Sir Mix-A-Lot was given the opportunity to mix a lot of mediums last night in Seattle, where his 1992 hit single "Baby Got Back" was performed and remixed by the Seattle Symphony. The rapper and producer names Seattle as his hometown.

Mix-A-Lot begins with, "What I want to do now is something you really should not do." Hm. He goes on, however, with a defense of the blended genres: "Tonight is orchestral movements from the hood night."

The event where "Baby Got Back" was remixed is a part of the Seattle Symphony's Sonic Evolution, a project that builds a bridge "between the Symphony and Seattle's storied reputation as launching pad for some of the most creative musicians on the popular music scene." The composition was written by Gabriel Prokofiev.

For all the music composition nerds, Prokofiev has written in explicit detail what changes and amendments he made to the song, such as adding new instruments like a "scratcher" (made by scratching a credit card against a metal guiro) and a "jackdaw" (a friction drum that creates a frog like noise) to the mix.

A spokesperson for St Anthony Hospital in Washington told Reuters that the legendary radio DJ and voice of Scooby-Doo's Shaggy has been in critical condition in Washington since early last week. As of an update today, Kasem is being treated for an infected bedsore but remains in intensive care.

Via Reuters:

The 82-year-old former DJ has been alert throughout his hospitalisation, receiving wound care, intravenous antibiotic therapy, blood pressure support medication and treatment for his pain, hospital spokesman Scott Thompson said.

Kasem suffers from Lewy body disease, a form of dementia with symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease and hallucinations.

Care of Kasem has been legally turned over to his daughter, Kerri, as of a ruling on Friday, and out of the hands of his current wife, who had been caught on video throwing raw meat at her stepdaughter.

A spokesperson for Kasem's family told the press on Friday that "he won't be with us much longer."

[Image via Reuters]

Chillary "Hillary" Clinton has been making the press salivate lately, with a slew of interviews in anticipation of Tuesday's release of her new memoir "Hard Choices." But the former secretary of state isn't giving in to pressure: she continues to say she'll announce if she's running for president when she feels ready.

The most recent interview to feature Clinton's immaculate waffling is with ABC's Diane Sawyer. In it, Clinton firmly communicates to the anchor that she'll be announcing when the time is right and when she's really made up her mind.

"I just want to get through this year, travel around the country, sign books, help in the midterm elections in the fall and then take a deep breath and kind of go through my pluses and minuses."

When asked for a timetable on Clinton's announcement, she remains elusive on the matter. She tells Sawyer, "I will be on the way to making a decision by the end of the year, yes." On the way to then make a decision. The announcement could come as late as 2015, she says.

Democrats are starting to get scared that Clinton's feet-dragging could put other potential candidates in a bad position, should she decide not to run.

Via the Associated Press:

Some Democrats privately worry that if Clinton holds off on making a decision and then opts against running, potential candidates like Vice President Joe Biden, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and several Democratic senators would be at a disadvantage against Republicans who have been actively pursuing the White House.

A new ABC News-Washington Post poll released Sunday reveals that, among registered voters, 69 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent favor Clinton for the party's nomination over seven other potential contenders.

But Clinton isn't concerned. She says in the interview with Sawyer that her husband also took his time.

"Bill Clinton started running for president officially in, like September or October of 1991. So, no, I just don't think that's a real concern. People will do what they think is best for them. . . . Whether they choose to seek the presidency or not is very personal, for everybody."

In the meantime, Clinton will continue her book tour (CNN: "or campaign tune up?") for "Hard Choices." The full interview with Diane Sawyer will air Monday evening, June 9 at 9 p.m.

[Image via AP]

Around 8 p.m. last night, three inmates at the Orsainville Detention Centre outside of Quebec City fled the jail as they were whisked away by a green helicopter that had touched down on the property. This counts as the second time this kind of escape has happened in Canada in only two years.

Yves Denis, Denis Lefebvre, and Serge Pomerleau were awaiting trial on drug-related charges, as well as charges of murder and gangsterism. The three men are reported to have ties to Hells Angels.

