So a missing American soldier turned up in the Euphrates along with 800 gajillion Iraqi bodies. I hate to say it, but its like, did they just start looking there? You could clear up every homicide-missing person-genocide case by dipping a toe in that floating graveyard (as we mentioned before.)

The world at large thinks of three things when it comes to music from Houston, Texas: Destiny’s Child, Lyle Lovett and ZZ Top. Well, okay. Maybe just Destiny’s Child.

But you, dear reader, being the well-informed renaissance person that you are, know better, don’t you? You already know about The Mathletes, and now you’re about to learn about The Dimes.

Hailing from West Houston, the land of grossely similar home developments, spawls of franchises and the densest collection of SUVs per capita, The Dimes is the union of then-high school friends Carlos Sanchez (vocals/guitar), Cley Miller (guitar), Iram Guerrero (drums) and Jose Sanchez (bass), who came to together in 2004. Together, they’ve managed to create a sound not unlike The Pixies, who they’re routinely compared to. Harnessing one of the strongest rhythm sections in Houston, their sound is raw but completely focused. Maybe that’s why they’ve already opened for the likes of 120 Days, Ratatat and Tapes ‘N’ Tapes (who sported one of the nifty Dimes shirts at Coachella.)

The band officially released their “Animal” EP last year, and are in the studio working on a full-length. They do a show here and there, two of which are the weekend of the 19th in Houston, I’m told. If you can’t catch them live just yet, distract yourself with their first video for the “Delilah” single:

Yes, The Dimes are poised to take over the world before they can even legally drink. We submit to their awesomeness.

Featured Song - “Teenage Sex,” by The Dimes
Featured Song - “Delilah,” by The Dimes

(EDITOR’S NOTE: If you ever catch them live and they take requests, scream out “Psycho Killer.” Actually, do it even if they don’t take requests.)

River Tigris went from being the craddle of civilization to the graveyard of Baghdad. IRIN, a humanitarian news agency, reports a massive volume of floating bodies all along the Tigris.

The situation is even worse in Suwayrah, a southern area of the capital, where the government has built barriers with huge iron nets to trap plants and garbage dropped in the river but now this is also a barrier for bodies.

Under Saddam, people were punished for throwing trash in the river. (Probably severely punished.) Today mountains of trash line the banks. More bad news? Massive mud islands appear in the ever-more-shallow river during dry seasons. It’s great how U.S. reconstruction contractors can’t be trusted to build a sound police headquarters, and, like, restoring the Tigris would be way harder. [Source]

P.S. Wouldn’t this be an amazing TV news story? Post if you see it covered anywhere in the mainstream media.

Tucker Carlon’s show, Tucker, on MSNBC is kinda awesome.

Sure, it serves up the content like a snarky J-Crew ad, but it’s actually witty and they oscillate well between real news and serving up the anti-news stories we all crave– like Paris Hilton’s possible pardon and parliamentary brawls in Taiwan.

If you look at all the latest batch of news shows trying to target younger audiences it actually seems like the program designers are coming up with a more effective formula. As we know, they really need th 18-34 crowd so badly.

Thoughts on what I would do as an exec to lure the spring chickens in after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Bank, you know, owners or board of governors or whatever today voted that Paul Wolfowitz is guilty of a conflict of interest. Duh. And this New York Times headline is hilarious.

So what? Sometimes we setup elaborate photo shoots of ourselves and our friends. The most appealing shots end up on the Internet. Some make it to brief Facebook profile fame, others fade into photo set obscurity. Well, this time things went differently. I took some pictures of a friend and look what happened.

BEFORE


Taken in December when pastel polos were safely hidden under tweed coats.

And then a few months later the front page of the Express…

AFTER
A shockingly original capture

This one makes me a little uncomfortable

Tip-off courtesy of Will Nolan, who should blog here by the way.

Very few movies trailers actually grab us by our metaphorical balls at first sight. “Superbad” has:

The minds behind “Da Ali G Show” and “The 10-Year-Old Virgin” are taking credit for this piece of trailer gold, but we can’t help but wonder if the genius of it is limited to these mere three minutes.

But an entertaining three minutes nonetheless. (Not safe for work, by the way. Don the headphones.)