Monday, October 28, 2013

Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal looks for revenge this Saturday at Bellator



(Bellator light heavyweight Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal looks to win an interim title Saturday)


“He’s just so corny. I mean, tell me the truth – isn’t he corny?” Bellator light heavyweight Muhammed Lawal is talking about his November 2 opponent Emanuel Newton with Cagewriter.


The two used to be training partners and, heading into their bout earlier this year, didn’t exchange much in the way of trash talk. After Newton knocked Lawal out with a surprise spinning back fist and then suggested that “King Mo” was cocky and got what he deserved, all that changed though.


Lawal is fond of saying that he is a prizefighter and fights for money, plain and simple. It is now clear, however, that Newton vs. Lawal II is now a grudge match.


“Honestly, who do you like interviewing more, him or me?”


We’ve spoken with both fighters and certainly don’t have a personal preference but it can’t be argued that few personalities in the world of MMA are more as colorful as Lawal.


“I’m real,” he says.


“I can’t be any other way. I don’t know why Newton is saying the stuff he is about me being cocky. I made a point not to talk about him because he trains with Antonio McKee who I respect. I went in there to fight, we fought and he won. But then he says that I got what I deserved because I’m cocky. Whatever.”


When a fighter comes to the ring wearing a robe, a cape and holding a scepter as Lawal has, it isn’t a far stretch to think of them as arrogant or cocky. “King Mo” won’t apologize for putting on a show but he works as hard as anyone in the game, and says he respects all his opponents.


“People want to say that I had my hands down when I fought Newton and that’s why I got caught,” he scoffs.


“Look at the entire fight. I had my hands up. I know what mistake I made in that fight and it had nothing to do with cockiness. I was loading up on my punches. That was my mistake. I had my hands up and then I lowered them as I loaded up to punch. It’s a mistake I was working on and that I’ve continued to work on.”


The former international wrestler Lawal says he’s fed up with the talk but insists he’s still about his business. “It is still professional. I’ve trained and am going in there as a pro. He can say what he wants but I work hard and prepare well,” Mo says.


If Lawal can get revenge he’ll also get his hands on some Bellator gold – the interim light heavyweight belt. To be precise At the end of the day, the gold and what it can provide for he and his family is still what motivates this self-styled “king.”


“It’s hard to say what my motivation is. Becoming a great fighter, taking care of my family, my loved ones,” Lawal explains.


“That’s what it always has been so I guess that’s what it is still all about. That’s what gets me up in the morning and gets me into the cage.”


Follow Elias on Twitter @EliasCepeda


Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/muhammed-king-mo-lawal-looks-revenge-saturday-bellator-144024993--mma.html
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WORLD SERIES WATCH: Buchholz vs Lynn in Game 4


ST. LOUIS (AP) — A look at Game 4 of the World Series at Busch Stadium on Sunday night as the Boston Red Sox take on the St. Louis Cardinals:

___

UNOBSTRUCTED: Now that everyone from umpires to rappers has weighed in on the obstruction rule, the World Series has resumed at Busch Stadium.

Game 4 is underway — Lance Lynn worked a 1-2-3 first inning for the Cardinals. He's facing Boston right-hander Clay Buchholz, trying to work through some weakness in his shoulder.

What a crazy finish that was last night, though. Tough to swallow for the Red Sox and their fans. But it seems as though, after some rule-book explanations from the experts, most people are realizing the correct call was made.

St. Louis leads 2-1 in the best-of-seven Series.

___

SHANE SCRATCHED: Boston made a late lineup switch, pulling right fielder Shane Victorino and putting in Jonny Gomes.

The Red Sox say Victorino has stiffness in his lower back. The change came about 75 minutes before the first pitch.

Daniel Nava shifted from left field to right and moved into Victorino's No. 2 spot in the batting order. Gomes will hit fifth and play left.

Victorino and Gomes were both hitless in the Series at a combined 0 for 18.

___

CRAIG READY: The Cardinals say Allen Craig will be ready if needed.

Craig re-injured his sprained left foot on a wild trip around the bases Saturday night, sliding into third base and home while scoring the winning on the obstruction call against Boston third baseman Will Middlebrooks in the ninth inning.

The first baseman and cleanup hitter had been out since Sept. 4 before returning for the World Series. Craig was the DH in Boston, and got a pinch-hit double in Game 3.

Manager Mike Matheny said X-rays showed no additional injury.

St. Louis had one lineup wrinkle for Game 4, with Daniel Descalso starting at shortstop in place of Pete Kozma. Descalso has plenty of starting experience in the middle infield.

