[Illustration by ALEX FINE] EDITOR’S NOTE: Rick Moody will be speaking at the Free Library on July 29th. The following interview ran back in 2007, upon the release of Right Livelihoods. BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Rick Moody tackles the hallucinatory pathologies of American paranoia in Right Livelihoods, a collection of three thematically-connected novellas. Each story centers on a paranoid protagonist who serves as unreliable narrator and as a result, the reader spends an awful lot of time wondering just what the hell is going on — which only adds to the ultra-vivid realism and disconcerting familiarity of it all. […]
DUCKBOAT DOWN: Plot Thickens As Details Emerge
FOXPHILADELPHIA: The NTSB says in its interviews, the Duck Boat captain said he made radio calls to the Caribbean Sea, the tug pulling the barge, without a response from the tug boat. Other people on nearby vessels also heard the distress calls from the Duck Boat. The NTSB says the mate of the tug took the fifth amendment and would not speak with investigators. There were four other crew members on the tug. On deckhand was sleeping at the time of the accident, while the three other crew members, including the ship’s master, spoke with investigators. The Caribbean Sea’s GPS […]
SIDEWALKING: The Eagle Has Landed
American Bald Eagle, Elmwood Park Zoo, Norristown 9:39 AM by JEFF FUSCO ***
BOOKS: To Kill A Mockingbird Turns 50
TOM BROKAW: It was one of those memorable pieces of literary fiction that came along at an impressionable time in my life, and also in the country’s life. Dr. King had already started the movement at that point, we were paying attention on national television every night on the network news to what was going on in the South, and this book spoke to us. I knew people like that, who were willing to stand up in these kinds of communities against the conventional wisdom of the time. Racism didn’t stop at the Mason-Dixon Line. A lot of those same […]
WILD IN THE STREETS: 20,000 Mob South Street; Mega Brawl In Old City Turns Stabby
[Photo by NDBUTTER] INQUIRER: Philadelphia police shut down 11 blocks of South Street between 1 and 2 a.m. Sunday after officers decided that large crowds, estimated as high as 20,000 people, were in danger of overwhelming the area. Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, said Saturday night’s crowds apparently swelled because of rumors among local teenagers about the Greek Picnic, once an annual event that drew thousands of members of African American college fraternities and sororities to the city. While it was not held this year, a substitute event, which had difficulty securing a venue, drew some Greeks to the […]
DEENEY: On Delco’s GPS Killer
BY JEFF DEENEY FOR THE DAILY BEAST James Stropas apparently had no idea that his car was being tracked. It was June 21, coming off another in a series of scorching hot weekends in the quaint Philadelphia suburb of Springfield. Unbeknownst to Stropas, his Jeep Grand Cherokee had a small GPS device attached to its frame that was now broadcasting a signal, silently pinpointing his location as he pulled into the parking lot of the bustling Olde Sproul Shopping Village strip mall. According to police, a man with a laptop accessed the GPS data at 10:40 a.m. Ten minutes later, […]
PAPA CHUBBY: 50 Years Of ‘Twistory’
DAILY NEWS: Chubby Checker wowed a monster crowd outside City Hall yesterday afternoon as hundreds of people tried to “twist” their way into the record books. To mark the 50th anniversary of the popular tune and dance, “The Twist,” the Philadelphia-raised Checker performed a free concert on Dilworth Plaza, adjacent to City Hall. MORE INQUIRER: “It’s basically making love with your clothes on.” That’s Chubby Checker’s succinct explanation for the enduring popularity of the Twist, the dance that helped launch his career. On Friday, Checker, 68, with clothes on (jeans suit, open shirt), delivered 45 minutes of straight-ahead ’60s […]
THE NEW WELFARE QUEENS: PA Guv Candidate Tom Corbett Says Unemployed Don’t Want To Work
MORNING CALL: Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett came under fire Friday when he said some jobless Pennsylvanians would rather collect unemployment than return to work. During a campaign appearance in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, Corbett told a reporter from Pennsylvania Public Radio that “the jobs are there,” but he’d been told by business owners that, “one of the issues, and I hear it repeatedly – one of the individuals said, ‘I can’t get workers. People don’t want to come back to work while they still have unemployment.’ ” Corbett told the radio outlet that a business owner had “literally” told him […]
BIG BLACK: Gulf Gusher Could Be Sealed By Monday?
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The federal official leading the Gulf oil spill cleanup said Friday a new containment cap and an additional ship collecting oil could effectively contain the spill in the next three days The work to replace a leaky containment cap on the well head with a tighter one will begin Saturday, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said. At the same time, a ship connecting to a different part of the leak is expected to come online Sunday. Oil will flow unimpeded into the Gulf during the cap switch for at least part of the weekend. If all goes according […]
DUCKBOAT DOWN: Second Body Found
[Photo by HARPO 42] INQUIRER: A female’s body was recovered from the Delaware River this morning as a salvage crew prepared to raise a duck boat from the river bottom. It is not clear yet if the body – described as that of a young woman – is that of Dora Schwendtner, 16, a Hungarian tourist who disappeared when the duck boat was run over by a barge on Wednesday. A second Hungarian tourist Szablcs Prem, 20, also did not make it to shore after the Ride the Ducks boat went down and remains missing. A fisherman spotted the body […]
CINEMA: Fire, Walk With Me
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (2010, directed by, 129 minutes, Sweden) DOGTOOTH (2008, directed by Giorgos Lanthimos, 94 minutes, Greece) ROBOGEISHA (2009, directed by Noboru Iguchi, 102 minutes, Japan) DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2009, directed by Ole Bornedal, 100 minutes, Denmark) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC She’s back! And this time it’s personal! The girl with the dragon tattoo, the violent bisexual rape revenger Lisbeth Salander returns with the second adaptation from the phenomenally successful best-selling Millennium trilogy. Thankfully shorter than the opening chapter, The Girl Who Played With Fire carries with it most of the same strengths and […]
ALBUM REVIEW: AG’s Everything’s Berri
AG Everything’s Berri FAT BEATS/RED APPLES 45 Rap veteran AG never gets his props. He’s received critical acclaim for his collaborations with NYC producer Showbiz in the 90s, but his name is never ever mentioned amongst his contemporaries like Guru, Q-Tip, C. L. Smooth, Big L, and the Notorious B.I.G.. This doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact, listening to Everything’s Berri, you’d swear that this could be AG’s debut album. His super-lazy, relaxed delivery deeply contrasts his rigid and formulaic emceeing of the 90s. AG’s flow is neither a rip-off of Jay-Z swagger, nor a clone of “wavy” Harlem-ites […]
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 […]