FRESH AIR Love, violence, death and America have always been themes for Australian-born singer-composer Nick Cave, so he was a natural to compose the soundtrack for 2007’s epically paranoid Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Cave also wrote the screenplay and soundtrack for the Australian epic The Proposition, which Roger Ebert described as “pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence that it is a record of those things we pray to be delivered from.” Cave appeared in Wim Wenders’ 1987 film Wings of Desire, and he’s written plays and novels. In 2008, […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Uncommon Sense
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY It’s official. She’s running, and she says she’s going to bring “the voice of common sense” to the White House (a revelation that no doubt brought an even more deeply furrowed brow to the faces of those still trying to figure out which planet she commutes from). Recognizing Miss Sensible’s all-too-self-effacing nature, I think it’s only fitting that I cite a few past examples of Michele’s “common sense” utterings so that those who may be unfamiliar with these quasi-cum-laudables might join in appreciation of the intellectual depth and derring-do exhibited by this nimble-minded master of malapropism. […]
LOVE WILL KEEP US TOGETHER: Internet Mistakes Cop-Clobbered Couple For Lovers In Repose
HUFFINGTON POST: While a city burned its Stanley Cup dream in the flurry of flames, looting and bone-breaking that was the 2011 Vancouver riots, an altogether different sort of passion spilled, literally, into the streets. At the moment, they’re known only as the kissing couple. But that won’t last long. When this unlikely snapshot of lovers entangled on a tear-gas filled street, with riot police in the fore and background emerged Thursday morning, you can bet the great media race was on. It will, most certainly, be the picture that launched a thousand media inquiries. Who are they? What were […]
Won’t Have Anthony Weiner To Dick Around Anymore
It is finished. RELATED: Weiner was Twitter’s first major political casualty in a darker way, too. This eposide demonstrated in a unique way that Twitter can encourage pack political journalism at its worst. I’m not defending Weiner. He lied to his colleagues, and what he did was unspeakably foolish, given that his outspoken liberalism guaranteed that he’d be a tempting target for the right. I’m agnostic on whether he should have resigned; other public officials who have committed far worse acts, sexual and otherwise, haven’t faced a fraction of the pressure he faced to step down. But ultimately, all you […]
TONITE: Come Feel Me Trimble
THE GUARDIAN: Trimble made a grand total of two albums in his early 20s: the last was released in 1982. He never had a record deal. The albums were privately released in minuscule quantities: he can’t remember whether there were 300 or 500 copies pressed of his debut, Iron Curtain Innocence, but either way, there weren’t many takers for his brand of lush-yet-disquieting Beatles and Pink Floyd- influenced psychedelia in early-80s New England. He never performed live outside of the central Massachusetts area. “We just played Worcester County, we didn’t even play Boston,” he says.The problem was Trimble’s habit of […]
Coltrane’s Long Island House On Endangered List
WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Long Island home where John Coltrane penned his iconic “A Love Supreme” is one of America’s most endangered historic sites, according to the annual list released by the National Trust for Historic Preservation Wednesday. Jazz great Coltrane purchased the modest 1950s Dix Hills ranch home in 1964 and lived there until he died in 1967. He transformed the basement into a recording and rehearsal studio and converted a guest room into a composition space. His wife Alice Coltrane lived in the home until 1973. Though the space is more artistically than architecturally significant, a local organization […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Star Of David
LARRY PLATT: Brenner gave birth to a generation of “observational” comics – funny men who examined small moments closely and poked fun at life’s minutiae. To borrow the now-infamous “Seinfeld” phrase, Brenner’s act was the first to be about nothing. In the same way that Dr. J paved the way for Michael Jordan, Brenner gave us Jerry Seinfeld, much to his chagrin. About a decade ago, a woman in the audience called out to Brenner: “Do you think in his quiet moments alone, Jerry Seinfeld admits you’re the original?” The crowd cheered. […] Turns out, Jerry was more than a […]
COMMENTARY: A Home Where The Buffalo Roam
BY JEFF DEENEY In yesterday’s Inquirer there was another article in a long series of familiar articles telling us yet again that the city’s homeless shelter system is a dismal failure. The shelter system cannot provide even basic services to many who engage it, let alone make a start towards the city’s stated goal of ending homelessness. There’s really nothing new, here; we all know how this story goes. Though the unique twist in this particular article was its focus on the groaning, overcrowded family shelters, reporting that they are already at capacity early in the system’s peak summer months […]
Santorum Gives Up Right Wing Welfare; Will Stop Sucking The Teat Of Big Government To Run For Prez
PHILLY DEALS: Santorum is saying good-bye to a post that paid him $168,000 in cash and stock last year for attending board and compensation committee meetings, where his duties included approving a $10 million CEO cash, stock and insurance compensation package for Universal boss Alan B. Miller. Universal relied on taxpayer-funded Medicare and Medicaid payments for 38% of its $5.6 billion in revenues last year, according to the company’s annual report. The company collected profits totalling $230 million. MORE RELATED: The federal government exists to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Santorum says, “not to take care of […]
TONITE: Fringeology Live
As a staff writer for Philadelphia Magazine, Steve Volk has been built a solid reputation as an investigative reporter. His book, Fringe-ology is a journey into the unexplored territory where science and the paranormal converge. Join him as he moves into the heart of the paranormal universe to try to answer some of life’s most fundamental questions. Along the way Volk encounters a psychologist who concludes that there is life beyond death, people who claim to have survived alien abduction, a former N.A.S.A astronaut who is now an avid paranormalist, professional ghost-hunters and more. Volk pulls fact from fiction and finds that there is still […]
AP TICKER: Soda Taxation With Representation Is Not Tyranny, It’s Just Good Old Fashioned Common Sense
AP TICKER: Recently, Mayor Nutter proposed a 25 cent tax on soda pop to restore school district funding for things like all-day Kindergarten and school bus service. To which the soda pop lobby responded like the sky was falling. “It would decrease soda consumption and kill jobs”, they screamed, howled and belched. It’s true that studies show that when the price of delicious, life-giving soda goes up, consumption goes down. But in the middle of an epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes, is that such a bad thing? I think we can all agree that NO that is not a […]
In A Bizarre Spy Vs. Spy Maneuver, Pakistan Arrests CIA Informants That Helped Pinpoint Bin Laden
NEW YORK TIMES: Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials. Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration […]
EXCLUSIVE: Penn Relays Was A Magnet For Immigration Fraud According To Wikileaked Cable
U.S. EMBASSY KINGSTON JAMAICA: The Penn Relays track and field meet in April of each year is a major athletic event that is a significant cultural milestone for many young Jamaican athletes. Hundreds of high school and university students apply for visas each spring to attend the meet. However, many mala fide applicants apply for visas to attend the meet as well, disguising themselves as student athletes. MORE RELATED: In January, FPU intercepted a group of sixteen performers who had close ties to the Caribbean Alliance Group, a petitioner known to FPU to have associations with drug trafficking. While this […]