Photo by ALAINA CLUNE Emotionally hungover from a Valentine’s Day spent trying to walk he fine line between embarrassingly enthusiastic and an even more embarrassing aversion for the holiday, me and my friends walk what feels like too many blocks from the subway to Union Transfer. We chug cheap beer without the ease and enthusiasm with which we normally do. The rafters and the general admission area of Union Transfer are blessedly uncrowded. There’s a calm, coolness that marks both the sound of the music and this rainy Thursday night. Girl Ray, a refreshingly laid back North London girl group, […]
GEEK SQUAD: Black And Proud
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Black Panther (2018) is the best superhero movie I have ever seen. Not just the best this year, not just the best since Captain America: Winter Soldier (2013) or Tim Bruton’s Batman (1989) not just the best with a person of color superhero. Just The Best. Period. The film was already hyped due to Disney’s Deaths Star size PR department but it is actually quality. Director Ryan Coogler (Creed, Fruitvale Station) brings the Marvel country of Wakanda to life. And he slams it right into the rest of the world. Wakanda is the most […]
WORTH REPEATING: Thoughts & Prayers
“Prayers without accordant action are silent lies told to oneself, heard by no God, amounting to nothing. Action is the language of truth, the prayers of the Saints.” — MARK RUFFALO
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
Illustration by PAUL PICARELLI FRESH AIR: Though six months have passed since Steve Bannon left his position as White House chief strategist, he continues to follow the drama inside the Trump administration. Journalist Joshua Green says the right-wing provocateur is particularly attuned to the #MeToo movement, which he has dubbed “the matriarchy.” Green notes that Bannon sees the movement as “an existential threat” not just to Trump, but also to Republicans in Congress.”Bannon, despite his many flaws, is a very shrewd analyst of American politics,” Green says. “And what he seemed so upset about was the power of this rising […]
BEING THERE: Girlpool @ First Unitarian Church
Photo by BEN PELTA-HELLER My best friend sits on my couch and hunts fruitlessly through Facebook for a ticket. Girlpool’s Philadelphia show at First Unitarian sold out only hours before. This is evident the moment I arrive. The air is thick. There is barely room to comfortably take a sip of your somewhat stale, cheap beer. The folk punk band from Los Angeles opens with a fuller, harder sound than I expected for people adorned with glittery hair clips, and I sweat out the boxed wine I drank prior. On Powerpoint, the latest from singer/guitarist Cleo Tucker and singer/bassist Harmony […]
CINEMA: The Bare, Ruined Choirs Of John Mahoney
AV CLUB: There’s a similarly loose resemblance between Mahoney’s character, a floridly boozy Southern author named W.P. Mayhew, and William Faulkner. Ethan Coen has acknowledged that discovering Faulkner had once worked on a wrestling picture starring Wallace Beery (Whaddaya need, a road map?) gave the brothers their way in on Barton Fink—the concept of an eminently serious author debasing themselves in order to, as Mayhew puts it to Barton, “make their way out here to the Great Salt Lick.” Like Faulkner, Mayhew is also a heavy drinker—Barton first discovers him puking in the bathroom—and he speaks in a casually baroque […]
THE RECKONING: Mueller Is Coming
WIRED: President Trump claimed in a tweet over the weekend that the controversial Nunes memo “totally vindicates” him, clearing him of the cloud of the Russia investigation that has hung over his administration for a year now. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if anything, the Mueller investigation appears to have been picking up steam in the past three weeks—and homing in on a series of targets. Last summer, I wrote an analysis exploring the “known unknowns” of the Russia investigation—unanswered but knowable questions regarding Mueller’s probe. Today, given a week that saw immense sturm und drang […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: In Mueller We Trust
Illustration by TRACIE CHING via POLITICO FRESH AIR: As the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election forges on, Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel leading the investigation, has managed to stay largely out of public view. Journalist Garrett Graff says that is in keeping with Mueller’s personality: “This is not someone who in any way has tried to grab the spotlight, but instead has kept his head down and worked hard throughout his career.” Graff’s 2011 book, The Threat Matrix, explores the transformation of the FBI under Mueller’s leadership. Appointed by President George […]
NUNES MEMO: The House’s Un-American Activities
POLITICO: The FBI issued an extraordinary statement on Wednesday, pushing back on the release of a partisan congressional memo alleging the bureau used improper evidence to obtain legal permission to surveil a Trump campaign adviser. We’ve never seen anything like it. “[T]he FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” the bureau said. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” The memo, written by Congressman Devin Nunes and barreling toward public circulation at the president’s […]