EDITOR’S NOTE: Pat Berkery was Phawker’s first sports columnist. PATRICK BERKERY: Hey, Patrick Berkery here, drummer for The Bigger Lovers. Five seasons and change after closing up shop, The Bigger Lovers are reuniting to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our instantly out-of-print 2001 debut, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying” (originally issued on Black Dog Records on March 13, 2001) with a remastered vinyl and digital reissue coming March 8, 2011 on our own Miles Above imprint. It’s the first time the album has appeared in either format. The reissue – which includes two bonus tracks (available digitally) recorded during […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
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 […]
How Jared Lee Loughner Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
BY JEFF DEENEY In the days since Gabrielle Gifford was shot, the media conversation surrounding the event has shifted focus away from whether or not the ambient atmosphere of bigotry and political extremism in Arizona, along with the toxic political rhetoric espoused by Tea Party figures like Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle, drove Jared Lee Loughner’s actions. Details have emerged painting a portrait of an unhinged young man with obvious mental health problems, and the conversation is now focusing on whether the mental health system did enough to help Loughner and protect the community. Whenever a high profile violent crime […]
STAY CLASSY PHILADELPHIA: Green Bay Packers Fans’ Cars Effed Up In Linc Parking Lot
MORNING CALL: A college professor from Lower Macungie Township who wrote a book about the first 50 years of the NFL knew Philly fans had a reputation for mistreating visiting fans, but the Wisconsin native said he didn’t know how bad it could be until he went to the Eagles game Sunday. Craig Coenen and his father, Peter Coenen, left Lincoln Financial Field jubilant after watching their beloved Green Bay Packers defeat the Eagles in the NFC wild card playoff game. “We were just thinking about how nice a day it was and it was a good memory,” Peter Coenen […]
ARTSY: Pleased To Meat Me
BY CAROLINE SCHMIDT Photographer Dominic Episcopo’s latest show, “Meat America,” opens tonight at Bambi Gallery. Episcopo—who leads a double life as a well-respected commercial photographer—has taken pounds upon pounds of raw meat, and carved it into a bracing series of photographs depicting the carnivorous cultural landscape of America. Out of rib eye steaks, pork chops, lamb and gator—even caribou—he has butchered and sculpted the shapes of all 50 states, along with cultural icons and historical figures: from Benjamin Franklin to Bob Dylan, from Betsy Ross to Elvis. Out of ground beef he has made a series of photographed still lifes […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
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 […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: With Your Host AP Ticker
This week AP discusses the Upper Darby woman suing Disney because Donald Duck groped her, the mysterious sick-out at a church in Bucks County and the downright apocalyptic mass birdkill in Arkansas. Plus Hot Carl with sports.
HIZZONER: The Problem With Nutter’s Black Problem
[Artwork by HUGGIE!] PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: Who can blame Michael Nutter, though, for […] bristling at the fact that he was — again — being forced to publicly defend his authenticity as a black man?As the Mayor puts it to me, in an interview in his office a few weeks after the party, “I’m fully secure and clear about who I am, where I came from and what my life experience has been as an African-American.” Then he adds, “The fact of the matter is, neither you nor anyone else has walked into Ed Rendell’s office and said, ‘Are you white […]
KENSINGTON STRANGLER: Hell’s Angels
BY JEFF DEENEY The media discussion of the Kensington Strangler has at this point strayed pretty far from the essential questions, so I would like to try to bring it back to center. When I say the discussion has strayed from the essential questions and has stopped really informing media consumers I would point to Dave Davies’s unfortunate interaction with Mayor Nutter on WHYY last week. The intent here isn’t to beat up on Dave, because I think nearly all agree that he’s about the best we have going in terms of Philly reporters. But the fact that even Dave […]
REWIND 2010: Our Favorite Albums Of 2010
ALBUM OF THE YEAR ARCADE FIRE The Suburbs In a more accurate world, if you looked up anthemic in the dictionary, you would invariably find a picture of the Arcade Fire. Rousing, heartfelt, and everyone-can-sing-along have been, heretofore, the hallmarks of the Montreal band’s recorded output and on The Suburbs, they continue passionately pounding out sweeping, densely layered, stadium-shaking soundtracks for people who have long since made peace with the fact that sooner or later the world will break your heart. If nothing else, Arcade Fire proved that the profound sense of loss – of innocence, of control, of loved […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
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 […]
REWIND 2010: The Year In Phawker Interviews
Talk is cheap on the Internet, but at Phawker it’s totally free, baby — at least for you, dear reader. Trolling through the vast and dusty Phawker archives, we have dug up fat sack of conversations worth re-visiting: the always prickish-but-worth-it Will Oldham on authenticity, Americana and his testicles; the inimitable Black Francis susses out Doolittle for us; graphic artiste extraordinaire Charles Burns on the darkness within; author Hampton Sides discusses the banality of Martin Luther King assassin James Earle Ray’s evil; Dave Bielanko discusses Marah’s last chance power try; folk/rock legend Richard Thompson discusses Fairport Convention and reuniting with […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
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 […]