Now playing on Phawker Radio! Tricky plays the Trocadero tonite. BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT Had my music-listening and drug-taking behaviors not been well established before the advent of Massive Attack and the subsequent solo career of Tricky, my initial thoughts on listening to Tricky’s new album, Knowle West Boy, might run deeper than recalling episodes of cheesy cable spy and con game shows, like USA’s ’90s knockoff, La Femme Nikita, and the more recent AMC series Hustle. Of course the use of trip-hop soundtracks on such shows is an outgrowth of the music’s use in stylish, gritty action films, like Face/Off […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
FLEX TIME: Devil Girl, R. Crumb’s Underground Opening, ICA, Last Night [Photo by TIFFANY YOON] PREVIOUSLY: How Devil Girl Became Mrs. Natural BY JONATHAN VALANIA Almost everyone knows R. Crumb’s work whether they realize it or not. Keep On Truckin‘? You’re soaking in it. Cheap Thrills? You betcha. Big butts? He invented them. Devil doll glamazons offering piggyback rides to nebbishy four-eyed horn dogs? Sweet Jesus! Giddyup! (If none of this rings a bell, you would do well by renting Terry Zwigoff’s 1994 documentary, CRUMB.) Aline Kominsky-Crumb, his wife of 35 years, is not quite the household word her husband […]
WORTH REPEATING: Sarah, The Founding Fathers Were ‘Community Organizers,’ Look It Up, Get A Clue
[via BRENDAN CALLING] “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.” — Sarah Palin, denigrating me and all of my neighbors. Here are some other community organizers, people that Sarah Palin feels don’t do anything for their communities. This useless fellow is Ben Franklin. A community organizer in Philadelphia, Franklin helped fight the American Revolution. He also established the first fire department, the first library?, and the fire insurance company. In 1747, he organized our first militia. In many ways, he conceived the American nation. As such, he was utterly […]
FOX NEWS: Swiftboating From The Broadcast Booth
[FOX Attacks Obama Like Kerry • FOX ATTACKS • Season 1 – Part 2] Tune in November 4th and see why 2008 won’t be like 1984 2004.
FRINGE PICKS: Lemme Hear Your Body Talk
bodies in urban spaces Cie. Willi Dorner Vienna-based choreographer Willi Dorner makes his Festival debut with bodies in urban spaces, a free outdoor dance event that will travel through Philadelphia’s business district. Meet at LOVE Park and follow the dancers as they stack their bodies in and around Center City newsstands, fire escapes, and office buildings, creating a colorful trail of live human sculpture. Philly’s architectural landscape will never look the same again. Get your walking shoes on and be prepared to stand and walk during this performance. (9/5 at 12:30 & 7pm, 9/6 at 1pm, Begins at John F. […]
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: No Prayer For The City
BY JEFF DEENEY My interest in Chester’s gang problem that resulted in this week’s City Paper article “Home Turf” began a couple months back when I stopped to gas up a rented U-haul at the Sunoco station on 9th and Kerlin Street on the city’s Westside. I had just moved some stuff into a storage facility off I-95 in nearby Chester Township and was on my way to return the truck. I pulled up to the pump and went to pay cash at the register. In the two minutes that I was gone some punk came along and spray painted […]
FRINGE REVIEW: Sweet By-And-By
BY AARON STELLA Unlikely rebel rabble-rouser Joe Hill, a Swedish immigrant and union songwriter of the early 20th century union strikes, takes center stage in the sepia spotlight of Dan Rothenberg’s Sweet By-and-By. False promises pervade Hill’s life: in his dealings with God, that he will always provide for and reward the righteous; the American dream, that the sweat of man’s brow is solely his, and cannot be cheated; and that all the working class needs do, according to land and factory owners, is to work harder and hustle longer (even if wages are cut) to alleviate their economic misery. […]
TONIGHT: Jesus Is Magic
Feat. ex-Flaming Groovies. Tonite at Johnny Brendas with Beretta 76 & The Donuts.
ELEPHANT GUN: John McCain’s House Of Pain
Our completely unfair and totally biased analysts tonight will be Amy Z. Quinn, aka Citizen Mom, recently converted Obama supporter/longtime Hillarycrat dead-ender, and Jonathan Valania, aka ME, who was right about Obama, and most other things, all along. We join the fourth night of the RNC in Minneapolis with Cindy McCain about to take the stage… 9:40 PM me: omg shoulda seen the Cindy McCain movie she beat back genocide 9:41 PM with just a single adoption and a few strategically placed cases of Anheuser Busch products Citizen: Hey, that beer money’s paying the bills, she can be the Queen of […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Letter From Alaska
[EDITOR’S NOTE: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED] TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city. She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: Aleksandra Berczynski performs How Do I Love Me?, Pll Gallery, Fringe Fest, Last Night [Photos by ROZA FRYKOWSKA] “This theatrical experiment marks Aleksandra Berczynski’s Fringe acting debut with her minimalist one-woman show. Inspired by The Bard’s Sonnets, Berczynski explores the budding beauty, love, and artistic yearning of a young woman, discovering the most gorgeous thing…” MORE FRINGE PICKS: It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! No, It’s…. stuporwoman Tania Isaac Dance Featuring the stunning, vibrant movement style of St. Lucia-born choreographer Tania Isaac, stuporwoman is an operatic and humorous fairytale of motherhood and parenting in the twenty-first […]
JUNK SCI: If Cows Could Break Home Run Records
BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR In a stunning consumer victory the biotech behemoth Monsanto announced on August 8th that they want to dump their business of producing rBGH and hope to find a buyer for the product. rBGH is a lab produced, genetically modified artificial growth hormone that is being administered to about 15-17 percent of America’s milk producing dairy cows. r = recombinant which means it’s artificially produced in a lab; BGH, Bovine-Growth-Hormone is the common description for the hormone bovine somatotropin (BST) sold to dairy farmers under the commercial name of Posilac. The label on a bottle of […]
THE EARLY WORD: Tuff Enuff?
[click image to activate Internets]