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Brian Hickey (pictured above with Danny Devito, on the set of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia), formerly editor of the City Paper and spokesman for John Dougherty’s unsuccessful bid for Vincent Fumo’s state senate seat (not to mention a trusted colleague during our staff writer days at PW), was seriously injured by a hit and run driver in Collingswood last night, according to his wife Angela. He is currently in the Trauma-ICU of Cooper University hospital and in stable condition after emergency surgery to alleviate swelling of the brain.

INQUIRER: Hickey, 35, was walking to the PATCO station on Atlantic Ave. late Friday when he was struck by an unknown motorist. A nearby resident called 911 at 10:15 p.m. after hearing the screech of brakes and a loud thump. “She saw the car lights, but couldn’t make out the model of the vehicle,” said Hickey’s wife, Angela Klem. Rescue workers found Hickey gravely injured along the side of the road. Hickey was walking and talking when he arrived at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, Klem said. But Hickey’s brain began to swell and doctors placed him in a medically-induced coma. Anyone with information about the hit-and-run is asked to call Collingswood police at (856) 854-1901. MORE

FACEBOOK: Brian needs your prayers, he was a victim of a hit and run last night at 1015pm in Collingswood NJ. He’s in the Trauma-ICU with a subdural hemotoma and cerebral contusions. Please pray for him. Brian is out of surgery. They performed bilateral decompression. He is in stable condition. They could not find his phone, so I have very little phone numbers to update friends. Please call or email me at 215-888-5538, angela_klem@msn.com. Thank you so much for you well wishes at this horrible time.

INQUIRER: In the tight rowhouse streets of North Philadelphia, people share walls and worries. Few outsiders see, know or feel the cycle of want and chaos that a week of privation creates. To show what life north of Spring Garden Street looks like to some of the people who live there, Mariana Chilton, a professor and anthropologist at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, gave digital cameras to 40 women. Out of a simple idea, complex images and narratives emerge.

An exhibit of the photos, called Witnesses to Hunger, will open to the public Dec. 11 at Drexel’s Bossone Center. The women aimed their cameras at precious children and faithless lovers, falling-down apartments and asthma nebulizers. They also shot empty grocery carts and unstocked refrigerators, sewage puddling in the street, clouds and sky (to show elusive freedom, Chilton said), and food-stamp forms and child-care subsidy paperwork, because to be poor is to be, among other things, a harried bookkeeper.

At turns hopeful and desolate, the Witnesses pictures are the unvarnished view of blunt women whose life visions have been planed down to their irreducible essence. The women know Philadelphia better than they want to. “My 4-year-old son saw a shot person and has prostitutes in his face,” Tianna Gaines, 29, said in an Inquirer interview in her crowded apartment. “This is not The Cosby Show. That wasn’t a stunt double dead in front of my son. I know a woman who sells her body to buy Pampers. This is the real world.” MORE

BY SUKETU MEHTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness. Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. “Mumbai is a golden songbird,” he said. It flies quick and sly, and you’ll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird.

Just as cinema is a mass dream of the audience, Mumbai is a mass dream of the peoples of South Asia. Bollywood movies are the most popular form of entertainment across the subcontinent. Through them, every Pakistani and Bangladeshi is familiar with the wedding-cake architecture of the Taj and the arc of the Gateway of India, symbols of the city that gives the industry its name. It is no wonder that one of the first things the Taliban did upon entering Kabul was to shut down the Bollywood video rental stores. The Taliban also banned, wouldn’t you know it, the keeping of songbirds.

In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed. And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts.

Mumbai is a “soft target,” the terrorism analysts say. Anybody can walk into the hotels, the hospitals, the train stations, and start spraying with a machine gun. Where are the metal detectors, the random bag checks? In Mumbai, it’s impossible to control the crowd. In other cities, if there’s an explosion, people run away from it. In Mumbai, people run toward it — to help. Greater Mumbai takes in a million new residents a year. This is the problem, say the nativists. The city is just too hospitable. You let them in, and they break your heart. MORE

Suketu Mehta, a professor of journalism at New York University, is the author of “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.” [Photo by  Soumik Kar]

WASHINGTON POST: After a wave of coordinated terrorist attacks turned parts of Mumbai’s financial district into a combat zone, the full extent of the 60 hours of violence came to light Saturday in the stories of victims who filled the city’s hospitals. The assailants killed at least 195 people and wounded about 300. Among the dead were 22 foreigners, including six Americans. MORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Whole Horrible Story

BELFAST TELEGRAPH: It is the photograph that has dominated the world’s front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India’s most vibrant city. Now it can be revealed how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him. Sebastian D’Souza, a picture editor at the Mumbai Mirror, whose offices are just opposite the city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji station, heard the gunfire erupt and ran towards the terminus. “I ran into the first carriage of one of the trains on the platform to try and get a shot but couldn’t get a good angle, so I moved to the second carriage and waited for the gunmen to walk by,” he said. “They were shooting from waist height and fired at anything that moved. I briefly had time to take a couple of frames using a telephoto lens. I think they saw me taking photographs but they didn’t seem to care.” MORE

DAILY NEWS: Can’t Happen Here?

PREVIOUSLY: Murder & Mayhem In Mumbai, Gunmen Kill 172, 370 Wounded, Americans And Brits Targeted

INQUIRER: Police found the body of an unidentified man inside a parked car North Philadelphia shortly after 12 a.m. today. The man, who was shot in the left chest area and the arm, was discovered in the 4600 block of North 16th Street, police said. He was pronounced dead at Einstein Medical Center. The investigation is continuing and no other details were available. MORE

ALSO: A man who was carjacked in Hunting Parkon Friday remained in Temple University Hospital in serious condition today with a single gunshot wound to his buttocks, according to city police information officer Christine O’Brien. The 32-year-old man, whose identity was not disclosed, was driving a Chevrolet Impala when two men fired on him and took his vehicle. The incident occurred shortly before 6 p.m., in the 3100 block of North 10th Street, O’Brien said. No arrests have been made and the investigation is continuing. MORE

I’M RICK JAMES, BITCH: : King Khan & The BBQ, Johnny Brendas, Last Night

BY TIFFANY YOON I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Love City, the opener for Johnny Brenda’s Black Friday show, but unfortunately, I missed their set, which is supposed to pull influences from psychedelic 70′s punk, 90′s grunge and 80′s new wave.  I did catch some words with the bass player Patrick outside, and he said they had some technical difficulties anyways.  He seemed pretty upset, and to top it off Jamie, the lead of Love City, walked by looking miserable and fairly wasted to cope.  He briefly stood next to me and a stranger outside, then quickly announced, “I’m going home”, ran off, then just as quickly turned around and ran back inside the bar.  Rough night for Love City, but the rest of the bill went pretty smoothly.

Jacuzzi Boys were up next.  These three Florida boys put on a great set, warming things up with some surf rock, but with a grittier southern twang rather than the classic California flavor mixed in with some psych and melodies suitable for Ian McCulloch to sing along to. Vivian Girls were next, and at this point it was clear this show was going to sell out before the end of the night.  I’ve tried to see this all female trio from Brooklyn so many times, but for whatever reason always ended up missing out.  Vivian Girls are like The Friggs for my generation, but with shoegazer guitars and layered vocals that have a haunting spacey effect.

King Khan teamed up with Mark Sultan (the BBQ) and together they created The King Khan and the BBQ Show, not to be confused with Khan’s other band, King Khan and the Shrines, which are currently on a break.  So no, Khan’s cheerleader, who usually shares the stage with him, was nowhere to be found.  BBQ, who had a bright neon pink turban on his head, took off his red sneakers and socks and placed them next to his tiny drum set.  It kept unwrapping throughout their set, but he didn’t seem to care at all.  Khan is infamous for his ridiculous costumes and on-stage antics.  With his Sun Ra outfits and James Brown stage presence, his shows are hard to forget.  He and BBQ put on a show mixing swinging 50′s rock, 70′s psych and intermittent punk influences.  When thinking back to the night, I keep imagining Khan starting every song with a very Misfits sounding, “one two three four”, when he probably only did it for one or two.

