God's Own Crunk

Too good to not pass along:

Has Lana Del Rey ditched her ‘romance’ with shock rocker Marilyn Manson to hook up with Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose?

Last month (March 23), rumours spread that the ‘Video Games’ songstress had been spotted cavorting with Manson in a hotel lift together in Berlin, with an eyewitness claiming that the pair were headed to the ‘Antichrist Superstar’ singer’s hotel room.

Now, however, TMZ is romantically linking Del Rey to Rose after they were seen at the Chateau Mormont hotel in Hollywood, before hopping into an SUV and driving off together.

via Lana Del Rey dating Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose? | News | NME.COM.

You know your shit’s arrived when the NYT is blowing it up as something Big, Shiny and New.

EDM ie Electronic Dance Music is the great new flavor of people who enjoy making money from concerts, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. As someone who’s been a fan of such music for more than 20 years, I think I knew the tide was starting to turn when tracks from Moby and Fatboy Slim starting invading television ads back in the late 90s. When Sirius-XM really got rolling and dedicated three channels (BPM, Area and Chill) to the format, that’s probably where the real tide turned.

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This was infuriating – CBS missed the Kansas throw-in that ended the game last night, instead showing a bloody replay. Unlike the story’s contention, this wasn’t a very good game, at least in terms of gameplay – I think playing on a stage (an elevated floor, if you will) is unnecessarily dangerous for the players, and judging by the shooting in both games, more than a tad disorienting as well. The use of an elevated floor wasn’t CBS’s fault, but missing the last play of a Final4 game is all them:

As for CBS, they get no such praise in failure. The network fell victim to the increasing Scorsese-ization of televised sports. Instead of showing a game with normal camera angles, directors are increasingly trying to use their dozens of different perspectives to show the game in a different way. This is why we get disorienting sky-cam shots during the game and obscured views of baseline cams while free throws are being shot. It’s why networks cut to cheering fans after a made basket instead of showing the opponent start the break.

via CBS doesn’t show viewers final seconds of Kansas-Ohio State game | The Dagger: College Basketball Blog – Yahoo! Sports.

William Jacobson has been all over the Rush boycott from the get-go, and it’s not surprising that Rush Limbaugh’s first Tweet made reference to Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection. Rush joined Twitter last week after zero ‘warning’ – he just did it, so to speak. Jacobson goes into detail about the boycott, Rush’s move to Twitter and all other such things related to this story that is so fascinating to many (nope, not just me):

The advertiser boycott of Rush Limbaugh appears to be cracking, and Rush’s move to Twitter has boycott organizers worried.Behind the scenes, anecdotal evidence suggests that advertising either never really was impacted at the local level, or to the extent it was it has returned to normal.

via » Rush move to Twitter has boycott organizers worried – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

In all honesty, I can’t remember the last time I watched Fox News, fwiw:

Fox viewers are routinely depicted as dumb corn-shucking banjo-playing Swamp Caucasians, but a 2007 Pew poll found those who watch The O’Reilly Factor are roughly as informed as those who listen to NPR and watch The Daily Show. A recent Fairleigh Dickinson University study said that Fox viewers in New Jersey were less well-informed about current events than people who watch no news at all.People who watch no news at all? That would be me. And, yes, I’d presume I’m more well-informed than your average Fox viewer, since I’m neither average nor a Fox viewer.

via Argumentum ad Fox Newsem – Takis Magazine.

FWIW, as much as I despise what the Occupy movement was (and is), I would love to audit any number of classes on the movement to see how it was tackled from an academic standpoint – and by audit, I literally mean sit in the back of the class and add nothing, listening to only what professor -and-students had to say:

1) The Higher Education Bubble and Debt Slavery Throughout History. Since ancient times, debt has been a tool used by rulers to enslave the ruled, which is why the Bible explains that the borrower is the slave to the lender. One complaint of many Occupy protesters involves their pursuit of expensive degrees that has left them burdened by student loans but unable to find suitable employment. This unit would compare the marketing of higher education and student debt to today’s students with the techniques used to lure sharecroppers and coal miners into irredeemable indebtedness. Music to be provided by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

via Glenn Reynolds: A Syllabus for the ‘Occupy’ Movement – WSJ.com.

CK posted this on Friday over Grantland, but I’m just now getting around to it. Klosterman is at his best when writing about rock, and he doesn’t disappoint here, just as Van Halen didn’t disappoint at a recent gig. I suspect there’s something meta- about that, but I’m too tired to explain it:

They were really, truly, absolutely incredible. Their 45-minute performance exceeded my expectations, which were unrealistically high to begin with. The musicianship was muscular and impeccable. After Dime Bag Darrell’s funeral and Sammy Hagar’s autobiography, I had a real fear that Eddie Van Halen was going to come across as a stumbling, vomiting, toothless hobbit; in actuality, he was flawless and (seemingly) quite happy. Alex Van Halen was a little restrained owing to the size of the room, but his drumming remained precise and propulsive. Eddie’s son Wolfgang was equally competent on bass and did a remarkable job simulating Michael Anthony’s soaring background vocals, even on songs like “Dance the Night Away.” As a pure power trio, Van Halen has virtually no peers. Robert Christgau once wrote that “this music belongs on an aircraft carrier,” which he meant as a criticism — but for anyone who loves Van Halen, that reality defines the magnitude of their merit. These guys are hydro-electric destroyers. Watching Eddie Van Halen play guitar is like watching the detonation of a nuclear bomb from inside the warhead.

via The Incredibly, Insanely, Undeniably Awesome Return of Van Halen – Hollywood Prospectus Blog.

I’ve been watching this retahded Baylor game, and I missed this? 

…and it goes just as you would expect. Or not. Via Sterreogum.