TIGER BOMB: M.I.A., Electric Factory, Last Night CLICK TO ENLARGE Yes, the rumors are true — M.I.A. is absolutely beautiful, both in sparkly skintight spandex and a t-shirt three sizes too large, either standing tall like Shiva the Destroyer or seemingly trying to make a baby with the stack of speakers. Few things fire up a crowd more than opening with “Bamboo Banger.” And seeing as how it’s HER song, it only makes sense that she should open with it, if you think about it. Also, few things are as hard as waiting for the song to kick in after […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
STOPPING THE INSANITY: Teddy Bear Teacher Pardoned By President Of Sudan KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan’s president on Monday agreed to pardon a British teacher jailed here after she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, British politician Lord Nazir Ahmed said. Ahmed and another Muslim representative from Britain’s House of Lords, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir Monday at his presidential palace to plead for Gillian Gibbons’ pardon. “The president has told us he has already signed the papers for her pardon,” Ahmed told reporters. Sudanese presidential spokesman Mahzoub Faidul told The Associated Press that […]
HALL MONITOR: Our Unofficial City Council Minutes
TIME CAPSULE: Lucien Blackwell presents proclamation to Maurice Barboza in Council chambers on February 25th, 1988. Also pictured, Anna Verna and young Ben Franklin. Unofficial Minutes of City Council Meeting at 10 a.m. on Thursday November 29, 2007 BY ABIGAIL SHEPHERD, CITY HALL CORRESPONDENT-IN-TRAINING 10:00 Is when the City Council meeting is scheduled to commence, but the Committee on Appropriations meeting being held in Council chambers is running late and seeing as how these guys dole out the dough, nobody has the balls to ask them kindly wrap it up. So we wait…and wait. 10:05 A group of […]
KILLADELPHIA: One More Dead Since U Went To Bed
DAILY NEWS: A 20-year-old man was fatally shot in broad daylight yesterday in Point Breeze. Homicide Lt. Philip Riehl said Jamar Williams was sitting inside a white van on Dickinson Street near Capitol at 2:47 p.m. when he was shot in the back and abdomen. Williams, of Stanley Street near Dickinson, got out the van and collapsed. He died at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at 3:30 p.m. Witnesses said they had not gotten a look at the driver of the vehicle, and it’s unknown what motivated the shooting, Riehl said. According to court records, Williams was arrested […]
PAPERBOY: Bowlers, Bugs and Bullets Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN We know how it is: so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up valuable nanoseconds that can now be better spent ‘roughing up the suspect’ over at Suicide Girls or what have you. Every Thursday 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 you towards the gooey caramel center of each edition. Why? Because we like you. ON THE COVER CITY PAPER: […]
SECOND OPINION: Being I’m Not There
BY CARRIE RICKEY INQUIRER FILM CRITIC Much as I admire [the] performances, and much as I respect Haynes’ attempt to create something deeper than the standard movie biopic, I left the theater scratching my head, thinking, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There’s no there there.” It’s an enigmatic movie about an enigma — not unlike a boring song about boredom. Thankfully, Haynes successfully avoids replicating the biopic’s standard arc of struggle/flameout/phoenix rising from ashes, the cliche of every VH-1: Behind the Music episode. While structurally ambitious, his six actors in search of one character — or actors representing different […]
THE LINCOLN BITE: Curing Hunger With Just $5
Located near 22nd and South, Ants Pants Café bustles and resonates with strange Australian catchphrases and the whoosh-bang of an overscheduled espresso bar. “Ants Pants” is Aussie vernacular for “the best” or the “it” thing of the moment, which explains why the walls are plastered with street maps of Sydney (co-owner Liz Fleming cut her teeth in the cafes of that city). Tables are a bit scarce on weekends, but for good reason, and take-out orders fly out the door as the morning becomes afternoon. Ants Pants offers an array of traditional café pastries for $2 to $3. A five-dollar […]
NEWS CLUES: ‘So Local It Hurts’ Edition
Jannie Gets Out The Way Of The Barnes Move, For $12 Million And Naming Rights City Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell’s three-year holdout against moving the city’s youth detention facility to her West Philadelphia district paid off yesterday, as the city, state and school district announced plans for a $12 million community center named after her late husband. “This plan has been a long time coming, but the result was worth waiting for,” said Blackwell, who had refused to introduce legislation required for a new Youth Study Center at North 48th Street and Haverford Avenue without something “positive” for the community. […]
DRUG TEST: Frisking The Inquirer’s Super-Weed Bust Story For The Straight Dope On ‘The War On Drugs’
So the Inquirer is trumpeting a big marijuana bust on City Line Avenue that took 16 pounds of the dreaded “AK47″off the street, denying buzz to untold scores of suburban dad-rockers currently pumping iron out in the garage like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. A potent type of marijuana known as AK47 – so strong that some users are treated in emergency rooms for overdoses – has hit the Philadelphia area. Today, police laid out 16 pounds of the stuff [NOT pictured, above] they said they confiscated from a high-level dealer who supplied the suburbs: Michael Cascioli, 31, of the […]
VALANIA/SWEENEY FEUD: A Never-Ending Fount Of Dubious ‘Hipster’ Humor Since 2006!
From Today’s Metro, where Quizzomeister Johnny Goodtimes holds forth on some Philly wrestling matches he’d like to see: Philebrity founder Joey Sweeney vs. Phawker founder Jonathan Valania in a Hipster Death Match: This match disappoints promoters, as the hipsters think that this whole idea is “lame” and, after entering the ring, just exchange shrugs and discuss some crappy band. Actually, I’m pretty confident that any fight between those two would involve some girlie slapping, soft weeping, a blurry Photobucket slideshow and at least one smoke break. And the entire evening ends with Jill and Ruthie ditching them to go for […]
THE EARLY WORD: About A Girl
Closing Requiem Concert: Igni Natura Renovatur Integra The Artistic Legacy of Jennifer Bates On Saturday, December 1, 2007, six esteemed Philadelphia musicians will gather at Germ Books and Gallery to ritually close the current art show of our founder, the late Jennifer Bates. At approximately 3PM, David E. Williams — Germ’s owner and Bates’ widower — will open the performance on synthesizer with a plaintive melody from one of Jennifer’s own compositions. From there, the other musicians will join in an improvised performance of electronic drones, noises and other psychonautic sounds that evoke Jennifer’s spirit on the day before many […]
EDITORIAL: Ivy League Murder, GED Justice
BY AMY Z. QUINN The dead wife of Penn Professor Rafael Robb has been abused in death by Bruce Castor as badly as she was in life by her husband. He bludgeoned his wife to death with a metal bar in cold blood. By ANY objective analysis he appears to have gotten away with murder Despite evidence that Robb, a PhD and expert on game theory, had been a controlling, abusive husband who couldn’t stand that the wife he despised was daring to divorce him and was planning to take their daughter away on a trip, the Montgomery County District […]
GUNCRAZY: Five-Year-Old Shot In The Ass
A five-year-old boy was shot at his family’s home in the 600 block of West Huntingdon Street in Philadelphia’s West Kensington neighborhood around 1am on Tuesday. The young boy was under treatment late in the morning at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children where he was listed in stable condition with a gunshot wound of his buttocks. Police later found handguns in a nearby car and at the young victim’s house but had not immediately determined whether either of those weapons had been fired. Investigators initially said they were not sure if the shooting was deliberate or accidental, having received conflicting stories from various family […]