BY SYDNEY SCOTT Pretty much everyone on the planet, it seems, has a blog. Sharing your ideas, opinions, and life stories with millions of anonymous Internet users is now commonplace. Allison Burnett blurs the lines between blogging and book-writing with her novel Undiscovered Gyrl. This book surprised me. What looks like an annoying chick lit novel is the surface turns out to be anything but: Katie Kampenfelt is a seventeen-year-old high school graduate who decides to start an online journal chronicling her life and sexual escapades. She posts stories of her first job, an affair with a married man and […]
THIS JUST IN: Leonard Cohen Collapses Onstage
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Leonard Cohen is recovering after collapsing onstage while on tour in eastern Spain, his music company said Saturday. The veteran poet and performer has been released from hospital after suffering from a stomach complaint, Doctor Music Concerts said in a statement. Cohen was part-way through his song “Bird on the Wire” in Valencia when he fainted, causing the band to stop playing to rush to his aid as concertgoers watched. The concert was stopped. MORE PREVIOUSLY: The Great Man glides onstage in black pinstripes and a fedora like a gangster cantor, double-breasted and tie-less, his crisp creamy blue […]
FRINGE REVIEW: The Waitstaff Sells Out
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL The Waitstaff has got it all down to a science. By now, they certainly should. After almost a decade of reincarnating their troupe on stages from The Adrienne to Chicago’s Sketch Fest, they’ve refined their craft into a tight, efficient comedy machine. Thank God we have the Waitstaff to send up Brand Fringe. The crew has been writing and performing in theatre and sketch since the Fringe was in diapers (and Chris McGovern quietly shows us that it still is), and not much has changed, so they’re well-poised to show us the commonalities. While the Waitstaff is […]
CINEMA: With Friends Like This Who Needs Enemas?
THE INFORMANT! (2009, directed by Steven Soderbergh, 108 minutes, U.S.) JENNIFER’S BODY (2009, directed by Karyn Kusama, 102 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC In the 20 years since Steven Soderbergh’s debut, his versatility has left him somewhat of an enigma. Over the course of 20 films, you would expect a theme, a driving concern or even a visual vocabulary to emerge. Instead, Soderbergh comes off as an reserved, unbiased observer, poking and prodding whatever idea tickles his curiosity (philosophical sci-fi! Leftist biography! old Hollywood recreations!), yet never giving the sense that he’s emotionally tied to any idea. This […]
FRINGE PREVIEW: Q&A With Dean Wareham
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Back in the 60s, Andy Warhol’s Factory, his studio-cum-playpen situated in a brick-walled walk-up on 47st street in Manhattan, was the epicenter of all things edgy, artsy and, ultimately, profoundly influential. Dylan, Edie Sedgwick, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Nico, and The Velvet Underground all came and went, and most sat for one of Warhol’s screen tests — a three-minute black and white stare-down between the camera and subject. There are some 500 of them in the Warhol archives. Recently the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh commissioned ex-Galaxie 500/Luna mainman Dean Wareham — whose cred as a modern […]
CRAZY SHIT ON CRAIGSLIST: Come Live In My Bathroom; Delicious Pony Needed For Kid’s Party
CRAIGSLIST: “I am a female in my mid 60’s and I am looking for a room mate. Times are tight and I need some extra money. I am willing to rent out my bathroom in my 1 bedroom east village home. My bathroom is large. You can easily put a twin air mattress in there. I only ask that when I need to use the bathroom, you or your air mattress are not in it. I do ask that when you are in the apartment, you confine yourself to the bathroom. I do not feel comfortable with a stranger walking […]
MEDIA MATTERS: Philly ACORN Office Called The Cops On Gotcha Duo Posing As Pimp And Hooker
MEDIA MATTERS: In recent days, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, the conservative filmmakers who made the widely circulated ACORN videos, as well as Andrew Breitbart and Mike Flynn, who have been promoting the videos for BigGovernment.com, have claimed that the filmmakers were never rebuffed by any of the ACORN offices they visited in their attempts to get ACORN to assist them in improper activities. However, in a newly released video, ACORN Housing Corp.’s Katherine Conway Russell directly rebuts those claims, citing a police report ACORN filed as evidence that she asked the filmmakers to leave the ACORN office in Philadelphia […]
COMING ATTRACTION: Q&A With Dean Wareham
We talk with former Galaxie 500/Luna mainman Dean Wareham about 13 Most Beautiful…Songs For Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, which he performs tomorrow night as part of the Fringe at the Arts Bank at University of the Arts. And yes, we asked him if Galaxie 500 is ever gonna reunite. Look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you!
GAYDAR: My Life In The Ghost Of Bush 3
BY AARON STELLA Whew! We’ve had some hot and heavy posts lately, haven’t we? For the benefit of those who haven’t been following along, here’s a little recap: I’ve been wrongfully committed to a psych-ward by my parents. Not to mention, this particular ward was meant more to be a lockup for homicidal and suicidal teenagers, neither of which I was at the time. I have just watched the ward bouncers haul off my roommate to solitary confinement for harming himself, which involved him ripping out his pubic hair and rubbing it in his face to near asphyxiation. And for […]
FRINGE REVIEW: The Chairs
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL Absurdism is a lot of things, but in its most classic form, it’s tragicomedy, where characters are lonely, stuck spinning their wheels, unable to move forward and unwilling to go back. The playwrights most credited with creating this trend are Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter. A play in which characters are permanently stuck in pointless or repetitive action — or worse, inaction — absolutely goes against every expectation of good theatre, which is to keep moving forward, to take action against conflict. These plays, if not acted and directed very carefully, […]
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 […]
10 YEARS AFTER: Pavement Announces Reunion
After years of speculation, the most important American band of the Nineties is returning to the stage with the lineup of Mark Ibold, Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West reuniting for dates around the world in 2010. Please be advised this tour is not a prelude to additional jaunts and/or a permanent reunion. Described in their own Wikipedia entry as having experienced “moderate commercial success,” Pavement’s catalog for the Matador, Domino, Drag City and Treble Kicker imprints has come to define in the eyes of many the blueprint for independent rock over the past generation. […]
RIP: Folk Singer Mary Travers Dead At 72
LOS ANGELES TIMES: It wasn’t all free love and hallucinogens in the ’60s. Hundreds of thousands marched for civil rights and peace, and folk music was the galvanizing voice of freedom and change. Peter, Paul and Mary, the legendary trio who helped promulgate that spirit of activism, could be considered relics of a decade of chaos and transmutation, but for the fact that they’ve kept the faith for more than 30 years. Together and separately, Peter Yarrow, Noel (Paul) Stookey and Mary Travers have raised their voices for peace, for a nuclear-free America, to support the homeless and to protest […]