THE ATLANTIC: MIA tweeted at Gaga on Sunday night, “if ur at harrods today , come visit Assange at the Ecuador embassy across the st. im there. ill bring TEA and CAKE.” A full 24-hours later, Lady Gaga posted a photo of her and the Wikileaks founder with a stain on his shirt. Somebody even snapped a couple of photos of her leaving the embassy. It’s unclear if MIA showed up. Who knows what the two of them talked about. However, thanks to the enthusiastic droves of Lady Gaga fans on Twitter, we’re reminded of the time that Bradley […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Pete Townshend @ Penn
Currently promoting his new autobiography Who I Am (see below), Pete Townshend will be speaking at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on Wednesday at 7 PM. This event is COMPLETELY sold out, but we have a pair of tickets to giveaway to the 27th reader to sign up for our mailing list. The sign up window is just to the right of this post at the bottom of the masthead. (Don’t worry, we will never share or sell your email address, unless you do something really bad on national television and the cops make us […]
ARTSY: An Extremely Rare And Factual Q&A With Cartoonist & Illustrator Extraordinaire Chris Ware
BY RITA BOOK* In the hands of Chris Ware, the funnies aren’t particularly funny. Unless, that is, lonely misfits and their existential lives of quiet desperation is your idea of comedy gold. Ware’s deeply felt, darkly told and beautifully illustrated stories, including the partly autobiographical “Jimmy Corrigan” and “Rusty Brown,” have won awards in the U.S. and abroad, drawn comparisons to “Ulysses” and Duchamp, and landed the Chicago-based cartoonist on bookshelves, museums and galleries, The New York Times, The New Yorker and Esquire. Ware’s latest, the groundbreaking and gorgeous “Building Stories,” has already been called his magnum opus and a […]
CONCERT REVIEW: ZZ Top @ The Keswick
Men’s Room, Keswick Theater, Friday night by JONATHAN VALANIA BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER It is a well-known fact that only two things will survive the coming Apocalypse: cockroaches and Keith Richards. A betting man would add ZZ Top to the list. After 40 years of chrome, smoke and BBQ’d blooze licks, their party time ubiquity shows no signs of diminishing. Wherever there are men on scaffolding, they will be there. Wherever Harley meets Davidson, they will be there. Wherever stripper meets pole, they will be there. Wherever a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS sticker meets a mud-caked pickup truck […]
WHEN WEDDINGS ATTACK: Video Of Massive Wedding On Wedding Violence Goes Viral
NBC10: The uncle of a bride died and three people were arrested at a Philadelphia hotel Sunday after a fight broke out between dozens of guests from two wedding parties forcing police to use batons and a Taser to end the melee. Investigators tell NBC10 about 75 to 100 people were fighting in the lobby of the Sheraton Society Hill hotel located at 1 Dock Street. Police say at one point they were outnumbered by the crowd and had to call in extra patrols twice. Dozens of officers from across the city came to the hotel. Police say they used […]
SIDEWALKING: Chasing The Dragon
Chinatown, last night, 10:43 PM by PETE TROSHAK
MUST SEE TV: Funny Cars
This is genius. It’s like Smokey & The Bandit with Matchboxes.
CINEMA: The Horror, The Horror
V/H/S (2012, directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Gen McQuade, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence, 115 minutes, U.S.) SLAUGHTER TALES (2012, directed by Johnny Dickie, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC There was an uncomfortable silence leaving the press screening of the new horror anthology V/H/S, one I couldn’t help breaking with a brief capsule review. “A little rape-y, no?” Slight nervous laughter ensued. V/H/S brings together a group of like-minded young filmmakers each adding a “found-footage” horror short to this collection of solidly spooky mayhem. Ti West is probably the most acclaimed of the […]
INCOMING: An Extremely Rare Q&A w/ Chris Ware
Click HERE to enlarge Everybody who knows anything about illustration/graphic novels/alt-comics knows that Chris Ware sits atop the heap. They also know that Ware almost NEVER does interviews, but he agreed to answer Phawker’s questions and we’ll have that for you Monday in advance of his appearance with fellow American Master Charles Burns at the Free Library on Tuesday. In the mean time, check out this rejected cover for Fortune Magazine’s 2010 Fortune 500 cover. Its seems there is a limit to how many times you can bite the hand that feeds in one magazine cover art assignment. See below […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Raveonettes @ Union Transfer
Photograph by PETE TROSHAK Danish duo The Raveonettes brought their reverb-drenched noir-rock to Union Transfer last night, making one of their rare U.S. appearances and appeasing fans who had waited hundreds of years to see them. The band’s music is a study in contrasts, sticky and sweet throwback garage/surf pop on the outside but lurid verging on lewd at the lyrical core with pulp-y thematic obsessions that include sex, drugs and death. Lanky, Tim Burton-coiffed guitarist Sune Rose Wagner alternated between thrashing chords and stinging single-note volleys while icy hot blonde Sharin Foo held down the low end, and an […]
OP-ED: Big Bird Or Big Bombs?
In the wake of Mitt Romney’s declaration the other night that he would de-fund public broadcasting, we’d like to reprise our remarks on this matter and hopefully provide a little much-needed perspective. Every year, the Federal government budgets roughly $400 million dollars for public broadcasting, money that is spent for things like Big Bird and Ken Burns, All Things Considered and Fresh Air, A Prairie Home Companion and This American Life. The Republicans say we can’t afford such luxuries anymore — well, maybe they could find the money if only public broadcasting would be more like Fox News and […]
RAMBLE ON: Win A Trip To NYC To Meet Led Zep
You can win an trip for two to attend the world premiere of Led Zeppelin‘s ‘Celebration Day’ concert film on Oct. 9 in New York City — complete with airfare, hotel, movie tickets and spending money — courtesy of Ultimate Classic Rock and Omniverse Vision. Led Zeppelin electrified the rock world in 2007 when the legendary group’s three surviving members reunited for their first full-length concert since their 1980 breakup. Millions of fans across the world applied for tickets to this special event, but only 18,000 got to see it all go down inside London’s O2 Arena — until now! Last month, […]
SIDEWALKING: Pet Sounds
Animal Collective, 10:20 PM, The Mann by JONATHAN VALANIA INQUIRER: Nowadays it’s not easy being Animal Collective. After more than a decade of fortuitous left turns and deft reinventions, the Baltimore-born quartet has entered that paradoxical Twilight Zone where their audience expects the unexpected – but isn’t necessarily thrilled when it comes. Their new album Centipede Hz is a clangorous volte-face inward from 2009’s unseasonably warm and welcoming Merriweather Post Pavilion. Given the experimental troupe’s reputation for seldom looking back, their Hz-heavy set list at the Mann Center on Wednesday was equally unsurprising – as was the cavernous venue’s wide […]