CHARLIE PIERCE: There will now be a decade or more of criminal trials, and perhaps a quarter-century or more of civil actions, as a result of what went on at Penn State. These things cannot be prayed away. Let us hear nothing about “closure” or about “moving on.” And God help us, let us not hear a single mumbling word about how football can help the university “heal.” (Lord, let the Alamo Bowl be an instrument of your peace.) This wound should be left open and gaping and raw until the very last of the children that Jerry Sandusky is […]

Retired NYPD Philadelphia Police captain Ray Lewis, Zuccotti Park, NYC, last night RELATED: Inside Job

THE WEIRD WORLD OF BLOWFLY (2010, directed by Jonathan Furmansky, 89 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC First time director Jonathan Furmanski deserves kudos for shining a dirty light on the weird world of the lascivious 1970s proto-rapper Blowfly in a new documentary so deep it peripherally captures something important about the weird world in which we all live. Nobody could be Blowfly all the time. The costumed sex fiend’s secret identity is Clarence Reid, a cornerstone player of the dance music hit machine that came out of Miami in the early 1970s. Reid wrote tunes and acted as […]

RELATED: Tinariwen was founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who at age four witnessed the execution of his father (a Tuareg rebel) during a 1963 uprising in Mali. As a child he saw a western film in which a cowboy played a guitar. Ag Alhabib built his own guitar out of a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire. He started to play old Tuareg and modern Arabic pop tunes.[citation needed] Ag Alhabib first lived in refugee camps and later resided with other Tuareg exiles in Libya and Algeria. In the late 1970s Ag Alhabib joined with other musicians in […]

FRESH AIR “Almost without exception, every proposal put forth by GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates is intended to preserve or expand tax privileges for the wealthiest Americans,” writes Rolling Stone political correspondent Tim Dickinson. “Most of their plans, which are presented as commonsense measures that will aid all Americans, would actually result in higher taxes for middle-class taxpayers and the poor.” On Wednesday’s Fresh Air, Dickinson explains how the tax policies pursued by the Republican Party have changed in the past 14 years — and says those changes have led to greater economic inequality in our country. He explains that […]

[illustration by ALEX FINE] Do us all a favor: Cue up “Waterloo Sunset” by the Kinks. Ah. Don’t you feel better already? Music in the left speaker, vocals in the right-totally old-school. That twinkling strum of brotherly guitar and gently piddling snare, those drowsy sha-la-las drifting upward while the bassline tumbles downward, and the comforting sentiment that even the shittiest day on earth ends with a glimpse-of-paradise sunset. That, my friend, is the sound of your father’s Britpop. They don’t make singles like that anymore — Damon Albarn has long since stopped even trying. Sadly, the Gallagher brothers haven’t. As […]

BY MEREDITH KLEIBER Anyone who views the banjo as strictly a bluegrass instrument clearly hasn’t been introduced to the music of Béla Fleck — or his new banjo concerto (you never expected to see those two words together, did you?). Since cutting his teeth in the music industry in 1979 with the release of his first solo album, the 12-time Grammy winner has re-proven his ingenuity time and again. He continues to surprise audiences with complex compositions and innovative approaches to the banjo, and Rocket Science, his new release with the Flecktones, is no exception. The new album features the […]

Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 at Westlake Park in Seattle. Protesters gathered in the intersection of 5th Avenue and Pine Street after marching from their camp at Seattle Central Community College in support of Occupy Wall Street. Many refused to move from the intersection after being ordered by police. Police then began spraying pepper spray into the gathered crowd hitting dozens of people. Photo: Seattlepi.com, Joshua Trujillo / AP MORE

THE DAILY: The lawyer for accused child molester Jerry Sandusky apparently likes his women young. Defense attorney Joe Amendola, 63, representing Sandusky in the sexual molestation case roiling Penn State and Joe Paterno’s legendary football program, impregnated a teenager and later married her, The Daily has learned. According to documents filed with Centre County Courthouse, Amendola served as the attorney for Mary Iavasile’s emancipation petition on Sept. 3, 1996, just weeks before her 17th birthday. The emancipation request said Mary graduated from high school in two years with a 3.69 grade point average and maintained a full-time job — but […]

Longtime New Yorker staff writer and Philly Homeboy Adam Gopnik will be at the Free Library on Thursday to promote his new book The Table Comes First: Family, France & The Meaning Of Food. We’ll just wrapped a lengthy Q&A with Gopnik wherein we discussed writing, food, crime and punishment, the necessity of factory farming, the slow dissolve of print into the digital ether, the uncertain future of the New Yorker, the secret world of children’s literature, the enduring power of Tolkien, seeing Hendrix and the Incredible String Band at the Electric Factory, avant garde theater on South Street in […]

FRESH AIR ED WARD: We know now that, starting with Western swing in the 1920s, country-music reflections of popular black music has a long history, so claiming that Elvis Presley was the first successful fusion of the two is just silly. The hillbilly boogie fad, however, has been largely overlooked in that history, although there were hundreds of records made in that style. It started with a guy named Arthur Smith in 1945. “Guitar Boogie” is by Arthur Smith’s Hot Quintet, which recorded it as a goof when there was some time remaining in a recording session. A straight-ahead boogie-woogie […]