BYKO: “WHAT WILL happen to Larry Mendte?” I’ve been asked that a few times, because people know that I covered TV for five years, I know the players and I know the process. I know how the squirrels who run TV stations arrange their nuts. After stitching together what has been reported, what is believed to have happened and what is likely to happen, an Etch-a-Sketch picture emerges. To that grainy image I add what else might happen. Larry Mendte is kaput at CBS 3. Why? Odds are he will cop to electronic snooping. In exchange for saving the government […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Thank You For Smoking
FRESH AIR Whether he’s lancing boils, getting crabs from thrift store pants or sitting in a hospital waiting room dressed only in his underwear, one thing is clear: David Sedaris is not shy about sharing those embarrassing, cringe-worthy incidents that members of the general population tend to save for diaries or therapists. In his sixth collection of essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Sedaris continues to bare his body and soul, detailing the aforementioned boils and crabs, as well as an uncomfortable incident in which he accidentally spits a lozenge into the lap of his seatmate on an airplane. […]
MUST-SEE WEB TV: Wasgoinon?
You may remember our pal Kilroy from his days as Phawker TV anchorman, which included this priceless interview with Barack Obama. He’s got his own show, Wasgoinon?, currently in production with our New Media partners in crime Woodshop Films/ScrappleTV, in which he more or less tries to see how much trouble a grown man in knickers and a tricorn hat can get into in this city. Get behind it before it gets in front of you.
KILLADELPHIA: 4 Shot, Including Six-Year-Old
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Three adults and a 6-year-old girl were shot outside a social club that was hosting a barbecue, police said Sunday. Someone fired into a crowd of people from an alley across the street around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Officer Tanya Little said. All four victims were taken to a hospital in private vehicles. The adults were listed in critical condition with unspecified injuries; the girl was stabilized and transferred to a children’s hospital. The names of the victims were not released. No arrests had been made and authorities said they were still trying to sort out exactly what happened. […]
I Went To The Roots Picnic & All I Got Was A Good Time
TEXT & PHOTOS BY JONATHAN VALANIA & TIFFANY YOON 1. Quite probably, Ahmir ‘?uestlove’ Thompson is the greatest drummer on Earth. Speaking on behalf of the entire 215…drumroll, please…we could not be more proud or horny. Thank you, try the veal. 2. Black Thought is arguably the baddest MC in the game right now. (Bad meaning good, and also a ‘jive turkey’ is a bad person. Just sayin’.) 3. Not only is guitarist Captain Kirk Douglas a master of Hendrixian six-string psychedelic scribble and Maggot Brain-damaged space-funk, but dude can sing like Smokey Robinson, or close enough for sweaty white […]
EVERY TUESDAY: The Afterlife Of A Statistic
The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney, the man who brought you Today I Saw, knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather-and-share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. Look for it every Tuesday on Phawker! Why? Because we love you! [Photo by JUSTIN ROMAN]
EARLY WORD: Sharon Jones Has Nice Bones
[Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER There was a prevailing mood of giddiness in the air at the Fillmore one night back in December, a palpable sense that we were lucky enough to attend a very auspicious occasion, one above and beyond the usual concert experience. A sense that we were all active participants in poetic justice, and by ponying up for a ticket and selling out the joint, a long-neglected talent was finally getting her turn in the sun. As Sharon Jones will be the first to tell you, record executives have long told her […]
MEDIA: Philadelphia Media Holdings Defaults On Loan
BLOOMBERG: Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC lenders blocked a June 1 interest payment after the company, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, fell into technical default on loan covenants, Standard & Poor’s reported. The two sides are negotiating to resolve the default, Standard & Poor’s Leveraged Commentary & Data said today, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of a Citizens Bank-led phone call Wednesday in which lenders learned of the missed payment. The company is seeking an $8 million equity investment, S&P said. In January, Chief Executive Officer Brian Tierney warned of “a dire situation” if costs weren’t cut by 10 percent by […]
KILLADELPHIA: 2 Shot Dead At Holy Innocents
INQUIRER: A double shooting at a Catholic elementary school early this morning left a man and a woman dead before dawn. Gunshots rang out at 4:10 a.m. at the Holy Innocents Catholic School in Philadelphia’s Juniata section, police said. Two women were sitting in a van parked on the school’s grounds when a gunman approached and opened fire. The shots fatally wounded a 19-year-old a woman. The man, 27, then turned the gun on himself, police said. * The Archdiocese of Philadelphia cancelled classes today for several hundred students who attend Holy Innocents and the adjoining St. Lucy Day School […]
Five Things U Should Know About M.I.A. Last Night
1. Last time I saw a show at The Armory, the Breeders were opening for Nirvana. Now I remember why it’s been 14 years before I went back for more. Leaning into the slight incline of 33rd and Market like a rigid salute, the Armory was literally designed to shelter tanks, thus it is built like a brick shithouse — and it sure sounds like one, too. 2. Still, there is something fitting about an fundamental peacenik like M.I.A. transforming this mouldering edifice of the military-industrial complex into roiling rave of shock-and-awe dance jams and kaleidoscopic hip-hop and packing it […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Trouble With The Roots
[Illustrations by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA A friend of mine has a funny-ass I-met-the-Roots-and-made-an-ass-of-myself story. This friend, for obvious reasons, shall remain nameless, but for sheer entertainment value, let’s refer to him hereafter as Horsecock.Around the release of 2002’s wonderfully artsy-fartsy Phrenology, good ol’ Horsecock and his girl went to see the Roots perform at Indre Studios. Joining the Roots for said performance was one Cody ChesnuTT, the dirty South rubber-band man who lent his Smokey Robinson-like pipes to the single “The Seed (2.0).” Later Horsecock and his girl ventured up to an impromptu VIP after-party on Indre’s roof […]
LOSING MY RELIGION: Advertising The Enlightenment
INQUIRER: Mounted by a consortium of local atheists, it is an invitation to the area’s atheists, agnostics, skeptics, rationalists and religious freethinkers (no one label fits them all) to overcome their differences and form a coalition. “Our mission is not to convince fundamentalists to change their position,” Steve Rade, a Huntingdon Valley businessman, said last week. He donated the $22,500 needed to mount the billboard, which appeared May 1 and is to remain until the end of August [on I-95]. “What we want to do is give people questioning their beliefs a place to go for more information and to […]
HEAR YE: Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Place
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we love you! RELATED: Spiritualized play TLA July 29; tix go on sale Friday INTERVIEW: Spaceman 3 VIDEO: Interview with jason and sonic about spacemen 3 breaking up