drugs and cheap thrills fill the date book…Where rock n’ roll means death and destruction…”

I’m doing this post via my phone so hang with me…okay, how gay are these, San Francisco electro-Pride as Apple offers up an array of tall skinny musical goodness with the remodeled iPod Nano, now with voice recorder, 8GB for $150 and 16GB for $199, shake to shuffle a random track with the integrated accelerometer, what the hell it’s green too; The new nano is arsenic-free, bfr-free, mercury free, pvc free, and “highly recyclable.” I guess everything is coming with this Genius Playlist, a playlist of songs is created based on songs you like or what’s currently playing.

iPhone 2.1 update coming Friday: less calls dropped, fewer crashes, faster sync, better battery life, thank fucking God. New iPod Touch version 2, curved like the iPhone, 3.5-inch display, volume controls, also with the accelerometer, 802.11 b/g wireless and built-in speaker. Apple premium (isn’t everything by Apple premium?) in-ear headphones (i.e they won’t fit my dorked ears) with dual woofer tweeter drivers for $79, no thanks I’ll stick with what I gots. The iPod Classic gets bumped to 120GB for $250, the 160GB is being discontinued.

iTunes 8 has arrived, the iTunes store finally gets TV downloads in HD, and we see the return of NBC. Do a read through from Gizmodo which covered the event live for more information, get details from the entire event here. Oh and Steve Jobs, not without a sense of humor;

While we’re on the topic of wrestling, one of my favorite artist’s Colin Johnson has created “Bundy Boys“, a limited edition series of vinyl figurines modeled around wrestler “King Kong Bundy”. I think they’re all sold out now, but they’re so “sick” I had to post a pic or two. From Colin’s site: “Listen up all you little Hulksters, Hulk Hogan’s old nemesis King Kong Bundy has made his way to my studio and been customized in a series of 22 “one of a kind” vinyl figures!! They’ve all been sprayed with specialty vinyl paints from Japan and then painted over with various patterns and designs by yours truly. Each figure comes in it’s own bag with header card. And each header card is signed and numbered (again by your truly) on the back.” More photos here.

Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, won the Golden Lion Award for best film at the Venice festival over the weekend. From what I’ve been reading, Mickey Rourke makes a wicked comeback as washed up wrestler whose personal and professional decline echo those of his own.

In the film, Rourke plays bleach blond wrestling veteran Randy The Ram Robinson a 1980s-era star pro wrestler who has become a burnt-out shell of his former self (think Extreme Championship Wrestling circa 92). After he has a heart attack during a small-time match, a doctor tells him he could die if he fights again. In an effort to build a new life, Robinson takes a job at a deli, moves in with an aging stripper and tries to build a relationship with her son. But the prospect of a rematch with his old nemesis the Ayatollah proves too tempting to resist, even if it means risking his life.

Critics in Venice called Rourke’s performance “Heartbreaking”, while Variety’s Todd McCarthy takes it all a step further saying Rourke “creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances.” Read McCarthy’s review in Variety, and check out more about this film which seems to be creating quite a bit of Oscar buzz. US distribution deal has been signed last night and should be announced soon.

I know this is a bit of an insult to the great cast of the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies, and to the painter Grant Wood, but I couldn’t resist doctoring up this old cover from a 1963 edition of The Saturday Evening Post.

Owing a debt to the long history of the connection between music and various anti-establishment ideologies, including anarchism and socialism, The East Coast Avengers - Kill Bill O’Reilly Dead is deliciously inappropriate content that looks back to the work of The Dead Kennedys and Public Enemy, although not nearly as genius or anthemic. The track is a chilling, quite unpleasant provocative, and at times funny commentary on the social absurdity of blowhard Bill O’Reilly and Fox television. The video was going gang busters on YouTube before it was removed, but I’ve included a link for research purposes. Noah from “Coffeebreak for Heroes and Villains” on WFMU says; “Keith Olbermann covered the song on his MSNBC show but thought it was a bad idea that they threatened Bill’s life.” Yes yes yes, car crash material, look away, look away now, I can’t…NSFW, listen to MP3 via WFMU and no I don’t advocate any sort of violence no matter how much you disagree.

Rashad “Sugar” Evans knocked Chuck Liddell out cold last night at UFC 88 in Atlanta, squashing the organizations hopes for a big money pay-per-view that would have pitted Liddell against the reigning light heavyweight titleholder Forest Griffin. The shocking finish came just before the 2 minute mark of round 2, Liddell backed Evans‘ into the cage prepping him for an uppercut, when Rashad lands one right on the sweet spot of the chin plunging the “iceman” into the deep freeze, out cold, clean and decisive. I had my money on Evans’ seeing as I’ve never understood Lidell’s success in the stand up. Chuck throws his fists high and super wide, no secrets, no special deliveries, just typical all out balls to the wall brawling. Whoever coached Evans knew what they were doing, keep it tight and fast and success will follow, good advice seeing as this sets up Evans for a title match.

Rich Franklin, tired of getting his ass beat like a red-headed step child by Anderson Silva in the middleweight division returned to smoothly handle developing fighter/wrestler Matt Hamill in the light heavyweight division. No surprises here, the referee stopped the match around the 40 second mark of the third round. Franklin, a seasoned veteran and expert kicker (he’s tall) easily put away pugster Hamill.

The Sun U.K. has a slideshow covering UFC 88

A few quick results and closing thoughts on UFC 88: Dong Hyun Kim swindled Matt Brown out of a welterweight win as all three judges scored the bout 29-28, I had that one scored for Brown. Kurt Pellegrino pounded Thiago Tavares for a win. Light heavyweight Tim Boetsch, known for dusting his opponents early in matches put away newcomer Michael Patt. Canadian veteran Jason McDonald choked out Jason Lambert with a guillotine. Dan Henderson def. Rousimar Palhares via unanimous decision, Nate Marquardt def. Martin Kampmann via TKO, 1:22 of round 1 and Ryo Chonan def. Roan Carneiro via split decision.