BY JONATHAN VALANIA For the record, I am home safe and sound from my journey through the high plains of the Andes. For some that will be good news, for others, less so (you fall into this latter category if you have ever uttered the words ‘If he writes one more word about being in that mother#$%& Wilco movie, I’ll murdelize him’ — you know who you are.) Anyway, it’s good to be back in the USA — you don’t realize how good we have it until you leave it. I am of course, referring to America’s superior Wi-Fi and […]
WORTH REPEATING: No Moss On Rolling Stone
In the new Hot Issue — not to be confused with last week’s Best Of Hot Issue or the 100 Hottest Hot Issues issue before that — Rolling Stone declares us smoked habanero HOT, as in they would ‘do’ us, best we can tell. Also they talk to the The Teeth and find out Spank Rock lives in a…wait for it…warehouse. Man! Is that a roll of Certs in Jann Wenner’s pocket or is he just really, really glad to see us? HOT SCENE: Just try to live like this in New York: Peter McDavis, bassist for rising Philadelphia indie […]
CINEMA: In The Kingdom Of The Senseless
LUST, CAUTION (2007. Directed by Ang Lee, 157 minutes, U.S./China/Taiwan) THE KINGDOM (2007. Directed by Peter Berg, 110, USA) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Caution: Lust! It’s a little pathetic that a few scenes of canoodling can overwhelm the advance word on Ang Lee’s excellent new wartime drama Lust, Caution. With the success of Brokeback Mountain Lee has done what few film directors dare, that is demanding an NC-17 rating rather than cut back its emphatic and very specific scenes of sex. It’s an embarrassing reminder of the weird dichotomy of the U.S.’s view of sex: It teases us from […]
EARLY WORD: Dear Prudence…
Won’t You Come Out To Play?
TODAY I SAW. . .
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW the crowd of defendants gathered outside the 4th floor courtroom in the Criminal Justice Center at 13th and Filbert, waiting for the judge to call them. The head court clerk was an older black man wearing a brass-colored Kangol, a tan Guayabera and brown leather loafers with dangling tassels; he waded smoothly through the crowd asking to see subpoenas. He filtered out friends and family members, who were made to wait outside. At the judge’s order, the crowd filed into court. A broad-shouldered white girl with a puffy, bloated face stood out from the […]
JUSTICE: Judge Fines Wal-Mart $62 Million For Being Too Slow To Reach For Wallet In Class Action Award
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania who previously won a $78.5 million class-action award for working off the clock will share an additional $62.3 million in damages, a judge ruled Wednesday. About 125,000 people will receive $500 each in damages under a state law invoked when a company, without cause, withholds pay for more than 30 days. A Philadelphia jury last year awarded the workers the exact amount they had sought, rejecting Wal-Mart’s claim that some people chose to work through breaks or that a few minutes of extra work here and there was insignificant. Similar suits charging that […]
GROSS: The Ritz Bullying Indie Cinema Outta The 215?
The Ritz at the Bourse pulled “In the Valley of Elah” from its screen Tuesday, telling callers to the box office that the decision had been made “for legal reasons” and referring would-be moviegoers to the Roxy Theatre (2023 Sansom). Roxy owner Bernard Nearey [NOT pictured] says Landmark Theatres, which bought the three Center City Ritz theaters in March, is trying to muscle him out of showing first-run movies. Sources say Landmark told Warner Independent, the film’s distributor, that it pulled the film to protest the Tommy Lee Jones‘ movie being booked at the Roxy, too. “It’s an example of […]
JUST WONDERING: What Is Jannie Blackwell Hiding?
“I don’t believe we should have so many laws we don’t know when we’re breaking them.” — Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, In Today’s Inquirer. RELATED: The ethics reforms were derailed last month, when a resolution enabling legislation to change Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter failed. The resolution would have let voters decide by a ballot question on the May primary whether charter amendments should be permitted to empower City Council to enact ethics reforms….Jannie Blackwell voted against the resolution, which required two-thirds of City’s Council’s votes to pass. [via PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS JOURNAL] * RELATED: Blackwell noted her lone opposition to the ethics-reform […]
FREE SPEECH: Peace Activists Stopped At Border
WASHINGTON — Two high-profile American peace activists on Thursday accused the Canadian government of denying them entry into Canada solely because of past arrests in the U.S. for peaceful protests against the war in Iraq. Medea Benjamin, founder of the women’s peace movement CodePink, and former U.S. diplomat Ann Wright were detained for several hours by Canadian authorities at the border crossing between Buffalo, N.Y. and Niagara Falls, Ont., then turned back because their names appeared on an FBI database detailing their misdemeanour convictions. “We believe the Canadian government should not be doing the dirty political intimidation work for the […]
WORTH REPEATING: Born In The USA
The Boss on 60 Minutes, in a segment that airs Sunday: In the interview, Springsteen points out the direction in which the U.S. is going, by his estimation. “I think we’ve seen things happen over the past six years that I don’t think anybody ever thought they’d ever see in the United States,” says Springsteen. “When people think of the Unites States’ identity, they don’t think of torture. They don’t think of illegal wiretapping. They don’t think of voter suppression,” he tells Pelley. “They don’t think of no habeas corpus,” he says, referring to the people being held by the […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
D.A. DESCRIBES HOUSE OF HORROR FUNERAL PARLORS, ILLEGAL SKIN TRADE District Attorney Lynne Abraham said the men operated funeral homes and a crematorium in which body parts were taken and sold to various tissue banks, which, in turn, sold the parts to hospitals in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York for tissue transplants. The tissue was used in operations in which patients required connective tissue replacements for arteries, joints, and dental work. The parts — bones, cartilage, and skin — were taken from 244 people in the Philadelphia area, she said. She said the bodies were “sometimes stacked in the […]
TYRANTS CANNOT HIDE ON THEM INTERNETS: Footage The Junta Does Not Want The World To See
BBC: Images of saffron-robed monks leading throngs of people along the streets of Rangoon have been seeping out of a country famed for its totalitarian regime and repressive control of information. The pictures are sometimes grainy and the video footage shaky — captured at great personal risk on mobile phones — but each represents a powerful statement of political dissent. “It is amazing how the Burmese are able through underground networks to get things from outside and inside,” says Vincent Brussels, head of the Asian section of press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders. “Before, they were moving things hand-to-hand and […]