Phawker

BY EVA LIAO — BEIJING, CHINA — On the day we fly to the Republic Of China, my father and I meet my mother at Chiang Kai-Shek Airport, where she is flying in from the U.S. (Click here to get the backstory on my mom) When she arrives, it’s obvious my mom’s already drunk. It’s 8 a.m. While we’re standing in a very long, very static check-in line, my mother and I decide to make a trip to the bathroom. Before I’m even able to pull my pants down, I hear the distinctive click and woosh of a can tab cracked open, followed by an unmistakable fizzling sound coming from the stall next to mine. A loud fizzy sound. I stand up on my toilet seat and look over the divider to see my mother sitting on the toilet with her with her underwear around her ankles, drinking a can of Coors Light. I don’t know if I’m more embarrassed by the time, the place or her choice of beer.

*

I ask her what the fuck she thinks she’s doing and she gives me a guiltless shrug. I sneer in disgust, jump off the toilet seat and tell her to hurry the fuck up. The group of women waiting in line watch my back as I storm out of the bathroom. Later on, as we’re approaching security, I remind my mom that airports now have a no-liquid law. She nods, but I can’t tell if she’s heard me. Not surprisingly, when her purse goes through the x-ray, she’s told to stop. The security guard digs into her oversized, Mary Poppins-esque purse and pulls out not one, not two, but three cans of beer. The whole line in stopped, watching of course, and I’m standing there positive that the flames radiating off my cheeks are palpable. They run the bag through the x-ray again, and again the conveyor belt stops. I can’t tell if the security guard is annoyed or amused, but I’m guessing both. He pulls out one last Coors Light from her bag and finally, we’re able to go. I don’t talk to my mom for the remainder of the flight, which is fine because she passes out in two seconds anyway.

PREVIOUSLY ON THE TAO OF EVA: The Motorcycle Diaries

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: Phawker Assisstant Editor EVA LIAO is currently visiting family and friends along the Pacific Rim. TAO OF EVA is a collection of her semi-regular dispatches back to the home office.

BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up valuable nanoseconds that can now be better spent roughing up the suspect over at Suicide Girls or what have you. Every week we pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey caramel center each edition. Why? Because we like you.
ON THE COVER

CITY PAPER: Gettin’ Fringe-y With It, also known as an exhaustive (no fewer than eight separate pieces, plus picks within picks within picks) guide to and preview of the Live Arts/Fringe Festival, kicking off this weekend. I’m already looking forward to “Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical” and “Wawapalooza,” which sounds like a bit like a live-action, South Jersey version of Kevin Smith’s entire filmography. Also, look for “Sonic Dances,” described as “something of a public art tour wherein your guides are sinewy waifs decked out in iPods and speakers who do cryptic interpretive dances about art, government and civics.” Man, I can’t wait until the homeless dudes in City Hall Plaza get a load of that.

PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: Curtis Jones Jr. hasn’t even officially been elected to the 4th District City Council seat yet, but he’s already made a significant contribution to the city’s political vocabulary with one word: solutionary.

After 15 years at PCDC, Jones says he’s learned what the city does well, what it can do better and what it fails at miserably.

“But the folks in City Council, a lot of them don’t get it,” he says. “I don’t think they get the urgency—not at all. And that’s one reason I decided to run. I believe I have something to offer. I’m not a status quo guy. I’m a solutionary.

Best I can tell, from Kia Gregory’s profile of the guy about to take over Mike Nutter’s old job, a solutionary is a person who’s been a city political insider for most of his life, came up with Chaka Fattah, done most jobs in city government-type work except hold elected office, etc. etc. who’s going to use all that accumulated inside knowledge of how the status quo operates in Philadelphia to . . . take it in a new direction? Well, he’s not Carol Campbell, at least.

INSIDE THE BOOK:

PW: Former Inky columnist Steve Lopez isn’t even finished writing his next book and it’s already headed for the Tinseltown treatment! Somehow this news does not fill us with righteous indignation, the way a similar announcement did. Doug Wallen “bro[s] down” with the A-Sides about their new record; PW has the lowdown on holy humor at the Fringe — hello, “Heebs In The House”? These people know from funny!

CP: Woah, it’s another A-Sides Q&A, with deets on The Hills, the farm, the show tonight, etc. etc. See you there. You know, whenever I’m having a bad day or feeling less than fabulous, it helps to spend a little bit of time with I Love You, I Hate You, where spurned lovers come to call out two-timers, family dramz come home to roost and some women are not to be trifled with. It’s funny to listen to a.d. amorosi write about “freaks.” Haha . . . oh wait, it was the American Idol tryouts. He’s right: Freaks.

WINNER: CP, for the hot naked guy on the cover and the number of one-liners in the “Idol” story worth ripping off.

FRESH AIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Robert Plant is the former lead singer of the band Led Zeppelin, one of the most influential pioneers of heavy metal music. Plant was born in West Bromwich but grew up in Halesowen, formerly Worcestershire, now part of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. He left school in his mid-teens and developed a strong passion for the blues, abandoning a promising career as a chartered accountant to become part of the Midlands blues scene.^[1] His early blues influences included artists such as Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, Jerry Miller and Sleepy John Estes. Plant did various jobs whilst pursuing his music career, one of which was working for the major British construction company Wimpey in Birmingham in 1966 laying tarmac on roads. He also worked at Woolworths in Halesowen town for a short period of time. He cut three obscure singles on CBS Records ^[2] and sang with a variety of bands, including The Crawling King Snakes, which brought him into contact with drummer John Bonham. They both went on to play in the Band of Joy, merging blues with newer psychedelic trends. Though his early career met with no commercial success, word quickly spread about the “young man with the powerful voice”. [via WIKIPEDIA]
ALSO, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, two of the original members of the band Aerosmith, talk about the group’s long and spectacular run. Starting in the 1970s, the band had such hits as “Dream On,” “Walk This Way,” and “Sweet Emotion.” Tyler and Perry also became famous for their drug and alcohol abuse, earning the nickname the toxic twins. Drugs, sex and self destruction were a part of their image, and part of their attraction. In 1997 the band collaborated on the book Walk This Way which traced their rise from the music scene in New England.

