BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY In the soft twilight of the first Saturday of August, a gray-bearded man in a dark suit stood on the grassy knoll in front of Independence Hall and declared for the benefit of a film crew on hand that we are, as a nation, through the looking glass, people. Black is white, up is down, cats are dogs and the President of the United States is a fraud and a liar, a “usurper,” a foreign-born alien unqualified to hold office and the fact that he currently resides in the White House represents a constitutional […]
HEAR YE: Jay Reatard Watch Me Fall
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we love you! MATADOR: As we approach the August 18, 2009 release of Watch Me Fall, Jay Reatard’s 90-somethingth release since dropping out of 8th grade to pursue this game, you might ask, who is this guy? In the late ’90s, 15-year-old Jay Lindsey, living right outside Memphis, played all of the instruments on a demo tape by his newly-minted performing moniker of “The Reatards.” This cassette was sent to Eric Friedl of the Oblivians, who had used the “Goner Records” imprint on a couple of releases. His next would be a 7” […]
COMING ATTRACTION: Day That Will Live In Infamy
Look for Dan Buskirk’s review, coming to a Phawker near you on Friday. RELATED: Vanity Fair Photo Spread RELATED: Watch The Trailer PREVIOUSLY: Meet Lieutenant Aldo Raine, Nazi-Hunting Hillbilly Jew & Dead Ringer For Brad Pitt PREVIOUSLY: NY Mag Has The New Tarantino Script NEW YORK MAGAZINE: The script is 165 pages long and follows a squad of American soldiers called the Bastards — a guerrillalike force who travel behind German lines in 1944, striking terror into the hearts of Nazi soldiers. The Bastards are headed by Lieutenant Aldo Raine — the role we’d imagine Tarantino is hoping to land […]
FORECAST: Like A Dog Locked In A Hot Car
INQUIRER: The summer’s first heat wave has started, if the forecast is correct, and with it comes an air quality alert for parts of the region. Three straight days of 90 degrees or more qualifies as a heat wave, and the area is predicted to get at least five. Yesterday, the high was 91. Today and tomorrow could hit the mid-90s, followed by highs in the low 90s Wednesday and Thursday. Friday could extend the streak, if it nudges past the expected 88. MORE
NEW CLUES: Like A Low Carb Diet Of The Truth
Guv Goes On Diet, Loses 40 Pounds; Cheesesteak Industry Devastated Ed Rendell, the unabashed indulger in all things greasy, has not had so much as a bite of a cheesesteak in two months. He’s given up sweets, too, including his favorite dessert, Starbucks coffee ice cream. Not a spoonful, as hard as that might be to believe. It shows. The once-rotund governor has shed nearly 40 pounds since reaching an all-time high in the spring of 265 pounds. His secret? “I literally eat half of what I used to,” Rendell said yesterday at the governor’s mansion. “I am now a […]
Wall St. Dancing On The Grave Of The Public Option
MARKET WATCH: “The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health-care reform,” Obama said on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo. “This is just one sliver of it.” Bucking a bearish Monday trend in the broader stock market, shares of health-insurance companies including UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH 28.95, +0.47, +1.65%) and Aetna Inc. (AET 29.54, -0.09, -0.31%) rose after the comments by Obama as well as members of his administration over the weekend. Health insurers have fought a public plan. Republicans, long opposed to a public plan, seized on comments made Sunday […]
ELVIS COSTELLO: Indoor Fireworks
Written by Nick Lowe.
BENERGY: A Day In The Life Of Ben Franklin
[Via NICK BILTON] Hat tip to Dave Bragdon. TANGENTIALLY RELATED: The Anoka-Hennepin School District is paying a high school student’s family $25,000 in a settlement after two teachers made his perceived sexual orientation into a class joke. Teachers seem to now set their gaydars based on a student’s choice of research topics. The high school junior wrote a report on Ben Franklin during the 2007-2007 school year. His teacher, Diane Cleveland told the entire class that the student had a “thing for older men.” Cleveland also told the class the boy’s “fence swings both ways,” according to the Star Tribune […]
ROAD TO REDEMPTION: We’ve Only Just Begun
PHAWKER: For obvious reasons, we have been thinking a lot about Michael Vick as of late. We have been thinking about the doggie Auschwitz he ran for six years for fun and for profit and about how it cost him everything: his career, his seven figure net worth, his freedom and, in some corners, his membership in the human race. We have also been thinking that this is what happens when you take a man out of the ‘hood but you don’t take the ‘hood out of the man. And while that may explain Vick’s crimes, it does not excuse […]
TONITE: It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
[Click image to activate Internets] NEW YORK TIMES: Though the third season of “Mad Men” didn’t quite begin with the jumpstart we were hoping for, it did at least offer a comforting “continuity of service,” to borrow a phrase from Don Draper and Salvatore Romano’s meeting with the father-and-son executives of London Fog. This particular episode didn’t shake us to our core, but it did pick up nicely where Season 2 left off. Like a comfortable Thanksgiving dinner, every crazy member of this extended family was reliably acting out his or her established role. MORE NEW YORK TIMES: This week […]
CINEMA: Pretty Pretty Ponyo
PONYO (Dir. by Hayao Miyazaki, 100 min., Japan, 2008) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The tenth feature film from anime master Hayao Miyazaki is no radical departure from what we’ve seen from him before, it’s more feisty heroines, more strange morphing creatures and more warnings of nature out-of-balance. But it is also predictable that the 68-year-old Japanese national treasure evokes feelings of awe that no other animator currently working can. Ponyo contains most of the master’s pet themes, in a gentler package than any of his films since Totoro yet at his advancing age one should savor its ingenuity for […]
RIP: Legendary Memphis Producer Jim Dickinson
MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL: The North Mississippi Allstars have lost their father, Bob Dylan has lost a “brother,” rock and roll has lost one of its great cult heroes and Memphis has lost a musical icon with the death of Jim Dickinson. The 67-year-old Dickinson passed away early Saturday morning in his sleep. The Memphis native and longtime Mississippi resident had been in failing health for the past few months and was recuperating from heart surgery at Methodist Extended Care Hospital. MORE BILL BENTLEY: There aren’t many shamans still in our world. Most have been ground down to dust, and those […]
I, GAMER: Reeding Iz Funn
BY ADAM BONANNI Best I can tell, the only place in the known universe where bronze is worth more than gold is in Bookworm Adventures 2, the latest black hole disguised as a game from developer Popcap designed to suck up all your free time. Imagine scrabble with the twist of roleplaying game conventions: A health bar, potions, and a mess of augmentations and enhancements that you can give your words. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, I would be pretty curious to know what you are thinking right now. Bookworm Adventures 2 is actually much simpler than it sounds, […]