There's only a week left before the Marvel blockbuster "The Avengers" hits theaters, and what better way to get hyped up than taking a crash-course in "Avengers" comics?
Readers who spent twelve cents on the first issue of the long-running series had no idea in 1963 that the first ever team-up of the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp would go on to spawn one of the most audacious summer movies in history.
Over the last fifty years, the team has been involved in everything, from time-travel to alien planets to death to romance to action (there was even a scrappy teenage sidekick named Rick Jones).
Here, we've hand-picked the very best "Avengers" comics to help you become an almighty "Avengers" trivia master (or, at the very least, help you can fake it during "Avengers" cocktail parties -- those are things, right?). So give it a look and get to reading!
Songkick, a service that informs you when your favorite bands are playing, is out with a new mobile app that makes it easy to track concerts and plan music-filled nights out.
A kind of concert-going social network, Songkick, lets you track bands from Last.fm, Pandora and iTunes, get email alerts when your top acts are playing near you, buy tickets to shows and create show calendars that you can export to Google Calendar, Outlook or iCal.
LOS ANGELES — Six teenagers have shown up in two Los Angeles emergency rooms in the last few months with alcohol poisoning after drinking hand sanitizer, worrying public health officials who say the cases could signal a dangerous trend.
Some of the teenagers used salt to separate the alcohol from the sanitizer, making a potent drink that is similar to a shot of hard liquor.
"All it takes is just a few swallows and you have a drunk teenager," said Cyrus Rangan, director of the toxicology bureau for Los Angeles County's public health department and a medical toxicology consultant for Children's Hospital Los Angeles. "There is no question that it is dangerous."
Welcome back to our series Rembert Explains the '80s. Every so often, we'll e-mail 25-year-old Rembert Browne a video from the 1980s that he hasn't seen. Rembert will write down his thoughts as he's watching it, then we'll post those thoughts here. This week's installment was selected by Grantland Editor-in-Chief Bill Simmons: "Your Love" by The Outfield. If you have an idea for a future episode of Rembert Explains the '80s, e-mail us at hollywood@grantland.com.
Rembert's note: Even though I've heard this marvelous song 70 million times, because I went to college ... with all the white people ... I have never even considered watching this video. This could be amazing or horrible. Can't imagine an in-between.
Sleigh Bells - Rill Rill
Just a non-stop jam.
Katsu Burger Fantastic burger. The atmosphere probably helped. They were playing Japanese death metal from a band called "Sex Machineguns"
In a histrionic world where American Idol and The Voice somehow represent the apotheosis of vocal culture, you'd think Stapp would deserve the Congressional Medal of Honor. His bearlike delivery defines the great/terrible conceit (when Stapp truly goes for the jugular, his howl is like an F-14 flying 40 feet off the ground). He paces around and seems randomly unhinged, periodically slapping his own chest like Kevin Garnett in the playoffs. Everyone in the front row wants to touch him, but respectfully so; sometimes they only need to touch his fingertips.
Creed's highest artistic achievement is the (excellent) song "My Own Prison," the first single they ever released. It's Creed at their upmost Creediest. Lyrical themes include despair, self-loathing, Golgotha, drugs, the shackles of self-awareness, metaphorical lions, actual lions, hypocrisy, Crime and Punishment, and the desperate notion of surrendering one's agency to a Higher Power. The payoff explodes at the end, where Stapp insists, "I created, I created, I created, I created, I created, I created my own prison." Free will: intact.
I've long wondered if this song is popular inside actual prisons.
Summer Rays - Toyohashi
Rookies Sports Bar in Colombia City We are located in Columbia City at 3820 S Ferdinand St (next door to Jones BBQ). We invite you to come by for your favorite sporting event, Happy Hour or Sunday Brunch and enjoy our excellent food in our comfortable confines, featuring reclaimed floors and bartops as well as custom artwork, and of course, 12 flat-screen TVs.
