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ON MAGNOLIA MOUNTAIN: Ryan Adams, Fillmore at the TLA, Last Night

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER For all intents and purposes, Ryan Adams is the Paris Hilton of indie rock — you just can’t bring yourself to not look, or more accurately, listen. As such, the messy-haired alt-country heartthrob has become a polarizing figure.

THE CASE AGAINST: Hoo-boy. Adams came to fame, or some variation of it, on the heels of the messy collapse of his first band, the insurgent country pioneers Whiskeytown. With the exception of his breakthrough solo debut, Heartbreaker, Adams’ recorded output has been both maddeningly prolific and wildly inconsistent, with true gems often lost in the clutter of semi-precious stones.

He is an inveterate scene-maker — last seen rubbing himself up against the Strokes, back when a little of their cool-by-association actually meant something — invariably seen grinning crookedly in a skinny T-shirt, his patented bedhead hair in precise disarray, behind the velvet rope at the buzz band-du-jour show of the week, usually accompanied by some indie model/actress arm candy. It is there that he will usually announce his plans to release five albums with three different bands in seven different languages, or some such — all subject to the whims of chemical change, of course.

Invariably, each new album is accompanied by a cycle of painfully self-absorbed confessional interviews during which Adams publicly rides the see-saw of sin and redemption. Just kicked: speedballs, a potent intravenous cocktail of heroin and cocaine. Also, alcohol.

THE CASE FOR: It has been my experience that Ryan Adams the live performer renders all the above moot, as was the case Thursday night when Adams performed with his band The Cardinals at the way-sold out Fillmore at the TLA. Performing stone-cold sober — I have it on good authority that backstage was bone-dry as per the recently clean-and-sober Adams’ instructions — behind a pair of dark sunglasses, Adams and his band played the entire show seated in a semi-circle.

Drawing liberally from his more-recent back catalog — namely 2005’s Grateful Dead-indebted Cold Roses and the new and maddeningly inconsistent Easy Tiger – Adams and Co. performed impeccably, recreating the twanged sonics and down-from-the-mountain harmonies of the recordings. In the past, Adams proved incapable of editing himself, seemingly releasing everything and anything. Perhaps due to his new-found clarity, he finally seems to be able to separate his wheat from his chaff.

Opening with a stellar reading of “A Kiss Before I Go,” the lilting Gram Parsons hat tip from Jacksonville City Nights, and closing with the haunted folkadelia of “I See Monsters” from Love Is Hell, Adams seems intent on actually putting his money where his mouth, or more accurately his mug, usually is — front and center. And, as became abundantly clear Thursday night, the music is ready for its close-up.

[photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]

“In today’s policing environment, Johnson made a mistake. He hung around too long. You can’t do that anymore.

“What went wrong?” asked Gibbons. “Loyalty.” Johnson, Gibbons said, is too loyal to Mayor Street, who insiders say keeps Johnson as a buffer between his two-term administration and negative publicity over crime.

Those closest to Johnson hold several more theories: “He creates a lot of controversy,” said C.B. Kimmins, an anti-drug activist and Johnson friend. “It is not for something he is doing. It is for something he is not doing. He is not demonstrative. He is not bravado. People say, ‘He can’t be that humble. He must be a phony. . . .’ I think he is a victim of his personality.”

Aaron Johnson said his father is neither a politician nor a fan of the camera. Just a “cop’s cop.”

Still Johnson’s legacy is tainted by a murder rate that has crept up during the last three years. His department, like others across the country, is stretched thin due to a bevy of federal budget cuts. His officers face an overwhelming number of dangerous repeat offenders.

