Phawker

PHILADELPHIA — Tua, the Philadelphia Zoo’s female Sumatran orangutan, is getting a companion: Sugriwa (Sue-GREE-wuh), a male Sumatran orangutan. Sugi arrived in Philadelphia from the St. Louis Zoo in December. Since then, he has gone through the zoo’s routine quarantine period for new animals, then was slowly introduced to Tua and to the zoo’s male and female gibbons, Mercury and Solstice.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Hot Monkey Love!

A MAN IN FULL: Norman Mailer, The Free Library Of Philadelphia, Tuesday Night

BY EVA LIAO Full disclosure: I have never read a Norman Mailer book from cover to cover. And the perfunctory excerpts thrown into the textbooks of my contemporary lit college courses don’t really count. I do know, however, that after writing 45 books and providing decades of titillating fodder for the media — co-founder of the Village Voice, winner of multiple Pulitzer Prizes and devotee of Marilyn Monroe, not to mention the whole wife-stabbing incident — the guy has a reputation. He’s kind of like an older, whiter Salman Rushdie in that half the people obsessed with his salacious personal life and political views have never actually read past the first ten pages of his books. But all of that was a long, long time ago. For a moment or two Tuesday night I worried that perhaps this brittle 84 year old man was too old to be speaking in public as I watched him inch fragilely towards his chair with the assistance of not one, but two separate canes. But then he opened his mouth. A deep, gruffly voice came booming through the microphone full of life, and sarcasm and wit — and suddenly he looked 40 years younger.

Mailer, promoting his first book in four years, Castle in the Forest, has this time chosen Adolf Hitler as his subject — nothing really out of character for a man whose other subjects include Picasso, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jesus. So why Hitler this time around? Because according to Mailer, “he violates an understanding of human nature, a basic notion about humans: While other tyrants had structure, he killed with metaphors. Hitler was a depraved poet.” Mailer continued on, throwing punches and punchlines about every thing from religion (“If I were to be reincarnated I’d want to be a black athlete. But I’d probably just be a cockroach. But the fastest cockroach on earth”) to excrement (“The only things worth writing about are the things that haven’t been nailed. And scatology remains a mystery. I think shit is fascinating.”)

He condemned perma-war as a tactic for keeping society ignorant and afraid while those in power rig the systems of governance for maximum profits that fill the coffers of a select elite. As much of the audience nodded in agreement, Mailer chastised the most obvious culprit, television, for the lack of passion, imagination and engagement in current affairs (that don’t include celebrities) amongst the youth of today. “Mediocrity is taking over the world” he repeated like a refrain.

Afterwards, while the many fans lined up for their autographed copies of old Mailer collectibles (posters, Life Magazines, withered books) I met a college professor who struck up a conversation with me. When I told her I wrote for a blog, she pretty much accused me of attributing to the mediocrity that Mailer was describing. The downside to attending events with an older crowd is that somebody always feels the need to list all the problems with ‘my’ generation — to my face. The professor’s critique included the following: Young people these days are all confidence and no content, and that confidence is really just a mirage projected by a crass consumer culture. Young adults these days have no humility. And lastly, young adults do not and cannot know what elegance is, being that it takes years of studying the classics to develop that sense. Hence, our mediocrity.

I don’t deny that this woman had some valid points. Sometimes, I do worry about my generation and the ones to follow — what’s to become of us? But despite her cred (unsolicited she voluteered her credentials: graduated from Penn Magnum Cum Lade, ex-Penn professor, current PCC prof) I can’t help but think she just sounds old and bitter. Besides, judging from Mailer’s legend, he too was over-confident in his youth, cocky even. And the elders of his day said he was all hat and no cattle, too. So, the whole time she was berating me, I couldn’t help thinking that Mailer would have told this woman to go fuck herself — or offered to do it for her. Works for me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eva is 22 years old and from Los Angeles. Her favorite band is the Velvet Underground. That’s why we hired her. Eva goes to Temple. Some would call her an ‘intern,’ but we call her Assistant Editor because we believe the media should empower young people, not belittle and exploit them. But that’s just us.

BY DAVE GAMBACORTA A Philadelphia police officer is being investigated for allegedly having had an “inappropriate sexual encounter” with another man earlier this month, police sources said yesterday.The incident occurred while the officer was on duty early on March 16, hours before the city was blanketed by a sleet storm.

Police sources said the incident happened inside the cop’s patrol car.

At the time, the officer was assigned to the 92nd District, headquartered on Lincoln Drive near Gypsy Lane in East Falls.

The man reported the incident to the Internal Affairs Bureau, which is investigating his allegations, a police source said. The officer has been temporarily reassigned to desk duty, but has not been charged with committing any crime.

DAILY NEWS: The Question Is WHY Did The Man Report His Cop Tryst To Internal Affairs? 

