SANTIGOLD PERFORMS @ THE TROC TONIGHT w/ Theophilus London
Gray Lady-Bound, Pulitzer Prize-Winner Wendy Ruderman Urges DN Brethren To Abandon Ship
PHILLY POST: How bad are things at the Daily News? New York Times-bound Wendy Ruderman [pictured, middle], a 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner, is urging her colleagues to jump ship. “I hate to say it, but if people at the Daily News aren’t looking, they should be,” says Ruderman, whose swan song is Thursday. “If they’re not, it’s kind of stupid … This place is rudderless.” Rumors of the DN’s imminent demise are nothing new. This time, however, it feels real, Ruderman, 42, says. Under new owners (again) and with circulation plummeting, everything is in flux as the DN and the […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR Lena Dunham was just 23 years old when her second feature film, Tiny Furniture, won the best narrative feature prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival. The movie’s success led to Dunham striking a deal with HBO for a comedy series about a group of 20-something girls navigating New York City. Girls, which Dunham writes and also stars in, premiered on HBO in April. Critics immediately heaped praise on the comedy for its voice and colorful storylines; The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Goodman called the show “one of the most original, spot-on, no-missed-steps series in recent memory.” A […]
AHOY: Fergie May Be The Best Thing To Happen To The Delaware Since Washington Crossed It
FOOBOOZ: Fergus “Fergie” Carey (Fergie’s, Monk’s Cafe, Belgian Cafe, Grace Tavern and Nodding Head Brewery) is listed as one of the officers on the liquor license application at old High Pressure Fire Service Building at Columbus Boulevard and Race Street. The building was purchased last year by the Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe festival management and a bright orange liquor license placard is now displayed on the former fire hydrant pumping station. The building will be the permanent home of Philadelphia Live Arts and will include: MORE RELATED: Morgan’s Pier is the name attached to Avram Hornik’s new project on the […]
SAY IT AGAIN: Have We Reached Peak Facebook?
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Which brings us back to the question: Have we reached peak Facebook? And no, we haven’t. Even if Facebook never adds another user, it will keep growing: It has become a fundamental substrate, a difficult-to-avoid component of any site or app that requires users to register—making it essential to nearly every major web innovation now and in the future. There’s a related question: Is Facebook ever going to be cool again? That’s like asking “Is the phone company cool?” The interface may not be exciting anymore, but the network is very, very cool, in the disruptively awesome […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Willie Nelson @ The Keswick
Forget everything you know about Willie Nelson: the weed, the massive IRS bill, the resulting Taco Bell commercials, the weed, the solar powered tour bus, the Julio Iglesias duet, the reggae album, the weed. That’s all well and good, but what matters is the music. And the music of Willie Nelson is no joke. Nelson is an icon, an outlaw, a cowboy, a fierce guitar player and nuanced singer, a great songwriter, a larger than life character who seems hewn from a piece of granite. He is still out on the road most of the time at age 79, outperforming […]
Blatstein To Build A Euro Village In The Clouds
PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: From some other developer, this might all sound a little too fantastical. But after putting a European-style piazza in Northern Liberties, Blatstein is working in rarefied air, both literally and figuratively. His newest concept takes a little explaining. But in short, about 60 feet off the ground, on rooftops extending from about a third of the way along the 1400 block of Callowhill, all the way to 16th Street, Blatstein plans to erect a “village reminiscent of old Europe.” [NOT pictured, above] Crooked and meandering streets will weave through a collection of one- and two-story buildings housing small […]
Iceland Responded To Crash Of ’08 By Forgiving Consumer Debt & Prosecuting Pols & Bank Execs & Is Currently Kicking The Ass Of The Economies Of The U.S. & EU Where None Of That Happened
THE INDEPENDENT: Iceland was a pioneer in recklessness during the credit boom. And now the small nation in the north Atlantic is a pioneer in political accountability during the credit bust. Geir Haarde, the Icelandic prime minister between 2006 and 2009, appeared in a special constitutional court in Reykjavik yesterday on charges of “failures of ministerial responsibility” during the 2008 financial meltdown. But there is an irony here. For the economy that Mr Haarde helped to wreck has fared surprisingly well since the bust. Iceland experienced one of the most severe recessions in the world when the markets crashed in […]
CONCERT REVIEW: The Shins @ The Tower
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER If Zac Braff’s Garden State was The Graduate for the iPod generation, the Shins’ “New Slang” was its “Sound of Silence.” “You have to hear this one song, it will change your life,” Natalie Portman beseeched us all in Braff’s film. That scene sure changed the Shins’ life, for better and for worse — depending on where you stand on the two albums that followed, 2007’s winsome Wincing the Night Away and the new Port of Morrow. I like ’em fine, but they sound like the work of a different band from the one […]
DEATH OF A GOOBER: George Lindsey Dead At 83
LOS ANGELES TIMES: George Lindsey, the Southern-born character actor who played dim hayseed Goober Pyle, the genial gas station auto mechanic on “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Mayberry R.F.D.,” died early Sunday morning. He was 83.”George Lindsey was my friend,” Andy Griffith said in a statement. “I had great respect for his talent and his human spirit.” Noting that he had his last conversation with Lindsey a few days ago, Griffith said: “I am happy to say that as we found ourselves in our 80s, we were not afraid to say, ‘I love you.’ That was the last thing George […]
Q&A: M. Doughty, Former Soul Coughing Frontman, Ex-Junkie, Acclaimed Author & Recovering Genius
Photo by Deborah Lopez BY JONATHAN VALANIA “If heroin still made me feel like I did the first time, and kept making me that way forever — kept working — I might’ve quite happily accepted a desolate, marginal life and death,” writes Mike Doughty, aka M. Doughty, former frontman for the dearly departed Soul Coughing, in the introduction to The Book of Drugs, his wickedly funny recently-published memoir. Although he is loathe to admit it, Soul Coughing was easily the most fascinating, innovative and sonically-subversive American band to come along since Devo. Future generations of scientists may well conclude that […]
CINEMA: Supercallifragilistic
THE AVENGERS (2012, directed by Joss Whedon, 142 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Like an asteroid headed straight at earth, the unavoidable, unstoppable Avengers movie has finally made impact and resistance is futile. Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D has been making post-credit appearances in the Marvel super hero films for four years now, hinting at the arrival of the all-star super hero team. The Avengers is meant to top all the previous Marvel blockbusters of the past decade and it does that with the sheer scope of the frenzied destruction that, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk […]
GEEK SQUAD: Vetting The Avengers
EDITOR’S NOTE: One-man-walking-Star-Trek-convention and incoming Phawker intern Richard Suplee is, by his own admission, a total comic book nerd. In the quadrants of the galaxy where the jocks still rule the roost, such a confession would get your ass kicked into next week. As further proof that Phawker is not high school, instead of kicking his ass into next week, we are going to harness his deep geek knowledge and use it to vet this summer’s onslaught of big budget superhero popcorn movies. We begin with this incredibly-detailed and rigorous cross-examination of The Avengers. So put on your Spock ears […]