___

HALF THE DISTANCE: For the ceremonial first pitch, Hall of Famer Bob Gibson threw to Tim McCarver, who is in his final season as a broadcaster with Fox.

The pair also made up the battery for the Cardinals' 7-2 victory in Game 7 of the 1967 World Series at Fenway Park. However, Gibson's toss Sunday night was only from about 30 feet.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/world-series-watch-buchholz-vs-lynn-game-4-001350294--spt.html
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Samsung's Galaxy Round ad compares its curved smartphone to avocados, Russian dolls (video)


Samsung's Galaxy Round ad compares its curved smartphone to avocados, russian dolls video


Thanks to Samsung Korea's new (soon to be viral) Galaxy Round commercial, we've learned that its new smartphone is curved. Like many other objects. In the world. We get that now. It's also got differently-curved competition coming very soon. The whole 30-second showcase is after the break.


Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/28/samsung-galaxy-round-ad-curved-smartphone-korea/?ncid=rss_truncated
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Quick Hit: UFC Fight Night 30 affirms middleweight division as hugely improved


Photo via Getty Images, Zuffa, LLC



Don't look now, but if we learned anything at UFC Fight Night 30, it's that one of the UFC's most exciting divisions is middleweight.


To those who've been watching the sport for more than a few years, this sounds almost comical. To those who've been watching even longer, it could almost be passed off as a pathetic attempting at trolling.


And yet, it's true. There are many ways to illustrate just how lackluster middleweight has historically been, but perhaps the best reminder was the reign of Anderson Silva when he was forced to defend his UFC middleweight title against Patrick Cote, Thales Leites and Demian Maia. Those are all accomplished fighters, but two of them don't even compete in that weight class anymore. The other was cut from the UFC and only recently returned after a mostly successful stint in regional MMA.


Silva's resume is impeccable, but his peers can barely hang onto employment? That's hardly the mark of talent-rich division.


And when he wasn't defending his title against complete non-challengers, Silva was moonlighting as a light heavyweight. There aren't many fighters who force the UFC to give them challenges in different weight classes because the one they're competing in is abysmally thin enough to force boredom.


Remember Silva not doing anything in title fights because he couldn't be bothered to fight competitors that far below his level? That is the scarlet letter middleweight has been carrying around.


Yes, Silva is arguably the greatest fighter of all time. He's going to make most fighters look bad. Even very good ones. But it's one thing for them to look bad at Silva's hand and it's quite another for them to demonstrate the rigors of simply maintaining position in the weight class is too tall an order to handle.


That's all behind us now, however. Now we have a middleweight division with a new champion (Chris Weidman). We have a man some consider the best fighter ever trying to reclaim a title he lost when he was brutally knocked out. If nothing else, that creates intrigue at the top of the division.


We have more than that, though. Today, there's depth in this space. We have an infusion of talent from Strikeforce (Luke Rockhold, Ronaldo Souza and Gegard Mousasi). We have a surging veteran (Vitor Belfort). We also have a former UFC light heavyweight champion dropping down to stake a new claim in Lyoto Machida.


The reality is middleweight isn't just thin in the UFC. It's thin in all of MMA, much as lightweight isn't just strong in the UFC, but other organizations as well. My point is not that these institutional or existential reasons for middleweight not being very good are all of a sudden changed. But right now in this division, there's a reason to enjoy the sudden intrigue that's now there. Maybe the circumstances that have created this are ephemeral, but they're here now. Might as well enjoy them before things change.


One wonders how much Silva being so dominant made things so lackluster. Something similar is happening at light heavyweight with Jon Jones dominating everyone he fights. Yet, Alexander Gustafsson happened and that all changed. Daniel Cormier is also making his way down, which adds to that narrative. Just as things were getting boring, now there's a reason to pay attention.


Perhaps the best thing for any division, be it middle or flyweight, is to have things shaken up when they get stale. Lucky for us, that's exactly what we're getting at middleweight right now. With new blood at the top, middle and bottom and a rearrangement of the division's hierarchy, all of a sudden there's hope.


The middleweight division is dead. Long live the middleweight division.


Source: http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/10/27/5036308/quick-hit-ufc-fight-night-30-affirms-middleweight-division-as-hugely
Category: demarco murray   Tony Hale   Ios 7 Release Date   freedom tower   lea michele  

NY to judge: Unseal documents on '71 Attica riot

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York's attorney general has asked a state judge to release sealed documents about the 1971 riot and retaking of Attica state prison in an effort to reveal the full history of the nation's bloodiest prison rebellion and answer the questions of families whose loved ones died there.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wants the court in Wyoming County to open hundreds of detailed pages about investigations into the five September days when inmates took control of the maximum-security prison in rural western New York until state troopers and guards stormed the facility and fatally shot 29 inmates and 10 hostages.

