BY AMY Z. QUINN I have this Hillary Clinton fantasy. It’s something I’ve been, until now, reticent to share. Go figure. No, it’s not just about her being elected president, especially since that seems less and less a fantasy as Obama continues to plateau while Hillary’s air of inevitability continues to gain altitude, but about her inauguration. OK, OK, it’s really about the outfit she’d be wearing at her inauguration. My daydream ensemble looks nothing like that ill-advised number she sported at Bill’s first swearing-in — you remember, the one that made her look like Tinky-Winky? And my fantasy President […]
CLOSED ENCOUNTERS: Judge Tells NASA To Come Clean On 1965 Kecksburg, Pa. UFO Crash
WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA has agreed to search its archives once again for documents on a 1965 UFO incident in Pennsylvania, a step the space agency fought in federal court. The government has refused to open its files about what, if anything, moved across the sky and crashed in the woods near Kecksburg, Pa., 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Traffic was tied up in the area as curiosity seekers drove to the area, only to be kept away from the crash site by soldiers. The Air Force’s explanation for the unidentified flying object: a meteor or meteors. Eyewitnesses said a […]
THE WAY WE WERE: When We Were Kings
During the Centennial year of 1876, Philadelphia was host to a celebration of 100 years of American cultural and industrial progress. Officially known as the “International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine,” the Centennial Exhibition, the first major World’s Fair to be held in the United States, opened on May 10, 1876 on a 285-acre tract of Fairmount Park overlooking the Schuylkill River. The fairgrounds, designed almost exclusively by 27-year-old German immigrant Hermann J. Schwarzmann, were host to 37 nations and countless industrial exhibits occupying over 250 individual pavilions. The Exhibition was immensely popular, drawing […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
FROM ‘BLOHAN’ TO ‘BROKEHAN’: Lindsay Has Literally Blown Through $7 Million Lohan quickly earned millions from films like Mean Girls and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen — but she has spent it even quicker. She lived for most of last year in Hollywood’s opulent Chateau Marmont hotel, spending $450,000 on her $1,200-a-night suite, as well as another £500,000 having chauffeurs on 24-hour standby. “And the amount she has wasted putting cocaine up her nose is disgusting. Even she has lost count.” Added to that were endless bottles of Cristal champagne at $550 a pop — until the unpaid bills […]
BREAKING: Former Vice President Al Gore Wins Nobel
WASHINGTON POST: Former Vice President Al Gore Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today along with a United Nations panel that monitors climate change for their work educating the world about global warming and advocating for political action to stop it.The Norwegian Nobel Committee characterized Gore as “the single individual” responsible for convincing world governments that climate change was real, caused by human activity, and posed a threat to society. MORE
CONFETTI BETTY: The Week That Was
BY AMY Z. QUINN The logic which binds these events together is as twisted as a pretzel — I mean yo, this is Philly — but it’s a kind of Six Degrees of Election ’08: South Philly Edition. Follow me: 1. Bono, in town to receive the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center, declares himself an American, says “this is my country, too.” Uses platform to deliver an elegantly worded tongue-lashing to his adopted country on subjects including: fair trade, our responsibility to the poor, free speech, our responsibility toward Africa’s AIDS victims, and torture. That last one was […]
MY MOTORCYCLE DIARY: Jesus, The Leper & St. Kurt
BY JONATHAN VALANIA For the record, I am home safe and sound from my journey through the high plains of the Andes. For some that will be good news, for others, less so (you fall into this latter category if you have ever uttered the words ‘If he writes one more word about being in that mother#$%& Wilco movie, I’ll murdelize him’ — you know who you are.) Anyway, it’s good to be back in the USA — you don’t realize how good we have it until you leave it. I am of course, referring to America’s superior Wi-Fi and […]
WTF: Why The South Won’t Rise Again
MAIDEN, N.C. — Authorities say a South Carolina man who mistakenly lost his amputated leg when it was sold in a barbecue smoker at a public auction will get the appendage back. John Wood had been battling to regain custody of the leg from Shannon Whisnant. Whisnant found the leg in a barbecue smoker he purchased at an auction of Wood’s belongings last week. Whisnant first turned the leg over to police but later claimed ownership of it, saying he wanted to charge admission for people to see it. Wood’s leg was amputated three years ago after an airplane crash. […]
Pot-Bellied Cops To Crack Down On Saggy-Assed Pants
EDITOR’S NOTE: Parts of this post first appeared on Phawker on August 14th, 2007 MANSFIELD, LA — “Pull ’em up or pay up.” That’s Police Chief Don English’s interpretation of a new law that took effect in Mansfield on Sept. 15. Anyone caught wearing sagging pants who exposes his or her underwear will be subject to a fine of up to $150 plus court costs, or face up to 15 days in jail. Mansfield aldermen voted unanimously at today’s 4:30 p.m. meeting to enact the new law. The law makes it illegal to found in a “state of nudity, or […]
CONFETTI BETTY: Dirty White Boys
By the time I arrived back in New Jersey — where, by the way, we know from this kind of thing, from the years of whispered is-he-or-isn’t-he to the dramatic press conference to the shell-shocked wife looking on — Sen. Larry Craig was reconsidering his decision to step down and now says he plans to stay away from D.C. Even here in the Jerz, where our to-the-left attitude is part drag queen, part gangsta lean, people are like, “Yo, good luck with all that.” I never thought I’d say this, but compared to the what the folks in Idaho are […]
JFK: A View Of The Sun God
J.F.K.: A View of the Sun God From Inside the Television Set by John David Ebert John F. Kennedy was a man who spent his entire life, from first to last, living inside a television set. If we want to understand that life, then we must, like Alice through the looking glass, crawl up into the radiant, pixilated landscape of television ourselves, and learn to make our way about its contoured rows of ordered electrons, all carefully aligned on a grid and pulsing with life, like huge glowing radioactive eggs. We must tread carefully across this soft and spongy landscape, […]
STUDY: ‘Cancerous Mole? What’s The Hurry? Botox? Good God, The Doctor Will Be Right With You!’
NEW YORK TIMES: Patients seeking an appointment with a dermatologist to ask about a potentially cancerous mole have to wait substantially longer than those seeking Botox for wrinkles, a study published online yesterday by The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology said. Researchers reported that dermatologists in 12 cities offered a typical wait of eight days for a cosmetic patient wanting Botox to smooth wrinkles, compared with a typical wait of 26 days for a patient requesting evaluation of a changing mole, a possible indicator of skin cancer. MORE