Chemtrails – Beck
JUNK SCI: The Groove Is In The Heart
BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR You go to the doctor. First thing, a nurse takes your blood pressure, then makes a face and leaves the room. Most of the time they never tell you the numbers. Infuriating! You should always ask what your numbers are. It’s a pet peeve of mine that you even have to do this — the nurse or doctor should automatically tell you, but mostly they don’t. I’ve found that a lot of people don’t really understand what their blood pressure readings mean or how having high blood pressure might impact your health. So, here’s a […]
MAILBAG: Why Whitey Can’t Hope
Jonathan, This is a belated thanks for your awesome editorial after last week’s West Virginia primary. I forwarded it to many friends around the country, and they all loved it. I’ve sent you a few notes over the years, mostly after reading great stories/interview/reviews you did for Philadelphia Weekly. You are definitely the best writer in Philly. I’ve been reading Phawker since its inception, and I check it out every day. I’m a huge music fan, but the job I had in the early 90’s required heavy travel. So I regret that I never got to see the Psyclone Rangers […]
TODAY I SAW: Jeff Deeney In The Metro
RELATED: The Valley of The Shadow RELATED: Today I Saw
BRIDGES OVER TROUBLED WATER: Rendell Lists 1,100 PA Bridges That Are Not Safe At Any Speed
INQUIRER: Gov. Rendell is expected today to call for repairs on hundreds of aging bridges statewide – including many in the Philadelphia area. Rendell will also list more than 1,100 bridges that are structurally deficient at an 11 a.m. press conference in Harrisburg. The bridge repair program would require legislative approval. Last year, the legislature approved a transportation funding bill to provide about $530 million for Pennsylvania bridges and roads. The state Department of Transportation last year found 6,000 structurally deficient bridges statewide. Of those, 60 heavily traveled bridges were in the Philadelphia region and rated as bad as, or […]
CANNES: The Revolution Is Not Ready To Be Televisied
FIRST SHOWING: Ocean’s Thirteen director Steven Soderbergh’s latest project is a set of two films shot back-to-back about Che Guevara titled individually The Argentine and Guerrilla. Both are premiering at the Cannes Film Festival this month under the name Che as a 268 minute presentation. The Argentine: On November 26, 1956, Fidel Castro sails to Cuba with eighty rebels. One of those rebels is Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine doctor who shares a common goal with Fidel Castro — to overthrow the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Che proves indispensable as a fighter, and quickly grasps the art of guerrilla […]
HEAR YE: Clinic Memories
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Well, TURN IT UP! BY ED KING ROCK SNOB An appealing sense of revenge and antisocial impulses run through the music of Clinic, the surgical masked quartet from Liverpool that’s been making pretty much the same passively sinister album since their first long-player in 1999. On Do It! the band does it again, and why not? Every psychological horror movie is worth a sequel or four. Do fans of The Omen series bother complaining that the third installment was not as good as the first one? I think not. Such films work within a narrow […]
MEOW MIX: Hugs, Uggs, Juggs & Greed
Droll, ironic question: Does this picture of Jennifer Aniston in Philly (we assume for the Middlebrow & M shoot) count as distasteful paparazzi dreck? No, for many reasons, but nobody’s about to waste your time waxing all smug-like on the deep, reasoned and ultimately, understandable only to myself thought process I used to decide…DEVELOPING… I will, however, acknowledge being unsurprised at the speed with which Aniston embraced the city’s native dress code of pajama bottoms and out-of-style footwear. (Dude. Those things look new. ) All she needs is a Kathy Van Zeeland handbag and no car insurance and bam! she’s […]
ELEVATOR LADY: A Ghost Is Born?
Elevator Ghost Footage That Freaks Out 1.3 Billion Asians This footage was recorded on February 21st 2008 at the Raffles City in Shanghai. RELATED: Ghost Busted
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR In 1964, Democrat Lyndon Johnson won the presidency in a landslide victory; eight years later, Republican president Richard Nixon was reelected in an equally lopsided race. In his new book, Nixonland, historian Rick Perlstein looks at the chaotic years between those elections, a time marked by protests, social upheaval, assassinations and an unpopular war. Perlstein is a senior fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, where he writes the blog The Big Con. He has written for The New Republic Online, Slate, the Village Voice, Newsday and The Nation. Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents, a Nixoniana collection compiled […]
CONTEST: Question The Parking Authority
While the majority of the money the Philadelphia Parking Authority collects from parking tickets and fines goes directly to Harrisburg’s coffers, a set percentage is earmarked for the cash-strapped Philadelphia School District. However, according to reports in the Daily News and Inquirer, the PPA has not paid the school district a dime since 2004, and is in fact in arrears to the tune of $20 million to $45 million depending on who you ask. There is a word for organisms like the PPA that are all take and no give: Parasite. Dictionary.com defines ‘parasite’ as the following: par·a·site /?pær??sa?t/ Pronunciation […]
SPORTO: Eagles Unveil Secret Weapon
Sources tell Phawker that the Eagles plan to literally shoot DeSean Jackson out of a cannon and into the end zone [see above]. The source went on to point out that the Eagles’ legal department insists there is a loophole in the NFL rulebook in as much as it does not explicitly forbid the shooting of man out of a cannon. “This will be tied up in the courts for years, and by that time we’ll be getting sized-up for Superbowl rings,” said the source. [Photo by BEN LIEBENBERG/NFL.com via PHILLY.COM]