CHERRY HILL COURIER-POST: After months of disbelief over mass police layoffs in the nation’s second most dangerous city, Camden officers Monday began turning in their guns and badges. And in a move that will allow the department to maintain a much-needed street presence with fewer officers, the department moved to 12-hour work shifts Monday morning, according to sources with knowledge of the department. “Today was extremely difficult as we collected equipment from people who have dedicated and risked their lives for this city,” said Police Chief Scott Thomson. “Some of these individuals have more than 10 years of service, have […]
BREAKING: Police Have Strangler Suspect In Custody
DAILY NEWS: Police just announced that they’ve arrested Antonio Rodriguez, identified tonight as the Kensington Strangler. Rodriguez was arrested on Mutter Street near Westmoreland in Kensington. MORE MSNBC: DNA links the 21-year-old alleged serial killer to three murders in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, police said at a Monday night news conference. During that news conference a 911 call came in saying that Rodriguez was hiding out in a house on the 3300 block of Mudder Street. MORE DAILY MAIL: Philadelphia police say they have caught a serial killer who has been dubbed the Kensington Strangler – after a $37,000 […]
MONSTER PORN: Cops Say Jared Lee Loughner Photographed Himself In A G-String Posing With Glock
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] NEW YORK TIMES: Law enforcement officials said Friday they have multiple photos of Jared L. Loughner posing with a Glock 9mm pistol next to his naked buttocks and dressed in a bright red g-string. It is the same model of weapon as the one the police say Mr. Loughner used last Saturday to kill six people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and to wound 14 others, including an Arizona congresswoman. The photos were turned over to the police by Walgreens, where Mr. Loughner had taken the 35-mm film to be developed on Jan. […]
CINEMA: The Boys Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
DAVID EDELSTEIN: The Green Hornet at least is likable, a refreshing change from all those heavy, angst-ridden superhero movies. The director is Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a virtuoso at making childish fantasies take wing. And I’m not the first to notice a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road-movie vibe between the two stars, Seth Rogen (as Britt Reid, aka The Green Hornet) and Jay Chou (the kung fu master Kato), who are both smitten with Cameron Diaz in the Dorothy Lamour role. Rogen’s Britt is a ne’er-do-well rich kid, the son of a disapproving media mogul played […]
LIT: Whatever Happened To Norman Mailer?
COMMENTARY: By this point, Mailer had jettisoned his first wife, college sweetheart Beatrice Silverman, and clearly traded up in the sexual-allure department by marrying the painter Adele Morales in 1954. With Adele’s all-too-willing complicity, he cultivated the ugliest part of his nature and called it high moral adventure. Threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes became a regular feature of their sex life. Mailer especially got off watching his wife with other women; when he could provoke her to duke it out with her lesbian partner, his night was made. The spectacle was even better than naked mud wrestling. Marijuana lubed the orgiastic […]
Six Students Slashed During Punch-Up Under The El
INQUIRER: Six high school students have been taken to hospitals, five of them with knife wounds, after a melee at a Market Street El station in West Philadelphia this morning, police said. A witness said a fight between two youths quickly escalated into five different fights about 7:40 a.m. at the 46th and Market Street station. Police said the students were from Boys Latin Charter and West Catholic High School. Four Latin Charter students suffered knife wounds and one had a cut mouth, police said. They were taken to Mercy Hospital, apparently by school officials. Investigators are trying to determine […]
OW, MY BALLS: Larry Platt Testicle Photos Leaked To Gawker, Along With Not-Funny Black Nurse Joke
GAWKER: A former Philadelphia staffer provided the below email, which Platt sent to his then-assistant while recovering from having a testicle removed. Platt makes a questionable joke about a black woman, then instructs the assistant to forward his testicle pictures to “the ball girls,” a group of five current and former staffers. MORE RELATED: IN HIS reporting of my leave-taking as editor of Philadelphia magazine, Dan Gross included in his description of my “un-bosslike” behavior “tackling in the hallways.” To be clear, there had been no tackling in the hallways of Philadelphia magazine since 2003, which is when I rescinded […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
SETTLEMENT: Shep Fairey & AP Declare Truce
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Associated Press and the artist who created the Barack Obama “HOPE” image announced Wednesday they have agreed to settle their copyright infringement claims against each other and will work together again in projects that use the news agency’s pictures. Both sides disclosed the agreement in a joint release, ending a fight that began after Shepard Fairey’s art based on a 2006 AP photograph became an iconic image in Obama’s presidential campaign. The red, cream and light-blue image shows a determined-looking Obama gazing upward, with the caption “HOPE.” Fairey sued the AP in 2009, seeking a court declaration […]
MEDIA: Dave Davies Goes After Larry Platt
DAVE DAVIES: I was working at the Philadelphia Daily News when the company filed for bankruptcy, and I was there when an earlier corporate parent, Knight-Ridder put the paper up for sale. I dare say there was less dismay in the newsroom on those days than yesterday, when the company’s CEO named former Philadelphia Magazine editor Larry Platt as editor of the Daily News and announced the “the transformation of the Daily News into a loud, irreverent and fun tabloid.” I wasn’t at the paper yesterday, but my friends there tell me the atmosphere in the newsroom when the changes […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Real AZ Shooting Victims
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] ANDREW SULLIVAN: “This message—even at a time of national crisis—was a base-rousing rallying cry, perpetuating her own victimhood and alleged bloodthirstiness of her opponents. One would have thought that Palin, like any responsible person in her shoes right now, could have mustered some sort of regret about the unfortunate coincidence of what she had done in the campaign and what happened afterwards. Wouldn’t you? If you had publicly defended a map with cross-hairs on a congresswoman’s district, and that congresswoman had subsequently been shot, would you not be able to express even some measure of regret […]
RECORD REVIEW: Kanye & Jay-Z’s H.A.M.
According to internet jabber, Jay-Z and Kanye West are in the south of France polishing up their collaboration EP, Watch The Throne, due mid-2011. They leaked three tracks from the EP. The first two tracks “That’s My Bitch” and “The Joy,” produced by Pete Rock and Q-Tip respectively, were promising, to say the least. However, on Tuesday, Kanye announced that a third leaked track, “H.A.M. (Hard As A Motherfucker,” would be the lead single for the EP. In a nutshell, “H.A.M.” is a remake of Rick Ross’ summer hit “BMF.” Sure, the beat has changed mildly to include choral dynamics, […]