[via PEREZ HILTON]

PREVIOUSLY: God Save The Queen

In the future we will all live on the Internet, where, abetted by the micro miracles of nanotechnology, we will build vast hive-like colonies within the circuitry of microchips, convert ourselves into JPEGs and climb inside the New Frontier. It will be just like Tron, but with Kraftwerk doing the soundtrack. There will be no need for cars or oil or the wars that come with them, we’ll just attach ourelves to an email and type in the addy to wherever we wanna go; for vast distances, instead of flying, we will simply upload and download ourselves. And, most importantly, we will all dress like they do on Space 1999. You see, I have given a LOT of thought about the future and it bascially all comes down to this: I call the tunic with the black sleeves. (And the chick in the yellow sleeves.) Meanwhile, back in the 21st Century newspapers prepare to shed their print operations like humans shed their tails. And one day, nobody will ever remember there ever was such a thing as print, just like people forgot they had tails. The functional advantage of this will be no more all-black PW covers printing out slate grey and dreary, not even once upon a midnight weary.

WINNER: CITY PAPER

SLOTS CRIME STATS

In the first four months of 2007, Pennsylvania State Police troopers assigned to gaming-enforcement offices at the Philadelphia Park Casino & Racetrack in Bensalem and the Harrah’s Chester Casino & Racetrack in Chester reported these crimes:

Philadelphia Park:
29 thefts
17 forgeries or counterfeit bills
5 assaults
1 illegal firearm
11 drug investigations
1 public intoxication
2 harassments

Harrah’s Chester:

34 thefts
1 robbery/purse-snatching
8 forgeries or counterfeit bills
6 harassments
1 domestic disturbance
1 indecent assault
1 criminal mischief/vandalism
1 fugitive from justice
2 outstanding warrants served

The Shore: Inundated Boardwalks and Receding Beaches

–North Wildwood could be turned into an island, separated from Wildwood Crest by shallow flooding from across New Jersey Avenue.

–Cape May Beach would face accelerated erosion, and on average, Shore beaches could retreat inland between 50 and 150 meters.

Camden: Water Supply at Risk

–Camden could find increasing levels of salt water in its drinking water, since global warming-induced sea-level rise would push the salt front higher up the Delaware River. If the salt front reaches the Camden area, the city may have to shut its water supply wells and find an alternate source of water. If the salt front recedes higher, it could also affect the water supply in Philadelphia.

ENVIRONMENT NEW JERSEY: Bulk Of Report Considers Impact Of Climate Change On Whether Or Not Springsteen Records With E-Street Band Again

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A Saudi Arabian detainee died Wednesday at Guantanamo Bay prison and the U.S. military said he apparently committed suicide. Critics of the detention center said the death showed the level of desperation among prisoners.

Also Wednesday, a Canadian detainee fired his American attorneys, leaving him without defense counsel ahead of his trial, his former U.S. military attorney told The Associated Press. The detainee, Omar Khadr, is still to be arraigned and is one of only three of the roughly 380 Guantanamo prisoners to be charged with a crime.

The military did not identify the detainee who died or describe the manner of death. There are about 80 detainees from Saudi Arabia held at Guantanamo. It would be the fourth suicide at Guantanamo since the prison camp opened in January 2002. On June 10, 2006, two Saudi detainees and one Yemeni hanged themselves with sheets.

About 380 men are held at the isolated prison camp on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Many have been held for five years. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is conducting an ongoing investigation into the three previous suicides. The former commander of the detention facilities, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, described those suicides as acts of “asymmetric warfare” — an effort to increase condemnation of the prison.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: No Word On Whether Or Not He Left A Thank You Note

In an about-face by the Pentagon, the military is putting many more amputees back on active duty _ even back into combat, in some cases. Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration.

So far, the Army has treated nearly 600 service members who have come back from Iraq or Afghanistan without an arm, leg, hand or foot. Thirty-one have gone back to active duty. Most of those who return to active duty are assigned to instructor or desk jobs away from combat. Only a few _ the Army doesn’t keep track of exactly how many _ have returned to the war zone.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: There Ain’t No Handicapped Parking Spaces In The Sunni Triangle

PHILADELPHIA — The 14 plaintiffs — most from Mexico — worked for Rosenbaum-Cunningham International Inc., a Palm Beach, Fla.-based janitorial firm. In Philadelphia, the company placed workers in Dave and Buster’s Inc., the restaurant chain that has a popular waterfront outpost in the city.

Rosenbaum-Cunningham and three top executives were indicted this year in Michigan on federal charges they harbored illegal immigrants for profit and failed to pay the federal government more than $18 million in employment taxes. The charges are still pending.

The immigrants say they worked as many as 110 hours a week cleaning kitchens, washing floors and scrubbing toilets. Many were locked in at their work sites and most put in 11-hour days, seven days a week without breaks, their lawyers said.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Dark Side Of Jalapeno Poppers And Coors Light

[Photo by STEVE DUFALA]

Originally presented as a workshop performance at the 2002 Philly Fringe, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines was a runaway hit with standing-room only houses and an extended run. Newly reimagined and performed by original co-creators Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel and Geoff Sobelle, of Pig Iron Theatre Company, with rainpan 43 co-founder Trey Lyford, the play is a physical and comic send-up of America’s obsession with technology and security.

Through a unique blend of clowning and engineering, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines reveals the claustrophobic bunker of three paranoid brothers so fixated on protecting themselves from the outside world that they themselves become the objects of suspicion.

In an attempt to simplify their lives, they bury themselves in a cacophonous landslide of ingenious – if poorly made – machines. At the heart of the play are the ridiculously complex machines (created by Philly artists Steven Dufala and Billy Blaise Dufala, known for their 2005 Toilet Tricycle Race), based on cartoonist Rube Goldberg’s vision of technology and the equation: the most amount of effort to achieve the least amount of gain.

machines, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines from May 31^st through June 17^th at the Alter(ed) Garage at 818 Alter Street in South Philadelphia. Tickets are $20 to $25 and are available by calling (215) 531-3185 or visiting www.machinesmachinesmachines.com.

[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]
BY JEFF DEENEY “Today I saw…” is a series of nonfiction shorts based on my experiences as a caseworker serving formerly homeless families now living in North and West Philadelphia. I decided not long after starting the job that I was seeing so many fascinating and disturbing things in the city’s poorest neighborhoods that I needed to start cataloging them. I hope this bi-weekly column serves as a record of a side of the city that many Philadelphians don’t come in contact with on a daily basis. I want to capture moments not frequently covered by the local media, which tends to only cover the most fantastically violent or sordid aspects of life there.

TODAY I SAW an anti-drug and violence march headed south on Broad Street toward City Hall. It was a small contingent of protesters, maybe 200 black and Latin men and women on foot or hanging out of rolled-down car windows. At the front of the pack was an MC with a megaphone leading chants in Spanish. Behind him there were women holding banners bearing the names of the different community groups involved in the demonstration. The crowd swelled behind them to take up the entire southbound side of Broad Street’s four lanes. There were women with placards held up over their heads, slabs of white poster board with pictures of children, perhaps their sons or little brothers, who had been caught in cross fires. There were other placards bearing the faces of teenagers and grown men; without any context it was impossible to discern whether these were simple victims who walked into stray bullets or fallen street warriors who lived and died by the gun. In a couple minutes the parade had passed, the noise of the chanting and horn-honking demonstrators fading into the background.

I stopped in the corner bodega at Broad and Ridge for a can of soda. It’s a hole-in-the-wall Korean place that has a couple of metal racks with cheap, packaged 25-cent pastries stacked on them. There’s a counter on one side of the room with a tiny grill behind it, just big enough to fry a couple eggs and bacon strips. It’s manned by the husband while the wife works the register, mostly selling packs of generic cigarettes to the largely transient population flowing in from the two major homeless shelters within eyeshot.

The line wasn’t long but it was moving slowly — each transaction was being done through an intermediary, one of the Ridge shelter boys who was paying for everything with his Access card and collecting cash from patrons in exchange, even offering a dollar discount to those who were wary of his hustle.

