News-Record.com

A new book from the Harry Potter universe has been announced.

The Tales of Beedle The Bard is being called a classic of the wizarding world translated from ancient runes by Hermione Granger, with extensive commentary by that clever old queen Albus Dumbledore.

After enjoying the new Seth Rogan weed action/comedy Pineapple Express (and, perhaps, a doobie of his own), Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers compiled a list of ten movies that belong in the Stoner Movie Hall of Fame.

Though the last one's a bit of a cop out, it's hard to argue with these selections.

Except to say...no Dude, Where's My Car?

On a related note: Cheech and Chong are apparently touring again.

I think we can all agree that although Oliver Stone's political/historical movies (JFK, Nixon) are fascinating, they have to be viewed as a sort of historical fiction with a heavy bent toward speculative psychoanalysis and melodrama.

But you still do want to go see them.

Right now I'm reading First Son by Bill Minutaglio, a veteran Texas journalist who delves deep into the lives of the Bush clan.

Hopefully Stone's movie will do a little of what Minutaglio's book does -- help to humanize a man who has been both demonized and lionized beyond all logic at a turbulent period in American history.

Cory Doctorow gave a talk at the Cambridge Business Lectures Series.

Really fascinating stuff - the Internet as the world's most perfect copy machine, Digital Rights Management, why Paris Hilton's genitals are like the undead on the Net, etc. Worth listening to.

Cracked.com has a hilarious (and surprisingly educational) list of The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High.

The list includes Coca-Cola, Psychoanalysis, the discovery of the DNA and (wait for it...) The Ten Commandments.

It also includes the following caveat: "To make the cut, an accomplishment has to be considered great by people who could pass a field sobriety test. So no Grateful Dead music."

I've been listening to The Black Keys' latest album, Attack and Release, since it came out.

I've got this song stuck in my head and can't seem to shake it:

They're playing at the Ryman Auditorium in October and I'm thinking about taking a trip to Nashville to visit some friends and see them live.

Word is they're amazing live.

Local blogger, DJ and Go Triad contributor Joe Scott is helping to organize a film series at the Carousel Luxury Cinemas on Battleground Ave.

The Mix-Tape Film Series will give many of us a second (or in some cases a first) chance to see some great (and some...er...cult...) films on the big screen.

First up on September 3: a personal favorite -- The Big Lebowski.

In the coming months: everything from the high-brow perversity of Blue Velvet to the low brow juvenile nostalgia of The Monster Squad.

I'm not really a big-screen, 35 mm fetishist, so there are only a few of these I think will be really improved by seeing them in the theater (Edward Scissorhands chief among them) -- but tickets are $3, popcorn $1.25 and beer's $1 so I'll probably end up seeing quite a few of these.

You should too.

Wasn't sure it was actually going to happen this time around, but I did finally manage to get excited about the Olympics.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm always CURIOUS about the Olympics. With our communications technology at this level it seems the world is always getting smaller, our differences less apparent. When so many of the world's nations converge on one spot to square off against each other in physical challenges it now seems like an episode of Star Trek, our ethnic and national differences exaggerated for allegory.

This year there's the extra, added sensational interest of the games being held in a nation with a brutal totalitarian regime - a communist nation that's become a capitalist powerhouse.

They put on a hell of an opening ceremony...

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony - Funny video clips are a click away

...but they had to know they were doomed going into that basketball game.

I have been a bit frustrated with the coverage of the games in this respect -- the NBC Olympic website is not so easy to navigate, footage of the games is being tightly controlled, tape-delayed and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops (What's the name of your cable provider? What kind of cable do you have? What's your local NBC affiliate?) just to see highlights.

But what I've caught at home (women's gymnastics, that great U.S. swim team win over the trash-talking French) has been worth catching on TV.

Who else is catching the fever?

Is it just me, or do other people feel pervy watching the Olympic synchronized divers shower or hop into the hot tub after every jump?

Must we really have a close up of them hosing off? It's like Real World Beijing at the Water Cube. Yowzah.

"...so I can let them die in jail over a clerical error."

Remember when that movie Rendition came out, and people thought it was far-fetched and sensationalist?

Turns out there's far less international political intrigue and suspicion of espionage than that necessary for people to simply disappear. And die. In U.S. custody. Because of clerical errors.

Today's lesson: If you're a husband, father and law abiding cancer patient, pray that U.S. immigration doesn't screw up your address.

I think I scared my deskmates this afternoon when I found out the next Harry Potter movie had been pushed back from November 2008 to July 2009. (There was pounding of the mouse and cursing involved. I'm a passionate HP fan.)

Basically, it sounds like the strike screwed them up for summer 2009, so they need a tentpole movie to make some money. What's more of a surefire moneymaker than The Boy Who Lived?

While it means more of a lag between Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, it will mean a shorter wait between the next one and the last two movies (which will be based on book seven), which are due November 2010 and summer 2011.

"Horn said the later release of "Half-Blood Prince" will not affect the schedule for the final two movies."

I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I hope it's true.