Don Draper Is An Alpha Male from Gynomite The thought has been that women can’t have both success and a successful partner at the same time, and there’s been lots of tongue clucking over that. Women are said to be “dating down” with someone less because they’re too focused on their careers to find a “good man”.
But fuck that.
In this brilliant Psychology Today article written by Marcia Reynolds, she proposes the incredibly obvious and yet unmentioned idea that once you take away a need for financial support, perhaps what women want from men is emotionalsupport. They don’t need someone to be daddy, they just need someone to be there for them and help out with day-to-day stuff, like a grownup. Like women have always done.
''What do you look for in a city?'' It's a question Roger Morgan, the civic pioneer at the heart of Lynch's novel, asks more than once, referring to his drizzly hometown of Seattle. Truth Like the Sun skips through the city's history from 1962, when Morgan helps organize the World's Fair that put it on the map, to 2001, when he decides to run for mayor. Lynch presents the more recent chapters through the eyes of an ambitious muckraker pillaging Morgan's closets for skeletons, and it's the author's own journalistic eye for detail that turns the stereotypically gray city into something vibrantly colorful. B+ Review by Keith Staskiewicz Great. Another book I want to read. What a great problem.
One’s a starving, militant rebel living in a post-apocalyptic world. The other is a fashion-forward teen thriving on a bright Orlando soundstage. What do they have in common? One clearly versatile writer: Suzanne Collins.
Ever since reading The Hunger Games, I’ve been intrigued by the fact that the same woman who wrote such a gritty, violent series also wrote for the fizzy, neon-colored sitcom Clarissa Explains It All (and also for The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, which I think is sort of underrated). Collins didn’t create Clarissa, but I’m sure she lived and breathed Clarissa while she worked for the show, just as she lived and breathed Katniss while writing the novels. We’ll learn about Collins’ journey from Clarissa to Katniss in the upcoming comic book about the author’s life, but for now, it’s fascinating to see ways in which the 90′s Nickelodeon heroine could have inspired the very different teen who made Collins famous. Okay, all of this is a huge stretch, and it’s easier to think of ways they almost-might-be similar but are completely different, but here goes:
151 original Pokemon re-imagined. Your Logical Fallacy Is No one has ever been able to explain these to me without being a condescending jerkface. Today's Photo:
THE INFINITE HORIZON takes place in the not-too-distant future, with a small group of abandoned soldiers being led home by one man: The Captain. To get back, he’ll have to cross half the globe and endure deadly encounters with mythic enemies.
The Captain escapes shipwrecks, beats a vicious opponent wearing a cycloptic combat armor...and resists the siren's call of a predatory society, all while encountering everywhere dying breaths of a great and horrible war. Artist Noto depicts the horrors of war and The Captain's long trek home with an understated palette, the violence taking on a haunting quality as The Captain sacrifices more and more of himself to return home.
Duggan found his inspiration both in Homer's 2700-year-old epic and current events in global conflict. "In the years following the 9/11 attacks I re-examined the poem and found it to be very fresh and relevant to our society," he said. "We're now living in a state of almost perpetual war. Contractors and drones will probably remain behind long after combat troops are withdrawn. The burden of these conflicts are not shared. Military families shoulder the load, and I have doubts about whether or not they are adequately supported for their service and sacrifice."
"The Next 50" campaign looks at continuing the legacy of the World's Fair with a six month celebration of our past and future. Download a pdf of the full event guide at the link above. I looked for five minutes and saw
Celebrate science! In June 2012, Seattle hosts the area's first science festival. As we mark the 50th anniversary of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, our region's schools, universities, cultural institutions, research centers and businesses come together to celebrate the importance of science and technology. Learn more about Science EXPO Day, Science Festival Week and the Science Luminaries Series.