This is the age-old ploy of exchanging food stamps for cash: Back in the days before Access cards there were black market brokers who stood outside supermarkets and welfare offices on the first of the month, snatching up stamps for 50 cents on the dollar from the drug addicted and those who needed emergency cash. The broker took the stamps to a shop owner who had a redemption certificate; the shop owner cashed in the stamps, kept a little and paid out the rest to the broker who made a nice profit. By issuing Access cards, the state hoped to crack down on this kind of wholesale fraud. Each Access card is attached to an individual account with a PIN number, just like a bank card. This made selling bulk stamps far more difficult, but it made bothersome individual incidents like this more frequent. In the ghetto, you’re almost guaranteed to get hassled at the corner store by an Access card-wielding dope fiend on the first of the month.

When I got to the front of the line with my soda the dope fiend said, “Hey, let me get that for you with my stamps?” He moved towards the debit card processor without waiting for an answer. I stopped him; I said I was in a rush and didn’t have time. He looked personally offended as I handed the single dollar to the Korean woman behind the counter. As she took it from me she rolled her eyes, as if to say, “Do you see what I have to put up with?”

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeff Deeney is a freelance writer who has contributed to the City Paper and the Inquirer. He focuses on issues of urban poverty and drug culture. He is also a caseworker with a nonprofit housing program that serves homeless families.

FRESH AIR

The 60th Cannes Film Festival drew more than 4,000 journalists, so it’s possible you’ve heard a little something about the hits and misses there. Michael Moore screened a damning documentary about the U.S. health-care system, while singer Norah Jones made her acting debut in a film from Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai. Critic-at-large John Powers reports on other high- and low-lights.

RADIO TIMES

Finding humor when everyone thinks you’re a terrorist. We’ll talk with one of the founding members of the Axis of Evil comedy group, and one of their regular guest comedians. MAZ JOBRANI, is an Iranian-American who along with an Egyptian-American and Palestinian-American founded the comedy team that highlights their post 9/11 status as everyone’s worst nightmare, a terrorist. We’ll also hear from DEAN OBEIDALLAH, who appears as a regular special guest with Axis of Evil. Obeidallah is the co-founder of the annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival.

WORLD CAFE

Tim Finn has been writing charming, piano-driven pop and rock music for nearly three decades, both as a solo act and as leader of the new-wave/art-rock band Split Enz. Born in New Zealand, Finn was influenced by the classic sounds of British Invasion bands like the Beatles and Kinks.

SPLIT ENZ: I Got You

J,
I’m sure you knew what I was gonna say before you even opened the email, but that shit is in poor taste.These gifs provide a very cheap shock, and it’s the cheapness and casualness that I believe underscores both of our points. I understand that you are trying to put a shocking face on violence in Philadelphia because you think it’s being ignored to a certain extent. However, it comes off as childish and unthinking because of its comic nature and the ease and frequency with which you put up those types of graphics. Your motives are unclear and it comes off as a gimmick. Furthermore, this sort of thing lessens the impact you can have with any sort of shock when the effect would be valuable and necessary. This just comes off as insulting to anybody who has ever been affected by violence, myself included.

MICHAEL FICHMAN*
Center City

Fich,

Thought I might hear from you. Please understand that I put a lot of thought into where the line is and how to get as close as possible without going over. I’m not just looking for cheap shock value. The Zapruder Film GIF was over the line — and I’m glad you pointed that out to me. (Hell, the whole goddamn assassination was over the line, but that’s another discussion) However, while I hear what you are saying — and realize you are especially raw about this right now — I don’t think that this one crosses the line. If it were bloody — even fake bloody — or somebody really being killed, I would agree with you. But I happen to think this GIF perfectly illustrates the revolving door/conveyor belt nature of these crimes. If people feel something other than complacency when they read the latest homicide statistic, then I feel like I did my job. I think that discomfort is actually people’s conscience reminding them that they are human and this is obscene.

best,

JONATHAN VALANIA
Editor-In-Chief

*Michael Fichman writes the POP IN TAPE column for Phawker, and blogs at Just Sayin’.