BY TOMMY ZANE February made me shiver and April was just as shrinkage-inducing, if you know what I mean. During the recent warm weather, though, I hit the clubs and shook it up as all gay folk should at some point. Seriously, it’s in the Queer Handbook, Rule #297. Anyway, aside from Ben Gay, here’s what’s currently warming cockles: HOUSE MUSIC I don’t mean the crap that passes for it today. I’m talking about the shit gay folks popularized in the mid-80s and perfected around ’92. Everything from George Kranz’s 1985 “Din Daa Daa,” thru to Philly’s own Josh Wink, […]
Vallas Cries Uncle, Tells Street To ‘Pogue Mahone’
BY SUSAN SNYDER INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Philadelphia School District chief executive officer Paul Vallas, who brought hope and a whirlwind of change to the 174,000-student system, says he will leave soon and take his family home to Chicago.”I’m done,” Vallas said in a telephone interview last night. “I made a commitment to stay here five years. I think five years is enough.” He said he would at least finish the school year but would not be specific about a departure date. The news came as no surprise to district insiders, who have heard the rumors for weeks that Vallas would […]
KURT VONNEGUT RIP: ‘Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt’ — Epitaph From Slaughterhouse Five
NEW YORK — Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Cat’s Cradle,” died Wednesday. He was 84. Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking habit, had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz. The author of at least 19 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays, Vonnegut relished the role of a social critic. He lectured […]
HIZZONER ’07: A PHAWKER TV NEWS BULLETIN
SPECIAL REPORT: Meet the men who would be mayor. See what they see, smell what they smell, eat what they eat.
BREAKING: $teven $tarr On The $elling Block?
[Via DownByTheHipster] It seems Starwood Capital CEO and hospitality visionary Barry Sternlicht’s buying spree may not end with B.R. Guest. A little birdy let us know that Philly’s most famous (and pompous) restaurateur may be the next target for Sternlicht’s firm, saying “Starwood Capital may be looking to buy the Starr Restaurant Organization and then make a play to take back control of Starwood Hotels.” Hmm, Starr just made a successful move into Atlantic City (Continental, Buddakan) and NYC (Buddakan and Morimoto), and with Continental NYC coming soon, why sell now? DEVELOPING….
POPPED! PICKS: THE NOTEKILLERS & THE LOW BUDGETS & NORTHERN LIBERTIES (The Band)
NOTE: All this week we will be running our Popped! Fest Band Libs. Northern Liberties 1. We are called Northern Liberties because we are a noospheric oratory rite, transmitting holographic emblems, resonating neural linguistic imprinting, brazenly eulogizing radiant terrestrial imagined entities, stridently. 2. No, that is not a stupid name for a band and it is unenlightened of you to say that. 3. We are a band because we received the command, and it is a way for us to partially reveal our plan. 4. If we were not a band, we would be a pigeon, a beehive, or a […]
BREAKING: House Of Cash Burns Down
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – The Tennessee home of late country icon Johnny Cash burned down on Tuesday as renovations were under way for its new owner, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, a local newspaper reported. Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived together in the three-story, wooden lakeside house in Hendersonville, Tennessee, about 20 miles north of Nashville, from 1968 until they died within months of each other in 2003. The Hendersonville Star News quoted a fire official as saying the blaze probably started when fumes from a wood preservative used in the renovations were ignited by a […]
FILM FEST PICKS: COMEDY POWER; CRUDE AWAKENINGS; DIRTY CARNIVALS
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC In my years devising strategies for tackling Film Fests I always skipped attending offerings like A Comedy of Power. It has nothing to do with the quality of Claude Chabrol’s latest thriller, it is just that you should get ample chance to catch up with the film during its regular run or on home video. Chabrol is a dependable talent who has had his films distributed in the states beginning with 1968’s Les Bitches through 2003’s Flower of Evil. However since A Comedy of Power opened in New York way back in January, the era […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
SWORDFISH & TROMBONES: Grandchildren, Popped! Fest, Last Night [FLICKR] EVA SAYS: Holy shit! I am so hyped up on Monster Energy Drink right now it’s not even funny. It’s 3:23 in the morning, I’ve smoked my third cigarette in a row, and I’ve just read this last sentence over five times. Whoever thought of giving out free mega doses of glucose and sucrose in sugar-water beverages to kids at an avant-garde, prog-rock, DIY West Philly show is either an asshole or a genius — I haven’t decided yet. Luckily, the task ahead of me deserves all the energy I […]
Plot Thickens For Man Questioned In Atlantic City Sex Worker Serial Killings
BY SAM WOOD INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Salem County authorities have seized another box of items from the home of a man who was questioned last week in the slayings of four Atlantic City women.The man, Terry Oleson, 34, has been jailed since Friday, when he was charged with invasion of privacy – an accusation unrelated to the corpses of four prostitutes who were found in a watery ditch in Egg Harbor Township in November. The charge stems from the discovery of a videotape showing a naked teenage girl, found by investigators during a search of Oleson’s Alloway Township home, his […]
HEY LADIES: Dirk Diggler Is Comin’ To Town
Mark Wahlberg has decided that Philadelphia is The Happening place to be. The actor, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance in Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed, has signed on to star in writer/director M. Night Shyamalan‘s apocalyptic thriller — set to begin filming in the City of Brotherly Love this fall. Wahlberg will reportedly play a family man determined to do whatever it takes to save his loved ones from a cataclysmic crisis. [via BoxOffice.com]
ATTORNEY GENERAL SUBPOENAED BY CONGRESS
WASHINGTON — Democrats subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for more documents Tuesday, escalating their fight with the Bush administration over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. The subpoena, issued a week before Gonzales was scheduled to testify before Congress about the dismissals, seeks hundreds of documents either withheld or heavily blacked out by his department. The subpoena sets a Monday deadline for Gonzales to produce the documents. “We have been patient in allowing the department to work through its concerns regarding the sensitive nature of some of these materials,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., wrote Gonzales in a […]