Schneiderman said it's time to bring transparency to what he referred to as one of the state government's darkest chapters. The sealed documents are part of a 1975 report by a special commission that examined New York's efforts to investigate the riot and its aftermath.

"It is important, both for families directly affected and for future generations, that these historical documents be made available so the public can have a better understanding of what happened and how we can prevent future tragedies," Schneiderman said. He noted the historical significance and the fact that all related criminal and civil litigation has ended. And after 40 years, he said, the privacy concerns can be addressed more narrowly by omitting only the names of many grand jury witnesses and some people identified in testimony.

Among those seeking the records are the Forgotten Victims of Attica, a group of prison employees who survived and relatives of those who died.

"For families that lost their father, son, brother because they were killed in D Yard, they yearn to know the truth of how their loved one died and why they died," said Gary Morton, a lawyer representing the group, said this year. "Some of that has come out, but certainly there's a lot more that hasn't come out."

In all, 11 staff and 32 inmates died — all but four shot by troopers and correction officers who fired hundreds of rounds in six minutes storming the prison's D Yard on Sept. 13, 1971. An additional 89 men were wounded. The inmates were demanding better conditions and amnesty for the riot itself.

Known as the Meyer Commission Report for the late judge who headed the investigation, the 570-page document was divided into volumes. The first with broad findings and recommendations was released, but the others were sealed in 1981 because they contain grand jury testimony.

Published four years after the riot, the first volume said 62 inmates had been indicted for various offenses, but the grand jury investigation should continue and consider all possible crimes by authorities. The original grand jury refused to indict in four cases brought against law enforcement personnel. One trooper was later indicted on a charge of reckless endangerment in 1975.

The commission report emphasized "important omissions" in the evidence gathered by state police afterward and the possible conflict of interest with troopers investigating their fellow officers' actions in retaking the prison. It found no intentional cover-up by prosecutors but faulted police for bad planning and failing to account for the rifles, shotguns and pistols used and bullets, slugs and buckshot fired by individual officers.

Gov. Hugh Carey effectively ended official scrutiny of the uprising in 1976 when he pardoned seven inmates and barred disciplinary action against 20 of the troopers and prison guards among the hundreds of officers who retook the prison. He also commuted the murder sentence of inmate John Hill, who was found guilty of beating guard William Quinn to death. The report concluded Quinn and three inmates were killed by prisoners.

It isn't clear when the judge will rule.

In 2005, the state reached a $12 million settlement with survivors and families of prison staff caught in the uprising. About 150 claims were filed.

That followed a settlement for $8 million five years earlier with 502 former inmates and families of those killed or injured, who claimed they were beaten, tortured and denied medical treatment after the prison was retaken.

Audiotapes published in 2011 showed then-President Richard Nixon offering support by phone to then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller hours after the siege ended. "You did the right thing. It's a tragedy that these poor fellows were shot but I just want you to know that's my view and I've told the troops around here that I back that right to the hilt," he said.

While Rockefeller initially praised the work of state police sharp shooters and called the retaking "a beautiful operation" a day later, he acknowledged "a little problem" — that most hostages were killed by gunfire, not by inmates as initially believed.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-27-Attica%20Riot-Documents/id-a1476ae1e44b4dada08c731fb75f3488
Tags: aaron rodgers   constitution day   US News college rankings   djokovic   Victoria Duval  

Bike Navigation That Actually Might Not Kill You

Bike Navigation That Actually Might Not Kill You

Using any gadget on a bike is pretty dangerous. But it makes sense that you might want driving directions while biking. There's tons of GPS and mapping tech out there, let's put it to work, right? Hammerhead is on it.

Read more...


    






Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/USzvMFcpBtQ/bike-navigation-that-actually-might-not-kill-you-1452982016
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Pennsylvania Governor Talks Up Plan To Expand Medicaid His Way

[unable to retrieve full-text content]After initially declining federal funding to expand Medicaid, Gov. Tom Corbett has changed course slightly. He is pursuing an approach for Pennsylvania that would make use of federal funds, but there are some caveats.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/h5mBBwkJRBA/pennsylvania-governor-talks-up-plan-to-expand-medicaid-his-way
Category: chris brown   The Goldbergs   911 Memorial   David Frost   david cassidy  

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Lou Reed, iconic punk poet, dead at 71

FILE - In this Sunday, Aug. 9, 2009 file photo, Lou Reed performs at the Lollapalooza music festival, in Chicago. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/John Smierciak, File)







