If you’ve never read Lords of Chaos, the epic origin story of Norwegian black metal, you are depriving yourself of something profound. Atavistic, elemental paganism! The burning of beautiful, 1000-year old churches — an act of purest, despicable philistinism… There is apparently a movie, Until The Light Takes Us, coming next month. This is a [...]

You’ll find it animating his very good interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. What I find most interesting is Goldberg’s self-imposed conceptual restrictions — which don’t serve journalism very well — as when he presses Ben-Ami on whether “Israel is creating conditions for the Palestinians to become terrorists.” I mean, of course it is. Read The Accidental [...]

In March of 2008, maybe 30 people bothered to show up at the Black Cat’s tiny backroom stage to see this excellent band of storytellers from New Brunswick called the Gaslight Anthem. One of them, I’m happy to report, was a very confused Armando Iannucci, and the experience led to the scene in his movie [...]

Foreign Policy publishes a wonderful and stirring response from Rebecca Abou-Chedid to the smear circulated by racist ex-AIPAC official Lenny Ben-David. It deserves to be read in full, since it’s less a personal reply that a mission statement for the Jewish and Arab-American peace constituencies. But this excerpt encapsulates the stakes so extremely well: Ben-David’s [...]

A.J. vs Lackey. We’re going back. Fuck L.A., we’ve done that already. Philadelphia, we stare at you from 95. We have 27 outs to get through this last bit of business and then we will come through your city like a hurricane. Soundtrack is courtesy of the hardest band that ever lived, with its ode [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 825-09 October 22, 2009 DoD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Spc. Kyle A. Coumas, 22, of Lockeford, Calif., died Oct. 21 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised [...]

These are dark times for the State Department. The imbalance between military and civilian aspects of foreign policy is greater than ever. Over decades, the Pentagon has taken increasing primacy in U.S. foreign relations, creating a vicious circle where ever-more burden is transferred to the military and correspondingly less capability remains at State or USAID, [...]

“Hey Tawwrek! Ahftah you finish putting tahgettheh that pipe bowumb, remind me to shit intah this bag, so I can throw it at the Tushibah when Jeteh stahts to bat during the Warld Series!” (Photo of Tommy from Quinzee stolen from Kissing Suzy Kolber.)

Noted… without… comment…

My pal and former TPM colleague Andrew Golis has been hired by Yahoo to create a news blog. He promises “a combination of curation and original reporting, with gregarious linking and sharp, smart writing.” And I have no doubt Golis will succeed. Absurdly young, the guy spends a lot of time thinking about the architecture [...]