Sly Stone Homeless, Lives in a Van

Some rock stars make headlines when they're having trouble building mega-million-dollar dream homes (like The Edge, who wants to construct a massive Malibu estate), but funk pioneer Sly Stone doesn't have that problem: About 30 miles east of the U2 guitarist's controversial compound, Stone has been living in a small camper parked on a residential street in the rough Los Angeles neighborhood of Crenshaw. One of music's most influential legends is on the edge of homelessness.

How did Stone go from the Beverly Hills mansion he once owned to a Winnebago? A combination of bad business decisions, a greedy manager, and decades of drug use that ate into his savings. Amazingly, Stone is taking his troubles in stride, telling the New York Post, "I like my small camper. I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving." Still, the musician says he wants to recoup the cash he lost over the past decades.

Sly and the Family Stone, the band Sly formed with his siblings Freddie and Rose, were one of the most influential groups of the Woodstock era, seamlessly blending elements of funk, R&B, psychedelic rock, and soul into chart-topping hits like "Family Affair," "Everybody People," and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." They released landmark albums like 1969's Stand and 1971's There's a Riot Goin' On. Stone's group changed the trajectory of American music, and everyone from Michael Jackson and Parliament/Funkadelic to Prince and Red Hot Chili Peppers were inspired by his work -- Tupac Shakur and the Wu-Tang Clan even sampled his songs. However, by 1987, Stone ditched the music industry completely...More

Read More

The Future of Tiki is Weaky

When Tiki Barber told HBO that he was returning to football because he "needed the game," and because he "needed to prove to [himself] that he could be successful at something," I thought it sounded like a recipe for a personal mental health disaster.

Now that NFL rosters are set at 53, and Tiki Barber never got to sniff one, I hope that's not true. According to Peter King at Sports Illustrated, Tiki isn't taking it well.

I tried to reach Barber on Sunday, but he wasn't talking. I hear he's devastated that no team gave him a chance. You might wonder if teams would bring him in after the first game of the season, so his contract wouldn't be guaranteed, and that could still happen. But with no team calling [Barber's agent Mark] Lepselter with even a hint of interest, it's more likely teams would start with backs who've been in some football competition this summer.

Lepselter told me Sunday: "We are flabbergasted that Tiki has not had an opportunity with any team, especially when rosters were at 90 players this year. I certainly thought some team would be intrigued to see what he had left in the tank.'"...More

Read More

Amazon Crashes and Burns with Spacecraft

An unmanned spacecraft bankrolled by Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos failed during a recent test flight.

The vehicle became unstable at 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) and ground controllers had to terminate it as a precaution. Additional details about what went wrong were not released.

"Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard," Bezos wrote in a blog post Friday.

Bezos founded Blue Origin to develop a vertical takeoff and landing rocketship that would fly passengers to suborbital space. It recently won money from NASA to compete to go into orbit as a space taxi now that the space shuttle fleet is retired.

The mishap occurred during a test flight last week from Blue Origin's West Texas spaceport. The ultra-secretive company notified the Federal Aviation Administration about the launch and only acknowledged the accident publicly on Friday.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported about the failure, said the test did not use federal funds and was not part of the development agreement with NASA.

Blue Origin's failure shines a spotlight on the risks of commercial space ventures.

SpaceX, which has a NASA contract to develop a commercial vehicle to haul supplies and astronauts, suffered three rocket failures before it found success. Later this year, the company, run by PayPal founder Elon Musk, will launch a capsule on a cargo test run to the International Space Station.

Virgin Galactic, founded by Sir Richard Branson, lost three workers in 2007 after an explosion rocked a California airport during testing of a propellant system for its space tourism vehicle. The company is currently conducting flight tests in the Mojave Desert and has not set a date for the first passenger flights....More

Read More

Green Day Gets Green Boot from Flight

Green Day rocker Billie Joe Armstrong has complained that he was booted from a Southwest Airlines flight in Oakland, California, because of the way he wore his pants. Armstrong, 39, said on the website Twitter on Thursday, "Just got kicked off a Southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!..."

The flight was going from Oakland, California, to the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, said Brad Hawkins, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines.Cindy Qiu, an associate producer at Bay area television station ABC7/KGO-TV, was on the flight and described the incident on her company's website.

She said that Armstrong, when he was initially approached by a flight attendant and told to hike up his pants, said "Don't you have better things to do than worry about that?" He then tried to take his seat but was asked to leave the plane, Qiu said on the ABC7 website....More

Read More