SUFFRAGETTE CITY: Bring The Noise

  NEWSWEEK: As of 11 a.m. ET on Friday, Metro counted 193,000 rides, less than half the 513,000 it counted in 2009 and far fewer than the 317,000 it did for Obama’s second inauguration, in 2013. On Saturday, Metro counted 275,000 trips before 11 a.m., also surpassing the figure from the previous morning. MORE

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RIP: Wayne Barrett, The Voice’s ‘Fierce Muckraker’ & Truth-Telling Trump Nemesis, Dead At 71

NEW YORK TIMES: Wayne Barrett, the muckraking Village Voice columnist who carved out a four-decade career tilting at developers, landlords and politicians, among them Donald J. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71. Mr. Barrett’s voluminous background files from the Trump biography, and his professional courtesy, made his Brooklyn home a mecca for investigative reporters during the recent presidential campaign. “There may be no journalist in the nation who knows more about Trump than Barrett,” Jennifer Gonnerman wrote in The New Yorker just after the election. Timothy O’Brien, who was research assistant on the […]

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VIOLATION: Donald Trump’s Empire Is “Nakedly Unconstitutional” & “A Giant Emoluments Vortex”

  FRESH AIR: Will Donald Trump’s new job as president create ethical conflicts with his long-running role as a business owner? Trump sees no problem. “I have a no-conflict situation, because I’m president,” Trump said at a recent press conference. He was correctly referring to the federal conflicts-of-interest law that covers Cabinet secretaries, but not presidents. Still, ethics experts say other restrictions do apply to presidents, setting up serious ethical problems for the new administration. “A president is not permitted to receive cash and other benefits from foreign governments,” Norm Eisen tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “And yet, Donald Trump […]

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NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t

  FRESH AIR: I don’t want to oversell this new version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I don’t know how not to. Everything that the movie version got wrong, this TV adaptation gets right. And not just right, but brilliantly. The difference is as stark, and as significant, as the difference between the movie and TV versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — where the writer of that story, Joss Whedon, took the reins and made a television version much truer to his original vision. Daniel Handler, who wrote the original series of Lemony Snicket books, has done […]

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Everything U Ever Wanted To Know About Camper Van Beethoven But U Didn’t Have Their Number

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on January 16th, 2013 BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of  the eagerly awaited Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker show at World Cafe Life tonight, we got CVB/Cracker mainman Dave Lowery on the horn to talk turkey. Discussed: Bowie, hallucinogenics, Bowling For Columbine, skinheads, Upper Humboldtistan, Patty Hearst, Albanian folk music, The Illuminati, the Inland Empire, La Costa Perdida, what it feels like to be the new Lars Ulrich (pretty good, actually), and just what the hell is a Vampire Can Mating Oven? So Pitch-A-Tent and just get high while the radio’s on. And let us fondly […]

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INCOMING: Sarah Silverman Got Me High

Artwork by REXPLUNA EDITOR’S NOTE: There is more to Sarah Silverman — who kicks off a two-night stand at the Keswick on Sunday — than just ‘fake-racist meta-jokes’ and fucking Matt Damon. There is also doody jokes. But seriously folks, after 34 episodes of The Sarah Silverman Show, 30 movies, two Emmys, and one memoir, she’s just getting started. On the doody jokes. Just kidding. You’ll see. The following is an exclusive excerpt from my 6,300 word 2014 MAGNET cover story. Enjoy. ________ BY JONATHAN VALANIA When I meet Sarah Silverman for the first time she is coming out of […]

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CINEMA: Purple Reign

  SIGN O’ THE TIMES (1987, directed by Prince, 89 minutes, U.S.) BREAKING GLASS (1980, directed by Brian Gibson, 103 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Andrew’s Video Vault presents a pair of semi-lost 80s rock films are on the bill Thursday night January 12th at the Rotunda in West Philly: Prince’s 1987 theatrical concert film Sign O’ the Times and Brian Gibson’s 1980 rise and fall of a British post-punk star Breaking Glass with Hazel O’Connor, in its extended U.K. Cut. It’s easy to see 1987’s double-album Sign O’ the Times as Prince’s cultural pinnacle, propelling three songs […]

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HOT DOC: #Golden Showers Intel Leak Could Spell C-U-R-T-A-I-N-S For Donald Trump’s Presidency

  BUZZFEED: A dossier making explosive — but unverified — allegations that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” President-elect Donald Trump for years and gained compromising information about him has been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks. The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians. BuzzFeed News reporters in the US and Europe have been investigating various alleged facts in the dossier […]

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