DAILY NEWS: A Must-Read If You Truly Want To Understand The Dense Matrix Of Class, Race, And Politics That Has Created Our Current Murder Epidemic
RELATED: Thug Tries To Kill Cop, Shoots His Own Balls Off Instead [DN]

“KUDOS TO THE Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus for stepping up and standing firm on the need for common sense gun laws in the state. In an act of courage rarely seen in Harrisburg, some caucus members Wednesday threatened to stonewall the state budget unless Harrisburg reconsidered its indifference to the lax gun laws that contribute to the bloodshed in the city. We understand that the gun violence in the commonwealth’s cities is far from the concerns of more rural parts of the state. But reasonable laws can benefit everyone – and that includes Rep. Jewell Williams’ bill that would require gun owners to report lost or stolen guns within 24 hours of noticing them missing. That bill was shot down in a surprise committee vote on Wednesday. One lawmaker voting against it reflected the illogic of the gun lobby by reportedly saying it would place an “undue burden” on gun owners.” [DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL]

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007, directed by Len Wiseman, 130 minutes, U.S.)
ANGEL-A (2005, directed by Luc Besson, 91 minutes, France)

BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC

Making the phrase “Yippie-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker” safe for the PG-13 world, aging smart-aleck Bruce Willis returns after a 12 year hiatus from the franchise that made him a movie star with Live Free Or Die Hard (or Die Hard 4, but who’s counting?). Unlike Stallone with last year’s Rocky Balboa, Willis doesn’t seem quite as desperate to claw his way back to megaplex screens yet before he disappears into a career as a funny middle-aged character actor Willis correctly guessed it was time for his cowboy cop John McClane to haul out his one-man terrorist busting act for another go around while he still has knees springy enough to leap away from raging fireballs. “You’re a Timex in a digital world McClane” the villain sneers at our bleeding hero, alluding to the fact that this lone man against a super gang formula has lost the blockbuster battle to assorted C.G.I. netherworlds but Die Hard‘s male-fueled fantasy of gun-toting, mayhem-unleashing adventure seems every bit as sturdy as the unkillable Bond franchise.

And what is McClane except an American Bond, using toughness, quick-thinking and sarcastic rejoinders to foil the ridiculously complicated plots of mad super-geniuses intent on ruling and/or destroying the world. And like Bond the Die Hard franchise is not about following a progressing saga film to film, it’s about throwing McClane into a the same improbable situation and watching him punch and shoot his way out. So while nothing that happens is a surprise (and I’ll spare you a synopsis of it’s techno-terrorist plot) it’s the little details that are telling.

(more…)

BY ED KING ROCK SNOB I’m finding that one unexpected part of the aging process is reliving every half-decent pop culture trend of my youth. Musically, I feel stuck in some prepubescent summer of ’74 pool jukebox rut of pleasant mediocrity. It makes sense. This is the era when major-label releases of surprisingly interesting material could fly under the radar, get tossed into the cheapest bins at used record stores — you know, the ones that sit on a table in the sun, dog-eared covers and missing inner sleeves be damned — and await the adoption of a hopeful, budget-conscious rock nerd. A lot of great albums which otherwise would have been lost to the ages have been discovered through this process, such as Big Star’s #1 Record, which beginning in 1980 or so made its way from the sun-baked bargain bins of used record stores to the vaunted wall slot, reserved for overpriced collector’s items. Today, countless bands have sprouted from the hopes of stumbling across the next 25-cent copy of a forgotten late-period Association or Roy Wood album. This brings me to the latest from The Clientele and The Polyphonic Spree.

God Save The Clientele answers the question, “What would The Monkees’ Davy Jones sound like fronting an indie pop band in 2007?” The opener “Here Comes the Phantom” must buckle the knees of modern-day Marcia Bradys. The indie pop scene has been working toward the fulfilling the wish that Bread actually released more than three great soft-pop songs for years. Think of all the quarters spent at used record stores in hopes of scoring that one great Bread album. The Clientele manage to turn out a whole album that sounds as good as those three good Bread songs. “I Hope I Know You” and “Isn’t Life Strange” sound as if Elvis Costello spent a few weeks writing with David Gates himself to achieve this bargain-bin fantasy. Hell, I’m almost willing to think that Bread really were America’s answer to The Zombies all over again.

