Pop Culture

Lead Photo Marking time

Greg Beato | Wed, Dec 31, 2008 (midnight)

What if eight-track tapes were a billion-dollar business today, more popular than iPods and Zunes? Would that be any stranger than the fact that U.S. consumers have purchased millions and millions of calendars in the last few weeks?

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Lead Photo The beat goes on

Greg Beato | Thu, Dec 18, 2008 (midnight)

Music torture, one of the War on Terror’s most enduring hits, made headlines again last week. Apparently there is no Army-wide playlist or programming strategy that determines what songs get utilized. Soldiers are simply encouraged to make selections from their own private collections.

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Star search

Greg Beato | Thu, Dec 4, 2008 (midnight)

Why are so many major movie stars fleeing the screen? Apparently it’s less fun than generally imagined to spend a couple of months in an exotic locale once or twice a year, eating catered food in luxurious trailers and having your hair styled for hours on end.

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Lead Photo Glampire weekend

Greg Beato | Thu, Nov 20, 2008 (midnight)

Robert Pattinson, the young English star of the new movie Twilight, plays Edward Cullen, an ageless blood-sucking hottie with the creamy pallor of a slightly consumptive Abercrombie & Fitch model and stylishly haunted hair.

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AC/DC, we salute you

Greg Beato | Thu, Nov 6, 2008 (midnight)

Are you tired of change? Are you fed up with extreme makeovers, disruptive innovation, the constant pressure to extend your product line? You may feel alone, out of step, defective in a world that prizes self-improvement above all else. But at least you still have AC/DC, the patron saints of high-voltage complacency, to believe in.

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Lead Photo Broken record

Greg Beato | Thu, Oct 9, 2008 (midnight)

At first glance, you might mistake Guinness World Records 2009 for a book-sized can of some energy drink.

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Lead Photo America’s got … Paris?

Greg Beato | Thu, Sep 25, 2008 (midnight)

This is, after all, the reality TV era. If, like Brooke Hogan, you’re the daughter of a famous person, you get your own TV show. If, like Dina Lohan, you’re the mother of a famous person, you get your own TV show. If, like Kim Kardashian, you live in a city where a lot of famous people live and you have a giant ass, you get your own TV show.

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Lead Photo Rose-colored glasses

Greg Beato | Thu, Sep 11, 2008 (midnight)

n Minneapolis last week, as Sarah Palin introduced herself to the world, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska talked about her small-town values, and her life as a small-town hockey mom, and her experience as a small-town mayor.

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Lead Photo Air apparent

Greg Beato | Thu, Aug 28, 2008 (midnight)

This month in Beijing, the planet’s greatest athletes sprinted, backstroked and pirouetted their way to glory and endorsement deals, thrilling billions around the world. In Oulu, Finland, the planet’s greatest air guitarists sprinted, backstroked and pirouetted their way to sore necks and sweaty semi-acclaim, momentarily amusing the hundreds of Finns who were on hand.

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If Paris can do it…

Greg Beato | Thu, Aug 14, 2008 (midnight)

In 2006, Paris Hilton was hot. By 2008, the former infotainment diversion had grown so tepid that clunky designer knockoff Perez Hilton was probably wishing he’d chosen a namesake with more staying power, like Taylor Hicks or Lonelygirl15. Then, in an attempt to undermine Barack Obama’s status as the “biggest celebrity in the world,” John McCain spiked his latest attack ad with random images of Hilton and fellow blond cupcake Britney Spears.

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Waxing insignificant

Greg Beato | Thu, Jul 31, 2008 (midnight)

At the London headquarters of Madame Tussauds, the only place in the world where bloody decapitations and exacting facsimiles of Brad Pitt’s ass are presented as family entertainment, strange and gruesome spectacle is the norm. And yet even by its outlandish standards, the museum’s recent unveiling of a new Amy Winehouse automaton was surreal.

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No country for old shoppers

Greg Beato | Thu, Jul 17, 2008 (midnight)

When was the last time you read a John Updike novel cover to cover in a single sitting? Or even a John Updike book jacket cover to cover in a single sitting? While dour eggheads are forever forecasting apocalypse borne of our infatuation with images over text, it should be obvious by now that reading is grossly overrated. For most people, bookstores are where you get lattes and Burt’s Bees sampler kits, and yet life just keeps getting better. In previous centuries, apparently, everyone was so engrossed in Paradise Lost they never got around to inventing the Internet, organic frozen dinners, reality TV. We haven’t made the same mistake.

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Mystery is killed by the Web

Greg Beato | Thu, Jul 3, 2008 (midnight)

In the earliest days of e-commerce, it didn’t matter if you were ordering from a little old lady on eBay or a venture-funded start-up like Amazon or Webvan: Every transaction was a crapshoot. With a leap of faith, you clicked on the Order button and surrendered your mailing address and credit card number.

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Pep talk

Greg Beato | Thu, Jun 19, 2008 (midnight)

If you think life was tough in the old days, when housewives prepared dinner using manual can openers instead of microwave ovens, when teens rode bikes to school instead of SUVs, when changing TV channels required a hike across the living room, consider this: Not only did the hearty folk of yesteryear have to endure such hardships, they did so without the benefit of energy drinks!

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Must-see reform

Greg Beato | Thu, Jun 5, 2008 (midnight)

For years, Hollywood celebrities have fought to keep us healthy by enjoying sumptuous $1,500-a-plate meals at lavish benefit galas, auctioning off their old shoes to the highest bidder and holding hands with each other and singing. Despite such efforts, however, cancer, heart disease and countless other ills continue to afflict us. Frustrated, no doubt, by their lack of progress, today’s most forward-thinking stars have decided that disease isn’t the real problem after all—the cure is. Thus, they’ve declared war on health care.

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A&E

Mamma Mia!, by the numbers!
How many yards of Spandex have been used in the construction of costumes for The Dynamos in the Mandalay Bay production of Mamma Mia!?
Still fab-“O”-lous at 10
O quietly marked its 10th anniversary in 2008. Far from dating, however, the show remains a timeless experience; even its technology still impresses.
Paint the town
The three-story building at 601 E. Fremont, at the edge of Downtown’s Fremont East District, has seen duty as a Sears store and a fingerprinting lab used by Metro. It was almost the site of a 10,000 square-foot nightclub.

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Cocktail of the Week

Cocktail of the Week Dec 31, 2008
by Xania Woodman

The Bearded Clam

A verrry distant cousin of the Mojito, the Caipirinha and the Batida is the Bearded Clam, created by Frankie's Tiki Room by bartender Alice Hartling. In a pint glass, muddle ...
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