ASSOCIATED PRESS: MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Isaac Hayes, the pioneering singer, songwriter and musician whose relentless ”Theme From Shaft” won Academy and Grammy awards, has been found dead at home. He was 65. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office says a family member found Hayes unresponsive near a treadmill on Sunday. He was pronounced dead about an hour later at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis. The cause of death was not immediately known. In the early 1970s, Hayes laid the groundwork for disco, for what became known as urban-contemporary music and for romantic crooners like Barry White. And he was rapping before […]
CONCERT REVIEW: New Porno At The E-Factory
BY DAVE ALLEN If the New Pornographers were tuckered-out from their triumphant Friday gig at the All Points West Festival, they didn’t show it at their Saturday show at the Electric Factory. The Canadian sextet pumped up the song tempos to the breaking point without sacrificing the rich, ‘60s-inspired textures, sunbeam harmonies and endorphin-triggering melodies that have made them a beloved fixture of the indie scene for going on a decade. In a set drawn equally from their last three studio albums, with one or two throwbacks to 2000’s Mass Romantic, poise and polish held sway, with chugging instrumentals and […]
HOW WORLD WARS GET STARTED: Georgian Crackdown On Pro-Moscow Separtists Prompts Massive Retaliation From Russian Army; Bush Plays Volleyball
ASSOCIATED PRESS: GORI, Georgia — Georgian troops retreated from the breakaway province of South Ossetia on Sunday as their U.S.-allied government ordered a cease-fire and pressed for a truce, overwhelmed by Russian firepower in a conflict that threatened to set off a wider war. Russia deployed a naval squadron off the coast of another of Georgia’s separatist regions, Abkhazia, and its jets bombed the outskirts of Tblisi, the Georgian capital. Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said its soldiers were observing a cease-fire on orders of the president and notified Russia’s envoy to Tbilisi.”Georgia expresses its readiness to immediately start negotiations with the […]
BETRAYED: CeaseFirePA Shitcans NRA Double Agent
ASSOCIATED PRESS: PHILADELPHIA — A group advocating stricter gun laws is kicking out a woman who has been accused of being a spy for the National Rifle Association. The CeaseFirePA board of directors voted unanimously Friday to remove fellow board member Mary Lou McFate. The group also is exploring possible legal action against her, though spokesman Joe Grace declined to elaborate. McFate, an unpaid member of the CeaseFirePA board for seven years, is accused of portraying herself as a gun-control activist while being paid by the NRA to gather intelligence. A Chicago-based group, the Freedom States Alliance, expelled her from […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
LET THE GAMES BEGIN: Chinatown Celebrates The Olympic Opening Ceremonies + Making Time, Last Night [Photos by TIFFANY YOON] XINHUANET: PHILADELPHIA, the United States, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) — Chinatown in Philadelphia, Pa., turned into a sea of jubilance Friday night as thousands of local Chinese Americans and citizens gathered here to celebrate the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics over 10,000 km away.The event, named “evening of champions,” would “celebrate the spirit of Olympiad, capture the excitement of the Olympic Games and help to showcase the Chinese tradition and culture,” said Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who also wished both Chinese […]
LOVIN’ SPOONFUL: Summer In The City
Amazing shadow puppet performance by Pilobolus Dance Theater on Conan.
DEATH OF PRINT: Inky Web Memo Is ‘Ritual Suicide’
THE INQUISITIR: The decision [to embargo content from the web until it runs in print] rests on two major presumptions that fail miserably. The first is that there is a scarcity of competition therefore people who want the news will have no choice but to buy the paper. Secondly, that anything they write of substance is worthy of buying the print edition to read it first when it will either end up on their website, or will be reported on other websites. Neither hold true. There may be only one major competitor in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Daily News) but both papers […]
HEAR YE: Randy Newman Harps And Angels
UNCUT: Harps & Angels provokes approximately equal parts gratitude that Newman got around to it, and vexation that he doesn’t do this sort of thing more often. Exactly 40 years since his eponymous solo debut, it’s both awesome and faintly depressing how few compete in his league. Harps & Angels consists of just 10 tracks, and has a running time that falls just short of 35 minutes, yet freights multitudes, musically and lyrically. That opening line introduces the title track, a gradually building, slowly sumptuous, New Orleans-flavoured jazz shimmy. Over this, Newman unspools the tale of a man sucking what […]
GIRL GERMS: Letter From Rock Camp
[Photos by BROOKE BOCAST] Thursday August 7, 2008 DEAR PHAWKER, Today was really good. My band, Electric Bliss, made a lot of progress in our song. Today the instructors and counselors performed another skit during assembly. This one was great. It was about cleaning up your band practice room and taking care of your gear. They first acted out the skit by leaving the lights on in the room and throwing their quarter-inch cables on the ground and tangling then up. So in response to the skit one of the band coaches Elaine taught us how to warp our cables […]
LOVE CHILD BLUES: John Edwards Cops To Affair
ABC NEWS: John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC. In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her. Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test. Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby’s birth […]
WORTH REPEATING: Fine Print
BY DOUG WALLEN In Dr. Dog’s Kensington studio hangs the painted and stitched fabric piece that became the cover of Fate. The guys saw it behind the bar at Chicago’s Rainbow Room, where artist Ken Ellis tends bar. The piece—which depicts a woman holding a man at bay with a shotgun in front of a dead tree—watches over them eerily. I ask Miller how Fate differs from previous albums. “It’s partially, I think, in the fidelity,” he says. “We didn’t have to compromise in the mixing process. We All Belong had more arrangements and was on a grander scale, but […]
CINEMA: Send Lawyers, Guns And Money
PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008, directed by David Gordon Green, 111 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC The Judd Apatow Comedy Machine is turning out yucks at such a dizzying pace I’m beginning to anticipate it sharpening to a fine tune and creating a universally-acknowledged instant classic — although I am not holding my breath. The Apatow brand may well have hidden ambitions to greatness but it seems almost unfair to expect it from their latest summer blockbuster, the stoner comedy Pineapple Express, wherein Seth Rogen’s lumpy-gravy likability teams up with James Franco’s loose-limbed, drug-addled slapstick sidekick for a shoot-em-up car-chase […]
NOT SAFE AT ANY SPEED: Why Some People Do Better Behind Bars Than They Do On The Outside
INQUIRER: A speeding car careered careened off Kelly Drive and plunged into the Schuylkill River at the height of the rush hour this morning as rowers and runners looked on in horror. The car, a 2000 Buick LeSabre [NOT pictured, left], sailed nearly 30 feet from the embankment before plummeting into the waters. “It was just like a Charles Bronson movie,” said Bill Ban, a rower who was finishing up his morning routine at 8 a.m. just north of Boathouse Row. “I heard squealing tires, then boom! Saw the car flying off into the river,” Ban said. “It was very […]