NEW YORK TIMES: Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker in the outlaw tradition of Rimbaud and Burroughs who chronicled his wild youth in “The Basketball Diaries,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 60. The cause was a heart attack, said Rosemary Carroll, his former wife. As a teenage basketball star in the 1960s at Trinity, an elite private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Carroll led a chaotic life that combined sports, drugs and poetry. This highly unusual combination lent a lurid appeal to “The Basketball Diaries,” the journal he kept during […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Good Things Come To Those Who Sellout The Public Option For A Little Filthy Lucre
CNN: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in comments at separate news conferences, said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance – whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats. Pelosi, who said as recently as Tuesday that a public option was essential for passing a health-care bill in the House, on Thursday used language on the issue similar to Obama’s speech. MORE OPEN LEFT: This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth’s lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, […]
SEPTA GIRL: Studying A Broad
BY PHILLYGRRL I’m sorry, but smooth-talking subway Philly boys ain’t got nothing on the international student. I’ve come to this conclusion based on the inordinate amount of time I spend every week at the Cecil B. Moore stop by Temple University. And now exclusively for Phawker readers, the results of my extensive research. (I’d show you my graphs, but I’m saving them for the white paper.) The thing Philly guys get wrong is, they think they have to pretend to know everything to get girls to talk to them. They affect this worldly air that might work in a smaller […]
FRINGE REVIEW: Hard Times At Camera Blanca
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL Step into the cozy, welcoming Murph’s Bar at 202 East Girard. You’ll find it’s been commandeered by Applied Mechanics, a theater company that “creates original performance experiments in the environmental-installation-parallel-narrative style.” Sounds lofty? Get a drink and slide into a seat, or find a good corner. The characters are everywhere and their conversations are contagious. The circus has burnt down, the big cats have been sold for food, and all that’s left are the performers, drinking, reminiscing, planning their futures or burying their dreams. Following a character will give you more information, but staking out a space […]
HYPOCRITIC OATH: Government-Run Health Care Is Bad For America But Good For Joe Wilson’s Family
NEWSWEEK: JOE WILSON (R-SC) IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE! Except that he’s not — at least not when it comes to his, and his family’s, government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one’s commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE. Yes, it’s true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate […]
TONITE: Get Pickled
Tonight is the closing night of the Dill Pickles’ summer run at Fergie’s. *** SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS: I Put A Spell On You
FRINGE REVIEW: Fatebook
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL FRINGE CORRESPONDENT FATEBOOK: Avoiding Catastrophe One Party at a Time is a party and a show and a maze and a puzzle. Be prepared to walk. New Paradise Laboratories has created a show that forces you to negotiate plot as you negotiate space. As you travel the maze of projection screens, you follow different characters in an attempt to solve a murder mystery. Or maybe you’re witnessing a theft, participating in a drug deal, or a story of ideal romantic love. You’ll notice yourself multi-tasking and processing text and images as one, listening for sounds you hadn’t […]
Q&A: With Acclaimed Monologist Mike Daisey
“If Lenny Bruce was embodied by Zero Mostel and played by Louis Armstrong the result would closely resemble Mike Daisey.” — BROADWAY WORLD Mike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His monologues, fourteen and counting, include the controversial How Theater Failed America (which he performed last weekend at the Live Arts-Fringe Festival), the six-hour […]
STRANGER THAN FICTION: Fork Fight At Melrose
SOUTH PHILLY REVIEW: The victim who suffered a forking received a large scrape to his back, while the another victim sustained contusions and cuts to his head. Neither required hospital treatment and police said they do not know what ignited the brawl. The victims, a 24- and 25-year-old, were having a meal inside the establishment at 1501 Snyder Ave. when they became involved in a physical altercation with a group of about four other men at another table. According to investigators, Baldino was spotted striking the younger victim in the head with a metal napkin dispenser, while Emma was seen […]
GLENN BECKISTAN: Lawyers Threaten Defamation Suit Against Web Site, But Still No Denial
ARS TECHNICA: The Communications Decency Act basically protects registrars and web hosts from liability for the content that people put up using such services, so the letters to the registrar aren’t so much a legal threat as an attempt to get the website owner’s contact info without a subpoena. And the trademark claims made at WIPO? Levy thinks they sound “preposterous.” But the possibility of a US defamation/libel suit against the anonymous site operator is a real one. Certainly, domain names alone “can be defamatory,” Levy says, pointing out that the first iteration of the site posed the “rape and […]
BRENDAN CALLING: Make It A Federal Holiday
PW: [T]he woman who gave birth to my son was evacuated from the World Trade Center, and ferried across the Hudson to safety. So it is impossible for me, and anyone else who watched the attacks unfold, to forget. And yet to this day, while proclamations are issued and communities gather for memorial events and services, there is no federal holiday memorializing the attacks of September 11, the people who died, or the people who rushed to the rescue. There is something deeply wrong with that. One of my favorite holidays is the Martin Luther King Day of Service, which […]
TONIGHT: Life Is But A Dream
Life is a Dream Aleksandra Berczynski PII Gallery is happy to host Aleksandra Berczynski again for Philly Fringe after a successful debut show last year. Inspired by the 17th Century Spanish playwright Calderón’s play, La Vida es Sueño, Berczynski presents a minimalist, 20-minute, one-woman show where she explores the world of philosophy and learns that beauty, reality and dreams dissolve together in disturbing ways. Will she discover her life is just a dream? PII Gallery 242 Race St $10 / 20 Minutes Sept 9, 11, 18 at 7pm Sept 12 at 5pm Sept 13 at 6pm
FRINGE REVIEW: How Theater Failed America
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL Mike Daisey may be one of the great thinkers of our generation. He speaks truth to power, sometimes roaring, sometimes whispering, always entertaining. I can only add to the praise that’s already been heaped upon his shoulders. He’s saying what we already know, but are afraid to say publicly. In his show How Theater Failed America, he’s pointing out not so much that theater has failed America, but that America is failing theater. What makes this magical is not what he says, but how. Daisey’s relentless, nearly two-hour monologue holds two interwoven stories. One, with the stage […]