We hope you didn’t miss know-nothing column about “French gangsta rap” and hip-hop culture in re: the suburban French riots. (The column, posted Thursday, is hidden behind the TimesSelect subscription wall, hélas, but you’ll get his drift from the critique.) Also, in re: the Evangelical theme park Leon Freilich offers this verse commentary:

Will Mel Gibson cut the ribbon? American Evangelicals are to unveil plans for a $60-million theme park in the Holy Land. But

A forerunner of performance art? “Company of Pianos”] is that of the huge bonfire on the beach of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1904, when a thousand square pianos were burned to a crisp. The main manufacturers got together to put on this show in order to declare the “square” dead. That quote, from a

“Zut alors!”

We see that ABC News: Arts and Entertainment, has has a gig to guest-conduct the 99.99999% all-male Vienna Philharmonic in a concert this coming weekend (which will make her the first woman ever to do so). (See the Postscript.) CIRCLE JERKS, our recent item about the orchestra’s sexism, Rodgers wonders “whether [the orchestra’s] long-standing critics […]

In re: Scroll to the postscript. — TSoT EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

We like the way the Los Angeles Times put it, with all eight “No”s, though you’d never know from the photo what happened: No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No Schwarzenegger ‘Sequel’ Couldn’t Captivate Voters — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Do you want to know what’s happening, Mr. Jones? Do you really want to know? Then tune in to Robert Fisk this morning. “You know?” he quotes a CIA officer, “Torture works.” In an interview on Democracy Now!, Fisk, who may be the most intrepid, most illuminating reporter working in Iraq and the Middle East, […]

If the British Parliament passes a We’re told this diagram, which illustrates “a reaction involving two inorganic molecules,” is from “an entirely serious article” in the journal actual formulation means. Could it possibly be erotic? — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Prompted, we believe, by the posting of VPO Watch, an advocacy project of the media coverage of the Vienna Philharmonic and the status of women will find it invaluable. — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

“We do not torture,” the I pledge allegiance to the flog Of the United States of Cheney And to the tortures for which he stands, One nation, with me as trainee.

How do you say “Burn, Baby, Burn” in French? And which would you believe, Doug Ireland’s “France Has an Underclass, but Its Roots Are Still Shallow”? Did we really have to ask? Ireland messages: U.S. press coverage of the youth rebellion in France’s ghettos hasn’t done a very good job of portraying the reasons for […]

Eight years ago, the all-male Vienna Philharmonic agreed to open its doors to women for the first time since it was founded, in 1842. Has it lived up to that agreement? In a word, no. These guys are still playing with themselves. Despite official promises and pronouncements, and the brief hiring of a female harpist […]

A gag is making the email rounds: 1. Go to the Aaaahhhh, on Aug. 11, 2003 in our first Straight Up post, to be precise — and pointed out that the Web wit who thought up the gag and commandeered the Google site was a guy by the name of blogging pharmacist with a taste […]

Prince Charles and his now-legal paramour, Camilla, are being trailed on Humbert Wolfe in his famous ditty: THE BRITISH JOURNALIST [Actual title: “Over the Fire”] You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to. In the intervening decades, things have […]

Most news stories live for a day and die the next.