BY ADAM BONANNI Well the Xbox is finally out from under of the shadow of Halo with the the latest Call of Duty 4 — or Modern Warfare 2, or whatever the hell this franchise is supposed to be called — which may well qualify as with the most hyped new title launch ever. It’s coming in hot with first day sales of $310 million in the U.S.A. and U.K. vs Halo 3 $170 million, dethroning previous record holder Grand Theft Auto 4’s estimated $310 million across more territories, so saying “huge anticipation” only does this launch “huge injustice.” Kotaku […]
STYLE COUNCIL: Orgotton
[Photo by ACUKUKI] BY ASHLEY MYERS Orgotton is a Philadelphia clothing company focused on creating stylish clothing and awareness about sustainability and the organic movement. Established in March of this year, Orgotton takes its name from the combination of ‘cotton’ and ‘organic.’ The t-shirts are printed using only eco-friendly inks and chemicals on organic material from Alternative Apparel, a sweatshop free company. Orgotton is entirely owned and operated by sisters Kristy and Stefanie Emery [pictured, above] who design and screen-print all of the shirts in their basement. One of the main goals of Orgotton is to make people aware of […]
MUST SEE TV: Doc Ellis’ Legendary LSD No-Hitter
NO MAS TV: In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis’ legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years we’ve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 […]
EARLY WORD: Roll, Baby, Roll!
The Philly Roller Girls are excited to host and skate in the final event of the 2009 WFTDA Tournament season — Declaration of Derby — November 13-15, 2009, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center (PaCC). The top trio of teams in each of the four WFTDA divisions has earned a ticket to Philadelphia to decide the National Champion and award the Hydra Trophy! Located in the heart of Center City Philadelphia, the PaCC is adjacent to a major hotel and connected to the hub of the city’s public transportation system. This central location will facilitate public access, reduce travel expenses and […]
GREATEST HITS: Today I Saw Revisited
BY JEFF DEENEY Today I saw a pile of teddy bears arranged like a pyramid around the thin trunk of a young tree planted in the sidewalk near the corner of 13th and Parrish Streets. The tree was on a block of two-story Section 8 homes that looked still new, almost like suburban tract plots complete with small squares of green front lawn, driveways and little back yards big enough to fit a kiddie pool and a wash line. I was walking down this same block about a week earlier on a warm afternoon thinking that it didn’t look like […]
SEPTA GIRL: Purple Hearts Of Darkness
BY PHILLYGRRL This past Wednesday, as I rushed from the subway to class, I had nearly forgotten what day it was. But the security guard at Temple reminded me. “Ahem, young lady! Young lady!” I stop in my tracks. “Young lady, today is a very special day for me. Do you know what day it is?” I try not to look at my watch and frantically think. Birthday? Anniversary? I know almost nothing of this man. All I know is that he makes it a point to get familiar with each student. That by the end of the second […]
CINEMA: Apocalypto
2012 (2009, directed by Roland Emmerich, 158 minutes, U.S.) BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN (2009, directed by John Krasinski, 80 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Roland Emmerich has spent an estimated quarter of a billion dollars to wreck the world one more time in 2012, a film that has drawn audible sneers whenever it and its calamity-rich trailer rear their head. Emmerich has souped-up ideas from his past hits Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow to bring us his biggest and baddest apocalypse yet, only to drive home the fact that the end of the world somehow […]
VICTED: Two Touring Bands In One Week Ripped Off
INQUIRER: Two bands got the same nasty welcome when they passed through Philadelphia over the past week: Members awoke to find the trailers carrying their instruments and equipment had vanished. The thefts happened in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn at 900 Packer Ave., where bands Kill Hannah and Mae stayed during stops on their respective tours. Mat Devine, lead singer of the Chicago-based Kill Hannah, said the group’s van and 14-foot trailer were parked “five feet from the front door” when they were stolen Wednesday. “We’re devastated and speechless,” Devine said. “We’ve been touring so hard around the […]
WAIT: Inky/DN Auction Postponed For A Week
INQUIRER: An auction of the operating assets of Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C. scheduled for Wednesday will be postponed at least a week as a result of a ruling yesterday by U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno. Robreno had ruled Tuesday that the newspaper company’s senior lenders did not have a right to bid the value of about $318 million in loans in the auction, which is designed to determine the fair-market value of the company’s assets. That ruling overturned a decision by Chief Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich, who had authorized a so-called credit bid by the lenders, a group that includes […]
ALL FALL DOWN: Perzel + 9 Statehouse GOPers Indicted 4 Theft, Conspiracy & Obstruction Of Justice
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The charges of theft, conspiracy, conflict of interest and obstruction of justice, and an elaborately detailed grand jury report, were released one day before the defendants were scheduled to turn themselves in at a Dauphin County district judge’s office. The most prominent defendant is state Rep. John M. Perzel, R-Philadelphia, who served as speaker for about four years and as majority leader for nearly a decade before that. Corbett described Perzel as “aggressive in the acquisition and retention of power” and accused him of punishing fellow Republicans who voted against him on legislation with “dirty tricks” that included […]
SEX IN THE CITY: Men I Have Dated
BY GLORIA MARIS “I’m on a first-name basis,” he said, “with vodka.” On a recent cross-country flight I was reading a paperback collection of short stories that I’d put away, half-read, some years ago. Stuck to the inside back cover was a Post-It note with a name, a phone number, and an Art Museum area address on it. “Vodka, she speaks to me, and I speak to her. We get along well, except when we don’t.” “When is that?” I asked. “When I don’t respect her,” he said, and he refilled my glass. When we met, he was updating one […]
20 YEARS AGO: The More Fiends Vs. The Berlin Wall
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Philly punk band More Fiends was founded by Allen and Elizabeth Fiend (host of BiG TeA PaRtY Sustainable Living) . BY ELIZABETH FIEND It was November 9th 1989 and More Fiends had been on tour already for a grueling seven weeks. I was lying on an old mattress on the floor of a narrow bedroom watching Happy Days which had turned incredibly funny because in the German dubbed version The Fonz had a whiney, high pitched voice. Plus, come on, Fonzie was speaking German. The program was interrupted by what seemed like some sort of special news […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]