This week A.P. dishes on Ed Rendell threatening to lay off 20,000 state employees, wishes the War In Afghanistan a happy 8th birthday, discusses Ryan Howard’s love life, and reveals that he is rooting for North Korea to win the World Cup — all before having an on-camera meltdown, tearing off his clothes and storming off the set.
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
[Photos by JEFF FUSCO COPYRIGHT 2010] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR ROLLING STONE Like France, the picnic remains proof positive that, despite wild-eyed Tea Party protests to the contrary, socialism actually can work. Everyone brings something, we all share, and everyone live relatively happily ever after — sometimes anyway. Such was the case at Saturday’s third annual Roots Picnic at the Festival Pier in Philadelphia. Senegal’s horn-y, percussion-heavy Baja and the Dry Eye Crew brought the world beats. Face-painted, ukulele-strumming one-gal-band TuneYards brought the weirdness. New Orleans rapper Jay Electronica brought the conspiracy theories (specifically the damning federal indictment of “Candyman”). […]
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 […]
MY TUNES: Our Favorite Albums Of Right Now
LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening (2010 DFA/Virgin) Now that the decade of the 00’s is a closed set let me eulogize the collapse of the pop music industry. Reports at the decade’s start were that the music business would collapse and with 2010, seeing profits halved, tells us that’s what we’re hearing. It is the uncomfortable sound of history coming to a close, a decade without a new genre being born. Oh, there’s still some artful grab-baggery and musical slicing and dicing but the production of a number one hit pop hit from 2000 sounds depressingly similar to a […]
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 […]
REAL ESTATE: So You Want To Buy A Home Pt. 2
BY AARON STELLA Never buy your first home for love; buy it for money. Embracing this maxim will maximize the considerable benefits of first-time home ownership. As I mentioned in our last edition, people don’t typically buy a home until they’re ready to settle down, and it’s this mindset that prevents many people from home owning and securing wealth until later in life. Your dream home doesn’t have to be your first; make it your fourth, and by that point you should be able to buy it in cash. After I got serious about buying my first home, I had […]
Is It Time To Time To Rename The Fencl Award?
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] DAILY NEWS: IT WAS a joke. It had to be a joke. That was the only thought that entered Officer Richard “Butch” Riddick’s mind last week when he was told by the Daily News that he was the winner of the 25th annual George Fencl Award. MORE DAILY NEWS: George Fencl died in January, 1985. At the time he was chief of security for the Philadelphia School District, having retired from the Police Department with the rank of chief inspector in 1983, after 33 years on the force. Soon after his death, Chuck Stone, then senior […]
PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: The Khyber Past
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY On the afternoon of Nov. 26, 2008, death came ashore at the Indian coastal city of Mumbai in the form of 10 Pakistani assassins aboard a rubber dinghy. Young and cocky, the killers were dressed in bluejeans and cargo pants, pumped up on steroids and ripped from months of rigorous physical training. They brandished AK-47s and carried backpacks loaded with grenades and ammo. When fisherman asked them what was going on, the gunmen told them in fluent Marathi to, in effect, go fuck themselves. The fishermen reported the incident […]
TIME HAS COME TODAY: Sestak Beats Specter
JOE SESTAK: “I respect the man, but it is time. It is time for a different generation.” 9:47 PM: Sestak is currently up by 13,000 with 42% of the vote counted. Reportedly two thirds of the Philadelphia vote has already been counted. Specter’s only hope was the African American vote and it appears that he didn’t get it, or at least not enough of it to make a difference. Because this is the Internet, where being first trumps being right, we are going out on a limb here and declaring Joe Sestak the winner. 10:12 PM: Associated Press just called […]
SPECTER VS. SESTAK: The Thrilla In Pennsylvania
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW: Pennsylvania voters go the polls Tuesday for a primary election that could determine more than who bears the Democratic and Republican standards in November. The results will measure Obama’s influence with voters, the credibility of party hierarchies, the fate of a Capitol’s worth of incumbents, and the mood of a key swing state. “What’s at stake is the message to Washington and the political direction of our country,” said Lara Brown, political science professor at Villanova University. “It could literally moderate all the policy in Washington.” MORE DICK POLMAN: Two Capitol Hill insiders have been summarily dumped by […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Toby Leaman of Dr. Dog
BY JONATHAN VALANIA There are few greater pleasures in this American life than watching a young, gifted rock band in the prime of its youth burn through its set before an adoring hometown crowd with the confidence of five young men who’ve come to realize that — after all the blood, the sweat and the tears that got them to this point — they are making their mark on the world. It’s even better when the young, gifted band is local, as will be the case when Dr. Dog takes the stage at the Electric Factory tonite in support of […]
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 […]
REAL ESTATE: So You Want To Buy A Home
BY AARON STELLA “Oh Osh magosh me? A house? Mortgages and mahogany? Brunches and backsplashes? Go pick on someone your own size!” Was what I told my broker/boss at CITYSPACE, a real estate agency, when she asked me if I was considering buying a house anytime soon. That was November 2009. I was 24-years-old and in my sixth month employed at CITYSPACE as their Web Content Associate. I possessed relatively little knowledge about real estate and home owning, and to me, people just didn’t purchase homes until they’re ready to settle down. A few weeks after my broker poked me […]