BY SAINT JOHN BARNED-SMITH So this ends my time as a Peace Corps Trainee. I’m officially a Volunteer, and we are now at T-2 years and counting. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve learned through this process, how I might have changed, how I might change in the future. First, I’m learning how to handle awkward and uncomfortable better. This is a skill I think I’d already started to develop as a reporter – it’s not particularly fun or easy to ask a man how his mother was shot to death by her cracked out boyfriend for a […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News is leaving as part of the transition to new ownership by company creditors. Brian Tierney will step down as chief executive on May 21, and as publisher when the sale closes in late June or early July, the company said. “It’s obviously with a certain sense of sadness when you see the folks around here that you’ve enjoyed working with,” Tierney, 53, said. However, he noted that the Inquirer has survived for more than 180 years. “The future is bright. I want to be cheering them on the […]

Laura Marling, Mercury Prize nominee and darling of the NME, is playing a show at JB’s along with Jack White’s pet phantom-blues band Smoke Fairies.  Laura Marling is genius for several reasons.  I could tell you about how gorgeous her melodies are, or her album’s excellent production, or her clear, crystalline British voice that reminds you of lakes and woods and flannel, or how good looking she is, or how in love with her I am, but honestly the best thing about Laura Marling is her lyrics.  Confessional, poetic, wry, and most of all, they all feel true.  She presents […]

MOTHER JONES: It’s not easy to stick a label on Daniel Clowes. In his 30-year-plus career, he’s gone from submitting cartoons to Cracked to drawing New Yorker covers. He’s illustrated a Ramones video and been nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting. His comics have switched agilely between styles and genres, from the retro kitsch of Lloyd Llewellyn to the grotesque noir of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, from Pussey!‘s knowing send-up of comic nerddom to Ghost World‘s affecting portrait of teenage melancholy. Newsweek has hailed him as America’s “premier underground cartoonist,” yet that tag barely begins to […]

DEADLINE: In the latest example of Hollywood alchemy that mixes real historical figures with flesh-eating zombies, Double Feature partners Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher have optioned Paul Is Undead, an Alan Goldsher novel that re-imagines the history of The Beatles–with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr re-cast as zombies. Written as oral history, the book details how Lennon, a zombie guitarist in Liverpool, kills and reanimates McCartney, then does the same with Harrison and Starr. They create hits and bloody mayhem across the world, pursued by England’s greatest zombie hunter, Mick Jagger. They also engage in a […]

COPS RULE DEATH OF TWO NORTHEAST PHILLY KIDS SUICIDES Authorities in Philadelphia have ruled the deaths of two children, ages 9 and 11, suicide but say their deaths are unrelated. Police say the 11-year-old girl strangled herself with a scarf on May 4 and the 9-year-old boy hanged himself with a belt on May 7. Philadelphia police Capt. John McGinnis says neither child exhibited any warning signs before they killed themselves. Investigators say the two children were from different neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia and went to different schools. They do not appear to be connected in any way. McGinnis says […]

INQURER: The beleaguered principal of South Philadelphia High resigned Thursday, abruptly ending her controversial tenure after it was revealed that her state certificate was inactive. School officials made the announcement in the afternoon, after The Inquirer asked about the status of LaGreta Brown’s certification to work as principal. The state Department of Education confirmed that the certificate, issued in 2000, was inactive because Brown had not fulfilled a requirement for continuing education. Brown’s resignation, on the day teachers were to take a vote of no confidence against her, ended a turbulent tenure at the 900-student school. On Dec. 3, the […]

[via THE BIG PICTURE] NPR: NPR’s Richard Harris has learned that much more oil, 70,000 barrels a day or more than ten times the official estimate, is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon pipe, based on scientific analysis of the video released Wednesday. That’s the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days. Assuming the flow rate has been steady since the gusher started on April 20, the gulf spill surpassed the Exxon Valdez in the first four days. MORE NEW YORK TIMES: Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of […]

SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY POLL: Congressman Joe Sestak (49 percent) leads incumbent Arlen Specter (40 percent) by 9 points in the race for U.S. Senate among likely Democratic Primary voters in Pennsylvania, according to a poll released today by the Suffolk University Political Research Center. Twelve percent of voters were undecided. The winner of the Democratic Primary will most likely face Republican Pat Toomey, who led Peg Luksik 60 percent to 9 percent in the Republican Primary for U.S. Senate. MORE USA TODAY: Sestak, who is 58 and has great hair, brags about his surge in the polls in his latest ad, […]