BY PELLE GUNTHER So cold. Hands numb. Lights dimming. And then Justin Jones came out and let us know that he, too, was in fact freezing his ass off in the First Unitarian Church Tuesday night. His first song “The Gutter”, off his new release The Little Fox EP, felt fitting in these frigid temperatures of the sanctuary. The lyrics are steeped in a darkened past, that Jones seems to have left behind with happier songs like “Little Fox”. Regardless of what he was singing though, Justin Jones [pictured, above] wielded a mighty voice, beautiful rich tenor with a slight […]

John Winston Ono Lennon (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)

RAW STORY: “We do think people should be able to make their own decisions as to who they donate to,” Xipwire co-founder Sibyl Lindsay told Raw Story during a Tuesday afternoon telephone interview. “The fact that people can’t donate to where they’d like to and make that decision for themselves does bother us.” The company has set up a page where WikiLeaks supporters can donate, saying it will waive all related fees. “Our motivation is really simple,” Xipwire founder Sharif Aleandre explained in an email. “While people may or may not agree with WikiLeaks and the documents it has released, […]

Legendary musician, poet, artist and activist Patti Smith will be at the Free Library tonight reading from her new book, Just Kids — a memoir about coming of age and becoming an artist in New York in the 1960’s and 70’s with her former lover and lifelong friend, the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe —  which won the National Book Award for Non-fiction. Just Kids has maintained its perch in the upper reaches of the New York Times bestseller list since publication. Just Kids is beautiful and gritty, the ultimate story of New York grime and glamour told through the impassioned […]

BY MAVIS LINNEMANN Last year, my best friend Laura and I threw our first annual ladies-only holiday bash. We decorated my little apartment like it was the North Pole, made more appetizers than we could ever eat, baked a million cookies for our guests to decorate, and whipped up about 15 different colors of icing to top both the cookies and homemade gingerbread houses. Needless to say, we were exhausted by the end of the day, but the party was a huge success and we vowed to learn from our mistakes when we planned our holiday extravaganza the next year. […]

[Artwork by MICHAEL THOMPSON] NEW YORK TIMES: In a hearing that lasted just under an hour, Mr. Assange said he would fight extradition. But despite the presence in court of several prominent people ready to vouch for him, he was called a flight risk and ordered to remain in custody until a further court session on Dec. 14. His British lawyer, Mark Stephens, told reporters Mr. Assange would appeal the denial of bail. MORE THE GUARDIAN: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is expected to appear in a UK court tomorrow after his lawyers said he would meet police to […]

BLOOMBERG NEWS: Billionaire Warren Buffett said that rich people should pay more in taxes and that Bush-era tax cuts for top earners should be allowed to expire at the end of December. “If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further,” Buffett said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour” that is scheduled to air on Nov. 28. “But I think that people at the high end — people like myself — should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better […]

[Artwork by PAUL ROCKER] BUSINESS INSIDER: Ashburn, Va. is the most obscene place in America, as determined by analyzing data from Google. To find the most obscene cities in America, we plugged the “seven dirty words you can never say on television” — made popular by George Carlin — into Google Trends. We gave each city a score for each of the seven words, assigning more points to cities ranking higher up on each list. […] This is our third year publishing this list. Philly finally may be cleaning up its act. After coming in third place for the past […]

BILL CONLIN: Jaws dropped so far open they had to sound like a 21-gun salute when the late-afternoon press conference was called announcing the last-place bleeping Washington Nationals had signed the former Phillies rightfielder to a free-agent contract for 7 years and $126 million. One-hundred-twenty-six-million for 7 years.  That’s an average of $18 million a year guaranteed through the year 2018, when Werth will turn 39. He will be 32 May 20.  But Mike Rizzo, apparently a gerontologist in his spare time, said with confidence that Werth’s “best years are ahead of him.” I immediately thought of Steve Carlton’s personal […]

[Photo by TOM BUSILLO] MONICA YANT KINNEY: First, there was the boneheaded decision to take the Christmas out of that quaint Christmas Village surrounding City Hall. […] Three years into Nutter’s “new day, new way,” grinches lurk around every corner. In this month’s Philadelphia Magazine, archenemy John Street calls Nutter an “arrogant, incompetent, and offensive” coward. Bashing his successor for that lame 311 system and refusing to stand up to city unions, Street goes in for the kill: “On the things that matter, Mayor Nutter has crippled the city.” Consider this payback. Whenever candidate Nutter talked about cleaning up government, […]