When Cocaine and Broccoli Collide

U.S. Border Patrol agents in Laredo say they've seized nearly $8 million in drugs after searching a bus and a truck laden with frozen broccoli.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Friday the bus was packed with more than $4 million in cocaine and driven by a 30-year-old from Conroe. No arrest was immediately made after the Thursday seizure, but the agency reports the investigation is ongoing.

A separate search of a truck turned up more than a ton of marijuana and nearly 50 pounds of cocaine worth more than $3 million. Authorities say the man driving the truck was turned over to immigration authorities on federal drug charges.

--via Associated Press

Photo of the Week: Forever with Marilyn

--For sale: eternity with Marilyn Monroe

Getting the Story First

In one murder after another, the "Canal Livre" crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim.

Too uncanny, say police, who are investigating the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking.

"The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police," state police intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos charged in an interview with The Associated Press.

The killings of competing drug traffickers, he said, "appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase the audience of the TV show."

--via Associated Press

Photo of the Week: Susan Boyle All Dolled Up

Find the rest here. (Hat tip Sullivan)

Sunday Morning

Finally!

The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.

--via Associated Press

The Evolving Art of the Mugshot

Errol Morris on the mugshot.

Make Me Proud, Iowa

Go, Grassley, Go

Why We Freelance

--via businessguysonbusinesstrips (Hat tip Jason Welch)

Speaking of the Times...

Will they ever learn to link properly?

She thought for a minute and then laughed. “Oh, fine. I suppose they probably don’t attach sexuality to Julia Child, either.” (Dan Aykroyd famously parodied her lack of femininity in a “Saturday Night Live” skit, parts of which Ms. Ephron includes in her film.)
--via "Julie & Julia" review, here.

Where's the skit, you tease? We've all heard of Dan Aykroyd and seen Saturday Night Live already.

The New Face of American Power

What we can really learn from Gatesgate:

...America is being led, to a striking extent, by a new elite, a cohort of the best and the brightest whose advancement was formed, at least in part, by affirmative action policies. ...And yet the consequences of that change remain unresolved.

..Even those who now occupy niches at the top of society, regard their status as complicated, ambiguous and vulnerable.

--from Helene Cooper at the Times

Ten Insults for the Modern Man

1. FRENCHIFY (v)

Definition: 1) To make French in quality or trait 2) To make somewhat effeminate, and 3) To contract a veneral disease (a 19th century slang).

Analysis: We have the English to thank for this word. Most people implicitly understand that it means to become more like the French, but not a lot know the second or the third meaning. We’re still not sure which is more insulting.

Find the rest here. Thanks, Mr. Perlin!

Photo of the Week: Soldier Graffiti

Ali Al Salem, Kuwait, 2006.
Graffiti written by soldiers
on the walls of bathroom stalls.

--once again, via GOOD

William Shatner Finds the Poet in Palin

--via the beatniks at GOOD

P.S. See the OG here. And while you're at it, check out Vanity Fair's masterful remastering.

Bankroll...

Swiss franc

More on currency design, here.

Beer-Fueled Diplomacy

For more than a week a debate on racial profiling has raged in American press quarters. Did police mistreat Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the esteemed Harvard professor, because he's black? Clearly, it's unclear.

And so, in a move promoting both racial harmony and drinking, President Obama has invited his pal Gates and the arresting officer to the White House to share in a cold one and discuss.

It started out as a casual suggestion: three guys working out their differences over a beer. But President Obama's offer to play host to the cop and the professor entangled in a debate over racial profiling now carries the imprimatur of high-level diplomacy.

--via LATimes, on the so-named "Beer Summit"

The Monks Remembered

The Monks, receiving their signature 'do

The Monks were a band of GIs who overstayed in West Germany following their Vietnam-era discharge. They shaved their heads, dressed in robes and made abrasive music that everyone hated (including one of my favorite songs, "I Hate You").

Forty years later, a reissue of their album, Black Monk Time, and the DVD release of the documentary Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback are rescuing the group from obscurity--if only for a time. Their sound was rarely loved.

Their insistent rhythms recalled martial beats and polkas as much as garage rock, and the weirdness quotient was heightened by electric banjo, berserk organ runs, and occasional bursts of feedback guitar. To prove that they meant business, the Monks shaved the top of their heads and performed their songs -- crude diatribes about the Vietnam war, dehumanized society, and love/hate affairs with girls -- in actual monks' clothing.

--via All Music

And from Fresh Air:

The band went on German TV when [Blank Monk Time] came out, and the tape is excruciating: the band does its best, but the kids are utterly confused. The Monks toured, but audiences remained mostly hostile. ... Finally, in September, 1967, the band called it quits. ...

The Monks remained unknown until they were rediscovered during the punk era, although they had influenced some of the later generation of krautrock musicians. Polydor reissued the album, which again didn't sell.

They're up against Lady Gaga now. Hard to imagine the album will sell this time around, either.

Teach Teens How to Drink?

That's one idea from The Atlantic:

High-school seniors tend to hold romantic notions of college life: newfound freedoms, enlightenment, keg-fueled free-for-alls. But the last attraction has lately achieved a new prominence: at one major university, student visits to the emergency room for alcohol-related treatment have increased by 84 percent in the past three years....

So what might states...do differently? They might license 18-year-olds—adults in the eyes of the law—to drink, provided they’ve completed high school, attended an alcohol-education course (that consists of more than temperance lectures and scare tactics), and kept a clean record.... Binge drinking is as serious a crisis today as drunk driving was two decades ago. It’s time we tackled the problem like adults.

The Ghost of Michael Jackson

Oh my!

Photo of the Week: Equine Styling

The work of Sascha Breuer (via TIME).