Ten years ago, Marvels was the breakthrough work for both of its creators: a worm's-eye view of the spectacle of Marvel comics history—35 years of glorious superheroes and terrifying super-disasters, told from the perspective of Phil Sheldon, a newspaper photographer who's experienced "the marvels" from ground level. Renowned artist Ross's rich, lush, nearly photorealistic style (he painted all the major characters from photographs of models) made his reputation—and the book—a landmark. The story, too, suggests a sort of grandeur that had largely slipped away from superhero comics by the early '90s, even as it describes the helplessness that normal people might feel in the presence of angel-winged mutants and rapacious gods from outer space. There are plenty of Easter eggs in Marvels for longtime comics buffs, although the book is structured so that new readers won't be lost, either. The level of detail goes much deeper than what's visible on the page, but its creators' command of that unseen background gives the story itself force and resilience. This new edition augments the original with over 200 pages of extras: four drafts of Busiek's original proposal for the series, all of his scripts, a short bonus story, dozens of Ross's sketches and related artwork, and a guide to the many celebrity cameo appearances Ross drew into the original.
In 2005, multi-platinum recording artist R. Kelly launched a cultural phenomenon with the mega-hit urban operetta “Trapped in the Closet.” The show defies categorization. Part contemporary movie musical, part urban soap opera, part epic music video, part independent film, this groundbreaking series unfolds like a juicy tabloid story, full of suspense, mystery, drama and packed with unexpected twists and turns.
Fans and critics alike applauded the unique series filled with over-the-top characters and complex story lines, all set to a sexy R&B groove. Viewers demanded more, and R. Kelly delivered again and again with brand new characters and plot twists and 22 chapters of whatever was going on inside R. Kelly’s rich interior world.
Yes, it's finally here. The "Trapped in the Closet" podcast. Reality Czar David Jacoby sits down with Rembert Browne and Jay Caspian Kang to talk about R. Kelly's masterpiece, with scattered discussions of Coachella, cruises, and holograms sprinkled in for good measure. A few of you will really, really like this.
Swingin' Doors is dedicated to a wide range of country sounds and styles, from honky tonk and western swing to alternative country and bluegrass, in sharp contrast to the tight playlists and narrow focus of today's commercial country radio.
As might be expected from a show named Swingin' Doors, there's usually a bit more honky tonk than anything else, though you'll hear everything from old-time fiddle tunes and boppin' country boogie to lush Countrypolitan sounds and hard-charging alternative twang-rock.
You'll hear country giants like Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb and Lefty Frizzell alongside more obscure but talented folks such as Joe Carson, the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers and Charline Arthur. You'll also hear plenty of new music ranging from hardcore honky tonkers like Roger Wallace and Heather Myles to edgy alt-country artists like Neko Case, the Drive-By Truckers and Fred Eaglesmith.
Today's Photo:
The rain soon let up, and soccer proceeded without a hitch.
At Outside magazine, a beautifully-written and skillfully-reported story on the search for Micah True, aka "Caballo Blanco." The long-distance runner who became famous by way ofthe book "Born to Run" died last month, after setting out on a 12-mile hike in the Gila National Forest. Related: this 2010 profile of True (PDF) in Arizona fitness magazineSweat is one of the better ones.
Record Store Day is like a one-day-a-year time machine. On Saturday, April 21, independent record stores around the country will be mobbed by music fans anxiously lining up to get their hands on actual pieces of plastic with musical information etched onto either side. We can't help it. After spending the rest of the year getting access to just about any piece of music we want without ever interacting with another human being, Record Store Day brings out the collector in us all.
And there's plenty to look forward to. A Flaming Lips double LPfeaturing guests as diverse as Ke$ha, Nick Cave and Bon Iver. Anew St. Vincent single. A split seven-inch where Feist covers Mastodon on one side and Mastodon covers Feist on the other. The best thing about Record Store Day, though, is the way it offers not just a few recordings about which we can all agree, but something to make every fan go a little crazy in anticipation.
Here's proof: the geeks at NPR Music have gone through the complete list of hundreds of exclusive Record Store Day releases and picked out a baker's dozen that will have us lining up early on Saturday.
