Radios are old, right? Get rid of that 'Radio' anchor weighing down your valuable forward-thinking brand of the future, by all means! But for god's sake, replace it with something. Otherwise you get this:

[Our] tipster says that in-store signs will reflect the change this week, and storefront signage will begin to be reworked as "The Shack" sometime later this year.

Forget the old "Radio Shack." The new home of sophisticated electronic retailing is "The Shack."
With everyone broke, this should go over well.
[Endgadget. Pic via]

The Moment points out an entire collection of seconds-long Youtube clips offering the "correct" pronunciations of various fashion names. A selection:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Comme des Garçons: "Cum dee Gyair-so"


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Dolce & Gabbana: "Dul-chayyyyyyyyy (pause, go have an espresso) Gabannnuh"


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Fendi: (Inject self with thorazine). "findi."


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Louis Vuitton: "Oo-wee ee taw"


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Yves Saint Laurent: "Eve's on la Whore"

[via The Moment/ Fashion Doohickey]

This dickbag, Bush, didn't even win the election, but we were all so bored and drunk in 2000 that we just let him be President, anyway, and then, next thing you know, it's 9/11, just like that. It was shortly after 9/11 that all these perfectly nice and acceptable words suddenly became terrible. Like "freedom." Now, that word is like nails on chalkboard. Ugh.

People who still think "The Freedom Tower" is a good name for the new WTC building? GROW UP. After the last eight years that really sounds like a bunch of 7th-graders came up with it. "The America is Awesome Tower." "The Let's Roll Building." "Megatron's Bitchin' Castle."

So, "freedom." It is a thing we like, sure, but that Bush asshole just ruined it for a generation. "Liberty" is a more elegant, mature word for what we are supposed to be talking about when we talk about "freedom," but even that word with its rich history has this total "tobacco company-funded think tank" tone to it.

"Terrorism," obviously, was always a loaded term, but now it is also just a joke. "Evil" was already a word far too cartoonish to be used by serious people in political discourse (unless, you know, Hitler and Stalin are up for debate), so no harm, no foul there.

So: your precious "Freedom Tower" will not be called that childish name, officially, though you can certainly honor all those dead fireman by calling it whatever the hell you like, privately. We will call it "The Embarrassing Bureaucratic Corruption, Gradual Dissipation of Crippling Paranoia and American Real Estate Bubble Memorial Tower."

Sam Sifton, the Times's culture editor, says that while such decisions are handled on a case-by-case basis, rap artists often get special treatment. "There's a big difference between [Houston rapper] Bun B and Tony Bennett," Sifton says, referring to Bernard Freeman and Anthony Dominick Benedetto, respectively. "Tony Bennett took a stage name, which I think is a little different from taking an alias. Someone like Jay-Z can be Mr. Carter, certainly, or he can just be Jay-Z, but he's never going to be Mr. Z."

There is absolutely no difference between Bun B and Tony Bennett that should affect how their names are treated in the paper. Not only does this highlight the faux-formal idiocy of the Times style guide, it provides a good opportunity to repeat Method Man's greatest truth ever: "Dig it/ F a rap critic/ They talk about it while I live it."

No equality of birth-naming, no peace!

[CJR via Romenesko]