CRAIGSLIST: “I am a female in my mid 60’s and I am looking for a room mate. Times are tight and I need some extra money. I am willing to rent out my bathroom in my 1 bedroom east village home. My bathroom is large. You can easily put a twin air mattress in there. I only ask that when I need to use the bathroom, you or your air mattress are not in it. I do ask that when you are in the apartment, you confine yourself to the bathroom. I do not feel comfortable with a stranger walking […]
MEDIA MATTERS: Philly ACORN Office Called The Cops On Gotcha Duo Posing As Pimp And Hooker
MEDIA MATTERS: In recent days, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, the conservative filmmakers who made the widely circulated ACORN videos, as well as Andrew Breitbart and Mike Flynn, who have been promoting the videos for BigGovernment.com, have claimed that the filmmakers were never rebuffed by any of the ACORN offices they visited in their attempts to get ACORN to assist them in improper activities. However, in a newly released video, ACORN Housing Corp.’s Katherine Conway Russell directly rebuts those claims, citing a police report ACORN filed as evidence that she asked the filmmakers to leave the ACORN office in Philadelphia […]
COMING ATTRACTION: Q&A With Dean Wareham
We talk with former Galaxie 500/Luna mainman Dean Wareham about 13 Most Beautiful…Songs For Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, which he performs tomorrow night as part of the Fringe at the Arts Bank at University of the Arts. And yes, we asked him if Galaxie 500 is ever gonna reunite. Look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you!
GAYDAR: My Life In The Ghost Of Bush 3
BY AARON STELLA Whew! We’ve had some hot and heavy posts lately, haven’t we? For the benefit of those who haven’t been following along, here’s a little recap: I’ve been wrongfully committed to a psych-ward by my parents. Not to mention, this particular ward was meant more to be a lockup for homicidal and suicidal teenagers, neither of which I was at the time. I have just watched the ward bouncers haul off my roommate to solitary confinement for harming himself, which involved him ripping out his pubic hair and rubbing it in his face to near asphyxiation. And for […]
FRINGE REVIEW: The Chairs
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL Absurdism is a lot of things, but in its most classic form, it’s tragicomedy, where characters are lonely, stuck spinning their wheels, unable to move forward and unwilling to go back. The playwrights most credited with creating this trend are Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter. A play in which characters are permanently stuck in pointless or repetitive action — or worse, inaction — absolutely goes against every expectation of good theatre, which is to keep moving forward, to take action against conflict. These plays, if not acted and directed very carefully, […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
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 […]
10 YEARS AFTER: Pavement Announces Reunion
After years of speculation, the most important American band of the Nineties is returning to the stage with the lineup of Mark Ibold, Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West reuniting for dates around the world in 2010. Please be advised this tour is not a prelude to additional jaunts and/or a permanent reunion. Described in their own Wikipedia entry as having experienced “moderate commercial success,” Pavement’s catalog for the Matador, Domino, Drag City and Treble Kicker imprints has come to define in the eyes of many the blueprint for independent rock over the past generation. […]
RIP: Folk Singer Mary Travers Dead At 72
LOS ANGELES TIMES: It wasn’t all free love and hallucinogens in the ’60s. Hundreds of thousands marched for civil rights and peace, and folk music was the galvanizing voice of freedom and change. Peter, Paul and Mary, the legendary trio who helped promulgate that spirit of activism, could be considered relics of a decade of chaos and transmutation, but for the fact that they’ve kept the faith for more than 30 years. Together and separately, Peter Yarrow, Noel (Paul) Stookey and Mary Travers have raised their voices for peace, for a nuclear-free America, to support the homeless and to protest […]
NEW COLUMN: Men I Have Dated
BY GLORIA MARIS He’s a musician and has worked as a musical director off-Broadway and in the Catskills. He appeared in a few episodes of a well-received cable sitcom, now off the air. He had a very brief speaking part (no close-up, but a credit in the end titles) in a film that won the Academy Award for best picture. He’s a cruciverbalist, a person who constructs crossword puzzles. He lives in New York, and we met during the fringe festival a few years ago. That year, there was a late-night cabaret of various acts — based on the vaudeville […]
TONIGHT: Full Metal Jacket Required
Two acclaimed Australian companies descend on the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, now in its final 4 days, this week. Geelong, Australia’s Back to Back Theatre presents the Philadelphia premiere of their Bessie Award-winning small metal objects, which takes place at the 40th Street field on UPenn’s campus. Actors are outfitted with microphones. You are given headphones. From a prominent riser you listen to an intense drama happening somewhere in the crowd. In a public space with pedestrians wandering every which way, only gradually do the actors become distinguishable from the rest of the passersby. small metal objects explores how respect […]
OBAMA: Is That All There Is To A Teabagging?
[Photos by TIFFANY YOON] BY GREG ADOMAITIS President Barack Obama came to town this afternoon to attend an invitation only fundraiser for Senator Arlen Specter at the Convention Center. White House press pool reports indicate the haul was hefty. Christopher Nicholas, Specter’s campaign manager, said that they were “within striking distance” of the $2.5 million goal for the two-tiered event. Proceeds were to be split between the Specter campaign and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. Guests dined on steak, crab cakes, potatoes, carrots and green beans. For giving $10,000 or raising $50,000, donors posed for photos with the president and […]
Q&A: With Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Jessie Thorn has been dubbed “America’s radio sweetheart” by, well, Jessie Thorn. It started as a joke, but each week it comes closer to self-fulfilling prophecy courtesy of the thoughtful and illuminating interviews Thorn conducts with underground rappers, indie-rockers, and edgy comedians as part of The Sound Of Young America, the nationally-syndicated public radio talk show Thorn tapes in the spare bedroom of his apartment in Los Angeles. Heard locally on WHYY Friday nights at 9PM, The Sound Of Young America has morphed in recent years from an unpaid hobby dating back to Thorn’s college years into […]
OFF THE RECORD: Obama Calls Kanye A ‘Jackass’
During an off-the-record portion of an interview with CNBC, ABC reporter Terry Moran overheard the president call Kanye West a ‘Jackass’ — for storming stage and grabbing the mic from Taylor Swift in the middle of the country star’s acceptance speech — and immediately Twittered it, along with the snarky zinger “now THAT’s presidential”. ABC quickly pulled the tweet and apologized, but the damage was already done — ABC’s Twitterstream has a million-plus followers and Obama’s remark was immediately screencapped, retweeted ad nauseum and then picked up by the MSM, becoming the latest much ado about nothing to burn up […]