- Any good punk rock band has to hate authority and enjoy
raging against The Man, right? London band Palma
Violets understand that principle well and showed it when they were allegedly
involved in a scuffle with police following their gig in Liverpool Wednesday
night. The band played the Leaf venue along with fellow newcomers Savages earlier in the evening and ran
afoul of the local constabulary after breaking into the George Irvin Helter
Skelter slide in the city center shortly after midnight. The venue was closed
to members of the public at the time and was surrounded by fences to stop
people getting in. That should obviously never stop anyone looking to have a
good time and it didn’t stop Palma Violets, who jumped the fence and climbed to
the top of the 70-foot structure. Unfortunately, being 70 feet off the ground
makes one extremely visible and law enforcement and the band apparently found
themselves surrounded by police before being taken off for questioning. They
were later released and a spokesperson from the band's record label, Rough
Trade, confirmed that the rest of their co-headline tour with Savages is going
ahead as planned. For those behind on their Liverpool geography, George Irvin's
Helter Skelter was the center piece of the Queen's coronation party in
Manchester in 1953 and was re-erected in Liverpool in 2010. Jumping fences and
sneaking into closed spaces and venues is not exactly brawling with the cops,
but most punk rock fans and empathize with the desire to do so and it has a
definite punk rock aesthetic to it. As for the tour, it most on to Glasgow,
Newcastle, Leeds, Nottingham and beyond………..
- Cries of censorship have been raised in Manhattan, where
police have painted over a
controversial new mural. The artist who painted the mural wants an explanation
for why his politically-minded work of art pained on the north side of 4979
Broadway is now a long, black expanse with specks of bright colors peeking out
from behind the black cover paint. Artist Alan Ket pained six-foot-tall red and
white letters spelling out "Murderers" along with about two dozen
coffins in different shapes, sizes and colors, with the names of various
entities the artist felt fit the deadly description painted on the coffins. Ket
used the NYPD, Monsanto, Halliburton, the EPA, TV and other corporate,
government and cultural institutions as his targets on the massive piece of art
and explained his thinking without pulling punches. "The NYPD has murdered
people," Ket said. "Ramarley Graham, that's one of them. I have a
list -- Sean Bell, Amidou
Diallo..." Diallo was the man famously shot in an apartment building
stairwell when officers thought they saw him reaching for a gun, only to learn
after killing him that he was reaching for his wallet to show them his
identification. Ket paints a new mural on the wall of the same single-story
building, which houses New Edition Dry Cleaner, every three months or so. He’s
not painting graffiti in an unwelcome place because he has had an agreement with the business's owners for the last six
years to display his art on their wall. However, just four days after he painted
the "Murderers" mural, NYPD officers painted over it with black paint.
"I feel insulted," said Ket, who lives a few blocks away from the
location from which his art was removed. "How they can have the audacity
and come into a community and censor art that's done by the citizens of the
community? The Curet Family, which owns New Edition Cleaners, said police
“asked” to paint over the mural before doing so, but claimed the request didn’t
sound like a request, if you follow. Ket still believes his mural has a message
despite the blatant censorship of the NYPD. "It's something to spark
debate, some dialogue among young people," he said…………
- Every season, an NFL team that was below .500 and not very
good the previous season comes from nowhere and makes the playoffs with an
impressive turnaround season. Carolina Panthers sixth-year center Ryan
Kalil is expecting his team, which was 6-10 last year, to be that squad in
2012. The three-time Pro Bowler is so confident that he bought a full-page ad
in the Charlotte Observer on Wednesday, telling Panthers fans their "unwavering
support" would be rewarded this year. Not only does Kalil believe the
team, which improved drastically on offense last season behind dynamic rookie
quarterback Cam Newton, will be better, he has a guarantee of how much better
they will be. "One hundred-percent, sterling silver victory. The Lombardi
Trophy," the ad boasted. The 178-word open letter, called "a war cry
