Today at Flavorpill, we tried to imagine a world where Ringo Starr didn’t end up as one of the Beatles. We thought that Jillian Tamaki’s “Have a Sexy Halloween” illustrations for The Hairpin were laugh out loud funny. We watched Rihanna puke out a bunch of ribbons in her new music video. We were excited by the news that a six-minute prologue to Dark Knight Rises will play before Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol in IMAX — but we’re not excited to pay for that ticket. We found it a little funny that Salman Rushdie likes Entourage, but thinks that Game of Thrones is “very addictive garbage.” We wondered if Chris Martin is a secretly a furry. We wished the legendary Divine a very happy birthday. We watched Devo hawk Honda scooters in this fantastic 1984 commercial. We were happy to see Peggy Olson looking so happy in this photo from the upcoming season of Mad Men. We wanted to buy a copy of this teeny tiny newspaper. We couldn’t wait to see French Stewart play “the best French Stewart celebrity impersonator of all time” on Community. And finally, we were intrigued to hear that according to a new study, people with more Facebook friends have denser grey matter in the regions of the brain linked to social skills than those who don’t. Crazy, right?
It’s a pretty common phenomenon for singers and rappers to write songs about how awesome they are, and that makes sense. Musicians have a lot to be proud of. They work long hours, they have to churn out new songs all the time, and their wallets are sometimes too small for their fifties. Just kidding! We all know that lyrical bragging is part of the bedrock of hip-hop, and is a distinct presence in other genres, and we’re cool with that, but sometimes a song comes along that is literally only about how great the singer is, and we think that deserves some special mention. Not that it’s necessarily a value judgement – these songs range from Charlie Sheen-level winning to actual greatness worthy of their own lyrics. After all, we all know that when Nicki Minaj says she’s the best, she’s not bragging. She’s just being realistic. So take a listen, brush your shoulders off, and let us know which of your favorites we’ve missed in the comments.
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1. Some good news to help get you through this icy morning: Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow which means we should have an early spring. And the same goes for the poor man’s version of Phil, Staten Island Chuck.
2. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in talks to join the cast of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, but with more obvious choices like the Joker and the Riddler supposedly thrown out, no one is quite sure which villain he’ll play. [via Deadline]
3. Gwyneth Paltrow and Cee Lo Green are planning to do a duet at the Grammy Awards on February 13th, and while we’re not certain of the song yet, we do know that there will be some Muppets involved. [via People]
4. Ringo Starr wants to trademark his name for future use in “computer game software” and “games via the Internet and wireless devices.” We’re curious: what do you imagine a Ringo-themed iPhone app would do exactly? [via Billboard]
5. “Anderson [Cooper] said he was punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounded him and his crew trying to cover demonstration” – Steve Brusk, a CNN Political Coverage Manager, just tweeted this disturbing bit of news from the Egyptian protests
Bonus link: How a Statistician Beat Scratch Lottery Tickets
Today is the 70th birthday of former Beatle Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr. To celebrate this fact, we thought we’d take a look at 70 other facts that you might not know about the drummer from Liverpool. Click past the jump to read tales about Ringo’s childhood, his experiences with drugs, and his portrayal of the Pope.
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We’ll let James Dacey of physicsworld.com explain this music world miracle: “It was whilst writing a story this afternoon about water-repellency in lotus leaves that I noticed something very strange. Bizarrely, everybody’s favorite mop-topped Liverpudlian seems to reveal himself in the high-speed photo images of water-droplets being ejected from the leaf surface.”
It looks more like George Harrison to us. What do you think?
With The Beatles: Rock Band and the band’s entire remastered catalog hitting retail shops today, it’s no wonder that we hear more rumors that EMI, the Fab Four’s floundering label, and Apple, ye proprietor of the country’s largest retail music shop, finally reached a deal to sell the Beatles catalog on iTunes. Sky News would have you believe it’s true, quoting Yoko Ono as their source. Of course, Sky News removed the link almost immediately after publishing, though not before a host of news services picked up on the story. Read More »
