- There are two potential lenses through which to view
hack-tacular pop singer Lana Del Rey’s career ambitions. On the one hand, her
music is thoroughly terrible and if she wants to move away from cranking out
bad pop albums, that has to be considered a positive. On the other hand, her
aspirations to write for film mean she could potentially set about wrecking an entirely
new industry with her awful spin on mainstream pop. According to the diminutive
songstress, working in the movie industry would be her “happy place” and
that she’s not really comfortable with the life of a pop star. "When I was
starting, I had a vision of being a writer for film and that's what I am doing
now. I'm so happy," said Del Rey, whose real name is the much less glitzy
Lizzie Grant. "Hopefully I will branch into film work and stay there. That
will be my happy place. I'd like to stay in one place for a long time."
Why is she so eager to get into writing movie scores and soundtracks and get
away from Top 40 radio? “I love
to take care of the songs – that's my natural place – then, when I get on stage
that's not my element," she explained. "Sometimes I kneel down
because I am trembling or touch the audience because I don’t know what else to
do. But the nice thing about the kids is that they feel bad for me, and pass me
soft toys.” Trust us, L., we definitely feel bad, but not for you, for the
music you are torturing by attempting to perform it. Maybe children are giving
her toys because they hope she’ll shove them in her mouth and keep the sounds
that are supposed to be singing from coming out. As she debates her career’s
future, three of her new tracks have leaked online and Del Rey has inked a deal
to become a spokesperson for luxury car maker Jaguar. She is also the face of a
new advertising campaign for Swedish fashion brand H&M and had recorded a
music video of her covering Bobby Vinton's 1963 track “Blue Velvet” for the
campaign. If nothing else, Del Rey certainly is cashing in on her 15 minutes
while she can……….
- While the Arab Spring precipitated uprisings across Africa
and the Middle East and the dissident movements in Asia and South America have
been sporadically interesting, it is best not to forget that few do riots quite
like Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army, Sinn Fein and the like have
made Northern Ireland a combustible place for years, but it was Protestant extremists angry over a Belfast
parade by Irish republicans from the Catholic side of the community who livened
up the scene Sunday night. Sunday’s wave of violence came as Irish republicans
paraded near British Protestant districts of north Belfast and the festivities
turned violent enough that police were compelled to don flame-retardant suits,
helmets and shields and spend nine hours standing their ground versus mobs of
masked, hooded Protestants. A group of several hundred rioters hurled bottles,
bricks and fireworks at police lines until early Monday and according to Northern
Ireland police, 47 officers were injured during the overnight clashes. This
particular riot was largely predictable as these sorts of demonstrations in
Northern Ireland, typically by the Protestant side, spark riots every freaking
summer in the country. According to police commander Matt Baggott, his officers
demonstrated "courage and restraint" in dealing with the riots and
judging by the injuries sustained by both sides, that may be true. Only four officers
were hospitalized with more serious injuries and most of the rioters who were
injured in the clashes suffered cuts and bruises, but nothing more. A 17-year-old
boy suspected of being part of the riots was arrested Monday morning and police
are still investigating………
- Don’t tell Chicago
Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher what he can't do. The All-Pro
captain of Chicago’s defense may have undergone
multiple procedures on his left knee that forced him off the practice field for
the entire offseason program and the bulk of training camp, but don’t try to
inform Urlacher that his surgeries mean he can’t play Sunday as the Bears open their
season against the Indianapolis Colts. Urlacher returned to the practice field
on Monday for the first time in over a month after he re-injured the knee a
couple of days into the start of training camp and at a minimum, his head coach
was sufficiently impressed. "He had a good first day back," Bears
coach Lovie Smith said. "He's got to get in shape, I'm sure he'll tell you
that. But we didn't have any trouble with him today so he's right back on
schedule. He did everything we asked him to do. He was one of the guys. You
forgot that he's been out. When we're playing No. 54 has been out there for so
long, today it was just back to the normal routine as much as anything.”
