NEW YORK TIMES: With staff changes and reductions across the media industry, even a blog post can be too time-consuming a way to announce who is in and out of a job. That is why a public relations employee turned to the instant-blogging platform Twitter to create The Media Is Dying, a Twitter feed that documents media hirings and firings in one-sentence bursts of text. “These sorts of layoffs are unheard-of,” said the stream’s founder, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his sources in the industry. “It’s gotten insane to keep up with who was moving around […]
DUCK: Iraqi Journalist Hurls Shoes At Bush’s Head
Shoe-Hurling Iraqi Becomes a Folk Hero UPDATE: BAGHDAD — An Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President Bush and called him a dog became a huge celebrity in the Arab world and beyond on Monday, with many supporters exalting him for what they called a courageous act in the face of American arrogance about the war. MORE CNN: An Iraqi television journalist hurled two shoes at President Bush on Sunday during a joint news conference Bush was holding with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to mark the signing of a U.S.-Iraq security agreement. Bush had just finished his […]
KILLADELPHIA: 3 More Dead Since U Went To Bed
INQUIRER: A 34-year-old man, who lived in an apartment above the restaurant he owned – Wings and Things – in the 2300 block of South 65th Street, was killed as he returned home at 1:47 a.m., said Lt. Mark Deegan of the police department’s homicide division. Two men confronted him in a robbery attempt. He resisted and was shot more than once in the chest. He was pronounced dead at 2:08 a.m. at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The man’s name has not been released because relatives have not yet been notified. No arrests have been made. Shortly after […]
NO MO: 76ers Fire Head Coach Maurice Cheeks
INQUIRER: A source close to the 76ers has confirmed that Sixers head coach Maurice Cheeks has been fired and the interim coach will be Tony DiLeo, who is currently the Senior Vice President and Assistant General Manager. DiLeo will coach tonight’s home game against the Washington Wizards and, a source close to the Sixers confirmed that DiLeo will coach the team through the end of the season. The official word coming from the Sixers at this point in “no comment.” MORE WASHINGTON POST: The 76ers became the fifth team to fire its head coach this season when they replaced Maurice […]
THE PHOTON BAND: Where Did The Love Go?
[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] The Photon Band plays tonight at JBs with Audible and Brown Recluse.
TONITE: On Sugar Mountain
ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: AMERICANA (Musical movement 1776-present; see also alt-country, No Depression) Often shortsightedly assumed to date back no further than the first Uncle Tupelo record, the Americana musical tradition in fact begins with that iconic, bloodied fife-and-drum trio staggering out of the smoking ruins of the American Revolution. Forsaking macho jingoism for earthy, backwoods aesthetics, Americana is a catchall phrase to encompass the impossibly wide breadth of American roots music, evoking the magnificent vistas of the national geography and the transcendental struggle of the American experience — the good, the bad, the ugly, the high and the lonesome. While […]
TRAGIC: Bettie Page Is Dead
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85. Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died Thursday night at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler. A cult figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur […]
THE EARLY WORD: Let Them Eat Rock
Philabundance is the region’s largest hunger relief organization and works to end hunger and malnutrition in the Delaware Valley by acquiring food and distributing it through organizations serving people in need. *** NEIL YOUNG: After The Gold Rush RELATED: Tix Still Available For Neil Young + Wilco Friday At The Spectrum PREVIOUSLY: Q&A With Wilco Keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen *** BIZJOURNAL: Comcast Corp. said Thursday it launched a faster Internet service that will double the speed for most of its existing customers by early 2009. The Philadelphia-based telecommunications giant will roll out the so-called “wideband” service to residential and business customers […]
LIL MAN W/ GUN IN HIS HAND: Psycho Killer & Wrestling Enthusiast John Du Pont Denied Parole
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Former suburban Philadelphia multimillionaire John du Pont has lost a bid for parole. A jury in 1997 found the heir to his family’s chemical company fortune guilty of third-degree murder but mentally ill in the 1996 shooting death of Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler David Schultz. Du Pont was sentenced to 13 to 30 years in prison, but first was treated for three months at Norristown State Hospital. His attorney, Tara Wochok, said the 70-year-old du Pont is now at the state prison at Mercer in western Pennsylvania. Wochok said du Pont’s parole petition was turned down last […]
Q&A: My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden
[Photo by MATT WIGNALL] BY DAVE ALLEN There’s no way around the too-easy metaphor: My Brightest Diamond is a gem. The project by talented singer and multi-instrumentalist Shara Worden is now on its second record, “A Thousand Shark’s Teeth,” and has crafted a richly haunted sound, steeped in both late Romantic chamber music and the seamy vocal stylings of Jeff Buckley, Bjork and Billie Holiday. Worden came by her classical roots honestly: she has a degree in opera. After a musically eclectic childhood in Ypsilanti, Michigan and musical studies at the University of North Texas, Worden set out for New […]
PAPERBOY: Special ‘UFO Nutter Buddy’ 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 […]
HEAR YE: Pronto All Is Golden
SELECTED TRACKS NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO! BY JONATHAN VALANIA Mikael Jorgensen is the keyboard player for Wilco, who open for Neil Young Friday at the Spectrum (tix still available, yo). He’s the one in the Clark Kent glasses and untucked Oxford and Charlie Brown sweater combo, hunched over his MacBook and triggering disembodied sonic filigree and sine wave surrealism, like a mischievous child coloring outside the lines of Wilco’s horse-drawn Americana. Jorgensen — a Leonardo, New Jersey native who recently moved from Wilco’s HQ in Chicago to Brooklyn — first made Phawker’s acquaintance back in the mid-90s when he […]
EARLY WORD: Here Comes The Silver Age
Dear friends, family, and fans of men’s close harmony vocal ensembles, Hello and happy holiday season to you! We hope this suddenly very chilly autumn is finding you well. The Silver Ages have been hard at work of late, sequestered in an authentic reproduction of Mory’s Temple Bar set up in a row home just south of Fitler Square. We’ve been singing round-the-clock, honing our craft in preparation for this busiest time of year (for those unfamiliar, close harmony vocal ensemble season runs from Beaujolais Day in November to the moment of the Vernal Equinox in March). Things are sounding better […]