How is it possible that the men were able to flee so easily? Apparently, minimal security at the jail played a big part.

Via CBC News:

A spokesman for the union of prison guards, Mathieu Lavoie, said he's not surprised they were able to get away. He said security at the Orsainville detention centre is minimal, with only a few layers of barbed wire protecting the courtyard.

Lavoie also added that there aren't enough resources or guards at the facility to take on a helicopter potentially helmed by armed men.

Investigators suspect that the helicopter dropped the inmates in the nearby woods, as a way to draw attention away from them and the getaway helicopter. Police ask that if you encounter any of the three men below, to not approach them, but to contact police immediately.

[Image via AP]

Police in Prince Frederick, Md. arrested a drunk man on Friday afternoon for attempting to steal candy from a Subway restaurant. He was reportedly only wearing shorts and socks.

Hey. If you're going to try to steal candy, at least be comfortable while you do it. Fifty-year-old James Dean Wirick was booked in a detention center in Calvert County and charged with theft under $100 and disorderly conduct.

After arriving at the detention center, Wirick allegedly ripped a telephone out of a wall and was then slapped with an additional charge of destruction of property.

[Image via Calvert County's Sheriff's Office]

Between four and 10 gunmen attacked a terminal at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan late Sunday night, reportedly killing at least five security guards.

BBC News, citing Pakistani media, reports that the airport's staff are being evacuated, and that the terminal, typically used for cargo and VIP flights, has been closed. All incoming flights have been diverted. From the BBC:

Geo News said two attackers were also reported dead and that smoke is billowing from the terminal.

The terminal is not normally used for commercial flights.

Senior police official Rao Muhammad Anwar told Agence France-Presse: "Exchange of fire is continuing. We don't know the exact number of the attackers."

Shaukat Jamal, a spokesperson for the Airport Security Force, told the Associated Press that the that the "Pakistani military has been called in and that police are fighting the attackers."

BREAKING All operations at Karachi airport has been suspended after a shooting at the airport http://t.co/YQobiHz6xY pic.twitter.com/cj8bLQmKn4

— AirLiveNet (@airlivenet) June 8, 2014

[Image via Twitter]

After a crash early Saturday that killed one and injured four others including actor and comedian Tracy Morgan, a rep for Morgan is saying he will likely remain in the hospital for several more weeks. Kevin Roper, a truck driver for Walmart, has been charged in the accident with one count of death by auto and four counts of assault by auto.

Lewis Kay's full statement regarding Morgan's recovery is here, via The Hollywood Reporter:

"While Tracy remains in critical condition, he has been more responsive today, which is an incredibly encouraging sign. He sustained a number of injuries including a broken leg, a broken femur, a broken nose and several broken ribs. He had surgery earlier today on his leg. We expect him to remain in the hospital for several weeks. His family is tremendously overwhelmed and appreciative of the outpouring of love and support from his fans."

[Image via AP]

Pop megastar and recovering racist Justin Bieber was reportedly baptized—in a bathtub. TMZ is reporting that Bieber underwent "intense" Bible study with Pastor Carl Lentz over the course of the last few weeks, all of which concluded with the singer getting baptized in New York City. Despite wanting to keep the ceremony hush hush, Bieber's cover kept getting blown every time he visited a church, so he ultimately decided to take a dip in a friend's bathtub.

Whether Bieber's religious awakening is real or just some good old-fashion PR damage control, it will be interesting to see how this whole redemption tour continues to play out. God may forgive, but the public is rarely, if ever, as sympathetic. Stay #blessed, Biebs.

[Image via AP]

George Will, national treasure, has spent a life championing America's diamond pastime. He wants to make sure that you appreciate our other cherished pastime: "the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones." Hang on to your Cracker Jack, gents.

According to Will's column today in the Post, the modern college experience's sexual power dynamic is much like baseball, in that it's a hidebound tradition that gives us rough-and-tumble Americans our identity, and its ambiguities ought not to be tampered with by the righteous "progressivism" of big government:

Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. "sexual assault." Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student "was in her room with a guy with whom she'd been hooking up for three months":

"They'd now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. 'I basically said, "No, I don't want to have sex with you." And then he said, "OK, that's fine" and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn't do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.'"

Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped. Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of "sexual assault" victims...

What could be worse than socialist interference in an American man's right to put "sexual assault" in scare quotes while discussing the sexual assault of a woman who repeatedly says no? According to Will, the tyranny doesn't end there; like a pack of heritage-free heathens who forced instant replay down umpires' throats, Obama's minions seek to redefine "sexual assault" itself, sans scare quotes, even:

Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape.

The idea that nonconsensually touching a drunk woman could be sexual assault? My goodness. May as well call a home run a foul.

[Photo via]

Colorado just can't catch a break. When it's not burning or flooding, it's catching hell from the sky, with hailstones the size of baseballs and a constant conga line of tornadoes raking the eastern half of the state. How common is extreme weather in Colorado, and is this the new normal?

A good way to see the trend in severe weather is to look at how many severe weather warnings have been issued by the National Weather Service.

For reference, a tornado warning is issued when meteorologists detect rotation in a storm using radar, or spotters report a tornado on the ground. A severe thunderstorm warning is issued when meteorologists detect (or spotters report) a storm producing large hail or damaging winds.

Since January 1, the National Weather Service office in Denver has issued more tornado warnings than any of the other 122 offices in the country, save for Jackson, Mississippi. They've issued 62 tornado warnings for northeastern Colorado, falling just shy of the 65 seen around central Mississippi and far beyond the region in third place, Paducah, Kentucky, which has seen an even 50.

Where were we this time last year?

NWS Denver had only issued 17 tornado warnings between January 1 and June 9 last year, a far cry from the 62 seen so far this year.

This is easily the earliest tornado season in recent memory in eastern Colorado. 2009 saw a total of 81 tornado warnings issued by NWS Denver, and only 10 of those were issued by June 9 that year. The tornado activity that year didn't pick up until later in the month.

It's worth noting that the first half of June is historically the most active period for tornadoes, with the second week of the month seeing a 90% chance of at least one tornado touching down anywhere in the United States.

Severe weather isn't an uncommon sight in eastern Colorado. The eastern half of the state is in a "sweet spot" for tornado formation, as the region often sees thunderstorm activity forming in areas of favorable wind shear, allowing the storms to grow into supercells that produce extreme hail and tornadoes.

Looking at severe thunderstorm and tornado warning data issued around Denver as far back as 1986, it's clear that the region sees bad storms on a regular basis.

In fact, the county that saw the most tornadoes between 1952 and 2010 isn't in Oklahoma or Kansas or Alabama — it's Weld County, Colorado, which covers the area just north of Denver. Two other counties near the Denver metro area — Adams and Washington — also have some of the highest overall tornado counts in the United States.

Whether or not this is "the new normal," it's extremely doubtful. Severe weather (meaning large hail-/damaging wind-/tornado-producing thunderstorms) is highly variable from year-to-year. Case in point: 2011 was one of the worst year for tornadoes in recent memory, and it concerned people that it would only get worse from there. Then 2012 rolled around and it saw a near-record lull in tornado activity, and 2013 was even slower. Barring any surprise summertime outbreaks or a really bad fall tornado season, 2014 is on track to follow suit.

Colorado actually will catch a break for the next couple of days, but storms return on Wednesday.

[Top image of piles of hail left behind by a severe thunderstorm in Denver via AP, other images via IEM / IEM / author / SPC / SPC]

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The clock is running down for Kim Dotcom, the Megaupload founder whose riches and eccentricities make him a kind of hacker Howard Hughes. In a last-ditch effort to avoid extradition from New Zealand to the United States for trial, Dotcom's offering $5 million to anyone who can prove corruption in his case.

Dotcom chose to announce his "bounty" offer to Torrentfreak, where he cast the net of desirable information quite wide:

Let me be clear, we are asking for information that proves unlawful or corrupt conduct by the US government, the New Zealand government, spy agencies, law enforcement and Hollywood.

