The Nashville Post is reporting that the Gibson Guitar Company is in very bad financial shape:
“This year is critical and they are running out of time — rapidly,” said Cassidy, who last summer downgraded Gibson’s debt rating. “And if this ends in bankruptcy, he will give up the entire company.”
Black Panther is a smash hit and breaking all kinds of records:
Disney has revised their three and four-day estimates for Black Panther and as expected the grosses continue to rise with the film now delivering an estimated $201.7 million over the three-day and is expected to surpass $235 million for the four-day weekend. This makes Black Panther only the fifth movie to debut with over $200 million over its opening weekend and the third highest four-day gross in history, passing Jurassic World’s $234.1 million four-day gross.
Here’s Miles Surrey writing at The Ringer:
Black Panther, because of this huge opening weekend, should be a sign of the future of filmmaking. There are 202 million reasons for the industry to make more big-budget movies headlined by people of color; to produce small, specific stories with the weight and wallet of major studios; to let Ryan Coogler (and Michael B. Jordan, and Chadwick Boseman, and Danai Gurira, and Lupita Nyong’o) do more great things. And there are zero viable excuses for Black Panther to become an anomaly.
A new variant of Santi from The Academy Is… is up for pre-order.
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This weekend sees the release of Black Panther. Did you love Black Panther? Did it leave you wanting more of Wakanda? Members of our comic book thread have put together another batch of accessible comic recommendations for new readers to check out.
Rafi Schwartz, writing at Splinter News:
On Wednesday, 17 people—the vast majority of them children—were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. The suspected gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was apprehended by police late Wednesday, leaving America to grapple with yet another horrific act of gun violence.
In the wake of this latest mass murder, lawmakers have once again resorted to the now-cliché gesture of offering “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of the Parkland shooting, while stopping conspicuously short of actually acting on their laughably hollow sentiment. And once again, those lawmakers are the very same people who have gladly pocketed dollar after blood-soaked dollar from the National Rifle Association.
This country has a sickness. We are very, very broken. And we need to make massive changes to even begin the process of healing what we’ve created.
As it turns out, Shazam has continued to be updated and support Spotify since Apple’s acquisition. In fact, there have been at least four updates to Shazam since the acquisition including one today that adds synchronized lyrics and a design refresh of the app’s results screen.
The new UI looks great. The results screen is dominated by a background image of the artist. In the foreground is a big play button, the name of the song the app recognized, and the name of the artist. If you tap on the artwork, you get an image of the artist and album in some cases, plus more details on the artist, album, song, and release date.
It looks pretty good.
Aja Romano, writing for Vox:
On social media, racist trolls are currently attempting to fake a battle that isn’t happening by stealing photos, many of assault victims, from various parts of the internet and claiming they’re evidence of attacks by black moviegoers during Thursday night showings of Black Panther.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
Cameron Boucher of Sorority Noise and Field Medic have just released a new charity split for Valentine’s Day.
Vulture have an excerpt from the upcoming book, All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire, about how the infamous “fuck” scene from the fourth episode came about:
He explained the whole scene to us. He said, “Now you guys are going to do that whole thing, but they’re going to be on me about the profanity and language that we use.” So, I said, “Let’s just come out the box with it.” He said, “You’re going to do that whole scene, but the only word you can say is ‘fuck.’” I said, “What?”
It’s an incredible scene from one of my favorite shows of all time. I’m looking forward to this book.
Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie is the latest guest on You Made It Weird podcast with Pete Holmes.
Brian Fallon recently sat down with the New York Daily News:
Everything has to line up for something to be successful, it’s not just simply whether it’s good or bad. You have to have a lot of favorable things happen in the process in order for it to actually reach a large number of people. Sometimes timing is one of those things that you can’t plan for. I’m glad we don’t have to do it again (laughs). If I had to put that out now would I be able to manage a career? I have no idea if that would work so I’m glad it did then.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, writing for The New York Times:
I was beginning to get frustrated by how much of our lives are spent arguing about music. So I decided to do something about it the only way I know how: I analyzed data.
I couldn’t think of a way to use data to prove how great “Born to Run” is. But I thought data might give me clarity on why my brother and I never seem to agree on music.
In particular, I wanted to see to what extent the year we were born influences the music we listen to, the extent to which different generations are bound to disagree on music.
I always find these kinds of studies fascinating. For the most part I’ve found this to be pretty true in my life (I’m sitting here spinning My Chemical Romance right now), but I also think my musical tastes have changed quite a bit in the past few years. I listen to more straight up pop music and hip-hop than I ever did as a teenager.
Mary J. Blige will co-star in Netflix’s Umbrella Academy:
Blige, nominated for supporting actress and original song, will segue to television with her first series regular role in the adaptation of Gerard Way’s comic series. After receiving offers from multiple streamers and networks, Blige will join the cast in what sources say is a one-year deal.