NPR: “And what I did came back to me eventually,” narrator Redford Stephens, transcendently portrayed by Black Thought, posthumously intones in “Sleep,” the first track from The Roots’ 13th album undun. Death pervades undun; it follows Stephens, a poor kid from Philadelphia and victim to the drug trade, from the moment he surrenders himself to the game all the way to his inevitable end. Along the way, no verse is wasted, no optimism is spared; each line is like a shovelful of dirt on Redford’s coffin. At 39 minutes, undun feels like a lifetime, because it is one. […] The […]
AND IN THE END: The Beginning Is Near
[Artwork by LARRY WEST] INQUIRER: Police swarmed around City Hall overnight and rousted Occupy Philadelphia protesters from their encampment more than two days after a deadline passed for them to leave. The occupiers responded by roaming around Center City, scattering and regrouping with police following their every move in a chaotic night of cat-and-mouse that threatened to drag into the morning rush hour. The attempt to disperse the occupiers began about 1 a.m. – 56 hours after the city-imposed deadline to leave came and went. Shortly before 5 a.m., as protesters confronted police in a standoff on 15th Street between […]
EARLY WORD: A Very Bigger Christmas
DOWNLOAD: The Bigger Lovers “For Christ’s Sake” [MP3] RELATED: As for the origins of this tear-in-yer-eggnog slow jam, here’s how the song’s writer Bret Tobias remembers it: “We were asked to contribute to a Christmas compilation and were riffing off title ideas at rehearsal. Someone came up with “For Christ’s Sake” and we all had a laugh and then quickly moved on to doing “Emmanuelle” for the umpteenth time or something. But the title stuck in my head, and as I started writing it became a little more heartfelt than intended. It was an interesting experiment, even though it’d be […]
How To Help The GOP Stereotype The Unemployed As Lazy-Boned Leeches Looking For A Handout
FOX NEWS: A former Philadelphia school district superintendent who collected a $905,000 contract buyout from the city has reportedly filed for unemployment benefits. Arlene Ackerman was reportedly paid the hefty buyout by the school district with taxpayer funds after a plan to use $405,000 in private funds to pay her was cancelled amid public outrage. The school district cannot contest the filing due to the separation agreement her lawyers negotiated in August, sources told Fox affiliate WTXF-TV. Ackerman was the highest paid government official in Philadelphia during her three-year stay with the school district, which is run by the state, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: ‘Reading The Mind Of God’
FRESH AIR Imagine being able to access the Internet through the contact lenses on your eyeballs. Blink, and you’d be online. Meet someone, and you’d have the ability to immediately search their identity. And if your friend happens to be speaking a different language, an instantaneous translation could appear directly in front of you. That might sound farfetched, but it’s something that might very well exist in 30 years or less, says theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. “The first people to buy these contact lenses will be college students studying for final exams,” he tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “They’ll see […]
DONE AND DONE: Herman Cain Acknowledging Reality For The First And Last Time In His Campaign
ABC NEWS: Herman Cain’s chief of staff Mark Block confirmed to ABC News that the candidate told his senior staff this morning he’s reassessing whether to stay in the race, as reported by the National Review. An adviser to Cain said the former businessman told staff he will spend the next two days assessing his candidacy, and that he would base his decision on two factors. One, whether or not he still has enough support to go on, and two, the toll it is taking on his family. MORE THE ATLANTIC: On a conference call Tuesday morning, Herman Cain told […]
DR. DOG: That Old Black Hole
From the Dog’s sixth LP, Be The Void, which hits stores February 7th. You can pre-order it via KINGS ROAD MERCH and immediately receive “The Old Black Hole” as well as “Warrior Man” and “Control Yourself” from the long ago sold out Black Friday 7-incher.
WORTH REPEATING: The Original Occupier
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] THE FINANCIAL TIMES: “I have a lot of plan B, C, D, E, and F in effect,” he adds. What’s plan A, I ask? “Plan A is to make movies. The one thing I can’t do right now.” He finds himself in a cinematic no-man’s land. Hollywood studios look only for blockbusters, while the demise of art-house cinemas makes investors reluctant to finance independent films. The last half-dozen films he made cost between $4m and $8m, he says. “Nowadays, [backers] want it to cost $500,000 to $1m. I can’t do that because I have four employees. […]
Scott Olsen Speaks — With Difficulty — After Getting His Skull Cracked Open By Oakland Cops
USA TODAY: The scene, Olsen said, reminded him of Iraq — the helicopters overhead, the explosions, the smoke. After he was hit, there were frantic curses and cries of “Medic!” “It seemed like a battle, like war,” he said. “It did bring that back to me.” He was standing with an ex-sailor in uniform between the main bodies of police and protesters. Olsen wore his Marines’ camouflage jacket over a Veterans for Peace T-shirt. He was posing for pictures, he said, and trying to use his status as a veteran to keep the peace. After he was hit on the […]
TONITE: 17 Years Of Fergie In A Glass
[Photo by BRIAN FERGUSON] GRUBB STREET: Before Fergie’s there was nothing. Okay, maybe that’s a little bit of stretch, but when Fergus “Fergie” Carey opened his eponymous pub on Sansom Street near 13th Street back in 1994, editors from Food & Wine and Bon Appetit weren’t exactly lining up to check out the likes of Barbuzzo, El Vez or Sampan. In fact much of what’s now called Midtown Village was dotted with empty store fronts, strip joints, sex shops and adult cinemas. And Fergie was seen as something of a madman for opening a bar and restaurant in the middle […]
BLOTTO: Fear & Loathing In Nowhere, New Jersey
BY LANCE DOILY I had just gotten through my first route without a near total collapse into debauchery in a couple months, so I gave my man Royce a call to celebrate over a couple cold ones at the Husker. Slunt Huskers, that is. Stone was at the helm, so it goes without saying that the tap was locked in the pour position and Uriah Heap’s “Easy Livin’” was runnin’ repeat on the juke before my asscheeks even touched the barstool. He was in rare form that night, barely getting to the second round before telling us a story about […]
ARAB SPRING BREAK: U.S. College Students Cuffed, Beaten And Scared Sh*tless By Egyptian Popo
CBS NEWS: Of his treatment by Egyptian authorities during his detention, Sweeney said, “The first night, we weren’t really told anything as to what was going to happen to us for a long time, for several days. “But the first night, we were hit several times in the face, in the back of the neck, and we were forced to sit on the ground in the dark with our hands cuffed behind our backs, and there were a number of Egyptian policemen behind us with guns telling us that if we moved, we would be shot. We were there for […]
SHAKING THROUGH: Snowmine
RELATED: Snowmine, a Brooklyn-based five-piece, is keyboardist Grayson Sanders, guitarists Calvin Pia and Austin Mendenhall, bassist Jay Goodman, and drummer Alex Beckmann. The band’s lush indie-pop songs are generated largely by Sanders, who recently turned his attention from composing in the New York classical music scene to become the principle singer and songwriter for the group. For the session, Snowmine chose to record the song “Curfews.” Sanders said: “It’s a song about being a slave to your work. The first line is: I might not earn it but its what I deserve […] It’s the relationship you have being validated […]