Coming soon! A PHAWKER Q&A with WHYY’s Marty Moss-Coane [above, 1969]

BY PATRICK KERKSTRA OF THE INQUIRER Somehow, it just didn’t come up. Amid all the lawyers, the petitions, the protests and the huge stakes, little was said about Section 14-1624 of the Philadelphia Code – which bans certain adult-oriented businesses from part of the Delaware riverfront.

DiCicco said he’s alerting his lawyers to the relevant section of the city code and intends to add this issue to the lawsuit Council has filed against the state Gaming Control Board over its casino site selections. Still, it was unclear yesterday just how large a challenge Section 14-1624 – approved by City Council in 2002 – actually poses to SugarHouse’s plans to build a half-billion-dollar slot-machine casino along the riverfront in Fishtown.

Gaming opponents have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Philadelphia’s two casino licensees. DiCicco, who is running for reelection, said he had simply forgotten about the 2002 ordinance – which he sponsored.

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UK songstress Amy Winehouse packs a solid soulful punch with this 60s-era era throwback on a non-traditional theme-addiction and recovery. Sounds like Nina Simone soaked in Phil Spector and tossed in a blender with The Supremes. Stunningly upbeat stuff, smile-inducing for even the most miserable hipster. –Tommy Zane

BY MICHAEL ‘Fich’ FICHMAN Baseball is America’s perpetually redeeming characteristic. I care too much — I’m a harsh critic, a cynic. Sometimes I’ll hate something just on principle. I think too much, can’t relax. I’m always thinking about which 10 things I need to be doing, instead of doing them. But in the spring, I’m mellowed out and ready for baseball.

This is a music column. However, I used to be a sportswriter and hey, a guy can like both pickles and ice cream, sometimes at the same time. I’m gonna throw together some kosher dill pistachio mint for yinz today, just to watch it melt.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, we used to take the starting lineup for the season opener and try to accurately apply each member of the Wu-Tang to a position, transposing nine onto nine. For instance, Brian Giles, known for being the classic dugout “zany guy,” could always count on securing the Dirt McGirt “ohhhhhhhhhh!!” spot on the lineup card. But after a while, the Pirates were just so bad (we haven’t had a winning season in 13 years, so put that misery in your fucking Phillies pipe and smoke it) that we really couldn’t justify degrading any rappers by likening them to Chris Stynes.

I’m not a Phillies fan at all, but the Phillies are what I’ve got. Plus, I came up hating the Mets and Braves something awful, so I suppose I’m a Phillies fan by default. Last season, I found myself pulling for the Phils, inexplicably. Ryan Howard, whom Ian Cohen and I anointed Scrapple Dun Dun (seriously, call him that!), Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and the supporting cast of spousal abusers and underachievers sucked me into their classic Philly last-minute failure of a season. Maybe it’s because I love seeing Philly’s hopes get inflated and ultimately dashed, but it was truly beautiful and exciting baseball.

So, without further ado, your 2007 Philadelphia Phillies… the box set:

1B: Ryan Howard: Nas- Illmatic
The young heavy hitter that came to straight ball on motherfuckers. When Illmatic came out it was like a four hundred foot moon shot with a MAC-11 raised in the air, busting out shots for good measure. Like Escobar, Scrapple Dun Dun showed some early promise (see: Nas on MC Serch’s Back to the Grill) and then came out with the absolutely game changing full-length. I guess this doesn’t bode well for Scrap’s next ten years.

2B: Chase Utley: The Band- The Band
An all-around solid performer, Utley oozes with the stuff that makes even the sharpest critics bow with respect. He’s the baseball zeitgeist, the guy who does it all, keeps a clean shave and has monogamous sex. However, he’s got that strangely left-of-center outsider aesthetic that nobody can bring themselves to criticize, despite the fact that he drives a hybrid car. He’s just too good at what he does.

SS: Jimmy Rollins: Donovan- Catch the Wind
Nobody will ever accuse Jimmy Rollins of being less than an All-Star caliber shortstop, but decades from now, he’ll be all but forgotten relative to his contemporaries. Starting with heavy hitter Cal Ripken Jr., the ’90s and ’00s have seen the shortstop position go from being a haven for good-field, no-hit hangers-on to a position from which one could expect homers, run production and OPS. When you think back on the genesis of the singer-songwriter movement, you usually conjure up names like Dylan (A-Rod), Simon (Tejada), Van Morrison (Jeter) and even Guthrie (Ripken) before them. But neither Donovan nor Miguel Tejada raps for charity, especially not with All-Name Team mainstay Coco Crisp.

3B: Abraham Nunez: Billy Strayhorn- Lush Life- The Billy Strayhorn Songbook
Like Strayhorn, Nunez is but a diminutive, switch-hitting journeyman from Pittsburgh. However, I guarantee that unlike Strayhorn, nobody will remember Nunez in 50 years. Nunez is also rumored to have ghostwritten for Duke Ellington.

