Phawker

UPDATE: Nobody was hurt, and after the man, identified as Leeland Eisenberg of nearby Somersworth, was taken into custody, the police said he had nothing more than road flares taped to his chest. They would not discuss Mr. Eisenberg’s motive or mental state, but said he could face federal as well as state charges once the investigation was complete.[via NEW YORK TIMES/Photo by BRIAN SNYDER for REUTERS]

PREVIOUSLY: (CNN) — Two people are being held hostage by an armed man at Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, police said Friday. Emergency crews arrive at the office building in Rochester, New Hampshire, Friday. The man walked into the office at about 1 p.m., Maj. Michael Hambrook of the New Hampshire State Police told CNN affiliate WMUR-TV. Hambrook and Clinton campaign officials said two people were believed to be inside. Shortly before 2 p.m., police officers had taken positions across the street from the office, some kneeling behind police cruisers with guns drawn. Witnesses described the man as in his 40s with salt-and-pepper hair, WMUR reported. A woman and her baby were released by the hostage-taker, the woman told workers at a nearby business, according to the WMUR Web site. A witness, Lettie Tzizik, told WMUR she spoke to a woman shortly after she was released from the office by the hostage-taker. “A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, ‘You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,’” the Web site reported. MORE

BY AMY Z. QUINN 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 Thursday 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 of each edition. Why? Because we like you.

ON THE COVER

CITY PAPER: You know Brian Christinzio, even if you’ve never met the dude — or at least, that’s the feeling you get after reading the story of this past terrible, beautiful year in the life of the B.C. Camplight musician. Is he a musical craftsman, a hopeless hypochondriac or just . . . crazy? Or is that just another way of calling him a tormented genius? He doesn’t have ALS, or cancer, or any other of the life-threatening maladies he’s been convinced he’s had over the years, but he does have a music career taking off and a girlfriend who sounds strong and willing enough to stand by him:

Steph Vernacchio, his girlfriend and roommate (and friend for the past decade and a half — they met in grade school), was the one holding the camera. For the most part she keeps the shot tight and steady on his face, though she does zoom in at one point, slowly, until one huge eye takes up the entirety of the frame.

When the zoom can zoom no more, it lingers frustrated, like a dog at the end of its chain wanting to go farther, deeper, into the head of the man.

And she asks him questions.

How do you feel?

What did the doctor tell you today?

His answers are slow and muddled. He says he’s not well.

The tests today, the EMGs, reported no fasciculation.

“Right,” he replies.

Not anything. With that high-tech machine.

She did this several times, pointed the camera at her boyfriend at his absolute lowest. While Christinzio is in the kitchen, watching the screen, Steph is on the couch in the living room, rooting around in the camera bag for more tapes. Then she lets out a soft gasp and pulls out a small bottle of pills. It’s the Ativan she hid from Brian months ago. She clutches it in both hands and quietly darts past the kitchen doorway and up the stairs to find a new hiding spot for it.

(more…)

BY CARRIE RICKEY INQUIRER FILM CRITIC Much as I admire [the] performances, and much as I respect Haynes’ attempt to create something deeper than the standard movie biopic, I left the theater scratching my head, thinking, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There’s no there there.” It’s an enigmatic movie about an enigma — not unlike a boring song about boredom.

Thankfully, Haynes successfully avoids replicating the biopic’s standard arc of struggle/flameout/phoenix rising from ashes, the cliche of every VH-1: Behind the Music episode. While structurally ambitious, his six actors in search of one character — or actors representing different facets of one character — deny us the elemental pleasures of narrative buildup and catharsis.
[...]
I sympathize with those, including Haynes, who want more from a biopic than the predictable rhythms of fall-and-rise. But my hunch is that audiences will prefer the forthcoming lightweight biopic satire Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story to Haynes’ deep-dish ruminations. Thoughts? [via FLICKGRRL]

OUR THOUGHTS: As for the ‘there there’, or the lack thereof, the inscrutability is intentional, if not the whole point. So taking the film to task for being too ambiguous is like blaming the night for being too dark. Besides, does 2 + 2 always add up to 4 in real life? As for complaining that the film’s experimental structure denied you the ‘elemental pleasures of narrative build-up and catharsis’, well, that strikes us complaining that the Venus De Milo don’t have no arms. And besides, you’ll always have Ray and Walk The Line. Always. Lastly, your hunch that herd mentality audiences will always choose the path of least resistance? You are blowin’ our frickin’ mind with that bombshell, Carrie. Just to be clear: That was saracasm. Motion denied, next case!

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Having diversity in your diet is an often overlooked way to remain healthy. Within each food category lies a cornucopia of nutrient-rich foods. And each one of these foods contains hundreds of unique substances — the good, like antioxidants and phytonutrients, and the not-so-good toxins. By eating a diverse diet, you increase your chance of getting the good and decrease your chance of consuming too much of the bad.

Increase eating the good + Decrease eating the bad = Decrease your risk of disease.

Prehistoric peoples are thought to have dined on 1,500 different wild plants. And throughout history, humans we have consumed 80,000 different edible species, with 3,000 of those in widespread use. Shockingly, today we generally stick to eating just 30 different plants with only four – wheat, rice, corn and soybeans – accounting for 75% of our calories!

Think about it? How many different kinds of fruits did you eat this week? You did eat some fruit this week, right?

The number of unique foods you eat is the key to diversity. A study at the University of Utah showed that women who ate an assortment of different vegetables were at a 20 percent lower risk of colon cancer than women who ate the least diverse types of vegetables. That’s a huge benefit! But there are many more reasons to go diverse, taste and fun among them.

Seasonal eating is a good way to add diversity to your diet — and lucky for us, two great foods are at their peak right now: Cranberries, the local hero, and everybody’s favorite, Brussels sprouts! Shocker: Brussels sprouts and cranberries, not just for Thanksgiving.

Cranberries have popular appeal thanks to cranberry juice and dried cranberries cleverly marketed as Craisins. Brussels sprouts, unfortunately, have not been so lucky in the branding department. But that could all change, if only you know how to prepare them in the proper way.

The old school way was to boil the hell out of these cute vegetables that look like baby cabbages. Don’t do that. Sure, they’re densely textured, but they should be slightly crisp after cooking. You’ll be rewarded by their sunny, nutty flavor and miss out on the release of nasty sulfurous compounds that comes on only after over cooking.

Brussels sprouts (Yes they have been grown in Belgium since at least 1200 AD) are part of the mustard family. A very a distinctive looking plant growing about three feet tall, the sprouts grow in bunches of 20 to 40 along a thick stem.

You’ve all heard of antioxidants, substances in food that protect our bodies from damage on the cellular level. Well, what about indirect antioxidants, ever hear of them? Indirect antioxidants are substances, also found in food, that stimulate our body’s own natural defense systems. When you eat a food with an antioxidant, like vitamin C, you get a one-time boost from the antioxidants. And that’s nice. But if you eat a food, like Brussels sprouts, which contains glucosinolates, an indirect antioxidant or phytonutrient, you get a cascading effect of protection that will continue working to protect your cells for three to four days! Is that super cool or what!?!

Of course, there’s more.

(more…)

Located near 22nd and South, Ants Pants Café bustles and resonates with strange Australian catchphrases and the whoosh-bang of an overscheduled espresso bar. “Ants Pants” is Aussie vernacular for “the best” or the “it” thing of the moment, which explains why the walls are plastered with street maps of Sydney (co-owner Liz Fleming cut her teeth in the cafes of that city). Tables are a bit scarce on weekends, but for good reason, and take-out orders fly out the door as the morning becomes afternoon.

Ants Pants offers an array of traditional café pastries for $2 to $3. A five-dollar bill will buy you a decent-sized beverage and a quick eat. The “Quick Fix” menu offers an array of just that: egg and cheese on a roll, ham and brie sandwiches with tomato and avocado for about $4 to $6, with a drink. With a 10-spot and some free time, you can sit and enjoy the café’s famous Crème Brulee Battered French Toast, served in maple syrup and sour cream, or dill scrambled Eggs with feta for an eclectic taste (get with homemade potato chip fries — thinly sliced, by hand). Lunch is typically a couple bills more expensive. Sandwiches are served with a side dish and cost anywhere from five to eight bucks. The Lincoln Bite: the butter-drenched, crispy layered, chocolate croissant washed down with an iced espresso ($5). – COLLEEN REESE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: BILAL Press Release for Journalists

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Today over 1850 professional photographers and journalists from over 90 countries sent once again a petition to the U.S. Government demanding the imediate release of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein.

Bilal Hussein was detained by US Forces in Iraq on April 12, 2006, and has been held in prison ever since without charges. This week, the US Military informed The Associated Press that they plan to seek a criminal complaint against Bilal before an Iraqi court on Nov. 29.

Despite the fact that the US Army had said to media outlets that they have “irrefutable evidence” that Bilal is “a terrorist media operative” who had “infiltrated the AP” they won’t say what the charges are or what evidence will be presented.

