City Skies
06-20-2005, 12:57 PM
Billy Corgan
The Future Embrace
[Warner Bros.; 2005]
Rating: 6.4
In an alternate world, The Future Embrace could pass for an average shoegaze record with a few OK songs. Because really that's what we got here: Tracks like "Mina Loy (M.O.H.)" and "DIA" cough up all the proven pink noise progressions, hot drums pushed back in the mix, so-called lush layers of guitar distortion, an acceptable vocal melody, frothing overdrive, etc. Even the single "Walking Shade", however hookless and octave-bass trendy as electro-fuck (think the Killers, then thank mixing boy Alan Moulder), still sounds enough like New Order at times that, hey, things are gonna be fine-- one less Out Hud song on the radio.
Unfortunately, Billy Corgan's changed a few lives in his time, which makes it difficult for some people (me, at least) to have any sense of the song's musical merits before their brains pavlov. For a time, Smashing Pumpkins were tops; in my neighborhood alone, dressing up for Halloween as the Asian Guy From Smashing Pumpkins was a politically acceptable if not publicly applauded costume choice. So was making your own ZERO shirt, and locking yourself in your locker, despite all your rage.
So there are, in fact, two ways The Future Embrace can, will, and possibly should be read. The first is, like I said, as just another shoegaze record with some/many lyrical missteps (a teaser: "On the ninth day God created SHAME!!!!!!!"). The second: Although Pumpkins fans enjoy explaining to their peers how, actually, Corgan recorded most of Siamese Dream himself, etc., The Future Embrace really is his first solo record. He's dropping the ruse of band co-operation, and, however much it's often untrue, asking us to read his songs to be at least partially autobiographically. Officially, Corgan no longer represents Smashing Pumpkins (or Zwan), just himself, and the solo run implies a certain interest in showing his true face to those who want to see it.
"All Things Change" has loveful guitars and flimsy drums and really nasally vocals. But for the Corganites this is The Artist justifying his return, explaining his motives for disbanding the Pumpkins, putting faith in pop music, and steeling himself in a way that, if we're buying into the song as a personal account, is kinda sorta affecting. The song's last line, "We can change the world," is cliche, sure, but so is "I love you" to your girlfriend, and "I can't believe I'm doing this" to yourself before the virgin line-- what matters more is Corgan's saying it.
So, forgive Corgan his infinite lyrical badness, but know that infinity's a lot to forgive. "You are love/ You are soul/ You are real to me" is bad, approaching the level of "Can I give my old heart TO YOU!!!!!!!", also a line from The Future Embrace. In fairness, I don't remember what I was thinking exactly when I first heard something like, "I torch my soul to show/ The world that I am pure," stuff like that. Anyway, while that line from "Rocket" seems intentionally poetic, The Future Embrace doesn't seem to aspire to the craft's inherently mediated affair. This is Corgan talking candidly to the mirror, a recording for himself and interested fans, but a big fuck-you to anyone who never cared in the first place. I can't reward that, but I think I get it: When we talk to ourselves about stuff, most of us don't think in necessarily poetic terms-- we just think what we feel. Granted, I've never said something like, "Every time I start reaching out to find you/ Loneliness abounds," but you get the point.
Tonally and compositionally, The Future Embrace is either samey or consistent depending on your mentality, but Corgan throws one undeniable curve with his cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody"-- thirds dropped and Robert Smith on backup vox to boot. Turns out it's not a straight cover; Corgan personalizes it in a spot. Perhaps underscoring the tension he's had in his own career-- a tension he seems to enjoy talking about-- Corgan doesn't sing, "And I'm blind, so very blind," as scripted, but instead asks himself, "Am I so blind, blind to believe?" Woof. For an answer, we might turn back to Corgan's cover of "Destination (Unknown)": "I know I'll leave when it's my time to go/ Till then I carry on with what I know." The swoons fight the groans.
-Nick Sylvester, June 20, 2005
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/corgan_billy/future-embrace.shtml
The Future Embrace
by Billy Corgan
June 21, 2005
There was a time when, as frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan was an affable if somewhat moody fellow. Today, with his tendency toward Victorian-era clothing and an autobiography titled The Confessions of Billy Corgan in the works, his musical presence has become dominated by a more than irritating persona -- one which some recent lackluster musical efforts have brought into stronger relief.
