BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Sarah Chayes first went to Afghanistan to report on the Taliban for NPR, but in 2002, after the fall of the Taliban government in Kabul, she left journalism and dedicated herself to rebuilding the country. She drew on her experiences to write her 2006 book, The Punishment of Virtue. Chayes is an advocate for economic development in Afghanistan, and she founded a cooperative in Kandahar that produces skin-care products from local crops. The cooperative aims to help farmers earn a living from licit crops rather than opium. Chayes joins Fresh Air to explain how the Taliban is using […]
TONIGHT: Wavvy Gravvy
THE WAVVES: So Bored [Mp3] UPDATE: Cancelled due to inclement weather. Dang! Choice. We turn up the volume on the voices in our heads and try to make sense of the babble. On a journey around the country to understand how emotion and logic interact to guide us through our options, we ponder how we get through the million choices and decisions we make every day. Forget free will, some important decisions could come down to a steaming cup of coffee. MORE [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]
CONCERT REVIEW: Antony & The Johnsons
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If Antony Hegarty didn’t exist, Lou Reed would have surely invented him. It would be in a song called “Antony Says,” an elegantly twinkling ballad wrapped up in fishnet, mascara and doom, about an anguished androgyne with a canary-in-the-coal-mine voice that makes grown men cry in their souls, singing about the crack in the center of everything, where the light gets in. Fortunately, for the devoted at the half-full Keswick Theater Monday night, Antony is all too real. For it was there that he set the twilight reeling, and that voice — like butter, […]
THE EARLY WORD: Histoire Lesson
Whenever Wednesday, February 18 @ 6:30pm Screening and Reception: Melody Institute of Contemporary Art · University of Pennsylvania 118 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-3289 · 215.898.5911 Join Anthony Campuzano over wine and cheese to watch Serge Gainsbourg seduce nymphet Jane Birkin in Melody (1971), Jean-Christophe Averty’s kaleidoscopic 28-minute video accompaniment to Gainsbourg’s iconic and provocative concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson. SERGE GAINSBOURG: Requiem Pour Un Con
CLUELESS: According To Rasmussen Poll, Majority Of GOP Thinks Party Should Be MORE Like Sarah Palin
HUFFPO: While the media and political elites debate the future of the GOP, rank and file Republicans see see no need to deviate from the party’s current path. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, a plurality of Republican voters think the party has grown too moderate over the past eight years, and a majority think the party should become more like controversial Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. MORE GUARDIAN: Alaska governor Sarah Palin opened a political action committee yesterday, a move that may not outright confirm her intentions of running for US president in 2012 but indicates she intends to remain […]
KILLADELPHIA: 15-Year-Old Boy Charged With Killing 73-Year-Old Man In Christmas Eve Hit And Run
DAILY NEWS: Police arrested a 15-year-old boy who they say was behind the wheel of his parents’ Ford Expedition on Christmas Eve when he plowed it into 73-year-old William Wrigley, killing him, and then kept driving. Police said that he turned himself in yesterday after an arrest warrant was issued more than a week ago. Authorities have not released the identity of the teen suspect, pending whether he’s charged as an adult when he appears in a court hearing today, a police source said. About 9:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Wrigley, of Frankford Avenue near Sedgely, was crossing the intersection […]
We Know It’s Only Avant Garde Noise But We Like It
HOWL: Thurston Moore, International House, Last Night [Photos: JONATHAN VALANIA] BY DAVE ALLEN I counted about a dozen walkouts from Thurston Moore and Mats Gustafsson’s performance at International House last night. The duo’s aggressive and experimental playing on guitar and saxophone, respectively, tested the limits of what two instruments, with but six strings and one strip of wood between them, could do, but it also tested the audience’s patience and tolerance of noise. During quieter moments, the duo’s playing resembled a static-smeared AM radio receiver rapidly cycling between stations, and during the louder moments they sounded like dueling atom smashers. […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #7 The latest edition of our five-minute week-in-review, wherein I’m a flower that reads the news. This is by far the best one yet. Hats off to our partners in crime at Collateral News and Woodshop Films.
Inky/DN Seeking $10 Million Bailout From State
NEWSBUSTERS: We all wondered if it would happen. NB readers said it would very soon. NB author Tom Blumer even predicted this would be the year for it. Now the largest newspaper in Philadelphia is requesting a bailout. In a perfectly ironic fashion it took a lawsuit for the public to learn that the Philadelphia Inquirer is seeking $10 million dollars from the state of Pennsylvania. The bailout request was revealed after the school filed suit against the paper for a series of articles questioning the school’s use of government funds.Now, according to an interview between the Philadelphia Bulletin and […]
EARLY WORD: Velvet Goldmine
Mercury Music Prize winner ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS KESWICK THEATRE MON., FEB. 2, 8 PM In their first area appearance since 2005, ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS will perform their internationally-acclaimed blend of highly dramatic, emotional and lyrical chamber cabaret at Glenside’s Keswick Theatre on Mon. Feb. 2 @ 8 PM .ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS will be touring in support of their highly-anticipated January 2009 release, The Crying Light. Their last full-length album, 2005’s I am a Bird Now, won the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize for the best album of 2005 over rival nominees the Kaiser Chiefs, and was greeted with […]
BOOK EXCERPT: Tear Down This Myth
EDITOR’S NOTE: Phawker is proud to bring you this excerpt from Daily News scribe/Attytood blogger-in-chief Will Bunch’s soon-to-publish Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics And Haunts Our Future, a meaty, pointed dissection of the dream factory mythologizing of Ronald Reagan’s presidency — how this is being done, why, and the impact such historical revisionism has on our current political landscape. The short answer to all the above can be found the following quote from George Orwell, which kicks off the book: ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls […]
PAPERBOY: ‘We’re All Polar Bears Now’ Edition
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]