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 […]
LOU REED & JOHN CALE: Heroin
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KILLADELPHIA: Taking It To The Streets
Survivors of gun violence hope a noon march in Center City will publicize a message: Get illegal handguns off the streets. It could also block traffic on a busy stretch of Broad Street. People in wheelchairs will be part of the procession, from Magee Rehabilitation Hospital at 16th and Race Streets to the State Office Building at Broad and Spring Garden Streets, where a rally will be held. Permits to march up Broad Street have been requested, but may not be officially approved until just before the event, a spokesperson for Handgun Sanity said this morning. The demonstration is to […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
POE DISPUTE TURNS GRAVE, DARKER THAN ‘THE NIGHT’S PLUTONIAN SHORE’ In the Oct. 4-11 issue of the City Paper, local literary blogger Edward Pettit declared that Edgar Allan Poe, who flourished in Philadelphia but inconveniently died in Baltimore and is buried there, must be exhumed and reinterred in Philadelphia by 2009, marking 200 years since his birth. Poe lived in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1844. Baltimore Sun columnist Laura Vozzella replied with a caustic piece headlined “We Have the Body and We’re Keeping Him!” Baltimore mystery novelist Laura Lippman groused, “What’s next, a crab cake hoagie?” Jeff Jerome, curator of […]
MISSION OF BURMA: Top Democracy Activist Arrested
FINANCIAL TIMES: Burma’s defiant military junta captured a leading dissident who had been on the run for weeks as its official mouthpiece warned “national traitors will soon meet their tragic ends.” Htay Kywe, a charismatic democracy activist who had been the target of a huge manhunt since late August, was seized in a raid on a house where he was hiding with two other members of the 88 Generation Students group. Amnesty International expressed concern that the arrested dissidents would be tortured. Although it made no direct reference to the Saturday arrests, The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, the junta’s […]
DOOBIE: Don’t Tase Me, Bro (Remix)
Don’t taze me bro – Rap Remix Uploaded by DoobieMusic
NPR 4 THE DEAF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Author Alice Sebold has produced difficult books before: Her novel The Lovely Bones, soon to be filmed by director Peter Jackson, centers on a 14-year-old looking down from heaven after her own rape and murder. Sebold’s 1999 memoir Lucky began with an account of the author’s own rape, which occurred when she was a freshman at Syracuse University. The title comes from a comment made by a policeman, who told her she was lucky not to have been killed and dismembered like another woman attacked in the same vicinity; the unflinchingly candid book detailed Sebold’s battles with the […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
FROM ‘BLOHAN’ TO ‘BROKEHAN’: Lindsay Has Literally Blown Through $7 Million Lohan quickly earned millions from films like Mean Girls and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen — but she has spent it even quicker. She lived for most of last year in Hollywood’s opulent Chateau Marmont hotel, spending $450,000 on her $1,200-a-night suite, as well as another £500,000 having chauffeurs on 24-hour standby. “And the amount she has wasted putting cocaine up her nose is disgusting. Even she has lost count.” Added to that were endless bottles of Cristal champagne at $550 a pop — until the unpaid bills […]
KILLADELPHIA: 1 More Dead Since U Went 2 Bed
A man was found in the trunk of a car in Grays Ferry early this morning, police said. The man was found wrapped in a blanket in the trunk of a Cadillac in the 1200 block of South 27th Street at 1:51 a.m. He was officially pronounced dead at the scene shortly before 4 a.m. Police were unable to provide more details this morning, such as how long the body had been in the trunk or how the body was discovered. [via PHILLY.COM]
WORTH REPEATING: The Ashes Of American Flags
BILL MAHER: Show me a man wearing an American flag pin in his lapel, and I’ll show you an asshole. I’m sure there are exceptions, but in general people need to remember that lapels aren’t for wearing pins to create the illusion that you’re supporting the troops. They’re for wearing ribbons to create the illusion that you’re helping cure a disease. Last week we had the first genuine controversy of the presidential campaign: the shocking news that Barack Obama doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin, so apparently he and America are no longer going steady. “No lapel pin, Senator? […]
TODAY I SAW. . .
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW another of the 9th Street methadone clinic’s finest, perusing the perfume selection at the Rite Aid on 12th and Girard. She was a tall, stick-skinny white girl, her cheeks sunken and pale skin pulled taut across her cheekbones. Her eyes weren’t even open when she reached to grab a bottle off a shelf in the front of the store facing the register. Instead of closing her hand around the bottle and picking it up, she pushed it until it fell on the floor. I expected it to shatter, but apparently cheap perfume bottles aren’t […]
NAOMI WOLF: First They Came For The ‘Terrorists’…
In Boulder, two days ago, a rosy-cheeked thirtysomething mother of two small children, in soft yoga velours, started to tear up when she said to me: `I want to take action but I am so scared. I look at my kids and I am scared. How do you deal with fear? Is it safer for them if I act or stay quiet? I don’t want to get on a list.’ In D.C., before that, a beefy, handsome civil servant, a government department head — probably a Republican — confides in a lowered voice that he is scared to sign the […]
LIVE AND DIRECT FROM THE FIRST ANNUAL WES ANDERSON PHILADELPHIA PRESS CONFERENCE
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Well, this turned out to be kind of a bust. The publicists decided to move up the press conference from 3:30 to 3 PM, with just 15 minutes notice. What, do they think us podunks in Philly have nothing better do all day than interview Wes Anderson? Okay, even if that is technically true, it’s still unprofessional and inconsiderate. So I am standing in the hall way outside suite 561 of the Four Seasons, where the press conference is well underway. Through the door, I can hear the soft muffled huzzah of Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman […]