Phawker

Men, this will serve you well at sea.

By SARA SHERR:

1.Mouth-breathers who hug the cart of refiles that I’m trying to put away. This is the same crap that’s been sitting in the racks for the last two months. If I put a bunch of Keak the Sneak CD’s on a cart, does that make them suddenly more attractive and awesomely collectable?

2.People who ask stupid questions in order to make a conversation with me. Yes, we’re going out of business. Nope, there’s nothing left. Yep, that pesky downloading.

3.People who can’t read. I understand the Philadelphia public school system is in a shambles and it’s hard to learn how to read when someone is pointing a gun at your head. But for the love of God, don’t ask me where M is.

4.People who shout “scuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me miss” from across the store. You should never shout like that unless you, me, or the store is on fire.

5.Me or the cellphone. Pick one. Unless you’re a doctor with a dying patient on the other end, there is no reason for you to interrupt our conversation just to tell your buddy that you’re at Tower Records, and guess what, they’re going out of business.

6.Turn off the pager. It’s bad enough that I hear one side of your stupid conversation, now I hear both sides in every scintillating detail. BLEEP! “Where you at?” BLEEP! “Mwah, mwah!” BLEEP! “I’m at Tower Records, where you at?!”

7.A going-out-of-business sale works like this. You look around. Maybe we have what you want, maybe we don’t. If you’re asking me for more than three titles, you’re a douche and you need to read. Besides, there are like, eight rows left in the whole store!

8.We’re closing in three days and we’ve been going out of business for two months. Do you really think we’re gonna have the new Jay-Z? Please stop staring at me like that.

9.Please stop staring at me. None of this should be slightly revelatory.

10.If you live in the city and didn’t know we were going out of business, don’t ask me why. The shit was even on Action News. Please go home and Google it. Do you know how many times I’ve told the liquidator story since October?

As announced yesterday, a consortium of the local moneyed class has pulled out their checkbooks and stopped the Wicked Witch of Walmart from getting her flying monkey paws on our Eakins masterpiece. Maybe next time we can rally $60 million in a coupla weeks to, say, build a new school or put some new books in the Public Library or something. Still, let us applaud the following:

Leonore Annenberg ($10 million to the Gross Clinic effort) is the widow of Walter Annenberg, the publisher and U.S. ambassador to Britain. She is the president, chairman, and sole director of the Annenberg Foundation, with $2.5 billion in assets. She sits on the Art Museum board.

Joseph and Jeanette Neubauer ($3 million through the Neubauer Family Foundation) recently gave $10 million to the Philadelphia Orchestra and $10 million to the University of Chicago. He is chairman and chief executive officer of Aramark Corp., and she was vice president of corporate communications at Time Warner Inc. in New York when they were married in 1996. Jeanette Neubauer is on the Art Museum board.

H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest ($3 million) sits on the boards of a remarkable number of cultural organizations. He is chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and of Curtis Institute of Music, and on the board of Columbia University. He made his multibillion-dollar fortune in the cable TV industry.

The Pew Charitable Trusts ($3 million) is headed by president Rebecca W. Rimel and is Philadelphia’s largest foundation, with $5.1 billion in assets.

Anonymous ($1 million). The only other gift over $1 million is from an anonymous donor, according to a Pew spokeswoman.

INQUIRER:“Dear George, remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings, Love Clarence.”

FROM ATTYTOOD:

68,000,000: Dollars that could hire 170 new Philadelphia police officers for five years, or 850 officers for one year, based on official estimates of $80,000 a cop for salary, benefits and training.

68,000,000: Dollars that could almost completely close the current yawning budget gap currently faced by the Philadelphia School District, estimated now at $73.3 million. The gap has led to a series of painful cutbacks, such as the elimination of 175 administrative jobs.

68,000,000: Dollars that could hire roughly 124 new social workers for 10 years in city’s Department of Human Services (based on average city salary and benefits.) DHS has been under fire for its handling of several cases of alleged abuse or neglect in which children ultimately died.

68,000,000: Dollars that could buy a brand-new laptop computer for roughly one in three public school students in Philadelphia — 63,000 of them, based on the average price the district now pays for laptops of $1,080.

68,000,000: Dollars that could provide outpatient drug- or alcohol-abuse treatment for some 47,500 people, based on the average cost (from 2002 statistics) of $1,433 per episode.

ATTYTOOD: You’re A Foul One, Mr. Bunch!

Well, it would appear that the worm has finally turned. After weeks of being shut out by PW, the Daily News and even our own Election Day dead pachyderm cover, CP comes back stronger than ever. Truly, Evan M. Lopez‘s cover illustration is the finest aspirational visual representation of Christmas in the 215 since, like, ever. Seriously, we take our hat off, Sir. Meanwhile, PW‘s cover may well be pink and scrapplicious at first glance, but if you squint real hard you can almost see the marks from the hands-free headset they used to phone this one in. It just seems so incongruous with the calendar, and then there’s the slapped-on Holiday pun. Guess these little piggies won the coin toss over the one with the kitten hanging off the clothes line and the caption HANG IN THERE, KID. And besides, everyone knows that pigs can’t talk. They just can’t.
WINNER: CP

You be the judge.

