PHILLY CLOUT: Donald Trump sued the state Gaming Control Board in federal court this afternoon for rejecting in 2006 his bid to build a casino on the site of the former Budd Co. plant in Nicetown with a group of investors*. Trump is asking a federal judge to overturn the state-awarded gaming licenses for SugarHouse in Fishtown and Foxwoods, which was approved for a South Philly site but is now considering relocation to the Gallery at 11th and Market streets. The lawsuit says Trump and his investors spent more than $10 million in planning for their Nicetown location and were rewarded […]
PAPERBOY: ‘Assorted Inconvenient Truths’ Edition
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 […]
CHARLIE DON’T SURF: Actor Sam Bottoms, AKA Lance The Surfer In Apocalypse Now, Dead At 53
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Sam Bottoms, a film and television actor who played the role of California surfer-turned-GI Lance Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now,” has died. He was 53. Bottoms died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles of glioblastoma multiforme, a virulent brain cancer, said his wife, Laura Bickford. Bottoms was 20 in 1976 when he was cast to play surfer Lance Johnson in “Apocalypse Now,” in which he was one of the young sailors who accompany Capt. Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) up river in a gunboat for his rendezvous with Marlon Brando’s renegade […]
TURN THE OTHER CHEEK: Obama Picks Anti-Gay, Anti-Choice, Anti-Stem Cell Pastor For Inauguration
FAITH IN PUBLIC LIFE: Rick Warren, whose recent remarks on issues ranging from war and torture to sexuality and abortion have generated some justifiable pushback lately, will give the invocation at the inauguration. The pick was news to us. But he’s not the only one who will be praying from the podium on January 20. Rev. Joseph Lowery a civil rights icon and supporter of same-sex marriage, is giving the benediction at the end of the event. I can’t read the administration’s mind, but my guess here is that they’re crafting an inauguration meant to appeal to voters who voted […]
WORTH REPEATING: Man Bites Blog
BY KELLIE C. MURPHY Rebelling against the machine comes naturally to Skwire. Born in Newport, R.I., he grew up during the Reagan years and became an early frequenter of the local punk rock music scene, learning how to rage with political groups like the Dead Kennedys and MDC. He moved to Philly in 1999 to pursue his musical ambitions and settled in Kingsessing, one of the oldest settlements in the city. He says the area was the perfect fit, because he wanted homeownership and a yard—without going broke. Skwire realizes how out of place he looks in his predominately black […]
BREAKING: Obama Is TIME’s ‘Person Of The Year’
TIME: David Von Drehle’s masterly story on our Person of the Year not only sketches out what’s on Obama’s mind but also reveals new details about how and when he realized that his first 100 days had to start on Nov. 5, the day after voters elected him to become the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the office. Von Drehle also tells us — with Obama’s help — how we should hold the new President accountable. Beyond his mastery of the issues, Obama revealed a more personal note: a slightly rueful sense […]
SEE THAT MY GRAVE IS KEPT CLEAN: 35 Years After Death, Sister Rosetta Tharpe Finally Gets A Headstone
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the pioneering gospel musician and instrumentalist, finally has a gravestone marking her resting place at Northwood Cemetery in Philadelphia. Since her passing in 1973, the gravesite of Sister Rosetta had been a barren plot lacking any memorial. Today, a beautiful, rose-colored monument bears respect to one of America’s most influential artists of the 20th Century. Sister Rosetta’s monument was partially funded by a benefit concert at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA on January 11, 2008, that featured performances by gospel and spiritual music legends—The Dixie Hummingbirds, Odetta, Marie Knight, Willa Ward, The Johnny Thompson Singers, and […]
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS: Whatever Happens In Room 315 Stays In Room 315, Part 6
BY JEFF DEENEY The students’ first taste of freedom from room 315 doesn’t come until well after noon when they are escorted by the teacher’s aid Miss Patterson and the behavioral health worker Mr. Thompson to the lunch room. When finally given the opportunity to leave the room with legitimate cause the children explode into the hallway, running, jumping and kicking lockers. They draw the ire of the school security officers who scream at them to settle down. They duck into classrooms, giving loud, disruptive shout outs to their friends, causing teachers to holler and slam doors in their faces. […]
TONITE: Enjoy Yourself, It’s Later Than You Think
ABC NEWS: New home starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 625,000 from a downwardly revised level of 771,000 in October, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That is a drop of 18.9 percent, the steepest since March 1984. The total is far below the 740,000 pace that Wall Street economists expected. MORE CBS NEWS: U.S. consumer prices in November plunged by the largest amount on records going back 61 years as energy costs posted nearly double the decline of the previous month. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that consumer prices fell 1.7 percent in November, surpassing the previous […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Working
BIG KRIMPIN’: Giant Tastykake dude celebrates Philadelphia Magazine’s 100th Anniversary at Shops at Liberty Place, lunch time, today [Photo by TIFFANY YOON]
CHENEY: I Love The Smell Of Waterboarding
[In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney issued an unapologetic defense of the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies, including the use of waterboarding, and said the prison at Guantanamo Bay should remain open as long as there’s a war on terror.] Smells like…victory.
GAYDAR EXTRA: A Very Dumpsta Christmas
JINGLE BELLS, BATMAN SMELLS: Sara Sherr and Jimmy Divine get their Dumpsta on. BY AARON STELLA Christmas is here. Yeah, the economy sucks, and you’ve pawned your whole re-gift stash. Well, at least you can treat yourself to a little Christmas cheer. For only $1.99, you can revel in some holiday havoc with one of Philly’s premier trash-glitz drag troupes: you guessed it, the one and only Dumpsta Players are showcasing their Christmas extravaganza “A Very Lipshitz Christmas.” The Lipshitz’s, an orthodox Jewish family, find themselves flat broke (thanks to the Wall Street meltdown) this Christmas, a tragedy which eventually brings […]
NOT SAFE AT ANY SPEED: Flaw In Internet Explorer Leaves All Users Vulnernable To Attack, Financial Ruin
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Users of all current versions of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer browser might be vulnerable to having their computers hijacked because of a serious security hole in the software that had yet to be fixed Monday. The flaw lets criminals commandeer victims’ machines merely by tricking them into visiting Web sites tainted with malicious programming code. As many as 10,000 sites have been compromised since last week to exploit the browser flaw, according to antivirus software maker Trend Micro Inc. The sites are mostly Chinese and have been serving up programs that steal passwords for computer games, which can […]