Friday, April 15, 2005 This week in rock kfr By Sean Mihlo staff writer Ex-Models Prep New LP for European Release What do Twiggy, Rachel Hunter and Cindy Crawford have in common? Well, they're all ex-models of course. Incidentally, New York post-punk band Ex- Models are currently gearing up to release a new album. “Chrome Panthers,” the band's first full-length since 2003's acclaimed “Zoo Psychology,” will be released in Europe on April 19th via Germany's X-Mist Records and Psychotica Records in Italy. The record will only be available on vinyl until the New Jersey-based label Troubleman Unlimited releases it on CD later this year. “Chrome Panthers” is packed with six new tracks and, according to the band's official website, is the longest album they've recorded yet. Translation: It's longer than 20 minutes! Oneida and Jah Division member Kid Millions contributes drum work to the forthcoming LP. Next week, Ex-Models embark on a European tour that will take them from England to France to Germany to the Czech Republic. No sum mer U.S. dates have been scheduled yet. Garbage Get Heavy on “Bleed Like Me,” Tour the U.S. and Europe It's been ten entire years since Shirley Manson and the boys of Garbage first hit the alternative rock scene. And I can even remember buying their first single, “Only Happy When It Rains,” on CD at my local National Record Mart. Yeah, remember those days? Well, after four albums and a rumored break-up, Garbage are back with their fifth set of melodic, loud guitars and Hilton gets serious with new clothing line REVIEWJOURNAL.COM Nicky Hilton, sister of Paris Hilton, has begun advertising her new line of clothing includ ing Capri jeans, hoodies and sweat suits. By Allison Kaplan Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) It's tough to be taken serious ly as a fashion designer when you're an heiress, and you party a lot, and you're best known for being the brunette little sister of Paris Hilton, who can make national news just by changing lipstick colors. But Nicky Hilton is deter mined to show the world she means business with her new line of Capri jeans, chiffon hoodies and ice-cream-cone screen-printed sweat suits. We caught up with her recently as she kicked off her "Shop Like a Hilton" national department store tour in New York. Q: So, what is it like to “Shop Like a Hilton?” A: It is exhausting. There's a lot of shopping involved. I love shopping. I could shop all day. I shopped all day today. Q: Where do you shop? A: Bloomingdale's, Scoop, Louis Vuitton, Prada. Q: And what did you buy? A: A Balenciaga handbag. Q: How much? A: $1,200. I’ll carry it a lot. I’m somewhat reasonable. Ct O Manson's Scottish-snarling, the aptly titled “Bleed Like Me.” Released on April 12th via Geffen (and April 11th internationally via Warner Brothers), this album takes Garbage in a new direction, differing from their previous releases as drummer Butch Vig described in an interview with MTV: “There's less layering, less electronic things. It's basically just a really loud guitar record.” Over two years in the making, “Bleed Like Me” was almost a complete bust. In 2003, Vig quit the band for four months, and the rest of the band, including vocalist Shirley Manson and guitarists Duke Erikson and Steve Marker, went their sepa rate ways as well. Eventually, “Rolling Stone” reports, Vig decided that Garbage was by no means over: “It's like we'd been married for ten years, and it was worth it to try one more time.” Garbage also decided to bring in an outside producer this time around, the Dust Brothers’ John King, but decided to scrap all of those recorded ses sions; the only track that remains King-pro duced is “Bad Boyfriend,” which also fea tures Dave Grohl on drums. The first single from “Bleed Like Me,” “Why Do You Love Me,” was released to radio stations last month. Garbage have already lined up a slew of dates in support of Bleed Like Me. The tour, which began yesterday in San Francisco, is set to hit most major cities in the U.S. In Q: Do you ever look at price tags? A: I do. I'll be silly with watches, jewelry and cars, but I'm not going to spend some absurd amount on a garment. Q: What do you consider absurd? A: I don't understand $1,600 jeweled T-shirts from Dolce & Gabbana. That's ridiculous. Q: So did you have paparazzi trailing you from store to store? A: I'm pretty low key. I don't roll with an entourage. No bodyguard. Q: What about when you're with Paris? A: It gets a little out of hand. Paris, with the blond hair and the dog... she can't go unno ticed. It's annoying when you're trying to shop. Q: Is it frustrating, living in your big sister's shadow? A: I don't care. Q: Seriously, why are you Hiltons so famous? A: I think maybe it's because there are a lot of wealthy heiresses running around, doing their thing, but people are shocked that we actually work for a living. I mean, Paris has built an empire, fragrances, modeling, TV. She has an office. Q: Why do you bother to work? A: It's much more fulfilling than just sitting there. That gets old after a while. Q: So does that mean you really are involved with designing this collection? Seems like every celebrity wants her name on a clothing line these days. A: A lot of celebrities don't really care. I went to school for this. (She attended but didn't graduate from Fashion Institute of Technology.) I always want ed to be a designer. I started with handbags when I was 17. Q: Feeling a little defensive? A: It's annoying to explain to people. But I don't really care. Everyone seems to be buying it. They like it. All of it comes from my heart. Q: But here's the real test. Is it “hot?” A: I used "That's hot" before Paris. She just used it on TV. TUDENT LIFE Garbage local concert dates May 9 - Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall May 10 - Cleveland, OH - Agora Ballroom A dark-chocolate force Believe it or not, some of us aren't counting the days until the premiere of the new "Star Wars" film. But if it took a new installment in the sci-fi series to get dark chocolate M&Ms on the shelves of my local supermarket, you can count me as the world's newest "Star Wars" fan. It seems crazy that in their 64-year history, M&Ms have never gotten the dark chocolate treatment. But in a