TOMMY, CAN YOU FEEL ME: The Hold Steady, Electric Factory, Saturday Night 1. Knowing that they had the shorter of the two sets tonight, Craig Finn and the gang made sure to fit in all of the staples. For the Hold Steady, that means fitting in horse races, Kerouac references, and dealing with dealers—all in the course of an hour. Cliffs notes for having a good time? 2. Just a few years ago the crowd for the Hold Steady was mostly the younger, blog-savvy set, but last night saw a much older collective. It seems like Gen-X (and even some […]
EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION: NPR For The Tone Deaf
INQUIRER: WHYY is a relatively low-profile station in the world of public broadcasting. It doesn’t produce flashy, syndicated television shows like Frontline, from Boston’s WGBH, or Nature, from New York’s WNET. Among public stations in the top-10 markets, it is in the middle of the pack for budget and staff. WHYY is tops in one category — how much it rewards its chief executive. President and CEO William J. Marrazzo’s potential pay, benefits and expenses totaled $740,090 in the year ending June 30, 2007, according to its most recent tax filing. The package consists of $415,993 in salary, $317,240 in […]
DEBUT: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #1 Humbly submitted for your approval, a new animated feature wherein I am a flower that reads the news.
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
RADIO TIMES Joel Rose fills in for Marty and interviews ART SPIEGELMAN, famous for his comic, Maus. Spiegelman is re-introducing his 1978 book, “Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!,” his transformational memoir. We’re also joined by Comix writer, DAVID HEATLEY, who is continuing in the comic narrative form with his new book, “My Brain is Hanging Upside Down.” Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3 FRESH AIR The legendary Chicago broadcaster Studs Terkel dedicated his life to capturing the stories of ordinary Americans through oral histories. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for his […]
PAPERBOY: Election Afterglow Edition
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 […]
HISTORY TURNS A PAGE: And So It Begins…
NEWSWEEK: Secrets Of The 2008 Campaign [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED] POLITICO: Critics said they were too nice, too vague on the issues, too obsessed with the youth vote and too dependent on all those penny-ante Internet donors. But Obama’s core group of Chicago advisers, led by former reporter David Axelrod, has created a new paradigm for post-Rove campaigning. Instead of exploiting wedge issues (as Rove did) or micro-targeting demographic niche groups (as the Clintons and their pollster, Mark Penn, did), they focused on exciting a new base of young people, educated whites and minority voters. Get-out-the-vote wizard Steve Hildebrand built a hyperdisciplined […]
EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Darth Cheney, Dark Lord Of The Sith, Endorses The McCain/Palin Ticket
POLITICAL WIRE: “He’s earned our support and confidence, and the time is now to make him commander-in-chief. I’m delighted to support John McCain and I’m pleased that he’s chosen a running mate with executive talent, toughness and common sense, our next vice president in Sarah Palin.” MORE FOX NEWS: “John McCain had to vote 90% of the time with Bush and Cheney to get that endorsement. He had to serve as Washington’s biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq. He had to support economic policies that have gotten us into this mess, so Senator McCain worked hard to get […]
JOHN MCCAIN: With Friends Like This
Who needs enemas? My Friends: The Musical [Humanitainment: Mr. Straight Talk himself stars in this musical inspired by his most favorite of phrases.]
RIP: Studs Terkel, Voice Of The Face In The Crowd
TEXAS OBSERVER: He is beloved “Uncle Studs” to many who grew up listening to WFMT, the Chicago radio station that broadcast his eclectic daily mix of music and interviews from 1952 to 1997. To anyone who has ever heard his raspy, empathetic voice, there is only one Studs: Studs Terkel, singer of the unsung American. Louis Terkel acquired his nickname in the 1930s while performing in Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty. He was carrying around books by fellow Chicagoan James T. Farrell, and to differentiate Terkel from two others in the cast also named Louis, members of the Chicago Repertory […]
POLL: Majority Of Americans Afraid Of Sarah Palin
HALLOWEEN MASK: Print Out, Cut Out, Put On, Scare White People NEW YORK TIMES: A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up nine percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said the vice-presidential selection would be a major […]
SEASON’S GREETINGS: It’s Halloween!
HISTORY.COM: Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Print Is Undead?
PHILADELPHIA, October 30, 2008 – In response to the Phillies World Series win last night, Philadelphia Media Holdings Chief Executive Officer Brian Tierney announced this morning that last night’s over-run of almost 350,000 copies of The Inquirer and Daily News are completely sold out. And, in an unprecedented move, the printing presses are running again this morning so that an additional 350,000 copies can be printed and available by early afternoon today. “People are buying these souvenir editions of The Inquirer and Daily News in massive quantities and we are responding by firing up our printing presses for another run […]
TONITE: Why Whitey Can’t Vote Live
Tonight I’ll be on The Big Talker (1210 AM) with Dom Giordano at 8:30 PM, to discuss my White People Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Vote editorial in Sunday’s Inquirer. I am told Dom is a teacher, so here’s hoping his reading comprehension skills are superior to the folks at the The David Boze Show in Seattle, who were DEEPLY disappointed to learn that I was not LITERALLY advocating that white people not be allowed to vote and thus rescinded their offer to have me come on their show. Sometimes I think we are just too damn stupid to be the […]