PHILADELPHIA 26 MINNESOTA 14 *** WHOOPSIE: Pay-To-Play Probe Ends Richardson Commerce Secretary Bid WASHINGTON POST: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to be commerce secretary, withdrew from consideration yesterday, citing an ongoing federal “pay-to-play” investigation involving one of his political donors as a significant obstacle to his confirmation. Richardson, 61, who competed unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, becomes the first political casualty in Obama’s Cabinet, and his withdrawal marked the first visible crack in what had been one of the smoothest presidential transitions in modern history. MORE RELATED: Picture of Richardson Beating Up […]
EYELESS IN GAZA: Death From Above
[Photo slideshow at: BOSTON GLOBE] [WARNING: Graphic content.] EDITOR’S NOTE: Let the record show that Phawker has no dog in this fight. We are posting these pictures [CLICK TO ENLARGE] as neutral observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because we believe that sanitized reportage of conflict is a gross distortion of reality that only serves to enable conflict to persist. Setting aside for a a moment the convoluted tit-for-tat that stretches all the way back to 1947 and serves as the bloody preamble to what is happening right now, the chain of recent events goes something like this: enraged by Israel’s […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Gay
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Frankly, I’d be lying if I said 2008 was a good years for gays. First, there’s the case of Senator Larry Craig: Mr. Whoopsie footsie nudging tootsies with the undercover cop in the airport restroom. Uh, whoopsie! Exactly. The Idaho senator just couldn’t keep his homosexual tendencies to himself, could he? According to the police report, Craig was caught propositioning a man in the stall next to him in the Minneapolis -St. Paul airport restroom by way of foot nudging. To Craig’s misfortune, the man he propositioned turned out to be an undercover cop. Whoopsie! […]
ARTSY: Dancing With Yourself
[“Billy Idol On Wood” by SHEPARD FAIREY] ALTERNATIVE PRESS MAGAZINE PRESENTS: “Side Show” – Art by Musicians Friday January 2nd, 7pm at T&P Fine Art Gallery. RELATED: A Hip Gallery Grows In The Dirty South (Details after the jump)
REWIND 2008: The Year In Movies We Loved
BY DAN BUSKIRK Looking over this list of favorite film experiences of the last year I’m stuck on the idea that my recommendations might be misleading. Particularly with Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely and with both the Van Sant films, the power of the experiences seem especially diminished by their transition from theater event to home video. Watching Diego’s Luna’s Michael Jackson impersonator break-out his best Jacko moves in front of a Paris skyline in the opening of Mister Lonely or Christopher Doyle’s breathless camerawork in Paranoid Park were visceral experiences in the theater. At home, what can I say: results […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Obama
[EDITOR’S NOTE: New and improved, with more content than ever!] Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Obama in the White House, the Democrats in control of Congress and the motherf*king Republicans down in flames. If this is a dream, we don’t wanna wake up. Join with us now as we stroll down the memory lane of our in-house commentary and analysis on the 2008 Presidential election (for our complete coverage CLICK HERE). Like Same Cooke prophesied in 1963, a change has come. Truly a once in a lifetime moment in this American life. […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Music We Loved
DEMOCRACY IS MESSY: Phawker Best of 2008 staff meeting. [Photo by PAUL PUGILESE, Copyright 2008] ***OUR FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2008*** (In No Particular Order) BON IVER For Emma, Forever Ago Classic story: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes to cabin in the Wisconsin woods and, over the course of three months of complete isolation and living on nothing but venison and Leinenkugels, records confessional folk/rock masterpiece with the hope of catching the ear of the girl he lost, and catches the ear of the world instead. This is pretty much the story of Bon Iver — AKA Justin […]
TO OUR READERS: Happy New Year!
“Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.” RADIOHEAD: Nude[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] * REWIND: 2008 The Year In Yoon 2008 [Photos by TIFFANY YOON]
THERE WILL BE BLOOD: They Might Be Giants
[Photo by SUSAN ANDERSON] BY DAVE ALLEN It might sound like an insult to call a band’s sound cartoonish, but in the case of They Might Be Giants, it’s really not. I first encountered their music on the FOX cartoon show Tiny Toon Adventures in a kind of music video where the character Plucky Duck acts out the song “Particle Man,” getting pummeled by a variety of heavily-muscled of the professional wrestler-meets-comic book superhero type. The band’s wry, funny lyrics mesh with the arch musical sensibilities of the two core members, John Flansburgh and John Linnell — organ, accordion and […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Giant Rock Pix
? [Photos by TIFFANY YOON, JONATHAN VALANIA, PAUL PUGILESE, MICHAEL DONOVAN, JEFF FUSCO, DAVE ALLEN] * BREAKING: Court of Common Pleas Judge Idee Fox just ordered Mayor Nutter and the Free Library of Philadelphia to halt their plans to shutter 11 branch libraries after 5 p.m. tomorrow. MORE * NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t FRESH AIR While his Office character may take himself seriously, actor Rainn Wilson seems to be all about the laughs. Wilson plays beet-farming, archery-loving middle-management kook Dwight Shrute on the NBC hit television series. Now, Wilson is trading his crossbow for a […]
CLUSTER & ENO: Ho Renomo
WARNING: Extremely beautiful. WIKIPEDIA: Anna Pavlovna Pavlova (Russian: ????? ????????? ????????) (12 February 1881 [O.S. 31 January]–23 January 1931) was a Russian ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th century. She is widely regarded as one of the most famous classical ballet dancers in history and was most noted as a Principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev. Pavlova is most recognised for the creation of the role The Dying Swan and with her own company, would become the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world.
SIGH: Zooey Deschanel Engaged To Ben Gibbard
[Image via INDIE ROCK OLYMPIC SKETCHES] PEOPLE: Zooey Deschanel [pictured, left] is ready to walk down the aisle, PEOPLE has learned. The actress and singer, 28, and Death Cab for Cutie singer Ben Gibbard [drawn, above], 32, who is also in the indie band the Postal Service, got engaged before the holidays, a source confirms. Deschanel, currently starring in Yes Man opposite Jim Carrey, also released her first album, Volume One, in March with her band She & Him. Her rep was not available for comment. MORE CELEBRITY BUZZ: There has been some confusion over who, exactly, has won the […]