The Polyphonic Spree, that 40-piece collective of brightly colored robes and Kool Aid-sipping marching band freaks, sets itself a tougher task on The Fragile Army, trying — once more — to marry the symphonic pomp of ELO to the feel-better sentiments of landmark ’70s self-help tome “I’m OK, You’re OK.” The results are as muddy and unsatisfying as the many Roy Wood and Wizzard albums I’ve dropped a quarter on in hopes of finding one more whacked-out gem like “Boulders.” Like the worst of George Harrison’s solo works, instrumental breaks are constructed not so much to highlight expressive flights of musicality but to allow for the shimmying and hand-raising of all those robed backing singers. Damn flutes flutter at every given opportunity! Some songs, like “Younger Yesterday,” start out perfectly cool, before being bogged down by up-with-life platitudes. Hey, I love life as much as the guy in the chartreuse robe, but how about giving the song itself some life?

Other tracks, like “We Crawl,” treads the depressingly fine line of demarcation between Eno and Styx. Before I wrote this, I went back and listened to some ELO albums, a Queen album, and the one-man recordings of Wood and Todd Rundgren. Do 40 musicians really contribute to the sound and ideas of The Polyphonic Spree, or am I correct in thinking their records sound smaller and shorter on ideas than any of a half-dozen Elephant 6 releases made by a fraction of the musicians? “Too much of nothing,” sang Bob Dylan, “can make a man feel ill at ease.” Or to put it another way: when more is less, size no longer matters.

The Polyphonic Spree perform tonight at the Fillmore at the TLA

Fabulously awful, with love from TOMMY ZANE. Happy Pride, y’all.

[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 Mona’s crew giving out lunches to the kids on the block. The lunches are part of the Summer Food Service Program, a city initiative that’s meant to provide free meals and recreational activities during summer recess. Mona and her crew do provide lunches sporadically; black plastic containers divided into sections like TV dinners. In the container are two pieces of white bread, a plastic cup containing peanut butter and jelly, and what looks like either applesauce or maybe vanilla pudding, it’s hard to tell. Yesterday there were no lunches, only an Igloo cooler with juice boxes on ice. The street was roped off for lunch anyway; I suppose it will be for the rest of the summer between the hours of 10 and 4, but of course it doesn’t much matter. The addicts who come here to cop bags are locals on foot. I figure the whole setup is an elaborate front that keeps cops off the block. At least today there were actually lunches.

Since it’s roped off, I have to park on Allegheny now and walk the length of the block to get to my client’s house. Regularly walking the worst block in the city from end to end is a profound experience. From this vantage I see dried piles of feces left by the feral cats and dogs who seem to skulk everywhere. The piles are dried and hard, swarming with flies that rise up and buzz around my face when I walk past. There is shattered glass everywhere, and I don’t mean the little cubes that fall from a smashed car window. These are long and jagged pieces of glass from house windows hit with projectiles. In fact, on their first day here someone threw a brick through my client family’s front window. Welcome to Kensington. Nobody on the block knows who threw the brick, though the adjacent stoops are mobbed with people day and night. I think the neighbors were jealous because they saw me carrying in bags of groceries that weren’t for them.

The word on the surrounding blocks is that here the dealers like to toss quarter-sticks of dynamite into the unoccupied homes for kicks. This sounded like neighborhood apocrypha to me, but lo and behold, the next day a window was missing from the house next to my client, there was more jagged glass on the sidewalk and a look inside the empty house showed scorch marks on the carpet.

The heat has turned this narrow block into a furnace, and every family is outside on their stoop as I walk past. Very few people here work. Young Latin mothers blast salsa and reggaeton from living room stereos while their children play on the dirty sidewalk barefoot, wearing nothing but diapers. They don’t speak English and won’t make eye contact with me. The black families won’t either. They blast rap music from boom boxes in second-story windows. I keep walking and see more children in diapers tiptoeing around the shattered glass and dried cat shit. The only one who says hello to me is the old head who likes to drink malt liquor from a brown bag for breakfast and is always perched on my client’s steps when I arrive. He’s nice enough; he jumped up to move when he saw me and we exchanged niceties about the heat before I disappeared inside.