This week comes Corgan's opportunity to get his songwriting talents back into the forefront, with the release of his first full-length solo effort, The Future Embrace. And upon first listen, it seems to be a successful one. Tune out the heavy top layer of angst (which a vocal appearance from Robert Smith thickens up all the more), and you'll hear the same strangely romantic rock that made the Pumpkins such a great band.
http://www.askmen.com/toys/top5_250/290_top_ten.html
June 21, 2005
As the driving force behind Smashing Pumpkins and, more recently, Zwan, Billy Corgan was the master of the indie-rock anthem.
Whether it was the raucous "Cherub Rock" or "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," the more contemplative "Tonight, Tonight" or the dreamy "1979," Corgan made the songs sound ocean-sized, stadium-ready. Almost anything from the Smashing Pumpkins' impressive catalog of hits practically demanded a pumped fist or a flaming lighter.
DROPS
Corgan's 'Embrace' of low-key angst
All of which makes Corgan's solo debut "The Future Embrace" (Martha's Music/Reprise) such a low-key surprise. It sounds like the musical equivalent of an igloo - small, confined and quite cold. Corgan said he took inspiration from Joy Division, Echo & The Bunnymen and David Bowie's "Low" album for "The Future Embrace," and the influences show, especially in the first single "Mina Loy (M.O.H.)," which sounds like he reworked a long-lost Joy Division track.
His precise vision works best on "All Things Change" because the optimistic end, where Corgan repeats, "We can change the world," seems to thaw some of the iciness. "The Camera Eye" also works well, picking up some of the refrigerated cool of The Postal Service.
Too often, though, Corgan takes his pursuit of subtlety and isolation too far with "The Future Embrace." On "To Love Somebody," Corgan drowns the Bee Gees' classic with a minor key and stony delivery, as well as the odd harmonies of The Cure's Robert Smith. By the time the second half of the album rolls around, Corgan's delivery has become numbing and the songs become indistinguishable.
"The Future Embrace" sounds like a way for Corgan to ease into his new career as a solo artist, which seems understandable enough. Once he gets his bearings again, they will undoubtedly lead him back to the anthems he handles so much more gracefully. ("The Future Embrace," in stores today; Grade: B-)
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-etledew4312484jun21,0,3459746.column?coll=ny-entertainment-columnists
Lashing Pumpkin
Billy Corgan stumps for his new CD
by attacking ex-bandmates
By JIM FARBER
Billy Corgan
Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan is in the mood to spew.
With this week's release of "TheFuture- Embrace," his first solo album, the former leader of the Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan has decided to come clean about his childhood and history with his two famous bands.
Not only is he doing so in interviews but in a rambling and seldom pleasant online autobiography that appears at www.billycorgan.com.
"I'm sick of covering up for my tormentors," the singer says. "I used to protect them out of a warped sense of loyalty. But there comes a point when you have to tell your story."
This one isn't pretty. In his unfolding blog, Corgan writes about the torment and confusion of his mentally ill mother, who died of cancer at age 50; his father, who neglected him while he was growing up; plus the triumphs and tussles of the Pumpkins, one of the key bands of the '90s.
Corgan paints his experience with the Pumpkins as a saga of paranoia, pressure and self-hatred. He no longer speaks to two of his former bandmates, nor to the guys in Zwan.
"They were supposed to be these cool indie rock people where it's all about the music," he says of Zwan. "But it was all about hanging out with skanky chicks in bars. It was shocking to me."
Yet, Zwan's one album was more catchy and pithy than anything put out by the Pumpkins. "I did a really good job of making an unhappy band sound happy," Corgan says.
COMPLETE CONTROL
He says he always controlled much of the music in his group projects. Doing a solo album, therefore, wasn't much of a stretch.
The music on the new album, however, differs dramatically from his past work. Instead of the raging guitars on the Pumpkins and Zwan CDs, gurgling synths dominate "TheFuture-Embrace." Yet Corgan insists there's more guitar work on the CD than seems apparent.
