[Artwork by PAUL ROCKER] BUSINESS INSIDER: Ashburn, Va. is the most obscene place in America, as determined by analyzing data from Google. To find the most obscene cities in America, we plugged the “seven dirty words you can never say on television” — made popular by George Carlin — into Google Trends. We gave each city a score for each of the seven words, assigning more points to cities ranking higher up on each list. […] This is our third year publishing this list. Philly finally may be cleaning up its act. After coming in third place for the past […]
Werth Sells For $127 Million On The Open Market
BILL CONLIN: Jaws dropped so far open they had to sound like a 21-gun salute when the late-afternoon press conference was called announcing the last-place bleeping Washington Nationals had signed the former Phillies rightfielder to a free-agent contract for 7 years and $126 million. One-hundred-twenty-six-million for 7 years. That’s an average of $18 million a year guaranteed through the year 2018, when Werth will turn 39. He will be 32 May 20. But Mike Rizzo, apparently a gerontologist in his spare time, said with confidence that Werth’s “best years are ahead of him.” I immediately thought of Steve Carlton’s personal […]
NUTTER SPUTTER: Dawg Pile On The Rabbit
[Photo by TOM BUSILLO] MONICA YANT KINNEY: First, there was the boneheaded decision to take the Christmas out of that quaint Christmas Village surrounding City Hall. […] Three years into Nutter’s “new day, new way,” grinches lurk around every corner. In this month’s Philadelphia Magazine, archenemy John Street calls Nutter an “arrogant, incompetent, and offensive” coward. Bashing his successor for that lame 311 system and refusing to stand up to city unions, Street goes in for the kill: “On the things that matter, Mayor Nutter has crippled the city.” Consider this payback. Whenever candidate Nutter talked about cleaning up government, […]
THIS JUST IN: Kenzo Strangler Strikes Again
NBC PHILADELPHIA: It happened around 2 a.m.. as the woman was walking on the 2600 block of Kensington Ave. Police say a man approached the woman from behind, grabbed her hair and pulled her into an alley where he strangled her, punched her and hit her in the head with a brick. He is described as a black male in his 20s, 5’7 to 5’11, 160 to 170-pounds with facial hair (sideburns). He was wearing a dark, puffy coat and faded black jeans. He was listening to his iPod at the time of the attack and allegedly told the woman […]
LOST & FOUND: Return Of The King Of Carrot Flowers
INTERNATIONAL TAPES: I felt fortunate to be one of the 100-or-so people to see Jeff Mangum play his intimate set last night, but it was also unfortunate that I got there after the opening band, Forma, who I’ll definitely catch at Tandem this Saturday December 11. Hair a little longer and dressed in signature red flannel, Mangum played a 10 song set of Neutral Milk Hotel songs. The audience sat on the Schoolhouse’s hardwood floor cross-legged, quietly mouthing the words of Mangum’s lecture. Perched beside a music stand with a revolving cast of three acoustic guitars, he constantly traded instruments, sometimes in […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Hating On The New Kanye
BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD So, Pitchfork gave this album a perfect score. Rolling Stone did too. The Source just awarded it the once-coveted 5 Mics rating. But who gives a fuck about a review anyway!? I’m here to tell you that Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is shit shit shit! Kanye’s failure, in my book, stems from him being unable to stick to his promises — specifically he promised fans a revival of boom-bap hip-hop and a departure from the electronic dabbling seen in 808s and Heartbreak. Kanye told us that Madlib would be there, RZA would be there, […]
SHOOTING THE MESSENGER: The Curious Sex Crimes Case Against Wikileaks’ Julian Assange
THE GLOBE & MAIL: At the centre of a tightening web of death threats, sex-crime accusations and high-level demands for a treason trial, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threatened to unleash a “thermonuclear device” of completely unexpurgated government files if he is forced to appear before authorities. Mr. Assange, the 39-year-old Australian Internet activist whose online document-leaking service has embarrassed the United States and other countries by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic and military documents, has referred to the huge, unfiltered document as his “insurance policy.” The 1.3-gigabyte file, distributed through file-sharing services this summer and protected with an […]
D’OH!: PHA Spent $17,000 On Diversity Training Party
MY FOX PHILLY: Belly dancers, rented costumes and even yodelers were incorporated into a diversity training exercise in 2006, which was paid for with $17,150.21 of taxpayer money. The belly dancers came at cost of $1,200, costume rentals ran up $540, while food and training materials for 200 employees of the PHA accounted for the rest of the cost of the March 21, 2006 diversity event. The person at the helm for the PHA event was its then-executive director, Carl Greene, who has since been fired. MORE INQUIRER: The evening’s finale began when four exotically clad belly dancers pulled members […]
SIDEWALKING: Metaphysical Graffiti
Sansom street, between 11th and 12th, 11:32 AM Sunday by JEFF FUSCO
CINEMA: Panther Burns
NIGHT CATCHES US (2010, directed by Tanya Hamilton, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The most unusual thing about the new locally-shot drama opening today, Night Catches Us, is its setting: northwest Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood in the year 1976. An African American enclave, this inner city setting in is not the concrete jungle most would associate with northern U.S. cities but a sprawling woodsy landscape offset by old stone and brick businesses and homes. Night Catches Us is the rare African America drama unconcerned with religion or drug-toting gangsters but it is instead a clever disguise for a […]
ARTSY: Yankee Doodler Foxtrot
David Jablow’s “Do it yourself Doodler” opens at Bambi Gallery tonight (6 PM-10 PM) and runs through January 2nd BY CAROLINE SCHMIDT Local artist David Jablow’s latest project, “Do It Yourself Doodler” was inspired by a friend’s gift: a vintage novelty doodle pad from the sixties that featured an incomplete drawing of a woman on each page. With ink, white out, and no small amount of resourcefulness, Jablow has filled all 38 pages of the tablet with intricate illustrations, placing the doodler lady in comedic, quirky, clever, and occasionally compromising positions. He plans to turn the collection into a book. […]
THIS JUST IN: Einsturzende Neubauten Cancels 30th Anniversary Tour, Blames Homeland Security
It is with great regret that Einstürzende Neubauten announce the cancellation of their planned thirtieth anniversary appearances in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto and New York. While the US Department of Homeland Security did issue approvals for the band’s visas, it was not done in time to secure the appointments at the overseas embassies and consulates that represent the necessary final step in the process. The band members are tremendously disappointed by this turn of events and wish to thank all those fans who purchased tickets for these performances for their support. The band would have loved to do […]
EARLY WORD: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Film: Crispin Hellion Glover with It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine! dir. Crispin Glover, US, 2007, 35mm, 74 mins, color Co-presented by R5 Productions + Joseph A Gervasi Crispin Hellion Glover is an American film actor, director and screenwriter, recording artist, publisher and author. He is well know from such films as Back to the Future, River’s Edge, Charlie’s Angels, Willard, and this year’s Hot Tub Time Machine and Alice in Wonderland. Mr Glover performs his “Big Slide Show Part 1?, a one hour dramatic narration of eight different profusely illustrated books. Following the performance, Mr Glover screens his 35mm […]