RADIO TIMES

Hour 1
Philadelphia theater adaptation of Shakespeare’s Isabella. This production features a mortician who stages a play using nude actors playing corpses. We’ll talk with members of the Pig Iron Theater Company, DAN ROTHENBERG director of Isabella, CHARLES CONWELL who plays the mortician, and LISI STOESSEL the associate set designer/makeup designer for Isabella. Isabella opens Friday night and will continue through September 15 at the ICE BOX Projects Space in Philadelphia. Isabella is showing as part of this year’s Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

Hour 2

JONATHAN LETHEM’s new book is You Don’t Love Me. Through the story of a struggling LA Band, Lethem explores the creative process and the question of “who owns art?” He joined us to talk about it, his other novels, and the launching of his Promiscuous Material Project which encourages other artists to share his material. This is a rebroadcast, so tune in but don’t call in! Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

THE WORLD CAFE

The New York based band White Rabbits visit David Dye on the World Café to play some songs from their debut album, Fort Nightly. This sextet’s lineup includes two drummers, producing a sound driven by their bold, hard-hitting rhythm. Hints of big band grooves, reggae vibes, and afro-beat hold down the foundation under piano and obscure lyrics. Fort Nightly is as fascinating as it is refreshing.
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE: White Rabbit

The Japanese Fountains Of Wayne?

Police are investigating four different murders that occurred in Philadelphia Wednesday. So far, there is no one in custody for any of them.

Around 8am, police found a 28-year-old woman dead at 524 West Hill Creek Drive, in the Hill Creek Housing Complex in the Crescentville section of the city. Investigators aren’t sure if she was shot or stabbed.

At about 10:30am, police responded to Conlyn Street, near Old York Road in the Fern Rock section, where they found a 30-year-old woman dead from multiple stab wounds.

The third victim died just after 2pm at the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania. He had been shot at 23rd and Morris Streets in South Philadelphia at 12:44 in the afternoon.

And a fourth person was found dead about 2:30 pm, a man in his 30s, shot in the head near north 16th and West Cabot Streets in north Philadelphia. [via KYW]

FEDERAL SPENDING ON KATRINA RECOVERY: $94 Billion
FEDERAL SPENDING ON WAR IN IRAQ: $447 Billion

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The average CEO of a large U.S. company made roughly $10.8 million last year, or 364 times that of U.S. full-time and part-time workers, who made an average of $29,544, according to a joint analysis released Wednesday by the liberal Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. In 1989, for instance, U.S. CEOs of large companies earned 71 times more than the average worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: Patients seeking an appointment with a dermatologist to ask about a potentially cancerous mole have to wait substantially longer than those seeking Botox for wrinkles, a study published online yesterday by The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology said.

Researchers reported that dermatologists in 12 cities offered a typical wait of eight days for a cosmetic patient wanting Botox to smooth wrinkles, compared with a typical wait of 26 days for a patient requesting evaluation of a changing mole, a possible indicator of skin cancer. MORE

A military jury recommended a reprimand Wednesday for the only officer court-martialed in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, sparing him any prison time for disobeying an order to keep silent about the abuse investigation.

The jury had acquitted Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan a day earlier of all three charges directly related to the mistreatment of detainees at the U.S.-run prison in Iraq.

Those acquittals absolved Jordan, 51, [pictured right, with arm around son] of responsibility for the actions of 11 lower-ranking soldiers who have already been convicted for their roles at Abu Ghraib. The allegations surfaced after the release of photographs showing U.S. soldiers grinning alongside naked detainees held in humiliating positions at the prison.

Jordan was convicted of a single charge: disobeying a general’s order not to discuss the abuse investigation. The defense conceded that Jordan e-mailed a number of soldiers [and tipped them off] about the investigation after meeting with Maj. Gen. George Fay in spring 2004. The reprimand was the lightest sentence the jury could have recommended.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Thank God The Evil-Doers Were Held Accountable And Justice Was Served, The Stain Of Atrocity Was Removed From U.S. Armed Forces And The Islamic World’s Faith In American Truth, Justice And Decency Has Been Restored — No Wait, NONE Of Those Things Happened!

BY DAN DELUCA OF THE INQUIRER For me, growing up an hour down the Garden State Parkway in Ventnor, Asbury Park was a place to escape to, a destination where there was a music scene, unlike the rest of the culturally barren Jersey Shore. We made pilgrimages to the still-active Stone Pony in hopes of catching a Springsteen pop-in. Sometimes, we hit the jackpot. Others, all we got was Gary U.S. Bonds.

But when I drove there on a hot Sunday afternoon in July – stopping on the way into town at what seemed like the loneliest Starbucks in the world – I saw the same Asbury that Eric Mencher captures in these photos, the same one Springsteen wrote about in “My City of Ruins,” with a handful of people on the beach, a spooky stillness in the air.

All shore towns have a touch of sadness about them, because summer is forever ending, and good times disappear along with it. So looking out at forlorn empty lots and an all-but-abandoned boardwalk in Asbury in high season can be doubly heartbreaking.

[photo by ERIC MENCHER/PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER]

Woo-Hoo!