[Photos by Evelyn Taylor] BY KYLEE MESSNER You know the kind of people who are funny just by talking about the ordinary, without really trying at all? Unfortunately, those are not the kind of people I witnessed at the Kimmel Center’s Seinfeld Stand-Up Comedy Contest last night. The Kimmel Center was packed with businessmen and women, twentysomethings, and a handful of high school students. I couldn’t help but wonder what separated the young from the old; who had seen the original show’s airing in 1989, and which fans simply caught a couple of classics on TBS’s never-ending airing of re-runs. […]
OS MUTANTES: Bread & Circuses
ANTI: Founding frontman Sergio Dias Baptista and his new incarnation of the near-mythical Os Mutantes have signed with ANTI- Records with plans to release Haih — their first record in 35 years — on September 8th. Now Os Mutantes have found a home with other likeminded provocateurs such as Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Mavis Staples and Billy Bragg on the Los Angeles independent label ANTI- Records. 2006 saw a reunion of sorts, with the band playing a handful of shows in London, New York, the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, San Francisco and supporting the Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Bowl […]
EARLY WORD: Like A Raisin In The Sun
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PRESS BLACKOUT: Iran Expels Foreign Media
GUARDIAN: Ominously, the government ordered foreign journalists who are not permanently based in Iran to leave the country at once, and banned resident correspondents from reporting from the streets, a move seen as possibly heralding an intensification of the crackdown. The regime appeared to be following a dual strategy of partial concessions on Friday’s vote combined with arrests of opposition figures who could give coherence to the protests, which appeared relatively disorganised. Those detained included Muhammad Ali Abtahi and Saeed Hajarian, both Mousavi supporters and senior advisers to the former reformist president, Muhammad Khatami. MORE BBC: Supporters of Mir Hossein […]
THE VENTURES: Walk Don’t Run
ROLLING STONE: Bob Bogle, lead guitarist and co-founder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-inducted band the Ventures, passed away on June 14th, the band’s Don Wilson told their native Tacoma, Washington’s News Tribune. Bogle, who suffered from non-Hodgkin lymphoma for the past several years, became ill this weekend and was taken to the hospital, where he died at the age of 75. Bogle and Wilson were construction workers who moonlighted as musicians when they formed the Ventures in 1958, and two years later their classic rendition of the instrumental “Walk, Don’t Run” catapulted the surf-rock band up the […]
TONITE: Seinfeld Wars
WHAT: Kimmel Center hosts a stand-up comedy contest in the Kimmel Center’s Commonwealth Plaza to celebrate Jerry Seinfeld’s upcoming performances at the Academy of Music on June 19-20. WHEN: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 6pm-7:15pm (Sign-ups at 5:15pm) WHERE: Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Commonwealth Plaza, Broad & Spruce Streets, Philadelphia WHO: The first 75 people to sign up will take the stage to perform one minute of their favorite Seinfeld bit for the chance to win a prize.* Participants will be judged on dress, delivery, comedic timing and choice of material. *First Prize: Master of Your Domain: Four […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A w/ Annabel Alpers of Bachelorette
“Quietly psychedelic, the quavery vocal harmonies, wheezy synthesisers and attic-salvaged stringed instruments are layered with a shy urgency, a breathtaking tangle of dreaminess and directness… slow oscillations between intimacy and abstraction…. Having understood the implications of technology – electricity having made us all angels, etcetera – Bachelorette fractured herself into a girl-group of one, clouds of ah-ah-ahs and shoo-wop shoo-wops both underscoring and distracting from her tales of gravitational and hormonal pull.” – Author Unknown
ENDANGERED SPECIES: Food Trucks
[Photo by AARON STELLA] DAILY NEWS: Food-cart operators around the city say that they are struggling to make ends meet. They’re caught in a situation where they’re facing higher food prices, lower turnout and an inability to raise prices for fear of losing even more business, they say. “Customers are [coming] sometimes more, or sometimes less,” Aurang Zeb Khan, who runs Zeb’s Lunch, at 7th and Market streets, said last week as he slid grilled chicken onto his griddle, then shredded it. “But because of the ingredients, even if people are [coming] the same, our profits are lower.”Khan, 19, has […]
BRENDAN CALLING: Open Letter To Arlen Specter
It’s me, Brendan Skwire. You know, Mr. Sunshine. I’ve called your office quite a few times regarding the need for a public option in health care reform, which I guess is about as good as it’s gonna get considering you and the rest of your colleagues on the Hill are too timid or too indebted to the death-by-spreadsheet health care industry to support real single payer universal health care. Sen. Specter, you of all people should be loudly proclaiming your support for single player health care. After all, wasn’t it the taxpayers who paid for your Hodgkin’s lymphoma treatment? I […]
ARTSY: The Graduates
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NATIONAL EQUALITY MARCH: Walk The Line
OFFICIAL WEB SITE: On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington DC from all across America to let our elected leaders know that now is the time for full equal rights for LGBT people. We will gather. We will march. And we will leave energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every community across the nation. MORE RELATED: Less than a month after being told by Donald Trump that she can keep her Miss California crown, Carrie Prejean was fired on Wednesday. In a release first obtained by FOXNews.com, K2 Productions, the independent […]
EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: 12 Iranians Killed In Mass Demonstrations That Drew More Than One Million
FLICKR: A man lies the back of a truck after being seriously injured by gunfire in an area where militia were firing shots at a rally supporting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top opponent on Monday, June 15, 2009. Hundreds of thousands gathered in central Tehran to support Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims there was voting fraud in Friday’s election. The gunfire came from a compound for volunteer militia linked to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard. (AP Photo) MORE UPDATE: Iran’s powerful Guardian Council says it is ready to hold a recount of disputed votes in Friday’s presidential election. GUARDIAN: At least […]
TOSH.0: How To Find Demi Moore’s Burning Bush
Tosh.0 Thurs, 10pm / 9c Tosh’s Google Lesson www.comedycentral.com Daniel Tosh Miss Teen South Carolina Demi Moore Picture CELEBRITY BUZZ: Tosh.0 released instructions for how to find a picture of Demi Moore from the ’80s that is quite revealing, as part of his ‘Unfollow Ashton Kutchner’ campaign. The net result is that ‘Demi Moore Bush Pic’ is the most searched term on Google this morning. MORE