Blender Magazine asked Obama and McCain to pick a compact, 10-song playlist.

Here's what they came up with.

A few surprises -- Obama is apparently that one black guy who actually digs U2 and Bruce Springsteen and McCain went with not one but two ABBA tunes.

But they both agreed on Sinatra.

Some funny commentary on the lists from Randy Newman and Girl Talk, too.

Today only: Download Depeche Mode's singles collection The Singles 86-98 at Amazon.com for $3.99.

That's $16.80 less than buying the songs individually.

Of course, if you already own Violator you're set already, in my opinion.

"GREENSBORO -- Staind will perform Oct. 7 in the Greensboro Coliseum Complex's Special Events Center with guests Seether and Papa Roach.

Tickets will go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at www.ticketmaster.com, by phone at (336) 852-1100 or at the Greensboro Coliseum box office. Ticket prices are $35; seating is general admission."

---

Am I the only one who had no idea that any of these bands still existed?

Who's paying $35 to see the whiny nu-metal band who did a power ballad with Fred Durst when I was in high school?

And can we have them sterilized?

Here's a link, since the embed code doesn't seem to work. Daughtry covers "Feels Like the First Time" -- great version -- as part of CNN's League of First-Time Voters campaign. (Hyphen insertion is mine; CNN chose not to use one. :)

It's a thin line between genius and madness -- and Cracked.com has assembled a list that proves the point.

Among the 7 "Eccentric" Geniuses Who Were Clearly Just Insane:

- Pythagoras, mathematical genius who founded a religion that held that beans were evil and that vegetarianism and pacifism were essential (except when Pythagoras was himself slaughtering oxen or dying in fights).

- Nikola Tesla, brilliant scientist who was a compulsive hand-washer, afraid of round objects and fixated on the number three

- Lord Byron, great poet who let a small menagerie of exotic animals wander around his home doing whatever they liked and spent whole days in homemade forts directing toy boats. He was basically Prince with all of the sex and none of weird religious hangups.

Good news: one of my favorite comics of the last ten years may be coming to the big screen.

Bad news: it may star Tom Cruise.

Let's face it: some of these Comedy Central Roasts suck.

Anybody remember the one for Flavor Flav? Yeah, me either.

But the roast of Bob Saget this weekend was damned good.

And the surprise MVP? The 82-year-old Cloris Leachman.

Check out her extremely-not-safe-for-work bit:

Leachman was also a great sport while providing plenty of "she's so old" fodder for the other guest roasters...

Leachman is an Oscar winner and has won more Emmies than any other actor. And there's talk this roast could bring her another.

I say she's earned it.

We all love Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black is OK, too ...

There's a real reason why critics loved this movie. It pokes, prods, and makes laughs possible that otherwise would not be OK in the walking, living, thinking, sympathetic (and PC) real world. And it brings down the film industry, which many a critic, I bet, not-so-secretly wants to see.

And so, in those ha-ha Hollywood moments, the movie gets a little too inside baseball, if you're just looking for the good ol' haha.

I don't have any tattoos, but I do love seeing other peoples'.

Wired has a great gallery up today with photos of geek tattoos they saw at this year's Comic-Con in San Diego. They're comic-book heavy, but there are also some Tim Burton- and Calvin & Hobbes-influenced ones.

The Dude abides, indeed.

Rolling Stone has a great piece on the 10th anniversary of the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski -- which has only grown in cult stature since its initial, disappointing release.

The film will be on the big screen Sept. 3 as part of the Mix-Tape Film Series at the Carousel Luxury Cinemas in Greensboro. If you've never seen the movie, you've got a lot coming to you - and it's worth seeing on the big screen.

I plan on being there. You should, too.

UPDATE: Those doubting the endurance and growth of the Lebowski cult need only check out this shirt...

Kevin Smith says: "I saw 'Watchmen.' It's f%&^ing astounding." (profanity redacted)

Apparently HBO has given up the idea of turning PREACHER into a television show.

The popular comic, concerning a disillusioned preacher, his gun-toting girlfriend and vampire buddy in search of an absentee God, is apparently too dark, violent and controversial for HBO.

Yes - TOO CONTROVERSIAL FOR HBO.

Somehow I just don't buy this explanation.

This is the network that brought us live car sex in Taxicab Confessions, graphic rape and murder scenes in Rome, prisoners shivving, poisoning and forceably sodomizing each other on OZ.

They're the network that originally gave us all George Carlin's specials, brought us Borat on Da Ali G Show, who gave Bill Maher Real Time when he got bounced from his network gig in a political/religious controversy.

They're going to shrink from PREACHER?

I'd be willing to believe they thought it was too complicated to translate to TV, that a lot of it would have to be changed or wouldn't come across the way it was intended, that the comedy would be hard to balance with the drama and that all of that, on top of the controversy it would create, made it untenable.

Luckily, PREACHER scribe Garth Ennis seems happy in comics. No one seems to be waving him off controversy there. I recently read THE CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD, in which the hero, a rebellious anti-Christ who has shunned his dad and become friends with Jesus, has anal sex with a perverted Joan of Arc while she talks dirty and begs for more.

