Album Review: All Of The 80's Music You Hated Loving

Redux: The new Scissor Sisters album is inspired madness. I never hated/loved the 80's so much/more.

It's like listening to Sirius XM's 1st Wave channel but not recognizing the songs; it's a Prince album before he went all Jehovah's Witness. It's when gay was straight, but totally gay.

The Scissor Sisters have their first totally great album.

Happy Gay Pride 2

We're Still National Champions

Your gods demand tears for your epic fail!

Just in case you forgot, the Crimson Tide is still the National Champions.

Raven AND Nina AND Pandora Boxx AND Ongina

RuPaul's Drag U will start July 16. All my favorite bitches from the first two seasons will be competing, so watch out.



Nina Flowers should have won the first season, and Raven should have won the second. Most of the others were serious contenders from both seasons.

Drag queens taking tragic women and remaking them is, quite possibly, the most brilliant idea for a show since Top Chef. Or RuPaul's Drag Race.

Uh-oh

The US Navy is massing warships, including the nuclear carriers Eisenhower and Truman, near Iran.

This confluence of warships may only be a transfer; but given the G8's condemnation and Israel's naval positioning and alleged pre-basings, I am concerned.

Unless we (and by we, I mean NATO, Israel, and those Gulf allies who want to remain nameless) have special ops and civilian intelligence in place to do the dirty work that smart bombs can't, any preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear centrifuges could be a disaster.

Or, it all could be nothing: a show of force whose political implications will be, in my opinion, nothing but stupid. Bombastic, insincere bullying should be left with the previous administration's 2nd-term failures. And sincere, not-thought-out military actions should be left to its 1st-term debacles. We should not lend our support to such wearying, unproductive nonsense now: all military actions should be approved by Congress (per our constitution).

Either bomb them right or get away. Doing either would make Obama demonstrably better than Bush the Younger.

I Found It!

When I was in Chicago last year, I was on a bus tour with my parents (against my protestations). And I saw, 2 streets off where we were driven, a building that warmed by mind.


By accident, I happened upon what it was. It's called The Contemporaine; and it won multiple awards. It's a residential building, which makes me both happy and ill. Why are such buildings so rare?

Happy Gay Pride

Best. Camp. Scene. Ever.*




*not directed by John Waters

I [Heart] Pandora Boxx

I was a huge Raven fan for Ru Paul's Drag Race season 2 (the best contest reality show filming). But I loved Pandora Boxx a whole lot, as she was a great showgirl and comedienne.

Case in point: this inspired nugget (give it until about 1:18):



That bitch is fucking comedy genius.

Gay Fun Alert: New Scissor Sisters Album

Not for everyone...and barely for me: the (mostly) fun-as-hell gay campy-rock, retro-disco Scissor Sisters will have a new album out June 28. Their last one came out in 2006, and I enjoyed it kinda a lot but not totally. Like their first album, it had great songs peppered amongst some forgettable just-ok songs.

But it's good to see the gays taking back their rock/disco/new-wave musical birthright. And if nothing else, the Scissor Sisters do that.

From their first album:



From their second:



And, their best song ever:


_________________________________________________

From their new album:

Epic Gods Fail

Chicago experienced an amazing storm this week, and the photos prove that all the gods failed.

Sometimes, a photographer goes out in search of a good photo--and, because of unforeseen circumstances, he comes back with a great photo, one that gets displayed all over the world.

And so it was last night as Tribune photographer Chris Sweda headed to the John Hancock Center skydeck to snap a few shots of the official debut of the Trump Tower spire--and a supercharged storm broke over Chicago.

Chris got the assigned shots as the spire turned from red to blue to white (below), but he got something much more powerful: A rare shot of lightning bolts simultaneously striking the Trump Tower and the Willis Tower (above).

A safe vantage point?

What Chris Sweda didn't capture is this: lightning also struck the building he was in, the elegant John Hancock Center (my favorite skyscraper ever). And at the same time.

But someone west of Chicago caught the whole thing on video.

Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.

Compare this to the Epic Gods Win posted a few days ago, and I think it's safe to say that the gods are total crap.

Mitchell!

Watched MST3K's "Mitchell" with Mendez last night. Until we couldn't take any more/stay awake. "Eye of the Sammich"

Penn Gilette. I love that guy.

Penn Jillette Is Willing to Be a Guest on Adolf Hitler's Talk Show

It's not just us.

Beware Manos, the Sequel of Fate

One of the funniest, geekiest things I have ever read.

S H O R T I M A G I N E D
M O N O L O G U E S .

- - - -
I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.
BY MIKE LACHER

- - - -

Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.

You don't like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don't like that I'm all over your sister-in-law's blog? You don't like that I'm on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I'm pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can't all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I'm standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once.

People love me. Why? Because I'm fun. I'm the life of the party. I bring levity to any situation. Need to soften the blow of a harsh message about restroom etiquette? SLAM. There I am. Need to spice up the directions to your graduation party? WHAM. There again. Need to convey your fun-loving, approachable nature on your business' website? SMACK. Like daffodils in motherfucking spring.

When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I'm banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I'm shredding Reign In Blood on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I'm racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who'll kill me if I don't cross the finish line first. I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.

It doesn't even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I'm famous. I am on every major operating system since Microsoft fucking Bob. I'm in your signs. I'm in your browsers. I'm in your instant messengers. I'm not just a font. I am a force of motherfucking nature and I will not rest until every uptight armchair typographer cock-hat like you is surrounded by my lovable, comic-book inspired, sans-serif badassery.

Enough of this bullshit. I'm gonna go get hammered with Papyrus.