DIDDY.COM: Look How Rich I Am, Bitches!
PREVIOUSLY: Kilroy Waz Herre
KRAFTWERK: Take Off Those Aviators And Fight Like A Man!

To the south, Paul Boni, a board member of the Society Hill Civic Association, said his group will “do all we can to prevent this from happening.”In the case of Foxwoods, they may have leverage.

Foxwoods has proposed to mitigate the traffic problems in South Philadelphia with a southbound off-ramp from Interstate 95, an idea that city analysts say has not been approved or funded, and that could cost the public $100 million.

But in a Dec. 14 letter to the gaming board, Boni and Donald Ackerman of the Queen Village Neighbors Association noted that their groups are parties to a mid-’70s federal consent decree under which no new ramps from I-95 can be built between the two bridges without consulting the groups.

And James Paylor, a vice president of Local 1291 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, said the rivermen are worried that the vast increase in traffic “will impact the working piers both north and south of Foxwoods.”

He said his union is consulting with the chief employer group, the Philadelphia Marine Trade Association, about a legal challenge to the gaming board’s decision.

“Foxwoods was a crazy decision,” said Boni. “I always said that if Foxwoods was selected, then you know there’s been monkey business.”

DAILY NEWS: Not Over Until It’s Over

[PHOTO By CLEM MURRAY/INQUIRER]

[F]or one of his national series of “call-outs,” urging parents and the community to take responsibility, especially for the vulnerable young in the black community.Cosby created controversy in 2004 when he criticized some poor black parents, saying they had failed to stress education or otherwise take responsibility for their children’s behavior, including dropping out of school, getting pregnant, cursing and bandying about the n-word.

In a series of gatherings in cities around the country, Cosby has continued to stress personal responsibility.

Tonight’s “call-out” will begin at 6 p.m. and is free, but seats are first-come, first-served, said Bilal Qayyum, of the anti-violence group Men United for a Better Philadelphia. That group is sponsoring the event with the Father’s Day Rally Committee, a group that emphasizes the role of the father in the black community.

DAILY NEWS: Ghost Dad For An Entire Race?

by KYW’s Mike Dunn

The Philadelphia city councilman whose district includes both of the sites chosen says politics, not merit, prompted the Gaming Board’s approvals. And he’s taking it to court.

First District councilman Frank DiCicco is disappointed by the two choices -– particularly the selection of the Foxwoods bid for a casino at Delaware Avenue and Reed Street:

“I have always felt that Foxwoods was the worst site.”

He says the traffic problems there are already enormous and will only get worse:

“There’s total gridlock today. And (with a casino) you raise the level of vehicles by somewhere between two and four million additional vehicles a year. I don’t know how anyone’s going to get to the river.”

DiCicco suspects that the political connections of the two successful applicants played a key role in the awards, and he intends to file a lawsuit to bring the Gaming Board’s decision-making process out into the open:

“For the life of me I just can’t figure out how the Gaming Board made this decision. And it’s one of the reasons I will be filing a suit in the not-too-distant future, to find out what criteria they used to select Foxwoods.”

KYW: DiCicco To The Lawsuit Rescue
RADIO TIMES: “Philadelphia casino locations revealed. We get reaction to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s approval of the two waterfrontcasinos. The Foxwood will be in South Philadelphia, and Sugar House is planned for Northern Liberties. We hear from Philadelphia Inquirer reporter JEFF SHIELDS, anti-casino activists RENE GOODWIN and MATT RUBEN, and PAUL LEVY, president and CEO of the Center City District and co-chair of the Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force.” Thursday 10 AM

ROCKY BALBOA
(2006, directed by Sylvester Stallone, 102 minutes)
BY DAN BUSKIRK
As the press cheers the return of Rocky Balboa to the big screen, you have to ask yourself: Is the public really crying out for another round with this mug, after 30 years? If the Riverview, the only movie theater in South Philly, draws only a three quarters-filled house at the advance screening, I’d say signs point to this fighter’s legs finally giving out.

Hearing the promising advance word, I’ll admit to being vaguely optimistic that, against all reason, the man who wrote the arm-wrestling epic “Over the Top” and the “Saturday Night Fever” sequel “Stayin’ Alive” had somehow located his muse at this late date. I figured maybe, with 16 years to ponder the character since “Rocky V,” Stallone had found a new angle on what was promised to be the last Rocky film. He wouldn’t dare to just remake the same underdog-against-the-odds saga one more time, would he?

But inspiration or not, the once-mighty Planet Hollywood co-founder had little choice but to resurrect the Rocky character, considering three of the last six films he starred in did not even make it to theaters. With his big-screen acting career in the lurch, Stallone gambles nothing and instead delivers another Rocky chapter that hits all the expected bases like an aging ballplayer on Old Timers’ Day. (more…)

From Ghostworld, of course, and before that, the 1965 Bollywood smoker Gumnaam, but we can’t help but think that if we made John Waters our envoy to Iraq, Baghdad night life would start to look, and for that matter sound, a lot like this. This, Mr. President, is OUR suggestion for the New Way Forward.