ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS: WASILLA — Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so. According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn’t fully […]
GAMBLOR: From Bad To Worse
INQUIRER: Foxwoods Casino has agreed to work with state and city leaders to move its long-delayed slots parlor planned for the South Philadelphia waterfront to the Gallery at Market East, The Inquirer has learned. Two sources familiar with the agreement, struck between Foxwoods and Gov. Rendell and Mayor Nutter this week, said the plan was to revive a vision for a downtown casino built over the Gallery. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity before Rendell and Nutter were scheduled to announce the plan at a 1 p.m. news conference today at City Hall. Although the Gallery was once […]
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: Town Without Pity III
BY JEFF DEENEY There’s a street memorial on the corner of 10th and Tilghman Street in Chester so large that from a distance it looks like a growth engulfing the tree it sits under. The memorial commemorates the night in April, 2006 when Carl “Bo” Johnson was shot and killed by a Pennsylvania State Police trooper. The trooper was in Chester as a part of Operation Trigger Lock, a state run program aiming to sweep illegal guns off the streets. The trooper responded to a call of shots fired in the area of the notorious Bennett Homes housing project and […]
Q&A: David Berman of The Silver Jews
BY ED KING Since founding Silver Jews with with college friends Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich, songwriter/poet/cartoonist David Berman has rolled stoned, gathered a little moss along with a rotating cast of indie-rock contributors, hit rock bottom, toured the Promised Land, saw the light, and built an accomplished body of earthy, intelligent work. Over the years, as the band’s recordings moved from lo-fi to a matte finish country rock, Berman’s deep, wry, downbeat delivery remained a constant. In 2006, after years of not touring and surviving the lowest point in his personal life, Berman took Silver Jews, including his wife […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Thomas Friedman is a man bent on revolution. In his new book, Hot Flat and Crowded, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist writes about the need for a green revolution — and calls upon Americans to lead the charge. Friedman argues that the U.S. can help revive itself at home and abroad by finding solutions to global warming. Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times. His other books include From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World is Flat. SOUND OPINIONS Show #145: 09.05.08 Based in Chicago, Sound Opinions is hosted by Jim DeRogatis and Greg […]
GAYDAR: Livin’ La Dolce Musto
BY AARON STELLA Amidst the revelry of the Mr. Gay Philadelphia pageant, I was able to finagle a future interview out of Michael Musto, famed gay-celeb columnist for the Village Voice in NYC. So a couple of weeks later, I hopped on the Chinatown bus headed for Village Voice’s headquarters in NYC. Musto, dressed in a crisp black and white vertical-striped shirt and baggy black slacks, (and of course, wearing his trademark Sally Jesse Raphaels) explained to me that the Voice was moving. Most everything was packed in boxes and hardly anyone was in the newsroom. We found a quiet […]
Pilot Immolated in DelCo Hot Air Balloon Tragedy
ASSOCIATED PRESS: CHESTER SPRINGS, Pa. — A hot air balloon made an unscheduled landing and burst into flames [NOT pictured, left] in suburban Philadelphia Sunday evening, killing its pilot and injuring seven passengers. The balloon carrying eight people was making an hourlong flight, but descended early into a field about two miles from the liftoff site, said Deputy Chief Chuck Fields of the Kimberton Fire Co. “It was an unscheduled landing, but it came down making a normal landing,” Fields said. “It did not fall from the sky on fire.” When the basket landed shortly before 6:40 p.m., a fuel […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Titanic Love Affair
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Every now and then a voice comes along so strong, so clear, so seemingly inexhaustible that it is heard all the way around world by the Great Middle — the middle-aged, the middle class, and, by and large, those midway between mom jeans and menopause. This voice contains multitudes: the stormy weather of Hallmarkian heartache; the soaring melodrama of airport romance novellas; the soft soothing ‘happy places’ of aromatherapy; and the soap operatic narrative arc of not just one, but two Hollywood blockbusters. That voice belongs to Celine Dion, of course, but just about […]
WORTH REPEATING: Georgia Ass Fault
THOM FRIEDMAN: On Wednesday, The New York Times on the Web flashed a headline that caught my eye: “U.S. to Unveil $1 Billion Aid Package to Repair Georgia.” Wow, I thought. That’s great: $1 billion to fix Georgia’s roads and schools. But as I read on, I quickly realized that I had the wrong Georgia. We’re going to spend $1 billion to fix the Georgia between Russia and Turkey, not the one between South Carolina and Florida. Sorry, but the thought of us spending $1 billion to repair a country whose president, though a democrat, recklessly provoked a war with […]
10 YEARS AFTER: It’s Google’s World, U Just Search It
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Success was hardly assured for two Stanford University graduate students and their nascent search engine, operated from a couple of cramped dorm rooms and burdened with a goofy name. But their brainchild, Google, incorporated 10 years ago, has blossomed into one of the world’s most valuable businesses — simultaneously sparking fear and admiration in competitors while making information infinitely more accessible to hundreds of millions of people. Few companies have left such an indelible mark in such a relatively short period of time. But can the Mountain View, Calif., online Goliath continue its winning streak for another […]
We Know It’s Only Soapbox Derby But We Like It
RACE TO THE BOTTOM: Redbull Soapbox Derby, Manayunk, Yesterday BY TIFFANY YOON It’s raining outside, no wait, it’s pouring, no wait, now the streets of Manayunk are flooding like we’re gonna need an ark. Somehow, this doesn’t stop hundreds of derby fans from coming out to watch Red Bull’s annual Soapbox Derby in Manayunk where man-powered Soapboxcars crash-but-don’t-burn or bob and weave between hay piles whilst careening down the The Wall. Most steep hills have at least a 10% grade, whereas The Wall has a 17% grade — and 500 meters of it. Red Bull hosts these Soap Box races […]
WE’RE ALL DEMOCRATS NOW: Federal Government Seizes Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, Shitcans CEOs
BLOOMBERG: The U.S. government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the biggest surge in mortgage defaults in at least three decades threatened to topple the companies making up almost half the U.S. home-loan market. “It is necessary to take action,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who engineered the takeover along with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart, said in Washington today. “Our economy and our markets will not recover until the bulk of this housing correction is behind us. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are critical to turning the corner.”The FHFA will take over Fannie and Freddie […]
FRINGE INSTA-REVIEW: Stuporwoman
BY AARON STELLA FRINGE CORRESPONDENT In Stuporwoman, the audience is equipped with a hypersensitive stethoscope, and is asked to press it against the bosom of a mother and to listen closely. Together with an interdisciplinary troupe of performers, director and choreographer Tania Isaac renders the over-scheduled soul of a mother beleaguered by relentless cooking, cleaning, baby raising, and the unsatisfied want of a full night’s rest. The choreography riffs on the household duties of motherhood (one particularly memorable gesture was an exaggerated scrubbing motion; another was this slow-motion gait that was seductive, but pinched ). An eclectic score evokes a […]