DAILY NEWS: In West Philadelphia, the body of a woman who had been stabbed to death lay facedown amid trash outside a vacant rowhouse. In Crescentville, construction workers found a dead man with a gunshot blast to the head.It was all part of a bloody breakfast hour for Philadelphia police yesterday, who hurried to investigate two bodies found within 20 minutes in separate incidents just after 7 a.m. Detectives already were juggling one homicide and two other deaths from overnight. The five deaths came after a three-day homicide hiatus; yesterday’s carnage boosted the city’s murder tally for the year to […]
MEDIA: Morale Shits The Bed At Courier-Post?
The Gannett Newspapers chain has a miserly rep in the biz for buying up papers, sending in the bean counters and subjecting staff and management to brutal belt-tightening: freezing wages, killing bonuses and slashing newsroom jobs. This just came in over the transom from something called the Gannett Blog, which appears to be a gathering place for the disgruntled: I couldn’t make this up if I tried. A reliable Gannett Blog tipster says Corporate sent a human resources representative to the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J., yesterday after the Big Cheeses in McLean, Va., got a letter describing a serious […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
GET IGGY WITH IT: Mgmt., Johnny Brendas, Last Night [Photo by TIFFANY YOON]
EARLY WORD: A Brown Reason To Live
Tomorrow we will run the third installment of hazy-crazy-mary-and-dirty-larry memories of our gloriously misspent ’80s youth, specifically the time we following a band called the Butthole Surfers around like the Grateful Dead. We would have posted it today, but the statute of limitations doesn’t run out on some of that stuff until tomorrow. You know how it is. Anyway, we will also — God willing — have a PHAWKER TV interview with Gibby up by sometime Sunday or first thing Monday. If you have any specific questions you need answered — you know like, ‘Were you really Kurt Cobain’s roommate […]
PAPERBOY EXTRA: Dead Man Whining
BY AMY Z. QUINN Courtesy our friends at the Washington (D.C.) City Paper, a cautionary tale about how to make make your newspaper’s online and print operations hate each other with only the contempt that bitter mid-career journalists can muster (hint: moving them to a different building might dilute the whole ‘we’re on the same team’ thing). Many people in the Post newsroom would prefer that their peers at washingtonpost.com restrict themselves to technical stuff. Post the brilliant news stories that come from 15th and L, put together slide shows, edit the videos, and go home. But it doesn’t work […]
PAPERBOY: ‘Duane’s Last Stand’ Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN 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 […]
5 Things You Should Know About FOOD FOR ANIMALS
1. Founding members Vulture Voltaire (rhymes) and Ricky Rabbit (beats) began life as dutiful D.C.-area hardcore kids, but they could not ignore the gravitational yank of the funk, the skronk-appeal of free jazz, or the verbal clarity of hip-hop. Now they make crazy rap songs. Don’t even try to talk smack about Outkast around them. 2. Vulture V needed some lyrical yin to his yang, so the group made rapper Hy a fully vested member for “Belly,” their second CD, which has a home on Hoss Records. Hy is supremely confident about his microphone abilities: “But fuck bein’ humble/When it […]
EARLY WORD: Hit The Road, Jack
PHILADELPHIA – On February 15th, the Hiway Theatre, located at 212 Old York Road in Jenkintown, will premiere the film series, Road Trips and Amazing Journeys to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the historic theatre’s reopening. The opening night celebration will begin with a screening of director Walter Salles’ acclaimed feature The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), chronicling the adventures of a young Che Guevara, followed by the featured selection for the evening – the critically acclaimed comedy Last Stop for Paul. Hailed as, “A unique accomplishment. Always entertaining. Very funny and at times quite touching” by film critic Richard Roeper, the […]
911: The Joke That Isn’t Funny Anymore
INQUIRER: Brenda Orr of Doylestown was trapped in a burning bed, immobilized by multiple sclerosis, when she dialed 911 on Jan. 29. Twenty-eight seconds passed before a Bucks County dispatcher answered Orr’s call. Then he put her on hold. It took 26 more seconds for a second dispatcher to pick up. “911. The bed is on fire,” Orr, 53, yelled into her phone. By then a minute had elapsed since Orr had first dialed. A half-minute later, she spoke her final words before the phone went dead. “The bed is fully inflamed,” she said. Bucks County officials, acknowledging that Orr’s […]
EARLY WORD: There’s A Creep In The Cellar
As promised, tomorrow we will share some hazy memories about our gloriously misspent ’80s youth, specifically about following a band called the Butthole Surfers around like the Grateful Dead. We would share today, but the statute of limitations doesn’t run out until tomorrow. You know how it is. Anyway, we will also — God willing — have an interview with Gibby Haynes on Friday. It was supposed to happen to today but Gibby lost his phone in DC last night. Some things never change. In the meantime, we will be giving away a limited number of tickets for Saturday’s show. […]
NEWS CLUES: ‘So Local It Hurts’ Edition
THIS JUST IN: Philly’s Most Wanted Caught Teaching 8th Grade Math One of Philadelphia’s Most Wanted has been found. He was teaching at a city school in North Philadelphia. Arnesx Honore, 33, has taught math to eighth-grade boys since 2003 at the Hunting Park alternative school in North Philadelphia. Honore, accused of attacking a 17-year-old girl in August 2006, was wanted on sexual-assault charges, police said. According to court records, Honore was arrested on charges of raping a minor on April 1, 2006, but all charges were dismissed because the witness was unavailable. It was unclear this morning whether the […]
FORECAST: Iceman Cometh
ACCUWEATHER: WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 AM EST WEDNESDAY…
MAYOR: 911 To Become Less Of A Joke
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) — Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced plans to add additional medics and ambulances on the streets Monday. The national average for medics to arrive at the scene of a medical emergency is approximately nine minutes. A recent study found Philadelphia meets the average response time only about 60 percent of the time. During a Monday morning news conference, Mayor Nutter said he will approve $4 million in the city’s budget in order to pay for new EMS units and dozens of additional paramedics. “This is a significant programmatic investment and one of many initiatives aimed towards improving […]