FILE - In this Sunday, Aug. 9, 2009 file photo, Lou Reed performs at the Lollapalooza music festival, in Chicago. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/John Smierciak, File)







FILE - In a March 27 1989 file photo, musician Lou Reed poses at the American Sound Studio in New York. Reed's literary agent Andrew Wylie says the legendary musician died Sunday morning, Oct. 27, 2013 in Southampton, N.Y., of an ailment related to his recent liver transplant. He was 71. (AP Photo/Wyatt Counts, File)







FILE - In this Jan. 17, 1996 file photo, Lou Reed takes the podium as the Velvet Underground, the group he once headed, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during a ceremony in New York s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Band mate John Cale is at left, and at right is Martha Morrison, accepting for late band member Sterling Morrison. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)







FILE - In a June 13, 1986 file photo, Lou Reed performs during musical number at a benefit in Chicago, for Amnesty International. Reed's literary agent Andrew Wylie says the legendary musician died Sunday morning, Oct. 27, 2013 in Southampton, N.Y., of an ailment related to his recent liver transplant. He was 71. (AP Photo/Fred Jewell, File)







FILE - In a Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1996 file photo, members of the band the Velvet Underground, from left, Maureen Tucker; Martha Morrison, attending for her late husband, Sterling Morrison; John Cale and Lou Reed pose backstage after their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/Joe Tabacca, File)







NEW YORK (AP) — Lou Reed was a pioneer for countless bands who didn't worry about their next hit single.

Reed, who died Sunday at age 71, radically challenged rock's founding promise of good times and public celebration. As leader of the Velvet Underground and as a solo artist, he was the father of indie rock, and an ancestor of punk, New Wave and the alternative rock movements of the 1970s, '80s and beyond. He influenced generations of musicians from David Bowie and R.E.M. to Talking Heads and Sonic Youth.

"The first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years," Brian Eno, who produced albums by Roxy Music and Talking Heads among others, once said. "I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!"

Reed and the Velvet Underground opened rock music to the avant-garde — to experimental theater, art, literature and film, from William Burroughs to Kurt Weill to Andy Warhol, Reed's early patron. Raised on doo-wop and Carl Perkins, Delmore Schwartz and the Beats, Reed helped shape the punk ethos of raw power, the alternative rock ethos of irony and droning music and the art-rock embrace of experimentation, whether the dual readings of Beat-influenced verse for "Murder Mystery," or, like a passage out of Burroughs' "Naked Lunch," the orgy of guns, drugs and oral sex on the Velvet Underground's 15-minute "Sister Ray."

Reed died in Southampton, N.Y., of an ailment related to his recent liver transplant, according to his literary agent, Andrew Wylie, who added that Reed had been in frail health for months. Reed shared a home in Southampton with his wife and fellow musician, Laurie Anderson, whom he married in 2008. Tributes to Reed came Sunday from such friends and admirers as Salman Rushdie and former Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale, who mourned his "school-yard buddy."

His trademarks were a monotone of surprising emotional range and power; slashing, grinding guitar; and lyrics that were complex, yet conversational, designed to make you feel as if Reed were seated next to you. Known for his cold stare and gaunt features, he was a cynic and a seeker who seemed to embody downtown Manhattan culture of the 1960s and '70s and was as essential a New York artist as Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen. Reed's New York was a jaded city of drag queens, drug addicts and violence, but it was also as wondrous as any Allen comedy, with so many of Reed's songs explorations of right and wrong and quests for transcendence.

He had one top 20 hit, "Walk On the Wild Side," and many other songs that became standards among his admirers, from "Heroin" and "Sweet Jane" to "Pale Blue Eyes" and "All Tomorrow's Parties." An outlaw in his early years, Reed would eventually perform at the White House, have his writing published in The New Yorker, be featured by PBS in an "American Masters" documentary and win a Grammy in 1999 for Best Long Form Music Video. The Velvet Underground was inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 1996 and their landmark debut album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico," was added to the Library of Congress' registry in 2006.

Reed called one song "Growing Up in Public" and his career was an ongoing exhibit of how any subject could be set to rock music — the death of a parent ("Standing On Ceremony), AIDS ("The Halloween Parade"), some favorite movies and plays ("Doin' the Things That We Want To"), racism ("I Want to be Black"), the electroshock therapy he received as a teen ("Kill Your Sons").

Reviewing Reed's 1989 topical album "New York," Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote that "the pleasure of the lyrics is mostly tone and delivery — plus the impulse they validate, their affirmation that you can write songs about this stuff. Protesting, elegizing, carping, waxing sarcastic, forcing jokes, stating facts, garbling what he just read in the Times, free-associating to doomsday, Lou carries on a New York conversation — all that's missing is a disquisition on real estate."

