Lee “Q” O’Denat

It’s the YouTube of urban antics — and a formerly homeless ninth-grade dropout from Queens is the mogul behind it.

Hollis native Lee “Q” O’Denat makes sure WorldStarHipHop.com is “real, raw and uncut” — and peppered with such videos as one of cops grinding with near-naked dancers at the West Indian Day Parade.

Millions check in on the site each month to view the latest rap videos and such scenes as a woman dancing near a Bronx chicken joint with her bra outside her shirt or one stripping naked on a Bronx sidewalk.

Catfights are really popular. A June brawl at Downtown Brooklyn’s Pathmark shows women tearing off each other’s wigs.

“It’s not sugarcoated,” said O’Denat, 37.

Launched in 2005, the gritty page has become the 259th most popular in the nation, according to Alexa, a Web site-ranking service. It had 4.9 million unique US visitors last month, up 27 percent from a year ago, say comScore analysts.

O’Denat, a father of three and now in Arizona, would not discuss earnings but has full-time security and stays in four-star hotels, not bad for a kid who left Grover Cleveland HS, lost his home and lived out of his car.

He launched his site to stream video submissions just after YouTube kicked off in ’05. It had netted 142 million page views by last month, comScore reports.

“People,” O’Denat said, “relate to the realness.”

Omkvæd:
Jeg så på, klar på noget tå til tå
Har mine øjne på mine ting, for der ting vi ska’ nå
vi ska’ prøve, på at løbe før vi ka’ gå
Er du klar joe?
1-2-3 Let’s go

Vers 1:
Ka du se enden af toget, det det jeg er på
f*** at ha’ en dialog når modparten ligger låg
jeg ikk’ metrolog, men ka’ se at himlen er grå
regnbuen kommer ikk’, samfundet gået i stå
se jeg vil flip’ flicks, og du vil’ check chicks
men de synes det progressivt, hvis min homie han putter sik!
bulls***! illuminati initieret,
du ka’ sige f*** dem og sige det Sufi du citerer
de vil ha’ din krop og sjæl, assimileret
markedsorienteret, kapitaldikteret
hvis du stadigvæk, ikk’ fatter hva f*** jeg siger
så din hjerne sikkert død, så jeg kondolerer
du ska’ på en lang rejse, bli’ vaccineret,
men behold dit tøj på, for jeg blir genert
jeg ka’ læse kropsprog, så jeg konstaterer
at du ska’ ha’ din prioriteter ommøbleret

Omkvæd:
Jeg så på, klar på noget tå til tå
Har mine øjne på mine ting, for der ting vi ska’ nå
vi ska’ prøve, på at løbe før vi ka’ gå
Er du klar joe?
1-2-3 Let’s go

Vers 2:
Holder ind til siden, hop ind
f*** rygemedicin, mangel på disciplin gør folk blind’
du ka’ bild’ mig ind, at du ikk’ ender som dem
men ikk’ lyv for dig selv, foran spejlet derhjemme
bare spørg F!zZ – (HVAD) Han ved godt dæmonerne kommer camouflerede, så f*** Diss
De usynlige de monstre, kald dem Loch Ness,
de har taget resten, og du ka’ være den næst’
Vi ka’ græde for dig homie, men du kommer ikk’ tilbage
for når det gælder para, vil du være arrogant, Kanye!
West, bitter når du ender næstbedst
livet er ikk’ en konkurrence, det en test
så f*** a’ være blæst
jeg vil heller være belæst og læse
om det næste wikileak læk!
men jeg stoler ikk’ på nogen
hvis der noget jeg har lært, så det dobbelt-tjek din’ information’

Omkvæd:
Jeg så på, klar på noget tå til tå
Har mine øjne på mine ting, for der ting vi ska’ nå
vi ska’ prøve, på at løbe før vi ka’ gå
Er du klar joe?
1-2-3 Let’s g

They were given a word and were allowed two minutes to study it and
come up with a poem that contained the word “Timbuktu.”

First to recite his poem was the Yale graduate. He stepped to the
microphone and said:

Slowly across the desert sand,
Trekked a lonely caravan;
Men on camels,two by two;
Their destination?….Timbuktu.

A big applause went up! No way could the Rasta man top that,
they thought.

The Rasta man calmly made his way to the microphone and recited:
Me and Tim, while out on the road,
Got cornered by three thieves, armed with board.
They were three, and we were two.
So I buck one and Timbuktu.
The crowd went wild!! The Rasta man won.

