EXODUS: We Are The Fastest-Losing City In America

INQUIRER: Continuing a long-running downward trend, Philadelphia lost more residents between 2000 and 2007 than any U.S. city except hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, newly released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show. Population in the city decreased from 1,517,550 to 1,449,634 in the seven years, a loss of nearly 68,000 people, according to Greg Harper, a demographer for the bureau. That drop of 4.5 percent represents the largest percentage loss in population of a top-25 U.S. city between 2000 and 2007, figures show. Viewed more broadly, the population of the Philadelphia region as a whole has grown even as the number […]

215 , NewsPosted on:

WACKO JACKO: We Are Family

DAILY MAIL: Pictured on a visit to a toy and book shop near his current home in Las Vegas, the singer was slumped in a wheelchair wearing pyjamas, a dreadlocked wig, a surgeon’s mask, a baseball cap and sunglasses. Such theatre was presumably designed to prevent shoppers from discovering his true identity. The irony is of course that Jackson is now better known for wearing such ludicrous disguises than not. Indeed he would have stood a much better chance of not being noticed had he strode into the shop without any disguise — and had not pulled up in four […]

Gossip , Music , NewsPosted on:

SECOND LIFE: Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was originally written back in the fall of 2007 for the Image section of the Sunday Inquirer. For reasons that remain unclear, the piece never ran. Today on Philly.Com, they posted what is basically the same story with different people — eight months later! On top of that, they cluelessly characterize Second Life as a video game, which is sorta like calling the Internet ‘a series of pipes.’ Sorry, just venting my frustration with the institutional arrogance of slow-brained bureaucracies. The accompanying video piece, however, is an excellent example of how newspapers can use the web’s […]

215 , Culture , Media , NewsPosted on:

HOT DOC: NY Mag Has The New Tarantino Script

NEW YORK MAGAZINE: The script is 165 pages long and follows a squad of American soldiers called the Bastards — a guerrillalike force who travel behind German lines in 1944, striking terror into the hearts of Nazi soldiers. The Bastards are headed by Lieutenant Aldo Raine — the role we’d imagine Tarantino is hoping to land Brad Pitt for — described by the script as a “hillbilly from the mountains of Tennessee,” who has around his neck a scar from where he survived a lynching. (“The scar will never once be mentioned,” Tarantino writes.) In a parallel story, Inglorious Bastards […]

Cinema , NewsPosted on:

ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS: Killing The Blues

Officially OUR FAVORITE SONG OF 2007. Written by Rowland Salley, this version from Raising Sand just fucking slays us every time. And speaking as former teenage Zepheads, it does our heart good to hear Robert Plant doing something we can both be proud of at our advanced age. Seriously, this is as timelessly classic as anything Led Zepellin ever did. And Alison Krauss is a force of nature. Mark Ribot’s guitar sounds like underwater moonlight piercing the spectral murk of T-Bone Burnett’s elegantly antiqued production. Like butter, it is. Because there was no official video for this song, we went […]

Music , NewsPosted on:

CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS: The Devil And Karl Rove

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he tried to influence the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama. Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of the House subcommittee that called Rove, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove’s claim of immunity was invalid – perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt for refusing to cooperate. Lawmakers subpoenaed Rove in May in an effort to force him to talk about whether he was involved in prosecutors’ […]

News , PoliticsPosted on:

TELECOM IMMUNITY: The Cover-Up Is Complete

NEW YORK TIMES: WASHINGTON — More than two and a half years after the disclosure of President’s Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program set off a furious national debate, the Senate gave final approval on Wednesday afternoon to broadening the government’s spy powers and providing legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program. The plan, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, marked one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. And it represented a stinging defeat for opponents on the left who had […]

News , PoliticsPosted on:

WORTH REPEATING: Songs Of The Summer Wind

BY DAN DELUCA OF THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Everybody’s got a personal playlist of summer songs. It might have Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind,” or Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime.” The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” or maybe Regina Spektor’s song of the same name. Seals and Croft’s “Summer Breeze” might make you feel fine, though I’m betting the Isley Brothers’ version would make you feel finer. The 21 picks assembled here — on a playlist that can be burned onto one CD — are contenders for the songs of summer ’08, tunes that may worm […]

Music , NewsPosted on:

PARKING WARS: A Beatdown In Upper Darby

DAILY NEWS: For a $15 ticket, police said, a young Yeadon couple “pummeled” Upper Darby meter maid Kalliopi Maroulis — punching her head and causing her to break her wrist — before speeding away with her ticket book. Maroulis, 46, said she took the meter-maid job in December because she loves to walk. Maroulis said she approached an illegally parked Dodge Charger behind the Wachovia Bank on Ludlow Street about noon Saturday and asked the occupant, identified by police as Ashley Dacons, 20, [pictured, left, via her MySpace page] to move her car. When Dacons refused, Maroulis said she began […]

215 , Media , NewsPosted on: