BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up valuable nanoseconds that can now be better spent roughing up the suspect over at Suicide Girls or what have you. Every week we pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey caramel center each edition. Why? Because we like you.
OUT FRONT
PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: Kate Kilpatrick and Kaitlin Menza write about Ocean City and its surf-boy, anti-Shoobie culture. Homegirls, I hope you milked that assignment for at least two weeks’ worth of hanging out with wetsuit-clad man-boys. They also rep it hard for the other Jersey Shore (up Monmouth-Ocean way), including Long Beach Island, where I aged about 15 years one winter. Extra-extra props for name-checking Pete n’ Eldas, too, though I now have a craving for pizza that’s only wafer-thin. But what, no mention of Farias? Or — dare I say it — Ron Jon?
CITY PAPER: The first few grafs hint at a thumb-sucker to come (“Lately, Americans have been growing more and more dissatisfied with the state of our health care system.”), but Tom Namako and Doron Taussig break down Gov. Rendell’s proposed subsidized health care plan, aka (Does-Not) Cover All Pennsylvanians, or CAP, into digestible chunks of understandability and what-this-means-to-me. Nice work, boys. Includes shoutout to Gus! And in case you take your weeklies to the beach with you for between-swells reading, fear not — it’s offered up in that most user-friendly format of all, the FAQ-and-A. As for the cover art, surfer boys are a dime a dozen, but illustration that cool comes only once in a
season.
INSIDE THE BOOK
PW: Bruce Warren hips us to the latest on the Copyright Royalty Board’s change in the rate structure for royalties, a move which could effectively silence many Internet radio streams. Battles is at the Church Thursday night (R5 has tickets ). Note to self: Make an appointment at the Beehive, do not point at the owner and say “I’ll have what she’s having!”
CP: Also, there’s a small farm in the city where the hot babes who run the place want to use human shit as an energy source. Sounds peachy. Wait, what? All is not well in the verdant garden that is NoLibs, where these days, gentrification grows like kudzu. Look, something about the Phils’ 10,000th loss!
WINNER: CP, by a HMO