This is a bit old, but apparently there is a passive aggressive war going on in Brooklyn. Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn got the city to paint over bike lanes in on certain streets in their neighborhoods and hipsters repainted the lines. The Hasidim say it’s a safety issue and the bikers ignore pedestrians and traffic laws, the hipsters say the Hasidim don’t like seeing women in shorts. Objectively, I think the Hasidim aren’t arguing in good faith. The way you get bikers to follow traffic laws is to get the cops to enforce them, not by making the roadways less safe for bikers. Apparently, the hipsters had a naked bike ride planned to further antagonize the situation, but a recent blizzard forced them to bundle up some. Oy.

If you haven’t ever seen pictures of dead baby birds with tons of plastic in their stomachs, click through here. These photographs, by Chris Jordan (Running the Numbers), were taken 2K miles from the nearest continent, but close enough to the giant fucking pile of plastic shit that swirls out by Hawaii. Oh and by the way, there’s another one off of Japan, too. One problem with a giant fucking pile of plastic shit twice the size of Texas and more than 30 feet deep is adult birds fly over it looking for food. When they see a tasty looking bottle cap, they scoop it up and feed it to their babies. Then the pictures linked to above happen. Take a look.

What do you get when you combine someone from Queens of the Stone Age, someone from Nirvana/ Foo Fighters and someone from Led FREAKING Zeppelin? You get The Crooked Vultures:

In a 2005 interview with Mojo magazine, Grohl confirmed the roles would be the most logical ones: “The next project that I’m trying to initiate involves me on drums, Josh Homme on guitar, and John Paul Jones playing bass. That’s the next album. That wouldn’t suck.” So the only question remaining is who would be singing. Speculation runs rampant, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

Woman with pug apparently assaulted by misogynistic cop.

Update: And just like that it appears that the happy magic is over. All 30 lives have been extinguished.

If you go to ESPN.com and enter in the Konami Code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, b, a enter), you’ll get unicorns. Lots of them. This is amazing. It felt good to use the Contra Code again, though I think I got less than 30 unicorns.

A couple years ago you could log into ESPN Insiders by using the first name of a 2 name college as the user name and the second name as the pass word, for instance Login: Boston Password: College. I don’t know if that was a feature, a bug, or user error, but it doesn’t happen anymore.

Via Twitter

This Thorns of Life live at 924 Gilman Street recording isn’t anything to sneeze at, but if you’re dying to hear what Blake Schwarzenbach’s new band sounds like, these MP3s do the trick. Sounds good to me and I can’t wait to hear more. 3 interviews with Blake: here, here, and here. (Thanks again, Seth!)

Edited to add another bonus. 4 tracks from Thorns of Life show at Bar Pink. Again, iffy quality, better than nothing.

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Obviously, I’ve listened to this 50 times already. (Thanks, Seth!)

I think these are from last night’s show, but can’t confirm it. It’s not much, but below are the first notes of The Thorns of Life music to hit the web. Nice work, lyssarella and thanks to my bro for the links. Can we please get some official news?

Ripping through the internet over the last couple days is word that Blake Schwarzenbach debuted a new band on Saturday, November 8th at the Jerk House in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The band features Aaron Cometbus (Crimpshrine and Pinhead Gunpowder among others) on drums and Daniela Sea (The L Word) on bass. It’s not totally clear if the band has a name, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone on the internet yet who actually saw the band perform.

Heavy breathing internet speculation leads the netizens to believe the band is called The Thorns of Life. This because Schwarzenbach’s Facebook image says the same and because he is currently defending his masters thesis on Percy Bysshe Shelly whose poem “Ode to the West Wind” features the line (emphasis his) “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”

In an unsubstantiated quotation, Schwarzenbach describes the band as such, “I can say only that it’s loud and tender and we’re called the Thorns Of Life. whether it’s more Jetsesque or Breaker-like I honestly don’t know; It sounds like a storehouse of fond hatred from the last few years and in the now.”

I’m going to take a cold shower for a week. To say this is exciting is an understatement.

Pic by Brooklyn DIY

(Hat tip to Brooklyn DIY, pop punk bored, Complete Jawbreaker Cigarbox Guitars, and Punknews)