He is not picky about how useful the information must be to claim it:

I will not just offer a bounty for the piece of 'case winning' information but for anything useful.

U.S. prosecutors allege that Dotcom and his partners formed a "Mega Conspiracy" (their term in the indictment, not mine) to commit copyright infringement and, you know, fraud and money laundering and all that good racketeering stuff. Matters look pretty bad for Dotcom in the indictment itself, which cites many emails back and forth between Megaupload employees in which they discuss various plans to transmit copyrighted material and deceive copyright holders about whether they are taking it down ("We have a funny business … modern days [sic] pirates :)").

Dotcom has been living in New Zealand since 2010, and has been using his money to throw his weight around in New Zealand politics, but he is actually a German citizen. And he has been losing a series of battles in the courts trying to prevent his extradition. Over the course of that battle he has repeatedly said that he believes the case against him is marred by corruption. He is reportedly paranoid that he will be killed. And to be fair to him, at one point his home in New Zealand was raided by helicopters and quite a few police. His complaints here seem more prosaic, though:

Should you think you might be able to fulfill his "Whistleblower" request, Dotcom's next extradition hearing is scheduled for July 7. But there's another deadline to consider, too: In April major film studios and music labels slapped Dotcom with a giant civil copyright infringement lawsuit and are seeking to have his New Zealand assets frozen pending its outcome. One suspects that might throw a wrench in getting payment of that bounty.

[Photo via Getty.]

In a very, er, interesting take on hip hop history, Tony Awards host and human-wolverine hybrid Hugh Jackman credited The Music Man songwriter Meredith Willson with creating "one of the very first rap songs ever," and then brought out T.I. and L.L. Cool J in an attempt to prove it.

Although Tip and Uncle L definitely "brought The Music Man into the 21st Century" (sorry, Matthew Broderick), it took Questlove's beat to convert "Rock Island" into Rap Island.

Let's just stipulate that circa-1957 white guys talking rhythmically over the sound of a locomotive did not invent rap (although they certainly may have pioneered whatever Jackman was doing up there).

When the man dances, certainly boys, the piper pays him. But when it comes to hip hop, he doesn't know the territory.

[H/T Vulture]

These days, it's rare to find a piece of San Francisco news that doesn't at least make a passing reference to the city's rapid-fire gentrification. And while numbers like the 115 percent increase in evictions over the past year are certainly astounding, nothing drives the point home quite like seeing the city evolve right before your very eyes.

Thanks to a confluence of factors (some of which include the blast of tech money from Silicon Valley and relatively severe geographical restrictions), our beloved City by the Bay has been home to some of the most extreme examples of gentrification in recent history. Particularly in the Mission, Mid-Market, Castro, and Dogpatch neighborhoods.

Thanks to Google Street View's new Time Machine function, we can see back in time (or at least as far back as 2007) virtually anywhere its street-mapping fleet of cars can roam. And though seven years might not seem like enough time for a city to make any noticeable strides, parts of San Francisco have become nearly unrecognizable in that relatively short period. That said, it's worth noting that some of what might seem like residences popping up in empty lots are actually places where prior buildings have already been torn down.

We've compiled some of the more extreme cases of San Francisco's transformation here. But this is just one example; the same land-value-raising evolution is happening in plenty of cities all across the country. Is yours one of them? Let us know down below.

2007-2014 15th and Market (Duboce Triangle)

2007-2014 15th and Dolores (Mission District)

2007-2014 Fulton and Buchanan (Hayes Valley)

2007-2009 18th and Mission (Mission District)

2007-2014 18th and Valencia (Mission District)

2008-2014 Folsom and 5th (South of Market)

2007-2014 Dore and Folsom (South of Market)

2007-2014 Fell and Octavia (Hayes Valley)

2007-2014 3rd and South (Dogpatch)

2008-2014 Cesar Chavez and Mission (Mission District)

2008-2014 Howard and 1st (Financial District)

A car chase in Los Angeles this morning ended with the suspect fleeing his car with a rifle and climbing to the roof of a building, where he's currently in a stand-off with the LAPD.

