[Artwork by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA It all started, for me anyway, at Brooke Sietinsons‘ walk-up loft/hobbit hole on Second Street, somewhere in that OK Corral-esque strip between the Standard Tap and the 700 Club. Even though she no longer lives there, the exact location will have to remain a secret because, technically speaking, L&I could still fine her for dispensing the Morning Glory seeds of Philly freak-folkdom without a permit. But the select initiates invited to these hash-pipe hootenannies — culled from some of the most remote and impenetrable redoubts of local bohemia — know where I’m talking […]
BREAKING: New Jersey Governor-Elect Subpoenaed By Jailed White Supremacist/FBI Informant
NJ.COM: A subpoena has been issued for Gov.-elect Chris Christie to appear next month at the federal trial of North Bergen Internet radio host and blogger Hal Turner [pictured, right]. Michael Orozco, Turner’s lawyer, said in an affadavit supporting the subpoena, that Christie, as the U.S. Attorney, knew that Turner was working with the FBI, Christie gave legal advice to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force regarding Turner, and issued a “Blanket Letter of Declination,” refusing to prosecute Turner. In late June Turner was charged with threatening federal judges in Chicago, stemming from an editorial on his Web site that […]
GLITTER AND DOOM: Phawker Photographer’s Work Included In The New Tom Waits Live Album
Yesterday, TOM WAITS released Glitter and Doom Live, a collection of outstanding live tracks from his 2008 sold out US and European tour. The two CD set contains 17 live recordings from ten nights along the tour including, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Tulsa, Knoxville, Atlanta, Paris, Milan, Jacksonville, Dublin and Columbus. The second CD entitled Tom Tales holds nearly 40 minutes of Waits quixotic ruminations on topics ranging from romantic spiders to injured vultures. The CD will also come with a booklet of live photos. One of those photos was snapped by Phawker contributing photographer Michael T. Regan, who we sent, along […]
AD BUST: This Is What Extinction Looks Like
[Video: Your flight has an impact. Plane Stupid’s new cinema ad, written and commissioned by creative agency Mother and made by production company Rattling Stick. Director Daniel Kleinman.] EDITOR’S NOTE: No polar bears were harmed in the making of this PSA. DISCOVER: In May the U.S. Department of the Interior classified polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Documented declines in sea ice and anticipation of massive melting that threatens the bears’ habitat prompted the action. MORE RELATED: Unless the pace of global warming slows or stops, polar bears could disappear within a century, says a University of […]
BOOK REVIEW: Stephen King’s Under The Dome
BY PAUL MAHER JR. When I was just a kid in Lowell, Massachusetts during the 1970s, I went into a Pawtucketville pet store and saw this 10-gallon fish tank set among cages of rabbits and guinea pigs. Scurrying through the wood shavings were over five dozen albino feeder mice fighting for space. Some of them were running relentlessly on a squeaking tin wheel. Others clung to a dripping water bottle trying to escape the madness below. Their little pink tales draped across an encrusted food bowl spoiled by urine and feces. Most glaringly, in the corner of the tank, three […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
[Artwork by ALEX FINE] FRESH AIR Director Wes Anderson has worked on a lot of film projects, but with his latest picture, Fantastic Mr. Fox, he ventured into new territory. It’s the first time Anderson has made an animated feature. Based on the Roald Dahl children’s book of the same name, Fantastic Mr. Fox is the story of a slick, well-bred fellow (voiced by George Clooney) who swears off stealing from three rich farmers after becoming a parent — but who can’t entirely control his sticky fingers. Anderson created the film in stop-motion, in which the objects in front of […]
KILLADELPHIA: The Hits Just Keep Comin’
DAILY NEWS: Episodes of violence in the city this weekend struck people at their homes, their jobs and even within their own families. On Friday alone, a man killed his mother with his bare hands, two home invasions resulted in slayings and a feud between two barbers ended with fatal gunfire, according to police. In separate incidents on Saturday, two babies, neither of whom was a full year into life, were taken to area hospitals with serious and suspicious injuries. One of the children did not survive, police said. In that case, the father, whose name was not released, is […]
GREATEST HITS: Today I Saw Revisited
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a monger scoop up a prostitute under the El at the corner of Monmouth Street, a block north of Cambria. It was 8 am on the dot; the rising sun in the east softly illuminated the transaction as a pale, freckled and deathly skinny white girl with waist length bright orange hair looked both ways for patrol cars before running out from the doorway where she waited for a John. Her faded jeans rode real low, revealing the red g-string panties she wore underneath. She ducked her head in the open passenger side window […]
SPORTO: About Last Night
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY Yes, the Eagles won the game. But no one will claim that Sunday night’s win over the Bears was “the night the Birds turned their season around.” It was a game the Eagles could easily have lost, to a crummy Bears team with a lost quarterback. For those who knock Donovan, admit he throws a hell of a deep ball. The pass to DeSean Jackson in the third quarter Sunday night wasn’t in-stride perfect, but it was good enough that Jackson only had to alter his stride a bit, without slowing up and letting the […]
30 YEARS AFTER THREE MILE ISLAND: Pay No Attention To That China Syndrome Behind The Curtain
[Photo by THE BMAG] FOX43: Emergency Management Agency officials reported low levels of radiation were measured on monitors at Three Mile Island Reactor Unit 1 at about 4 p.m. on Saturday, prompting about 150 workers to be removed from the reactor building. According to Exelon, the energy company operating TMI, all the workers were checked for exposure, but none of them approached or exceeded any exposure limits. An official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said about 20 workers were exposed to levels of radiation so low they did not fall under NRC limits. Exelon spokesman Ralph DeSantis said there was […]
PROTESTERS: Bring Us The Head Of The Fed
BY GREG ADOMAITIS There were a lot of angry white males — as well as a few angry white females and a ticked off kid or two — demonstrating on the west side of City Hall Sunday morning. About 200 gathered to demand an end to the Federal Reserve and the general disrespect the government has treated its citizens with recently. Rob Pepe, a primary organizer of the rally and member of the Montgomery County school board, has been at work in this realm of politics for 26 years. “I hope today creates more awareness about the criminal cabal that […]
WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE: The Khyber Pass, The Bionic Woman & The Clash Of Civilizations
[Photo by SYNDPROD] WASHINGTON POST: NEW DELHI – Police in India suspect that David Coleman Headley, a man with Philadelphia ties recently arrested in Chicago on terrorism charges, conducted scouting missions of the targets in last November’s attacks in Mumbai, including the city’s main train station, the popular Leopold Cafe, and the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi Trident hotels. Hotel records show that Headley stayed in both hotels in 2007, authorities said. He also allegedly posed as a Jew to visit one of the other eventual targets, Chabad House, home to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish center, said a […]
CINEMA: Rock The Boat
BY JAMIE DAVIS Pirate Radio is basically a coming of age story for young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who is sent to supposedly get on the straight and narrow by living on board his aging hipster godfather’s pirate radio ship anchored off the shore of Britain some time in the mid-1960s. It’s also a story of the rockers vs the squares. You see, in the 1960’s the British government controlled all broadcasting, and refused to play more than 45 minutes of rock n’ roll music a day. But the young folks needed to get their fix somehow, so these pirate radio […]