Urlacher did admit that his left knee "isn't the same anymore" and
"will never be the same," but he has no plans of sitting out the
opener. His teammates expressed enthusiasm for having him back and even if he’s
at less than 100 percent physically, the impact on chemistry and confidence by
virtue of him being back on the field should be immense. Last Urlacher was seen
on the field in a regular season game, he sprained the medial collateral and
posterior cruciate ligaments in his left knee during the 2011 regular-season
finale. He underwent an arthroscopic clean-up procedure on Aug. 14 and reportedly
traveled overseas seeking treatment that didn't involve surgery for his injured
knee before having the scope. After having the procedure done, he insisted the
knee “feels much better now” even though he is taking his time getting back
into full-speed practices. When it was suggested that maybe he should wait to
return until the Bears travel to Green Bay on Sept. 13 to make his
regular-season debut, the veteran linebacker was having none of it. "I
don't see why (I would wait)," Urlacher said. "We have a day off
Monday (before the Packers game) and our practices before that game will be
quick anyway.” See you on the field Sunday, B………
- Blessed with a cool acronym for a name, NASA's WISE
(Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) telescope is delivering some smart
results early in its run in outer space. The über-expensive telescope has
uncovered millions of black holes and extreme galaxies across the universe and
NASA has released released images from its mission that reveal millions of
dusty black hole candidates, as well as about 1,000 even dustier objects, which
scientists believe are among the brightest galaxies ever discovered. Those
suspected galaxies have cleverly been nicknamed "hot DOGs," or
dust-obscured galaxies. WISE has exposed a menagerie of hidden objects,"
WISE program scientist Hashima Hasan said in a statement. "We've found an
asteroid dancing ahead of Earth in its orbit, the coldest star-like orbs known
and now, supermassive black hole galaxies hiding behind cloaks of dust."
The WISE mission took on a different slant last year when the telescope put on
its night-vision goggles to twice scan the entire sky with infrared light. That
change led to millions of images that allowed scientists to dig around for new
discoveries and hence, the new images. Daniel Stern, lead author of the WISE
black hole study and member of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, touted the
capabilities of the combined work between the WISE telescope and the Nuclear
Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which provides a new look at their
high-energy X-ray light. NASA launched the NuSTAR in mid-June for a quest
filled with black-hole hunting relying on a telescope that can see the hottest,
densest, most energetic objects. In one single case, the device allowed astronomers
to identify about 2.5 million actively feeding supermassive black holes,
reaching more than 10 billion light-years away. WISE sees their warm dust
glowing in infrared light, which makes for some sensational images as well as a
lot of excitement in the scientific world. At its outset, the WISE mission’s
purpose was centered on finding the brightest galaxies ever known. To that end,
it appears to have been successful. To find the DOGs, which emit more than 100
trillion times as much light as the sun, NASA had to try a different approach because
DOGs are so dusty that they appear only in the longest wavelengths of infrared
captured by WISE. "We may be seeing a new, rare phase in the evolution of
galaxies," said Jingwen Wu, a WISE project scientist at JPL Peter
Eisenhardt. Three journal articles have been published on the project and more
are likely on the way………
- If you host it, they will come. By “it,” of course, take
that to mean a major political convention and “they” to mean kooks looking to
gravy train the buzz from the convention to shine a spotlight on their cause of
choice. As the
Democratic National Convention fires up this week in Charlotte, N.C., the kooks
are already out in force and about 800 of them showed up in Charlotte’s
financial district Sunday chanting and carrying signs with slogans like, "Banks
got bailed out. We got sold out." That might seem like a few losers
lagging well behind the pace after the Occupy movement trumpeted those concerns
last year and staged camp-ins at parks across America, but the sad sight of
less than 1,000 protestors trudging through Charlotte’s central business
district in ahead of the convention to protest what they deemed the seedy
corporate influence on politics had a certain grassroots charm to it.
Protestors came from across the country, posse-ed up at Frazier Park for a
round of speeches and then began their march through town. A collection of more
than 80 local and national groups made up the march and the groups handed out
promotional materials hailing their mission as "building peoples' power
during the DNC.” There was a heavy union presence at the march, along with a
smattering of anti-war veterans and undocumented immigrants. Rocking
anti-business signs with messages like "Capitalism is holding back the human race" and "Bail
out people, not banks," these 800 disgruntled souls tried to make their
voice heard before they were instantly forgotten the instant their march ended
and their little coalition of angry souls dissolved………
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