INQUIRER: Airforce One will touch down at 3:45 p.m. at Philadelphia International Airport. A motorcade will then travel up Interstate 95 to the Convention Center for a 4 p.m. reception for 750 invitees. More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the event which organizers hope will raise $2.5 million for Specter’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. MORE CQ POLITICS: Coaxing Arlen Specter into switching parties and running for re-election as a Democrat was a major coup for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is bending the Senate’s schedule to accommodate a presidential fundraiser for Specter Tuesday afternoon […]
DOOMSDAY: Libraries To Close October 1st If State Legislature Is Still Dicking Around With Budget Fix
INQUIRER: The Free Library of Philadelphia has posted notices at its branches and on its web site advising users that all libraries will close at the end of business on Oct. 2 if the state Legislature does not act on the city’s budget request. The notices also say that all material will now be due Oct. 1 and that nothing can be borrowed after Sept. 30. Besides closing libraries, the Nutter administration’s so-called Plan C doomsday budget includes eliminating court-system funding, shutting down all recreation centers and laying off up to 3,000 workers, including police and firefighters. MORE PHILLY CLOUT: […]
SPORTO: Auto-Tuning Fox’s Eagles Telecast
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY You saw the Eagles game yesterday, but did you hear it? Maybe you were at the bar and missed out on the “insight” from the FOX broadcast. Or maybe you heard but couldn’t believe your ears. I’m here to fill you in on what you missed. On the call for FOX is the “C” team of Dick Stockton and Charles Davis (making the move to the NFL after working the BCS Championship Game for FOX). Chances somebody goes for a dog-fighting joke somewhere during this broadcast: 15%. 1st quarter: New boy Davis doesn’t say a […]
PASS THE HENNESSY: Kanye Joe Wilsons The VMAs
[Photo courtesy of JUST JARED] MTV: The rapper stormed the stage just after the first award, for Best Female Video, was presented to Taylor Swift. He cut the teen singer off, grabbing the mic and protesting in support of Beyonce. “I’m sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time,” he proclaimed as B looked on from the crowd, stunned. His protest against Swift, however, was not well received. West stood briefly on the stage after his comments as the crowd was silent. Audience members then began to clap in support of Swift after West left the […]
RIP: Basketball Diaries Author Jim Carroll Dead At 59
NEW YORK TIMES: Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker in the outlaw tradition of Rimbaud and Burroughs who chronicled his wild youth in “The Basketball Diaries,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 60. The cause was a heart attack, said Rosemary Carroll, his former wife. As a teenage basketball star in the 1960s at Trinity, an elite private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Carroll led a chaotic life that combined sports, drugs and poetry. This highly unusual combination lent a lurid appeal to “The Basketball Diaries,” the journal he kept during […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Good Things Come To Those Who Sellout The Public Option For A Little Filthy Lucre
CNN: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in comments at separate news conferences, said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance – whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats. Pelosi, who said as recently as Tuesday that a public option was essential for passing a health-care bill in the House, on Thursday used language on the issue similar to Obama’s speech. MORE OPEN LEFT: This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth’s lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, […]
SEPTA GIRL: Studying A Broad
BY PHILLYGRRL I’m sorry, but smooth-talking subway Philly boys ain’t got nothing on the international student. I’ve come to this conclusion based on the inordinate amount of time I spend every week at the Cecil B. Moore stop by Temple University. And now exclusively for Phawker readers, the results of my extensive research. (I’d show you my graphs, but I’m saving them for the white paper.) The thing Philly guys get wrong is, they think they have to pretend to know everything to get girls to talk to them. They affect this worldly air that might work in a smaller […]
FRINGE REVIEW: Hard Times At Camera Blanca
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL Step into the cozy, welcoming Murph’s Bar at 202 East Girard. You’ll find it’s been commandeered by Applied Mechanics, a theater company that “creates original performance experiments in the environmental-installation-parallel-narrative style.” Sounds lofty? Get a drink and slide into a seat, or find a good corner. The characters are everywhere and their conversations are contagious. The circus has burnt down, the big cats have been sold for food, and all that’s left are the performers, drinking, reminiscing, planning their futures or burying their dreams. Following a character will give you more information, but staking out a space […]
HYPOCRITIC OATH: Government-Run Health Care Is Bad For America But Good For Joe Wilson’s Family
NEWSWEEK: JOE WILSON (R-SC) IS PASSIONATE ABOUT STOPPING GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE! Except that he’s not — at least not when it comes to his, and his family’s, government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel, Wilson gets a lot of benefits (one of which, apparently, was not a full appreciation of the customs, traditions, and courtesies that mandate respect for one’s commander in chief). And with four sons in the armed services, the entire Wilson brood has enjoyed multiple generations of free military medical coverage, known as TRICARE. Yes, it’s true. As politicos and town-hall criers debate […]
TONITE: Get Pickled
Tonight is the closing night of the Dill Pickles’ summer run at Fergie’s. *** SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS: I Put A Spell On You
FRINGE REVIEW: Fatebook
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL FRINGE CORRESPONDENT FATEBOOK: Avoiding Catastrophe One Party at a Time is a party and a show and a maze and a puzzle. Be prepared to walk. New Paradise Laboratories has created a show that forces you to negotiate plot as you negotiate space. As you travel the maze of projection screens, you follow different characters in an attempt to solve a murder mystery. Or maybe you’re witnessing a theft, participating in a drug deal, or a story of ideal romantic love. You’ll notice yourself multi-tasking and processing text and images as one, listening for sounds you hadn’t […]
Q&A: With Acclaimed Monologist Mike Daisey
“If Lenny Bruce was embodied by Zero Mostel and played by Louis Armstrong the result would closely resemble Mike Daisey.” — BROADWAY WORLD Mike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His monologues, fourteen and counting, include the controversial How Theater Failed America (which he performed last weekend at the Live Arts-Fringe Festival), the six-hour […]
STRANGER THAN FICTION: Fork Fight At Melrose
SOUTH PHILLY REVIEW: The victim who suffered a forking received a large scrape to his back, while the another victim sustained contusions and cuts to his head. Neither required hospital treatment and police said they do not know what ignited the brawl. The victims, a 24- and 25-year-old, were having a meal inside the establishment at 1501 Snyder Ave. when they became involved in a physical altercation with a group of about four other men at another table. According to investigators, Baldino was spotted striking the younger victim in the head with a metal napkin dispenser, while Emma was seen […]