TODAY I SAW…

  BY JEFF DEENEY “Today I saw…” is a series of nonfiction shorts based on my experiences as a caseworker serving formerly homeless families now living in North and West Philadelphia. I decided not long after starting the job that I was seeing so many fascinating and disturbing things in the city’s poorest neighborhoods that I needed to start cataloging them. I hope this bi-weekly column serves as a record of a side of the city that many Philadelphians don’t come in contact with on a daily basis. I want to capture moments not frequently covered by the local media, […]

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FILM FEST PREVIEW: Calling All Cinephiles!

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC For the next two weeks, Philadelphia film-goers can pretend we live in Manhattan, as our viewing choices multiply exponentially as the Philadelphia Film Festival unreels its 16th season. Since no one really gets to see all of the festival’s nearly 300 films, the best a film fan can do is throw arms around this elephant (said to now be the largest festival on the East Coast) and decide how the festival feels. But don’t grope the sensitive areas, an elephant is big and can hurt you — and they never forget. I’ve seen about 30 […]

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DEVO, Even Better Than The Real Thing

BY ED KING, ROCKIST The great thing about Devo was that you didn’t have to listen to their music to love them. Their appearance on Saturday Night Live, where they performed “Satisfaction” and “Jocko Homo” [see below] — complete with robotic choreography, the Booji Boy routine, the yellow HazMat jumpsuits, and a fuzz box mounted directly on one of the guitar players’ guitar — was the atom bomb of the rock ‘n roll age as we knew it. With that appearance, the release of their debut album, and their spectacular, absurd videos, they were the first shots fired in the […]

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THIS JUST IN: Old City No Longer In Flames

UPDATE: Ordinarily, we don’t cover fires — better to let the shiny drones of the MSM earn their health insurance and bleached teeth doing wet-sock stand-ups in front of the charred, smoking husk somebody used to call home. Frankly, they are better at it, and besides that’s an all-day job all by itself. However, we have since decided that we WILL cover any fires that occur in our house or on our block. So we went down to ground zero and got the straight dope from Joe Picozzi, the Philadelphia Fire Department’s acting public information officer: A two-alarm fire broke […]

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COMING ATTRACTION: Film Festival Picks And Pans

Would you accept a ride from this guy? Probably not. Don’t be afraid. This is Dan Buskirk, our film critic. He’s harmless. This picture was taken a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away called San Francisco. Fact is, Dan doesn’t really look like this anymore and truth be told he gave us this photo with strict instructions that it only be used for his obituary — but frankly, we got tired of waiting for him to die. Anyway, Dan has barricaded himself in a secure undisclosed location where he is combing his beautiful hair and watching upwards […]

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PRESIDENCY: Obama Kicking Ass, Taking Names

April 4, 2007 — In a conference call with financial supporters this morning, the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., announced that it had raised an eye-popping $25 million, with almost all of it — $23.5 million — raised for use during the Democratic primaries and caucuses. The announcement puts him within striking distance of the total raised by his more experienced rival, frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who reported raising $26 million in this first quarter. More significantly it likely puts him at an advantage over Clinton when it comes to money raised for use in the primaries. Clinton’s […]

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All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping

EXCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY: Albert Hammond Jr., TLA, Last Night [FLICKR] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Perhaps the meanest thing you could say about Yours To Keep, the solo debut by Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr., is that it’s all craft and no personality. This is often the case when a background member of a popular band steps into the foreground with a solo project, armed with long-dormant songs but minus the compelling narrative a band like the Strokes has worked so hard and long to establish. And because we know so much — too much, […]

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