to fans," contained the bold message: CAROLINA PANTHERS -- SUPER BOWL
XLVII CHAMPIONS! None of his teammates saw the ad coming, literally, because he
didn't tell anyone about it for fear of being talked out of it. "Every
team says it every year, whether it's publicly or not," Kalil explained. We've
said it in the past in meeting rooms and behind closed doors. This year's
different. There's a sense of urgency, a winning attitude that I haven't seen
before. And it's in the way we prepare. It's in the way we approach each
workday, and I think fans will see it in the way that we play." At least
publicly, his head coach likes Kalil's boldness. Second-year coach Ron Rivera
applauded the confident words when asked about them. "Good," Rivera
said. "Because if we don't have 53 guys with that attitude in our locker
room right now, then we gotta find the guys that want it. We don't know what's
going to happen.” For Kalil’s sake, hopefully the guarantee works out better
than Vince Young’s words last preseason, when he labeled the Philadelphia
Eagles a "Dream Team" and they missed the playoffs with an 8-8 record…………
- Television is about to go Google in at least one city. On
Thursday, the search giant said in a live announcement that neighborhoods in Kansas City that rally
the most interest will be the first to get hooked up to Google’s fiber-optic
lines, which the company says will offer 1 gigabit-per-second downloads and
uploads. It will bring them not just super-fast internet but full-featured
cable-style TV service and is the first high-speed citywide network built by
Google. It is reportedly 100 times faster than the typical broadband
connections now in most U.S. homes. This type of system allows Google to compete
directly with cable and satellite TV companies and for $120 per month for both
TV and Internet service, customers will get a set-top box that delivers tens of
thousands of on-demand movies and shows. The service also comes with Google’s
Nexus 7 tablet, which will serve as the set-top box’s remote. Kansas City,
Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, won the battle against 1,100 other cities to
become the testing grounds or Google’s first big venture into building and
owning the physical network consumers use to access the Internet. The project,
known as Google Fiber, is only a trial run and cable titans like Adelphia and
Time Warner probably don’t have anything to worry about just yet. However, a
leaked photo earlier this month allegedly snapped inside Time Warner Cable’s
Kansas City office of a placard promising $50 gift cards to employees for tips
on Google’s progress and plans suggests there may be some concern. In constructing
its Kansas City network, Google has become what’s known as an “overbuilder” by
installing its own wires over existing cable and telecom infrastructure.
Experts doubt the practice is financially feasible on a national scale, but
with 75 percent of U.S. homes having a broadband connection and 87 percent
having a multi-channel video service, which includes both cable and satellite,
it is a fight worth fighting. If Google delivers the promised 1
gigabit-per-second connections throughout Kansas City, the interest level in
Google Fiber could surge……….
- Visitors to the Taru
Jurug Zoo in the Indonesian town of Solo should be ashamed of themselves.
Because these ass hats simply cannot stop themselves from throwing cigarettes
into the orangutan cage at the zoo, zookeepers have been forced to move female
orangutan Tori and her male companion, Didik, to a small island within the zoo
to help Tori kick her smoking habit. She will now be housed out of visitors'
sight so they can no longer chuck cancer sticks to her and watch with bizarre
glee as she takes a few puffs and drastically ups her chances for lung cancer
and emphysema in the process. Tori is one of four endangered orangutans at the
zoo in the Central Java region of Indonesia and the 15-year-old orangutan has
been smoking for a decade. She mimics humans by holding cigarettes casually
between her fingers while visitors watch and photograph her puffing away and
flicking ashes on the ground. Nothing impresses your family and friends more
than showing them pictures from your trip to the zoo when you were able to snap
an unsuspecting primate engaging in a deadly habit. Even though zoo spokesman
Daniek Hendarto said recent medical tests show the four primates are in good
condition, the two other orangutans will be moved later to another island so
visitors don’t try to hook them on death sticks to get their orangutan smoking
fix……….
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