KITCHEN BITCH: Doing It Greek

[image via MANIFEST VEGAN] BY MAVIS LINNEMANN I was first exposed to Greek food many years ago when my best friend, Laura, and her parents, the Brokamps, took me to the Panegyri Greek Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Greeks have always known how to throw a party, and the festival is a barrage of fun activities: music, dancing, amusement rides, raffles, games, and, of course, food. The succulent smell of lamb wafts through the air at Greek festivals, but it’s the sweet and sticky Greek pastries that really win me over. There’s usually a host of Greek moms and grandmas […]

SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: Puppy Of The Month

New feature on Scrapple TV News: once a month we will bring our pal Jamie from the SPCA on to talk about some swell new doggie with a hard-luck story and in need of a home. We start off with Mila, who came into the shelter as a stray on April 4, 2010. She was a sad sight, covered in tar and mud, and was immediately a staff favorite because of her amazing spirit and willingness to give us love, even though she clearly hadn’t had anyone to care for her for quite some time. This 2-3 year old pit […]

REST IN PEACE: Manute Bol — 76er, Philanthropist, Coiner Of The Phrase ‘My Bad’ — Dead At 47

[photo by JEFF FUSCO] NEW YORK TIMES: Manute Bol, a towering Dinka tribesman who left southern Sudan to become one of the best shot blockers in the history of American basketball, then returned to his homeland to try to heal the wounds of a long, bloody civil war, died Saturday at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, according to Sally Jones, a spokeswoman for the hospital. He was 47 and lived in Olathe, Kan. The cause was severe kidney trouble and complications of a rare skin disorder known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome, said Tom Prichard, who runs Sudan Sunrise, […]

FATHERS: International Men Of Mystery

MORE TANGENTIALLY RELATED: After the war, he returned to his office delighted he still had a job — indeed, owned the job — and eager to resume architecture. But it is good to remember that war can vex the spirit in subtle and unexpected ways. He sat at his drafting table, and did nothing. Not for days, not for weeks. There were plenty of commissions, and he had no pressure on him: his partner, who had run the business during the war, urged him not to worry. Of course it will take a while, Dick, he said. It did. My […]

CINEMA: Meth Acting

WINTER’S BONE (2010, directed by Debra Granik, 100 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC As direct as a great John Ford western, Sundance Grand Jury winner Winter’s Bone flies in the face of everything that has been hollowed out and trite in American indie films over the last decade.  Contrast it with Nicole Holofcener’s recent indie hit, the critically-lauded Please Give. That film chronicles a little bump in the lives of vaguely disaffected privileged New Yorkers. The character’s mildly dramatic detour, flirting with guilt and infidelity hardly seems like the most interesting thing that happened to them this month, […]

DEMOCRACY HOW: SC Darkhorse Senate Candidate Nominates Self For Time’s ‘Man Of The Year’

TIME: As recently as Memorial Day, Alvin Greene was an unemployed 32-year-old, 13-year military veteran who had been involuntarily discharged from both the Army and the Air Force and was facing an obscenity charge for allegedly showing a teenage stranger online pornography in a college campus computer lab (Greene has denied comment, but he is fighting the charge). What he became after winning 59% of the vote in the June 8 Democratic primary is now in dispute. To Representative Jim Clyburn, the state’s most powerful Democrat, Greene is a pod person of unknown origin — “someone’s plant.” To his older […]

ADAPTATION: Twilight Star Gearing Up For Coppola-Produced Movie Version Of Beat Generation Classic

MTV: Kristen Stewart is moving from one literary adaptation to another — albeit to something a bit more scholarly than “Twilight.” After the actress finishes promoting “Eclipse” next month, she’s set to begin filming the long-anticipated movie version of Jack Kerouac’s classic novel “On the Road,” which helped define the Beatnik generation and is still talked about in many an English class.The book’s pedigree aside, the film also has some well-respected people attached — producer Francis Ford Coppola and director Walter Salles (“The Motorcycle Diaries”), just to name a few.  Though “On the Road” is considered one of the great […]

BLACK THOUGHTS: ?uestlove Vs. City Paper Readers

[artwork by MITCH] ?UESTLOVE: some of you people are turning that sabina link i sent earlier into something super ugly. my timeline and fund raising efforts obviously state that i am out for justice in her senseless murder. BUT. i cannot look into this boy’s eyes http://twitpic.com/1xageo and be all dismissive like “this fucking monster” as im sure most of us (specially those of us who knew sabina and were regulars at PYT) will react. and i understand the passion behind it. make no mistake, i understand the passion behind it. this is NOT me being irresponsible nor an apologist […]

TRUE COLORS: Republicans Feel Sorry For BP

WASHINGTON POST: At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Thursday, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the $20 billion “shakedown” the oil company received from President Obama. “I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Barton said. “I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or corporation does anything wrong,” they are subjected to such political pressure. MORE WHITE HOUSE: “What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business […]

KARMA: From The Dept. Of You Reap What You Sow

DAN GROSS: We hear the longtime girlfriend/business partner of a local hipster blogger, whose relevance continues to decline, has finally come to her senses and left him. MORE PHAWKER: Ouch, babe. BRIAN MCMANUS:  Through my iChats with Sweeney I’ve come to realize that dude really believes with all his fey heart that to write a story about someone means you’re endorsing their beliefs, or in bed with them somehow. Check our archives for his musings while on staff here and you’ll see it’s true. If he wasn’t writing about his friends, he was shooting fish in a barrel. Or, worse […]

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 […]