The Rosenbach Museum & Library Celebrates 17th Annual BLOOMSDAY, June 16, Noon – 7 p.m. PHILADELPHIA — The Rosenbach Museum & Library will celebrate its 17th annual Bloomsday on Tuesday, June 16th from noon – 7 p.m. The Rosenbach, home of James Joyce’s original manuscript for Ulysses, holds this Philadelphia tradition every year on June 16th, drawing hundreds of friends, neighbors, Joyce enthusiasts, book-lovers, and curious passersby to Delancey Place. Along with other Bloomsday events during the month of June, the Rosenbach will also present Money Matters, a special exhibition exploring Ulysses and the economy. Bloomsday itself is free and open […]
COUNTER REVOLUTION: 100,000 Flood The Streets Of Tehran To Protest Stolen Election, Demand Change
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Reporting from Tehran — Massive rivers of people defied authorities and poured into Tehran’s Freedom Square today chanting “Death to the dictator!” and “We want our vote back!” in an unprecedented display of civil disobedience and a rebuke to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reelected president over the weekend amid allegations of rampant voter fraud. The protesters defied Interior Ministry warnings broadcast on state television and radio that anyone showing up would be beaten or worse. They managed to find out about the event and turned out in droves despite a media clampdown that included the shuttering of numerous opposition […]
BOOBS HAVE FEELINGS TOO: Q&A With Will They Grow? Blogger & Breast Test Subject Martina
BY KYLEE MESSNER With blogs like Sorry-mom.com and Thisiswhyyourefat.com, it’s become clear to me that people can and will blog about anything, and many will read, enjoy, and come back for more. When I came across Will They Grow, I figured it was just another shameless self-absorbed blogger seeking attention. Martina, the 26-year-old NYC resident behind WillTheyGrow, assured me otherwise. For those unfamiliar with Martina’s blog, it is a daily documentation of the effects of birth control on her breast size, complete with photos. It’s not necessarily supposed to make sense to viewers, she assures me, and coming across it […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR After more than five decades of making movies, Academy Award-winning writer and director Woody Allen recently released his 40th film, Whatever Works. The movie, which stars Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood, tells the story a “genius” professor in New York who ditches his upper-class life for something simpler — winning, along the way, the devotion of a beautiful and very young girl from Mississippi. Allen’s first film, What’s Up Tiger Lily, was released in 1966. The director then went on to make Play It Again Sam, Manhattan and Radio Days, to name just a few of his […]
IRAN: The Counter Revolution Will Be Digitized
[Photo courtesy of TEHRANLIVE.ORG] BBC: All over the world people are monitoring unfolding events in Iran via the internet, where an apparently decisive election victory by the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being challenged on the streets. Although there are signs the Iranian government is trying to cut some communications with the outside world, citizen journalism appears to be thriving on the web. Here is a selection of popular links, many of which have been written from a particular point of view but – when taken together – provide a wide range of perspectives. MORE GUARDIAN: In days gone by, crushing […]
WAR IS OVER: The Drugs Have Won
NEW YORK TIMES: This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.” For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but […]
RISE: Shit Hits The Fan In Iran
FOREIGN POLICY: Leading Iranian opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi issued a statement warning of “tyranny” Saturday after a tense night in Iran in which state organs proclaimed that incumbent hardline Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a “landslide” victory by a two-to-one margin, a statistic that defied the belief of many analysts. Voter turnout was an unprecedented 84%. Meantime, reports from western-based Iranians late Saturday said that several people had been arrested in Iran, including the campaign manager for another reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi, and the brother of former reformist Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, Reza Khatami. Mousavi’s Twitter […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Eddie Vedder At The Tower
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Eddie Vedder is a golden god to that sector of the rock-audience demographic that loves sports as much as it loves music. On Thursday night, the first of a two-night sold-out solo stand at the Tower Theater, Vedder regaled the crowd with tales of soul-brother handshakes with Dr. J and bar-hopping during the NBA Finals with Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson (wherein a beautiful woman walks up to Jack and asks if he wants to dance, and Jack responds that she’s chosen the wrong verb to describe what he wants to do with her), […]
The First Time I Got High…
BY JAMES DOOLITTLE I was always the new kid. By the time I reached the 7th grade, I had lived in four states, gone to three different parochial schools and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars universe – which for the era, served me with kindling for conversation starters, so handy when it came to working my way through the bottom rungs of a new district’s social ladder. That was the thing about Bobby. He didn’t know Star Wars from Battle Beyond the Stars. He didn’t read comic books, didn’t collect baseball cards and sure as hell wasn’t interested in playing nice. I was […]
AMERICAN ASSHOLE: Q&A With Arthur Kade
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Until my Internet-savvy roommate directed me to arthurkade.com—in particular, a post titled Eulogy — I had no idea who Arthur Kade was. Four sentences into the post, I got the picture: he’s a delusional, narcissistic bag-of-douche, a whore to glamor and slave to fashion, but most of all, an irrepressible and frighteningly charismatic advocate of all the ruinous aforesaid. Upon finishing (no small feat without throwing up a little bit in my mouth) I decided to peruse other posts (Drunk Girls, The Kade Scale, Relationships, etc.), when all the sudden, mid-Kade, I felt the journalist […]
CONCERT REVIEW: John Vanderslice At JBs
BY DAVE ALLEN John Vanderslice has earned a reputation for producing clean, well-mannered recordings with smart, cerebral lyrics that stack up favorably against the best American short stories of the last ten years. The I’s of his songs are so richly drawn and engaged in such diverse, age-of-terrorism pursuits — patrolling the corridors at Gitmo, for example, or denouncing 9/11 as a hoax to a reporter — as to evoke modern literature in verse-chorus form. Live, though, he dispenses with tidiness. Rather than attempt to replicate every note, crackle and bit of fuzz of his studio work, Vanderslice has assembled […]
CINEMA: Play It Again Sam
AWAY WE GO (2009, directed by Sam Mendes, 98 minutes, U.S.) PRESSURE COOKER (2008, directed by Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman, 99 minutes, U.S) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Almost a decade ago a 30-year-old writer named Dave Eggers burst into the literary world with his acclaimed memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The Pulitzer-nominated book told the story of Eggers being tossed into the role of guardian when both his parents die unexpectedly, leaving the twenty-something freelance writer with the uncomfortable responsibility of raising his nine year old brother. Heartbreaking Work had a fresh and intelligent sense of […]
SEPTA GIRL: Tales Of Ordinary Madness
BY PHILLY GRRL Life as a SEPTA rider can be strange and unpredictable. One moment everything is quiet. And then some guy starts talking to the girl next to him and before you know it – everyone’s gabbing like old friends. And all of a sudden, it’s not so quiet anymore. I kinda like those frenetic, frantic days. For instance, last Wednesday…. It’s 3 in the afternoon. I’m riding the northbound Broad Street Line to the Olney Transportation Center. An elderly Asian man walks down the aisle. He is carrying a plastic pink umbrella and a pink backpack. He is […]