Illustration by ALEX FINE BY JONATHAN VALANIA Blackwater founder Erik Prince will be speaking at the Free Library on Friday to promote his new book, Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story Of Blackwater & The Unsung Heroes Of The War On Terror, his compelling counter-narrative about the rise and fall of Blackwater. Not surprisingly, in Prince’s telling Blackwater is essentially blameless for any and all murder and mayhem that has occurred on its watch. Yesterday we got Prince on the phone and asked who, in the final accounting, will have to answer for all that murder and mayhem. Turns out nobody […]
STRIP STRIP HOORAY: Q&A With Dita Von Teese
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Of all the reasons that Dita Von Teese is cool — and make no mistake, she is very effing cool — the fact that she takes her clothes off for a living isn’t even in the Top 10. First she’s smarter than the average bear — and not just ‘smart for a stripper.’ She was invited to speak at Oxford. Do you know who else was invited to speak at Oxford? Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Tony Blair, and Anna Wintour. Second, her craft. The period clothes, the period hair, the pre-porn striptease routines, the ornate stage pieces, […]
Q&A w/ Comedian John Mulaney, Ex-SNL Writer, Stefon Co-Creator, Couldbe TV Sitcom Star
BY JONATHAN VALANIA As co-creator of the ever-popular Stefon (‘New York’s hottest club is…’) sketch on SNL, comedian John Mulaney is probably better-known for his work behind the camera than in front of it, but that will change soon. Last Friday we got Mulaney on the horn in advance of his appearance at the Dave Chappelle-starring Oddball Fest at the Susquehanna Bank Center tomorrow night. DISCUSSED: Dave Chappelle walking offstage in Hartford, writing for SNL, inventing Stefon, making Bill Hader break character and laugh on live national television, that status of his in-development sitcom Mulaney, co-starring Dana Carvey and […]
RADIOHEAD: Q&A w/ Wiretap‘s Jonathan Goldstein
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Jonathan Goldstein is the creator and host of public radio’s Wiretap, which The (Montreal) Gazette aptly described as “something between borscht-belt comedy and Franz Kafka,” heard locally on Thursday nights at 9 pm on 90.9 FM WHYY. Goldstein is sort of the Woody Allen of the Airwaves — if Woody Allen was an aging Canadian Gen Xer with a punk pedigree and sociopathic-yet-loveable friends. Either way, he’s hilarious and Wiretap is a gas, gas, gas. He’ll be at the Free Library tonight to promote his new book, I’LL SEIZE THE DAY TOMORROW which is kinda like […]
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: Q&A With Foxygen, The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Let’s not kid ourselves, Foxygen‘s irresistible We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace And Magic — think The Royal Tenenbaums as a twee, technicolor indie-rock album — is hands down the catchiest album of 2013 thus far. No one else need apply. In fact, nobody needs to release another album this year. Not even kidding. When I listen to it, I feel like one of the Magi following the star that will lead us all to the manger. Go tell it on the mountain. Bring frankincense and myrrh. They play at World Cafe Live tonight […]
THE BOY WITH THE KALEIDOSCOPE MIND: Q&A with Writer-Director-Provocateur Harmony Korine
BY JONATHAN VALANIA To mark the 20th anniversary of A Crack Up At The Race Riots, his deliriously Dada attempt at writing, as he once put it, “the great American Choose Your Own Adventure novel,” we got the aging enfant terrible of American cinema on the horn. Discussed: Drugs, Tupac, apocalyptic Manson-ian race wars, why the Pamela Anderson sex tape is the greatest movie ever made, drugs, what band he wishes he could have been a member of, getting banned from Letterman for rifling through Meryl Streep’s purse in the Green Room, drugs, making a batshit insane video for […]
CROSS-POSTED: Q&A With Tim Blake Nelson
How me met the Coen Brothers, making O Brother, working with Clooney on Syriana, working with Spielberg on Minority Report and Lincoln, studying classics at Brown, growing up Jewish offspring of Holocaust refugees in Tulsa and why Katherine Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty got bamboozled by craven politicos and cowardly liberals. All that and more. MORE RELATED: O Brother, Who Art Thou?