The Lord has spoken

6-story Jesus statue in Ohio struck by lightning

MONROE, Ohio -- A six-story-tall statue of Jesus Christ with his arms raised along a highway was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm Monday night and burned to the ground, police said.

Moon Has 100 Times More Water, New Study Suggests

The moon's interior may harbor 100 times more water than previous estimates, according to a new study that took a fresh look at samples of moon rocks collected by Apollo astronauts nearly 40 years ago.

I Double [Heart] Tim Minchin

Storm The Movie

And still too funny to ignore:



I wish he were gay so I could make him my husband.

It's Not Just Evolution They Want To Dismiss

David Barton is a Christian fundamentalist tool. He has no history bone fides, but he was lauded as a serious history scholar by the Texas Board of Education. He justifies his theocratic notions by waving around a letter by John Adams that he says proves that said Founder believed that the Holy Spirit supported...nay wrote...the Constitution. As John Adams was a Unitarian, such a supposition should be immediately and logically dismissed.

Glen Beck, however...

No, Mr. Beck, John Adams Did Not Think Governments Must be Administered by the Holy Ghost from Chris Rodda on Vimeo.

Distrust anything you hear from Fox News: they are all the infections that the sun sucks up.

Justin Bond Is A Genius

I Miss My Uncle Lowell

Pink, with her father, on the Vietnam war.



Let's pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan now so that fewer have to bear this pain. We have means of responding to 9/11 and other attacks that don't involve the needless slaughter of devoted and admirable young men and women.

My uncle died of cancer that can be traced back to Vietnam. The stories he told me are immeasurably horrifying, and they weigh on my conscience every day.

He would have been the first to accept me as a homo, and I miss him so much...

Time to get out, and time to figure out a way to not need them.

Toxic Avenger The Musical Mk 2

"There's only thing I need to make this happen..."

So Memphis won the Tony for best new musical play. Green Day lost, but they were all over the awards like aggressive herpes. But really, who cares?

I didn't, until I found out this: the music for this who-the-fuck cares Memphis musical was written by Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan. Again, so what?

But David Bryan has stated that he wants to move Toxic Avenger: The Musical from off-Broadway to Broadway, with his revisions and money.


As a fan of the original of Toxic Avenger: The Musical's original cast recording, that is fucking awesome. It could use some touching up, for sure; but a Tony-winning name behind the touch-ups stains my pants.

George, finish the book.

Winter Is Coming

Best...Video...Ever...Seriously...

Rufus Wainwright's Across The Universe:

Much-needed Fun

Our coastline is going to be dead soon. So we need shadenfreude now more than ever!

Much-needed Fun

From Toxic Avenger: The Musical; our response to BP.

Movie Review: The Human Centipede

"And I'm so fucking beautiful I can't stand it myself! Now, everybody freeze! Who wants to be famous? Who wants to DIE for art?"

I admit that I had to get pretty lit in order to watch this film. But even if I hadn't, my review stands:

Hands down, the best John Waters film never made by John Waters.

Like any movie by alpha-horror-homo Clive Barker: take any cut from the film and it will make you queasy to the brink of spitting up. But watch the whole thing, and you are rooting for the Cenobites. Or, in this case, Doctor Heiter: a campy, over-the-top version of the campy, over-the-top villain of Christoph Walz's Col. Landa.

It's brilliant, severed-tongue-in-flayed-ass-cheek, expressionist sickness, like Andy Warhol's Flesh for Frankenstein or John Waters' Pink Flamingo.

That Crazy Steve

Stephen Hawking in an interview with Diane Sawyer.

When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

These People...

Redstone SF: Twice in a Week

Our online magazine, Redstone Science Fiction, has had a great week and is back in the SF news on io9 again, this time about our writing contest - "Towards An Accessible Future" that draws on Sarah Einstein's essay in RSF. We expected things to go well, but this is has far exceeded our expectations.

Welcome to the future

In New Space Race, Enter the Entrepreneurs

Four years from now, the company plans for real modules to be launched and assembled into the solar system’s first private space station. Paying customers — primarily nations that do not have the money or expertise to build a space program from scratch — would arrive a year later.

IN THE FUTURE Prototypes of Bigelow Aerospace’s Sundancer habitat, which has an inflated volume of 180 cubic meters, at a hangar in North Las Vegas.

There's Always the Sun

As the Sun Awakens, NASA Keeps a Wary Eye on Space Weather

I believe we're on the threshold of a new era in which space weather can be as influential in our daily lives as ordinary terrestrial weather.

--Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division

Laugh at my weeds now, smarties

From Reason:
Selling Free Food
Entrepreneurial foraging is the next phase of greener-than-thou eating

--------------------------------

Stinging Nettle Soup
allrecipes.com

Ingredients

* 1 pound stinging nettles
* 2 teaspoons salt
* 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
* 1 white onion, diced
* 1/4 cup basmati rice
* 4 cups chicken broth
* salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil with 2 teaspoons of salt. Drop in the stinging nettles, and cook 1 to 2 minutes until they soften. This will remove most of the sting. Drain in a colander, and rinse with cold water. Trim off any tough stems, then chop coarsely.
2. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium-low heat, and stir in the onion. Cook until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the rice, chicken broth, and chopped nettles. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the rice is tender, about 15 minutes. Puree the soup with an immersion blender, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Full-Time Hobby

Redstone Science Fiction is up and running.

We have a good first issue, with a lot of our Mallet friends participating and we are quite pleased.

An interview with editor Lou Anders was picked up by io9!

(Now begins the campaign for work from Tobermory & Clyde for issue #2!)

Oh...My...Jefferson...

Read this: the commencement speech of a high school valedictorian after he (with the ACLU) fought and won a case prohibiting prayer at the ceremony.