BY PELLE GUNTHER With a sold out show at the Electric Factory, Philly’s own Dr. Dog were certainly at their finest, with a few members of the band flaunting shades and red and white-pom-pommed “Dr. Dog” hats, inescapably evoking a Where’s Waldo vibe . Their stage set was made up of bizarre stained glass windows which were left un-illuminated during the openers, but for the Dr.’s entrance, the stage crew flipped the light-switch, suddenly transforming the stage into a mass of stained glass, popping from every amp and free space on the stage, including the head of the kick drum. […]
EXIT THE PHAROAH: And Then There Were None
CNN: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down Friday and handed over power to the military — three decades of his iron-clad rule ended by an 18-day revolution. In a somber one-minute announcement on state television, Vice President Omar Suleiman said Mubarak had resigned and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will “run the affairs of the country.” Tens of thousands of emotional Egyptians exploded in deafening cheers on the streets of Cairo, electric with excitement. It was a moment they had anticipated throughout long days of relentless demonstrations — sometimes violent — that demanded Mubarak’s departure. It was also […]
Chinese Reverse Decision, Say Penn Can Has Mummies
INQUIRER: The show will go on – Chinese mummies and all. Following talks between Chinese cultural authorities in Beijing and officials of the U.S. Embassy there, over 100 artifacts from western China, including two unique mummies, will go on display for a limited time at the Penn Museum, university officials announced Friday. The artifacts, part of a much-ballyhood exhibition, “Secrets of the Silk Road,” were unexpectedly barred from exhibition by the Chinese just days before the show opened last Saturday, leaving Penn Museum officials scrambling to mount an important exhibit – the museum’s first “blockbuster” – without any of the […]
‘Black Madam’ Sought In Silcone Butt Injection Death
INQUIRER: A musical artist who advertised buttock enhancement injections on YouTube under her performing name “Black Madam” is believed to be responsible for the death of one of her clients earlier this week in Philadelphia, police said in court filings. Officers searched the apartment of Padge Victoria Windslowe, 41, after the several witnesses identified her as the woman who injected aspiring actress Claudia Seye Aderotimi, 20, with what she claimed was silicone in an airport hotel room earlier this week. Aderotimi, who had traveled from London and allegedly paid Windslowe $1,800 for the procedure, died hours later at Mercy Fitzgerald […]
CINEMA: Prairie Home Companions
KURT LODER: There’s London, there’s Paris, and there’s Cedar Rapids, Iowa—for straight-arrow Tim Lippe, not necessarily in that order. Tim (Ed Helms, of The Hangover) is a small-town insurance agent who looks upon his calling as heroic—he’s there when his clients need him most, and he really cares. He’s never been anywhere outside of peaceful Brown Valley, Wisconsin, where he still lives, in the same house he grew up in. True, he’s occasionally sleeping with his seventh-grade teacher (Sigourney Weaver), to whom he likes to think of himself as “pre-engaged,” but he’s otherwise a museum-quality naïf—never flown on a plane, […]
Anonymous Does Not Forgive, And Does Not Forget
ARS TECHNICA: Aaron Barr believed he had penetrated Anonymous. The loose hacker collective had been responsible for everything from anti-Scientology protests to pro-Wikileaks attacks on MasterCard and Visa, and the FBI was now after them. But matching their online identities to real-world names and locations proved daunting. Barr found a way to crack the code. In a private e-mail to a colleague at his security firm HBGary Federal, which sells digital tools to the US government, the CEO bragged about his research project. “They think I have nothing but a heirarchy based on IRC [Internet Relay Chat] aliases!” he wrote. […]
THE SINGULARITY: The Rise Of The Machines
TIME: So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness – not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets […]
BLAKROC: What You Do To Me
Yes, it’s the song from that Zales commerical. BlaKRoc = The Black Keys + Billy Danze + Jim Jones + Nicole Wray. Very foxy.
EXIT THE PHAROAH: Mubarak Resignation FAIL
[Artwork by DonkeyHotey] NEW YORK TIMES: President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt prepared to address the nation Thursday, with government officials indicating that they expected him to step aside, and Egypt’s military announcing that it is intervening in state affairs in an attempt to stop a three-week old uprising. The military declared on state television that it would take measures “to maintain the homeland and the achievements and the aspirations of the great people of Egypt” and meet the demands of the protesters who have insisted on ending Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Several government officials said Mr. Mubarak is expected to […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR If you’re a fan of The Office, you may have seen Ed Helms, who plays Andy Bernard, occasionally whip out a banjo and bang out a few tunes. On today’s Fresh Air, Helms brings his own banjo to the studio and sings bluegrass tunes with his band, The Lonesome Trio. He also discusses his new comedy Cedar Rapids, in which he plays Tim Lippe, a naive insurance salesman who’s never left his small hometown, let alone ventured into a hotel room for a night. But after he’s sent to represent his insurance company at a convention in a […]
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 […]
CINEMA: Cat Scratch Fever
THE BLACK CAT (YABU NO NAKA NO KURANEKO) (1968, directed by Kaneto Shindô, 99 minutes, Japan) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Yesterday, the Inquirer reported yet another story of a soldier who had committed suicide after returning from the war. The idea of a soldier being haunted by the things he has seen in battle is an ancient one, and the story gets a mesmerizing telling in director Kaneto Shindô’s 1968 film The Black Cat. The classic ghost story has a free screening tonight at The Bellevue, as part of a weekly six-film series presented by Japanese culture impresario Eric […]
ERYKAH BADU: Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long
Erykah Badu – Gone Baby, Don’t be Long from beeple on Vimeo. Directed by Flying Lotus.