He was one of rock's archetypal tough guys, but he grew up middle class — an accountant's son raised on Long Island. Reed was born to be a suburban dropout. He hated school, loved rock 'n' roll, fought with his parents and attacked them in song for forcing him to undergo electroshock therapy as a supposed "cure" for being bisexual. "Families that live out in the suburbs often make each other cry," he later wrote.

His real break began in college. At Syracuse University, he studied under Schwartz, whom Reed would call the first "great man" he ever encountered. He credited Schwartz with making him want to become a writer and to express himself in the most concrete language possible. Reed honored his mentor in the song "My House," recounting how he connected with the spirit of the late, mad poet through a Ouija board. "Blazing stood the proud and regal name Delmore," he sang.

Reed moved to New York City after college and traveled in the pop and art worlds, working as a house songwriter at the low-budget Pickwick Records and putting in late hours in downtown clubs. One of his Pickwick songs, the dance parody "The Ostrich," was considered commercial enough to record. Fellow studio musicians included Cale, a Welsh-born viola player, with whom Reed soon performed in such makeshift groups as the Warlocks and the Primitives.

They were joined by a friend of Reed's from Syracuse, guitarist-bassist Sterling Morrison; and by an acquaintance of Morrison's, drummer Maureen Tucker, who tapped out simple, hypnotic rhythms while playing standing up. They renamed themselves the Velvet Underground after a Michael Leigh book about the sexual subculture. By the mid-1960s, they were rehearsing at Warhol's "Factory," a meeting ground of art, music, orgies, drug parties and screen tests for films that ended up being projected onto the band while it performed, part of what Warhol called the "Floating Plastic Inevitable."

"Warhol was the great catalyst," Reed told BOMB magazine in 1998. "It all revolved around him. It all happened very much because of him. He was like a swirl, and these things would come into being: Lo and behold multimedia. There it was. No one really thought about it, it was just fun."

Before the Velvets, references to drugs and sex were often brief and indirect, if only to ensure a chance at radio and television play. In 1967, the year of the Velvets' first album, the Rolling Stones were pressured to sing the title of their latest single as "Let's Spend Some Time Together" instead of "Let's Spend the Night Together" when they were performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The Doors fought with Sullivan over the word "higher" from "Light My Fire."

The Velvets said everything other bands were forbidden to say and some things other bands never imagined. Reed wrote some of rock's most explicit lyrics about drugs ("Heroin," ''Waiting for My Man"), sadomasochism ("Venus in Furs") and prostitution ("There She Goes Again"). His love songs were less stories of boy-meets-girl, than ambiguous studies of the heart, like the philosophical games of "Some Kinda Love" or the weary ballad "Pale Blue Eyes," an elegy for an old girlfriend and a confession to a post-breakup fling:

___

It was good what we did yesterday

And I'd do it once again

The fact that you are married

Only proves you're my best friend

But it's truly, truly a sin

___

Away from the Factory, the Velvets and were all too ahead of their time, getting tossed out of clubs or having audience members walk out. The mainstream press, still seeking a handle on the Beatles and the Stones, was thrown entirely by the Velvet Underground. The New York Times at first couldn't find the words, calling the Velvets "Warhol's jazz band" in a January 1966 story and "a combination of rock 'n roll and Egyptian belly-dance music" just days later. The Velvets' appearance in a Warhol film, "More Milk, Yvette," only added to the dismay of Times critic Bosley Crowther.

"Also on the bill is a performance by a group of rock 'n' roll singers called the Velvet Underground," Crowther wrote. "They bang away at their electronic equipment, while random movies are thrown on the screen in back of them. When will somebody ennoble Mr. Warhol with an above-ground movie called 'For Crying Out Loud'?"

At Warhol's suggestion, they performed and recorded with the sultry, German-born Nico, a "chanteuse" who sang lead on a handful of songs from their debut album. A storm cloud over 1967's Summer of Love, "The Velvet Underground & Nico" featured a now-iconic Warhol drawing of a (peelable) banana on the cover and proved an uncanny musical extension of Warhol's blank-faced aura. The Velvets juxtaposed childlike melodies with dry, affectless vocals on "Sunday Morning" and "Femme Fatale." On "Heroin," Cale's viola screeched and jumped behind Reed's obliterating junkie's journey, with his sacred vow, "Herrrrrr-o-in, it's my wife, and it's my life," and his cry into the void, "And I guess that I just don't know."

