BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Until my Internet-savvy roommate directed me to arthurkade.com—in particular, a post titled Eulogy — I had no idea who Arthur Kade was. Four sentences into the post, I got the picture: he’s a delusional, narcissistic bag-of-douche, a whore to glamor and slave to fashion, but most of all, an irrepressible and frighteningly charismatic advocate of all the ruinous aforesaid. Upon finishing (no small feat without throwing up a little bit in my mouth) I decided to peruse other posts (Drunk Girls, The Kade Scale, Relationships, etc.), when all the sudden, mid-Kade, I felt the journalist […]
CONCERT REVIEW: John Vanderslice At JBs
BY DAVE ALLEN John Vanderslice has earned a reputation for producing clean, well-mannered recordings with smart, cerebral lyrics that stack up favorably against the best American short stories of the last ten years. The I’s of his songs are so richly drawn and engaged in such diverse, age-of-terrorism pursuits — patrolling the corridors at Gitmo, for example, or denouncing 9/11 as a hoax to a reporter — as to evoke modern literature in verse-chorus form. Live, though, he dispenses with tidiness. Rather than attempt to replicate every note, crackle and bit of fuzz of his studio work, Vanderslice has assembled […]
CINEMA: Play It Again Sam
AWAY WE GO (2009, directed by Sam Mendes, 98 minutes, U.S.) PRESSURE COOKER (2008, directed by Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman, 99 minutes, U.S) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Almost a decade ago a 30-year-old writer named Dave Eggers burst into the literary world with his acclaimed memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The Pulitzer-nominated book told the story of Eggers being tossed into the role of guardian when both his parents die unexpectedly, leaving the twenty-something freelance writer with the uncomfortable responsibility of raising his nine year old brother. Heartbreaking Work had a fresh and intelligent sense of […]
SEPTA GIRL: Tales Of Ordinary Madness
BY PHILLY GRRL Life as a SEPTA rider can be strange and unpredictable. One moment everything is quiet. And then some guy starts talking to the girl next to him and before you know it – everyone’s gabbing like old friends. And all of a sudden, it’s not so quiet anymore. I kinda like those frenetic, frantic days. For instance, last Wednesday…. It’s 3 in the afternoon. I’m riding the northbound Broad Street Line to the Olney Transportation Center. An elderly Asian man walks down the aisle. He is carrying a plastic pink umbrella and a pink backpack. He is […]
THE DEATH OF ANALOG: The Big Switch
DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Today, all broadcast television stations in the U.S. have to turn off their analog signals and convert solely to digital. There is no set time today for the transition, so stations may switch at different times during the day. If you have an older analog television and are using an antenna to get your channels, your TV will stop working unless you buy a converter box or sign up for cable, satellite or fiber-optic television service. Converter boxes are sold at many retailers. The federal government is also offering up to two coupons worth $40 each to every […]
ALWAYS RUMMY IN PHILADELPHIA: Danny DeVito
Gettin’ fresh on Fox. Live, no less. Note the can of beer and the fact that it’s 8 AM when this went down. When we grow up, we wanna be Danny DeVito!
DRUG TEST: Frisking The Inky’s NJ Medical Marijuana Story For The Straight Dope On The War On Drugs
As you may have heard, the great state of New Jersey appears poised to become the 14th state in union to legalize and regulate the dispensation of medical marijuana to chronically ill patients. Still, old drug warrior habits die hard. The day before lawmakers in Trenton approved medical marijuana legislation, the New Jersey State Police, in conjunction with the National Guard, were conducting training flights with a Black Hawk Helicopter on how to locate and bust marijuana growers. COST OF A BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER: $6 Million Dollars [SOURCE: Global Security] NUMBER OF MARIJUANA PLANTS ERADICATED IN NEW JERSEY IN 2008: […]
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 […]
PEARL JAM: Elderly Woman Behind The Counter
Eddie Vedder performs solo tonight and tomorrow night at the Tower. Don’t give us that hipper-than-thou look, we know there’s a part of you, buried under gallons of Kenzinger and back issues of Vice, that still thinks Ten is rad.
CAPTURING THE FRIEDBERGERS: Or, 13 Snappy Answers To 13 Silly Questions For The Fiery Furnaces
FIERY FURNACES 1979: Matthew Friedberger and his sister Darth Vader Eleanor PHAWKER: Have you ever been arrested? If so please explain. MATTHEW FREIDBERG: Well rested, mostly. A-rested, rarely. Explain what? PHAWKER: Never mind. Have you ever knowingly killed anyone? If so please explain. MF: I read in an email very much like this one that we were just killin’ it every night cross Europe. Maybe you can explain that. Knowingly? PHAWKER: What was the last book you read? MF: Too personal. PHAWKER: Wow, that must have been some book! Okay, last album purchased? Was it worth it? MF: Dizzy Gillespie […]
KILLADELPHIA: Three Dead Since U Went 2 Bed
INQUIRER: Homicide detectives were investigating three killings in Philadelphia that occurred late Monday and early yesterday. Rasheed Rose, 36, was shot multiple times at 10:14 p.m. Monday in the 1400 block of South 21st Street in the city’s Point Breeze neighborhood. He was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and pronounced dead at 10:33 p.m. A 17-year-old youth was fatally shot in the 1900 block of South 56th Street in Southwest Philadelphia at 1:11 a.m. yesterday. He was pronounced dead at 1:51 a.m. at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. At 2:34 a.m., police responded to a shooting in […]
GIANT ROBOT ALERT: Oh No, There Goes Tokyo!
Poor Tokyo, if it’s not Godzilla terrorizing the city like a ginormous bull in an iddy-biddy China shop, it’s Mothra, or King Ghidorah, or Mechagodzilla, or Rodan fucking their shit up. And now this. When will it end? No need to panic, though, it looks like the authorities have it under control. That retaining wall should hold him, and if not it will be days before he gets here. So, as you were people…move along, nothing to see here…
BACHELORETTE: Her Rotating Head
“Quietly psychedelic, the quavery vocal harmonies, wheezy synthesisers and attic-salvaged stringed instruments are layered with a shy urgency, a breathtaking tangle of dreaminess and directness… slow oscillations between intimacy and abstraction…. Having understood the implications of technology – electricity having made us all angels, etcetera – Bachelorette fractured herself into a girl-group of one, clouds of ah-ah-ahs and shoo-wop shoo-wops both underscoring and distracting from her tales of gravitational and hormonal pull.”– Author Unknown Bachelorette plays Kung Fu Necktie June 17th.