NME: Ron Asheton, the guitarist and bassist with The Stooges, has been found dead today (January 6). He was 60. Asheton was found at his home in Ann Arbor this morning, according to police. A cause of death is yet to be confirmed, although initial reports suggest that Asheton died of a heart attack. Detective Sgt Jim Stephenson told local paper Ann Arbor News that foul play is not suspected. He added that Asheton‘s body was found on a living-room sofa, and that he appeared to have been dead for at least several days. Autopsy and toxicology results are pending. […]
DIRE MAN: Nutter Shutters Seven Fire Companies
Philadelphia Fire Department, circa 1913 [photo courtesy of PhillyHistory.Org] DAILY NEWS: Seven Fire Department companies were closed and 130 firefighters reassigned to other parts of the city yesterday as part of Mayor Nutter’s budget cuts. Nutter announced plans in November to eliminate five engine and two ladder companies to deal with a more than $1 billion hole in the budget over the next five years. MORE FIREFIGHTER HOURLY: Having visited fire departments all around the country, having ridden with very busy companies, I can say with a straight face that Philly faces some of the toughest conditions this side of […]
WE WILL ROCK YOU: BeardsBirds Crush Vikings
PHILADELPHIA 26 MINNESOTA 14 *** WHOOPSIE: Pay-To-Play Probe Ends Richardson Commerce Secretary Bid WASHINGTON POST: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to be commerce secretary, withdrew from consideration yesterday, citing an ongoing federal “pay-to-play” investigation involving one of his political donors as a significant obstacle to his confirmation. Richardson, 61, who competed unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, becomes the first political casualty in Obama’s Cabinet, and his withdrawal marked the first visible crack in what had been one of the smoothest presidential transitions in modern history. MORE RELATED: Picture of Richardson Beating Up […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Gay
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Frankly, I’d be lying if I said 2008 was a good years for gays. First, there’s the case of Senator Larry Craig: Mr. Whoopsie footsie nudging tootsies with the undercover cop in the airport restroom. Uh, whoopsie! Exactly. The Idaho senator just couldn’t keep his homosexual tendencies to himself, could he? According to the police report, Craig was caught propositioning a man in the stall next to him in the Minneapolis -St. Paul airport restroom by way of foot nudging. To Craig’s misfortune, the man he propositioned turned out to be an undercover cop. Whoopsie! […]
REWIND 2008: The Year In Obama
[EDITOR’S NOTE: New and improved, with more content than ever!] Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Obama in the White House, the Democrats in control of Congress and the motherf*king Republicans down in flames. If this is a dream, we don’t wanna wake up. Join with us now as we stroll down the memory lane of our in-house commentary and analysis on the 2008 Presidential election (for our complete coverage CLICK HERE). Like Same Cooke prophesied in 1963, a change has come. Truly a once in a lifetime moment in this American life. […]
TO OUR READERS: Happy New Year!
“Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.” RADIOHEAD: Nude[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] * REWIND: 2008 The Year In Yoon 2008 [Photos by TIFFANY YOON]
THERE WILL BE BLOOD: They Might Be Giants
[Photo by SUSAN ANDERSON] BY DAVE ALLEN It might sound like an insult to call a band’s sound cartoonish, but in the case of They Might Be Giants, it’s really not. I first encountered their music on the FOX cartoon show Tiny Toon Adventures in a kind of music video where the character Plucky Duck acts out the song “Particle Man,” getting pummeled by a variety of heavily-muscled of the professional wrestler-meets-comic book superhero type. The band’s wry, funny lyrics mesh with the arch musical sensibilities of the two core members, John Flansburgh and John Linnell — organ, accordion and […]
HEAR YE: Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It
Now playing on PHAWKER RADIO! WALL STREET JOURNAL: It’s been a big week for R&B performer Raphael Saadiq, whose critically acclaimed new album, The Way I See It, has just been named iTunes #1 Best Album of 2008. With an average customer rating of four-and-a-half-stars, The Way I See It is praised in an iTunes online review for “inhabit(ing) the atmosphere of late-Sixties Motown and Philadelphia International, incorporating the distinctly echo-laden drum shuffles of Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye, as well as the swelling string choruses of the Delfonics and the Stylistics … music pours from this performer as easily […]
MEDIA: The Curious Case Of The Man Shot For Talking At A Brad Pitt Movie That Became A Global Headline, And The 3 Men Shot Dead In One Day That Did Not
INQUIRER: Three shootings yesterday in Grays Ferry, Kensington and West Oak Lane left three dead and three in critical condition, police said. All the victims were male, and all were shot on the street. No arrests had been made as of last night. Just before 6 p.m. in the 1300 block of Harmony Street in Grays Ferry, two men in their 50s were shot. One, age 56, was shot once in the head, the other on the right side of his body. Both were pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. About 6:30 p.m. on the 800 […]
HO HO HO: Seasons Greetings From Phawker
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: This is the year Santa finally kicks that funny little Coke problem.
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS: Whatever Happens In Room 315 Stays In Room 315, Part 7
PART VII BY JEFF DEENEY After lunch the students return to room 315 for a structured free period. On an average day the group spends structured free period playing board games like Battleship and Monopoly, but on a good day they might get to go to the computer lab. On a bad day the free period isn’t so structured and the behavioral health worker Mr. Thompson spends the hour breaking up shoving matches and trying to keep furniture from being thrown across the room. The school has a total of 6 aging Dell PCs for roughly 1500 students. Getting a reservation for the computer lab […]
CONVICTED: Fort Dix 6 Guilty Of Conspiracy
INQUIRER: A federal jury today found the five foreign-born Muslim men guilty of conspiring to kill military personnel, but not guilty of attempted murder. The verdict ends one of the country’s most sensational cases of domestic terrorism, a case that garnered international headlines on May 7, 2007, when the defendants were arrested in coordinated raids. On that day, brothers Dritan and Shain Duka attempted to buy seven rifles from Mahmoud Omar, who was working as an FBI informant. A third Duka brother, Eljvir, also was arrested that day. Like all of the defendants, the brothers were born overseas, but raised […]