---

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Photos by Anna Knowlden

If it’s surprising that they celebrated 2,000 miles away from Seattle — in Alpine Valley, WI — know that Pearl Jam long ago evolved past their original grunge label to become prefix-less, suffix-less Rock, a sound without geography. In other words, when you’re drawing fans from the four corners of the United States and as far away as Germany and New Zealand, you might as well drop the pin in the Midwest. They booked it and the fans came, showing they are dedicated enough to make Pearl Jam one of the endangered species that can still (almost) fill a gargantuan, 37,000-capacity amphitheatre like Alpine Valley for 2 nights over Labor Day weekend.

Any snark about the band being a museum piece in 2011 was pre-empted by an actual Pearl Jam museum on site, where fans waited in line an hour to file past Eddie Vedder’s 4-track and a display case containing “Hats Worn By Jeff Ament.” Fans also happily swarmed the merch booths for unique “PJ20″ posters and clothing (including a hoodie with a wrong-date misprint), and crammed into special viewing areas reserved for the Ten Club, the Pearl Jam society of super-fans.

Those amenities were appreciated on a Saturday of poncho weather, with unceasing grey skies and a steady rain that put a soggy damper on tailgating plans and the afternoon side stages full of up-and comers and strummy solo acts. The Swell Season’s Glen Hansard tried to keep spirits up with a half-remembered cover of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and a string-breakingly savage cover of fellow Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” but the crowd mostly chose to drink away the storm, lending the afternoon a “rain delay in the bleachers” vibe.

Fortunately, precipitation was down to a surly drizzle for the main event, where the band’s guestlist mixed nostalgia with contemporaries, and maneuvered groups accustomed to headlining into opener slots. The result felt something like the classic ’90′s Lollapalooza lineups, a murderer’s row of accomplished acts forced to make their case in 45 minutes or less in front of another band’s gear.

Mudhoney were the band most tightly linked with Pearl Jam’s Emerald City past, and the only one that could be considered an influence on their sound. But the grunge pioneers sounded refreshingly undated, the snotty punk sensuality of tracks like “Touch Me I’m Sick” still roaring like they were written recently. On a night with pretty thick frontman competition, Mark Arm set the bar unattainably high with his half-cocky, half-cramped stage moves.

In contrast to Mudhoney’s unhinged danger, Queens of the Stone Age brought a very precise evil to the stage. As dark clouds continued to threaten the poor kids on Alpine’s steep lawn, Josh Homme’s band (which released its first album on Stone Gossard’s label) fought back with their own lightning storm. Even if Homme’s jocky banter — “if we do this right, we can all get laid toniiight!” — would have been awkwardly out of place in the scene that birthed Pearl Jam, the stoner metal sound of “No One Knows” and “The Sky is Falling” fit right in as examples of a grunge afterlife.

The Strokes, by their own admission, were the kids of the main stage. Julian Casablancas confessed to first trying out his singing voice alongside a cassette of Ten, and broke street-cool character several times to sheepishly thank Pearl Jam for the invite. The set itself was the night’s anomaly — brisk (10 songs, 35 minutes), catchy, and the only thing approaching danceable if you don’t count fist-pumping. Largely ignoring this year’s Angles, the highlight of the greatest hits set was Eddie Vedder convincingly taking the chorus of “Juicebox” and bringing a little showmanship to the movement-averse New Yorkers. “Oh shit, he sings that so much better than I do,” Casabalancas moaned.

After a long day of mounting musical and meteorological tension, Pearl Jam couldn’t help but open with “Release,” giving the crowd its long-awaited chance for a communal arm-waving sing-along. Middle-age has found the band settling into its sweet spot, a stadium rock bombast kept tethered to the earth with punk-rock chords. Though the Ten material (“Deep,” “Once,” “Porch”) still got the biggest cheers, there was plenty of room to explore their deep catalog, culminating this night in versions of “Better Man” and “rearviewmirror” that were tastefully extended and triumphantly peaked.

For a gig that was very much preaching to the choir, Pearl Jam didn’t need to worry too much about pacing, and the setlist was accordingly packed with rarities (“Who You Are,” Vedder’s solo track “Setting Forth”) and guest spots (Casablancas on “Not For You,” Homme on the never-before-played “In the Moonlight,” George Harrison’s son Dhani on “State of Love and Trust”). But the mother of all special guests for grunge aficionados was the encore appearance by Chris Cornell, who first took the role of Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood for “Stardog Champion,” then sang three songs from the Temple of the Dog memorial project for Wood. “Hunger Strike” was a gimmee, but “Reach Down” and “Say Hello to Heaven” made it a full-on reunion — only the third since 1992.

If Cornell couldn’t quite hit the ridiculously high notes of 20 years ago, it made it all the more poignant — why hide the wrinkles at an event celebrating long-term survival? The ghosts of mortality that lingered over the encore made for a bit of a bummer ending, despite the twin exorcisms of “Love Reign O’er Me” and “Kick Out the Jams” covers (the latter with Mudhoney). But it was Pearl Jam’s party, and they could cry if they wanted to.

