We were planning to live blog from the Irish Pub, with one eye on Bible Spice and the other on the debate — but her handlers are already shooing her out of town before anyone actually asks her a question. Never fear, though, dear reader, for we shall be liveblogging the debate from the comfort of our pajamas. As per usual, Citizen Mom and Jonathan Valania — the Greatest Political Analyst Team In The Known Universe — will be cracking wise, with occasional shoutouts from Philly Mag’s Steve Volk. You lucky ducks! 8:54 PMCitizen: yo 8:55 PM Where the hell is […]
Search Results for: why we can't have nice things
ELEPHANT GUN: Spitballing The RNC In IM
Our completely unfair and totally biased analysts tonight will be Amy Z. Quinn, aka Citizen Mom, recently converted Obama supporter/longtime Hillarycrat dead-ender, and Jonathan Valania, aka ME, who was right about Obama, and most other things, all along. We join the second night of the RNC in Minneapolis with First Lady Laura Bush introducing her husband… 9 minutes 9:49 PM Citizen: Laura Bush: Proof that with a pack of Marlboro Lights and a Xanax, a girl can do anything! 9:50 PM me: nice 9:51 PM nobody has ANYTHING good to say about No Child Left Behind except for the White House Spokesperson and […]
MILE HIGH: Live And Direct From Denver
[Photos by LenEdgerly & DemConvention] Our DNC correspondent Nick Powell has managed to elbow out a space at the table in the press room. He will be sending us reports from on the ground — God and WiFi willing. Also, our analysts Amy Z. Quinn and Jonathan Valania will be parsing Obama’s speech. 9:55 PM AZQ: gotta go get the kid in pjs back in a sec 9:56 PJV: Oh great, I’ll tell Obama I am SURE he can stall for five minutes just start this John Lennon record over sure nobody will notice 9:58 PM Durbin. This […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Parsing Hillary’s Speech In IM
Can a Clinton put party and country before raw ego and naked ambition, just this once? Let’s find out shall we? Our analysts tonight will be Amy Z. Quinn, aka Citizen Mom, recently converted Obama supporter/longtime Hillarycrat dead-ender, and Jonathan Valania, who was right about Obama, and most other things, all along. We join the action with Governor Brian Schweitzer at the podium… JV: The Guv of Montana is a trip AZQ: Oh god, not the bolo tie 10:21 PM JV: neck too fat to close top button stay classy, Montana! AZQ: the hardest button to button JV: this is […]
HEAR YE: Sparklehorse It’s A Wonderful Life
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO! BY JONATHAN VALANIA HE WAS DEAD ONCE. FOR TWO BREATHLESS MINUTES in 1996, Mark Linkous, the auteur behind Sparklehorse, lay dead on the floor of a London hotel room while paramedics rushed to revive him. Fourteen hours earlier he’d stepped off a plane at Heathrow Airport to begin a European tour supporting Radiohead. After swallowing an ill-advised cocktail of Valium, liquor and prescription antidepressants, Linkous collapsed on his hotel-room floor, where he would lie on his back for the next 14 hours in a kneeling position that cut off the circulation to his legs. When […]
CINEMA: The Evil That Men Do
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (2008, directed by Errol Morris, 118 minutes, U.S.)BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC He sure has come a long way since pondering why people bury their critters in pet cemeteries. Esteemed documentarian Errol Morris may have started out with whimsical examinations of the American psyche, but as his career has progressed his subject matter has gained gravitas, culminating in 2003’s Fog of War, a profile of Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara. Although the events covered in Fog of War were 40 years old Morris, was able to concentrate on the disturbing reality of executing a war in a […]
HEAR YE: The Raconteurs Consolers Of The Lonely
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we love you! BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT So The Raconteurs are back with a second album. Who woulda thought The Raconteurs would turn out to be a real band and not just a Jack White side project wank-off one-off? Not me, buddy boy. Not me. I tip my tricorn hat to the Raconteurs for kicking it old school, turning this thing around so quickly and releasing it without all the pomp and circumstance that usually precedes White Stripes release. But I just wish this album didn’t suck so bad. To wit: “Consoler […]
PAPERBOY: ‘Everything I Needed To Know About Hip-Hop I Learned From Lady B’ Early Edition
BY AMY Z. QUINN 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 […]
JUNK SCI: Offering A ‘Burning Man’ A Drink Of Water
BY ELIZABETH FIEND They burn a pony, not a man. The vibe is chill, not hot. I was trying to describe the difference between Burning Man, which by now every one knows about, and Playa del Fuego, which is still pretty much a secret, to my Burning Man campmates last year, who would be coming to PDF for the first time.) PDF is the mid-Atlantic regional “burn” – one of the many regional off-shoots of Burning Man. Playa del Fuego is nothing and everything like Burning Man. Held in not-so remote Odessa, Delaware, PDF is a four-day campout with a […]
BRITNEY SPEARS: LAST YEAR’S PUSSY
BY TAMMY ADARIS Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: Britney Spears is many things, but she is NOT fat. In fact, put her in any average suburban neighborhood, and she’d be Queen of the MILFs on any block. That is, however, in clothes that actually, you know, flatter her physique, not fillet it. But as we know all too well, nothing about the former Mrs. Federline — save her ongoing capacity to leave people who should know better by now gawking in horror — seems to fit properly. More disturbing than that vision of a doughy, vacant-eyed Britney […]
HEAR YE: Animal Collective Strawberry Jam
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO * PET SOUNDZ: Animal Collective Waves The Freak Flag BY JONATHAN VALANIA Back in college — which was longer ago than I care to admit, so let’s just say some time after the Earth cooled but before the Internet — I lived in an old Victorian house that the college owned and subdivided into separate apartments. It was a gathering house for all the freaks and geeks who didn’t quite blend in with the frat-boy-cheerleader-chug-a-lug-date-rape ethos of the main campus. Across the hall my neighbors had set up a de facto commune of 24/7 hacky-sack […]
THUG LIFE: Hustle And Flow
I was young then, and at the time, everyone around me saw jobs as, “That’s for the older people.” But whatever was going on that was quick money, I was involved in it. And being used to that planted me stiff to the point where this is what I wanted to do, and I ain’t wanna do nothing different.–Hareem BY JEFF DEENEY Once a hustler, always a hustler? It’s a crucial question: can ex-offenders change their stripes? Can a habitual criminal be rehabilitated? There are passionate arguments from both sides; social service providers who work with at risk […]
AUTHOR AUTHOR: Q&A W/ Nathan Englander
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Eight years after the critically-acclaimed short story collection The Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander’s first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, finally hit bookstores on May 1. This harrowing novel takes place during Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983), during which the junta government “disappeared” somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000 suspected dissidents and subversives, mostly students and liberals. Kaddish Poznan, hijo de puta (son of a whore) and outcast in the Jewish community, makes his living by erasing the names of wanton Jewish ancestors (pimps, whores and gangsters) from their gravestones on requests from more respectable […]