During King Khan and the BBQ’s set, Gabriel Alcala from Jacuzzi Boys came on stage wearing what looked like a child’s dinosaur costume — a leotard that showed off his tighty whities were layered underneath.  Not the prettiest sight, but definitely the funniest.  Then Gabriel and the Jacuzzi Boys drummer Diego Monasteri grabbed an aluminum foil tray full of what looked like a catered salad from backstage heavily doused in oily dressing and some sort of stinky cheese and threw its leafy contents all over the stage and audience.  If it weren’t so late and everyone weren’t so drunk it probably could’ve gotten ugly.  One guy nearly knocked me over pushing me aside to wipe some cheese from his hands onto the carpeted stage of Johnny Brenda’s.  He ran towards the stage with his arms flailing as if they were on fire and he let out a kind of hiccuped gasp of relief after wiping them clean.  I thought to myself, what a bastard.  I felt bad for the clean-up crew that would have to follow this act.

[Photos by TIFFANY YOON -- see more HERE]

INQUIRER: Robin’s Book Store, a favorite haunt of the Philadelphia’s literati, announced last week that this will be its last holiday season. It will be closing up shop at the end of January. Early this afternoon there were a handful of customers at the store. The customers appeared suprised at the store’s demise.

The city’s oldest independent book seller, Robin’s has long hosted poetry readings and autograph signings at 108 S. 13th Street.  “Operating a books store was always a better hoppy than a way to make a living, but now it’s impossible” writes Larry Robin in a news release. “Blame it on the Economy. Blame it on the Chain Stores. Blame it on the Internet. Blame it on Reading Habits.”

Robin’s grandfather, David, opened the original Robin’s 73 years ago on N. 11th Street. The store has a storied history as a hotbed of controversy. In 1961, then-Assistant District Attorney Arlen Specter and his boss, District Attorney James Crumlish, sought an injunction against Robin’s for selling Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, which was denounced at the time as pornography.

Every bookstore in Philadelphia pulled the novel from its shelves – except Robin’s. “We sold 7,000 copies in one week,” Robin told Inquirer reporter Alfred Lubrano on the stores 70th Anniversary.. “We were fighting for basic free speech.” Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the book was not obscene. From then on, Robin’s was known as a kind of forbidden-fruit stand, a place where you could find savory items others lacked, and where people stood up for art and language. MORE

RELATED: Robin’s, started by his grandfather in 1936 and believed to be Philadelphia’s oldest independent book seller, is calling it quits at the end of January.

BUY NOTHING DAY: The Good Consumer

NEWSDAY: Bargain-hungry shoppers stepped on a fallen Wal-Mart worker, who died Friday morning, after the crowd knocked down the store’s front doors — and the worker — during the “utter chaos” of a Black Friday shopping melee, Nassau County police said. “A throng of shoppers . . . physically broke down the doors” at around 5 a.m. Friday and knocked the 34-year-old part-time worker to the ground as the crowd pushed its way into the store at the Green Acres Mall, Nassau police said. MORE

INQUIRER: A 26-year old woman was shot in the leg inside an Old City nightclub this morning, police said. At 1:20 a.m., police responded to a shooting inside CEBU in the 100 block of Chestnut Street, police said. The victim had been shot in the lower right shin.The woman was taken to Jefferson University Hospital where she was listed in stable condition. No arrests were reported. MORE

The White Album Listening Party

DAVID SREBNIK: “The White Album Listening Party: Revisiting The Beatles’ Top-Seller” celebrates the 40th anniversary (Nov. 22, 1968) of the release of the Beatles scary-new, scary-wonderful, scary-ambitious new recording. The “Listening Party” puts the Beatles White Album in the center of a circle of non celebrity, smart, non-fanatic, well-spoken and knowledgeable Beatles experts, who share their memories, opinions and stories behind the stories and the recording. The discussion proceeds by track order, usually two tracks at a time, followed by both songs. Almost each segue from discussion to music generates both a musical “AHA” moment.It frequently reaches the high notes on the most important radio “best practices” metric board of story telling and listener focus. Remarks and the stories behind “Dear Prudence,” “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” and “Why Don’t We do it in the Road?” feature amusing stories and insight, and they may answer White Album questions we’ve perhaps been trying to formulate for the last 40 years. Also fresh — the discussion brings forward the notion and memory that this was a scary album for a number of reasons — to paraphrase, “What happened to ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’…where are my Beatles?” MORE

FRESH AIR

His biography of blues legend Muddy Waters, Can’t Be Statisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, is now out in paperback. Waters is credited with inventing electric blues and creating the template for the rock ‘n’ roll band. Gordon also produced and directed an accompanying documentary of the same name which was broadcast on PBS in April as part of the American Masters series. Gordon’s other books are It Came From Memphis, and The King on the Road. He also produced the Al Green box set, Anthology. This interview first aired October 3, 2002.

