OK, first a mea culpa. Since our first installment of this feature, Phawker has learned a valuable lesson: commenting on the pectoral pulchritude of alt-weekly art directors while praising their creative acumen is neither clever nor edgy, it’s hurtful and immature. Sure some people think it’s sexy, but others find it sexist. And that’s just a few letters away from ‘racist.’ And let’s just stop that kind of talk, RIGHT NOW. Anyway, onward and upward. This week is a tough call. Both alt-weeklies have handsome enough covers, for a change. Pictures of handfuls of dangerous drugs always gets our attention. […]
Hell Hath No Fury: Metro Fires Back
We knew damn well we were opening a whole new can of whup-ass with our Metro ass-clowning. And that’s fine, after all, if you’re gonna dish it out you better be willing to take it like a man, too. That’s how it works: you take your best shot, and then we take ours. So here it is — DUCK! — the Metro’s stinging rebuke: Dear Phawker, Glad you dug the Week that Was. I almost cut the healthcare answer to get the Sweeney answer in, but it was too good. We at Metro have long since surpassed the monkey […]
Outrage: Phawker Phucked By Metro
File this under Mountain Range Made Out Of Mole Hill. As previously reported, the Metro named us Celeb of the Week. There was a ticker tape parade. Lotsa confetti. Oversized key to the city. Everybody dancing to “Louie Louie.” The whole nine yards. (Lil’ known fact, the Metro Celeb of the Week gets to smoke WHEREVER he/she fuckin’ feels like it. Like it’s America again, or something. But this only applies for the duration of the week of your celebdom, after that it’s back to the curb with the rest of the shivering punters. As per usual, we abused this […]
Cover Wars: Whose Artfag Kung-Fu Is Stronger?
Let us introduce you to another regular feature: Cover Wars, in which we will make an entirely subjective call on which alt-weekly has the best-looking cover each week. (FULL DISCLOSURE: Yes, we do tapdance about architecture for PW, but they will get no special treatment from us, paybacks bein’ a bitch, an’ all. Unless they give me a raise, in which case, they win every week). In this corner, we have PW’s Sara Green, a gifted newcomer — and in full-posession of a “great rack”, or so we hear, sorry but we did hear that, so get off your high […]
Pot Calls Kettle: Inky’s Satullo Responds To PW Story Calling Inky Casino Coverage Shoddy; Calls PW Story ‘Shoddy’
Because it’s infinitely more fun to stage these media cockfights instead of being in them, and because this issue is too damn important to be left to the pros, we thought we’d throw a little fuel on a dimming fire. To recap, two weeks ago, PW‘s Steve Volk debuted a new media-watchdog column called Tierney Watch, wherein he wrote a piece about the Inky’s coverage of the casino issue, with all the manifold complications, shortcomings and conflict-of-interest duly noted, and gave the anti-casino activists a chance to weigh in and then let various Inky bigwigs respond. You can read it […]
Gitmo Jukebox
Just Like War, Torture Is Over If You Want It Like STDs or race relations, torture is the great unspeakable. Nobody will talk about it. Not your friends or your family, not your congressman or Fox News and certainly not our president. He won’t even use the T-word—he calls it “alternative interrogation” like it’s something you’d see on the midway at Lollapalooza. Well, you can call rape “a forced backrub with benefits,” but it’s still rape. Perhaps the least heinous of all reported U.S. torture techniques was the blasting of Eminem and Dr. Dre at teeth-rattling volume into the virgin […]
Top 5 Of The Moment
THE INVISIBLE MAN Now out on DVD, HBO’s The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is, like the titular changeling himself, by turns fascinating, tragic, trippy, ingenious and a little corny, but in a sweet way. Like Sellers’ existential quick-change act of a life, Geoffrey Rush’s performance is one of those nested Russian dolls: Unscrew Inspector Clouseau and you find Dr. Strangelove, and inside of him is Chance the Gardener, and finally, just when you think you’ve gotten down to Peter Sellers, there’s … nothing. He was a cipher, quite literally the man who wasn’t there, which made for a […]