NBC PHILADELPHIA: It happened around 2 a.m.. as the woman was walking on the 2600 block of Kensington Ave. Police say a man approached the woman from behind, grabbed her hair and pulled her into an alley where he strangled her, punched her and hit her in the head with a brick. He is described as a black male in his 20s, 5’7 to 5’11, 160 to 170-pounds with facial hair (sideburns). He was wearing a dark, puffy coat and faded black jeans. He was listening to his iPod at the time of the attack and allegedly told the woman […]
LOST & FOUND: Return Of The King Of Carrot Flowers
INTERNATIONAL TAPES: I felt fortunate to be one of the 100-or-so people to see Jeff Mangum play his intimate set last night, but it was also unfortunate that I got there after the opening band, Forma, who I’ll definitely catch at Tandem this Saturday December 11. Hair a little longer and dressed in signature red flannel, Mangum played a 10 song set of Neutral Milk Hotel songs. The audience sat on the Schoolhouse’s hardwood floor cross-legged, quietly mouthing the words of Mangum’s lecture. Perched beside a music stand with a revolving cast of three acoustic guitars, he constantly traded instruments, sometimes in […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Hating On The New Kanye
BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD So, Pitchfork gave this album a perfect score. Rolling Stone did too. The Source just awarded it the once-coveted 5 Mics rating. But who gives a fuck about a review anyway!? I’m here to tell you that Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is shit shit shit! Kanye’s failure, in my book, stems from him being unable to stick to his promises — specifically he promised fans a revival of boom-bap hip-hop and a departure from the electronic dabbling seen in 808s and Heartbreak. Kanye told us that Madlib would be there, RZA would be there, […]
SHOOTING THE MESSENGER: The Curious Sex Crimes Case Against Wikileaks’ Julian Assange
THE GLOBE & MAIL: At the centre of a tightening web of death threats, sex-crime accusations and high-level demands for a treason trial, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threatened to unleash a “thermonuclear device” of completely unexpurgated government files if he is forced to appear before authorities. Mr. Assange, the 39-year-old Australian Internet activist whose online document-leaking service has embarrassed the United States and other countries by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic and military documents, has referred to the huge, unfiltered document as his “insurance policy.” The 1.3-gigabyte file, distributed through file-sharing services this summer and protected with an […]
D’OH!: PHA Spent $17,000 On Diversity Training Party
MY FOX PHILLY: Belly dancers, rented costumes and even yodelers were incorporated into a diversity training exercise in 2006, which was paid for with $17,150.21 of taxpayer money. The belly dancers came at cost of $1,200, costume rentals ran up $540, while food and training materials for 200 employees of the PHA accounted for the rest of the cost of the March 21, 2006 diversity event. The person at the helm for the PHA event was its then-executive director, Carl Greene, who has since been fired. MORE INQUIRER: The evening’s finale began when four exotically clad belly dancers pulled members […]
SIDEWALKING: Metaphysical Graffiti
Sansom street, between 11th and 12th, 11:32 AM Sunday by JEFF FUSCO
CINEMA: Panther Burns
NIGHT CATCHES US (2010, directed by Tanya Hamilton, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The most unusual thing about the new locally-shot drama opening today, Night Catches Us, is its setting: northwest Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood in the year 1976. An African American enclave, this inner city setting in is not the concrete jungle most would associate with northern U.S. cities but a sprawling woodsy landscape offset by old stone and brick businesses and homes. Night Catches Us is the rare African America drama unconcerned with religion or drug-toting gangsters but it is instead a clever disguise for a […]
ARTSY: Yankee Doodler Foxtrot
David Jablow’s “Do it yourself Doodler” opens at Bambi Gallery tonight (6 PM-10 PM) and runs through January 2nd BY CAROLINE SCHMIDT Local artist David Jablow’s latest project, “Do It Yourself Doodler” was inspired by a friend’s gift: a vintage novelty doodle pad from the sixties that featured an incomplete drawing of a woman on each page. With ink, white out, and no small amount of resourcefulness, Jablow has filled all 38 pages of the tablet with intricate illustrations, placing the doodler lady in comedic, quirky, clever, and occasionally compromising positions. He plans to turn the collection into a book. […]
THIS JUST IN: Einsturzende Neubauten Cancels 30th Anniversary Tour, Blames Homeland Security
It is with great regret that Einstürzende Neubauten announce the cancellation of their planned thirtieth anniversary appearances in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto and New York. While the US Department of Homeland Security did issue approvals for the band’s visas, it was not done in time to secure the appointments at the overseas embassies and consulates that represent the necessary final step in the process. The band members are tremendously disappointed by this turn of events and wish to thank all those fans who purchased tickets for these performances for their support. The band would have loved to do […]
EARLY WORD: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Film: Crispin Hellion Glover with It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine! dir. Crispin Glover, US, 2007, 35mm, 74 mins, color Co-presented by R5 Productions + Joseph A Gervasi Crispin Hellion Glover is an American film actor, director and screenwriter, recording artist, publisher and author. He is well know from such films as Back to the Future, River’s Edge, Charlie’s Angels, Willard, and this year’s Hot Tub Time Machine and Alice in Wonderland. Mr Glover performs his “Big Slide Show Part 1?, a one hour dramatic narration of eight different profusely illustrated books. Following the performance, Mr Glover screens his 35mm […]
THE BIG TAKEDOWN: Wikileaks Domain Name Spiked After Massive Attack; Assange Arrest Imminent
[Illustration by R_SH] ABC: Wikileaks says its website has been shut down by the company providing it with domain name services, as British media reports Scotland Yard could arrest the site’s founder Julian Assange as early as tomorrow. The website’s alphabetical web address no longer exists and is now only accessible through a numerical IP address. The company involved, EveryDNS.net, says it terminated its services because Wikileaks had been coming under “massive” cyber attacks. MORE RELATED: You can still access the WikiLeaks site by going directly to this IP address: http://88.80.2.32 or http://213.251.145.96/ CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Is Assange already under […]
LIFE LESSIONS: With Your Life Coach, AP Ticker
Temporary layoffs? Good times. Easy credit rip-offs? Good times. Ain’t we lucky we got ’em?
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 […]