You can watch a livefeed of the standoff here.

The chase began this morning, after the suspect allegedly made criminal threats against someone and took off in a red Nissan Altima. As he raced down several LA highways—the 101, 110, 10 and the 5—he reportedly topped 100 mph.

From KTLA:

At one point during the pursuit, the driver held what appeared to be an assault rifle outside the window of his car.

At about 11:30 a.m., he exited the vehicle with the apparent rifle and began to walk through a residential neighborhood in the North Hollywood area.

A few minutes later, the man was on the roof of a home in North Hollywood(map), near Oakwood School's secondary campus, close to where three pedestrian students were injured, one critically, in a collision on Wednesday.

For the average America, the notion of retirement is a sick joke. A sick, sick joke. Just forget it. It's making me sick. All I'm going to ask is: Are you a member of "Generation X?" If so, you should feel sick as well.

Everyone spends a lot of time making fun of the "Millennial" generation, and while that is completely fair, necessary, and frankly an insufficient punishment for their existence, it should not distract us from making fun of the generation that preceded them. The Gen Xers, all grown up now. How you like being all grown up, Gen Xers (speaking to myself in the mirror?) You like your house and your car and your family and whatever? Well how is that RETIREMENT ACCOUNT doing? Eh? Eh?

(Bad). Bloomberg today takes a look at the retirement prospects of the Gen X generation. They're poor! Everyone worries about how the people who are old now are going to make it through retirement, or how the people are young now are going to do down the road, but nobody stops and worries about poor old Gen X, probably because we are generally insufferable. But think about it: lots of Gen Xers were old enough to catch the tech bubble collapse and the Great Recession of 08, but not old enough to have built up some financial savings that could cushion those blows. Instead, they just blow (financially speaking). From Bloomberg:

Good timing is not the age group's forte. Many took out mortgages just before prices plunged, making them the most disadvantaged by the housing crisis, while the 2008 stock-market slump dealt them a further setback. Only one-third of Generation X households had more wealth than their parents held at the same age, even though most earn more, The Pew Charitable Trusts found.

They went in the job market... then the tech bubble burst. They bought houses... then the real estate bubble burst. They like Kurt Cobain... you know how that turned out.

On top of that, one expert notes that "Gen-Xers are going to live longer than the current generation of retirees, and the major source of retirement income is going to be smaller."

Get your shit together, Gen X. You only have a couple of decades to figure out how to suck the millennials dry, before it's too late.

[Photo of Kurt Cobain's retirement message: AP]

Mass sexual assaults have plagued Cairo's Tahrir Square in the wake of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's inauguration on Sunday. One TV host attributed these attacks to people "having fun."

As a correspondent at a pro-Sisi Tahrir channel reported incidents of sexual harassment on Sunday, host Maha Bahnasy interrupted with giggles to say, "Well, they are happy. The people are having fun." Bahnasy later took to her Facebook page to say she was misunderstood: "I was, along with my guests, commenting on people's joy, not the harassment."

Despite Bahnasy's attempts to downplay the assaults, one piece of gruesome evidence surfaced today that will be hard to ignore. It's a YouTube video that allegedly shows a 19-year-old girl being raped by at least seven different men during the inaugural celebrations on Sunday. According to The New York Times, the video shows "a police officer with a gun in his hand struggling against a crowd of men to extricate the victim. A black shirt covered just her shoulders, her backside purple and black with bruises as the frenzied assailants tore it off. Moments later, stripped completely, her limp and reddened body was carried into a waiting vehicle."

The alleged attack shown in the video is one of at least 27 that Egyptian police are currently investigating. Authorities believe there is some coordination going on between groups of attackers — police told the AP that "groups of young men [are] consistently luring potential victims away from densely crowded spots before encircling them from the rest as they assault them."

Neither the president's office nor police will comment on the video specifically, but police arrested seven men today (likely the ones appearing in the video) for "harassing several girls." In his inaugural address, Sisi promised he'd create an "inclusive" Egypt going forward.

