DEAR OLD WHITE MEN WHO RUN EVERYTHING, I will turn 23 in just about two months, which means that over a third of my life has been spent enduring the seemingly intentional incompetence of the Bush Administration, the contrarian Congresses of the Clinton years and ‘do nothing’ Dem-majority Congress of now. In that time, I have seen a catastrophic terrorist attack on my homeland. I have seen a government invade and occupy a country that harbored our attackers, and then manipulate the fear and anger those attacks aroused in the American people to justify the invasion of a country that […]
BREAKING: 2 Cops Shot, 1 Dead; Perp Killed
UPDATE: One Philadelphia police officer was killed and a second officer was injured when they both were shot in in North Philadelphia early this afternoon. The suspected gunman was killed. INQUIRER: Two Philadelphia police officers were shot in North Philadelphia early this afternoon and the suspected gunman was killed. The shootings occurred shortly before 2 p.m. in a neighborhood about three blocks north of Temple University. One of the officers was shot near 17th and Dauphin Streets; the other on the 2200 block of Colorado Street, police said. Police shot and killed the suspect gunman. The two officers were rushed […]
ARCHIVE: Phawker Talk With Amy Sedaris
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Pretty girls aren’t funny for the same reason that pretty boys aren’t funny: they don’t have to be. Form fits function, and function answers to need. Pretty people rarely need for much, least of all the ability to win friends and disarm foes with a few well-placed yuks. It’s basic Darwin. Lucille Ball? Phyllis Diller? Roseanne Barr? Funny fuckin’ ladies. Pretty? Not so much. Amy Sedaris knows this. Her career puts the lie to that premise, by the way, but to do so she has to put on a fat suit and give herself an overbite, problem […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Dear Science
Now playing on Phawker Radio! BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT It’s good to hear a band make something worthwhile out of the scrapheap of Yamaha DX-7 synths and Linn drum machines that was the ’80s. Whether sounding like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark on human growth hormone on “Halfway Home” or INXS with the shades pulled back and a window opened on “Crying,” human hands firmly guide the mouse. Unlike Gnarls Barkley, another practitioner of Silicon Soul, there’s a muscular sexuality at the core of TV’s productions. Like mid-period Roxy Music, you can take this band to a fancy restaurant […]
RALLY FOR CHANGE: Pride In The Name Of Love
Chicago, IL – Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama will return to Pennsylvania this week. In Philadelphia, Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Biden will share with voters Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plans to end eight years of failed policies, and change Washington, so that instead of just talking about family values, we actually have policies that value families, and strengthen the middle class. CHANGE WE NEED RALLY WITH MICHELLE OBAMA AND JILL BIDEN WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 Francis Meyers Recreation Center 5803 Kingsessing Avenue Philadelphia, PA Gates Open: 4:30PM The event is free and open to the […]
EARLY WORD: Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santogold
Santogold plays the TLA tomorrow, details after the jump…
ARTSY: Pooh Deer In The Headlights
BY AARON STELLA I admit I don’t often frequent galleries, save perhaps on occasion when strolling the fairway of First Friday. Other than that, I rarely go out of my way. So this is totally a fluke, but a notable one at that. Just the other day, I saw a photo in the arts section of City Paper of what looked to be the bust of a deer that on its face had the fur and familiar feature of Winnie the Pooh. Sure enough, the caption under the photo read “Pooh Deer,” and that it was being showcased in the […]
EVERYTHING MUST GO: How To Sell Your Personal Shitpile Of ‘Toxic Debt’ To The Taxpayers Of America
[Click form to activate Internets] NEW YORK TIMES: Stocks fell sharply and oil prices suddenly spiked on Monday as investors anxiously waited for Washington lawmakers to hash out the details of the biggest government bailout in history — a politically fraught process that will create a new slate of winners and losers on Wall Street. That uncertainty, about a shaken financial system still in flux, appeared to spook investors away from assets tied directly to the health of the American government. The dollar dropped sharply against the euro, and oil prices jumped, closing up more than $16 a barrel. The […]
CANCELLED: Interview With A Vampire
CANCELED: Anne Rice Due to illness, Anne Rice has canceled her upcoming book tour, including a stop at the Free Library that was scheduled for Friday, October 10 at 7:30 p.m. If you have already purchased tickets for this event, please note that we are currently processing refunds for the face value of your tickets, less the handling fee. Thank you for your understanding and patience throughout this process. Email or call with questions. Contact 215-567-4341 authorevents@freelibrary.org RELATED: PHILADELPHIA – More than a century after its first publication in 1897, Dracula remains the ultimate horror story, with countless film adaptations and […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR On Sept. 21, the AMC series Mad Men became the first basic cable program to win an Emmy Award for outstanding drama. Executive producer Matthew Weiner and actors Jon Hamm and John Slattery discuss the madness of Madison Avenue circa 1960. Weiner is a former writer and producer for HBO’s The Sopranos. RADIO TIMES Last week’s events on Wall Street forced the candidates to focus on the the issues, their proposals for tacking complex problems and and how their approaches might differ. Today on Radio Times we talk about presidential election politics with MATTHEW CONTINETTI who writes for […]
ROCK THIS VOTE: Because Reality Has A Liberal Bias
[Click to vote] MY BARACK BLOG: PBS is running a poll which asks if Palin is qualified to be VP. The right wing has organized a “yes” campaign and at the moment, “yes” is winning. Please consider doing this. It’s important. It takes 30 seconds. RNC FORM LETTER ‘ALLEGEDLY TYPICAL’ PBS VIEWER: “I am once again aghast and stunned that the PBS would be so involved in politics that they actually circulated the “is Sarah Palin qualified to be Vice President” poll. How dare you use federally subsidized taxpayer platform for your own political ambitions: have you know shame? You code of […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
FLOWER CHILD: Give Festival, Liberty Lands, Saturday The annual Give Festival, a neo-hippie-esque jamboree bringing together local artists and musicians, celebrated its fourth year in Northern Liberties yesterday. The festival, put together by Brian Nadav, brought together families and friends for a full day (it ran from noon to 10 pm) of eating, drinking and dancing. All day, people filled their cups and opened their ears to local bands, like Audible Eyes, Spinning Leaves and King Britt’s Back to Basics Band, though there was a whole line up of bands that provided a wide variety of music that ranged from […]
WORD: A Beautiful Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
[Illustration by SARAHATLEE] A.O. SCOTT: What’s true of writers’ lives is also, surely, true of their deaths. The temptation to regard Mr. Wallace’s suicide last weekend as anything other than a private tragedy must be resisted. But the strength of the temptation should nonetheless be acknowledged. […] The moods that Mr. Wallace distilled so vividly on the page — the gradations of sadness and madness embedded in the obsessive, recursive, exhausting prose style that characterized both his journalism and his fiction — crystallized an unhappy collective consciousness. And it came through most vividly in his voice. Hyperarticulate, plaintive, self-mocking, diffident, […]