CNN: Saying it had completed an investigation into alleged voter irregularities, Iran’s election authority on Monday stood by its findings that gave hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an overwhelming victory and sparked more than two weeks of chaos in the streets. There was “no tangible irregularity,” Guardian Council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei told government-run Press TV after reporting that a recount of some 10 percent of the votes found no significant differences. “After this, the file will be closed and from today on in the presidential election, the file has been closed.” MORE
’80s FLASHBACK: Q&A With The Church
BY BARRY GUTMAN Twenty-nine years into their career, Australian quartet The Church – singer/bassist Steve Kilbey, guitarists Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper, and, for the past 15 years, drummer Tim Powles – are back with a new album, Untitled #23. Don’t take that number literally – it’s much higher when you figure in B-sides and EP collections, re-mixes, jam albums, soundtracks and best-ofs, not to mention countless solo and side projects. The band that hit with “The Unguarded Moment” in Australia in 1980 and “Under the Milky Way” worldwide in 1988 is not going for the easy nostalgia buck. When […]
COMEUPPANCE: Madoff Gets The Maximum
WALL STREET JOURNAL: In sentencing convicted swindler Bernard Madoff to 150 years, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said he wanted to send a symbolic message. That sentence was the number of years the prosecutors asked for and the statutory maximum for the 11 counts Madoff pleaded guilty to in March. “Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinary evil,” Judge Chin said. MORE BLOOMBERG NEWS: Ruth Madoff’s lawyer, Peter Chavkin, issued a statement moments after Bernard Madoff was sentenced today to 150 years in prison. No Madoff family members appeared at the sentencing. “From the moment […]
SEPTA GIRL: The Only Ones
[Photo byEDWARD NOBLE] BY PHILLY GRRL When not riding SEPTA semi-professionally for Phawker, I tutor kids K-12 on behalf of the Philadelphia School District. As part of my resolve to ride on every single bus route in Philadelphia, I blithely hop onto the 23 Bus for the first time to meet a student in Mt. Airy. The bus is packed with the after-school student crowd. To the left of me, two schoolgirls in plaid, scarlet-colored uniforms are semi-surreptitiously eating large slices of cheese pizza. To the right of me a woman is screaming into her cell-phone about a girl friend […]
WAVVES: No Hope Kids
Wavves “No Hope Kids” from Pete Ohs on Vimeo.
THE RESURRECTION: A Good Man Is Hard To Find
BY JONATHAN VALANIA “She would have been a good woman if she had someone around to shoot her every day of her life,” says The Misfit at the end of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” The same could have been said of Michael Jackson. Instead he got Joseph Jackson, terrifying paterfamilias of America’s bizarro first family. By all accounts Joe Jackson, an ex-boxer and struggling musician who wound up a crane operator in a Gary, Indiana steel mill fits the profile of the tyrannical showbiz dad who transfers his thwarted dreams of stardom onto his offspring, […]
DEATH ON THE PIAZZA: No Libs Drug Hit Kills 2
INQUIRER: Rian Thal, 34, was a party girl. Known as “the white girl,” the 5-foot-4 blonde threw parties in Society Hill and Northern Liberties which drew aspiring hip-hop rappers, pro athletes and the city’s top drug dealers, according to law enforcement sources. Even star rapper Beanie Sigel showed up sometimes at parties around 2nd and Market streets, the sources said. “She was not unfamiliar with drugs, money and rappers,” one investigator said. “She might have been questioned a lot of times.” On Saturday, her lifestyle apparently caught up with her. Thal and a male friend were shot several times and […]
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The First Time I Got High…
BY AARON STELLA My sheltered, cloistered-in-Christianity upbringing left many teenage temptations unbeknownst to me, particularly the culture of ganja. Had I not seen an episode Ghost Writer, I doubt I would have ever been able to recognize a joint. That is, until I smoked one. Needless to say, my lack of worldly exposure left me with no narcotic outlets (although in retrospect, those cathartic pubescent jerk-off sessions were so intense at times that they easily rivaled the sedation concomitant with the mightiest of bong rips. So life without marijuana was still peaceful—even with a chafed dick). Fast forward to the […]
CINEMA: I Love My Bicycle
I Love My Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes Trailer from Joe Stakun on Vimeo. I Love My Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes Trailer from BAD BREAKS on Vimeo. BY KYLEE MESSNER It’s hard to pinpoint just when BMX riding began, though there are stories of southern California teens riding their bikes on dirt roads in the early 1970s. It wasn’t until 1981 that the International BMX Federation was formed. Following the evolution of most industries, BMX companies began very hands on and mom-and-pop, only to become more corporate in the pursuit of a wider audiences. FBM is one […]
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MEDIA: The Year Of Dying Famously
[Via STEREOTYPIST/Click HERE To Enlarge] BBC: The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson’s death. Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack. Millions of people who Googled the star’s name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results. It warned users “your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.” Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public’s clamour for information. MORE
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Brooklyn’s Telepathe
Telepathe perform Friday at JBs in support of their debut, Dance Mother “Floating between crystalline electronica, misty shoegaze and ass-shaking club-rap, ‘Dance Mother’ is disorientating by design; like being set down on some unfamiliar street corner where the drone of synth from a nearby window meets the boom of bass from a passing car, and snippets of overheard conversation hang in the air like cryptic incantations. More than any other outfit since TV On The Radio, Telepathe illustrate the modern hipster condition: why choose between Lil Wayne, Animal Collective, Madonna and My Bloody Valentine, when you can have all of […]