BY PAUL MAHER JR. When I was just a kid in Lowell, Massachusetts during the 1970s, I went into a Pawtucketville pet store and saw this 10-gallon fish tank set among cages of rabbits and guinea pigs. Scurrying through the wood shavings were over five dozen albino feeder mice fighting for space. Some of them were running relentlessly on a squeaking tin wheel. Others clung to a dripping water bottle trying to escape the madness below. Their little pink tales draped across an encrusted food bowl spoiled by urine and feces. Most glaringly, in the corner of the tank, three […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
[Artwork by ALEX FINE] FRESH AIR Director Wes Anderson has worked on a lot of film projects, but with his latest picture, Fantastic Mr. Fox, he ventured into new territory. It’s the first time Anderson has made an animated feature. Based on the Roald Dahl children’s book of the same name, Fantastic Mr. Fox is the story of a slick, well-bred fellow (voiced by George Clooney) who swears off stealing from three rich farmers after becoming a parent — but who can’t entirely control his sticky fingers. Anderson created the film in stop-motion, in which the objects in front of […]
KILLADELPHIA: The Hits Just Keep Comin’
DAILY NEWS: Episodes of violence in the city this weekend struck people at their homes, their jobs and even within their own families. On Friday alone, a man killed his mother with his bare hands, two home invasions resulted in slayings and a feud between two barbers ended with fatal gunfire, according to police. In separate incidents on Saturday, two babies, neither of whom was a full year into life, were taken to area hospitals with serious and suspicious injuries. One of the children did not survive, police said. In that case, the father, whose name was not released, is […]
GREATEST HITS: Today I Saw Revisited
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a monger scoop up a prostitute under the El at the corner of Monmouth Street, a block north of Cambria. It was 8 am on the dot; the rising sun in the east softly illuminated the transaction as a pale, freckled and deathly skinny white girl with waist length bright orange hair looked both ways for patrol cars before running out from the doorway where she waited for a John. Her faded jeans rode real low, revealing the red g-string panties she wore underneath. She ducked her head in the open passenger side window […]
SPORTO: About Last Night
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY Yes, the Eagles won the game. But no one will claim that Sunday night’s win over the Bears was “the night the Birds turned their season around.” It was a game the Eagles could easily have lost, to a crummy Bears team with a lost quarterback. For those who knock Donovan, admit he throws a hell of a deep ball. The pass to DeSean Jackson in the third quarter Sunday night wasn’t in-stride perfect, but it was good enough that Jackson only had to alter his stride a bit, without slowing up and letting the […]
30 YEARS AFTER THREE MILE ISLAND: Pay No Attention To That China Syndrome Behind The Curtain
[Photo by THE BMAG] FOX43: Emergency Management Agency officials reported low levels of radiation were measured on monitors at Three Mile Island Reactor Unit 1 at about 4 p.m. on Saturday, prompting about 150 workers to be removed from the reactor building. According to Exelon, the energy company operating TMI, all the workers were checked for exposure, but none of them approached or exceeded any exposure limits. An official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said about 20 workers were exposed to levels of radiation so low they did not fall under NRC limits. Exelon spokesman Ralph DeSantis said there was […]
PROTESTERS: Bring Us The Head Of The Fed
BY GREG ADOMAITIS There were a lot of angry white males — as well as a few angry white females and a ticked off kid or two — demonstrating on the west side of City Hall Sunday morning. About 200 gathered to demand an end to the Federal Reserve and the general disrespect the government has treated its citizens with recently. Rob Pepe, a primary organizer of the rally and member of the Montgomery County school board, has been at work in this realm of politics for 26 years. “I hope today creates more awareness about the criminal cabal that […]
WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE: The Khyber Pass, The Bionic Woman & The Clash Of Civilizations
[Photo by SYNDPROD] WASHINGTON POST: NEW DELHI – Police in India suspect that David Coleman Headley, a man with Philadelphia ties recently arrested in Chicago on terrorism charges, conducted scouting missions of the targets in last November’s attacks in Mumbai, including the city’s main train station, the popular Leopold Cafe, and the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi Trident hotels. Hotel records show that Headley stayed in both hotels in 2007, authorities said. He also allegedly posed as a Jew to visit one of the other eventual targets, Chabad House, home to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish center, said a […]
CINEMA: Rock The Boat
BY JAMIE DAVIS Pirate Radio is basically a coming of age story for young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who is sent to supposedly get on the straight and narrow by living on board his aging hipster godfather’s pirate radio ship anchored off the shore of Britain some time in the mid-1960s. It’s also a story of the rockers vs the squares. You see, in the 1960’s the British government controlled all broadcasting, and refused to play more than 45 minutes of rock n’ roll music a day. But the young folks needed to get their fix somehow, so these pirate radio […]
TERROR ON TWO WHEELS: Can’t We All Get Along?
BY ASHLEY MYERS For the last day or two bicycling has consumed Philadelphia media. Yesterday the Philadelphia Bike Coalition’s Education Department met with Captain Wilson from the Philadelphia Police 9th District (one of Center City’s departments) to discuss enforcing the city’s bike laws. The meeting determined that as of today bike laws will tighten and a new education campaign about bicycling in the city will begin. After two recent deaths involving careless biking, police are going to enforce traffic rules that prohibit cyclists from riding on sidewalks, blowing through red lights and stop signs, and riding the wrong way on […]
WTF: Coatesville Arsonist Set Free After Copping Plea
INQUIRER: A former assistant fire chief accused in two Coatesville arsons this year walked into the Chester County Courthouse yesterday in shackles and exited without them, free to go home. Under a plea bargain that surprised the judge, Robert F. Tracey Jr., 37, of Coatesville, received a sentence of 242 days — the time he had served — to 23 months in prison followed by eight years’ probation. Tracey admitted that shortly before midnight March 20, he set fire to a front-porch swing cushion at an occupied home in the 600 block of Madison Street before walking three blocks to […]
CINEMA: 40 Years At Alice’s Restaurant
ALICE’S RESTAURANT (1969, directed by Arthur Penn, 111 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Curiously, there is a a dearth of songs to sing around the Thanksgiving dinner table, despite being based on ideas of gratitude and family — I blame those uptight Pilgrims. Well, there is Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” the eighteen-minute talking blues song by the then nineteen year old son of folk legend Woody Guthrie. The song chronicles a post-Thanksgiving dinner trip to the dump which results in a charge of littering that ultimately renders the young Guthrie unfit to serve in the war in […]
TONITE: Stay Golden, Ponyboy
[Video: Goldspot – Time Bomb] BY PHILLYGRRL “Today is Friday, it is my day to do what I want” is the opening line in the song “Friday,” sung by Goldspot, a Los Angeles-based band founded by singer/songwriter (and UPenn alum) Siddhartha Khosla. I’ve played that song every Friday since I first heard it back in August and today is no exception (He also does a Hindi version, if you’re so inclined.) And what do you know? Today is a Friday and all I want to do is go down to World Café Live tonight and watch Goldspot perform songs from […]