So remember that story in the LA Times a couple of weeks ago linking Sean “Diddy” Combs to the shooting death of rapper Tupac Shakur? Apparently it’s bullshit:

The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.” Sabatino is pictured in the above mug shot.

The author of the story was, of course, none other than Chuck Phillips, who previously won a Pullitzer for his reporting on corruption in entertainment industry, who just the other day, defended his sourcing on the story to MTV News:

“I often get approached by a lot of people, and then I talk to a lot of people who I thought knew someone and I find out they’re lying,” Philips said. “It takes a lot of time to develop. I’m not gonna write it just because someone says it. I have to, in my mind, have double or triple sourcing on something and people who hadn’t spoken to each other and I can assure myself that they haven’t spoken to each other. Because I’ve had two people try to set me up. … I would catch them. But if you have three, you never get tripped up. I learned that writing about the music business, because I’d write about big deals that were coming out or a firing that would happen five days before it happened. And you had to be right about that sh–, because those guys would sue your ass. But in this case, I don’t write anything until I feel it’s confident, it’s true. I know all kinds of stuff I don’t write about. But then if I know that it’s true, I’m gonna write about it. But I never tell anybody what it is, because it’s unfair if it’s not true. And there are people that will lie to you. Same thing happens in the music business, when I wrote about that. Same thing happened in the government. The police lie to you all the time. Police write up documents that are completely false, and you can print that. As a journalist, if they write up a police report that’s false, you can put that on the front page of the newspaper and not be sued, because it’s a police document.

“People are talking about that document,” Philips added. “I had all of the information before I got the FBI document. [Editor's note: Philips obtained FBI records cited in Monday's story that said an informant told authorities in 2002 that Jimmy Rosemond and James Sabatino set up Shakur.] And when I got the FBI document, that was really like frosting on the cake for me. Because in this document, by somebody who I had never spoke to, I did speak to them eventually before the story ran, but who I didn’t know or speak to, he said almost the same thing that I found out. So for me, it’s just another resource, but for everybody who reads it, ‘Oh, it has to be true. The FBI is sourcing it.’ “

Um, RONGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

I was going to post some unnecessary Youtube clip, but i actually found something worth notice. Youtube user Thelonefilmmaker is embarking on one of the riskiest/ most badass business moves I’ve heard of. He’s writing, producing, acting, directing, etc. every possible role and detail himself. Every 3 or 4 days he’s posting a new behind the scenes blog in which he gives a backstage look at how things are going.

Here’s the first update:

Not knowing much about the plot or his skills, I’m still really intrigued on the whole process and concept. I mean, he’s putting all this together by himself, where as I have been trying to summon up the motivation to pee for the last 20 minutes. I wish I had an astronaut suit right now…

The journal Nature is reporting that researchers have found human remains that date back 400,000 years before the previous oldest-known remains, meaning humans roamed Europe a lot longer than previously believed.

A jawbone, teeth and simple tools were uncovered in a cave near the Spanish city of Burgos.

The remains are accurately dated and lay to rest doubts about when early humans first lived in Europe, said Andreu Olle, who has worked at the Atapuerca site since 1990.

“These are the oldest human remains in Europe. With this fossil, we can say it (Europe) was populated earlier than was thought,” he told Reuters.

For more, check out this video courtesy of the Reuters YouTube Channel (believe it or not, you can actually get yourself some learning there).

I like it, and I like her Goddess-like red hair. I’d like to take her to Olive Garden and then eat ice cream with her in the park…

Flyleaf kicks ass too, but I can only take her to Burger King, because I spent all my money on Paramore, and her beautiful red hair that smells like sea shells and oakwood.

Movie is also going to star Dennis Quad. Snake eyes looks pretty damn good, I hope they don’t ruin the G.I. Joe that I used to re-enact by punching everything in the living room and then throw fake grenades at my Brothers face.

Don’t forget about the PSA!! Wait I don’t remember this one..

Mexican emo kids apparently have something to cry about, as they have been victimized by a bizarre wave of emo-bashings, inspired in part by a popular TV personality’s on-air anti-emo tirade. From LA Weekly blogger Daniel Hernandez:

In Mexico, emo culture is a butt of many jokes. It is either despised intensely or generally ignored. But it’s only the despising sentiment that lately has been getting wide airply. In the above clip, a Televisa on-air personality named Kristoff expresses a serious dose of anti-emo rhetoric and switches to English to say, on network television, “Fucking bullshit” to the emo movement. Some emos I’ve interviewed point to the Kristoff clip as a defining provocation of the current wave of anti-emo violence.

The aggressors responsible for emo attacks in Mexico City, Queretaro and elsewhere come from different subcultures, with differing reasons for their shared hate:

Anger against the emos has come from many quarters: punks and goths who think emos are ripping off their culture, homophobes who don’t find emos masculine enough, and those who simply seem threatened by a group that is so different than the mainstream.

But Mexican emos aren’t taking this shit lying down. They’ve organized marches and protests to bring attention to their plight:

Emos have begun to fight back, organizing marches in Guadalajara and Mexico City. And voices have begun appearing warning of a creeping intolerance in Mexican society. Gilberto Rincan Gallardo, a columnist for the El Porvenir newspaper, argued this week that tolerance is the foundation of any healthy democracy. “If a group of young people like (emos) decides to get together and live life in a certain manner, and doesn’t hurt others, it’s the obligation of the Democratic state to protect them…It’s easy for an eccentric and easily identified minority group to be stigmatized and discriminated against…It’s the responsibility of the authorities to make sure the threats aren’t carried out and the aggressions are punished.”

All I have to say is:

Dear Mexico,

If you don’t want your emos, please send them here. Especially the girls.

Thanks,

America