[Photo by ANDREW STRASSER] BY DAVE ALLEN Talk about getting your peanut butter in my chocolate: Lil Mama rhyming about her lipgloss mashed-up with the hammering of Metallica‘s “One.” Youngbloodz declaring that he don’t give a fuck to the smooth organ strains of Procol Harum. The dance music of Girl Talk, AKA Gregg Gillis, is so loaded with these types of bizarre combinations that you could almost measure it in terms of WTFs instead of BPMs, but Gillis’ skills in keeping the grooves seamless behind the constantly-changing samples makes his latest, Feed the Animals, an ear-worming winner (now playing on […]
THE SMEAR COMES HERE: Philly Booking Agency Takes Heat For ‘Palling Around With Terrorists’
DAN GROSS: Evil Twin Booking, a West Philly-based talent agency, has been inundated with e-mails and phone calls related to its representation of former Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers. Gov. Sarah Palin has recently ramped up criticism of Sen. Barack Obama‘s ties to Ayers, who, along with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and other members of the radical group bombed various government buildings in the ’70s. Obama and Ayers, now a University of Illinois professor, served on a nonprofit foundation’s board together and Ayers once hosted a party for Obama. We’re told that Evil Twin Booking/Lost Film Fest partners Scott Beibin and […]
PALINTOLOGY: Species, Boobus Americana
[Tim Russo: The McCain-Palin Mob] Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Many have, however, lost elections that way.
GO BAMA: The Man Comes Around
PHILADELPHIA – Sen. Barack Obama will barnstorm the city of Philadelphia on Saturday, making four stops within the city. At each stop, Sen. Obama will discuss his plans to strengthen our economy, lower taxes on Pennsylvania’s middle class families and give tax breaks to companies that create jobs in the United States. The trip comes just days after Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline, completing a three-month effort by Obama-Biden organizers that saw the gap between registered Democrats and Republicans grow to nearly 1.2 million. The campaign now turns its attention to generating volunteers for what will be an unprecedented Get-Out-The-Vote effort. […]
FAILOUT: $700 Billion Later, Global Markets Collapse, Paulson Wants To Feed The Beast ‘Unlimited Loans’
TIME: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his team are starting to look like short-order cooks stuck in a perpetual lunch-hour rush. The worse the economic crisis gets, the more confidence- and liquidity-boosting measures they cook up, from the Bear Stearns deal last spring to the AIG bailout last month. Now the markets have devoured last week’s passage of the titanic $700 billion bailout package without a trace. By the end of Tuesday, the Dow had dropped 1,400 points in five days, the biggest point loss ever. As increasingly gloomy job numbers pile on top of the continuing problems in the […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Fliers warning that people with outstanding warrants or unpaid parking tickets could be arrested if they show up at the polls on election day appeared recently in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Zach Stalberg, the president of the nonpartisan watchdog group Committee of Seventy, suggests that a Republican Party supporter may have posted the fliers in an effort discourage voters. A native Philadelphian, Stalberg was the editor of the Philadelphia Daily News for 20 years. In 2005, he became president of the Committee of Seventy, a group founded in 1904 with a mission to improve the Philadelphia region […]
WORTH REPEATING: Wake Up White People
EDWARD LINKELMAN: I owe a great deal to the United Steelworkers of America. Not only was my father a member his whole working life, but I attended college on a very generous scholarship sponsored by our local chapter. So while I’m not perhaps the most objective observer of their role in the increasingly global economy, I am extremely grateful to them for what they’ve given my family and almost heart-breakingly proud of the speech below, given by AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka recently. I’ll be honest, I know more people than I care to count who will not vote for […]
Top Five Reasons You Shoulda Blown Off The Debate To See Nick Cave At The Electric Factory Last Night
1. Nick Cave is not dead yet. Without hanging too much on the whole “Lazarus” metaphor, Nick Cave does seem to be back to doing what he does best. The greasy factory as church and even greasier congregation groping through the darkness as they approach judgment? Yeah, still intact. (SEE “We Call Upon the Author”) Biblical parables that veer into porno and somehow emerge as romance? Yup. (SEE “Lie Down Here (and Be My Girl)”) Songs that start out delicately and comforting with the patient beauty of an emerging butterfly before shaking you awake with visions of baby-eating wolves? Hell […]
BIG LOVE: Here Come The Mormons
INQUIRER: A new Mormon temple will be constructed on the 400 block of North Broad Street across from the Philadelphia School District headquarters, the church announced today. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said it will build the temple on a parking lot it owns on Broad Street between Noble and Hamilton Streets. According to city tax records, the church paid $8 million in October 2007 for two lots totaling 33,400 square feet — less than an acre. The land is now occupied by a private parking lot surrounded by chain-link fence. Mormon Church president Thomas S. Monsoon […]
MCSHAME: Hate Talk Express
[Hat tip to SCOTT COLAN] NEW YORK TIMES: It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember. They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison. […] We certainly expected better from Mr. McCain, who […]
CINEMA: A Comedy Of Terrors
VARIETY: Oliver Stone’s unusual and inescapably interesting “W.” feels like a rough draft of a film it might behoove him to remake in 10 or 15 years. The director’s third feature to hinge on a modern-era presidency, after “JFK” and “Nixon,” offers a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive’s psychological makeup and, considering Stone’s reputation and Bush’s vast unpopularity, a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics. For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, “W.” is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically. The picture possesses dramatic and entertainment value, […]
PETTY OFFICER: The Dimming Of John McCain’s Halo
PHAWKER: Why not just call him ‘boy’? WALL STREET JOURNAL: Obama spokesman Bill Burton sent a one-line message to reporters after McCain made the comment that said, “Did John McCain just refer to Obama as ‘that one’?” And again at the conclusion of the debate, the Obama campaign emailed reporters, “Did John McCain refer to Obama as ‘that one’?” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe also referenced the remark in his post-debate statement. “John McCain was all over the map on the issues, and he is so angry about the state of his campaign that he referred to Barack Obama as […]
TONITE: Get Up, Old Man! Get The Fuck Up!
[Artwork by FLYOVERSTATE] Tune in tonight for the snarkiest bi-coastal debate coverage on the Internet! You may not learn anything, but it will make you feel better. Tonight’s analysts will be JONATHAN VALANIA and JEFF DEENEY on the East Coast (Philadelphia, to be exact) and CITIZEN MOM who will be watching from the West Coast (Portland, to be exact). Starts around 9 PM. You betcha! UPDATE: The insta-polls, which provide viewers with a somewhat skewed but important insight into how each candidate fared say, by and large, that Obama scored a victory in the second debate. MORE deeney: whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?????? HE […]