Facebook Reminder

Update: As noted in the comments, you can also export events like birthdays directly from the Events page in Facebook. The instructions have been updated to explain that method instead.

Editor’s Note: of course, if you just want to get an email when your Facebook friends have a birthday coming up, Facebook has that feature under Account Settings –> Notifications. If you want to consolidate everything into Google Calendar, this also works.

This is a guest post by Shankar Ganesh.

Enabling Google Calendar Reminders for Birthdays
Head into Facebook, click Events on the left menu, and then Birthdays.

Now scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll find the Export Birthdays link.

This will pop up a dialog with a link, and you’ll need to copy the link.

Now head into Google Calendar, look for the Add button under the “Other Calendars” box, and use the Add by URL function.

Paste in the URL from Facebook.

And that’s all there is to it.

Now, from the “My Calendars” menu in the left panel, click on the small arrow next to the appropriate calendar and choose “Notifications”

You can now use the drop down menu to add SMS or email reminders before a set number of days/weeks.

You can add multiple reminders – may be you can add one that sends you an alert via email a week before a birthday and another that sends a text message a day before a birthday.

Created by Vancouver Film School students through the VFS Film Production program: Director/Writer: William McKnight Producer: Eliza Rogers Director of Photography: Amit Dey Assistant Director/Casting/Titles: Geoff Webb Art Director: Aaron Hecker Hair and Makeup: Melissa Ward Editor: Ryan Mitchell Camera Operator: Russell O’Neill Assistant Camera: Ross Macdonald Audio Director: Reilly Derkitt Grip/Gaffer: Lawrence Kan Assistant Editor: Ian Shirley Dialog/BG Editor, Re-recording Mixer: David Burnett Sound FX/Foley Editor, Re-recording Mixer: Chris Killoran Music Composed and Performed By: Tobias Silverstolpe, Chris Killoran Production Assistants: Cedric Malayi, Jennifer Li, Forrest Wong Cast: Tom Stevens Lisa Ovies Dariya Parakhnevych Alex Borrowman Jack Hedley Lee Page Aaron Hecker Sharan Bal Lawrence Kan

Images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from 13 to 15 miles up show the astronauts’ paths when they walked on the moon, as well as ruts left by a moon buggy. Experts could even identify the backpacks astronauts pitched out of their lunar landers before they returned to Earth.

“What we’re seeing is a trail,” said Arizona State University geology professor Mark Robinson, the orbiter’s chief scientist. “It’s totally awesome.”

However, the photos were not close enough to see individual bootprints, Robinson said.

The pictures were taken two weeks ago and show the landing sites for Apollo 12, 14 and 17. The closest images are of the 1972 Apollo 17 site, the last moon mission.

Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan wrote in an email to The Associated Press that the photo gives him a chance to revisit those days, “this time with a little nostalgia and disappointment. Nostalgia because those special days are fondly etched in my memory and disappointment because it looks like now we will not be going back within the days I have left on this planet.”

Two years ago, images from the same spacecraft from 30 and 60 miles out showed fuzzier images. But this year the orbiter dipped down to take about 300,000 more close-ups. The trails left by the astronauts are clear, but the places where backpacks were discarded, Apollo 17′s moon buggy, and the bottom parts of the three lunar landers are blurry.

“You have to really look at it for a long time to figure out what you’re looking at,” Robinson said. For example, when it comes to the moon buggy he said, “if you squint really hard you can resolve the wheels and that the wheels are slightly turned to the left.”

At first, scientists thought they had a bit of a mystery: They saw more stuff than they expected. It turned out to be packing material and an insulation blanket, Robinson said.

After 40 years there does not seem to be much moon dust covering the manmade trails. It probably will take about 10 million to 100 million years for dust to cover them, Robinson said.

The photos were released a few days after the debut of the new fictional movie “Apollo 18″ and before Thursday’s planned launch of NASA’s twin robotic spaceships to explore the moon’s gravity.

The choice of venue — the Republican-controlled House of Representatives — is aimed at sending a clear message to voters that if his plan to reduce high unemployment is blocked by Congress, it is Republicans and not the White House standing in the way of job growth.

With unemployment stubbornly high and most Americans unhappy with his handling of the economy, Obama’s speech is part of a 2012 election strategy to shift some of the blame for the struggling economy onto Congress and to portray it as obstructionist.

“It’s very important for the president to invoke Congress from the very beginning of this round in the jobs debate,” said Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden until April 2011.

