OBAMA/BIDEN CAMPAIGN: Bruce Springsteen is coming to Philadelphia this weekend to perform an acoustic set at a rally on the Ben Franklin Parkway in order to assist the Obama campaign’s voter registration and volunteer recruitment efforts. The concert will take place on Saturday at Benjamin Franklin Parkway between 20th and 22nd Streets. Gates open at 2:00 and the program will begin at 3:30. DEVELOPING… UPDATE: Rolling Stone just asked me to cover this, and TIME is literally on the other line and wants to know what I think about the bailout. I am not making this up. [Ticket info after […]
HIP PICKS: What’s Goin’ On
From our partners in New Media crime over at ScrappleTV comes this new bi-weekly night life feature hosted by Bob Concordia, who doesn’t let the fact that he is, like, 82 keep him from getting his rock on.
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR The new documentary Religulous offers a satirical — and very critical — look at the world’s religions. Directed by Larry Charles, the film features Bill Maher posing undercover as a man seeking spiritual guidance from various religious groups, including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons. In a recent New York Times article, Maher described religion as “the ultimate hustle,” and likened his role in the film to that of Toto, the dog who pulls back the curtain to expose the shortcomings of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Maher is best known as the host of the HBO […]
SARAH PALIN: Gettin’ Crazy With The Cheeze Whiz
CNN: PHILADELPHIA – Sarah Palin partook in an established political ritual on Saturday night when she headed to Tony Luke’s in south Philadelphia to order a pair of cheesesteaks with whiz and onions. But as the kitchen sizzled and orders were barked out, Palin found herself talking politics, calling McCain’s debate performance “awesome” and taking questions from a voter about the hunt for terrorists in Pakistan. MORE CNN: WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin’s stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama’s support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists. “She […]
HERD IN THE HALL: A Confederacy Of Dunces
DAN RUBIN: For two weeks, Fumocrats Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco have found their public — and some private — moments captured on videotape by Ed Kirlin, a consultant for Local 98 of the electricians union. Kirlin, you might remember, is the guy the city Ethics Board has accused of being behind flyers that questioned then-mayoral candidate Michael Nutter’s motivations for leaving the Catholic Church. After the Sept. 18 session, when DiCicco walked over to Committee of Seventy head Zack Stalberg and youth advocate Shelly Yanoff, DiCicco warned them they were being watched by a Local 98 operative. Kirlin said, […]
KILLADELPHIA: One More Dead Since U Went To Bed
INQUIRER: A 32-year-old man was fatally shot early this morning in West Philadelphia, police said. The man, whose name was not released, was shot multiple times around 1 a.m. at 55th Street and Baltimore Avenue, police said. He was transported to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and pronounced dead.
EVER NOTICE THAT: The More Things Change…
The more they stay uncannily the same? Or do they? CLICK TO ENLARGE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama’s senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House.Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states. Insiders say that Mr Obama’s apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength […]
HEAR YE: Girl Talk Feed The Animals
Now playing on Phawker Radio! NEW YORK TIMES: Girl Talk, whose real name is Gregg Gillis, makes danceable musical collages out of short clips from other people’s songs; there are more than 300 samples on “Feed the Animals,” the album he released online at illegalart.net in June. He doesn’t get the permission of the composers to use these samples, as United States copyright law mostly requires, because he maintains that the brief snippets he works with are covered by copyright law’s “fair use” principle (and perhaps because doing so would be prohibitively expensive). Girl Talk’s rising profile has put him […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Twilight’s Last Gleaming
[Illustration by DRUNKPUPPY] SMIRKING CHIMP: Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore. And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to […]
TONITE: Do You Know Where You’re Going To?
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE (2007, directed by Alex Gibney, 106 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Everything I know about politics I learned at the movies. Take torture. It was watching all those WWII movies with my older brother that introduced me to the U.S. policy on torture and war, especially prison camp films like The Great Escape, The Bridge On the River Kwai and Stalag 17. In each of them, the U.S. soldiers were left fairly unmolested, forced by dumb luck to wait out the war in lousy P.O.W. camp conditions. Occasionally a Japanese or German commander […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
[Photo by AMY Z. QUINN] JUST LIKE BUDDY HOLLY: Weezer, Susquehanna Center, Saturday Night BY AMY Z. QUINN I was pretty sure I’d made it through Saturday night’s Weezer show without feeling too old when on the way back to the car, niece Jenny turned to me and said “Who is Buddy Holly, anyway?” Cue that wah-wah-waaaaah “Thank you for playing!” sound effect. Of course, I was happy to tell her all about the Texas rocker, about the nerd-sex glasses and “Everyday” and “Peggy Sue” and The Day The Music Died, though I stopped short of going into why I […]
FAILOUT: House Votes ‘No’ On Bailout
WALL STREET JOURNAL: A bipartisan group of U.S. House lawmakers defeated a $700 billion rescue plan for Wall Street on Monday, rejecting pleas from the Bush administration and congressional leaders from both parties of the potential dire consequences of policymakers not acting to help financial markets. The 205-228 vote against the plan sent stocks plummeting, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down around 500 points as news of the vote spread through Wall Street. The defeat came despite House leaders holding open the vote for well beyond the 15-minute time limit, supporters were unable to convince enough members of either […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Once known mostly for his sweetly tentative portrayal of awkward, sexually anxious teenager George-Michael Bluth on the cult TV hit Arrested Development, Michael Cera became a bona fide movie star in 2007 with his winningly geeky performances in the hit comedies Juno and Superbad. As an actor, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss notes this week, Cera “has the gift of appearing both wise beyond his years and not at all happy about it … as if he’d received a vision of what life has in store for him, and it worries him sick.” Next up for Cera: Nick and […]