THE MINUS 5: Michael Nesmith
An epic ode to the Monkee Most Likely To Wear A Ski Cap. From the new forthcoming Minus 5 album, possibly called Forthcoming. Michael Nesmith plays World Cafe Live on April 15th. PREVIOUSLY: MONKEE BIZNESS: Q&A w/ Peter Tork BY JONATHAN VALANIA There are two kinds of people in this world: people who love The Monkees and sanctimonious assholes who fancy themselves the arbiters of authenticity. Whatever that is. Never trust anyone who tells you they don’t like the Monkees has always been my motto and it’s served me well. As just about everyone of a certain age knows, from […]
A Conversation About Legalizing Marijuana In Pennsylvania With State Senator Daylin Leach
BY JONATHAN VALANIA State Senator Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery/Delaware) was born in Philadelphia in 1961. He attended Temple University, where he graduated with a degree in political science, and earned a law degree from the University of Houston Law Center in 1983. After law school, Sen. Leach moved back to the Philadelphia metropolitan area where he practiced law for 17 years, and taught constitutional law, legal ethics and First Amendment law at Cedar Crest and Muhlenberg colleges. He was first elected to the General Assembly in the fall of 2002, and in 2008 he was elected to the Pennsylvania Senate. Senator […]
THE HURDY GURDY MAN COMES SINGING SONGS OF LOVE: Q&A w/ Julian Koster Of The Music Tapes
UPDATE: Tonight’s performances of The Music Tapes’s Traveling Imaginary has been postponed due to a band emergency. The show will be re-scheduled with a new date TBA. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Julian Koster was more or less was the one-man Salvation Army Band within Neutral Milk Hotel who made those proverbial ‘bare ruined choirs’ sing and gave NMH that Barton Fink feeling. In the wake of NMH’s long, never-explained self-exile, Koster has focused on The Music Tapes, wherein he creates whimsical, antediluvian hallucinatory circus music out of singing saws, rusty banjos, wrinkled horns and calliope-like keyboards with a revolving cast […]
BRIAN’S SONG: Q&A w/ Comedian Brian Posehn
Artwork by LEE STROUD DESIGNS BY JONATHAN VALANIA Although he’s probably best known as one half of the gay-bear-stoner-couple-next-door on the dearly departed The Sarah Silverman Program, Brian Posehn has appeared in a shit-ton of quality TV comedy, including Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, Seinfeld, Mr. Show, Newsradio, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Metalocalypse. He is also more metal than you. [SEE BELOW] In advance of his five-show, three-night run at Helium Comedy Club, which starts tonight, we got Posehn on the horn. Discussed: Juggaloes, Sarah Silverman’s terrible secret, The Burn‘s Jeffrey Ross’ transvestism, Patton Oswalt, Gallhagher, Weird […]
REWIND 2012: The Year In Phawker Interviews
Talk is cheap, especially on the Internet, but at Phawker it’s totally free, baby — at least for you, dear reader. Trolling through the vast and dusty Phawker archives, we have dug up fat sack of conversations from the past year that are worth re-visiting: Dick Dale, King Of The Surf Guitar; graphic novelist Charles Burns, the Edgar Allan Poe of right now; photographer Joe Kazcmarek, who tirelessly chronicles the murder-scarred backstreets of North and West Philly; Jim Reid, lead singer of The Jesus And Mary Chain; Anton Newcombe, cult leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre; Hardball host Chris Matthews; […]
THE SOPRANO: Q&A With Writer/Director David Chase
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Last week we sat down with Sopranos creator David Chase to talk about his new movie, Not Fade Away, a weedy coming-of-age dramedy about being young, horny and trying to be the Rolling Stones in the teenage wasteland of suburban New Jersey in the mid-’60s. There’s sex. There’s drugs. There’s rock n’ roll, in the form of an impeccably-curated soundtrack and convincing scenes of the band trying to kick out the jams in garages and basements. There’s James Gandolfini as the hey-you-kids-get-off-of-my-lawn father, shaking his fist at the longhairs from the wrong side of the generation […]