FUCKIN’ A RIGHT: Andrew WK, First Unitarian, Last Night EVA SAYS: For those of you who know Andrew W.K. as the blood drenched, body thrashing, party maniac responsible for hits such as I Get Wet, We Want Fun and Party Hard –– get ready for a whole new Andrew: Andrew the compassionate humanitarian and spiritual guru. He feels your pain, and he will try to tell you what it all means, too. As if to demonstrate his more refined side, this Andrew opened up his Q&A session with a beautiful classical piano piece first. Then he broke out the idiosyncratic […]
GIMME FICTION: The Manton Chronicles
BY MIKE NEWALL At that time Ronnie Stimola was my next-door neighbor. Ronnie was 33 and lived with his girlfriend Dina in the second-floor apartment of a rowhouse owned by his mother. Ronnie hung around with Gooch Amari. Ronnie and Gooch had been robbing neighborhood grocers on and off since high school. First, the old-school nigger grocers along 7th Street, then the gook take-out stores along Washington Avenue, and then the Mexican grocers that began popping up around 9th Street. It was a couple hundred dollars when they needed it. But then Gooch shot the Mexican in the eye, […]
THIS YOU MUST SEE
Wow.
EARLY WORD: Weimar Republicans
[Click image to activate Internet] More about the Weimar Republic HERE
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even If And Especially When The President Deceives The Nation Into War
FRESH AIR Former CIA chief George Tenet said the Bush administration used him as a scapegoat over intelligence issues with the war in Iraq, and debate among top officials was absent when decisions were made to invade the country. In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes to air Sunday night, Tenet discussed claims made in his forthcoming memoir At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, which focuses in part on his dealings with the Bush administration in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraq war. In the memoir, Tenet expresses frustration with Vice President Dick […]
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO: New Feist
BY DAN DELUCA INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC On a recent shopping Saturday, I found myself in a suburban Banana Republic, a Pine Street photo gallery, and a chichi Center City cafe. I bring this up not merely to establish my credentials as an effete poser, but because Feist was playing in all three places. That’s Leslie Feist, the Canadian indie-pop singer who goes by her last name when making her own music. (She’s also a sometime member of the Toronto collective Broken Social Scene, and used to perform along with electro-rapper Peaches under the name Bitch Lap Lap and sing with […]
LIVE & DIRECT: Michael Nutter For The Deaf
JONATHAN VALANIA REPORTS: Michael Nutter speaks in complete paragraphs, with subsections A., B., and C. and attendant footnotes, which also have their own subsections A., B., and C. He is overflowing with good ideas, not just slogans. Smart, principled, and aspirational. Spidey senses tingling. Is he the The One to lead us out of of the Matrix of our own bullshit? (Spidey senses also warning against crossing metaphors) True, he needs a joke writer or a court jester. (Although he did just describe himself as “just another unemployed guy from West Philly looking for a job.”) His only crime is […]
EATING CROW:Philebrity Retracts PW Sale Story While Blaming PW For Scuttling The PW Sale (Story)
OFFICAL OFFICIAL STATEMENT We here at Philebrity regret that we inadvertently published what has turned out to be false information regarding the sale of the Philadelphia Weekly to Village Voice Media. We initially published, based on what we believed to be a credible tip from a knowledgable source, that a deal was on the table between the two parties. What we could not have predicted and did not know at the time was how far up the corporate ladder the Weekly’s ineffectual, incompetent malaise stretched; we could have never known that at whatever key moment, the Weekly brass would have […]
EVERY DAY THIS WEEK: NPR For The Deaf, LIVE!
Every day this week, Marty Moss-Coane will be devoting an entire hour of Radio Times to one of the five candidates running for mayor, continuing Wednesday with MICHAEL NUTTER at 10 AM. Phawker will be on hand each day, watching her back, observing the men who would be mayor up close and, um, blogging phawking live from the studios of WHYY.
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR For many people, Clarence Thomas will be forever linked to Anita Hill, accusations of workplace harassment, inappropriate jokes, and one of the most bruising confirmation hearings in modern history. As a Supreme Court justice, Thomas is arguably the most powerful black man in public life. And yet, most black Americans have not embraced the conservative Thomas — or worse, despise the man who was tapped in 1991 to replace retiring civil-rights icon Thurgood Marshall on the nation’s highest court. That’s according to a new biography of Thomas, Supreme Discomfort. The book, written by Washington Post reporters Kevin Merida […]
GAMBLOR: The Sands To Auction-Off Glass Sinatra Kept His Dentures In, Plus Some Other Stuff
The gambling hall is having a giant liquidation sale on Thursday, and many items once touched by New Jersey’s own Frank Sinatra are up for sale. There will be hidden treasures aplenty, according to organizers, including everything from the Plaza Club, a swank 19th-floor hideout that became Sinatra’s private playground whenever he stayed at the Sands. Chandeliers (priced at $4,250), a marble-and-wood bar, and leather chairs are among the furnishings from the club that are expected to go quickly. All told, about $1.5 million worth of merchandise is being sold off, from one-dollar towels and linens to the giant red […]