"It's not out front, it's textual," he says. His role models for the approach were bands like Love and Rockets, Dresden Dolls and Nine Inch Nails.
Corgan hopes his dense new style "helps build a new wave of rock." He knows it will be a hard sell. Brand-name bands generate more excitement in rock than solo efforts. He's also aware that his most commercial period lies behind him. "I'm not asking people to love me," he says.
One can't help but wonder, though, if Corgan's decision to clean house emotionally is a ploy to give his CD a PR hook.
"People have said, 'Why not tell it all to your therapist and not in public?'" Corgan says. "Well, I lived in public, I was judged in public. So now I put it out in public."
In fact, Corgan believes he and his Gen X rock peers of the '90s were too harshly judged by the public and the press.
"Trent [Reznor], Courtney [Love], Billy [Corgan] - we were all put up on the chopping block and made to pay for having the guts to come along and talk about being human beings with real problems," he explains "We didn't live up to the 'rock god' image. Well, no s-! We were here to show we were flawed human beings. It wasn't a marketing ploy.
"Courtney - what did she do to anybody?" he goes on. "[Yes] she's crazy and she runs her mouth, but she liberated the whole world of music for women."
BURNING BRIDGES
Corgan offers no such defense of the other ex-Pumpkins. In his blog, he describes bassist D'arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha as unreliable, difficult and stand-offish (though he maintains a personal and professional relationship with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin).
Reading between the lines, one can imagine that Corgan's bandmates pulled away from him because he was limiting their creativity. Corgan dismisses this, offering as proof the paucity of great solo works produced by Wretzky and Iha since the Pumpkins split in December 2000.
"Where is their 'All Things Must Pass'?" he asks, referring to the solo masterpiece recorded by George Harrison after the Beatles broke up. John Lennon and Paul McCartney "really did shut him out. These other two [Wretzky and Iha] didn't do anything" since the Pumpkins broke up.
Despite such comments, Corgan says he doesn't know why Iha stopped talking to him.
"For all I know I didn't give him a Twinkie - it could be something stupid," he says. "My dad didn't talk to me for a year because he misunderstood something I said and thought I'd accused him of sexually abusing me."
Corgan says he knows why he and Wretzky don't speak, but won't elaborate.
For all this ill will, Corgan feels the Pumpkins' musical reputation is stronger than ever.
"Kids are rediscovering the band," he says. "There's energy trapped in those songs."
"It's been a bumpy ride," he adds. "But the fact is, if we [hadn't] made good music no one would care."
Originally published on June 19, 2005
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/320478p-273650c.html
BILLY CORGAN
Apparently, things have gotten so bad for Billy Corgan he can't even afford a computer with a working space bar. His called his new album "TheFutureEmbrace," and the songs ******* "The CameraEye," "Pretty, pretty STAR" and "DIA," which indicate that his shift key might have gone a little sticky as well. You would think that with all that time he put in with the Smashing Pumpkins, the singer would have at least saved up enough money to buy a secondhand TRS-80 with working letters and everything. Or maybe having his heart broken by his longtime girlfriend, photographer Yelena Yemchuck, hurt so much that Corgan could no longer be bothered with something as mundane as the English language. That would certainly explain why his first formal solo outing (everyone knows the Pumpkins' albums were solo affairs in all but name) sounds even more anguished and primitive than when he stalked around like Nosferatu singing things like "The Crying Tree of Mercury." Over a dozen tracks, Corgan obsesses over the breakup, trading in his '70s-metal-guitar onslaught for something more subdued but no less forceful. The highlight is an odd, electronically bent cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody." Sorry, "ToLoveSomebody." The song has been done many times before -- by everyone from Nina Simone and Janis Joplin to Tom Jones and Michael Bolton -- but never with the Cure's morose Robert Smith singing backing vocals. That enough is reason to think Corgan just might make a grab at relevance once again. -- Aidin Vaziri.