And then, two pages later, serious philosophical discussion.

It's another Web Junkie Wednesday and this week we're looking at getting more bang for your DVD buck.

If you're like me your inability to keep track of series television (especially large, complicated serial stories like those on Lost, Heroes and 24) has led you to give up, wait for the DVD and watch it at your own pace.

This can be leisurely -- an episode or two a night -- or you could stay in your pajamas, get a giant punchbowl full of breakfast cereal and create your own Saturday catch-up marathon. But however you do it, it can get expensive.

That's where Just The Disc comes in. By ditching the packaging and selling you just the disc of movies, shows and music CDs they cut the price dramatically -- CDs are just $2.99 and DVDs $3.99. You can buy one disc at a time and if you buy five, you get free shipping. All discs are pre-owned but in excellent condition and fully guaranteed.

They don't have everything -- but they do have a lot of popular shows, movies and CDs.

Example: On Amazon.com the cheapest price for the First Season of The West Wing is $37. Even used, the best you can do is $21. You can buy all four discs of the same series at Just The Disc for $16 -- or just buy the first disc to see if you get addicted (you will).

I don't know about you, but I rarely keep DVD and jewel cases nowadays anyway. I slip them into a disc wallet to save space. From now on, when possible, I'll be buying them this way, saving money and cutting out the middle man.

Sorta.

Steve Foley was not an original member of The Replacements, but he stepped in to tour behind the band's final record, All Shook Down, when original drummer Chris Mars quit.

Ironically, All Shook Down was the first Replacements record I ever heard. It was essentially the first Paul Westerberg solo album put out under his old band's name. The notoriously drunken Westerberg was trying to dry out during this album and it's never enjoyed a great reputation among critics or fans. But I kinda liked it -- and it led me to their other stuff.

So here's a tip of the hat to the drummer who kept the group on the road there at the end.

The Daily Show, taping before Obama's big speech last night, had to settle for this "biographical film."

For those who missed the actual speech:

I did think it was a little strange that after the speech, as the Obama and Biden families were gathering together on the stage, there was this over-the-top country song called "Only in America" playing.

Maybe it was one of those hedging-your-bets things. Like -- all right, we've just seen a black man nominated for president by one of the two major parties for the first time in history. Let's give them a little twang to take the sting out of it for those people who are a little freaked out. When Bruce Springsteen's not patriotic enough you've gotta find somebody in an actual cowboy hat.

David Duchovony has apparently entered a clinic for sex addiction.

He's been married to Tea Leoni for a decade and has two children, so no F*%&s Mulder jokes or anything just...wow. That's sad.

The former X-Files star recently starred in the Showtime series Californication -- in which he played...well, a guy who stops enjoying all the sex he's having but can't stop himself.

(Video trailer not-entirely work safe)

It may also be worth mentioning that the chants of "eight is enough" that we heard at the Obama acceptance speech last night were previously heard on The West Wing, hurled by a Republican presidential candidate at the Bartlet administration.

It was mentioned on another blog that there was a similarity between Obama's saying John McCain "didn't get it" and a line from Michael Douglas' President Shepherd in The American President, written by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin.

That line, aimed at Richard Dreyfus' Republican candidate in the movie, is actually "Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it."

Life imitates art imitating life.

In an interview in this month's GQ, Sorkin says he digs Obama.

From the Q&A:

"The first time I met Barack Obama—I should say the only time I’ve met Barack Obama—was a year ago, when he was doing fifty-person-cocktail-party fund-raisers. He flattered me by saying, “My intention is to steal a lot of your lines.” My prediction is he’s just going to blow the doors off the place in Denver. This is a man who—the Jeremiah Wright of it all aside—was clearly paying attention in church. I don’t need to tell you that I’m a big fan of oratory. A big part of leadership is the goose-bump experience. We’ve been missing that."

This is the first installment of a spankin' new part of Culture Shock!: the beverage blog.

In this Numero Uno edition of the beverage blog, the best way to do it - and do it well - would be to have some kind of grand party to go to.

Summertime Brews!

Which was packed. Almost too packed, some might say. Most of the brew festivals are a little more open air, and nobody has to wait in line too long for a beer. Maybe Summertime Brews did that by design at the Greensboro Coliseum Pavilion. It kept everyone from getting too loaded. Riiiiight.

Props to the organizers, too, for providing us with real glasses for sampling. The last beer festival I made it to had plastic for tasting. Good beverages should be served in a proper vessel. Also, later in the festival, when people (for some reason) began dropping their glasses on the concrete floor, the shatter led to several hundred people to all holler "Ohhhhhh!"

There were a lot of the usual Southeast breweries there: Sweetwater (a personal fav), Terrapin and Carolina Beer and Beverage (from my hometown, and brewer of one of the best pumpkin ales around). The big guys showed up too: Rogue, Flying Dog, and Sierra Nevada - all places that ship nationally and are fairly easy to find in your better beer sections.

So we made a beeline to the Sierra Nevada booth for a sip of that Anniversary Ale.