[Crystal Antlers: ‘Andrew’] At The Barbary tonight!
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Iggy Pop: He’s the Godfather of Punk, the former lead singer of The Stooges, famous for his explosive bare-chested performances and for the verbal abuse he hurls at his audiences. Also for his self-mutilation and heroin addiction. But last year the artist once known as James Jewell Osterburg Jr. turned 60, and his newest work reflects the changes that have come with age. His album Preliminaires, in fact, takes inspiration from sources that may surprise some: Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong and French novelist Michel Houellebecq. It features standards like “Autumn Leaves” and “How Insensitive.” The result? Iggy […]
WORTH REPEATING: Being Zach Galifianakis
NEW YORK TIMES: Perhaps more than anyone else in the business, Galifianakis embodies the rebellion against the outmoded Comedy Club circuit — the exposed brick, the two-drink minimum, the indifferent audience, the “regular guy with an attitude” routine — which has come to be labeled the “indie comedy” movement. […] The Internet, with its steady appetite for eccentric and off-the-cuff content, has been crucial to Galifianakis’s growing prominence, and to the rise of indie comedy as a whole. “College kids these days have an appreciation for randomness — just completely bizarre stuff,” Galifianakis told me, “and they didn’t get that […]
BUSTED: GM Goes For Broke, Declares Bankruptcy
BLOOMBERG: General Motors Corp., the world’s largest automaker for 77 years, will file for bankruptcy today, and emerge with majority ownership by taxpayers and liabilities reduced by more than 50 percent, the U.S. government said. The “new GM” will get $30.1 billion in bankruptcy financing from the government, and the Treasury “does not anticipate providing any additional assistance” after that, the Obama administration said yesterday in a statement. The federal government will have a 60 percent equity stake in the retooled automaker, and 12 percent will be held by the Canadian government, which is lending $9.5 billion to the company. […]
SuBo Taken To Mental Hospital After Breakdown
THE SUN: BRITAIN’S Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle was in the Priory clinic last night suffering from exhaustion. The singer, dubbed SuBo, had an “emotional breakdown” following Saturday’s final in which she was runner-up. But the talent show favourite was still eyeing a mega United States tour. The 48-year-old virgin, tipped to earn £8MILLION, survived tears and a tantrum to finish second in Saturday’s gripping final of telly’s Britain’s Got Talent. But the pressure finally told late yesterday as the Scots singer — dubbed SuBo by fans — was rushed to the private clinic suffering from exhaustion. Show aides had […]
WORDS HAVE CONSEQUENCES: Demonized Abortion Doctor Killed En Route To Church By Pro-Life Fanatic
[Painting by LOOSLI] ASSOCIATED PRESS: Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher. The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was detained some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said. Although Stolz refused to release the man’s name, Johnson County sheriff’s spokesman Tom Erickson identified the detained man as Scott Roeder. He has not been charged in the slaying and was expected to […]
CINEMA: Hell And Back
DRAG ME TO HELL (2009, directed by Sam Raimi, 96 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Seventeen years since the last Evil Dead film, fanboy icon Sam Raimi returns to his goo-oozing roots with the tightly-wound thriller Drag Me To Hell. The doomed bank officer Christine may be seen living through the worst three days of her life but fans of the manic mayhem with whichRaimi originally found fame will rejoice like a curse has been lifted. In a plot that crackles with contemporary resonance, Allison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a nervously ambitious banker desperate to show her boss […]
Ye Olde Old Media Vs. New Media Debate
STEVE VOLK: The problem is getting “young people” to read newspapers — either in print or online — and personally, it’s not my experience that, as Doctor suggests, we need the brightest minds of the Harvard Crimson to “reinvent journalism” in order to make that happen. I happen to work in a town, Philadelphia, overrun by bloggers. The reinvention of journalism is happening all around us here, where Will Bunch of the Daily News continues to be the hardest-working man in show business, writing a book, stories for his paper, and a blog, Attytood, that makes me feel part of […]
SEPTA GIRL: Beware The White Cadillac Man
BY PHILLY GRRL There are those people who refuse to take SEPTA at night. I am not one of them. On any given week, out of a mixture of sheer stubbornness and necessity, I join the throngs of second-shift workers on their way home. Riding at night is different. Gone are the students and suit-and-tied office workers who pack the aisles during the day. The buses go faster. There is no lingering at stops. People are tired and their tiredness gives way to a sort of looseness that only appears at night. That particular night, I sat at the bus […]
LIVE AND DIRECT: The Inky Yoo Torture Protest
Photo by PHILLYBITS BY KYLEE MESSNER “Phoo on you, we hate Yoo,” chanted Norman Koener, head member of Philadelphia’s World Can’t Wait chapter. Unfortunately for Koener, a crowd of photographers and Delaware Valley War Veterans were the only ears listening to World Can’t Wait’s pleas to stop torture. Sporting a mask resembling torture lawyer John Yoo, Koener and WCW carried on with their protest against torture and waterboarding demonstration as planned for the National Day Against Torture. Hoping to gain support for prosecution against those responsible for committing torture at, the organization laid their attacks on the U.S. government as […]
TONITE: When I Say ‘Obama!’ U Say ‘Ayers!’
Come to Moonstone Arts Center tonight. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn will be in Philly TONIGHT for a discussion and signing of their new book RACE COURSE: AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY, along with activist and poet Haki R. Madhubuti, who will read from and sign copies of his latest release LIBERATION NARRATIVES: NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS 1966-2009. And, I’ll be there! How could you miss out? Bill and Bernardine will discuss how systemic racial inequality in the criminal justice system, education, and housing illustrate the powerful pull of bigotry in our times. Open Q & A with the audience will follow. […]
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 […]
SPECIAL REPORT: The Good News Flower Hour
SPECIAL REPORT: GNFH #23 Today is SAY NO TO U.S. TORTURE POLICY Day. We made this reminder so you don’t forget. You’re welcome. RELATED: Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having […]