Fake ACORN-baiting pimp/fake Congressional office telephone repairman/fake human being and convicted criminal James O’Keefe will be debating partisanship and journalism with Chase Whiteside tonight, as part of the Banjos At Dawn debate series, from 6-8 PM at Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, 2001 North 13th Street, Philadelphia. Even though we’re pretty sure it will be as productive as discussing race relations with the Klan, we can hardly wait. Previous instances of O’Keefe’s toxic, cartoonish, and deeply dishonest right-wing-douchebaggery-masquerading-as-legit-journalism documented on Phawker after the jump…
JAZZER: Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society
BY ZIVIT SHLANK JAZZ CORRESPONDENT Bassist and composer Joshua Abrams is truly mad musical scientist. His hypnotic brand of sonic invention, has been hailed by critics and designated by fans as occupying the forefront of the “post-everything” musical era. His explorations draw from many musical sources from indie rock and electronic, to modern jazz and hip-hop idioms, while infusing eclectic and indigenous world styles. Originally from Philadelphia, he’s been in Chicago for over 15 years and is quite ubiquitous on Chi-town’s improvised music scene. His countless collaborations as well as his own groups Town & Country and Natural Information Society, […]
MUST SEE TV: “I’m From 5th & Washington!”
Apparently this has been around for a while, but we just caught it last night on Tosh 2.0 and it cracked us the fuck up. Not sure what prompted the fisticuffs, but dude taking his shirt off and getting all up in the other guy’s grill proved to be a fatal strategic error. Hollering “I’m from 5th and Washington!” was apparently another because it seemed to have given the guy in the designer jeans and pointy shoes superhuman strength. Not that we approve of this kind of thing, but it looks to us like shirtless dude got what he had […]
INCONVENIENT TRUTH: NAACP Sues City And Clear Channel For Refusing To Run Fact-Based Airport Ad
NAACP: The NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit today against the City of Philadelphia for violating the First Amendment, after Philadelphia International Airport refused to accept an advertisement promoting criminal justice reform. The advertisement highlights America’s high incarceration rate. The city claimed that the ad had been rejected because it does not accept “issue” or “advocacy” advertisements at the airport. However, the airport has accepted numerous other ads relating to political and social issues. The lawsuit is also against Clear Channel Outdoor, which handles advertising for Philadelphia’s airport, because […]
Don’t You Remember You Told Me You Loved Me Baby
SALON: I didn’t react well to the news that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, king and queen of the indie-rock scene, were getting divorced after 27 years of marriage. How could New York’s “underground power couple” call it quits? As if they were mere mortals? It came up on my Twitter feed Friday, which made the news seem all the worse — a bit of factual flotsam on my phone. It wasn’t some cocktail party rumor. I felt sick and off-balance, searching for confirmation, vision blurred with tears. I thought, I feel like I’m reading an obituary. “Are you fucking […]
PRICELESS: Romney & Perry Almost Come To Blows
SALON: Thus did Perry turn to Romney on Tuesday night and say: “You hired illegals in your home, and you knew about it for a year. And the idea that you stand here before us and you talk about that you’re strong on immigration is on its face the heighth (sic) of hypocrisy.” Whether Romney handled this ably or terribly is a matter of interpretation. […] Perry clearly got under his skin in a way that no other candidate has this year, and it showed, particularly when Perry tried to interject during Romney’s answer and Romney responded by stepping toward […]
CRADLE OF DEMOCRACY: Occupy Wall Street Movement To Stage National Convention In Philly
OCCUPY WALL STREET: The Action Plan is ambitious and calls for the election of a National General Assembly to convene on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia. This National General Assembly will consist of 870 Delegates elected from the 435 Congressional districts. Each Congressional district shall elect one woman and one man by direct ballot voting. These Delegates will attend the National General Assembly in July where a final Petition for the Redress of Grievances will be voted upon and delivered to all three branches of the federal government before the 2012 election. If the final Petition for the Redress of […]
You Know #OWS Is Doing Something Right When Rush Limbaugh Is Scared Shitless, The FBI Is Hacking Their Email & Both Romney & Obama Are Sucking Up
MEDIAITE: Limbaugh later accused President Obama of being behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, saying that it was driven by Tea Party envy from left-leaners. “The Democrats are so jealous of [the] Tea Party, they can’t see straight,” Limbaugh said. “Obama’s responsible for this. This kind of thing is not spontaneous, they didn’t bubble up out of nothing; they’ve had to create this, they’ve had to pay for it. They’re advertising.” MORE GAWKER: The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for a month. And it seems the FBI and NYPD have had help tracking protesters’ moves thanks to […]
EARLY WORD: Sister Christian Gets Her Due
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973), the pioneering gospel musician, will be honored by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission with the dedication of an Historical Marker at her former North Philadelphia home (1102 Master Street) on Monday, October 24, 2011 at 1:00PM. In addition, on this day, there will be a free film presentation of the recently released documentary, The Godmother of Rock & Roll: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, in the Central Philadelphia Library (1901 Vine Street) auditorium at 7:30PM. The film is produced and directed by Mick Csaky. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was one of gospel music’s first superstar and its original […]
THE HORROR: Plot Thickens At Tacony Dungeon
INQUIRER: The woman charged with keeping four adults with mental disabilities locked in a squalid Tacony basement while collecting their Social Security checks may have victimized dozens of others, police said Monday. When Linda Ann Weston was arrested Sunday, she had identification records for as many as 50 people in her possession, including power of attorney paperwork, forms of identification, and Social Security numbers, according to Philadelphia Police Lt. Ray Evers. The documents suggest that Weston has been running a wide-ranging fraud operation, he said. “She might have been doing this for years, probably since she got out of prison,” […]
SIDEWALKING: Teach Your Children Well
Washington Square, 10:09 AM by JONATHAN VALANIA
The Super Hassles Of Being A Real-Life Superhero
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Fabio Heuring was standing outside a Seattle nightclub with a friend on a Saturday night, smoking cigarettes, when a man bolting from a bouncer ran into them. Enraged, the man ripped off his shirt in the middle of the street and prepared to give Heuring’s buddy a beating. Just then, in swooped a bizarre sight: a self-proclaimed superhero in a black mask and matching muscle-suit. He doused the aggressor with pepper spray, much to Heuring’s shocked relief. A couple hours later, though, using those tactics on another group of clubgoers would land the superhero – Benjamin Fodor, better […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR MAUREEN CORRIGAN: Sometimes the stories that stay with us aren’t the classics or even all that polished. They’re what some critics call “good-bad” stories: The writing may be workmanlike and the characters barely developed, but something about them is so potent that they’re unforgettable — so unforgettable they can attain the status of myth. I’ve long wanted to give a nod to one of these “accidental myth-makers,” novelist and short-story writer Jack Finney. The fact that Finney would have turned 100 this month gives me an occasion. Finney started out in advertising before he became a science-fiction and […]