Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor
Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.
There will be no Quizzlet this week, out of respect and condolence for the citizens of London, England. My thoughts and prayers are with you during this very trying time. Please pray for me so that I don’t have a stressful weekend thinking of the London terrorist attacks, even though I am 3 thousand miles away in Boston. Or accidentally walk past a barber shop and hear an Omarion record.
And I thought I was narcissistic. Flash-in-the-pan R&B singer/actor/dancer Omarion was still in London after Live 8 during the bombings yesterday, so he did what any sensitive man-of-the-people would do – he asked his fans to pray for him. He wasn’t in any danger or even the vicinity of any of the blasts, nor did he mention any of the dead in his statement to his fans. I can’t really do this clown justice so please just read it for yourself. I have Star Wars figures that are 5 years older than this self-absorbed little breakdancing shite:
“Omarion was in London during the tragic bombings that struck this morning,” a statement by the singer’s publicist said. Making no mention of the fatalities or casualties of the blasts, the singer’s statement concluded, “He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home. He appreciates your support.”
Today, in fairly typical big-mouthed egotistical “star” fashion, his web-site is engaged in a damage control scramble featuring the title “Omarion Story On Reuters A Hoax”. Now I ask you, what do you think is more likely? The fact that this priviliged clown opened his fat mouth without thinking, or that Reuters is involved in an elaborate scheme to make him look like more of a simpleton than he manages all by himself? When will the man stop keeping Omarion down, yo?
Stay tuned for his next starring Hollywood role in “London Got Served“.
A fan of Pye In The Face asked me tonight if I was considering adding an RSS feed. If you have no idea what that is, please have a look here for some quick learnin’ – as they are about to change civilization as we know it. I told him I’d actually already added Really Simple Syndication, and that it was available at the far right of the top menu. You can also click here for the same effect.
Now – what in the heck is it, and how does it relate to you? Simply put, it’s a way of tailoring information from your favorite news outlets, blogs, whatever – so it will all appear in one place. This location may be a feed reader program, a web browser, your own website and the list goes on. You can add them to personal portals like My Yahoo and even have them pumped stright into your Outlook daily overview. Vesatility and convenience the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Butter Speed Stick.
“After the initial shock of stumbling over the truth, what will Britain do? Go back to the Bob Geldof agenda or avenge her dead?”
I checked Al-Jazeera West (CNN) before I left for work this morning and already knew what had happened in the Big Smoke by the time I’d stumbled upon the Park Street T stop evacuation. I should start carrying my camera with me during my walks to work – I come across crazy scenes almost every day during my pedestrian travels. And by ‘crazy scenes’ I of course mean VPLs.
On Tremont Street people were spilling out of the two kiosks and being shepherded onto waiting buses by frantic T employees in bright orange vests. Some displaced commuters headed straight for the Commons instead – unsure of what was going on and visibly confused. State police and city cops were everywhere, and for a moment I thought “Oh no, the Red Line has been hit with a bomb too. Did I remember to turn the lightswitch off and on exactly 37 times before I left the apartment?” The only thing scarier than Al Qaeda is an OCD.
In case you spent the first half of today with your head in the laundry sink, the non-existent terrorist threat didn’t blow up three Underground tube stops and a double-decker bus or kill over 50 people during rush hour in downton London, England. That was some other guy. But regardless, it happened – and if you’re one of my Londoner friends, email a brutha so I know you’re safe. The official death toll is currently hovering at 37 – but that’ll undoubtedly shoot up quite a bit. The Qaedlings obviously chose today carefully – with Blair, Bush and Putin in Scotland for the G8, and the 2012 Olympic bid news announced only yesterday. Why rain on a parade when you can blow it to kingdom frig?
“At dusk, hundreds of thousands of Londoners began a long walk home, with the underground network that carries 3 million passengers a day closed at least until Friday. Thomas Carr, a 63-year-old electrician who faced a two-hour walk home, said he would keep using the underground. “It won’t put me off using the Tube,” he said. “You can’t let them beat you.”
I wish only the best for the people of London, and the penultimate worst for the animals responsible. Regardless of where you stand on the politics, today was a sad reminder that we’re nowhere near out of the dune yet.
When I was a youth, beer acquisition was always at the forefront of my mind. Who has a fake ID, whose older brother is home from college, will Dad notice a few Coors Extra Darks missing, etc. But with the exception of the usual teen-stupidity-induced boozy backwoods car ride, or alcohol-fueled altercation, I was never willing to risk life and limb for a lager. In some parts of the world, however, the value of human life takes a definite backseat to the bitter.
“Alcohol has been banned in two small Australian Aboriginal communities to stop young people from a nearby alcohol-free township from risking their lives by swimming a crocodile-infested river to get a drink.”
You’ve got to admire their drunken spunk. And I’m no authority on the Australian Outback as I personally never got further inland than the Blue Mountains. Maybe it’s miserable. Maybe a crate of Victoria Bitter is worth a wooden leg. Maybe the poor Aborigines in that town have a busted TV set that playes nothing but Neighbors, Kylie Minogue Videos and the new INXS reality show. Go nuts, guys.