On my way out I saw a little Latin boy toting his black plastic box lunch. I walked back to my van through the music and heat and sweat, past the children in diapers and dead-eyed drug addicts and thought to myself this street is like a shanty town in the West Indies. It’s a slice of the Third World knotted into the fabric of America.

The hopelessness of it all is unbearable.

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.

BY AMY Z. QUINN I’m crediting the locally-grown young plants we installed in May, but this week we harvested the first tomatoes from the backyard garden — not huge, but warm and burnished to a ruby red thanks to this weather. Just a handful now, but hopefully a harbinger of love apples to come. The first one was brought along on a play date to the home of our friend Lil’Z and his moms, Miz B, a woman who understands that the season’s first tomato and a bowl of egg salad are the best kind of hostess gifts.

We ate that ‘mater for lunch, thick crimson wheels atop herbed egg salad on gorgeous Russian bread; poor Lil’Z, not old enough for such foods, shot us dirty looks while contenting himself with YoBaby and Puffs. The egg salad was studded with flat-leaf parsley and dill, also from the Jerz Garden, and was delicious but unfortunately arrived during my own son’s current “Eww, yucky green things” phase, so he had PB&J. His loss.When we finished the sandwiches, we sliced the rest of it down and ate it greedily, like a dessert of tomato cookies sweetened with earth and sun.

So where am I going with all this? When it swelters, forget cozying up to friends who have pools out back. Find one with a halfway decent garden, and you’ll really be hooked up. Just remember: Keep the herbs in a glass of water in your fridge, and keep that tomato away from the fridge until after it’s cut. If this heat and humidity keep up, a week or so from now the tomato crops will start bumpin’, so it’s good to have a stockpile of ideas for what to do with all of nature’s (or your friend’s) largess. The absolute best thing to do with a good tomato, of course, is as little as possible — being a fruit, tomatoes work best in low-fi applications. But here are some other ideas:

COLD FOODS

* Obviously, there’s the sammich and its endless possibilities;
* Caprese Salad: Romaine, slices of tomato, a few torn basil leaves, maybe some chopped red onion and a few hunks of fresh mozzarella. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and pause to thank your deity/higher power of choice.
* Use seeded, chopped Roma tomatoes (the little pear-shaped ones) and whatever fresh herbs you like to make salsa, bruschetta topping or gazpacho;

HOT FOODS

* Layer half-moon shaped slices of tomato with herbs and cheese in an omelet;
* Top a pan of mac’ n cheese with sliced tomatoes before baking;
* If you’re looking to make fresh pasta sauce, stay away from slicing tomatoes like Beefsteaks and Big Boys. Roma tomatoes are the ticket.
* Hollow out a larger tomato (fist-sized or larger), fill it with a starch like cooked cous cous, rice or orzo mixed with feta cheese and herbs, and bake at 350 until the flesh of the tomato is tender, about 30 minutes.

Got favorite uses for a tomato? Let’s hear ‘em. Email AmuseBouche215@gmail.com.

KYW is reporting that Mayor John Street is third in line at the AT&T store on 16th just south of Market.

He has been waiting on line since 3:30 a.m., despite heavy downpours, and will remain so until 6 p.m. when the Dave Matthews tickets heavily-hyped iPhone finally becomes available for purchase. His aides will be bringing all paperwork to him to sign in line, he says.

He has a few events today, he says, and somebody will be holding his place in line while he attends. And then it’s back in line.
“Mr. Mayor, with all due respect,” says KYW reporter Mike DeNardo, “this is a little geeky.”

“Well, we live in kind of a geeky little world,” says Street.

Word.