LF: Pat Burrell: John Mayer: That one album John Mayer put out
He exploded on the scene in 2001 and was showered with recognition, albeit only speculative. Got a lucrative deal and bought a bunch of nice collared shirts, only to turn in a string of performances that left him showered with expletives and gay jokes. Still a hit in Old City, though.

Paging Aaron Rowand, your face pad is now ready for pickup

CF: Aaron Rowand: M.O.P.- Warriorz
Rough, rugged and raw, Billy Danze and Lil’ Fame will shake you upside down until all your cake comes out your pockets. Rowand is equally rugged, except all his aggression is generally diffused by running face-first into a wall. If you ask me, that was just a ploy to postpone his inevitable booing when he fails to best his career season of .310/24/69. If things aren’t looking up by the All-Star break, maybe it would be in his best interests to execute some more Bukka-buck-bukka-bukka-BLAOWWWW W on his face and soak in the cheers from the dugout.

RF: Shane Victorino: Neko Case- Furnace Room Lullabye
The Flyin’ Hawaiian (what a terrible name) shows flashes of brilliance but can’t seem to hold it together for longer than two songs/games. Early in the 2005 season, Victorino was singing Buffy Sainte-Marie songs and poking hanging curves over the fence with ease. Everybody thinks he could be the next Griffey but then he backslides into the perpetual “he could break out” guy, turning in two good months a year, unable to break into the everyday lineup. Victorino is trying to put together a solid season straight through (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood), but little does he know that shit will really jump off when he’s named “Sexiest Indie-Rocker’s Baseball Analog” by Playboy.

C: Rod Barajas: Barrabas- Wild Safari
Barrabas, Barajas. I got nothing. I can’t believe they signed this guy.

SP: Brett Myers: Ike Turner and Tina Turner and the Ikettes- Come Together
Get it? He’s professionally competent and he’s a batterer! If he wins 15 games, people will probably (and regrettably) forget that he’s a fucking scumbag.[You should probably put in here that he and his wife settled and the charges were dropped, etc etc (check google) so we don't get sued. Th'Editrix]

RP: Tom Gordon: Fat Joe- All or Nothing
It takes a lot to stay on top of the game for a long time. Flash has been doing this since the ’80s and he’s still an All-Star. Yet he’s kind of fragile at this stage of the game, and his impact is probably somewhat exaggerated. However, by virtue of his titular role in a Stephen King novel he’s guaranteed his relevance, at least for the near future.

In case you’re wondering, the pic at the top is Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s old Comiskey Park.

By the way, make sure you keep it mega this weekend:
It seems like every DJ in West Philly will be at PhilaFunkLive supporting the recently formed WestWax collective as it throws down Friday, March 30 at PhilaFunkLive, 8 N. Preston St. (between 40th & 41st off Market).
WestWax busts out the big guns from mainstay nights like Bleached Black, Paradise at Key West, Philadelphyinz, Disconnect and Tech Support to showcase its new neighborhood digs at the recently renovated warehouse. The lineup includes:
Kyle Miller (Bleached Black), Apt One (Philadelphyinz), Stepchild (Paradise, Disconnect), Kenny Raw (Tech Support), Operant77 (Paradise), Andrew Gaspar (Bleached Black), Sebastian Petsu (WestWax), JJC (WestWax), HonkeyLips (WestWax)
9PM-all night, $5, BYOB.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fich is the first ordained rabbi in the musical church of Robot James Brown. He owns a lot of records and people pay him to play them. He writes for Just Sayin’.

We are seriously thinking about NEVER taking this down. Ever.

FRESH AIR

The Irrationality Of Belief In God.
Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme into the lexicon, helping found memetics. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to the science of evolution with the theory, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that phenotypic effects are not limited to an organism’s body but can stretch far into the environment, including into the bodies of other organisms. He has since written several best-selling popular books, and appeared in a number of television and radio programmes, concerning evolutionary biology, creationism, and religion.

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, humanist, and skeptic, and is a prominent member of the Brights movement. In a play on Thomas Huxley‘s epithet “Darwin‘s bulldog”, Dawkins’ impassioned defence of evolution has earned him the appellation “Darwin’s rottweiler”. [VIA WIKIPEDIA]

For the first time in years, every sector of television news lost audience in 2006, and newspapers, despite garnering a larger audience than ever for their content via online platforms, faced increasingly downbeat assessments of their business models, a new report from the D.C.-based Project for Excellence in Journalism finds.

According to the fourth-annual edition of State of the News Media, shifting economic fundamentals are spurring mainstream news organizations to try to build audience around “franchise” areas of coverage, specialties, and even crusades. Cable’s”argument culture” is giving way to an “answer culture,” a growing pattern that has news outlets,
programs, and journalists offering solutions, certainty, and the impression of putting information in clear order for people.

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