Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Upon his arrival onstage last night at the Tower Theater, Flying Louts (a.k.a. Steven Ellison) tilted his head skyward and petitioned the ‘Whiskey Fairy’ for a divine intervention. FlyLo was, he said, about to spirit-guide the jam-packed audience to their ego deaths, which is no easy task without an entire bottle of liquor at the ready. Then, with a maniacal grin, Flying Lotus informed the Tower crowd that they were dead and with that the wild rumpus had begun. Though terrifyingly ominous at times, Flying Lotus’ signature spaced-out jazz-infused electro-ambient hip-hop whosiewhatsit set sent the […]
THE GOOD SHEPHERD: A Q&A With Globe-Trotting New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Last week we got New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on the horn to discuss his new book, A Path Appears, co-authored with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, which extols the innovative but largely un-heralded efforts of a dedicated few to leave the world a better place than they found it. Just a few days prior, Kristof had been at the center of a cultural storm that erupted in the wake of his appearance on REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER along with Ben Affleck and Sam Harris, so we gave him an opportunity to clarify some points […]
THE STREETS OF LAREDO: Slow Train
Brooklyn’s The Streets Of Laredo play The Boot & Saddle on October 26th with Line & Circle.
INCOMING: Put A Beard On It
He plays the Beacon Theater on November 8th as part of Comedy Central’s New York Comedy Festival.
Win Tix To Wiz Khalifa @ The Piazza Sunday
Artwork by danb13 On Sunday October 19th, Forbes’ Under 30 Music Fest — featuring Wiz Khalifa, indie rocker LP and Philly’s own much-buzzed about hip-hop duo OCD: Moosh and Twist, and DJ Afrojack — will throw down at the Piazza at Schmidts. The Forbes Under 30 Music Festival will kick off the first-ever Forbes Under 30 Summit, a gathering in Philadelphia, Oct 20-22, of 1,000 of America’s most outstanding young entrepreneurs and leaders. To win tickets all you have to do is take two minutes to help end extreme poverty. There are four ways to do this, pick one: 1. […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Secret Sharer
THE NEW YORKER: [Laura Poitras] turned to the documentary’s opening shot: a tunnel in Hong Kong, filmed with a narrow aperture, so that the camera appeared to be speeding through black space. A pattern of lights flashed overhead like Morse-code dashes. It created an ominous mood, evoking the beginning of David Lynch’s “Lost Highway.” The sound of wind rose and, in voice-over, an unidentified female—Poitras—read one of the first e-mails she received from Snowden: “At this stage I can offer nothing more than my word. I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community.” Bonnefoy stopped the film. […]
POT CALLS KETTLE BLACK: A Day In The Life Of A Colorado Black Market Weed Dealer
WASHINGTON POST: New figures from the Colorado Department of Revenue show that recreational marijuana sales continued to climb in August, the most recent month for which data are available. Recreational sales totaled approximately $34.1 million in August, up from $29.3 million the previous month. MORE
TONITE: Win Tix To See Flying Lotus @ The Tower
Boy, oh boy! You lucky ducks! The Tower just dropped into our lap a small chunk of tix to see sonic sorcerer Flying Lotus at the Tower Theater tonight. Time is short so we’re gonna keep this one easy-peasy. All you have to do is join our mailing list (at the bottom of the masthead) and then send us a note at FEED@PHAWKER.COM telling us you do so along with your full name and mobile number for confirmation and the magic words FLYING LOTUS in the subject line. Good luck and…er, what’s that? You have no earthly idea who […]
LISTEN: Howard Stern Vs. Neil Young
DISCUSSED: Manson, Kent State, Buffalo Springfield, “Southern Man,” Pono, Woodstock, CSNY
NICK KRISTOF: When Whites Just Don’t Get It
NEW YORK TIMES: After the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., I wrote a couple of columns entitled “When Whites Just Don’t Get It.” The reaction to those columns — sometimes bewildered, resentful or unprintable — suggests to me that many whites in America don’t understand the depths of racial inequity lingering in this country. This inequity is embedded in our law enforcement and criminal justice system, and that is why Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America’s Mandela. For decades he has fought judges, prosecutors and police on behalf of those who are impoverished, black or both. When […]
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES: A Complete Guide To The High Ranking State Officials Who Ran The Corbett Administration’s Email Smut-Peddling Ring
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: [Pennsylvania State Attorney General Kathleen] Kane ignited the war in 2012, when she made a central theme of her campaign criticism of how [then-top prosecutor Frank] Fina‘s team in the Attorney General’s Office conducted the investigation into serial sex abuser Jerry Sandusky.[…] Though the review failed to back up Kane’s campaign rhetoric, it gave her a new and unexpected source of ammunition in the feud: Forensic computer work found that Fina, among dozens of others, had traded explicit [pornographic] photos and videos between 2008 and 2102 on state time on state computers. The X-rated e-mails were among […]
3-MINUTE DOCUMENTARY: David Lynch Explains Why The Horror Of Philadelphia In The Late ’60s Remains His Primary Source Of Artistic Inspiration
On September 10th, 2014, David Lynch gave a press conference at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to promote DAVID LYNCH: The Unified Field, the first major retrospective of his paintings in an American art museum. The retrospective is something of a homecoming for Lynch who studied painting at PAFA from 1966-1967, back when the City of Brotherly Love was a desolate hellscape of decay and despair after years of white flight, industrial collapse and seething racial animus. From 1965-1970, Lynch lived in a section of the city that has come to be known as The Eraserhood. It was in […]
GOAT: Hide From The Sun
SUB POP: There is no direct association between mysterious Swedish psychedelicists GOAT and revered Argentinian master of magical realism, Jorge Luis Borges. Yet their mission appears to be the same. Borges generated his ideas from historical curiosities across the globe—gaucho knife duels on the South American plains, Middle Eastern heresiarchs plotting treacheries in secret libraries, Chinese pirates waging wars against the Emperor—and twisted them into fictions that blurred the lines between fortified footnotes and outright fantasy. GOAT’s sound is the sonic manifestation of this principle, as evidenced in their aptly-named debut album World Music, which incorporated elements of Nigerian afrobeat, […]