(SiCKO, Directed by Michael Moore, 113 min. USA)

BY JONATHAN VALANIA EDITOR
As Michael Moore declares over the kind of gallows-humored opening montage that has since become his trademark, SiCKO, his invasive procedural on the American health care system, is not about the 50 million uninsured people in the richest country in the world, or the estimated 18,000 who die each year because they can’t afford to seek care. Nor is this film about the fact that the United States’ health care system is the 37th best in the world (woo-hoo!), right behind Slovenia. No, this film is about the winners and the happy-enders, the 250 million Americans who have health insurance and not a care in the world. Or so they think.

The first third of the film is a sad parade of health insurance hard-luck stories: The insured 50-something couple, so exhausted physically and financially by battles with cancer and heart disease that they had to sell their house and move into their daughter’s spare room. The insured women with cervical cancer who has to sneak across the Canadian border get the treatments her U.S. provider won’t approve because she is simply “too young to have cervical cancer.” The women knocked unconscious in a wicked car accident who is later informed that the life-saving ambulance trip would not be paid for by her insurer because the unconscious women did not approve the ambulance before it took her away. There is the man whose life could have been saved by a $500,000 procedure, but his wife’s health insurer refused to pay for it — even after she requested a meeting with the board of trustees and literally begged them to save her husband’s life. He died three months later. Then there’s the three-year-old with the dangerously high fever whom the Emergency Room staff refused to treat because her mother’s insurers insisted that the girl be taken to an “in-network” hospital for treatment. She died in the ambulance.

OK, you say, but those are just people that fell through the cracks and Moore, in classic fashion, is exaggerating these exceptions and misrepresenting them as the norm. Not necessarily, says a guy whose job used to be to comb through the insurance applications of the insured and look for any technicality that could be used to deny payment and cancel policies of anyone making a claim. “You’re not slipping through; somebody made the crack and swept you in it,” he says. There is also the riveting Congressional testimony of a physician who once served as a medical advisor to a major HMO. She could no longer continue, she said, when the company started offering six-figure bonus incentives for the doctor who could save the company the most money, and it became clear that the more care you denied the more money you would make. She is pretty sure, she told the committee, that at least one policy-holder died as a result of her denying care.

How did this happen, you ask? How did the health care system become about restricting medical care instead of dispensing it? Why, Richard Nixon, of course. Moore plays a Feb. 17, 1971 recording of an Oval Office conversation between Nixon and aide John Ehrlichman about “Edward Kaiser’s Permanente thing” and their “new” way of running health care as a for-profit concern.

John Ehrlichman: “On the … on the health business …”

President Nixon: “Yeah.”

Ehrlichman: “… we have now narrowed down the vice president’s problems on this thing to one issue and that is whether we should include these health maintenance organizations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing. The vice president just cannot see it. We tried 15 ways from Friday to explain it to him and then help him to understand it. He finally says, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll work, but if the President thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll support him a hundred percent.’”

President Nixon: “Well, what’s … what’s the judgment?”

Ehrlichman: “Well, everybody else’s judgment very strongly is that we go with it.”

President Nixon: “All right.”

Ehrlichman: “And, uh, uh, he’s the one holdout that we have in the whole office.”

President Nixon: “Say that I … I … I’d tell him I have doubts about it, but I think that it’s, uh, now let me ask you, now you give me your judgment. You know I’m not to keen on any of these damn medical programs.”

Ehrlichman: “This, uh, let me, let me tell you how I am …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”

President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”

Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”

President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

In 1973, Richard Nixon signed the HMO Act, ushering in the modern era of American health care. Today, Kaiser-Permanente is the largest HMO in the U.S.

The film’s middle third is a globe-trotting tour of socialized medicine wherein Moore compares and contrasts the U.S. with England (the National Health takes care of everyone and doctors live in million-dollar homes in London), France (number one health care system in the world where the doctors make house calls day or night, cheerfully, and government-paid nannies come by a couple times a week to help with the house work and do the laundry for mothers of newborns) and Canada.

