FACEBOOK, THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE HALF YOUR LIVES REVOLVE AROUND, has finally figured out how to make money. More than 50,000 sites now have ‘Like’ buttons which, when pressed, generate a message in your status timeline indicating your...

photo by Ani Yapundzhyan   BACK IN THE DAY, I COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND WHY GURU WAS FAMOUS. When I first heard Gang Starr in 1994, I said "dope beats, but is that guy really rapping on the whole record?" His famed 'monotone style'...

THE WU-TANG CLAN SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. If this was half the world that half the world would have you believe it is, a bunch of Five Percenters rapping about being samurais over muffled, offbeat tracks that often sounded to the untrained ear like...

I don't listen to much new music.   Erykah, UGK, Raekwon's most recent albums got play. I have many musician friends whose work I love. But in urban music it seems like lazy is the new cool, which insults me. And more and more...

YEP, APPARENTLY THE REPUBLICANS HAVE ONE TOO. I bumped into one at the free clinic last week (my new significant is a real ballbreaker) and he had just enough time to hip me before the nurse called him in for his boosters. Apparently I’m the...

 People are always asking me “why don’t you ever post album reviews?” Simple. I don’t post album reviews because I don’t listen to new albums. I don’t need to. The tons of records I’ve listened to in my...

WAS A TIME, NOT REALLY ALL THAT LONG AGO, WHEN ONE COULD WRITE DOWN THE NAMES of every famous entertainer that came to mind on a sheet of paper and still have room for a shopping list. If you knew even one of their names, then you knew them...

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -GEORGE BERNARD SHAW   We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. —“BILL MAHER     Q: What do A and B...

DO YOU SLEEP IN A DUMPSTER? If your answer is yes, then the current economic ‘downfizz’ is definitely impacting your life. It is possible that you’ve been a jobless loser since well before Alan Greenspan went from looking old and...

SOME PEOPLE SAY THE BEST SPOT IN A HOUSE PARTY IS THE KITCHEN. Others say the best spot in the club is the parking lot. But I'd wager that most of yesterday's attendees would agree that the place to be at Michael Jackson's memorial in the Staples...

  1987 WAS THE LAST TIME I WAS IN IRAN. It was a trip of many memories for an eight-year-old; the sight of the first pair of naked breasts that weren’t my mom’s (they were my cousin’s), a furious storm during which a...

IRAN'S ON  FIRE, AND FINGERS ARE POINTING as  fast as the bullets are flying. Conservatives are big cheaters. Liberals are sore losers. And like clockwork, the know-it-alls on each side are trundling out all kinds of...

  How can you expect a bunch of people who couldn’t get something right in 100 years to get it right in one? Or even ten? Hell, even 20? This is the first thought that crosses many minds upon learning of the news that a movement,...