"'Heroin' is the Velvets' masterpiece — seven minutes of excruciating spiritual extremity," wrote critic Ellen Willis. "No other work of art I know about has made the junkie's experience so horrible, so powerful, so appealing; listening to 'Heroin' I feel simultaneously impelled to somehow save this man and to reach for the needle."

Reed made just three more albums with the Velvet Underground before leaving in 1970. Cale was pushed out by Reed in 1968 (they had a long history of animosity) and was replaced by Doug Yule. Their sound turned more accessible, and the final album with Reed, "Loaded," included two upbeat musical anthems, "Rock and Roll" and "Sweet Jane," in which Reed seemed to warn Velvets fans — and himself — that "there's even some evil mothers/Well they're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt."

He lived many lives in the '70s, initially moving back home and working at his father's office, then competing with Keith Richards as the rock star most likely to die. He binged on drugs and alcohol, gained weight, lost even more and was described by critic Lester Bangs as "so transcendently emaciated he had indeed become insectival." Reed simulated shooting heroin during concerts, cursed out journalists and once slugged David Bowie when Bowie suggested he clean up his life.

"Lou Reed is the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock 'n' roll to smack, speed, homosexuality, sadomasochism, murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide," wrote Bangs, a dedicated fan and fearless detractor, "and then proceeded to belie all his achievements and return to the mire by turning the whole thing into a monumental bad joke with himself as the woozily insistent Henny Youngman in the center ring, mumbling punch lines that kept losing their punch."

His albums in the '70s were alternately praised as daring experiments or mocked as embarrassing failures, whether the ambitious song suite "Berlin" or the wholly experimental "Metal Machine Music," an hour of electronic feedback. But in the 1980s, he kicked drugs and released a series of acclaimed albums, including "The Blue Mask," ''Legendary Hearts" and "New Sensations."

He played some reunion shows with the Velvet Underground and in 1990 teamed with Cale for "Drella," a spare tribute to Warhol. He continued to receive strong reviews in the 1990s and after for such albums as "Set the Twilight Reeling." And "Ecstasy" and he continued to test new ground, whether a 2002 concept album about Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven," or a 2011 collaboration with Metallica, "Lulu."

Reed fancied dictionary language like "capricious" and "harridan," but he found special magic in the word "bells," sounding from above, "up in the sky," as he sang on the Velvets' "What Goes On." A personal favorite was the title track from a 1979 album, "The Bells." Over a foggy swirl of synthesizers and horns, suggesting a haunted house on skid row, Reed improvised a fairy tale about a stage actor who leaves work late at night and takes in a chiming, urban "Milky Way."

___

It was really not so cute

to play without a parachute

As he stood upon the ledge

Looking out, he thought he saw a brook

And he hollered, 'Look, there are the bells!'

And he sang out, 'Here come the bells!

Here come the bells! Here come the bells!

Here come the bells!'

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-27-Obit-Lou%20Reed/id-6716c629b45d41899675b697fc7d0e14
Category: Jofi Joseph   kaley cuoco   national coffee day   Talk Like a Pirate Day   Richard Sherman  

Man With MS Jumps Over Mount Everest: 'I Feel Very Happy'





French multiple sclerosis sufferer Marc Kopp speaks about his quest to skydive over Mount Everest, in an interview conducted in Kathmandu last week.



Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images


French multiple sclerosis sufferer Marc Kopp speaks about his quest to skydive over Mount Everest, in an interview conducted in Kathmandu last week.


Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images


From the list of things a person with multiple sclerosis can't do, we must erase "sky-dive over Mount Everest." That's because Frenchman Marc Kopp, 55, jumped from a helicopter at an altitude of some 32,000 feet before landing on the mountain this weekend.


"I feel very happy. I am exhausted but very happy," Kopp tells Agence France-Presse from Kathmandu, where he's being examined by doctors after his tandem jump with his friend, accomplished skydiver Mario Gervasi. The news agency says he's the first disabled person to skydive over the world's tallest mountain.


Kopp, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001, traveled on horseback to reach the heliport where he took off to make his leap — an exhausting process for the man who often uses a wheelchair.


"There were many times in the last few days when I thought I wouldn't be able to realize my dream," he tells the AFP.


For the first few thousand feet of his descent, Kopp and Gervasi were in a free-fall. They landed on a specially prepared platform at about half of Everest's height of 29,029 feet, according to reports.


"I hope my action will inspire others living with this illness. I hope many more will follow in my footsteps," Kopp said.


Kopp, who suffers from primary progressive multiple sclerosis, has gradually lost the use of most of his right side, according to French newspaper Le Parisien. He runs a support group for others with the disease.


Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/27/241218946/man-with-ms-jumps-over-mount-everest-i-feel-very-happy?ft=1&f=1001
Tags: Jenna Jameson   cnn  

You Want A Hot Movie? You Betta Work, Witch



The TV Guide





Last night was one of those perfect LA nights that make me so happy that I live here in SoCal. One of the best things about living here in LA is getting the chance to see movies at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It’s a treat that I reserve only for the most special of movies. In honor of Hallowe’en this year, last night’s Cinespia movie was The Craft. Now, because it is one of my all time favorite movies (along with Clueless, Empire Records and Hackers), there was no question that I’d be in attendance last night. My darling Amelia agreed to be my date and we had the best time ever … with a couple thousand other folks AND three stars of the movie! I mean, c’mon … so amazing!





After we dined at Osteria Buca, Amelia and I made our way to the front of the crowd to set up our blankets and settle in for a night of movie fun. As you can see below, I had THE hottest date of the night because Amelia looked EXACTLY like Nancy Downs (played by Fairuza Balk) in the movie:



I was BLOWN away by her outfit … and so was everyone else who thought she was Fairuza Balk in person :) Balk didn’t come out to the screening last night but her co-stars Robin Tunney, Rachel True and Neve Campbell did come out to the screening last night to say hello to all the fans in attendance. I was 10 feet from the 3 of them, dying of excited geekiness :) Amelia and I had so much fun, we vowed to make plans to go to more screenings at the cemetery next Summer :)

I couldn’t enjoy a late night last night because I had to be up and downtown to run the 3.5 mile Rock N Roll Los Angeles Halloween Mini Marathon this morning:





I treated today’s short run as a recovery run from the Detroit Marathon last weekend and I did a pretty good job. Finished in 30 mins. flat AND I got free beer before 9AM. Cannot complain at all.

I’m not sure what the plan is for today but I know this mound of laundry ain’t gonna wash itself. Happy Sunday, all!!





Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pinkisthenewblog/~3/JHntP_sBo1w/you-want-a-hot-movie-you-betta-work-witch
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Cheney: GOP needs to look to new generation


WASHINGTON (AP) — Dick Cheney said Sunday that Republicans need to look to a new generation of leaders as the party deals with poor approval ratings following the government shutdown.

The former vice president said Republicans have faced challenges before and it's healthy for the party to work to rebuild.

The GOP "got whipped" in the 2012 presidential campaign, when President Barack Obama won re-election over Mitt Romney, and the party needs to build its base of supporters and find "first-class" candidates and turn to a new generation of leaders, Cheney told ABC's "This Week."

"It's not the first time we have had to go down this road and it's basically, I think, healthy for the party to be brought up short, say, OK, now it's time to go to work," Cheney said.

He predicted that his daughter, Liz Cheney, would win her Senate primary challenge against Republican Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming next year. The former vice president said it was "simply not true" that he and Enzi were "fishing buddies," and asserted that Enzi has received the vast majority of his campaign funds from Washington-based political action committees.

"Washington is not going to elect the next senator from Wyoming. The people of Wyoming will elect that senator," Cheney said. He said his daughter's campaign is "going full speed. She's going to win."

Asked to name a prominent Republican who can attract Democrats and independent voters, Cheney said he was "not going to predict or endorse anybody. We've got a long way to go to the next presidential election."

On foreign policy matters, Cheney declined to weigh in on surveillance activities by the National Security Agency, saying he hadn't been regularly briefed in five years.

He expressed skepticism that the Obama administration would be able to force Iran to comply with demands that it show its nuclear program is peaceful. Asked if military action against Iran was "inevitable," Cheney said he had "trouble seeing how we're going to achieve our objective short of that."

Cheney faulted the Obama White House's handling of Middle East politics, saying the U.S. presence in the region had been "significantly diminished" in recent years. "I think our friends no longer count on us, no longer trust us and our adversaries don't fear us," he said.

___

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cheney-republicans-look-generation-144336717--election.html
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This Online Archive Collects 19th Century "GIFs" of Yore

This Online Archive Collects 19th Century "GIFs" of Yore

Phenakistoscopes, praxinoscopes, and zoetropes, oh my! Richard Balzer, a 69-year-old New York native, has cultivated a remarkable online museum of early animations and optical toys of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Read more...


    






Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/pcDm-Ruv2U4/this-online-archive-collects-19th-century-gifs-of-yor-1452356047
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The After Math: two new iPads, two new Windows Phones and Instagram news

Did Apple manage satisfy your cravings for a new iPad? Maybe that new Mac Pro has got you readying a preorder, if only for the illusion of the power user that you one day hope to be. After a year's break, the return of Nokia World coincided with Apple's soiree, but the Microsoft-aligned phone maker ...


Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/_7sm_ag0zRw/
Category: ohio state football   The Goldbergs   FIFA 14   Derrick Thomas   Jennifer Rosoff  

Box Office: "Bad Grandpa" Bumps "Gravity" from Top

After three weeks of reigning at the box office, "Gravity" was finally replaced in the top spot by "Bad Grandpa" for the weekend of October 25-27, 2013.


The comedy, brought to the masses by MTV'S Jackass, raked in $12.5 million on Friday and finished its first weekend in theaters with an impressive $33 million.


Landing in second spot was the sci-fi action drama "Gravity." The George Clooney and Sandra Bullock film nabbed $6.1 million on Friday, and garnered a three day total of $20 million.


Rounding out the top five in earmarked earnings are the bio-drama "Captain Phillips" ($11.7 million) in third, the new crime-thriller "The Counselor" ($7.5 million) in fourth, and Sony Animation's "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2" ($6 million) still hanging on in fifth.


Source: http://celebrity-gossip.net/jackass-presents-bad-grandpa/box-office-bad-grandpa-bumps-gravity-top-950747
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The Football App Scores $7M Led By Union Square Ventures As It Preps For World Cup 2014


There’s big money in football (or “soccer” as some TC readers like to say). And so it follows that there’s money to be made in corresponding apps that let fans engross themselves with the beautiful game.


To that end, Berlin-headquartered The Football App has raised a further round of funding: $7 million led by New York-based Union Square Ventures (previous backer of big hits such as Twitter, Tumblr, Zynga, and Kickstarter), along with a number of unnamed angels. This adds to the $10 million it previously raised back in May in a round led by Berlin’s Earlybird Venture Capital. That’s a lot of funding in quite a short amount of time.


But, with traction going in the right direction — 10 million downloads across all mobile platforms since it launched in 2008, with 3 million of those added in the last 6 months — and a pretty hefty and well-funded competitor in the form of FTBpro, it’s clearly a sign of stepping on the gas in a bid to get way out in front.


The timing is significant, too. Next year is a World Cup year, an opportunity if there ever was one for a football app to pick up millions of new users quickly. In a statement, The Football App founder and CEO, Lucas von Cranach, makes the case: “Our goal is to double our user base after the 2014 World Cup by tapping into the 350 million people across the world who use their mobile devices to consume all things football”, he says, talking a good game in the best football tradition.


Specifically, The Football App says it will use the new funding to “continue to develop social aspects of the platform and bolster the company’s already rapid international growth.”


In fact, “social” appears to be viewed as the company’s path to growth — talking about football is a full time sport in itself after all — and it’s here that the link with Union Square Ventures comes into full focus. The VC firm has previously backed social darlings Twitter, Foursquare, and Tumblr, so has the experience needed to help grow a social entity to the scale that the Berlin startup and its backers are clearly gunning for.


Earlier this month, the The Football App introduced a new ‘Fan Zone’ that integrates live commentary from social feeds, alongside professional media content, around any match, news story, or development from the world of football.


On the surface, it resembles the functionality of something like Fanatix.


In addition, by incorporating more User-Generated Content, the company is certainly strengthening its hand against rival FTBpro, which in May raised $5.8 million from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures to fund its own global expansion.


Bring on next Summer, World Cup 2014 just got even more interesting.



Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Im6wfSL7Zqo/
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iStat Menus gets updated with Mavericks fixes, new Mac support, more

iStat Menus gets updated with Mavericks fixes, new Mac support, more

One of my favorite OS X utilites, Bjango's iStat Menus, has been updated with improved Mavericks support, support for new Mac models and other changes.

iStat Menus embeds a menu item on your Mac that provides you with extensive, customizable details about the operation of your computer - how much memory and hard disk space is being used, how network traffic is utilized, the temperature of individual components on your Mac's motherboard, speed of the fans, and lots of other details - most available at a glance in easy-to-understand graphs that can be nested hierarchically off a single, unobtrusive menu item.

Here's the complete list of changes in 4.1:

  • Improved Mavericks support.
  • Added support for late 2013 iMacs.
  • Added support for late 2013 MacBook Pros.
  • Fixed an issue with menubar bandwidth being incorrect when connected to a VPN.
  • Fixed link to Network Utility in Mavericks.
  • Fixed a calendar display bug.
  • Fixed an issue with IP Addresses not being updated.
  • Improved support for FireWire disks.


    






Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/b1e8_xXyEG8/story01.htm
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