LOCAL GAL MAKES GOOD: Patti Smith’s Just Kids Wins National Book Award For Non-Fiction

THE GUARDIAN: For a musician who virtually dropped out of public life for almost two decades, Patti Smith has become remarkably ubiquitous. Barely a month passes without her being graced with a new award or feted at a Manhattan cultural event. The latest accolade for the 65-year-old “godmother of punk” was the National Book Award for non-fiction, which she won on Wednesday night for her memoir of her bohemian days in the Chelsea Hotel with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. It marked the fulfilment of Smith’s lifelong dream to be a writer, or as she put it at the awards ceremony […]

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CINEMA: The Long And Winding Road

dir. Federico Fellini, Italy, 1954, 35mm, 108 mins, b/w, Italian w/ English subtitles There has never been a face quite like that of Giulietta Masina. Her husband, the legendary Federico Fellini, directs her as Gelsomina in La strada, the film that launched them both into international stardom. Gelsomina is sold by her mother into the employ of Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a brutal strongman in a traveling circus. When Zampano encounters an old rival in highwire artist II Matto (Richard  Basehart), his fury is provoked to its breaking point. With La strada, Fellini left behind the familiar signposts of Italian neorealism […]

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EARLY WORD: Have Mercy, Baby

Fistful of Mercy – Father’s Son from Fistful of Mercy on Vimeo. Fistful Of Mercy — Ben Harper, Joseph Arthur and Dhani Harrison (son of George) — will perform at the Temple’s Peforming Arts Center (formerly known as Baptist Temple) on Saturday at 8 PM. Tickets are still available here.

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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 […]

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DEENEY: On The Kensington Strangler

DAILY BEAST: The rusting, blue steel frame of the El, the elevated portion of Philadelphia’s subway, looms over dilapidated Kensington Avenue like a giant centipede’s decaying exoskeleton. Known as “the stroll,” Kensington Avenue is the hub of Philly’s street prostitution scene, where young, drug-addicted women turn tricks for dope money—and where lately, a serial killer stalks them in the sickly orange glow of the streetlamps under the El. […] The two murdered women are alleged by the prostitutes on the stroll who knew them to have met the same fate in similar ways, by having gone on what the girls […]

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Q: Would You Buy $300 Million Worth Of Full Body Scanners From This Man? A: You Already Did

Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., former Chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee and the current top Republican on the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, blasts TSA’s invasive “pat downs” during a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on November 17, 2010. Duncan also questions the role of lucrative government contracts in TSA’s new naked body scanning machines. The text of the speech is copied below: “Mr. Speaker: A nationwide revolt is developing over the body scanners at the airports, and it should. Hundreds of thousands of frequent fliers who fly each week are upset about getting […]

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UPSHOT: Man Shoots TV During Dancing With The Stars Saying Bristol Palin Isn’t A Very Good Dancer

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A rural Wisconsin man blasted his television set with a shotgun after watching Bristol Palin’s “Dancing with the Stars” routine Monday night, saying he was fed up with politics and Palin wasn’t a very good dancer, according to court documents. Steven Cowan, 67, of the town of Vermont, about 15 miles west of Madison, then pointed the gun at his wife, 66-year-old Janice Cowan, who escaped and called police, authorities said. A SWAT team surrounded the couple’s farmhouse, and officers were able to talk Cowan out Tuesday morning after an all-night standoff.  Janice Cowan told police her husband […]

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HARRISBURGER: Dwight Evans Stripped Of Ranking Dem Status On The House Appropriations Committee

INQUIRER: Evans was on the outs with some members because they believe he was the master puppeteer behind an edict to try and cancel a House voting session this week in order to prevent a vote on a bill that contains a provision Evans did not like. In the end, other House leaders buckled to pressure from members and called them back to vote Monday. But the spat left Evans vulnerable. And it brought to the surface other complaints that House Democrats have had against their old leadership team, including how the controversial special-project grants nicknamed WAMs – for walking-around […]

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GAYDAR: Deconstructing Gwyneth On Glee

VANITY FAIR: When I heard that Gwynny was going to be appearing on the show—along with myriad commercials for her upcoming strong-willed-lady-in-country-music film creatively entitled Country Strong—I cringed and died inside. Not because I think, like most people, that Gwyneth is a talentless, affectless hack, who happened to luck into a few decent roles that called for skinny blond desperation. And not because I believe that celebrity cameos are the crystal meth of network television, fostering a euphoric bump in ratings followed by an increasing need for similar (and enhanced) euphoric bumps in ratings, followed by losing all your dignity […]

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