UPDATE: A team of FBI agents was ordered to fly to India to investigate the militants who killed four Americans and injured at least two others during a wave of assaults that ripped through a commercial center of Mumbai. The investigators aim to learn more about the origins of the militants who carried out the lethal strikes on luxury hotels, a train station and an Orthodox Jewish center where a New York rabbi and his wife were among five hostages slain. An American and his teenage daughter traveling with a Virginia-based spiritual group were also among the 150 people killed during the coordinated attacks. American lives remained in peril in Mumbai on Friday, the State Department said. Warning that “Americans are still at risk on the ground,” Gordon Duguid, a State Department spokesman, confirmed the deaths of two Americans in Mumbai, but would not comment further on the victims. U.S. officials were checking with Indian authorities and hospitals to learn more about the extent of casualties. The State Department urged Americans not to travel to the stricken city, at least through the weekend. MORE

UPDATE: Phone number for US citizens to call about family in Mumbai 888-407-4747

BREAKING: MUMBAI, India — Teams of heavily armed gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular tourist attraction and a crowded train station in at least seven attacks in India’s financial capital, killing at least 78 people and wounding at least 200, officials said Thursday. The gunmen were specifically targeting Britons and Americans and a top police official said the gunmen are holding hostages at two luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels. A British restaurant-goer at the Oberoi told Sky News television that the attackers were singling out Britons and Americans. Alex Chamberlain said a gunman, a young man of 22 or 23, ushered 30 or 40 people from the restaurant into a stairway and ordered everyone to put up their hands. “They were talking about British and Americans specifically. There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: ‘Where are you from?” and he said he’s from Italy and they said ‘fine’ and they left him alone. And I thought: ‘Fine, they’re going to shoot me if they ask me anything _ and thank God they didn’t,” he said. He managed to slip away from the group as they were forced to walk up the stairs, but said most of the group was still being kept hostage. Early Thursday morning, several European lawmakers were among those still barricaded inside the Taj, a century-old seaside hotel complex and one of the city’s best-known destinations. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: Suketu Mehta, who compared Mumbai to New York in his book Maximum City, attempted to put the scale of the attack in Mumbai in perspective for New Yorkers, saying that it would be “as if terrorists had taken over the Four Seasons and the Waldorff=Astoria and then were running around shooting people in Times Square.” MORE

MUMBAI METROBLOGS: [The gunmen, pictured above] were boys of about 20-25 year-olds. MORE

REUTERS: “At least six foreigners have been killed and the death figure has gone up to 101 now,” Ramesh Tayde, a senior police officer told Reuters from Mumbai’s control room. “We have a figure of 287 people injured.”

TWITTER: Mumbai police don’t want people to update in real time allegedly because it’s affecting operation. MORE

UPDATE: “Indian government is asking that the twitter search page #mumbai be shut down [terrorist are following, gaining intel]” MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: The police have requested that reporters and tweeters do not discuss their movements, because they are concerned that the terrorists in the Taj and Oberoi Hotels are watching television to monitor the situation. MORE

MUMBAI METROBLOGS: At last count, 12 locations in Mumbai have seen terrorist attack tonight. Two boats, loaded with explosives, were confiscated from the Gateway of India. The encounters continue…[The gunmen] were boys of about 20-25 year-olds and apparently they demanded that people with American and British passports to identify themselves…Reports are coming in of about 100 people having been evacuated from the Taj and of the stairwell of the hotel being encrusted with dead bodies. MORE

