Black Pus Stokes The Crowd For The Boredoms, Starlight Ballroom, Last Night 1. As with altitude sickness, you might expect to slowly acclimate to the stomach-flipping level of insanity in the room with the passage of time — let’s say, as the opening bands perform. This is would be foolish, as they are called Black Pus and if that’s not icky enough, they are all about the 10-foot-high walls of amplifiers, mind-bending drum gymnastics, and gimp masks a la Pulp Fiction. About this point it will hit you like a ton of bricks: I have ALWAYS been insane. This […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR w/ TERRY GROSS Perplexed by the U.S. economy? You’re not alone. Law professor Michael Greenberger joins Fresh Air to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, credit defaults, the shaky future of other types of loans and what we can expect from the U.S. financial markets. Greenberger is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and the director of the University’s Center for Health and Homeland Security. ALSO, analysts wondered if Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia last month was the beginning of a “national conversation” on the subject. Meanwhile, Fresh Air‘s contributing linguist Geoff Nunberg […]
PAPERBOY: ‘The Bitch Is Back’ Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and […]
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: For Decades…
“Today’s job news showed that Pennsylvania had the largest increase in initial jobless claims of any state in the country two weeks ago. While John McCain and Hillary Clinton continually claim their Washington experience as the primary reason they should be President, these numbers show that the ways of Washington are not working for the residents of Pennsylvania. As Sen. Obama demonstrated in town after town across Pennsylvania earlier this week, he has an agenda that includes immediate relief for homeowners, a second stimulus package that expands unemployment insurance and helps state and local governments, and investments in millions of […]
Former NJ Stripper Convicted Of Murder For Hire
INQUIRER: A former stripper turned soccer mom, convicted of plotting with a South Jersey man to kill her fiance, was sentenced yesterday to 99 years in prison. Mechele Linehan, 35, was convicted of murder last year for orchestrating the murder of an Alaskan fisherman she had promised to marry. In January, John Carlin 3d, a love-lorn steelworker from Salem County, was sentenced to 99 years for shooting Kent Lippink outside Hope, a tiny mining community an hour from Anchorage. Linehan ordered Carlin to kill the fisherman, prosecutors said. The exotic dancer believed she would be the beneficiary of a $1 […]
JUST DO IT: The Dissident Olympics
Beijing 2008 Olympics Live Video Coverage Uploaded by Podrovnik [Hat tip to KEIKO KETSUGO] CHINA ASKS U.S. TO PUBLICLY SUPPORT THE MILITARY CRACKDOWN IN TIBET BLOOMBERG NEWS: The U.S. should understand the real motives of protesters in Tibet and support China’s moves to control unrest, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said. Yang made the comment after meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in Beijing, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported late yesterday. China blames separatists backed by the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, for last month’s unrest in Tibet and neighboring provinces, the most serious protests in 20 […]
SOLD AMERICAN: Live Nation Buys Jay-Z 4 $150 Mil
NEW YORK TIMES: In a move that reflects the anarchy sweeping the music business, the superstar rapper Jay-Z, who released his latest album to lukewarm sales five months ago, is on the verge of closing a deal with a concert promoter that rivals the biggest music contracts ever awarded. Jay-Z plans to depart his longtime record label, Def Jam, for a roughly $150 million package with the concert giant Live Nation that includes financing for his own entertainment venture, in addition to recordings and tours for the next decade. The pact, expected to be finalized this week, is the most […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Cocaine For Your Eyes
Cops Seize $28 Million Worth Of Blow; Still Can’t Buy Jay-Z PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia police said they found 600 pounds of cocaine and are calling it the largest drug bust in the city’s history. Officers found it at a home along the 2600 block of Federal Street in South Philadelphia Wednesday morning. If it were sold on the street it would be worth about $28 million. “Getting this amount of drugs off of the streets whether it’s the poundage or the kilo count or the street value all of this active is what leads unfortunately to the daily death and […]
BREAKING: Cops Have Subway Killers In Custody
PHILADELPHIA – April 2, 2008 (WPVI) — Police say there has been a possible break in a deadly SEPTA attack. Authorities have four young men in the homicide unit on the verge of being charged in the fatal attack that claimed the life of a Center City coffee shop manager. Right after the attack police arrested a 16-year-old boy, and were looking for four other suspects. Now, police believe as many as six people were involved in the subway attack. It was a week ago today that 36-year-old Sean Conroy [NOT pictured] was attacked at the subway platform at 13th […]
All Names Have Been Changed To Protect The Innocent
BY JEFF DEENEY Author Richard Price, in town to read from and discuss his new book, Lush Life, drew a full house at the Free Library last night. The evening kicked off with a laudatory intro from former City Paper editor-slash-Hollywood heavyweight Duane Swierczynski. Duane’s lead was shaped around the idea of “stealing life” — his description of the kind of fiction that reads so real you’d swear it was — that Price is known for. It’s unfortunate, Duane said, that a lot of young writers don’t understand that it’s OK, even beneficial, to just make shit up, so long […]
LIVE AND DIRECT: The Audacity Of Teamsters
Sen. Barack Obama, on his way to address a union audience in Philadelphia this morning. [photo by MASTERCHEF28] BY NICK POWELL CAMPAIGN CORRESPONDENT Obama addressed the AFL-CIO at a Center City Sheraton this morning, and judging by the roaring cheers and Holy Ghost shrieks, one would have thought that Barack Obama had already saved our sagging economy, brought the boys home from Iraq and ended racism as we know it. Speaking to a major pow-wow of union workers, the effervescent U.S. Senator fired up his base, dissed his own bowling skills, discussed the Rocky comparisons, and drew a line in […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In 2005, The New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency had initiated wiretaps and other forms of surveillance without court orders. It was a story the Bush administration hoped to keep under wraps, says Eric Lichtblau, one of the two reporters who pushed for the publication of the story. Lichtblau’s new book, Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice, details how the administration used the “war on terror” to push for controversial surveillance programs. Lichtblau is a Washington correspondent for The New York Times. In 2006, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of domestic […]