Flavor Flav goes head to head with Colonel Sanders and opens ‘Flav’s Fried Chicken’ in Iowa

Just when you thought that Flavor Flav ‘s foray into the reality TV world with ‘Flavor of Love’, was about the peak of personal branding gone horribly wrong, Flav has come up with new idea that not only tops it but jumps all over it and kicks it out the back door. You guessed it, um maybe not, Flav has gone into the fried chicken business! Of course the transition from rap royalty to reality show star to fried chicken store owner seemed like a natural progression for Flav. However, for the rest of us who may have experienced the wincing awkwardness of  any of  ‘Flavor of Love’s’ episodes, it is just another bizarre step in the living caricature that is the life of Flavor Flav’s. According to Billboard Flav has at some stage gained a culinary degree and has restaurant experience. Perhaps he has worked the fryers before and knows the Colonel’s secret recipe. Whatever the case, you can get it while it’s hot and dripping in fat at Flav’s Fried Chicken opening Monday in Clinton, Iowa.

Sony pulls the plug on the iconic Walkman

The first Walkman went on sale back in 1979 and inspired a generation of portable music devices. However Sony has finally decided to put an end to production of the product, except for a small amount in China. Seriously though, I kind of assumed they stop making them years ago. Can you even buy cassettes anymore? How about cassingles? I have owned a couple of Walkmans in my time and to me it was all about the sports model. Maybe it was that sturdy looking chunk of a body that would instantly drag your pants to the ground if you tried to use the belt clip, or maybe it was the super cool bright canary yellow colour or maybe it was even the anti-shock mechanism that would supposedly stop the tape jumping while you were running with the Walkman, while holding onto your pants so they wouldn’t fall down. Either way all that is gone now, RIP Walkman.

Bing Brings You Jay-Z’s Life ‘Decoded’

According to Mashable, Jay Z fans will be able to read pages from his new book, Decoded, this week. The book is not set to hit the shelves for another month, but fans will be able to find the pages in different locations on Bing, which will directly relate to the content from the book.

“Pages will be placed in locations related to the content, so that’s everything from high profile advertising like billboards to very very unique placements such as swimming pools and pool tables, and even high-fashion designer clothing racks,” says Lisa Gurry, a Bing spokeswoman and communications director.

This interactive marketing campaign was designed by creative agency Droga5 in conjunction with Bing and if sucessful, we could definitely see more of the same. Interestingly enough it looks like Bing is leveraging of Jay Z’s poularity to market itself as it struggles against Google for market share.

Read the full article here.

Source: Mashable

Dear Weezer, I loathe you and will pay you $10M to break up

 

 

 Bands often annoy me so much I subject my girlfriend (lucky her) to mindless rant about their utter uselessness, proclaiming how they are a waste of oxygen and how I live in hope of the day when they have a fight over ‘creative differences’ and go their seperate ways. But you can’t really do anything about it, can you?

James Burns from Seattle disagrees. He hates the band Weezer on levels which in comparison put the Nazis and Jews on the mere frenemies level and make the Klu Klux and African Americans seem positively buddy, buddy.  He has come up with a scheme to end the daily agony he is put through by the bands mere exisitance by proposing that if the 852,000 people who purchsed Weezer’s album ‘Pinkerton’ were to donate $12 each, the he could offer the band $10M to break up and never be heard of again. So who is in?

Read James’ rant below and the full story at The Stranger.

“I have never been a fan of this band. I think that they are pretty much horrible, and always have been. Even in the early 90’s.

But this isn’t about me. This is about the Weezer fans. They are our brothers and sisters, our friends, our lovers.

Every year, Rivers Cuomo swears that he’s changed, and that their new album is the best thing that he’s done since “Pinkerton,” and what happens? Another pile of crap like “Beverly Hills” or “I’m Your Daddy.”

This is an abusive relationship, and it needs to stop now.

