[Click image to activate Internets] O3WORLD: See O3 Run is O3 World’s way of having fun, while raising money for a good cause. Our client, Back on My Feet is a non – profit organization that promotes self sufficiency for the homeless, through running, to build confidence, strength and self esteem. MORE
PIECE OF THE ROCK: Concert Venue Pie Chart
Pie chart illustrating the approximated market shares of the city’s live music venues based on current bookings. [via PHILLY CONCERT HUB]
Q&A: Being Rainn Wilson
VANITY FAIR: Rainn Wilson is a Hollywood conundrum. How could a regular cast member on one of the best sitcoms currently on television, NBC’s The Office, also have a role, even a small role, in one of the worst indignities to humanity and the written word, this summer’s cinematic trainwreck Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? It makes no sense, but that’s just how Rainn Wilson rolls. One minute you think you’ve got him pegged—he pops up on hipster TV shows like Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and Reno 911, and hipster movies like Juno and The Rocker—and then […]
CINEMA: Sweet And Sour
JULIE & JULIA (2009, directed by Nora Ephron, 123 minutes, U.S.) IN THE LOOP (2009, directed by Armando Iannucci, 106 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC When one thinks of the Nora Ephron “brand” one tends to think of those cutesy romantic comedies with the button-nosed young Meg Ryan: You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally. They each have chatty, New York flavored scripts, sweetly yearning heroines and a crippling dose of syrupy wish-fulfilling finales. Directing Meg Ryan to act cute is like chocolate syrup on chocolate ice cream, it’s too much of a good […]
SEPTA GIRL: Tales Of Ordinary Madness
[Photo by TOAST QUEEN] BY PHILLYGRRL It was a quiet week on SEPTA — for me anyway. Perhaps the hothouse weather pacified my fellow passengers, because everyone seemed to be on their best behavior. Even the otherwise-active subway kids opted for their headphones instead of mild flirtations with their peers. Hot in the city, indeed. Nobody moved as much as an inch when the homeless man on the C bus tried to start a fight with the driver. And he gave up as quickly as he’d begun. So it was that yesterday found me in a sad state of affairs […]
INFINITE JUSTICE: Leader Of Pakistani Taliban Reportedly Killed By U.S. Hellfire Missile Strike
[Photo by ANDRES] THE GUARDIAN: For a time, Baitullah Mehsud [picutured, below right] appeared to have cloaked himself in the historical garb of the Faqir of Ipi, a militant cleric whom British colonial troops spent much of the 1930s and ’40s chasing through the mountain passes of Waziristan. “They sought him here, they sought him there, those columns sought him everywhere,” went an old British couplet that equally applied to Mehsud as he shrugged off efforts by Pakistani and, more recently, US forces to kill him. In June a CIA-operated drone fired a barrage of missiles at a funeral for […]
RIP: Director John Hughes Dead At 59
BBC: The US film director John Hughes, who created some of the most famous comedies of the 1980s and 1990s, has died at the age of 59. The director died after a heart attack in New York, his spokeswoman said. Mr Hughes was the director of such successful films as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. He was also a leading script writer, penning films such as Pretty in Pink and Home Alone. The spokeswoman, Michelle Bega, told Associated Press that Mr Hughes had been in Manhattan on a family visit and died after […]
REEFER MADNESS: Juqua Parker Must’ve Been High
PHIL SHERIDAN: It was shocking to hear the news that Eagles defensive end Juqua Parker was charged with possession of marijuana early yesterday morning. Shocking to hear that a professional athlete might burn a little ganja in his free time? Hardly. What was shocking was the degree of stupidity exhibited by Parker and his wheelman, left guard Todd Herremans. To be rolling around an O Little Town like Bethlehem in the wee hours with the headlights off is to beg for police to notice you. And to be carrying a controlled substance – even one that is used by countless […]
Q&A With The Regulars Photographer Sarah Stolfa
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Pretty much everyone in this town knows about The Regulars, Sarah Stolfa’s stunning Bukowski-meets-Caravaggio portraiture of McGlinchey’s patrons, snapped from behind the bar where she earned the dubious distinction of Unfriendliest Bartender In Town. The series won her first place in the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s Photography Contest For College Students, a long-running exhibition at Gallery 339 and an asspocket full of local acclaim and national recognition, including a residency at the Whitney Museum Of American Art in New York. And now Artisan Books has published the series in richly-appointed book form with a snarky-but-snappy essay […]
TONITE: Kid Cudi
Kid Cudi – New Music – More Music Videos DAILY SWARM: If you boil it down, Kid Cudi’s nascent hit “Make Her Say” is about gettin’ good head, plain and simple. Yeah, it’s got an elegant sample of Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface,” and if you get swept up in her vox—or the nifty throwback beat—you’d almost think that the Kid was trying to make another “Hard Knock Life”—a tough pop hit that deftly deploys cuteness. (The classy video, meanwhile, is a total bait-and-switch.) But “Make Her Say” ain’t cute at all; Gaga’s melody gets served up as a convenient double entendre, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In the film Cold Souls, Paul Giamatti plays … Paul Giamatti. And this version of Paul Giamatti is every inch what movie audiences might suspect from the actor’s most frequent screen persona: an anxious, neurotic mess. Cold Souls is set in an alternate-universe America in which souls can be put into deep-freeze to relieve their human bearers of psychological torment. Giamatti (the character) undergoes the procedure when his onstage role as Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya cripples him emotionally. He plans to restore his soul when the run ends, but then a smuggler spirits his spirit off to Russia, and […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN 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 steer […]
Grand Jury Clears Cops In Televised Beatdown
ASSOCIATED PRESS: A Philadelphia grand jury won’t recommend charges against police officers involved in the videotaped beating of three suspects after a car chase. District Attorney Lynne Abraham made the announcement Thursday, a month after the three suspects were acquitted in a 2008 shooting. Video taken from a television news helicopter on May 5 that year shows police cars pursuing the suspects’ car for more than 2 miles before the driver pulls over. Officers smash a window and pull the men out and onto the ground. Several officers beat and kick them. The city police commissioner later fired four officers, […]