This week was easy. We were gonna make CP’s Big Battel-esque Re-Formers cover the winner. But then CP’s blog thingee gave Phawker talk-to-the-hand in their March Madness pool. Just to show that we can be just as petty and small as the rest of the pricks in the blog pond, this week CP snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Besides, we really, really like the sangria at Amada. WINNER: PW

INQUIRER: He should resign Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales should resign. If he ever does, the nation could take it as a clear sign that President Bush finally grasps the need to preserve core civil liberties while guarding against terrorism. It would also be a sign that the president grasps that the Justice Department is at least one part of the government that should be free from the all-politics-all-the-time approach of his Karl Rove-led White House team. Until the day Gonzales does the right thing — or it’s demanded of him — Americans must assume that their president doesn’t get […]

The living god-king of Philadelphia hipsters recently jumped the shark in the most embarrassing manner possible. You know who I mean. He needs no introduction. Yesterday he was the maharaja of Philly cool, the super-groovy gossip blogger, the dude who put the “pst” into hipster. Today he’s snot on a crack whore’s stocking. His crime against credibility? In a horrifically badly judged Philadelphia magazine advertorial, the god-king posed in the back of a “free” car — ridiculously resplendent in his trademark ironic girl’s coat and not-so-ironic no-sex specs — and gushed about his sponsors’ products (go to www.philadelphiawilldo.com for the […]

[Philly Confidential] grew tired of blaming the cops for the city’s crime woes. She decided it was time to move beyond the cop beat and submerge herself into the dark abyss that is the First Judicial District. She studied crime statistics and learned that youth gun violence is at a 5-year high. She spoke to prosecutors, along with court officials, to understand the nuances of juvenile justice, yet saw how slack everything seemed. Then she snooped around a few courtrooms and heard that too many teen murderers were assigned to probation officers months, sometimes days, before a slaying. What she […]

These are the cover stories that try the souls of alternative weekly art directors: A legendary newspaper columnist with a face for radio and an It Boy mixmaster with a radio for a face. I’ve seen this before: usually the AD in question will break down sobbing in the 11th hour before deadline, kicking and pounding the floor, IT CAN’T BE DONE! IT JUST CAN’T! they’ll scream. By this point the publisher will usually rush in, grab her by the arms, shake her, maybe slap her across the face once or twice until she snaps out of it (this sometimes […]

Back when we were starting a band, the guitar player wanted to call it One Percent Off. Walking through the produce aisle of the grocery store one day, he said, he saw a sticker on some arugula that said 1% Off and it struck him as a eureka moment. “The whole goddamn world is one percent off!” he said. Unfortunately we went with The Floating Doo Doo Balls instead, which in part explains why you never heard of us. But the good news is that boy finally got the help he so obviously needed. We bring this up because it’s […]