True to their word, The Hood Internet released their latest mixtape on Tuesday, The Hood Internet vs Chicago. True to the album’s name, The Hood only samples from Chicago-based artists on this release, taking bits and pieces from big acts like Wilco, Kanye West, and Liz Phair in addition to small acts like Yea Big, Kid Sister and Juice. Its a hit, without a doubt. If you have some Chicago pride to rep, download this. If you like mashup mixtapes, download this. If you don’t like yourself very much right now, download this. Fyi, follow the link above to download this. Lupe is there too.
Oscar Award-winning director Sydney Pollack died of cancer on Monday, at the age of 73.
While he is obviously most known for his directing efforts (Out of Africa, Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor), Pollack was an underrated actor, who I always found entertaining and funny. Always nailed the role of the Jewish New Yorker to a tee, especially with the deadpan humor. Below is a video from one of his more funny acting sequences, from Tootsie. I really wanted to post a video of his great acting performance from my favorite movie from ‘07, Michael Clayton, but I could not find the specific scene I wanted.
Sometimes you read a news story and you think to yourself, this is just too unbelievable to be true. I wrote about this subject just a few weeks ago. The sad part is that many of these stories are about a person’s death. In this case ex-pitcher Geremi Gonzalez was killed in his native Venezuela when he was struck by lightning. In case you were wondering the odds of being struck by lightning are 576,000 to 1, and the odds of being killed by lightning are 2,320,000 to 1, so this isn’t something that happens every day. This is might just be the worst case of luck in history.
I haven’t put up a music video in a while and recently Kanye West released a 2nd one for his single “Flashing Lights”. The original version was somewhat odd as it depicted a woman in lingerie slowly walking through the desert toward her Mustang. When she gets there we find out that she has Kanye bound and gagged in the trunk and that she’s planing on burying him out in the middle of nowhere. The second video for his song is a bit more conventional but, for me, much cooler to watch. I’m not sure what you call it but the video moves through time along with the beat of the music. Stop animation, herky jerky filmation, skippitty skop? Whatever it is, it looks cool.
Kanye West “Flashing Lights” – 2nd Official Release
Kanye West “Flashing Lights” – 1st Official Release
On Friday, New York Governor David Paterson granted a full and unconditional pardon for Ricky “Slick Rick” Walters, which will allow the rap pioneer to avoid deportation back to his native United Kingdom.
Anthony brought up Hillary Clinton’s unfortunate comments regarding Robert Kennedy’s assassination earlier today, and already she is backtracking. What’s amazing about the article on cnn.com is that the writer’s don’t even mention that her comments insinuate that Obama could be assassinated in this election. Clearly that’s what made her comment offensive, the fact that she decided to bring up an assassination as an example for why she should still be running at this point. I guess Hillary didn’t learn anything from Mike Huckabee.
The NY Times gives a much better analysis of Clinton’s blunder. Which again proves that CNN is a sham media organization when compared to the NY Times and other respectable newspapers.
Ok, so Hillary did not bluntly say she was hoping for a tragedy to befall Barack Obama, but the allusion to such an event is clearly made in her latest explanation for why she remains in the Primary Race, even as her chances of winning appear all but none.
Here is the key quote:
“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.” –Hillary Clinton, 5/23/08. (more…)
Anthony has been calling me out by saying that I’m being lazy with posting articles and not giving any analysis. So I guess I’ll have to rant a bit on this discovery that the U.S. military wasted $8.1 billion in taxpayer money by ignoring federal rules and doling out contracts without out any checking to see if they had even recieived the service they were paying for. This revelation doesn’t really surprise me. I mean when you hear stories of soldiers being given millions of dollar in cash to pay for things, you expect a few dollars to go unaccounted for. I’ll save more ranting for after the jump.
Going to Pitt, Joe Paterno was always derided as the head coach of our in-state rival. Nevermind that he’s a great coach who seems really invested in his players. He was the head coach of Penn State football and that meant I had to hate him. But since graduating I’ve let my inner appreciation for JoePa shine through. And after reading that Paterno wants a playoff in college football, how can you not love the guy? Here’s a guy who is well respected in his sport calling the reasons for keeping the BCS “bogus”. My cohort Anthony will be happy to hear that somebody our there agrees with him. Paterno even mentions how the excuse of football players missing too many classes as a result of playoffs is rediculous because basketball goes on twice as long and nobody seems to mind. A playoff would generate more money for the NCAA and schools, generate more interest and actually pick a national champion that nobody could argue against. And the argument that a playoff somehow minimizes the importance of the regular season is insane. Look at the NFL. People get excited for Week 4 matchups in the NFL, so why not College Football, which has a shorter season anyway. The fact that football is only once a week means that people will be excited to watch each weekend even with a playoff at the end of the season. I’m just happy somebody out there has the cojones to call out the BCS and their B.S. excuses.
Though not known for its financial coverage, The New Yorker contributes a very simple and insightful article this week arguing that free trade agreements actually benefit low and middle-class Americans a great deal due to the cheap products that are made available through foreign production. The article acknowledges that free trade does send low and middle class jobs overseas, leaving some Americans unemployed, but argues that the low production costs overseas allow these same Americans to purchase everything they need at big box retailers, like Wal-Mart, at relatively cheap prices. If America changed its trade policy to protect domestic jobs and produced more goods here, it is a certainty that costs of production would rise and retail prices would rise as well, undermining the gains made in employment numbers.
