BY PHILLY GRRL The thing about night school is, you’re practically brain dead when you get out from class. A typical workday coupled with three mind-numbing hours of lectures can leave one in a daze. At least that’s the excuse I use when people ask me why I almost got myself killed on the subway this past Monday. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I didn’t almost die. What I did do, however, was violate one of my number one SEPTA subway rule: Always exit in groups. I tend to get lost very easily when it comes to the orange line. I’ve […]
SUFJAN STEVENS: The BQE
ASTHMATIC KITTY: Back in October of 2007, Sufjan Stevens debuted The BQE — a visual and musical homage to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Howard Gilman Opera House in downtown Brooklyn. Originally commissioned by BAM for the Next Wave Festival, The BQE featured three simultaneous film projections, a 35-piece band and orchestra, and live hula hoopers for a 3-night run. One week following the performances, Sufjan and his orchestra went into the studio to record the soundtrack, but afterwards, feeling disenfranchised by the magnitude of the universe, Sufjan decided to shelve the project. Until […]
BRENDAN CALLING: Open Letter To Dom Pileggi
Dear Sen. Pileggi: I can call you Dom, right? Even as state senate majority leader, you’re still a public servant, answerable to me and everyone else in Pennsylvania, so I don’t mind being a little informal with the help. Thanks to your intransigence and obstruction holding up both the state and the city’s budget in the Pennsylvania State Senate, nonprofits are running out of money, the city’s cutting jobs and delaying police training, and counties from east to west are owed money. All because you missed YOUR deadline: and now everyone has to suffer because you’re in a pissing match […]
MAILBAG: After Birther
Jonathan, You are a joke as a journalist. Obama IS HIDING SOMEHTING [sic] and not it is NOT because he is too busy with other things. He has spent $1.4 million to DONATED campaign funds to his lawyer that is fighting the DOZENS of lawsuits. He is either hiding something embarrassing, such as his biological father possibly being Frank Marshall Davis. Or, he is possibly hiding a foreign birth. Whatever it is, he IS HIDING SOMEHTING [sic] from the American people. Your casual attendance to this is obvious. Oh, and I am not a ‘birther’. Rather, I am a TRUTHER. […]
HOT DOC: Memo From Tierney
Best we can tell, this is the equivalent of telling your credit card company: “This debt I’ve accrued is way too high for me to ever to pay off, so how about I give you one fifth of what I owe you and we can call it even, hmmmkay?” The bad news is that shit don’t fly for people like you and me. The good news for the Inquirer/Daily News is that Brian Tierney ain’t people like you and me. PREVIOUSLY: A PRAYER FOR THE CITY: God Save The Philadelphia Inquirer And Daily News And All Who Sail On Them
Police Release Sketch Of Immigrant Murder Suspect
WPVI: The suspect is described as a black man, between 19 and 21 years old. He is said to be skinny with dark skin, standing about six feet tall. He was wearing a blue baseball cap, and was wearing a green polo shirt with an orange polo logo, blue jeans and house slippers. MORE PREVIOUSLY: A Temple University student and West African immigrant was shot in an attempted robbery this morning in a Southwest Philadelphia park because he did not understand the gunman’s commands, police said. Mamadou Makadji, 22, was pistol-whipped and shot once in the chest around 1:12 a.m. […]
RENDELL: Don’t Mess With Bill
[Photo by MATT GOLDFINE] ASSOCIATED PRESS: “No more cuts!” Cosby declared at the beginning and end of a short speech that was part of a celebration marking the steady improvements in Pennsylvania students’ test scores in math and reading. The Philadelphia native, a well-known education advocate, joined Gov. Ed Rendell and educators at the event designed to put pressure on the state Senate’s Republican majority to support more money for public schools. “Ladies and gentlemen, is it that we don’t like children? I mean, what did these people ever do to you that you want to cut? They’re moving on […]
ARTSY: You Say It’s Your Birthday
“EPIC BIRTHDAY” Solo Exhibition: Photographer Ken Penn K E N C R E D I B L E August 15, 2009 through September 15, 2009 Amberella …sugary & sweet… Gallery & Boutique is pleased to present to you the delicious work of photographer Ken Penn… otherwise known as KENCREDIBLE! The Solo Exhibition, “EPIC BIRTHDAY”, opens August 15th, 2009 from 8-11pm to celebrate, most appropriately, the photographers actual birthday and show opening! With fashion photography being a strong focus of his work, Penn has worked with a long list of independent designers and models around the United States, Canada and Europe, […]
Meet Phil Berg, Alpha Birther Of The Bizarro Nation
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY In the soft twilight of the first Saturday of August, a gray-bearded man in a dark suit stood on the grassy knoll in front of Independence Hall and declared for the benefit of a film crew on hand that we are, as a nation, through the looking glass, people. Black is white, up is down, cats are dogs and the President of the United States is a fraud and a liar, a “usurper,” a foreign-born alien unqualified to hold office and the fact that he currently resides in the White House represents a constitutional […]
FORECAST: Like A Dog Locked In A Hot Car
INQUIRER: The summer’s first heat wave has started, if the forecast is correct, and with it comes an air quality alert for parts of the region. Three straight days of 90 degrees or more qualifies as a heat wave, and the area is predicted to get at least five. Yesterday, the high was 91. Today and tomorrow could hit the mid-90s, followed by highs in the low 90s Wednesday and Thursday. Friday could extend the streak, if it nudges past the expected 88. MORE
Wall St. Dancing On The Grave Of The Public Option
MARKET WATCH: “The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health-care reform,” Obama said on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo. “This is just one sliver of it.” Bucking a bearish Monday trend in the broader stock market, shares of health-insurance companies including UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH 28.95, +0.47, +1.65%) and Aetna Inc. (AET 29.54, -0.09, -0.31%) rose after the comments by Obama as well as members of his administration over the weekend. Health insurers have fought a public plan. Republicans, long opposed to a public plan, seized on comments made Sunday […]
BENERGY: A Day In The Life Of Ben Franklin
[Via NICK BILTON] Hat tip to Dave Bragdon. TANGENTIALLY RELATED: The Anoka-Hennepin School District is paying a high school student’s family $25,000 in a settlement after two teachers made his perceived sexual orientation into a class joke. Teachers seem to now set their gaydars based on a student’s choice of research topics. The high school junior wrote a report on Ben Franklin during the 2007-2007 school year. His teacher, Diane Cleveland told the entire class that the student had a “thing for older men.” Cleveland also told the class the boy’s “fence swings both ways,” according to the Star Tribune […]
ROAD TO REDEMPTION: We’ve Only Just Begun
PHAWKER: For obvious reasons, we have been thinking a lot about Michael Vick as of late. We have been thinking about the doggie Auschwitz he ran for six years for fun and for profit and about how it cost him everything: his career, his seven figure net worth, his freedom and, in some corners, his membership in the human race. We have also been thinking that this is what happens when you take a man out of the ‘hood but you don’t take the ‘hood out of the man. And while that may explain Vick’s crimes, it does not excuse […]