FROM All Things Considered September 5, 2006: John Hodgman is a very funny man. The writer and humorist is a sometime contributor to the public radio show This American Life and cable television’s The Daily Show. Currently, he is getting even more TV exposure in an ad campaign for Apple computers, in which he plays a tweedy, lumpy and awkward PC opposite a relaxed, cool, slim young man, who is a Mac. Hodgman is also author of The Areas of My Expertise — an almanac of random, fascinating and utterly unreliable information — which is coming out in paperback. A […]
Turns Out William Penn Was A Godamn Hippie! Please God, Don’t Tell Rizzo, It’ll Kill Him AGAIN!
[Photo Courtesy of PhillyHistory.org] The City of Philadelphia’s photo archive contains over 2 million images that date back as far as the late 1800s, i.e. the last time a Republican won in this town. In all seriousness, this is an INCREDIBLE visual record of the city’s evolution and a relatively new web site, PhillyHistory.org, is making it available for online consumption and purchase. To date, some 18,000 images have been digitally scanned, at a rate of roughly 8,000 images a month. So, if you’ve been wondering why the line at Kinko’s is so godamnned SLOW, well, now you know. Phawker […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
ON FRESH AIR: Lead singer and songwriter, Ray Davies started The Kinks in 1964 with his brother, Dave. His latest album is the solo effort, Other People’s Lives. Said to be the pioneers of the rowdy garage band genre of rock music, The Kinks had many hits including “You Really Got Me,” “Lola,” “All Day and All of the Night” and “Tired of Waiting for You.” This interview originally aired on Apr. 3, 2006. It’s been thirty years since the Heartbreakers debuted with their album Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Petty’s most recent album, and his first solo album in […]
THE WHO: ‘You Are All Forgiven’
For the last 20 25 years everything after Live At Leeds.
GUNCRAZY: Slayer Bells Ringing Out In Point Breeze OR The Mysterious X-mas Death of #402
Reginald Branham became a computer whiz while at Overbrook High School in the 1980s, earning a four-year scholarship to Drexel University and becoming a computer executive. In recent years, however, he had turned his attention to fixing up bars. On Christmas night, Branham, 37, was shot dead at his latest bar, Cognac Corner in the 1400 block of South 21st Street in Point Breeze, making him the city’s 402d homicide victim of the year. Police were not talking about a motive yesterday, but on the street outside the bar, those who said they knew Branham spoke of a possible hit […]
SMELLS LIKE JOURNALISM: Daily News Puts Boots On The Ground In Drug Trade, Gets To Know Name Behind Faceless Statistic And The Awful Truth Therein
DRESSED IN A black Dickies suit and black Timberlands, the chubby-faced 17-year-old crack dealer paced around the desolate lot working another graveyard shift. In the darkness, a steady stream of addicts ambled toward him to make a buy. Then he saw a familiar face: his close friend’s mom. “I need a nick,” she mumbled to him. Without hesitation, he sold her a nickel bag — $5 worth of crack. “I was surprised that she was a smoker,” Mikey recalled, months after that night. Today he calls it “the deal I will never forget.” “I was thinking that a real friend […]
Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Shades OR THE GREATEST PHILLY NEW WAVE SINGLE YOU NEVER HEARD OF AND COULDN’T FIND IF YOU TRIED!
THE SHADES “Hello Mr. Johnson” (NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO) Excerpted From THE BOB JR. Part Six BY DAVID SNYDER I’ve swore I’d get to this single before I put this miserable pamphlet in its grave. To set the context we’re going to revisit the bits and pieces of my life that on occasion have previously bubbled up here in the bastard offspring and, before that, in the old rag. I was born in Philly. But between fifth and sixth grade the family shipped out to New Jersey, some suburbs — from Northeast Philly, which was then a kind of […]
AND THEN THERE WAS ONE: Death Of PREZ FORD Leaves ARLEN SPECTER The Last Man Standing
AP: “He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared “our long national nightmare is over.” But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on. The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the […]