I am tired of my friends being disappointed year after year.I am tired of endless whimsical cutesy album covers and music videos.

I’m sick of hearing about whatever this terrible (and yes, even if you like the early stuff, you should be able to admit that they are wretched now) excuse for a band is up to these days.

If all 852,000 of you (really?) who bought “Pinkerton” pitch in $12, we will meet our goal.

I beg you, Weezer. Take our money and disappear”

Source: The Stranger

Watch the new Ski Beatz video for ‘Cream of the Planet’ feat Mos Def

Really liking the production sounds on this one and Mos Def rides it as only he can. This is just one track of the upcoming Ski Beatz debut solo album ’24 Hour Karate School’ which will also feature some other great MC’s like Jean Grae and Jay Electronica as well as Cool Kids and Wiz Khalifa. Posted below is a visual mixtape promo for the upcoming release which also looks pretty damn cool as well.

Source: Hypetrak

Listen to Lauryn Hill’s new track ‘Repercussions’

Is she back? If so can we expect a Miseducation II or Unplugged revisted, hopefully not the latter. Either way there is a new track out there for you to listen to.

Source: Hypetrak

Photo of the Day

If you are not aware of the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico then you have been living under a very large rock. This is one of the largest ecological disasters the world has seen and worse yet, it is still happening. This horrific picture of a bird struggling through the oil slick goes someway towards illustrating the tip of this disasterous ice berg. See the full set here courtesy of the Big Picture.

Photography from the late Dennis Hopper

This week saw the passing of the enigmatic actor and director, Dennis Hopper. Hopper first burst onto our screens alongside James Dean in the 1955 classic ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ and then the following year with ‘Giant’. He went on to to gain critical acclaim as a director and co-writer for the 1969 Peter Fonda film ‘Easy Rider’, in which he and Fonda also starred. He went on to make many other appearances, both as an actor and director, in significant films including ‘Apocalypse Now’ and the man who was perhaps the real ‘rebel without a cause’, will no doubt be missed. What you perhaps did not know about Dennis Hopper was that his talents were not limited to the motion picture. Hopper was also a well regarded photographer especially for his celebrity portraits. Enjoy some of his work below courtesy of Le Blog de Yoland.

J Dilla Orchestral Tribute in Cedar Falls

After hearing ‘Suite Ma Dukes’ conductor Jason Weinberger contacted Miguel Atwood-Ferguson through the internet to see if he could get a Dilla piece in front of one of the orchestras he worked with. A month or two on Weingberger and Atwood-Ferguson met in LA and the project was born.

“As the person responsible for programming the concert, I probably don’t have to explain how exciting it was for me to find myself performing Dilla’s music with the WCFSO. Even more gratifying, though, were other aspects of the evening – feeling the connections emerge between Dilla and his predecessors William Grant Still and Duke Ellington, taking the orchestra outside of its comfort level and in the process to a whole other level of music making, and especially offering our audience the opportunity to abandon preconceptions and discover something special. In the words of one listener in attendance that night, ‘the music was beyond interesting, especially the movements from Suite for Ma Dukes by J Dilla … we were swept along enjoying sound adventures we never could have imagined that we would enjoy.’”-Jason Weinberger

Watch the video below to see and hear Dilla’s music performed by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra to a packed house.

Line up for Austin City Limits festival announced

The full line up for the 2010 Austin City Limits festival has been announced. The festival takes place on October 8th-10th in Zilker Park with tickets available from $85 a day. This years lineup boasts a lot of recognizeable names including Muse, The Strokes, Monsters of Folk, Phish, LCD Soundsystem, Sonic Youth, Spoon, Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, The National, The XX, Matt and Kim, Portugal. The Man, The Temper Trap, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Local Natives with the headline spot for the festival was taken by The Eagles who play their only festival show for the year.

Three day passes for the festival sold out within 14 hours of going on sale last month before the line up had even been announced. Looks like it is going to be a big one down in Austin this year. For more details head to the official website here.