“Because if Congress in general, and the House Republicans in particular, block his agenda, he needs to be able to explain to the American people who’s standing between them, their jobs, their paychecks and economic opportunities.”

Republicans reject the view that they have been obstructionist. They say Obama has spent nearly $1 trillion to try to stimulate the economy but that it has failed to create jobs and instead dramatically increased the national debt.

David Gergen, a political analyst and adviser to four presidents, said using a joint session was “first and foremost an attempt to have Republicans be jointly responsible for the state of the economy.”

Gergen, who has advised both Democratic and Republican presidents, said: “He is in effect going into the lion’s den and looking at the Republicans in the eye. It’s very personal. He wants to say ‘I am trying to do something — are you?’ It’s a dare. It’s a way to shame them.”

White House officials have said the speech is being delivered inside the Capitol because many of the job creation proposals Obama will offer will require the approval of Congress, which controls the purse strings.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the proposals should get bipartisan support “if members of Congress are serious about trying to help the economy, which we believe is their number one obligation.”

VENUE CARRIES RISKS

Yet Obama’s decision to deliver his critical jobs speech to a joint session of the House and Senate, with all the pomp and ceremony attached to such an event, carries substantial risk if it disappoints or is perceived as being too partisan.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former top adviser to the 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, said he believed Obama was using the venue because “it basically allows him to run against Congress” in next year’s presidential election.

But Holtz-Eakin said Obama has a delicate task of delivering a speech in such a high-profile and formal setting that does not appear too political.

He added: “There are a lot of disadvantages in terms of raised expectations. It looks to me like the ratio of hype-to-substance is pretty high here.”

Most analysts do not expect the speech to contain any bold new proposals, but instead job-creation measures that have already been debated since the 2008 financial crisis, such as additional tax cuts and infrastructure spending.

Gergen said: “When you ask for a joint session you are diving off a high board — you’ve got to deliver. And he runs a real risk of markets sinking the next day.”

Barry Bosworth, a veteran fiscal and monetary policy expert at the Brookings Institution think tank, said Obama’s choice of venue was “very dangerous if he does something that is perceived as purely political.”

“If he does not have a big announcement, if he’s not got something more concrete to offer, it will be perceived by a lot of outsiders as an inappropriate use of a joint session.”

Presidents rarely call a joint session of Congress. Apart from the annual State of the Union address, the platform is used sparingly.

During eight years in office, Democratic President Bill Clinton called a joint session twice, to deliver speeches on the economy and on healthcare reform, according to the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives.

Republican President George W. Bush used the venue just once — nine days after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Two years ago, Obama used the platform to push Congress to pass his healthcare plan.

A former Capitol Hill Republican and leadership aide with close ties to the House Republican leadership told Reuters there was already a feeling of cynicism among Republicans about a speech they view as simply recycling old ideas.

“The benefit of a joint session is you are really elevating things to a new level,” the former aide said. “But you’ve set expectations of something new and something bold. If that is not the case even the average American will view this somewhat cynically.”

The Labor Department said Wednesday that employers increased their postings to 3.23 million from 3.17 million in June. That is the largest number of openings since August 2008. Typically, it takes anywhere from one to three months to fill an opening.

More openings don’t guarantee more jobs. The government said last week that employers failed to add any net jobs in August, the worst month for hiring since September 2010. The unemployment rate stayed for the second straight month at 9.1 percent.

The worsening jobs outlook has put pressure on President Barack Obama. He is expected on Thursday to introduce a $300 billion jobs package before a joint session of Congress. The plan will likely include extensions of the payroll tax cut and long-term unemployment benefits, tax incentives for businesses that hire and money for public works projects.

There’s heavy competition for each job. Nearly 14 million people were out of work in July. So roughly 4.3 unemployed workers were competing for each opening. That’s a slight improvement from June, when the ratio was 4.45. In a healthy economy, the ratio is closed to 2 to 1.

Total openings are about 1.1 million higher than they were in July 2009, one month after the recession officially ended. But they are still far below the 4.4 million openings that existed in December 2007, when the recession began.

The biggest gains in openings were reported in manufacturing, trade, transportation and utilities.

The report, known as the Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, or JOLTs, illustrates the high degree of churn that takes place in the job market each month. Total hiring in July slowed, to 3.98 million from 4.06 million.

Total layoffs and quits also dropped to 3.92 million from 3.99 million. The difference between total hires and total quits and layoffs is similar to the net jobs gain of 85,000 reported for July.

The economy isn’t growing enough to spur much hiring. It expanded at an annual pace of only 0.7 percent in the first six months of this year, the slowest growth since the recession ended. Growth may improve to a 2 percent rate in the second half, economists forecast, but that’s still too weak to encourage much hiring.