Last weekend in Britain the elusive graffiti master Banksy art directed The Cans Festival, an event being called the greatest showcases of guerilla street art in recent memory, hell perhaps the best ever. Over 30 artists
from all over the world created pieces in an unused Eurostar tunnel beneath Waterloo Station. (Click here for images). Some 28,000 pedestrians wandered through and checked out the 691 stencil pieces along the half-mile underground strip near where Ray Davies once mused about Terry meeting Julie. The stencils are supposed to stay on permanent display.

He keeps busy, this Banksy does. A few weeks earlier in April, he pulled one of his greatest stunts yet: painting a piece under the watchful eyes of closed circuit security cameras. The piece was done on an Oxford wall behind
a security fence. Working under the cover of a three story scaffolding – apparently no one ever bothered to ask for a building permit or questioned the artist as he painted – he created an instant subversive classic. The image of a child painting the words "One Nation Under CCTV" on a wall while a policeman takes his picture is a classic example of the artist's humor and his ability to seamlessly integrate his art into the terrain. The world is this dude's pallette and Banksy is simply one of the greatest social satirist working today. He's painted on the Israeli security wall. He's illegally hung his work at the Louvre in Paris and at the Tate in London. Just today there are reports of him painting on the streets of New York City. The fact is, Banksy is everywhere, except where you might be looking. And that's pretty fucking genius.

[Photo: Getty]

I'm shocked — shocked! — that McCain and Clinton want to repeal the gas tax for the summer. This is simply the worst kind of political pandering — some truly shameful shit. Both candidates, who purport to be environmentalists, should be talking about how they plan to end our dependence on foreign oil, but instead they offer a summer vacation from reality. This repeal is like offering a junkie a set works and a couple of bags of dope before they try and go cold turkey. Moreover, the repeal would save the average consumer only about $30.00 dollars. This is pure bull and Obama should get credit for refusing to pander but his principled stand has been drowned out by the sound of the inane Rev. Wright show.

[Photo: Getty]

Dear lord, no! Roger Clemens and Mindy McCready? This has to be grossest athlete/musician hookup since that greasy hack Rick Fox married Vanessa Williams. That Clemens, an alleged steroid fiend and confirmed uber-dick and a blonde country singer with a taste for Oxycotin and a hit song called "Guys Do it All the Time" broke the commandments is not surprising. The wonder is that we didn't hear about this earlier since the affair reportedly lasted ten years, starting when Clemens was in his late twenties and McCready was fifteen. Fifteen, dude, fifteen. Anyway, as I recoil with horror, here is a short list of couples who should never have been allowed in a sporting arena holding hands:

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One of the most entertaining, funny and informative movies in recent years is Charlie Wilson's War. The DVD is out next week and if you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out. Directed by Mike Nichols, the film is a geopolitical romp that both enlightened and left me with more than a few unanswered questions. So I was excited to get the real Charlie Wilson on the phone and ask him a few things that I was left wondering about at the end of the movie. If you don't know the story, here's the basics: In the Seventies and Eighties, Charlie Wilson was a licentious horndog of a congressman who after the Russians invaded Afghanistan became the unlikely architect of the United States' covert support of the Afghan freedom fighters. Essentially Wilson spent millions of tax-payers' dollars arming and training the Afghan resistance, an effort that eventually drove the Russians out of Afghanistan. But that not-so secret war, of course, had lasting consequences that we are still dealing with today. Here's what the always colorful and genuinely charming Mr. Wilson had to say when we discussed the topic of blowback.

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Ray Davies is bossy. "Is that how you want to sound?" he asked the crowd as it sang along to "Sunny Afternoon," at the sold-out Beacon Theater Tuesday night. "Diction, diction," he reprimanded when the audience's enunciation got too mushy. No one minded being chastised. They were having too good a time at one hell of a rock and roll show. From the menacing first chords of "I'm Not Like Everybody Else," Davies was in great form, forever the vaudevillian showman inhabiting the elastic body of a rock star. The guy is simply one of rock's greatest songwriters: if he had wanted to he could mine his catalog all night long. Check out the set list stocked with classic Kinks:

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So I’m at the Ray Davies show last night (one of best shows I have seen recently; I'll have a post on that later) and a really strange thing happened. The wife and I are enjoying "Sunny Afternoon" and “Waterloo Sunset" and the rest of the fantastic Kinks songbook, when we notice the middle-aged dude in the seat in front of us is holding up his iPhone, and — no shit — he's watching porn.

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Normally I hate sports analogies, but I feel I must make one. As the Bush administration mercifully draws to an end, so does another hated regime that is also a study in abject failure: The New York Knicks under head coach/GM Isiah Thomas.

After suffering through another season watching the Knicks, I have come to the conclusion that the worst franchise in sports has much in common with the worst presidency in our history. That Isiah Thomas and his boss James Dolan have chosen to mimic the Bush/Cheney junta with similarly abysmal results has been one of the NBA's most embarrassing stories for the last few years. (I know that sports teams are unimportant and a ridiculous thing for a grown man to care about, but I do care, so indulge me.) Paranoia, fiscal insanity, opaque operations, embarrassing lawsuits and an endless parade of debacles mark this epoch of Knick history and also the American presidency. When most would have had the grace and dignity (or at the very least the shame and horror) to resign and retire to play golf or shoot small birds, or whatever it is phenomanally wealthy folks do in the closing days of the American empire, these fuckheads have hung on to the bitter end. Here are some Bush/Knicks points of comparison:

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A couple of months ago I got the chance to talk to veteran actor and director Clark Johnson, whose turn as Gus Haynes, the acerbic city desk editor of the Baltimore Sun, was the moral core of the final season of The Wire. Along with directing the series finale last Sunday, Johnson directed the show's premier episode six years ago. "I'm either a great visionary or a show-killer," Johnson said with a laugh. "It’s either a glass half-empty or half-full kind of thing."

Johnson had this to say about his character Gus Haynes: "He’s Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen all grown up and bitter. Jimmy finally gets over the bitter phase and is wiser now because he’s an editor. And to be an effective editor, you’ve gotta have a finely tuned bullshit meter. Otherwise, you become a suit. And Gus is like, 'What’s with those glasses Clark Kent? I see right through you.'"

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Two weeks ago, I got to work ten minutes late and my phone was ringing before I even had my coat off. The ID screen flashed "Will Dana," managing editor of Rolling Stone. "Come down here," Will said. "We have to talk."

"Oh shit, I’ve fucked something up again," was the first thing that naturally came to mind. But I grabbed my coffee and walked down the hall. Will was seated in his office going over galleys. When he saw me, he flung down the pages and said, "Explain to me what the fuck happened on The Wire last night. Who’s the kid that shot Omar?"

I should have known.

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