NEW YORK TIMES: It was in November 1971 that Mr. Cooper bought a $20 plane ticket from Portland to Seattle. (He used the name Dan Cooper, believed to be an alias, but a reporter heard it as D. B. Cooper, and that name has stuck.) With bomb in hand, Mr. Cooper ordered the plane to land in Seattle, where he allowed the three dozen passengers to exit in exchange for four parachutes and $200,000. Then he and a skeleton crew took off again. He demanded the plane fly south, but not above 10,000 feet. Somewhere over the Cascades in southwest […]
CONTEST: Win Tickets To See Death Cab At The Mann
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] We have pair of tickets to see Death Cab For Cutie this Friday night at the Mann Music Center with special guest Frightened Rabbit for the first Phawker reader that can tell us the origin of DCFC’s name. (Hint, it’s the title of a song written by another band) Email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM, be sure and include a day time phone number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed! UPDATE: We have a winner! Thanks to all for playing and stay tuned for more groovy giveaways.
WORTH REPEATING: Profiles In Cowardice
DICK POLMAN: Never before had a cadre of partisan zealots sought to drive the nation into default and crash the economy. Raising the debt ceiling had always been a bipartisan imperative; it had never been used as a bargaining chip in a game of chicken. But in response, Obama essentially said: “Let us reason together. If you will vote to raise the debt ceiling, I will agree to cut lots of government spending. But I am drawing a line in the sand. To close the budget deficit, we also need to raise a lot of new revenue. The rich should […]
SIDEWALKING: Untitled
Near Kesington & Somerset, 12:44 PM by JEFF FUSCO
PAUL KRUGMAN: Man Up, Mr. President
PAUL KRUGMAN: In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here. Did the president have any alternative this time around? Yes. First of all, he could and should have demanded an increase in the debt ceiling back in December. When […]
SIDEWALKING: Play Ball
Citizen’s Bank Park, 7:45 PM last night by JEFF FUSCO
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: Another Teen Mob Rampages In Center City, Beating And Robbing People
PHILLY.COM: A mob of teens [NOT pictured, above] injured at least two people and robbed others during a brief rampage Friday night in Center City, police said. About 9:15 p.m., police started receiving 911 calls of a group of 20 to 40 teens assaulting people. Police found a man on the ground bleeding badly from the head at Walnut and Juniper Streets. He was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.A street robbery was reported at 16th and Spruce Streets, police said. An iPhone was taken in that or another robbery. A man was assaulted at 15th and Sansom Streets, police […]
Schoolly D Not Happy To Find His Lyrics Inside Norwegian Psycho Killer’s 1,500 Page Rant
Deep inside Anders Breivik’s 1,400 page ‘manifesto’, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” in between all the raging Islamophobia, pathological nativism, and bomb-making instructions, the man who killed 77 innocent, unarmed people in cold blood, warns readers of the negative effect that gangsta rap lyrics have on society. In section 2.67 of the PDF version, Breivik includes a slightly bastardized version of John P McWhorter‘s 2003 anti-rap diatribe How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back, which singles out a few of the most sensational lines from Schoolly D’s proto-gangsta rap “PSK What Does It Mean?” to illustrate the toxicity of hip-hop: Copped […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Tea Party Is A Boehner Killer
[By KAL via THE ECONOMIST] BY WILLIAM C. HENRY “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” If Shakespeare was indeed correct—and I find no “earthly” reason to question his insight—you can expect to find those words displayed in bright neon lights above the graves of Boehner, Cantor & Ilk, followed by a blinking asterisk informing the faithful that there are empty coffins down below. Yeah, yeah, I know the matter has been pretty much ranted (me included) to death, but I thought I’d give it one last semi-comical college try before […]
CINEMA: When Worlds Collide
ANOTHER EARTH (2011, directed by Mike Cahill, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Another Earth is an under-baked, overly-somber indie drama that attempts to enliven its paper-thin premise with an overlay of spiritual sci-fi. While both the drama and the fantastical elements are under-developed and poorly-executed, this independently-produced Sundance award winner has a deep well of earnestness that gives the film its own unique cock-eyed passion. Like the low-budget Christian-themed films that played the church circuit in the 70s and 80s, Another Earth‘s soggy storytelling may skirt believability yet it casts an odd spell because it believes […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Melissa Febos’ new memoir, Whip Smart, details the four years she spent working as a dominatrix. Febos enacted fantasy sequences, spanked grown men and verbally humiliated them for $75 an hour in a dungeon located somewhere in midtown Manhattan. Febos, who writes that she got started in sex work to pay for a drug habit, tells Terry Gross that working in a dungeon felt like “being in a womb.” “Pretty much all of the dungeons were outfitted with some sort of coat rack-related thing that had all sorts of floggers, riding crops,” she says. “We had giant coils […]
COMING ATTRACTION: Win Death Cab Tix
A chance to win two tix to see Death Cab For Cutie at The Mann next Friday, look for it Monday on a Phawker near you!
THE FLOWERS OF EVIL: Crazy See, Crazy Do
THINK PROGRESS: In his manifesto, Breivik cites an assortment of right-wing figures, but a troubling theme is evident in the 1,500 page document. Breivik was directly influenced by the same cadre of American anti-Muslim activists that have gained a powerful following in the contemporary conservative movement in recent years. Many of the leading Islamophobes who inspired Breivik have also been responsible for a rising tide of hate campaigns, from the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” hysteria to a disturbing trend of demonstrations against Muslim Americans across the country: – Breivik cites neoconservative Islamophobe Frank Gaffney on opposition to Turkey joining the […]