WIRED: America’s Funniest Home Videos may have pioneered the YouTube concept, but as the site reaches the five-year mark, its audience size is no laughing matter. YouTube’s viewership now exceeds that of all three networks combined during their “primetime” evening time slot, with more than 2 billion views per day, Google announced Sunday. Granted, YouTube’s numbers come from worldwide views, while ABC, CBS and NBC broadcast their primetime channels within the United States. But this is a significant milestone nonetheless, and hints at an eventual tipping point when the internet could become the world’s dominant video-delivery system, Mark Cuban’s predictions […]
APPRECIATION: Let Us Now Praise Andrew WK
BY JAMIE DAVIS Andrew W.K. is a god. And I don’t mean that in the sort of way Jimmy Page is a god, or John Lennon is a god. I mean that he is the archetypal embodiment of pure awesomeness. He doesn’t fuss with metaphors, or new ideas, or silly things like that, he just takes the awesomest things he can think of and combines them. Epic orchestral opening, seguing into an even-more epic guitar solo, climaxing in a chorus that’s sheer will to annihilate will have you air-drumming like it’s 1985? That would be “Never Let Down,” whose video […]
TONITE: ‘Don’t Say That You Love Me’
The Lindsey Buckingham Appreciation Society perform Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk in its entirety Mon., May 17, 8 p.m., $8, with Jennifer O’Connor, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 877-435-9849, johnnybrendas.com. CITY PAPER: In 1979, Fleetwood Mac followed up their gazillion-selling Rumours (1977) with the double-album Tusk. While maybe not as avant-garde as its reputation suggests, Tusk still afforded the band’s resident frizzy-haired control freak, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, ample room to let his freak flag fly. The disjointed, off-kilter arrangements of the title track, “The Ledge” and others helped ensure the album’s overriding cult status. MORE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: After years and […]
SPORTO: Steal This Sign
BY MIKE WOLVERTON In honor of my ADD children, here’s a quick Q&A with myself on some of this weekend’s pressing sports issues. Q: Are the Flyers the greatest team ever? A: Obviously. Here’s a team that has had goaltending issues since the Lindbergh/Hextall days of the ‘80s. There’s seemingly a new goalie in town every year (who remembers Ray Emery?). Now the plan has been accelerated to a new goalie every two weeks! The Flyers fell behind the Bruins three games to none in Round 2 of the playoffs, then lost goalie Brian Boucher to injury in Game 5. […]
SPECTER VS. SESTAK: The Thrilla In Pennsylvania
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW: Pennsylvania voters go the polls Tuesday for a primary election that could determine more than who bears the Democratic and Republican standards in November. The results will measure Obama’s influence with voters, the credibility of party hierarchies, the fate of a Capitol’s worth of incumbents, and the mood of a key swing state. “What’s at stake is the message to Washington and the political direction of our country,” said Lara Brown, political science professor at Villanova University. “It could literally moderate all the policy in Washington.” MORE DICK POLMAN: Two Capitol Hill insiders have been summarily dumped by […]
THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay
BY SAINT JOHN BARNED-SMITH So this ends my time as a Peace Corps Trainee. I’m officially a Volunteer, and we are now at T-2 years and counting. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve learned through this process, how I might have changed, how I might change in the future. First, I’m learning how to handle awkward and uncomfortable better. This is a skill I think I’d already started to develop as a reporter – it’s not particularly fun or easy to ask a man how his mother was shot to death by her cracked out boyfriend for a […]
RIP: Ronnie James Dio, Elfin Metallurgist, Dead At 67
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Ronnie James Dio, the metal god who replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath and later piloted the bands Heaven & Hell and Dio, has died, according to his wife and manager. Dio announced last fall he was suffering from stomach cancer. He was being treated at a Houston hospital, according to his website. “My heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45 a.m,” said a statement by Wendy Dio posted Sunday on the site and confirmed by publicist Maureen O’Connor. Wendy Dio said that friends and family were able to say their goodbyes to her husband, and asked […]
When Tierney Goes Will He Take Yoo With Him?
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News is leaving as part of the transition to new ownership by company creditors. Brian Tierney will step down as chief executive on May 21, and as publisher when the sale closes in late June or early July, the company said. “It’s obviously with a certain sense of sadness when you see the folks around here that you’ve enjoyed working with,” Tierney, 53, said. However, he noted that the Inquirer has survived for more than 180 years. “The future is bright. I want to be cheering them on the […]
TONITE: Tell Laura I Love Her
Laura Marling, Mercury Prize nominee and darling of the NME, is playing a show at JB’s along with Jack White’s pet phantom-blues band Smoke Fairies. Laura Marling is genius for several reasons. I could tell you about how gorgeous her melodies are, or her album’s excellent production, or her clear, crystalline British voice that reminds you of lakes and woods and flannel, or how good looking she is, or how in love with her I am, but honestly the best thing about Laura Marling is her lyrics. Confessional, poetic, wry, and most of all, they all feel true. She presents […]
Portrait Of The Graphic Artist As A Middle-Aged Man
MOTHER JONES: It’s not easy to stick a label on Daniel Clowes. In his 30-year-plus career, he’s gone from submitting cartoons to Cracked to drawing New Yorker covers. He’s illustrated a Ramones video and been nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting. His comics have switched agilely between styles and genres, from the retro kitsch of Lloyd Llewellyn to the grotesque noir of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, from Pussey!‘s knowing send-up of comic nerddom to Ghost World‘s affecting portrait of teenage melancholy. Newsweek has hailed him as America’s “premier underground cartoonist,” yet that tag barely begins to […]
DEVELOPING: The British Zombie Invasion
DEADLINE: In the latest example of Hollywood alchemy that mixes real historical figures with flesh-eating zombies, Double Feature partners Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher have optioned Paul Is Undead, an Alan Goldsher novel that re-imagines the history of The Beatles–with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr re-cast as zombies. Written as oral history, the book details how Lennon, a zombie guitarist in Liverpool, kills and reanimates McCartney, then does the same with Harrison and Starr. They create hits and bloody mayhem across the world, pursued by England’s greatest zombie hunter, Mick Jagger. They also engage in a […]
CINEMA: Give ‘Till It Hurts
PLEASE GIVE (2010, directed by Nicole Holofcener, 90 minutes, U.S.) THE GOOD HEART (2009, directed by Dagur Kári, 95 minutes, U.S./Iceland) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The production company behind the new film from writer/director Nicole Holofcener is named “Feelin’ Guilty,” a less-enticing but more direct title for her latest look at neurotic New Yorkers. Of course the only guilt most American movies are comfortable with is the type that calls for punishment meted out by a cop or a super hero. The guilt Please Give traffics in is the type that privileged New Yorkers might feel quietly within themselves; […]
NEW CLUES: Like A 10% Tax Hike On The Truth
COPS RULE DEATH OF TWO NORTHEAST PHILLY KIDS SUICIDES Authorities in Philadelphia have ruled the deaths of two children, ages 9 and 11, suicide but say their deaths are unrelated. Police say the 11-year-old girl strangled herself with a scarf on May 4 and the 9-year-old boy hanged himself with a belt on May 7. Philadelphia police Capt. John McGinnis says neither child exhibited any warning signs before they killed themselves. Investigators say the two children were from different neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia and went to different schools. They do not appear to be connected in any way. McGinnis says […]