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 […]
GRUMPY OLD MEN: Q&A With A Man Called Francis
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview first ran on October 18th, 2006. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Welcome to the second installment of our Grumpy Old Men series, wherein we learn from our elders and soak up their salty yarns like Bounty Quicker Picker-Upper. Yesterday we had Robert Christgau, today Francis Davis. Tomorrow? The Pope. What’s that you say? You never heard of Francis Davis. Oh buddy, it’s good thing you found us! Check out his CV: He has written about music, film, and other aspects of popular culture for The Atlantic since 1984 and was appointed lead jazz critic for the Voice in […]
Q&A: This American Life Host Ira Glass
BY JONATHAN VALANIA For nearly half a century television has had to bear the “barren wasteland” rap. But even a cursory, static-smeared twist of the radio dial reveals a largely fallow garden. Corporate consolidation and play-it-safe programmers have conspired to increase the emphasis on the obvious, the ordinary and the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t have to be like this. “When correctly harnessed, radio can be as emotional, as funny and as satisfying as the best motion pictures and television shows,” says Ira Glass, host of public radio’s This American Life. “But sadly, few radio programmers even shoot for that.” […]
KITCHEN BITCH: The Hot Beef Injection
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN I love barbeque. Americans love barbeque. Pretty much everyone in the world loves barbeque. You can slather barbeque on any number of meats, including pulled pork, chicken, ribs, and that lesser known but no less lovable cut of meat—the beef brisket. My boyfriend, Doug, doesn’t just like barbeque brisket. He LOVES it. If we go to a restaurant and it’s on the menu, hands down, that’s what he’s going to order. And that brisket sandwich will disappear before you’ve even had a chance to ask for a taste test. So, when my parents asked me to make […]
Mississippi NPR Chief Pulls Fresh Air From State Airwaves, Citing No Redeeming Educational Value
THE ATLANTIC: The state of Mississippi’s public radio has banned nationally syndicated interview show Fresh Air with Terry Gross. The afternoon program, in which Gross holds relaxed chats with artists, academics, and celebrities, claims 4.5 million listeners across 450 public radio stations. Mississippi Public Broadcasting cited “recurring inappropriate content” in announcing that they will no longer allow the show. What was the offending content? Mississippi was mum, but MSNBC’s Laura Conaway thinks she’s found the answer… MSNBC: Mississippi Public Broadcasting shares a campus with offices for the state’s colleges and universities, and we have learned that some of those offices […]
WAPO: Intelligence Industrial Complex Has Metastasized Into A Vast Kafkaesque Hall Of Mirrors
WASHINGTON POST: The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending […]
CONCERT REVIEW: XPoNential Music Festival
BY ARTHUR SHKOLNIK The sweltering heat did little to discourage massive crowds from herding into Wiggins Park on the Camden Waterfront this weekend for the XPoNential Music Festival, WXPN’s 17th annual three-day summer music festival, featuring over 30 unique and diverse bands and musicians. Promotional frisbees stubbornly took to the wind as Philly natives the Blood Feathers helped kick off Sunday’s festivities. Blood Feathers rocked the River Stage with their timeless and melodic blend of dirty funk, country twang, and fast paced rock and roll. All the while Fool’s Gold, a six-piece from Los Angeles with three percussionists, couldn’t have […]
REMAIN IN THE LIGHT: A Q&A With Post-Punk Stained Glass Sorceress Judith Schaechter
[“You Are Here” by JUDITH SCHAECHTER] BY JONATHAN VALANIA Judith Schaechter is a world renowned stained glass artist who has resided here in Philadelphia since graduating from Rhode Island School Of Design in 1983. (It was there that she met acclaimed novelist Rick Moody, then a student at nearby Brown, and the two attempted to be boyfriend/girlfriend, but eventually settled into a friendship that has lasted all these years.) Her work retrieves the lost art of stained glass-making from the dustbin of the Middle Ages — where it largely served as a decorative form pressed into the service of replicating […]
I, GAMER: Let’s Play ‘Tase The Phillies Fan’!
TAUNTR: Philly fans have been in the news quite a bit recently, even more than normal. The most notorious fan base in all of professional sports in the United States really needs to calm down. Nothing can tame the savage Philly fan quite like a good shock of electricity from a taser. Play TAUNTR.com‘s newest game now and send paralizing volts of electricity to try and stop some of Phillys most “awesome” fans. MORE PHAWKER: Highly recommended! Hurry, it won’t last long…
CINEMA: Tomorrow Never Knows
INCEPTION (2010, directed by Christopher Nolan, 148 minutes, U.S.) ENTER THE VOID (2009, directed by Gaspar Noé, 154 minutes, France) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I was maybe an hour into Inception before I found myself thinking, move over Last Airbender, this movie has got to be the biggest bomb of the summer. So convoluted the audience around me was snickering at the endless exposition, Inception’s action framework is stretched beyond all elasticity while Leonardo DiCaprio’s stroke-tempting intensity borders on parody. It was only after the movie that a fellow critic enlightened me the fact that the film had boasted […]
REAL ESTATE: So You Want To Buy A Home Pt. 3
BY AARON STELLA I’m still not in the house I purchased last April. It was, livable when I bought it, albeit in need of some serious face lifting, which always has its snags and surprises. Like, throwing up some dry wall should be a relatively painless process—unless there’s three layers of petrified wallpaper covering what were once beautiful plaster walls which means you have to frame out the whole house before dry walling; or, tearing out water damaged dry wall in the kitchen only to find a larger-than-life brick Jenga puzzle teetering precariously overhead because some brain trust didn’t use […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Comic book writer Harvey Pekar, who published a series of caustically funny autobiographical stories about the ups and downs of everyday life, died Monday morning. He was 70. Pekar started writing his series American Splendor in 1976, almost two decades before his life story was adapted into the 2003 film starring Paul Giamatti. The series touched on the prosaic quirks of a file clerk working to make ends meet — while Pekar mused on everything from collecting jazz records to dealing with annoying friends and strangers on the street. Pekar appeared on Fresh Air twice — first in […]
MUST SEE TV: The Altered States Of America
RELATED: Kids around the country are getting high on the internet, thanks to MP3s that induce a state of ecstasy. And it could be a gateway drug leading teens to real world narcotics. At least that’s what Kansas News 9 is reporting about a phenomenon called I-dosing, which involves finding an online dealer who can hook you up with “digital drugs” that get you high through your headphones. And officials are taking it seriously. “Kids are going to flock to these sites just to see what it is about and it can lead them to other places,” Oklahoma Bureau of […]