BY JONATHAN VALANIA Ann McElhinney and her husband Phelim McAleer describe themselves as journalists/documentary filmmakers whose only agenda is to tell the stories that aren’t being told: That environmentalists like Al Gore, James Cameron and Gasland director Josh Fox are (in order of appearance) liars, cheaters and hypocrites; that global warming/climate change is scam; that scientists who insist otherwise are only in it for the money; that fracking is harmless; and fossil fuel consumption is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I would call her a paid shill for Big Energy. Her latest film, Not Just Evil But Wrong, argues that decades […]
MUST SEE TV: We Love Free Except When We Don’t
Amen, brother.
SIDEWALKING: Statue Got Me High
Please Touch Museum, 11:22 PM last night by JONATHAN VALANIA
EARLY WORD: Occupy Mitt Romney
“I don’t worry about the top one percent. I don’t stay up nights worrying about ‘gee we need to help them.’ I don’t worry about that. They’re doing just fine by themselves. I worry about the 99 percent in America. I want America, once again, to be the best place in the world to be middle-class. I want to have a strong and vibrant and prosperous middle-class. And so I look at what’s happening on Wall Street and my own view is, boy I understand how those people feel…The people in this country are upset.”— MITT ROMNEY RELATED: Romney is […]
TO PROTECT & SERVE DECEIVE: Cop Caught Lying Under Oath On The Witness Stand About Pot Bust
INQUIRER: It looked like an open-and-shut case. A cop pulls over a car, walks up to the driver’s door, and sees a plastic baggy of marijuana. He brings in a drug-sniffing dog to prove probable cause for a search, gets a warrant, and finds a kilo of weed in the trunk. That’s what Officer Steven Lupo put in his report and testified to in Philadelphia Municipal Court. Then defense attorney Michael Diamondstein produced the video. Turned out reality was different. The video taken from nearby surveillance cameras contradicted key facts in Lupo’s report and sworn testimony. Most crucially, Lupo and […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Our universe might be really, really big — but finite. Or it might be infinitely big. Both cases, says physicist Brian Greene, are possibilities, but if the latter is true, so is another posit: There are only so many ways matter can arrange itself within that infinite universe. Eventually, matter has to repeat itself and arrange itself in similar ways. So if the universe is infinitely large, it is also home to infinite parallel universes. Does that sound confusing? Try this: Think of the universe like a deck of cards. “Now, if you shuffle that deck, there’s just […]
TRANSCENDENTALISM: Eternal Bliss In Our Time
[Artwork by MIGEL-GRASE] THE GUARDIAN: The director began meditating on the set of his debut feature, Eraserhead, back in the 70s and recently wrote a book (Catching the Big Fish) about the influence of TM on his creative process. Ask him about specific films, songs or paintings, and Lynch’s responses come swathed in shadow. Shift him on to the subject of transcendental meditation, however, and it’s though the lights have come on. It’s beautiful, he insists. We’re beautiful. Happiness lies within. Enlightenment is our birthright.Is it pedantic to note the obvious paradox here? Fair enough that Lynch, via the magic of […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: It’s All About You
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Do you consider yourself a “political” being? Politically speaking, do you have an anger “tipping point”? If so, is that the point at which you take action, or when you just let it slide? Are you–with sincerest apologies to Mr. Faulkner and The Bard–“but another walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. Is yours but a tale told to a mirror, full of harrumphs and a harangue or two, signifying nothing.” Pretty funny stuff, huh? Except I’ve never been more serious. These questions are at the very heart […]
CONCERT REVIEW: St. Vincent At Union Transfer
BY PELLE GUNTHER Pop music is rarely given creative justice anymore in the modern entertainment industrial complex. Sure every now and again there’s a flash of creative inspiration, but for the most part, it’s the same, played-out, recycled ideas just swimming around in the fishbowl of the radio dial. Amid the sea of Justin Bieber’s and T-Swift’s, calling St. Vincent’s music pop seems incredibly rude and simple minded for the level of care and composition put into these thoughtful arrangements. The songs of Annie Clark, the woman behind the mask, tumble—with no fear of any predictable musical constructs—from glitchy electronica […]
LISTEN LIKE THIEVES: New Old School GBV
[On newsstands now; click HERE to order] After a fifteen year hiatus, the “classic line up” of Guided By Voices finished off its year-long reunion tour by recording an album of 21 new songs, making a deliberate effort to return to what bandleader Robert Pollard calls the “semi-collegial” approach of iconic GBV albums like Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. Let’s Go Eat The Factory is some kind of return to form: sprawling, variegated, and yet still recognizably and coherently Guided By Voices in both its literal and mythic senses. Choosing to eschew the recording studio, Let’s Go Eat The Factory […]
FACT: Percentage Of Americans Out Of Work For A Year Or More At Astonishing, Historic High
[via TALKING POINTS MEMO]
WTF: Cops Storm Comcast, Arrest Wrong People
[Photo by Rob Bender] INQUIRER: Ten protesters were arrested during an Occupy Philly sit-in Wednesday afternoon at the Center City headquarters of Comcast Corp. Several hundred people, including protesters and onlookers, watched the spectacle unfold at the Comcast Center on John F. Kennedy Boulevard. Area traffic was jammed for hours. About 1:30 p.m., nine protesters got into the lobby and sat for about an hour before being arrested. Another demonstrator had been arrested outside earlier. They had marched from the Occupy Philly tent city at Dilworth Plaza in solidarity with a “general strike” organized by Occupy Oakland protesters after a […]
LOCO: Anonymous Takes On Mexican Drug Cartels
STRATFOR: A member of the online activist group, Anonymous, released a video statement October 31 stating that it will continue to search for and publicize sensitive data about Mexican criminal organizations despite the physical threat of doing so. Based upon past examples, the latest Anonymous campaign against Los Zetas could spill over into the real world, resulting in violence and deaths as Los Zetas target a new group. Online media has been in conflict with Mexican criminal and drug organizations for some time now. Journalists are known to be targets of the cartels and plenty have been killed in the […]