1. Last night Jon Stewart stopped by The Colbert Report to sign paperwork that legally makes him the head of Stephen Colbert’s super PAC — a move that will allow the late night host to pursue his “possible candidacy for the president of the United States of South Carolina.” [via Huffington Post]

2. Surprise: There’s another film project about Abraham Lincoln in the works! This one, which will be produced by Ridley Scott, is a documentary based on Bill O’Reilly‘s recent book Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever — source material that, as The Playlist points out, is “so factually inept, the National Parks Service has banned it from being sold at the Ford’s Theater.”

3. Kenneth Branagh will direct Kate Winslet in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a juicy-sounding period drama about a magazine reporter’s relationship with the residents of a Nazi-occupied island off the coast of Normandy. [via Vulture]

4. The Flaming Lips’ next album, which we already knew would feature collaborations with the Plastic Ono Band and Bon Iver, will apparently also include contributions from Nick Cave, Ke$ha, Lykke Li, and Erykah Badu. The LP is set to be released this coming April. [via NME]

5. The Daily reports that, thanks to a multimillion-dollar deal to be the spokeswoman for a pharmaceutical company, Paula Deen is about to reveal to the world that she has Type 2 diabetes. Does this mean no more deep-fried Twinkies for breakfast, y’all?

Bonus Buzz: 21 Examples Of Bizarre Furniture

It’s become damn near impossible to keep track of The Flaming Lips’ endless (and generally delightful) musical experiments, so we wouldn’t blame you for not realizing that they released a four-song EP in collaboration with Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band late last year. Unfortunately, the record — which features the bands’ joint holiday tune “Atlas Eets Christmas” –  was limited to 2,000 glow-in-the-dark vinyl copies and is already sold out. But don’t despair: The folks at Consequence of Sound have unearthed all four tracks on YouTube. Stream them after the jump and tell us what you think in the comments. So far, we’re really digging the ghostly, nine-minute “The Fear Litany.”

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Now that The Flaming Lips have released an EP in the form of a seven-pound gummy skull and put out a 24-hour song called “7 Skies H3″ packaged in an actual human skull, they’ve decided to end 2011 on a more festive, less death-obsessed note. Wayne Coyne and co. have put up a website called Atlas Eets Christmas, where they’re streaming various holiday songs. The most notable of these is a new collaboration with Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band, an update of a tune that surfaced in instrumental form in 2007 and is also titled “Atlas Eets Christmas.” Considering that it’s The Flaming Lips and Ono we’re talking about, the track is surprisingly easy on the ears, featuring the requisite seasonal bells and a melody that, despite the intense vocal layering, will remind you of just about every Christmas carol you’ve ever heard. Hear it after the jump. Read More »

A while back, we looked at albums that’d make for great TV series, a topic that gave rise to much intra-office discussion and several as-yet-unfulfilled promises to actually sit down and write some serious pitches. Anyway, the release of David Lynch’s Crazy Clown Time has got us thinking about the logical follow-up to this idea — albums that’d make for great films! There are plenty of records that spring to mind, several of which could happily be shot by a certain Mr. Lynch himself. Here are the ten albums that we’d love to option the rights to — so if you’re a mega-rich producer, at least give us credit when you cash in on these, eh? Read More »

If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: the teen detective queen, Nancy Drew.

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Today at Flavorpill, we were fascinated to learn the last words of some of our favorite writers. We were thrilled to hear that American hikers Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal have finally left Iran after being held in a Tehran prison for the past two years. We wondered if there’s anyone out there who will actually listen to all six hours of the Flaming Lips’ new song (probably, right?). We enjoyed reading Steve Martin’s unsolicited letter of advice to future Oscars host Eddie Murphy. We joined in the heated debate on who are the 50 greatest video game characters of all time. We looked at how the design of some famous logos might evolve in the future. We couldn’t believe that Nicholas Sparks has sold a show to ABC about a lovelorn angel. We were totally amused this Tumblr that spotlights the kids who have played the flashback versions of famous actors. We found out a few things that Apple is worth more than. We took an interactive tour of the United States of smartphones. And finally, we fell madly in love with Alessandro Novelli’s stop motion animation alphabet — and not just because it’s in Helvetica.

We’ve never been big fans of Rolling Stone‘s readers polls, but for once whoever reads the magazine regularly have got it mostly right. In their latest list, they’ve picked out the 10 worst songs of the ’90s, and their rankings do indeed include some major stinkers: Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?,” Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart,” and Los Del Rio’s once-unavoidable “Macarena” all get shout outs. (We will, however, take exception to the inclusion of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” — an excellent karaoke song.) Perusing the list, it occurred to us that most of the songs were one-hit wonders, which got us thinking about the considerable number of one-hit wonders from the ’90s we actually enjoyed. A list of our 10 favorites is after the jump. No, drunk girl dancing on the bar, “Baby Got Back” is not included.

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1. P.J. Harvey has taken home this year’s Mercury Prize for her album Let England Shake, making her the first singer to ever win the award twice. [via ArtsBeat]

2. News that we’re ashamed to admit makes us excited: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis have just closed deals to take on “substantial” roles in The Expendables 2. [via Deadline]

3. The Flaming Lips are recording “Found a Star on the Ground,” a song that’s a whopping six hours long, to benefit the Central Oklahoma Humane Society and the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma, and for $100 a pop, you can have your name included in its epic lyrics. [via Pitchfork]

4. Yesterday Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was fired over the phone, and now “people familiar with the matter” are saying that the company is “open to selling itself to the right bidder” — which many think could be Microsoft. [via Techland]

5. An intruder broke into Celine Dion’s Quebec mansion on Monday afternoon, and then proceeded to make himself a pastry snack and draw a nice, warm bath. [via E!]

Bonus Buzz: The 5 Stages Of Vacation Grief

Apart from the really important news of the day — the important breaking story about Ke$ha’s new necklace — Rolling Stone also reminded us yesterday that it was 32 years ago this week that U2′s debut EP, U2-3, was released. The three-song 12″ has become something of a Holy Grail for fans — it’s been reissued several times, but the original releases change hand for shitloads of money. All this despite the fact that like most of U2′s pre-Boy material, it’s not really all that good — two of the three songs (“Out of Control” and “Stories for Boys”) contained on U2-3 would end up in markedly superior forms on the band’s debut, while the last (“Boy/Girl”) slowly slipped out of their setlist and into obscurity. Anyway, the fact that it’s the band’s first release got us thinking about other bands who overcame relatively unpromising debuts — not necessarily terrible albums, mind, just comparatively unimpressive — and went on to bigger and better things. Here are 10 of our favorites. (And no, Radiohead’s Pablo Honey isn’t one of them — we really quite like that album.)

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For all that rock ‘n’ roll is full of songs that involve large, hirsute males boasting about their sexual prowess and remarkable ability to metabolize alcohol, rock songs that actually examine what it means to be a man are very few and far between. This, of course, is hardly surprising — men have never been encouraged to express their feelings, and even in our enlightened post-feminist world where everyone is supposed to be in touch with their emotions, there’s still a pretty substantial societal pressure on men to be strong and silent and emotionally inscrutable. Happily, here at Flavorpill, we don’t buy into gender-related bullshit of any description, so here are ten of our favorite songs about masculinity. We’d love to hear yours.

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