BILLY CORGAN
THEFUTUREEMBRACE
WARNER
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/19/PKGJNCEQB01.DTL&feed=rss.entertainment
cool pic: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050620/482/nyet33206201624
another cool pic: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050620/482/nyet33106201624
The Future Embrace
[Warner Bros.; 2005]
Rating: 6.4
In an alternate world, The Future Embrace could pass for an average shoegaze record with a few OK songs. Because really that's what we got here: Tracks like "Mina Loy (M.O.H.)" and "DIA" cough up all the proven pink noise progressions, hot drums pushed back in the mix, so-called lush layers of guitar distortion, an acceptable vocal melody, frothing overdrive, etc. Even the single "Walking Shade", however hookless and octave-bass trendy as electro-fuck (think the Killers, then thank mixing boy Alan Moulder), still sounds enough like New Order at times that, hey, things are gonna be fine-- one less Out Hud song on the radio.
Unfortunately, Billy Corgan's changed a few lives in his time, which makes it difficult for some people (me, at least) to have any sense of the song's musical merits before their brains pavlov. For a time, Smashing Pumpkins were tops; in my neighborhood alone, dressing up for Halloween as the Asian Guy From Smashing Pumpkins was a politically acceptable if not publicly applauded costume choice. So was making your own ZERO shirt, and locking yourself in your locker, despite all your rage.
So there are, in fact, two ways The Future Embrace can, will, and possibly should be read. The first is, like I said, as just another shoegaze record with some/many lyrical missteps (a teaser: "On the ninth day God created SHAME!!!!!!!"). The second: Although Pumpkins fans enjoy explaining to their peers how, actually, Corgan recorded most of Siamese Dream himself, etc., The Future Embrace really is his first solo record. He's dropping the ruse of band co-operation, and, however much it's often untrue, asking us to read his songs to be at least partially autobiographically. Officially, Corgan no longer represents Smashing Pumpkins (or Zwan), just himself, and the solo run implies a certain interest in showing his true face to those who want to see it.
"All Things Change" has loveful guitars and flimsy drums and really nasally vocals. But for the Corganites this is The Artist justifying his return, explaining his motives for disbanding the Pumpkins, putting faith in pop music, and steeling himself in a way that, if we're buying into the song as a personal account, is kinda sorta affecting. The song's last line, "We can change the world," is cliche, sure, but so is "I love you" to your girlfriend, and "I can't believe I'm doing this" to yourself before the virgin line-- what matters more is Corgan's saying it.
So, forgive Corgan his infinite lyrical badness, but know that infinity's a lot to forgive. "You are love/ You are soul/ You are real to me" is bad, approaching the level of "Can I give my old heart TO YOU!!!!!!!", also a line from The Future Embrace. In fairness, I don't remember what I was thinking exactly when I first heard something like, "I torch my soul to show/ The world that I am pure," stuff like that. Anyway, while that line from "Rocket" seems intentionally poetic, The Future Embrace doesn't seem to aspire to the craft's inherently mediated affair. This is Corgan talking candidly to the mirror, a recording for himself and interested fans, but a big fuck-you to anyone who never cared in the first place. I can't reward that, but I think I get it: When we talk to ourselves about stuff, most of us don't think in necessarily poetic terms-- we just think what we feel. Granted, I've never said something like, "Every time I start reaching out to find you/ Loneliness abounds," but you get the point.
Tonally and compositionally, The Future Embrace is either samey or consistent depending on your mentality, but Corgan throws one undeniable curve with his cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody"-- thirds dropped and Robert Smith on backup vox to boot. Turns out it's not a straight cover; Corgan personalizes it in a spot. Perhaps underscoring the tension he's had in his own career-- a tension he seems to enjoy talking about-- Corgan doesn't sing, "And I'm blind, so very blind," as scripted, but instead asks himself, "Am I so blind, blind to believe?" Woof. For an answer, we might turn back to Corgan's cover of "Destination (Unknown)": "I know I'll leave when it's my time to go/ Till then I carry on with what I know." The swoons fight the groans.
-Nick Sylvester, June 20, 2005
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/corgan_billy/future-embrace.shtml
The Future Embrace
by Billy Corgan
June 21, 2005
There was a time when, as frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan was an affable if somewhat moody fellow. Today, with his tendency toward Victorian-era clothing and an autobiography titled The Confessions of Billy Corgan in the works, his musical presence has become dominated by a more than irritating persona -- one which some recent lackluster musical efforts have brought into stronger relief.
