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 Conventional wisdom has it you can tell a lot about a person by the company he or she keeps. But, what if posterity makes a big mistake in judging a famous somebody’s friends; wouldn’t that blunder then trigger a huge misreading of the chief person of interest? There you have the reasoning underlying Brenda Wineapple‘s fascinating new book, White Heat, that explores the relationship between Emily Dickinson and one of her closest confidants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. For decades, Higginson has been derided by Dickinson scholars and fans as a kindly oaf; a Victorian man of minor letters damned […]
KILLADELPHIA: Death In The Afternoon
INQUIRER: A Philadelphia man was shot dead yesterday afternoon on a street in the city’s Kensington section, police said. Keith Bolden, 31, was lying on the 800 block of Thayer Street with a gunshot wound to the chest when police found him about 2:30 p.m. Emergency crews took Bolden, of the 5100 block of Saul Street, to Temple University Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 4:35 p.m., a police spokeswoman said. Investigators have no motive or suspect in the slaying. MORE INQUIRER: Two men found dead yesterday in an apartment above a North Philadelphia car stereo store had […]
FRINGE PICKS: The Sweet, Sweet Vampires Of Sodom
Sweet By-And-By Pig Iron Theater OBIE Award-winning Pig Iron Theatre Company teams up with Swedish Teater Sláva to create this all-acoustic whistle-stop tour of America in a time of union martyrs, Seventh-Day Adventists, and lost souls. A forerunner of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Billy Bragg, Joe Hill was a Swedish immigrant, well known on California picket lines as a union organizer and radical songwriter. Sweet By-and-By features Hill’s wickedly funny songs on banjo and concertina, while following his journey from Sweden to California to a Utah jail, and on up to Mars, where all good union leaders go to […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE: War On Drugs, Johnny Brendas, Last Night BY TIFFANY YOON Last night’s show was surprisingly light on paying customers, considering Windsor For the Derby just returned from a massive European tour and War on Drugs is set to leave for their own with the Brooklyn based Hold Steady. War on Drugs and WFTD were backed by two drummers, serving as a driving force for each set. It was only the second time they’ve tried incorporating two drummers and I’d say it was a complete success. These bands are all tightly knit, sharing Charlie Hall, Adam […]
ELEPHANT GUN: Spitballing The RNC In IM
Our completely unfair and totally biased analysts tonight will be Amy Z. Quinn, aka Citizen Mom, recently converted Obama supporter/longtime Hillarycrat dead-ender, and Jonathan Valania, aka ME, who was right about Obama, and most other things, all along. We join the second night of the RNC in Minneapolis with First Lady Laura Bush introducing her husband… 9 minutes 9:49 PM Citizen: Laura Bush: Proof that with a pack of Marlboro Lights and a Xanax, a girl can do anything! 9:50 PM me: nice 9:51 PM nobody has ANYTHING good to say about No Child Left Behind except for the White House Spokesperson and […]
EARLY WORD: I Like Big Butts & I Cannot Lie
INQUIRER: [W]ith the opening on Friday of “R. Crumb’s Underground” at the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Philadelphia-born artist’s obsessions — collecting old-time blues and country 78s, riding piggy-back on powerfully built women, and forever depicting, as he has put it, “the seamy side of America’s subconscious” — will be on full display in the ICA gallery at the University of Pennsylvania through Dec. 7. The exhibition, which originated at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in 2007, is the largest ever mounted in the United States on the 65-year-old Crumb, who created the 1960s counterculture […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Citizen Mom Gets A Job
Hey folks, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always felt like the year really starts in September. My school days are far behind me, but this time of year always feels like the beginning of something. To that end, I want to let you know about my new venture, a column for the Philadelphia City Paper. It debuts with the Sept. 4 issue (that’s Thursday, for any of you suffering Monday-holiday discombobulation) so please pick up a copy or look for it on www.citypaper.net . The plan is for the column to run weekly, and not many subjects will […]
FRINGE REVIEWS: Store; Waiting For the Show
BY AARON STELLA FRINGE CORRESPONDENT Two men gussied up in tweed suits and hard-soled shoes manage the day long showcasing of The Store. As you enter The Store, you are handed a menu — much like what you would be given at a restaurant — complete with specials and other various delicacies. But instead of food, art is today’s special. Michikuza Matsune and David Subal, creators of The Store, will be your “servers”, and they are capable of accommodating a diversity of artistic tastes. When you want to “order” something, you settle up the bill first (ranging between $0.75-5.00) and […]
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: Town Without Pity II
BY JEFF DEENEY The memorial standing at the intersection of Green Street and McIlvain on Chester’s Eastside was erected to commemorate the anniversary of 19 year old John Strand’s death. Strand was shot in the chest after a street corner confrontation in the early evening of August the 7th, 2007 and died on the sidewalk as paramedics attempted to resuscitate him. I found Strand’s memorial while en route to the site of another homicide that just happened two blocks away. A piece of white poster board including loving messages from Strand’s mother, brother and other friends and family was propped […]
FRINGE PICKS: European Sons
9/2: The European Lesson Fake anthropologists, real Slovaks, serious drama: The European Lesson is dance, theater, and adultery at its finest. The Live Arts Festival presents a world premiere by internationally acclaimed Norwegian director/choreographer Jo Strømgren (The Convent, Live Arts 2006), created in residency with five acclaimed Philadelphia actors. The European Lesson features Strømgren’s comedic, pseudo-realistic, and highly physical style of theater in a mock anthropological lecture that examines the ocean of misunderstanding that separates Europe and the Americas. MORE Beyond the Pale/Soundwalk Philadelphia Let an audio track usurp your every day consciousness as it guides you through heaven […]
RIP: Edwin Guthman, Ex-Inquirer Editor, Bobby Kennedy Press Sec. & Nixon ‘Enemy’, Dead At 89
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Edwin O. Guthman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the infamous “enemies list” prepared by aides of President Richard Nixon and who served as press secretary to Robert F. Kennedy, has died at 89. Guthman was the Los Angeles Times’ national editor from 1965 to 1977, then served for a decade as editorial page editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1950 for his stories in The Seattle Times on the Washington Legislature’s Un-American Activities Committee. His reporting cleared a University of Washington professor of allegations that he was […]
All This Happened While You Were Sleeping
WITH APOLOGIES TO ANDY WARHOL: Live Forever, The Barbary Last Night [Photos by TIFFANY YOON]