We can only wonder why after holding Bilal for 19 months without charges they will not reveal to the AP defense lawyer the accusation or the evidence they feel so strongly about. Further, the US Army says that if the Iraqi justice system acquits him they could still throw Bilal back in jail.

A nearly 50-page report by former federal prosecutor Paul Gardephe on behalf of the AP and recently disclosed by the news agency concludes that there is no hard evidence for any of the allegations that the US Military has so far unofficially made about Bilal.

Considering the towering injustice committed against Bilal, we demand Bilal’s immediate release.

Among the signatories are Pulitzer Prize winners Al Diaz, David Leeson, Judy Walgren, Anja Niedringhaus, Alexander Zemlianichenko, Oded Balilty, Lucian Perkins, John Moore and Charles J. Hanley. Agency VII photographers Gary Knight and John Stanmeyer, Noor agency photographer Philip Blenkinsop and Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado have also signed the petition. The full list of signatures is available at www.freebilal.org

The petition, transcribed below, was first faxed on Oct. 12 to the State Department, the White House, the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Office of the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and to the Department of Justice.

More on Bilal’s incarceration, and links to news coverage of efforts to free him, can be found at www.freebilal.org

We would appreciate it if you would consider reporting on Bilal Hussein’s situation.

Free Bilal Committee

PREVIOUSLY: My Country Tis Of Thee?

[Hat tip to reader Gayle Hegland for posting this in comments]

Thousands of protesters, many brandishing clubs and swords, took to the streets of Sudan’s capital Friday, demanding the execution of a British teacher who let her students name a teddy bear Muhammad. Gillian Gibbons, 54, was found guilty Thursday of insulting Islam and sentenced to 15 days in jail. She was spared the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

That angered many in Khartoum, who rallied in Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace. Protesters waved sticks, knives, axes and swords.“Kill her, kill her by firing squad!” they chanted. “No tolerance, execution!”

Others shouted, “Shame, shame on the U.K.” A cleric at Khartoum’s main Martyrs Mosque claimed Gibbons had intentionally insulted the Muslim faith. “This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad,” Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri told worshippers at a Friday sermon. “Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan,” he said. MORE

*NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO! WHY? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU!

*Warning: Explicit language

[Photo source: Coffee & Cigarettes]

Jannie Gets Out The Way Of The Barnes Move, For $12 Million And Naming Rights
City Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell’s three-year holdout against moving the city’s youth detention facility to her West Philadelphia district paid off yesterday, as the city, state and school district announced plans for a $12 million community center named after her late husband. “This plan has been a long time coming, but the result was worth waiting for,” said Blackwell, who had refused to introduce legislation required for a new Youth Study Center at North 48th Street and Haverford Avenue without something “positive” for the community. The Youth center must move to make room for the city’s big prize – the building of a new museum to house the famed Barnes Foundation art collection, which is slated to move from its home in Merion. [via INQUIRER]

*

NUTTER BUTTER: Next Mayor Hires Ethics Czarinas To Slay Pay-To-Play
Mayor-elect Michael Nutter has chosen three women who prosecuted some of the recent City Hall corruption cases to be his lead “point people” on ethics. “We’re very serious about ending the pay-to-play culture, and the era of corruption that’s gone in this city for much too long” he said. Nutter chose assistant US attorney Amy Kurland to be his inspector general, and assistant US attorney Joan Markman will be his chief integrity officer. Both were involved in the corruption trial of John Street’s former treasurer, Corey Kemp. Nutter’s message was clear: “I want to make sure that some of the things that have happened over the past few years never happen again.” [via KYW]

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KILLADELPHIA: One More Dead Since U Went To Bed

An unidentified man was found shot to death on a North Philadelphia street Wednesday afternoon, police said today. Police responded to a call in the 1800 block of Somerset Street at about 4:15 p.m. and found the man dead on the street, police said. There were no suspects or motive, police said. [via PHILLY.COM]

So the Inquirer is trumpeting a big marijuana bust on City Line Avenue that took 16 pounds of the dreaded “AK47″off the street, denying buzz to untold scores of suburban dad-rockers currently pumping iron out in the garage like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty.

A potent type of marijuana known as AK47 – so strong that some users are treated in emergency rooms for overdoses – has hit the Philadelphia area. Today, police laid out 16 pounds of the stuff [NOT pictured, above] they said they confiscated from a high-level dealer who supplied the suburbs: Michael Cascioli, 31, of the 6100 block of City Avenue. He was arrested Monday in his penthouse suite and charged with multiple drug offenses.

