BY DAVE DAVIES OF THE DAILY NEWS Two women who were killed in a four-vehicle crash that forced the shutdown of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge late Thanksgiving night were identified yesterday as elderly sisters who lived on opposite sides of the bridge. Seven others were hurt in the accident, which occurred in the eastbound lanes at about 10:40 p.m. according to Danelle Hunter, spokeswoman for the Delaware River Port Authority which operates the bridge. Traffic was closed in the eastbound lanes until 1:45 a.m. and in the westbound lanes for close to an hour, Hunter said. Neighbors identified the two […]
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN: Reads “The Raven”
By Edgar Allan Poe.
HEAR YE: Tegan & Sara The Con
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO 5 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT TEGAN & SARA AT THE C.B.A.C. 1. The Commerce Bank Arts Center is actually a really rich-looking high school with a fancy auditorium in Sewell, New Jersey — run entirely by soccer moms who have trouble calculating seat numbers with their rows. 2. Tegan and Sara do not really have the same hair cut and even though they are lesbians identical twins, they don’t really look that lesbian alike, or for that matter, like they are trying to look lesbian alike. And while we’re still on hair, if you […]
CINEMA: The Mystery Tramp
I’M NOT THERE (2007, directed by Todd Haynes, 135 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I’m Not There feel like a masters’ thesis on the themes that director Todd Haynes has been exploring for the last 20 years: the symbiotic relationship of image and identity, celebrity and anonymity; the porous borderlands of gender and sexuality and extending the outer limits of cinema’s artistic reach. With 1987’s Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story Haynes treated the bland exteriors of The Carpenters’ muzak-y cheese as a blank canvas and with 1998’s Velvet Goldmine he re-cast London in the Glam Rock 70s as […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR The Graduate turns 40. Terry interviews Dustin Hoffman, director Mike Nichols, Buck Henry, and Anne Bancroft. Like so many other students, Benjamin Braddock can often be found in the library. He’s been there since 1963, in the Fiction section, filed under ‘W.’ That year, Charles Webb published the novel that Hollywood producer Lawrence Turman would read about in The New York Times. Turman found a copy of The Graduate, and thought highly enough of the story that he made a movie he considered to be 90-percent faithful to the book. But Turman and director Mike Nichols made one […]
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Secrecy Is Un-American
A highwater mark for presidential oratory, reasserting the cruciality of openness, transparency, and accountability, not to mention freedom of the press, to a healthy democracy. Striking, really, how contrary these seemingly bedrock American virtues have become to the powers that be.
THE TROUBLE WITH SANTORUM: Not So Much A Column But A Pat On The Back — His Own Back
You know, when you’re a politician, you can throw around this kind of self-serving hyperbole and nobody will call you on it because, frankly, everyone expects you to lie. But when you start writing a column for the newspaper, you can’t just pull shit out of your ass and state it as fact. From paragraph two of Rick Santorum’s Elephant In The Room column in the Inquirer: Along with churches and families, government has played a role in, at first, nurturing – and, more recently, weakening – this social compact. One of my greatest frustrations as a Republican leader was […]
GUNCRAZY: Two Teens Confess To 14 Armed Bar Robberies And Two Gunpoint Carjackings
BY DAVE GAMBACORTA OF THE DAILY NEWS At an age when most boys are focused on prom dates and driver’s licenses, police say two West Philly teens have been busy masterminding a staggering citywide crime wave. The boys — ages 15 and 16 — were arrested on Monday after they confessed to committing 14 bar robberies and two carjackings at gunpoint during the past month, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives. The teens, whose names were not released, were each charged with multiple counts of robbery and related offenses. “They pretended to be patrons but ended up demanding money […]
WORTH REPEATING: A Beautiful Mind
THIS I BELIEVE BY ALBERT EINSTEIN The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious — the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with the awareness of — and glimpse into — the marvelous construction of the existing world together with the steadfast determination to comprehend a […]
MEDIA: Mayor Nutter Butter Meets The Gray Lady
Michael Nutter, who takes office in January, offered plans to declare crime emergencies in Philadelphia’s most violent areas. BY IAN URBINA OF THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: November 23, 2007 PHILADELPHIA — The day after Michael Nutter won a landslide victory to become this city’s next mayor, he put on a charcoal gray suit and drove to his first public event: the funeral of a police officer shot in a brazen daytime robbery. Two nights before he announced his choice for police commissioner, two more officers were shot and wounded. When Mr. Nutter takes office on Jan. 7, he will […]