[Image via AP]

Jack Dorsey was once a punk. He played in bands, his hair was a loose mess, he had *a tattoo*, and his website was littered in cuss-laden poetry. But then he traded his nose ring for Dior glasses, co-founded Twitter and Square, and amassed a fortune that affords him $10 million seaside homes.

It's safe to say the lightly-tattooed Dorsey has firmly put his blue-haired past behind him. But that didn't stop CNNMoney, the apparent Pitch4k of financial journalism, from setting him up to talk about how punk rock made the "very polished" Dorsey the businessman he is today. And he took the bait.

"I'm still a punk," Dorsey explained. "What was amazing to me about the punk scene, and why I got into it, is because there was this confidence of 'I'm not going to go off, be shy about learning how to be a musician', [...] people would get up on stage and they would just play and they were terrible, they were absolutely terrible, and then you'd see them next week and they were a little bit better, and you'd see them in a year and they were The Ramones."

Dorsey went on to compare the rise of The Ramones to open-source developers and Linux. "People would write code, and it was terrible. They'd write it again, and it was terrible. And a year from there, it was Linux." In other words, all coders are just talentless nobodies, leveling up their skills as they hack their way to greatness.

It's nonsense—the fable of Silicon Valley, failing up to inevitable riches, repeated yet again. But it's hard to fault Dorsey for perpetuating it. He threw up a few mortifying #tbts, and now he has to explain how a bunch of punks with Elmer's glue in their hair screaming about Reagan lead him found a point of sale merchant services company backed by Visa.

But in Silicon Valley, where coders are "rockstars" and PR jockeys are "growth hackers," CEOs might as well be punk.

[CNNMoney]

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, local police departments across the U.S. are snapping up leftover military equipment like M-16s, grenade launchers, and armored trucks from the Department of Defense. And why wouldn't they, when they're getting the gear for free?

A program instituted in the early '90s allows police departments to request equipment that the DOD no longer needs, forcing citizens to contend with the fearful prospect of cops who are armed like soldiers. According to the New York Times, cops have received a staggering amount of weaponry in recent years:

During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.

The Times visited Neenah, Wisconsin, population 25,000, which recently received a 30-ton military truck called a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP. Some residents questioned the logic of bringing an army-grade combat machine to a town that hasn't seen a homicide in five years:

"It just seems like ramping up a police department for a problem we don't have," said Shay Korittnig, a father of two who spoke against getting the armored truck at a recent public meeting in Neenah. "This is not what I was looking for when I moved here, that my children would view their local police officer as an M-16-toting, SWAT-apparel-wearing officer."

In Morgan County, Indiana, the sheriff's department justified its MRAP by suggesting that returning U.S. veterans may pose a threat to the area, echoing a Department of Homeland Security report that caused a dustup on the right in 2009:

"You have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build I.E.D.'s and to defeat law enforcement techniques," Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff's Department told the local Fox affiliate, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs. Sergeant Downing did not return a message seeking comment.

Back in Neenah, William Pollnow Jr., a city councilman who opposed the MRAP, said that any time he questioned the decision, he got the same chilling response: to be against the equipment transfers is to be against the safety of cops.

"Who's going to be against that? You're against the police coming home safe at night?" he said. "But you can always present a worst-case scenario. You can use that as a framework to get anything."

[Image via AP]

This is from last night Tony Awards, during which Bryan Cranston won the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. Chris O'Dowd was also nominated in that category and lost so well that he ended up winning anyway. This is how you do it.

If you, like many of us, devoted a large portion of your weekend to watching the second season of Orange Is the New Black on Netflix, you probably have a lot to discuss. There are new inmates, new teeth, new plants, new drugs, but still a lot of the same old shit in Litchfield. Some of that shit is even in the showers.

Join us as we examine the scenes, references, and characters that deserve a special comment or mention in each episode of the second season: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen.

And if you haven't started season two yet, be sure to refresh your season one memories here.