FRESH AIR In Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood and Invented Modern Horror, New York Times Theater Critic  Jason Zinoman recounts how directors like Bogdanovich, Wes Craven, George Romero, Roman Polanski and Brian De Palma started to redefine the horror genre in the aftermath of the Vietnam War — and influenced the genre for the next several decades. That new school of horror, says Zinoman, was based on real life: realistic, mundane events that could leave the audience wondering where evil could lurk (everywhere) and who could be evil (everyone). Serial killers replaced monsters […]

WASHINGTON POST: A dust storm pushed across Phoenix on Tuesday, blanketing the city in darkness and leaving thousands without power. The 50 to 60 mile wide dust wall, known as a haboob, was pushed by 60 mph winds across the Phoenix area, catching some residents off guard. “The sandstorm … was produced by the downdrafts of a collapsing thunderstorm complex generated by the Southwest monsoon,” the Post’s Jason Somenow explained. “When the downdrafts — made up of rapidly descending air — smashed down on the desert ground, they stirred up large amounts of sand and dust subsequently carried forth by […]

BY MIKE WOLVERTON Styx became my first favorite band around the time of 1980’s Paradise Theatre album, when I was all of 11. Well, the Beatles were my first favorite band, but Styx was my first favorite active band. I’ve never caught them live, because by the time I started going to concerts my tastes had, um, evolved. It had crossed my mind to catch them as they’ve toured these last few years, but they always seemed to be playing with REO Speedwagon (I will admit I was tempted when they shared a bill with The Fixx). When I saw […]

WIRED: Admitting that “some will call me a torturer” is a surefire way to cut yourself off from anyone’s sympathy. But Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative, isn’t sure whether he’s the hero or the villain of his own story. Distilled, that story, told in Carle’s new memoir The Interrogator, is this: In the months after 9/11, the CIA kidnaps a suspected senior member of al-Qaida and takes him to a Mideast country for interrogation. It assigns Carle — like nearly all his colleagues then, an inexperienced interrogator — to pry information out of him. Uneasy with the CIA’s new, […]

The Bewitched Hands, “Work” from Tato Maizza on Vimeo. Kinda like Air meets Apples In Stereo. We likey. JIM DEROGATIS: The reference points are numerous: The anthemic choruses can recall the Arcade Fire; the rollicking rhythms are resonant of the Feelies on “The Good Earth”; the indelible hooks bring to mind the New Pornographers at their most exuberant, and the layered, repetitive, and sometimes wordless vocals are pure Stereolab. All of this name-dropping would mean nothing, however, if the songwriting wasn’t so strong. MORE

BY LANCE DOILY It was Thursday and I had already had my fill of Murph’s for the week, so I ended up at another one of my usual haunts, Slunt Huskers off Rt. 23 in Little Falls.  I could drink heavily here due to the fact that the bartenders would rarely charge me, and there was a trough underneath the bar that allowed us all to relieve ourselves to our heart’s content without having to fuck around with the complexities of a urinal.  Everyone at the Husker knows me as a Schaefer man.  Born and bred that way, it’s been […]

MORNING CALL: When Barack Obama visited the struggling Allentown Metal Works in December 2009, the factory’s industrial landscape and its rugged workers made a perfect backdrop for the president to talk about his efforts to jump-start the economy. On Thursday afternoon, its workers gone, its windows boarded up and its lot overgrown with weeds, the century-old building again made a perfect political backdrop. This time it offered Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney a place to tear into the incumbent Democrat’s record on the economy. “This president came here and called this a symbol of hope,” Romney said, standing before a […]

INQUIRER: More than 40 percent of city students still can’t read or do basic math at grade level. MORE RELATED: Literacy statistics and juvenile court: 85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate. More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate. Penal institution records show that inmates have a 16% chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70% who receive no help. This equates to taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that amount for juvenile offenders. Illiteracy and crime […]

BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD If the collaboration of Eminem and Royce Da 5’9 seems a bit odd, or AstroTurf-y, it’s because it is. What’s true is that Eminem and Royce had a track together on 1999’s Slim Shady LP titled “Bad Meets Evil” and recorded a handful of non-album tracks, including a track titled “Renegade,” which eventually was re-dubbed with Jay-Z vocals and became part of the classic Blueprint album. However, “Bad Meets Evil” is more revisionism than reality. Eminem’s group D12, particularly lead-member Proof, had a falling-out with Royce and released a barrage of ‘diss’ tracks towards one another for […]

PHILLY.COM: A veteran Philadelphia homicide prosecutor who was forced to resign last week was asked to leave because she accessed the expunged arrest record of a young prosecutor whom District Attorney Seth Williams personally hired in October. Sources told the Daily News that MK Feeney, who worked in the D.A.’s Office for 15 years, abruptly resigned last Thursday after digging up information about Kevin Harden Jr., a 25-year-old assistant district attorney who was arrested several times as a youth. Harden has been arrested a handful of times, mostly for drug offenses, sources said, and survived being shot five times in […]