This week comes Corgan's opportunity to get his songwriting talents back into the forefront, with the release of his first full-length solo effort, The Future Embrace. And upon first listen, it seems to be a successful one. Tune out the heavy top layer of angst (which a vocal appearance from Robert Smith thickens up all the more), and you'll hear the same strangely romantic rock that made the Pumpkins such a great band.
http://www.askmen.com/toys/top5_250/290_top_ten.html
June 21, 2005
As the driving force behind Smashing Pumpkins and, more recently, Zwan, Billy Corgan was the master of the indie-rock anthem.
Whether it was the raucous "Cherub Rock" or "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," the more contemplative "Tonight, Tonight" or the dreamy "1979," Corgan made the songs sound ocean-sized, stadium-ready. Almost anything from the Smashing Pumpkins' impressive catalog of hits practically demanded a pumped fist or a flaming lighter.
DROPS
Corgan's 'Embrace' of low-key angst
All of which makes Corgan's solo debut "The Future Embrace" (Martha's Music/Reprise) such a low-key surprise. It sounds like the musical equivalent of an igloo - small, confined and quite cold. Corgan said he took inspiration from Joy Division, Echo & The Bunnymen and David Bowie's "Low" album for "The Future Embrace," and the influences show, especially in the first single "Mina Loy (M.O.H.)," which sounds like he reworked a long-lost Joy Division track.
His precise vision works best on "All Things Change" because the optimistic end, where Corgan repeats, "We can change the world," seems to thaw some of the iciness. "The Camera Eye" also works well, picking up some of the refrigerated cool of The Postal Service.
Too often, though, Corgan takes his pursuit of subtlety and isolation too far with "The Future Embrace." On "To Love Somebody," Corgan drowns the Bee Gees' classic with a minor key and stony delivery, as well as the odd harmonies of The Cure's Robert Smith. By the time the second half of the album rolls around, Corgan's delivery has become numbing and the songs become indistinguishable.
"The Future Embrace" sounds like a way for Corgan to ease into his new career as a solo artist, which seems understandable enough. Once he gets his bearings again, they will undoubtedly lead him back to the anthems he handles so much more gracefully. ("The Future Embrace," in stores today; Grade: B-)
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-etledew4312484jun21,0,3459746.column?coll=ny-entertainment-columnists
Lashing Pumpkin
Billy Corgan stumps for his new CD
by attacking ex-bandmates
By JIM FARBER
Billy Corgan
Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan is in the mood to spew.
With this week's release of "TheFuture- Embrace," his first solo album, the former leader of the Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan has decided to come clean about his childhood and history with his two famous bands.
Not only is he doing so in interviews but in a rambling and seldom pleasant online autobiography that appears at www.billycorgan.com.
"I'm sick of covering up for my tormentors," the singer says. "I used to protect them out of a warped sense of loyalty. But there comes a point when you have to tell your story."
This one isn't pretty. In his unfolding blog, Corgan writes about the torment and confusion of his mentally ill mother, who died of cancer at age 50; his father, who neglected him while he was growing up; plus the triumphs and tussles of the Pumpkins, one of the key bands of the '90s.
Corgan paints his experience with the Pumpkins as a saga of paranoia, pressure and self-hatred. He no longer speaks to two of his former bandmates, nor to the guys in Zwan.
"They were supposed to be these cool indie rock people where it's all about the music," he says of Zwan. "But it was all about hanging out with skanky chicks in bars. It was shocking to me."
Yet, Zwan's one album was more catchy and pithy than anything put out by the Pumpkins. "I did a really good job of making an unhappy band sound happy," Corgan says.
COMPLETE CONTROL
He says he always controlled much of the music in his group projects. Doing a solo album, therefore, wasn't much of a stretch.
The music on the new album, however, differs dramatically from his past work. Instead of the raging guitars on the Pumpkins and Zwan CDs, gurgling synths dominate "TheFuture-Embrace." Yet Corgan insists there's more guitar work on the CD than seems apparent.