For Canada, Moore plays a very sly trick. He interviews an elderly Canadian couple who tell him they applied for special insurance that would deliver them from the evil of the American health care system if, God forbid, something bad happened to either of them during their few-hour trek across the border to talk to Moore. Despite all the horror stories we have just witnessed about US medical care, we still laugh at this likable elderly couple who, like most elderly couples, feel very vulnerable in the world and protect themselves with irrational fears. It’s as if Moore is saying to us: Their fears of American health care are just as irrational as our fears of a Canadian-style health care system.

Actually, those two Canucks should be afraid, very afraid. Consider the unnamed American carpenter Moore interviews at the beginning of the film who accidentally sawed off his thumb and ring finger. Uninsured, the hospital offered him a deal: Put the thumb back on for $60,000 or the ring finger for $12,000 — with his family’s financial stability hanging in the balance, he went with the ring finger.

Arguably, no visual better illustrates the Darwinian barbarity of American health care than security cam footage of an ambulance dumping a disoriented homeless woman — still in her hospital gown, the name of the hospital cut off her hospital-issued ID bracelet — on LA’s Skid Row. Moore runs the footage in silent slo-mo and we watch the woman amble in a daze into oncoming traffic, the blurry film quality only adding to the pathos and teary-eyed verite of watching mankind at its lowest ebb. And it is then you come to grips with the cruel bargain we have struck: when health care becomes prohibitively expensive, life becomes increasingly cheap — until finally it’s worth nothing at all.

How else to explain the trio of 9/11 rescue volunteers who labored in the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center looking for survivors until they literally couldn’t breathe anymore, only to be denied care by the fund created by New York Gov. George Pataki to treat the scores of 9/11 volunteers who got sick? As Moore illustrates, while the 9/11 volunteers were quietly getting the shaft, the TV news reports were flush with images of Republican Congressmen visiting Gitmo and seeing first-hand the wonderful health care the prisoners receive. So basically, the guys who caused 9/11 — if you follow the administration’s logic — get unconditional access to top-flight medical care, but the people who tried to rescue survivors that day, well, they just might have to go without. Pow!

It is here that Moore, the great PT Barnum of the Left, stages a grand piece of political symbolism: He loads up a couple of boats with the three 9/11 rescuers and the woman who had to move into her daughter’s spare room and sets sail for Gitmo. It’s like a Cuban boatlift in reverse, taking our tired, our sick and our poor to a place more merciful. That winds up being a hospital in Havana — after Moore wisely decides against trying to navigate his way through the minefield that rings Guantanamo Bay — where all of Moore’s passengers are given the care they need gratis, courtesy of the people of Cuba. And so this tragic story has a happy ending, even for Moore, who is seen in the galumphing up the steps of the Capitol to get his laundry done as the credits roll.

And now a word about the haters: I know many, even those on the left, sneer at the mention of his name, but I happen to think Michael Moore is the greatest thing since Rush Limbaugh. Worst you can say about the guy is he’s spent a career trying to kid and cajole a country into recovering its founding principles. I suppose it’s because he always stacks the deck of facts so precariously in his films that the first reaction of every journalist is to is to try to tip it over. Here I am just minutes after seeing a Tuesday morning screening of Sicko, listening to some truth-squading NPR reporter call up his mom in Canada to dispute Moore’s claims about Canada’s national health system, which has covered every Canadian citizen since 1961. Moore’s film leaves the impression that there are no long lines or waiting lists North of the Border, but the radio reporter’s mom points out that she has been on a year-long waiting listed for a hip replacement. The reporter signs off, leaving behind the unspoken suspicion that if Moore is wrong about waiting rooms in Canada, what else is he wrong about?

