1/31 Morning Communiqué

CITY PAGES BLOGS AND NEWS

We remember Disneyland ride engineer Don Edgren at Corpus Obscurum.

We're happy to announce the release of our new Media Taster! The City Pages Media Taster lets you actually hear the great music you read about in City Pages—just launch, click, and listen. Simply download the Media Taster and you'll automatically receive a digital mixtape of music on a semi-regular basis (including free MP3s), legal and free of charge.

THESE DAYS

Two fungal diseases, Panama disease and black Sigatoka, are cutting a swath through banana plantations, leaving the future of the fruit in jeopardy.

Human trials of an experimental treatment for obesity derived from cannabis, which is commonly associated with stimulating hunger, are scheduled to begin in the second half of this year.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Jake Mohan is heading into his fifth year blogging about music, grocery shopping in the middle of the night, yuletide drinking games, and vomiting in taxi cabs at his eponymous blog.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

Top 50 Cover Songs of All Time according to Rivalfish

Diagrams of James Bond villains' lairs [via Incoming Signals]

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"The Kiss comics that have come out were licenses; they weren't truly part of the mythology. This is all of us working together. [Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley] care about every panel of every comic and how an image looks on a shirt."

— Platinum Studios chairman Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, announcing a partnership with the rock group Kiss to create a new comic-book entertainment company called the Kiss Comics Group