"It's not out front, it's textual," he says. His role models for the approach were bands like Love and Rockets, Dresden Dolls and Nine Inch Nails.
Corgan hopes his dense new style "helps build a new wave of rock." He knows it will be a hard sell. Brand-name bands generate more excitement in rock than solo efforts. He's also aware that his most commercial period lies behind him. "I'm not asking people to love me," he says.
One can't help but wonder, though, if Corgan's decision to clean house emotionally is a ploy to give his CD a PR hook.
"People have said, 'Why not tell it all to your therapist and not in public?'" Corgan says. "Well, I lived in public, I was judged in public. So now I put it out in public."
In fact, Corgan believes he and his Gen X rock peers of the '90s were too harshly judged by the public and the press.
"Trent [Reznor], Courtney [Love], Billy [Corgan] - we were all put up on the chopping block and made to pay for having the guts to come along and talk about being human beings with real problems," he explains "We didn't live up to the 'rock god' image. Well, no s-! We were here to show we were flawed human beings. It wasn't a marketing ploy.
"Courtney - what did she do to anybody?" he goes on. "[Yes] she's crazy and she runs her mouth, but she liberated the whole world of music for women."
BURNING BRIDGES
Corgan offers no such defense of the other ex-Pumpkins. In his blog, he describes bassist D'arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha as unreliable, difficult and stand-offish (though he maintains a personal and professional relationship with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin).
Reading between the lines, one can imagine that Corgan's bandmates pulled away from him because he was limiting their creativity. Corgan dismisses this, offering as proof the paucity of great solo works produced by Wretzky and Iha since the Pumpkins split in December 2000.
"Where is their 'All Things Must Pass'?" he asks, referring to the solo masterpiece recorded by George Harrison after the Beatles broke up. John Lennon and Paul McCartney "really did shut him out. These other two [Wretzky and Iha] didn't do anything" since the Pumpkins broke up.
Despite such comments, Corgan says he doesn't know why Iha stopped talking to him.
"For all I know I didn't give him a Twinkie - it could be something stupid," he says. "My dad didn't talk to me for a year because he misunderstood something I said and thought I'd accused him of sexually abusing me."
Corgan says he knows why he and Wretzky don't speak, but won't elaborate.
For all this ill will, Corgan feels the Pumpkins' musical reputation is stronger than ever.
"Kids are rediscovering the band," he says. "There's energy trapped in those songs."
"It's been a bumpy ride," he adds. "But the fact is, if we [hadn't] made good music no one would care."
Originally published on June 19, 2005
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/320478p-273650c.html
BILLY CORGAN
Apparently, things have gotten so bad for Billy Corgan he can't even afford a computer with a working space bar. His called his new album "TheFutureEmbrace," and the songs ******* "The CameraEye," "Pretty, pretty STAR" and "DIA," which indicate that his shift key might have gone a little sticky as well. You would think that with all that time he put in with the Smashing Pumpkins, the singer would have at least saved up enough money to buy a secondhand TRS-80 with working letters and everything. Or maybe having his heart broken by his longtime girlfriend, photographer Yelena Yemchuck, hurt so much that Corgan could no longer be bothered with something as mundane as the English language. That would certainly explain why his first formal solo outing (everyone knows the Pumpkins' albums were solo affairs in all but name) sounds even more anguished and primitive than when he stalked around like Nosferatu singing things like "The Crying Tree of Mercury." Over a dozen tracks, Corgan obsesses over the breakup, trading in his '70s-metal-guitar onslaught for something more subdued but no less forceful. The highlight is an odd, electronically bent cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody." Sorry, "ToLoveSomebody." The song has been done many times before -- by everyone from Nina Simone and Janis Joplin to Tom Jones and Michael Bolton -- but never with the Cure's morose Robert Smith singing backing vocals. That enough is reason to think Corgan just might make a grab at relevance once again. -- Aidin Vaziri.
BILLY CORGAN
THEFUTUREEMBRACE
WARNER
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/19/PKGJNCEQB01.DTL&feed=rss.entertainment
cool pic: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050620/482/nyet33206201624
another cool pic: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050620/482/nyet33106201624