GAWKER: You don’t need John Oliver to tell you that state lotteries—or, as your mom calls them, “the stupidity tax”—are a bad deal, but you may not have realized the extent to which they suck. State lotteries raked in $68 billion last year, money that comes disproportionately from the poor and from problem gamblers. It’s worse in states with video poker: Players in Oregon lost an average of $2,564 last year. And even when someone hits one of those fabled millions-t0-one jackpots, it’s hardly the dream the commercials promise. They blow through it in a few years, or someone steals […]
INCOMING: This American Guy
On Saturday November 15th, The 13th Annual First Person Arts Festival will present REINVENTING RADIO: AN EVENING WITH IRA GLASS at the Kimmel Center. Last week we got Mr. Glass on the horn for a little Q&A. DISCUSSED: The keys to good narrative; his favorite episode of This American Life; how the secret recordings of Carmen Segarra triggered a forthcoming Senate banking sub committee hearing on consumer protection; what is to be learned from the Mike Daisey fiasco; whether or not journalism, like art, can sometimes use a lie to tell a greater truth; why his parents actively dislike […]
CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES: Where Would We Be Without Philly.com’s Comments? Farther Along
If ever you are feeling a little bloated with faith in humanity and want to shed a few pounds of hope for the future, Philly.com comments section is the place to go for a for a painful reminder how far we have not come from those apes in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey bashing each other’s brains in with the bones of their brethren. This goes without saying, of course, but the minute we stop saying it, devolution has already won. Case in point: tucked beneath this eyebrow-raising story about the curious car crash that derailed PA […]
BEING THERE: FKA Twigs @ Union Transfer
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ Last night, FKA Twigs — aka The Next Big Thing out of England, and GF of Twilight star Robert Pattinson — arrived on stage for her sold out performance at Union Transfer to strains of “Preface,” the lead-off tracking from her debut, LP1. Slowly emerging from the sultry darkness of the stage, Twigs was draped in a silky white translucent robe and a matching flowing skirt, with a black caged bodysuit underneath and painfully high needle-thin stiletto pumps. Her hair, usually pulled back in her trademark space-bun style, was free flowing and used as […]
BEING THERE: Mark Lanegan @ Underground Arts
Photo by DAN LONG More than a few of my most trusted musical advisors told me “You have to go to Lanegan.” So when I heard he was playing Underground Arts I didn’t hesitate to follow suit, and I’m glad I did. For those of you who stayed home, you missed a beautiful performance that recreated choice cuts from the newly released Phantom Radio, as well as older stock like Blues Funeral and Bubblegum, to name but a few. From the gorgeous lullaby-like “Resurrection Song” to the synth heavy “Harborview Hospital” and the newly released “Floor of the Ocean,” Lanegan […]
Win Tix To See Suicide Girls BlackHeart Burlesque
After 13 years and at least as many piercings, Suicide Girls need no introduction, by now you know the drill: sultry tattooed hipster temptress pin-up parade coming to a horny town near you. Ah, the pageantry! The tube socks! The Stormtrooper helmets! These are the droids you have been looking for. God bless their blackened hearts. (Also, belated jeers to the History Channel who decided back in 2012 that having a real live SG on a show called Pawn Stars would somehow sully the high-falutin’ rep of the channel that brought you God, Guns & Automobiles and Biker Battleground […]
CINEMA: Interstellar Overdrive
Illustration by CHRIS B. MURRAY NEW YORKER: Interstellar, an outer-space survivalist epic created by the director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, with whom he co-wrote the screenplay, is ardently, even fervently incomprehensible, a movie designed to separate the civilians from the geeks, with the geeks apparently the target audience. Nolan’s 2010 movie, “Inception,” offered layers of dreaming consciousness, each outfitted with its own style of action. The film was stunning but meaningless—a postmodern machine, with many moving parts, dedicated to its own workings and little else. In “Interstellar,” however, Nolan goes for a master narrative. Like so many recent […]
Win Tix To See Tig Notaro @ The Troc Friday!
If Tig Notaro never existed we would have never thought to invent her, which not only points out the shortcomings of our imagination but also the depths of her originality. A tall drink of water in low-slung jeans with Billie Jean King hair, she speaks in a laconic drawl that is either medicated or chill to the point of Zen. She doesn’t so much tell jokes as construct these elaborate verbal Rube Goldberg Devices Of Funny and at the end, when you finally stop laughing, you’re like ‘I can’t believe that worked.’ If you’ve never heard her Taylor Dane […]
TELEVISION: Marquee Moon
They play the TLA December 29th!
THE NAKED TRUTH: Sexytime Q&A With Stripped Stories Hostesses Margot Leitman & Giula Rozzi
Photo by ANYA GARRETT Stripped Stories Margot Leitman (as seen on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central) and Giulia Rozzi (as seen on MTV, VH1, Chelsea Lately) come billed as storytelling’s sexiest duo, baring full-frontal id, ego and libido for howling horndog audiences from coast to coast. Stripped Stories has earned kudos from Time Out NY, Time Out LA, The Village Voice, and Playgirl lauds their “juiciest, jaw-dropping tales.” They come to Underground Arts on Saturday as part of the First Person Arts Festival. So we got Giula and Margot on the horn for a game of truth or […]
ALLAH LAS: Tell Me (What’s On Your Mind)
Very groovy. Nuggets-style pop geologists, i.e. fans of Cuban-heeled ’60s garage/surf rock, take note. They play Boot N’ Saddle on Sunday November 23rd. Plus, tour mates Tashaki Miyakiopen, think Tammy James & The Shondelles in the slow lane on the Autobahn,. RELATED: 2000 LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME: Q&A w/ Brian Jonestown Massacre Cult Leader Anton Newcombe
You’re Going To Miss The Internet When It’s Over
News reports say that Obama-appointed telecom stooge/FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is about to push through Net Neutrality rules that would let big companies discriminate against us, and break the internet as we know it. People are gathering in cities around the country to show that millions of us say no to rules that only benefit companies like Comcast, and limit our right to communicate. On November 6th, in solidarity with this nationwide action, we’ll gather at the Southwest corner of 17th and JFK Boulevard – http://bit.ly/1yVoudX – across the street from Comcast’s national headquarters. Bring cell phones, candles, and […]
INCOMING: The Deerhoof Hunter
No one asked to dance (Deerhoof) by Deerhoof When we first meet Bernard Jaffe, the Beatle-wigged “existential detective” played by Dustin Hoffman in David O. Russell’s 2004 impenetrable enigma of a black comedy I Heart Huckabees, he’s standing in front of a blackboard riddled with a Jackson Pollock-like splatter of chalk-drawn squares and rectangles. What, pray tell, do they add up to? Not much, as it turns out. Like life, they form an interconnected lattice of unrelated coincidences, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But hey, they look really cool when Hoffman leans against the blackboard and the […]