When Ozzy Osbourne launched his solo career with his 1980 debut album Blizzard of Ozz,he didn’t have the same support he had as a member of Black Sabbath. “That was in a warehouse in London,” Osbourne says of the album sleeve featuring him in a cape holding a cross with …
Read More »The Triumph and Tragedy of Woodstock's Forgotten Album Producer
Listen to an audio version of this story below: Fifty years after the original Woodstock festival took place, mementos of the event are scattered across the country. Jimi Hendrix’s guitar is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Wavy Gravy’s sleeping bag is housed at the …
Read More »'Rocketman': Fact-Checking the Elton John Biopic
The new Elton John movie Rocketman never pretends to be a traditional biopic. It’s a fantasy musical told from the perspective of a burned-out, drug-addled Elton reflecting on his wild life from a rehab facility in the early 1990s. Characters frequently burst into elaborately choreographed song and dance routines, songs …
Read More »I Tried Watching 22 Marvel Movies in 1 Theater for 3 Days and Went Insane
Two-and-a-half days from now, an 11-year, 22-movie journey will end with Avengers: Endgame. It all started in 2008. I was a 16-year-old in awe at Robert Downey Jr. turning Iron Man from a C-List character to the cornerstone of a movie multiverse. In 2019, I’m a jaded 26-year-old chasing recognition …
Read More »The Birth of Joy Division
The Joy Division story has been told many times, yet it never stops seeming too bizarre to be true. JonSavage, best known for his classic punk history, England’s Dreaming, was one of the band’s first chroniclers in the 1970s, but he tells the tale in a new way in his …
Read More »This Is How Human Extinction Could Play Out
Excerpted from “FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?” by Bill McKibben. Published by Henry Holt and Company April 16th 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Bill McKibben. All rights reserved. Oh, it could get very bad. In 2015, a study in the Journal of Mathematical Biology pointed …
Read More »Rachel Brosnahan on 'SNL': 3 Sketches You Have to See
Rachel Brosnahan hosted the first Saturday Night Live of 2019, but the show didn’t do much to highlight her comedic skills. Some hosts serve as the centerpiece of the proceedings. Others blend into the ensemble cast, making it seem as if they have always been there. But Brosnahan (through no …
Read More »Unraveling Trump's Toxic Agenda
Nobody had high hopes for Trump’s environmental policy. He had, after all, said climate change was a hoax and sent out more than 100 skeptic tweetseven before running for president. But the speed, recklessness and spite with which his administration has sought to upend environmental protections has been breathtaking. Climate …
Read More »Why the FBI's Kavanaugh Investigation Is So Troubling
United States senators are taking turns reading the FBI’s updated background investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. But the report is unaccountably incomplete. The FBI interviewed only one of Kavanaugh’s three accusers. And investigators failed to interview key witnesses who could have helped corroborate allegations of sexual misconduct by …
Read More »Cynical Decision to Hire 'Female Assistant' Rapidly Backfiring on Republicans
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, nervous about the optics of an all-male panel interrogating an alleged victim of sexual assault, gambled and hired a “female assistant” to question Christine Blasey FordThursday on their behalf.All 11 members of the Republican majority — including Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who called for …
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