A male runner collapsed and died yesterday after crossing the finish line in the Broad Street Run, a city official said. “The young man finished the race,” said Recreation Commissioner Victor N. Richard. “He collapsed right at the finish line. As soon as he crossed over.” DAILY NEWS: Meanwhile, Smokers All Over Town Continue To Live. Weird. UPDATE: The runner who died at yesterday’s Broad Street run was identified as a 29-year-old man from Holland, Pa. A post-mortem is scheduled to determine the cause of death of Robert Massaroni, who collapsed after crossing the finish line and was pronounced dead […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
GROUND CONROL TO MAJOR TOM: Arcade Fire, Tower Theater, Last Night EVA SAYS: The Arcade Fire is currently Canada’s most exciting export, which in another time would have been damning them with faint praise. These days it’s praise of the highest order, especially if you are an indie-rock band. After only two albums, the seven-member collective has positioned itself as a trans-national sensation with their solemn lyrics, bombastic instrumentation and passionate melodies. And still, nobody seems more surprised than the band members themselves. This is true especially of the band-leading songwriting couple Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, who still appear […]
GOSSIP: Crack + Tits + Ashanti = Sad
Maia Campbell [one-time co-star of LL Cool J in the TV series “In The House”] recently had Internet chatrooms buzzing over a video in which she appears to be naked and singing an Ashanti song, in a video clip posted on mediatakeout.com. The site alleges the clip was made in exchange for crack cocaine. Sources say Campbell has been floating around Germantown of late and doesn’t seem to be in a good way. [via Dan Gross]
Nutter Breathing The Thin Air Of Inevitability?
“Can I shake the hand of the next mayor?” asked Brown, a factory worker from Frankford. Michael Nutter obliged. Every step the former city councilman took in the Gallery mall Thursday afternoon brought more confirmation of his new status as the man with momentum in the Philadelphia mayor’s race. In recent days, Nutter reeled off a string of news-media endorsements, his TV ads gained traction, and the latest polls suggested that as the campaign enters its final stretch, voters have started to winnow down the five-man Democratic field in the May 15 primary to a contest between Nutter and Knox. […]
Gilmore Girl Namedrops First Unitarian, Millions To Regard Church As Ground Zero Of Indie Rock
DAN GROSS REPORTS: R5 Productions’ Sean Agnew was at First Unitarian Church Tuesday, when Andrew W.K. was doing a spoken-word event, when the text messages began pouring into his cell phone. The church, where he books indie rock, punk and hip-hop shows, had just been name-dropped on “Gilmore Girls.” Agnew said he thought it was all a big mistake until he downloaded the episode yesterday and saw for himself. Agnew was surprised, and points out that Tokyo Police Club [pictured], a real band with whom a “Gilmore Girls” character was to tour, actually played the First Unitarian several weeks ago. […]
BE HERE NOW…
PBJ, IT’S WHAT’S FOR LUNCH: Peter, Bjorn & John, Fillmore, Thursday Night BY AMY Z. QUINN Peter Bjorn and John’s MySpace profile cheerfully announces that in their band, “everybody writes, everybody sings, everybody plays, everybody’s happy.” Good enough for me, and for the rest of the crowd at the sold-out Fillmore/TLA Thursday night. Long story short, this was the first visit to our fair city for the Stockholm, Sweden-based trio, and you can bet your old ABBA records they’ll be back before too long. As for “Young Folks,” it occurs to me that the song suffers that the hands of […]
Chester The Molestin’ Lawyer In Deep Doo Doo
Yesterday, Larry Charles, 49, of East Oak Lane, faced five separate preliminary hearings on sexual-assault or indecent-assault-related charges. In February, he was held for trial on rape, sexual assault and other charges in the case of a 14-year-old girl with whom he was caught naked in the lawyers’ lounge at the Criminal Justice Center at 13th and Filbert streets on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Two of the five girls who testified yesterday are sisters of the 14-year-old. A third is a cousin. The two other girls are sisters whose mother had dated Charles. The mother had two younger […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
HOW SOON IS WOW? Johnny Marr w/ Modest Mouse, Electric Factory, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER: I’ve never really been able to quite put my finger on what it is exactly that bothers me about Modest Mouse: Was it that they always sounded to my ears like The Sons Of The Pixies? Or, was it that they came up around the time I stopped believing in rock bands — which was, not coincidentally, when the Pixies’ broke up (not to worry, this was a temporary thing, for me and the Pixies). Either way, in the interim, Modest […]
BRIAN WILSON: Prayer
It took the light from “The Sombrero” Galaxy featured in this short film 28 million years to travel across space and time to be captured by The Hubble Telescope.
EARLY WORD: With The Lights Out It’s Less Dangerous
[Click image to activate Internet]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In 1961, an integrated group of self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” challenged segregation by riding together on segregated buses through the Deep South. They demanded unrestricted access to the buses — as well as to terminal restaurants and waiting rooms — but pledged nonviolence. Despite being backed by recent federal rulings declaring it unconstitutional to segregate bus riders, the Freedom Riders met with obstinate resistance, even by hatred and violence — as in Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala, where white supremacists attacked bus depots themselves. Local police often refused to intervene, but still the Freedom Riders kept to their pledge of […]