Father, Mother and Baby Owls, Jeff Fusco’s Back Yard, 2:15 PM Sunday by JEFF FUSCO
GIVE UNTIL IT HELPS: Gardening At Night
[Detail from “Garden Of Earthly Delights” by HIERONYMOUS BOSCH] The Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger recently teamed up with Groupon to raise funds for a community garden in the Francisville area of Philadelphia. The goal of the garden is to provide a bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables to local food pantries and soup kitchens, supporting their efforts to feed local children and protect families at risk for hunger. With funding for raised garden beds, seeds, equipment, and planting and distribution expenses, the Coalition Against Hunger can establish this community garden and help hunger-relief programs improve the nutritional quality of […]
INCOMING: David Comes Alive
Exceptionally well-made mini-doc about David Comes To Life, the new album by this clean-cut Canadian guitar army with the gentle giant lead singer and a naughty name. Comes out June 7th on Matador. They play First Unitarian on June 26th.
GASLAND: Chesapeake Energy Fined $1 Million For Contaminating The Drinking Water Of 16 Families
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Pennsylvania state regulators have fined natural gas drilling company Chesapeake Energy Corp. more than $1 million, which officials said Tuesday is the single largest fine for an oil or gas operator in the state. The state Department of Environmental Protection said the fine stems from Chesapeake’s contamination of private water supplies in northern Pennsylvania’s Bradford County and a February tank fire at a drilling site in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Washington County. In Bradford County, the department said that improper well casing and cementing allowed natural gas to seep into groundwater and contaminate 16 families’ drinking water wells. The department began investigating […]
THE SPERMINATOR: Schwarzeneggers Split After Arnold Admits To Fathering Love Child With The Maid
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, have separated, with Shriver moving out of their Brentwood mansion while the two determine the next step in their 25-year marriage. Shriver has been residing apart from the actor-turned-politician for the last few weeks. The former first couple confirmed the separation in a joint statement released Monday after questions from The Times. “This has been a time of great personal and professional transition for each of us,” the statement read. “After a great deal of thought, reflection, discussion and prayer, we came to this decision together. At this […]
TONITE: Me Likey Likke
SPIN: Li’s new album, Wounded Rhymes, is equal parts seething ice princess and lonely snowwoman, vacillating almost track by track between fury and despondence over a scotched relationship. “Unrequited Love,” a sort of Spector-ish torch song, with its lightly strummed guitar and girl-group shoowop-shoowas, is one of the year’s saddest, prettiest moments. And then on follow-up “Get Some,” for which Yttling imports heaving tribal drums, Li is back on the prowl, tenaciously conflating herself with a prostitute as she writhes all over the track. The dual objectives — weep for me, fear me — collide throughout, creating a dicey, but […]
SILLY SEASON FINALE: The Donald Is Done
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] WASHINGTON POST: Wealthy businessman Donald Trump announced Monday that he won’t seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, bringing an end to the circus-like speculation that had surrounded the reality star’s political future in recent months. “I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election,” Trump said in a statement. “Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.” Trump’s decision brings to an end a political roller coaster ride on which the […]
Ex-Khyber/Terror Dude’s Testimony Could Prove Far More Damning To Pakistan Than Osama’s Hideout
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] THE GUARDIAN: [David Coleman] Headley, a Pakistani-American, is soon to appear in a federal court in Chicago as a prosecution witness against Rana Tawahhur Hussein, a Chicago area businessman of Pakistani descent. Hussein is accused of providing financial and logistical support to terrorists who carried out the deadly Mumbai terror attack in 2008.A first generation immigrant, Headley was born Daood Sayed Gilani. The son of a Pakistani father and an American mother, Headley changed his name to a more non-Pakistani-sounding one to avoid suspicion and to make it easier for him to travel to south Asia, […]
CINEMA: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
DAVID EDELSTEIN: A middle-aged husband is cast out, forced to move his belongings and furniture (including his comfy easy chair) to his lawn, where he sits getting blotto—until a young couple invades his new world, mistaking it for a yard sale. […] That lawn with its scraps of a ruined life is a setting both satirical and poignant, and Will Ferrell gives a performance of Chekhovian depth. I’d say Ferrell’s work is a revelation, except it isn’t. Even in slapstick comedies like Step Brothers, he shows a delicate touch, his child-men holding onto a defensive arrogance that barely conceals their […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Adele At The Electric Factory
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER It is a fitting coincidence that Brit ‘It Girl’ Adele launched her much-anticipated stateside tour the same weekend that “Bridesmaids,” Team Apatow’s rowdy girl-centric answer to “The Hangover,” opens in theaters across the country. The former is a budding superstar, the latter is a burgeoning box office hit, and the common ground is that Adele is the celebrated maker of mass-appeal music that could aptly be described as chick-flick soul. Her calling card, of course, is that voice: Big, bracing and acrobatic enough to wow the nattering class that tunes in weekly for “American […]
WORTH REPEATING: Dead Man Talking
NEW YORK TIMES: “[Richard Holbrooke] thought that this could become Obama’s Vietnam,” Marton recalled. “Some of the conversations in the Situation Room reminded him of conversations in the Johnson White House. When he raised that, Obama didn’t want to hear it.” Because he was fiercely loyal to his friend Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, Holbrooke bit his lip and kept quiet in public. But he died in December, and Marton and some of his friends (me included) believe it’s time to lift the cone of silence and share his private views. […] Holbrooke opposed the military “surge” in […]
MUST SEE TV: Live Action Ambiguously Gay Duo
The always hilarious Ambiguously Gay Duo returns from limbo, bigger and better than ever. Roughly half way through it transforms from animation to live action, and best of all the Duo is played by Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm and Jimmy Fallon. Also featuring Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrel. Easily the funniest thing since Sarah Palin said she wasn’t racist anti-rap because she knows all the words to “Rapper’s Delight.”
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: The Religious Right Is Wrong
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY The following can be found in in Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution: No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. Really? That being the case, I wonder why I can’t find corresponding language EXEMPTING participants in such “intercourses of congenial spirits” as the two-day all-expenses-paid (by their congregations no doubt) Pastors Policy Briefing which was held in Des Moines, Iowa on March 24th? Must have been written in disappearing ink. Conferences under the same guise have been held over the past few years […]