CINEMA: He’s Bringing ‘Sexy Time’ Back

Brüno (2009, directed by Larry Charles, 83 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I had one of my most memorable cinematic experiences in the early nineties while living in San Francisco. Some local TV obsessive had spent years videotaping his channel surfing, which he then boiled down to a 90-minute program on the grotesque extremes of the American id. He had weeping TV preachers, cackling midget wrestlers, drunken talk show guests and just when you thought you’d seen it all he would cut in some gratuitous footage of a horse mounting some brave and foolish young woman. Whenever the […]

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SEPTAGIRL: I Saw Her Standing There

BY PHILLYGRRL The first time I met her, we were both standing inside the Walgreen’s on JFK Boulevard waiting for the 38 bus to come by. It was one of the coldest nights of the winter and the bus was running late. It was the kind of cold that creeps inside any number of layers and leaves you hopping from one foot to the other, hoping you can crush some warmth into your toes. The man beside me had already run across the street to get a pocket-sized bottle of vodka from the Wine & Spirits store. He’d mixed it […]

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JIM CROW SWIMS HERE: Valley Swim Club Discrimination Becomes National Embarrassment

[Photo via A RUBBER DOOR] THE FORTY-NINE PERCENTER: I arrived at the Valley Swim Club (22 Tomlinson Road – Huntingdon Vly, PA 19006 (215) 947-0700) around 11:00am. When I got there, CNN, NBC-10 and ABC-6 were already there. In fact, Channel 10 had a helicopter circling overhead. A patrol-car was parked across the street to make sure nothing got out-of-hand. […] A member of the club, Jim Flynn, pulled up to the padlocked gates of the club and walked over to us. He said he wanted to make a statement. So, the press readied their microphones and cameras. A five […]

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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 […]

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ARTSY: No Peace In The Valley

BY GREG ADOMAITIS Tom Hunter no longer has a crew cut. His long red hair — he calls it “civilian camouflage” — and tattoos make him look more like a habitue of the mosh pit at Lollapalooza than a member of the 173rd Airborne Division, where he served as sergeant from 2003 to 2008. He enlisted the day after he graduated from high school. Hunter became interested in documenting the days-in-the-life of his military experience, starting with a disposable camera he found on an army base and eventually upgrading to a pricey Sony DSLR. During his last tour of duty […]

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News Of Post-Racial Era Slow To Reach Swim Club

“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.” — Valley Swim Club President John Duesler explaining why he refunded the $1900 Creative Steps Day Camp paid to swim there one day a week. The kids that attend Creative Steps are black. The majority of members of the Valley Swim Club are white. RELATED: “When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the […]

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PHARMACEUTICAL: Easter Island Drug Could Make You Live Forever & Cure Cancer And Heart Attacks

BBC: A drug discovered in the soil of a South Pacific island may help to fight the ageing process, research suggests. When US scientists treated old mice with rapamycin it extended their expected lifespan by up to 38%. The findings, published in the journal Nature, raise the prospect of being able to slow down the ageing process in older people. Rapamycin was first discovered on Easter Island in the 1970s. It is already used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients, and in stents implanted into patients to keep their coronary arteries open. It is also being tested as a […]

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THIS JUST IN: After Fighting It For 40 Years, Philadelphia Agrees To Desegregate Schools

INQUIRER: Nearly 40 years after the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission went to court seeking equal education for white and minority students in the city, the Philadelphia School District is poised to settle the landmark desegregation case by instituting reforms to benefit black and Hispanic children. The settlement would have broad implications, not only for students but for teachers. Regardless of their union contract, many could see significant changes in where they work, how much they are paid, and how they are evaluated. The School Reform Commission yesterday unanimously endorsed the agreement with the state commission, which filed the lawsuit against […]

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RIP: Oscar Mayer, Hot Dog King, Dead At 95

LOS ANGELES TIMES: His bologna had a first name. His bologna had a last name. So did he. More than simply a brand name or the punchline to a catchy ad jingle, Oscar G. Mayer, the former chairman of his family’s eponymous meat products company has died. He passed away Monday at the age of 95 in a hospice facility in Fitchburg, Wis., reports the Daily Herald. Founded by three German immigrant brothers, Gottfried, Max and Oscar Mayer, the company began selling sausages in Chicago in the 1890s. The basis of their success was the bratwurst, weisswurst and liverwurst made […]

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ON THE INTERNETS: The Astronomical Cost Of Free

The first ever YouTube, starring YouTube co-creator Jawed Karim, is incredibly lame. Nonetheless, it has been viewed 805,990 times. THE TELEGRAPH: Innumerable jaded web entrepreneurs will tell you how easy it is to get thousands of people to glance at a site, but how tortuous it is to get people to stick around or even come back again the following day. Not only do you have to fulfill a desire that people didn’t even realise that they had, but it has to be done with such style and panache that your service becomes indispensable. While the internet may have dismantled […]

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