FRESH AIR Perhaps best known for his role on the NBC comedy series The Office as Andy Bernard, the salesman who loves a cappella, actor Ed Helms takes to the big screen this summer in The Hangover, a buddy movie about three groomsmen who lose their soon-to-be married friend in Las Vegas. A graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, Helms got his start in comedy with numerous sketch comedy groups. Prior to joining the cast of The Office, he was a senior correspondent on The Daily Show. ALSO, Journalist Gretchen Morgenson discusses efforts in Congress to regulate default swaps, which […]
RAWK TAWK: Burying The Hatchet With Black Francis
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA Set the Wayback Machine to 1988. I’m a college radio DJ stranded in the middle of Pennsyltucky. Entranced by the naked boob on the cover of Surfer Rosa, I slap it on the turntable and…the Pixies had me by the first 10 seconds of “Where Is My Mind?” and never really let go. Shortly thereafter I got a gig working for a Pennsyltucky daily. They asked me one day if I wanted to interview some guy named Black Francis from the Pixies. Would I? Man, this was a dream come true! I could […]
BECAUSE EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN
MIAMI HERALD: Bret Michaels may have to take out his extensions for a bit while his head heals. The eternal bachelor had a run-in with some stage scenery at Sunday night’s Tony Awards. Michaels and his band Poison performed Nothin’ But a Good Time with the cast of Rock of Ages, which celebrates 1980s hair music. As Michaels exited the stage, he glanced back to his fans, and a descending set piece knocked him to the ground. Check it out on YouTube; it looks nasty. MORE
LIVE AND DIRECT: Faux News From The Faux War
NEW YORK TIMES: CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — It was Sunday night in Baghdad, and President Obama was ordering Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of the American troops here, to shave Stephen Colbert’s head. (Not to give everything away, but the general is not as brutal with an electric razor as one would expect a bald man to be; Mr. Colbert’s hairdresser, on the other hand, has a merciless streak.) War, as things go, is a fairly unironic exercise. Sure, there are endless incongruities to be found and parodied in the speeches about war from politicians, generals and heads of state. […]
I Went 2 The Roots Picnic & All I Got Was A Good Time
[Performer photos by TIFFANY YOON/Crowd shots by AMY SALIT] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR ROLLING STONE When it comes to The Roots — currently in-residence as the house band for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and arguably the greatest live act on the planet — you must always expect the unexpected. So it should come as no surprise that Saturday’s second annual Roots Picnic at the Festival Pier in Philadelphia was a 12-hour all-you-can-eat-and-then-some feast of wonderful WTF-ness. What other band would kick off their own multi-genre lollapalooza — featuring the likes of Public Enemy, TV On The Radio, The Black […]
LAW LESS: The Incredible Shrinking Legal Profession
NEW YORK TIMES: [T]he corridors of White & Case are quiet, the happy buzz of business having gradually been replaced by a melancholy pall of diminished billable hours. Many office doors are shut — not because of meetings, but, as one associate put it, so that “the man with the ax” cannot find the occupants. Type-A partners, once glued to their BlackBerrys, suddenly have time for their spouses and their children; ladder-climbing junior lawyers linger over lunch. As the apocalypse on Wall Street ripples out into the larger economy, a thick red tide is lapping at the once-impregnable foundations of […]
AXIS OF EVIL: North Korea Sentences Two Female American Journalists To 12 Years Hard Labor
VOICE OF AMERICA: North Korea’s state news agency says a court has sentenced two female American journalists to 12 years of hard labor. The Korean Central News Agency said Monday that the court found the two women guilty of committing an unspecified “grave crime” and illegally crossing into North Korea. Last Thursday, North Korean state media announced the start of the trial of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, reporters for the U.S. media company Current TV. North Korean authorities arrested Lee and Ling in March while they were working on a story near the Chinese-North Korean border. U.S. State Department […]
CINEMA: The Soprano
IL DIVO (2008, directed by Paolo Sorrentino, 110 minutes, Italy) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Set mostly in the late 1980s, before something called “The Bribesville Scandal” brought down his Christian Democratic Party, Il Divo looks at the world through the heavily-lidded eyes of Giulio Andreotti’s, widely regarded as the most influential Italian political figure of the 20th. In his late eighties, Andreotti seems calcified by his own corruption, his shoulders hunched and his face a near-emotionless mask. He spends his time being escorted from one beautiful ancient room to the next, living his life in unacknowledged splendor, while occasionally […]
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Decemberists To Play Folk Fest
[Photo by AutumnDeWilde] Now that last night’s Decemberists show at the Tower is safely over, we are allowed to share the following: The Decemberists will be headlining the Saturday afternoon concert at the Philadelphia Folk Festival on Saturday, August 15. Other newly added acts include The Derek Trucks Band (closing Sunday night’s Martin Guitar Stage), Heartless Bastards, Austin Lucas, Kerri Powers, Shannon Lambert-Ryan and RUNA, as well as locals the West Philadelphia Orchestra and Burning Bridget Cleary. MORE PREVIOUSLY ON PHAWKER: Amongst people who like that sort of thing, Colin Meloy — ringleader of the Portland-based folk-pop collective The Decemberists […]
I, GAMER: Our E3 Mega Round-Up
BY ADAM BONANNI The annual E3 (Electronics Entertainment Expo), lasting from June 1st to the 4th in Los Angeles, blew by us way too fast yet again. In what has been hailed as a return to form for the gaming industry’s largest trade show, this year’s E3 allowed much of the flash and pizazz missing since 2006 when the suits decided that the elaborate showmanship on the expo floor cramped the “business” aspect of the show. Part of the joys of gaming is that people have fun making, playing, and reporting on them, so it only makes sense to have […]
Sometimes Good Things DO Happen To Good People
As you may have heard, Woodshop Films/Scrapple TV founder Marc Brodzik, our partner in New Media crime, has been awarded a Pew Grant for media art. We could not be more proud or horny. For those unfamiliar with the Big Man, here’s his Pew bio: Marc Brodzik, media arts Born 1967 Marc Brodzik is a documentary filmmaker interested in filming portraits of the common man. In a recent documentary he focuses on small family owned coal mines and the struggles they face to stay in business in today’s market dominated by large corporations. His work has been screened at the […]
SEPTA GIRL: Out Of The Mouths Of Babes
BY PHILLYGRRL So, I’m waiting for the Broad Street subway at City Hall. It’s game day. Phillies vs. the Nationals. The station has only a few Phillies fans left. It’s already a half hour past the first inning and the usual sports crowd has long gone. Suddenly, the quiet is broken by a tiny voice. A little boy, maybe three or four, wearing a Phillies cap and jersey, is tugging on his father’s hand. He points to the subway tracks. “It’s scary in there, Papa,” he says, in a trembling voice. Only the boy’s s’s come out as th’s, so […]
TONITE: Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah
PORTRAITS IN MUSIC Photographs by Michael T. Regan at the PRIMER Microstudio Opening First Friday, June 5th Doors open at 6:00pm Michael T. Regan is a sucker for heart and soul. At a young age, he discovered that music moved him and, in the next heartbeat, fell in love with the idea of capturing its’ essence on film. With skills honed at NYU’s Tisch School of Art and through hard work, humility and passion, Mike has been fortunate to carve out a successful commercial career shooting portraits for newspapers, magazines, labels and agencies such as URB, XLR8R, Scratch and […]