Curiously, a similar campaign was launched to chip away at the legitimacy of Fahrenheit 9/11, when a vast right wing conspiracy array of talking heads rabidly gnawed at the film’s moorings in truth. They were like gremlins vandalizing Moore’s airborne dirigible, hoping to bring it down before it went Hindenburg all over the 2004 presidential election. By election day, the conventional wisdom was that Fahrenheit 9/11 was just a wacky left-wing conspiracy flick, a piece of a creative fiction intended to embarrass the President in an election year. And yet, Moore had the last laugh. Today, the basic premises of that film — that Bush was asleep at the switch on 9/11 and then exploited the disaster to tighten the reins of power, misused it to drag the country kicking and screaming into the black hole of Iraq and methodically stoked public fears of terrorism to win re-election — are no longer the province of the lunatic fringe (“the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic party”), but rather the conventional wisdom of the Great American Middle. Lord help the health care barons when this thing comes out on DVD and really starts to soak into the blue-lit living rooms of Middle America. If ever there was a populist cause that could turn the country into a angry mob of torch-wielding villagers, it’s access to health care. SiCKO is clean-burning fuel for that fire. Anybody got a light? GRADE A

New Census figures show Philadelphia has dropped to the sixth-largest city in America. It’s official: “Philadelphia is now the sixth-largest city in the US. It declined by about 8,000 people from 2005 to 2006.”

Census Bureau Demographer Greg Harper says after measuring births and deaths and people moving in and out, Phoenix has moved to the number-five city with 1.5 million residents ahead of Philadelphia’s 1.4 million.

What’s it all mean? Not much, says Temple University geography professor David Bartelt, who says people don’t judge a city by how big it is: “That’s not really the telling concern. Most people evaluate cities in terms of a broad range of characteristics: Livability, cultural attractions, and so forth.”

KYW: Size Only Matters To The Insecure — and Phoenix

[Image courtesy of PhillyHISTORY.org]

BY AMY Z. QUINN Uhh, remember what I said last week in this space about how the summer doldrums would be setting into the weekly newsrooms aaaaany second now? Well, faster than you can say “Buy me some peanuts and Crackerjack,” both weeklies launch a soft parade of warm fuzzy this week. Inside and out, they’re well-stocked with feel-good features (some of which taste good, too), but let’s start, as always, by judging the alt-weeklies by their covers:

OUT FRONT

Over at Philadelphia Weekly, my bud DMac not only gets the cover with a piece on the Phils’ inexorable march toward historical levels of loserishness, but it’s a damn cool one, with the mustard and the peanuts and all. And the story ain’t bad either, well-written and thoroughly reported. Losing Proposition

City Paper: There is no truth to the rumor that staring at this cover too long will actually turn you gay. We checked. Seriously, it’s like they raided Lance Bass’s bureau drawer — and why is the one guy picking his ass? I must avert my eyes. For The Shorties: Summer Book Quarterly

WINNER: PW, BY AN ATOMIC WEDGIE

INSIDE THE BOOK:

PW: Note to Boss Phawker: Consider padding staff with “a few incarcerated writers.” Liz Spikol isn’t afraid to admit she’s been glued to the Paris Hilton prison drama. I feel the same way except I don’t have a good excuse like working with the Pennsylvania Prison Society. Tim Whitaker’s Editor’s Note seems to spend an inordinate amount of time justifying the cover story and includes the obligatory “Dan McQuade is really like 8 years old!” line. But on the good side, it name-checks both Bruce Buschel’s Walking Broad book (which I am reading right now) and Bake McBride’s righteous ‘fro, so I ain’t mad.

CP: Out here in the sticks of Jersey, the farm stands are already full to bursting with the early harvest (you missed the asparagus). But like liquor on Sunday, fresh local produce is usually out of the reach of you cityfolk, unless you’re looking for overpriced fiddlehead ferns at Whole Foods or are lucky enough to have enough yard space to grow your own. Aaaaanyway, Will Dean fills us in on the Headhouse Farmers’ Market, which opens Sunday. Sam Adams reviews SiCKO; note to “Sterling”: Your ass is GRASS, dude.