Good (NEWS) Friday!

Fear Not! For I bring unto thee good tidings of great joy! And now some especially terrific news items:

• Great Zombie Jesus! - Head Honcho David X. Cohen talks up Futurama at Toyfare magazine (click on over there). For those too lazy to click over, the gist is that Futurama will be back in 2008. Will it be on Comedy Central? Will it be on DVD? Unknown. But most of the writers are back, all of the voice talent is back, and Al Gore is once again lending his voice (Dude - get a job already! Oh that's right, he's a consultant for Apple and Google...which means he's groin grabbingly rich. Bastard). The best lil tidbit is that the Hypnotoad will be returning, including, Cohen says, "a full 22-minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad for the DVD release. I am serious."


• If Only There Were Hipsters in Brooklyn to Appreciate This... - Lou Reed will be performing his formerly derided/currently hiply beloved album Berlin in Brooklyn, NY. This NY Times article details how Reed will be performing his entire gloomy album from Dec. 13th - 17th @ St. Ann's Warehouse. I'm very interested and pray that they are filming this event as it is once in a life time (well, the first in a life time at least). I really love this album, although I will note it is the Single Most Depressing album of all time (no matter what the British say). But it is a beautiful, symphonic epic telling of a very simple and personal story of two classic Reed characters (drug addict lovers who abuse each other and lament their existence) inside of an apartment building in Berlin (before the wall came down). Just listening to the song "The Kids" when a child suddenly and desperately cries out "MAMA!" that is absolutely heartbreaking. It's definitely worth listening to, and if you're able, you should head on over there to check it out.
• The British Version of Pretty Woman is A LOT Darker - Okay, this doesn't qualify good news. Unless you think the slaughter of 5 British prostitutes counts as good news. In which case you're starting to scare me, and I think I should take the kids to my mothers. In the English port town of Ipswich, the bodies of 5 women have been found in 11 days. This rash of murders harkens back, of course, to Jack the Ripper (although the news story makes it sound as if there have been several "Rippers" in the UK's past. Hey, England - why you no likey the whores?). But what makes this sound so fascinating to me is the near cinematic dramatic language that Mike Berry, criminal psychologist, uses in describing the fiend: "'The killer may be confident he will not be caught," he wrote in the Daily Mirror. "He will be fascinated by the coverage of the case ... he will be thinking "the game is on".'" So who wants to join my rag tag group of Ripper hunters and go on over to foggy Londontown and crack this case wide open? I would prefer a mixture of races and expertises that were comprised of (but not limited t0): judomaster, chemist, acrobat, computer analyst, mathematical genius, mime, precision driving, 1980s cartoon theme songs, and whores. Please email me at the contact info provided. Also - names are important, people. "Ipswich Ripper" is a misnomer. And "Suffolk Strangler" just sounds lame. But "The Ipswich Killer" - that sounds pretty great. It's like a Jane Austen book where characters tell each other HP Lovecraft stories. Let's stick with Ipswich Killer, and let's track this guy down, gang!
• Best Christmas Themed Hipster Gift EVER (Overwhelming Sense of Irony Not Included) - Behold the Sufjan Stevens Christmas Box Set! At only $19, and jam packed with 5 CDs (albeit of Christmas standards) along with a slew of extras (• Five individually packaged CD EPs!• Five Christmas stickers!• Extensive liner notes and short stories by Sufjan Stevens!• An original Christmas essay by Rick Moody!• An animated music video and comic strip by Tom Eaton!• A Christmas Songbook with lyric sheets and chord charts--so you can sing along too!• An original Christmas Family Portrait painting of Santa Sufjan (with wife and kids!) by Jacques Bredy!), I think this would be quite the steal for any holiday hipster.
  

• And You Thought Congo Was Retarded... - Honestly, Michael Crichton: What the Fuck? What is wrong with you? For those who haven't heard, allegedly Michael Crichton has inserted one of his critics into his newest book for about 2 paragraphs. Sure, writers have used similar techniques in the past to get their revenge on those who deride them. But I think this is a special case. Why? Because Crichton has decided to cast his critic as a Baby Rapist. And to add insult to injury? He's a Baby Rapist with a Small Penis. I would also like to point out that the NY Times uses the term "small penis rule" as if that is part of our every day lexicon (for those not in the know - and i certainly wasn't - the small penis rule is when an author describes a person in real life with a fictional name and then gives said person a small penis; the theory is that no one wants to scream "that's me! that's me with the small penis!"). Seriously, this is some fucked up shit. Much worse than Sphere. Well...mostly worse than Sphere.
• God Bless You, Conan O'Brien! - There's a law that if you mention a domain on the air, and that domain is available, then you have to own it. Or something like that. Anyways - here's the story. But as the story shows, Conan's staff turned nerdy cybernetic lemons into hilarious aquatic mammalian porn! Go on over to the site to check out some hot Manatee porn, and also the great cartoon: Pale Force. Head on over to http://www.hornymanatee.com/. And enjoy!
• That IS Why They Call Them Business Socks - It's an oldie, but a goodie. I leave you with Flight of the Conchords performing their internatinonal megahit, "Business Time".