- Jack White has been very chatty of late. For a rock star
who used to embrace the idea of being mysterious and eccentric and rarely spoke
out, White is now swinging wildly in the opposite direction. He’s offering
opinions on other musicians and a wide array of musical topics and now, he’s
retroactively taking a hatchet to the best musical endeavor he has ever been a
part of. White and ex-wife (or sister, as the two of them tried to claim during
their run as a band) Meg White skyrocketed to commercial popularity in 2001 by
bringing the two-person garage rock aesthetic to the mainstream and became one
of the biggest bands of the decade with songs such as “Fell in Love With a
Girl” and the stadium crowd anthem sweeping the world, “Seven Nation Army.”
They split last year and with about four dozen side projects to keep him busy,
White has cranked out his debut solo album and continued to run his Third Man
Records label while becoming the unofficial voice of rock consciousness by
blasting Lady Gaga and offering thoughts on other issues facing the music industry.
It would have been better for White Stripes fans if he had stayed on that path
because when White zeroed in on his partnership with Meg White and analyzed why
it ended, the analysis wasn’t positive. In his mind, Meg White never shared his
level of enthusiasm during the band’s biggest years. “In The White Stripes, it
was impossible to share the good moments with Meg because she was very
uninterested,” he explained. “If something nice happened, it wasn't like we
would hug or have a drink. That wasn't what went on. We would record a White
Stripes song in the studio and it would be me, Meg and an engineer. So we would
finish a mix of a song and I'd say, 'Wow! That's pretty good!' I'd look around
and Meg would just be sitting there, and the engineer would just be sitting
there. So it'd be sorta like, 'OK... Let's just move on to the next one.'” When
one member of a group feels that way, especially if it’s a two-person outfit,
that can definitely take most of the wind out of the sails…………
- Nothing screams Nobel Peace Prize quite like the three
leaders of a political union with a failing currency brawling over who should
accept the trophy, right? After a battle in Brussels over who was going to
accept the prestigious
peace prize in Oslo on Monday, European Union tri-presidents Herman Van Rompuy,
Jose Manuel Barroso and Martin Schulz received the prize as a group and brought
a fitting end to a year marked by riots in many European capitals and the real
prospect of break up caused by the euro crisis. Ever the politician, Barroso
hailed the EU as "a remarkable journey which is leading us to an 'ever
closer Union.’” He foolishly vowed that the prize was a sign of how united the
ever-fracturing EU is. "Today one of the most visible symbols of our unity
is in everyone's hands. It is the euro, the currency of our European Union. We
will stand by it," he said. Van Rompuy took on the challenge of explaining
how the EU could deserve a peace prize when deepening divisions exist between
the union’s northern and southern members, unemployment is soaring and riots
have taken place in Spain, Portugal and Greece over austerity measures by
Brussels. "The test Europe is currently facing is real," he said.
"We will come out of this together, and stronger." The Nobel Peace
Prize is traditionally collected by one individual laureate in a lavish
ceremony at Oslo’s historic city hall, but this time the three presidents could
not agree on any one of them to represent the group. Curiously, only 20 of the
27 EU leaders showed up for the ceremony and British Prime Minister David
Cameron refused to attend, sending Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in his
stead. Thorbjoern Jagland, the chairman of the Nobel committee which awarded
the prize, explained the choice by saying that Europe had gone from being “a
continent of war to becoming a continent of peace.” Those were Jagland’s words,
while three previous peace prize laureates, including South African Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, criticized the award last week because the EU relies on
"security based on military force and waging wars" rather than
pacifism. A handful of Norwegian peace protesters outside the ceremony sounded
those same concerns to no avail………
- At least he didn’t hire a skywriter. Deer Park, Wash.
