WHO: The Dismemberment Plan is a Washington D.C. based indie rock band formed on January 1, 1993. Also known as D-Plan or The Plan, the name comes from a stray phrase uttered by insurance salesman Ned Ryerson in the popular comedy Groundhog Day. While drawing heavily from previous Washington-based art-punk acts such as Fugazi and Jawbox, the Dismemberment Plan were significant for incorporating R&B (in stage banter, Morrison often talked of his obsession with Gladys Knight) and hip-hop influences to their sound. Influential indie rock criticism website Pitchfork Media has called them the fathers of the late-1990s/early-2000s dance-punk movement, […]
SPARKS & RECREATION: Oregon, Alaska And Washington D.C. Vote To Legalize Marijuana
VOX: Voters in Oregon narrowly rejected recreational marijuana legislation in 2012, but had the chance to reconsider the issue Tuesday, passing the measure with 54% in favor and becoming the third state in the nation to legalize weed, after Colorado and Washington. The measure, which will not take effect until July 1, allows possession of up to eight ounces of marijuana, while cultivating four plants. Pot shops will be regulated like liquor stores and would only be open to people over the age of 21. MORE TIME: Legalization advocates also won a victory in Washington, D.C. With nearly 70% […]
WORTH REPEATING: Citizen Pierre
Illustration by MATTHEW WOODSON NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Earlier this year, Greenwald, Poitras, and a third comrade in arms — former Nation writer Jeremy Scahill — launched a website called the Intercept. It is meant to be the prototype for a fleet of publications funded by Omidyar’s flagship company, First Look Media, to which Omidyar has initially committed $250 million. “We have the luxury of doing something different because we have this kind of infinite-resource backer,” Greenwald told me on the phone from Brazil, where he is based. “We’re thinking about how to do journalism structurally differently.” At the time of […]
Win Tix To First Person Arts’ Grand Story Slam!
First Person Arts is a Philadelphia nonprofit organization that celebrates the power of the personal. Their storytelling, social impact, and festival programs reinforce their mission: everyone has a story to tell, and sharing these stories connects us with each other and the world. For 13 years they have been hosting StorySlams around the city, wherein local storytellers got head to head in front of a live audience and a panel of celebrity judges (full disclosure, we judged one of these suckers) for a chance to proceed to the next round. On Thursday at the Prince Music theater Winners of […]
RIP: Car Talk‘s Tom Magliozzi, One Half Of Brothers Tappet, Heads To The Great Big Puzzler In The Sky
NEW YORK TIMES: On the air, the brothers were a team, swapping stories, chortling at each other’s jokes. Ray, who is 12 years younger, has a higher-pitched voice; Tom had the deeper voice and a laugh that tended to run away with itself. Both had unmistakable Boston accents. When asked who was Click and who was Clack, “they said they didn’t know,” Mr. Berman recalled. Another favorite line, he said, was “that they shared one brain, and were each working with a half.” Thomas Louis Magliozzi (pronounced mal-YOT-zee) was born on June 28, 1937, in a largely Italian-American section […]
THE GAME IS RIGGED: Until Elections Are Publicly Financed, Voting Will Continue To NOT Matter
TIME: Evidence suggests that the U.S. Congress is less popular today than the British crown was in the 13 colonies at the time of the American Revolution. So why do voters continue to send so many incumbents back to Washington? The system is rigged, argues Larry Lessig, a maverick Harvard Law School professor and prominent advocate for campaign finance reform. According to Lessig, the outcome of many Congressional elections are decided ahead of the vote by a tiny fraction of the population – the donors who give to Super PACs. In order to combat the undue influence of these political-action […]
Bobby’s In The Basement Mixin’ Up The Medicine
PHAWKER: Anyone under 30 probably wonders what all the fuss is about. But there was a time when Dylan was the all-seeing eye atop the pyramid of rock, a razor-thin, wild-haired visionary speaking in stoned parables and meth- riddles about the nature of transcendental consciousness from behind impenetrable black shades. His every utterance was scrutinized for prophetic import. His status as generational oracle was earned by a triumvirate of hallucinatory folk-rock albums–1965’s Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited and 1966’s Blonde On Blonde–that he would spend the rest of his career simultaneously trying to live up […]
CINEMA: Night Moves
NIGHTCRAWLER (2014, directed by Dan Gilroy, 117 minutes, U.S.) THE GUEST (2014, directed by Adam Wingard, 99 minutes, U.S.) BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP (2014, directed by Rowan Joffe, 92 minutes, U.K.) HORNS (2013, directed by Alexandre Aja, 120 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC A new financial reality has hit Hollywood as the range of films they once made has seemingly tightened. Of course we know they’re funding gargantuan super hero films and CGI-driven blockbusters but further down the budget ladder are modest action films with middle-aged stars, relatively inexpensive youth comedies and low budget horror films. […]
BEING THERE: Glitch Mob @ The Electric Factory
Photo by CLAYTON RUSSELL It was a creepy, bone-chilling Halloween at the Electric Factory and just about everyone came dressed for the occasion — a cross-generational array of costumes that spanned The Fonz from Happy Days to Finn from Adventure Time. With high fives and good vibes being thrown all around the venue you could tell that everyone was ready for there to party and party hard. So hard an ambulance was on standby outside of the Electric Factory for when it gets crazy. With most EDM shows you go to there’s a person or two behind a DJ booth […]
CINEMA: Wings Of Desire
BIRDMAN (OR THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE (2014, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, 119 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Birdman would appear to be the most acclaimed film of the year and it is easy to be swept up as its backstage drama takes flight. This sort of behind-the-curtains look at the world of theater has a long history in the world of small scale art films but director Alejando González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) juices up the precedings with a modern blockbuster dynamism and creates a film that is unlike much else we’ve seen in modern […]
BEING THERE: The Damned @ TLA
Photo by DAN LONG Halloween came to Philly a day early with last night’s lineup of punk legends at the TLA. The night started early with a solid set of moody garage-rock from local faves A Brood Of Vipers. I always like to see a local band on the bill with a touring band, and Vipers were an excellent match for this stop on the Hallow-East tour. The crowd and the energy grew and as Seattle’s The Briefs took the stage, blasting out a solid set of buzzsaw anthems. Let the pogo-ing and raucous Buzzcocky New Wave Punk commence! You […]
MALALAGATE: The New ‘Freedom Fries’
BY JONATHAN VALANIA So, the National Constitution Center went and did a dumb thing. They went and told 14-year-old Ayla Potamkin [pictured below, far right] that her love-letter-in-song to America would be featured in last week’s Liberty Medal award ceremony. More accurately, they told her rich-man father, he of the Potamkin auto dealer empire. Or even more accurately, her rich-man father’s proxies, consigliere-to-the-powerful Ed Rendell and advertising exec Elliott Curson, no doubt completing the circle of some unspoken quid pro quo started years ago, presumably when Rendell was still a political actor. But, to be clear, that’s just speculation. The […]
CINEMA: Even Better Than The Real Thing
Art And Craft, which opens at the Ritz At The Bourse on tomorrow, follows the monkeyshines of eccentric self-described “philanthropist” and “art collector” Mark Landis, who donates famous works from his collection to museums around the country that could never afford to purchase them. Unbeknownst to the museums is the fact that all the works are actually forgeries — forgeries Landis created with his own two hands. In fact, Landis is considered the most prolific art forger of all time. Eventually Matthew Leininger, then a staffer at the Cincinnati Museum Of Art, discovers the ruse and begins tracking Landis […]