“Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” by FRANCIS BACON DAILY NEWS: ANDY DRUDING has a lot to say to the priest who he says repeatedly raped him when he was a middle-school choir boy. So he wrote the Rev. Francis S. Feret a letter. He wanted to give it to him personally, but hasn’t – still scared, after 40 years, to see Feret again. But Tuesday, Druding read his letter in the most public of venues: a news conference at which it was announced that eight more lawsuits have been filed, including one by Druding, against the Philadelphia […]
RIP: Steve Sabol, Poet Laureate Of The NFL, Dead At 69
Photo courtesy of NFL FILMS INQUIRER: Steve Sabol, an art history major and football star in college who combined those two passions to help transform the family business, NFL Films, into a modern mythmaking marvel, died Tuesday at 69. Mr. Sabol had been battling brain cancer since 2011. An inoperable tumor had been discovered just days after his father, Ed, the NFL Films founder, was elected to Pro Football’s Hall of Fame. A lifelong Philadelphia-area resident who never lost his accent or his boyish idealism, Mr. Sabol forever changed the way Americans view their sports. The theatrical instincts that grew […]
Reason Number #42 Not To Go To A Sixers Game
Artwork by INSPIRATO VISUAL INQUIRER: The secretly recorded video of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney describing 47 percent of Americans as being government dependents and victims was shot at the Florida home of financier Marc Leder [pictured, below right], one of the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers. So reports David Corn, the author of the Mother Jones article that first disclosed the existence of the video on MondayCorn says the video was shot May 17 at a $50,000-a-person, private fund-raiser for Romney at Leder’s Boca Raton home. At the fund-raiser Romney said: “There are 47 percent of the people who […]
AIMEE MANN: Labrador
Brilliant and hilarious. Directed by Tom Sharpling and starring Jons Wurster and Hamm. A shot-by-shot recreation of ‘Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” video.
LOCAL-ISH BOY MAKES GOOD: Ex-PW Music Editor Named Village Voice Music Editor, Replaces Fired Local Girl Made Good Maura Johnston
NEW YORK TIMES: The Village Voice has named a new music editor, three days after it emerged that the weekly’s editor was departing and its music editor had been fired. According to a post on The Voice’s music blog on Monday afternoon, its new music editor is Brian McManus [pictured, below right], a former editor at Philadelphia Weekly who has also written for Houston Press, The Chicago Reader, SF Weekly and other publications, and recently reviewed a Madonna concert in Philadelphia for Rolling Stone. He is also the author of a book, “Philadelphia’s Best Dive Bars.” Last week, The […]
Leaked Fundraiser Videos Prove Romney Really Is The Heartless ‘Get-A-Job-Ya-Bum’ Richie-Rich-All-Grown-Up Caricature The Democrats Say He Is
MOTHER JONES: During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don’t assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with […]
BOOKS: Get Yer Gatsby On
Via FROM ME TO YOU “Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”- – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 5
SNL: Eastwood & Chair
Would have been funnier last Monday, but better late than never. God bless Bill Hader.
HOT DOC: Happy #S17
S17NYC.ORG: On September 17, we will occupy Wall Street with non-violent civil disobedience and flood the area around it with a roving carnival of resistance. After assembling in parks throughout the Financial District at 7am, we will converge on the Stock Exchange at 7:30am and surround it with the “People’s Wall” sit-in. We will then fill the Financial District with “99 Revolutions,” a swirl of mobile occupations of corporate lobbies and intersections. At 10am, the Eco Cluster will gather at Bowling Green to “Storm Wall Street” and demand it stop bankrolling climate change. At 11am, we will assess the […]
FRINGE REVIEW: Red-Eye to Havre de Grace
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore– While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” (The Raven, ll. 1-4) The author of these harrowing lines, Edgar Allen Poe, has a new more playful conduit to the modern world – Thaddeus Phillips’ latest work, Red-Eye to Havre de Grace. Regardless of how you categorize it, the play/ballet/concert is deeply evocative and darkly humorous, giving tribute to the artist without pushing its audience over […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, set in Atlantic City in the 1920s, is about organized crime in the era of Prohibition. The show stars Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson, an Atlantic City politician who sees the coming of Prohibition as an opportunity to make even more money from illegal activities and kickbacks. Buscemi’s co-star, Michael Shannon, tells Terry Gross that when he signed up to play the righteous federal agent Nelson Van Alden, he didn’t know his character would succumb to the temptations of Atlantic City — and so quickly. In the show’s first season, Van Alden cheated, lied and […]
CINEMA: Enter Sandman
SLEEPWALK WITH ME (2012, directed by Mike Birbiglia and Seth Barrish, 90 minutes, U.S.) KEEP THE LIGHTS ON (2012, directed by Ira Sachs, 101 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Some of the most-captivating storytelling of the last decade from any medium has come from PRI’s This American Life, the public radio show hosted by Ira Glass. Although the first-person narrative stories the show produces can span the globe, it is a whimsical take on “everyday Americans” that dominates. Sleepwalk With Me is the first film produced directly by This American Life (Ira Glass contributed to the […]
UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES: Corbett’s Tongue-Tied Justification For Voter Suppression ID Law
NBC10’s Lu Ann Cahn vigorously questions Governor Tom Corbett about the Voter ID law that PA House Republican Majority Leader Mike Turzai declared would make it possible for Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania on November fourth. Unable to cite any evidence of the kind of rampant voter fraud that might justify onerous legislation requiring voters to jump through new hoops to get to pull the lever on election day, Corbett is forced to reach back to a 20-year-old incident that one incident in the 1990’s of voter fraud in Pennsylvania that was, in fact, never substantiated. And in any case, […]