new promotion tied to "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith," the candies have gone to the dark side. And all I can say is, what took them so long? True dark chocolate fans may find that the candies don't have quite the bitter bite of pricier dark chocolates, but for less than a dollar for a king-size package, it's a trade-off worth making. Look for M&Ms Darth Mix wherever you normally get your chocolate fix. (Warning: The candies come in "dark side" colors like maroon and silver. Don't buy them if you have a problem with black candy - remember it's only a color; the chocolate tastes the same on the inside.) Dark chocolate M&Ms aren't around forever; they'll be avail able just a few weeks past the film's release. June, the band will head off to Europe, playing a few shows (a majority of which are still being worked out) and riding the festival circuit. Weird War: New Album + European Tour = Not Weird Psychedelic-funksters Weird War are preparing to release their fourth album for Drag City, “Illuminated by the Light,” on April 19. Previously known as Scene Creamers on their last album, Weird War features former Make-Up members Michelle Mae and lan Svenonius and ex- Six Finger Satellite guitarist Alex Minoff. Recently, the group became a four-piece with the addition of drummer Sebastian Thomson (ex-Trans AM). Weird War’s last record, “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Bite ‘Em,” included a steamy, sexually-fraught batch of songs, accompanied by song titles such as “Music for Masturbation” and “Licking Stick.” “Illuminated” features eleven tracks chock-full of irresistible guitar riffs and funked-up grooves, undeniably akin to the soul-tinged Make-Up records of the late 90s. Drag City has posted “Illuminated,” the title track from the forthcoming “Illuminated by the Light,” on their website to satisfy our bootlegging needs. After a European tour that will run through the majority of April and May, the band will head back to the states and launch a summer tour in support of “Illuminate” in July. By Becky Sher Knight Ridder/Tribune (KRT) Ask ASCII: Why are so many programmers? By Logan Stack staff writer Dear ASCII, Every year, thousands of peo ple graduate with computer sci ence degrees. Why do we need so many programmers? I don't need any new programs. The only programs I use are Word and Internet Explorer. What are all these people doing? - Not a CS Major Dear Not a CS Major, Computer Science isn't just programing, and programing isn't just for Computer Scientists. One of the more common non-programing things which CS majors end up doing is system administration; they work at Yahoo! to make sure that their web site works. They work for the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette to make sure all the reporters can access their e mail, and they work at AOL to make sure everyone can chat on AIM. Those who program may work for some big company like IBM or Microsoft, but there are a lot of smaller companies pro viding software for a smaller market. A friend of mine spent last summer working for a com pany of 5 people helping to write software to model proteins at the atomic level to help doc . | tors. Besides that, you use more programs than you think. Besides Internet Explorer and Word, you probably use AIM, e mail, and Winamp. Many pro grams you use don't run on your computer. When you visit a web site, you're using your web browser, and a web server at the site you're visiting. Whoever provides your e-mail has an e mail Server which your e-mail program connects to. Before you visit the web site, your com puter uses another program to connect to another server to find out where google.com is located at. Windows itself is a program, and every piece of hardware (your modem, your network card, your sound card, etc) has to have a special program called a "driver" to communicate with Windows. Programing isn't just for CS majors though. There are hun dreds of different programing languages, none of which do quite the same thing. Assembly is extremely fast, but extremely The Behrend Beacon I difficult to write - it can take up to five instructions just to add two small numbers together. But other languages are designed to be easy to program. Scripting languages like Perl allow you to write powerful statements. For instance I can write a single line of Perl which sorts a file in reverse-alphabetical order, and e-mails you with a list of mis spelled words in that file. Scripting languages like Perl let you have the computer do your work for you. Do you have a summer job where you're given boring assignments like, "Find the top 25 companies we contract with that are giving us erroneous information about our transactions from this list of 12,000 errors." Perl can do that for you in 3 seconds, with a pro gram that would only take an hour to write. With the script you can just run it every month for three seconds, and everyone at the office will think highly of you. There are a lot of books out there on "How to Program in Some-programing-language." Most of them start off slowly enough that you can learn from it, even if you're never pro gramed before. If you want to learn and can't fit a class into your schedule, a book can teach you how to avoid the tedious tasks. Just check the book's beginning. They usually have a half-page section named some thing like "who should read this book," which explains the level of experience you're expected to have to understand the book. So if anyone can program, what do CS majors do? They write more complex programs. Just like everyone knows how to do basic math, math majors do more complex math. Think of Google's magic searching algo rithm and Windows XP being analogous to your third year of calculus. Writing a Perl script to read your book report to deter mine if your erroneously altered verb tenses in the middle is anal ogous to doing multiplication. Computer Science majors design protocols, like HTTP and DNS, which your computer uses every time you visit a web site. Do you have a computer question? Then ask ASCII! Send an e-mail to lwsllB@psu.edu with "Ask ASCII" in the subject line, and you may see it answered in next week’s col-
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