resident Loren Lentz was looking to create a special moment for the love of his
life by proposing to her in spectacular fashion. The idea is a noble one and
any guy who really wants to win a woman’s heart knows he has to put all of his
effort and creativity into the proposal because it’s a moment both participants
will remember for the rest of their lives. Lentz, a farmer, decided that he
would use the tools at his disposal to craft a memorable and decidedly redneck
marriage proposal. With a 200-acre field full of weeds that he could use to
send the message, his creative engine revved up. “We had this 200 acre field that was prime, full of weeds,” Lentz
said. “I wanted to do something big.” Using a 27-foot disc on the back of his
plow tractor, Lentz spent an hour and a half plowing a message for his
significant other in this field. Everything was going well….right up to the
point his 10-year-old daughter, who was riding on the tractor with him, noticed
something was wrong. "I get doing the "J" and my 10–year old
daughter is riding with me in the
tractor and she says dad, you did the J– backwards. I said, ‘No I didn't,"’
he insisted. It turned out that his daughter was correct, but by that point
there was to time to fix it. Lentz forged ahead with his plan and after one of
his vehicles was “stolen,” he asked his girlfriend Jody Schaefer to go up in an
airplane with him and a pilot friend to look for it. As the plane neared Deer
Park Airport, Lentz asked Schaefer to take photos of his haystacks. She was peering
through the lens when she saw something unusual. “I pulled it down and sure enough,
there it was. The proposal,” Schaefer said. She turned around and found Lentz,
ring in hand, asking her to marry him. Only after saying yes did she turn
around and notice that something was amiss. Her name was spelled “Lody,” not
Jody. In spite of the misspelled moniker, she decided to stick with her
affirmative response……….
- Out of one of the worst tragedies to hit the NFL or any
other professional sport in a long time, maybe a small amount of good can come.
After Kansas
City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend, 22-year-old Kasandra
Perkins, at their Kansas City home on Dec. 1, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium
and committed suicide in front of Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli and coach
Romeo Crennel, a reported seven NFL players have turned their guns into their
respective team's security. Gun control became a major point of debate after
the incident and while the pushback from fans and media members has inspired
some NFL players to strengthen their pro-gun resolve, at least seven of them
have decided that owning a gun simply is not worth the risk for then. One
player reportedly surrendered multiple guns and informed team security that he
did not trust himself with the firearms. It’s worth noting that Kansas City
police Sgt. Marisa Barnes said last Monday that firearms found at the couple's
home were legally registered to Belcher and the player who have turned in their
guns aren't handing over semi-automatic weapons with the serial numbers filed
off of them. In other words, these are guns that are legally owned, but unwanted
in light of Belcher’s horrible crime. "The majority of people own them,
you know, especially in the places that they're legal," Chiefs linebacker
Brandon Siler said. “People don't go out and shoot other people. Most of the
time they're for self-defense or sport. Yeah, people own guns, but did you ever
hear him say anything about harming someone with a gun? No." Another Chief
took a very different position on the issue and based on defensive tackle Shaun
Smith’s words, he probably was not one of the players who gave up their guns. "Just
because we're in the NFL, that doesn't make us no different," Smith
proclaimed. "You never know when someone would try to rob you or whatever. ... I've worked hard to get
where I am. I'll be damned if I'd let someone just take it away from me,
period." Clearly, not everyone has changed because of this terrible
occurrence………
- If Instagram doesn’t want to play with Twitter, then
Twitter will just come up with a creative photo filter of its own. The popular
online photo-sharing app that allows people to do vital things like show you a
photo of what they had for lunch with a vintage photo filter announced last
week that it
would no longer support Twitter card functionality, which means Instagram
photos will no longer show up on Twitter. Instagram wanted no part of
any continuing partnership with the popular microblogging service and with its
face freshly smacked, Twitter is now rumored to be working on its own photo
filters that could be released through a mobile app update in the next few
weeks. Those same rumors have Twitter aiming to release those filters by the
end of this month so they can be used for the Christmas and New Year’s
holidays, which are predicted to generate heavy photo uploading traffic, as evidenced by
Instagram's record-breaking Thanksgiving performance. Anyone who tries to
Instagram a photo via Twitter these days will find out that their photo shows
up only as a link on their Twitter feed. Multiple reports have the new photo
filters being tested by Twitter employees, including co-founder Jack Dorsey,
who tweeted out a photo that seemed to have some sort of filter on it over the
weekend. All of this is big news because there is no way anyone wants to see a
boring picture of the French toast you’re about to wolf down at the diner on
the way to work unless it has a cool, vintage sepia overlay………..
No comments:
Post a Comment