First question is what is the source of this bit about about users “treated in emergency rooms for overdoses”? Planted in the lede like an alarm bell triggered mid-sentence, it is crucial to justifying the enormous expenditure of law enforcement resources to take 16 pounds of mary jane off the street. After all, in the era of ‘medical marijuana’ most readers view pot busts as doobie dubious at best. But if there is some dangerous new strain is flooding the nation’s emergency rooms with spaced-out Cheeches and Chongs on the verge of death, well, we wanna know, right? But the sourcing on that crucial factoid is buried far below. First we have to wade through the details of the bust, which reads like a transcript of the law enforcement press conference it came from:

Also arrested was Jeremy Sarkissina, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who allegedly showed up with $14,000 to buy drugs while police were executing a search warrant, Narcotics Chief Inspector William Blackburn said. That money was confiscated, as well.

Police put the value of the marijuana at $812,000. On Tuesday, as the probe continued, investigators seized 12 pounds of hallucinogenic mushrooms worth $614,000 and more than $439,000 in cash, police said. “This was a large-scale smuggling operation,” Blackburn said. The drugs came up from South America to Canada, and then went through New York to reach this area, he said.

Ah, the dollar-figure money shot. Always juices up these stories. Yes, there is a lot of money in the drug trade. Why? Because it is illegal and pricing is unregulated. But that’s not news, that’s Economics 101. Cue weightlifting scene from American Beauty…

“Most of his clients were from the suburbs,” Blackburn said of Cascioli, calling his customers “high-end” buyers who purchased by the pound and then sold smaller quantities. “He wasn’t selling this stuff on the street level. People would come and buy pretty large amounts of marijuana.”

OK, finally — some nine graphs into the story — we find out the source of that zinger about emergency room overdoses. And surprise, surprise, it comes not from a medical professional or a hospital spokesperson, but a cop. In fact, the senior law enforcement official overseeing the drug bust:

Blackburn said that in marijuana circles, the AK47 strain is called “the one-hit wonder” and “an award-winning drug.” Web sites that sell marijuana seeds call AK47 a highly potent form of the drug.

Hospitals are seeing more teens in emergency rooms because of the “overdose, effects and powerfulness of this drug,” Blackburn said, adding that overdoses are not “typical of marijuana, but it’s typical of this type of marijuana.”

And then the rest of the story reads like a department head justifying his budget. FYI, this year the federal government will spend $19 BILLION fighting the so-called War On Drugs. That breaks down to roughly $600 every second. Let us be clear here, we are not questioning the competency or the integrity of the law enforcement officials involved in this bust. The question we raise here is how precious law enforcement resources are being prioritized. We know for a stone cold fact that NOBODY HAS EVER DIED FROM MARIJUANA and we are wondering why law enforcement isn’t taking 16 pounds of illegal guns off the streets instead. Furthermore, we find the claim of a sinister new strain of marijuana spurring an epidemic of emergency room visits to be apocryphal at best, and as such we question the journalistic standards that allowed such a specious statement to be treated as unassailable fact in the lede of the story. Frankly, it seems like the Inquirer got played.

WARNING: May cause the paper of record to behave like a police state megaphone. [photo source]

KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) — A Sudanese court found a British teacher guilty of insulting religion and sentenced her to 15 days in prison Thursday for allowing a teddy bear to be named “Mohammed,” British authorities and her lawyer reported. Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday after she asked her class of 7-year-olds in Khartoum to name the stuffed animal as part of a school project, the British Foreign Office said. She had faced charges under Article 125 of Sudan’s constitution, the law relating to insulting religion and inciting hatred. Appearing somber and dazed, Gibbons arrived at the central courthouse in Khartoum for her closed hearing early Thursday. A staff member from the British Embassy in Khartoum and defense lawyers attended the hearing with her. The courthouse was heavily guarded by police, who kept journalists — and, for a while, even one of her attorneys — away. MORE

From Today’s Metro, where Quizzomeister Johnny Goodtimes holds forth on some Philly wrestling matches he’d like to see:

Philebrity founder Joey Sweeney vs. Phawker founder Jonathan Valania in a Hipster Death Match: This match disappoints promoters, as the hipsters think that this whole idea is “lame” and, after entering the ring, just exchange shrugs and discuss some crappy band.

Actually, I’m pretty confident that any fight between those two would involve some girlie slapping, soft weeping, a blurry Photobucket slideshow and at least one smoke break. And the entire evening ends with Jill and Ruthie ditching them to go for drinks. –AMY Z. QUINN