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 […]
SOMEBODY ISN’T TELLING THE TRUTH: Eagles Say ‘Deal’ Was Struck With City; Street Says ‘No Deal’
INQUIRER: Former Mayor John F. Street said yesterday that he had struck no agreement with the Eagles to substantially reduce the team’s $8 million debt to the city during private negotiations years ago that led to the building of Lincoln Financial Field. “I didn’t cut a secret deal. There was no deal. We didn’t make a deal. . . . And if I had agreed to a deal, I would have put it in writing,” Street said last night during a rare City Hall appearance. “The one thing I did commit to,” he continued, “is we would absolutely make a […]
What Part Of ‘On The Record’ Don’t You Understand?
Temple J-schooler notes Philadelphia police officer’s racial slurs during a patrol car ridealong in the article she wrote about it. Sh*t hits fan. To wit: The stories of police brutality are easier to believe when Thrasher and his colleagues interact. “TNS” is the code they use for many of their cases. When Thrasher arrives at Arthur’s Dog House on Germantown Avenue in response to a midday call about an escalating argument; the cook greets him by saying the fighting couple has already left. “Nobody died,” he tells her dismissively. Thrasher’s lieutenant drives by as Thrashers slides back into the seat […]
CINEMA: Our Daily Film Fest Picks
WAGES OF SPIN (2008, directed by Shawn Swords, 68 minutes, U.S.) One show only! Starting the film with a title card defining “Payola”, Wages of Spin comes on like a cheap shot attempt to smear Dick Clark’s legacy from Philly’s American Bandstand heyday. If the line of inquiry for the sea of graying talking heads shows an attempt to harvest sour grapes, Wages of Spin picks up much of its cantankerous personality from its stubborn half-century grudge with the former “World’s Oldest Teenager.” Wages of Spin‘s greater value though is in letting old hands like Ed Hurst and Wee Willie […]
USELESS INFORMATION: Diddy On The Way To Gym, Hopes Everyone Is Having A Great Day, God Bless, Etc.
RELATED: Barack Obama met the Queen at Buckingham Palace today and gave her a gift of an iPod loaded with video footage and photographs of her 2007 United States visit to Richmond, Jamestown and Williamsburg in Virginia. In return, the Queen gave the President a silver framed signed photograph of herself and the Duke of Edinburgh — apparently a standard present for visiting dignitaries. It is believed the Queen already has an iPod, a 6GB silver Mini version she is said to have bought in 2005 at the suggestion of Prince Andrew. Earlier, Mr Obama had spoken of his admiration […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR “Pet fashion shows, Chihuahua social networking, veterinary antidepressants [and] ambulance-chasing animal lawyers” are just the tip of what Philadelphia-based journalist Michael Schaffer says is a kind of pet-obsession iceberg in the lives of the American middle class. In his new book One Nation Under Dog, Schaffer takes a close look at the $43 billion industry that’s grown to help enable that obsession, explaining how that booming market reflects our evolving ideas of consumerism, family, politics and domesticity. But One Nation Under Dog is no dry industry analysis: It’s a book, as Schaffer explains on his Web site, that’s […]
HAVE A CIGAR: Congress To Lift Cuban Travel Ban
LOS ANGELES TIMES: A bipartisan group of senators predicted Tuesday that Congress was ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba. Removing the travel ban would produce a burst of tourism, create thousands of jobs and generate as much as $1.6 billion in business a year, an independent research group said. A Senate news conference Tuesday and one in the House set for Thursday reflect new attempts to lift the travel ban, a key part of the U.S. trade embargo imposed after Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1959. The broader trade embargo would remain […]
CINEPHILE: Let Us Now Praise Cormac McCarthy
BY EGINA MANACHOVA This week Cinephile pays homage to a living literary legend and the film adaptations his work have inspired. The mighty Cormac McCarthy is an eminent author and playwright in the Southern Gothic and Western tradition who is often compared to William Faulkner — which is a little like being compared to Picasso if you’re a painter or Mozart if you’re a composer. In short, McCarthy is an American master. While much of his work deals with the ethical development — or the lack thereof — between life and death, physical landscape plays as much of a role […]
KILLADELPHIA: Teen Shot In Head Outside School
INQUIRER: A teenage boy was shot four times — twice in the head, once in the chest and once in the back — this afternoon outside one of the city’s disciplinary schools in Feltonville. Initial information was sketchy, but this much was known: The victim, described only as a 16-year-old male, was shot a by another male teenager — wearing a black hoodie — who escaped running through a nearby cemetery. The victim is described as being in “extremely critical condition,” by a police spokesperson. MORE
HELP WANTED: Reading Is Fundamental
Do you like to read books? Do you have an opinion of those books you read? Can you speak English? Do you secretly long to be a pompous-and-opiniated-but-always articulate-witty-and-absolutely-correct-about-everything book reviewer for the metroblog of record in the sixth largest metropolis in the United States of America? If so, drop us a line at feed@phawker.com. Because in these hard times, you need free books — and Phawker needs book reviews that taste great don’t suck. RELATED: The Sun-Times Media Group, owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of suburban newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday, making it the fifth […]
CINEMA: Our Daily Film Fest Picks
PHANTOM PUNCH (2008, directed by Robert Townsend, 112 minutes, U.S.) Tonight is your only chance to catch up with the latest film from Robert Townsend, who broke into the business in a big way twenty-two years ago with the black comic satire Hollywood Shuffle. Townsend has never recaptured that early success, although he has continued to direct, helming TV biopics of both Natalie Cole and Little Richard. In Phantom Punch Townsend tackles the biography of former Heavyweight Champ Sonny Liston, the hard-punching fighter who back in the sixties struck fear into fighters like few others. The always reliable Ving Rhames […]
CONFICKER WORM: Pearl Harbor Or April’s Fool?
DOW JONES NEWSWIRE: Security experts have sounded the alarm — and many others are just as loudly trying to quell the furor — over fears the Conficker computer worm could trigger Internet havoc on April 1. Some security researchers have warned that Conficker could unleash the equivalent of a “digital Pearl Harbor,” while others have suggested it could be world’s biggest April Fool’s joke. No one knows for sure what will happen on Wednesday when as many as 10 million computers infected by Conficker start “phoning home” for new instructions from the worm’s creators. Multiple versions of the worm, which […]