BREAKING: Eric Cantor Is A Pussy

[Poster by Inspirato Design] DOWNLOAD: Hi Res Version UPDATE: U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House, canceled his scheduled speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business because it was going to be open to the first 300 people who showed up. Given that hundreds of Occupy Philadelphia protesters were planning to march from City Hall to the campus to protest the speech, that could have been lively audience. MORE UPDATE II: Daily Pennsylvanian has posted a transcript of the speech Cantor was to deliver LOS ANGELES TIMES: On Tuesday night’s episode of […]

CINEMA: Philadelphia Film Festival Opening Weekend

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The Philadelphia Film Festival is celebrating its 20th Anniversary with a festival of over 150 films running through November 3rd. This is the first weekend of the festival and there will be screenings Saturday and Sunday of major new works from The Duplas Brothers, (Jeff, Who Lives at Home with Jason Siegel and Susan Sarandon), the Dardenne Brothers (The Kid with the Bike), David Cronenberg (Viggo Mortensen as Freud in A Dangerous Method), Lar von Trier’s sci-fi apocalypse film Melancholia (with Kirsten Dunst), and Wim Wenders’ new 3-D dance documentary (Pima), plus revivals of the […]

EARLY WORD: The Nightmare Of Ecstacy

ED WOOD’S SLEAZE PAPERBACKS   CURATED BY MICHAEL DALEY AND JOHAN KUGELBERG EXHIBIT OPEN EVERYDAY 11AM-6PM Wed, Nov 2nd to Thu Dec 1st. Boo-Hooray Gallery 265 Canal St, #601, New York, NY 10013 The antiquarian mystique surrounding Edward Davis Wood Jr.’s career as an author of pornographic pulp fiction is legend. He wrote under a variety of pseudonyms, books were published and re-published under different titles, and occasionally under different author names. Multiple authors would share the same pseudonym, and the companies that published the titles weren’t the kind of operations that kept any kind of records, nor paid royalties, […]

BREAKING: Iraq War Is Over

NPR: A few minutes ago, President Obama announced that the war in Iraq was over. “After nearly nine years, the long war in Iraq will come to an end by the end of this year,” the president said. President Obama said he talked to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier today and they were both in complete agreement about how to proceed. Obama said that “as promised” by the end of the year all troops will withdraw from the country. He said that this means the relationship between Iraq and the United States will now be a normal one “between […]

Barry Feinstein, Iconic Rock Photographer, Dead At 80

NEW YORK TIMES: Barry Feinstein, a photographer who chronicled the lives of seminal rock ’n’ roll stars of the 1960s, and who was perhaps best known for the stark portrait of Bob Dylan on the cover of the 1964 album “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” died on Thursday in a hospital near his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 80. Besides his work with Mr. Dylan, Mr. Feinstein established his reputation as one of rock’s semiofficial official chroniclers with two 1970 photographs: one of Janis Joplin, taken the day before she died, which appeared on the cover of her final […]

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Stormtroopers Crush #OccupyMelbourne In Brutal Crackdown

WASHINGTON POST: Riot police in Australia’s second-largest city broke up a demonstration linked to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement Friday, after a group of around 100 people protesting corporate greed defied an order to vacate a plaza. Between 15 and 20 members of the “Occupy Melbourne” group were arrested and around 20 people, including two police officers, suffered minor injuries in the scuffle, Victoria state Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said. Several demonstrators screamed and cried as police dragged and carried them away from the city square, where protesters had been camped out for nearly a week. Around 100 “Occupy” […]

VICE PRESIDENTIAL BLUES: How I Tried To Change National Drug Policy & All I Got Was A Parking Ticket

BY TONY ABRAHAM I usually try to avoid talking about politics altogether and have more or less done so for most of my 21 years on Earth. But every once in a while, a political development will pique my interest. Such was the case when the boss called me up and asked me to cover Vice President Joe Biden’s jobs bill speech at Penn on Tuesday. Turns out Biden was bringing along Gil Kerlikowske, Obama’s director of White House drug policy (formerly known as the Drug Czar, and since he still behaves like one despite the name change, we’re gonna […]

CONTEST: Win Tix To See Andrew Bird At The Grand

We have a pair of tickets to see the always-excellent Andrew Bird at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington this Saturday! The first Phawker reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the correct answer to the following Andrew Bird trivia questions wins them: What is the name of the swing band Andrew Bird was a member of back in the 90s? Put BIRD in the subject line and include a mobile number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed!

THE HERMINATOR: How Cain Killed Hillary Care

WASHINGTON MONTHLY: In a surprising swing in the Republican presidential field, Herman Cain has rocketed to second place, just behind Mitt Romney. Like all the other candidates, he has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and even claimed (falsely) that he would have died from his liver cancer under Obamacare. Cain actually got his start in politics helping to defeat the 90’s health care reform plan. MORE NEWSWEEK: The Clintons would later blame “Harry and Louise,” the fictional couple in the ads aired by the insurance industry, for undermining health reform. But the real saboteurs are named Herman and […]

SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Die Hard And Fast

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY No long term care of the elderly and infirm (Medicare doesn’t cover it), but TRILLION$ for the butchery and burial of our bravest. God forbid we should sacrifice a weapons system or two, or a war here or there, to provide security and peace of mind to our senior citizens. Once again the Obama administration is left searching for veracity and missing vertebrae. Apparently the fact that the CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) program was predicted to become non-self-sustaining after its tenth year was sufficient cause for the Obama administration to fold its tent and signal a semi-provisional surrender. […]

DING DONG: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi Is Dead

NEW YORK TIMES: The head of the Libyan military council said that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed Thursday as fighters battling the vestiges of his fallen regime wrested control of his hometown of Surt after a prolonged struggle. Al-Jazeera television showed what it said was Colonel Qaddafi’s corpse as Libyans rejoiced. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the Tripoli military council, said on Al Jazeera that the former leader had been killed and that anti-Qaddafi forces had his body.The report of Colonel Qaddafi’s death by the highest ranking military officer in Libya’s interim government appeared to put an end to […]

CONCERT REVIEW: Little Dragon At Union Transfer

BY PELLE GUNTHER Little Dragon are such a tease. They come into the room, bursting with 80’s synth pop-giggles, tossing their R&B hair, running their beautiful electronic textures down my cheek, and winking their incredibly gifted vocalist, before standing up and walking away into another room full of overused-effects, bland instrumentation and immature composition. After a night of walking miles through Philly (long story) and trying to convince the Union Transfer’s WILL CALL people that YES I AM ON THE GUEST LIST, DAMMIT (turns out I wasn’t, but that’s another long story), I was hoping to be blown off my […]