ANAND GIRIDHARADA: Anyone, anywhere who has lived in Mumbai was gasping at the sight of a burning Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel. That is because it is not your average hotel. It is not another Sheraton or Hilton in the business district of another world city. It is the aorta through which anything glamorous, sentimental, confidential or profitable passes in Mumbai. Its major role is to serve its guests, who come from around the world and elsewhere in India. But it also serves the local city in a way that few hotels in the world could claim to do. If a momentous infidelity is being committed on a given night, or a billion-dollar business deal being inked, or a recklessly brilliant idea being hatched, there is a fair chance it is being committed, inked, hatched at the Taj. Mumbaikars who can afford it have their most romantic meals at its Wasabi restaurant, accept marriage proposals in its Sea Lounge, land job offers in its coffee shop. It stands across from the Gateway of India. Those who would not dream of paying $3 – a decent daily wage – for one of its fresh-lime sodas sit outside the hotel, leaning against the stone wall on the sea. They take in the scene; they admire the finely dressed people breezing in and out. They know that it is not their time for the Taj now, but, should a fortune bless them, it is in the Taj they will spend it. MORE

CNN:  Manuela Testolini [ex-wife of Prince] and her colleagues had just sat down to dinner at the Oberoi hotel restaurant in Mumbai, India, on Wednesday when the sound of gunfire erupted outside. At first, they didn’t know what it was. Then, one of Testolini’s colleagues saw a man get shot to death outside the restaurant’s front door, and everyone started to run. “We left everything behind, including purses and phones,” Testolini told CNN’s Miles O’Brien. “There was a lot of panic.” Testolini said gunfire followed her as she and dozens more fled through the kitchen and down to the ballroom, where they found temporary refuge from the gunfire and grenades raining outside. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: Indian broadcaster IBN is now reporting that there is a siege at Mumbai’s Nariman House, which is the home of the city’s Chabad-Lubavitch center. MORE

WIKIPEDIA: Mumbai (Marathi: मुंबई, Mumbaī, IPA:[ˈmumbəi] (help·info)), formerly Bombay, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the financial capital of India. With an estimated population of thirteen million, it is one of the most populated cities in the world.^[1] Along with the neighbouring suburbs of Navi Mumbai and Thane, it forms, at nineteen million, the world’s fifth most populous metropolitan area. Mumbai is the commercial and entertainment centre of India, generating 5% of India’s GDP^[3] and accounting for 25% of industrial output, 40% of maritime trade, and 70% of capital transactions to India’s economy.^[4] Mumbai is one of the world’s top ten centres of commerce by global financial flow,^[5] home to important financial institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies and numerous multinational corporations. The city also houses India’s hindi film and television industry, known as Bollywood. Mumbai’s business opportunities, as well as its high standard of living, attract migrants from all over India and, in turn, make the city a potpourri of many communities and cultures.

NEW YORK TIMES: Wired blogger Noah Shachtman points out that “First-hand accounts of the deadly Mumbai attacks are pouring in on Twitter, Flickr, and other social media.” Mr. Shachtman rounds up links to Twitter accounts which are being updated minute by minute, including one on Mumbai and another called BreakingNewz. Mr. Schachtman also draws our attention to a Google map of the attack sites, which has been created, “a shockingly-current Wikipedia page,” and posts on a Mumbai blog following the attacks.

[click to view]

REUTERS: U.S. authorities have warned of a possible al Qaeda threat to transit systems in and around New York City, a Homeland Security official said on Wednesday.  New York police said they were increasing security in response to the warning but said this was “in an abundance of caution.” The warning comes at the start of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, one of the busiest U.S. travel periods of the year. “The New York City Police Department is aware of an unsubstantiated report indicating that al Qaeda terrorists discussed targeting mass transit in New York City and the vicinity,” Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne told Reuters. MORE

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Every Thanksgiving for the last 50 years, the Jaindl family turkey farm has been putting the bird on the dinner table at the White House. A Jaindl bird also goes to George Clooney, Michael Jordan, J. Lo, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger courtesy of Warner Bros. Studios, which has a standing annual order with Jaindl for 500 turkeys to be doled out to its sundry stars and VIPs. Meanwhile, some 350,000 families from Maine to Florida and as far west as the Mississippi–flyover country, as it were– will sit down today to give thanks for their painfully ordinary lives over a Jaindl turkey.

Located about an hour north of Philadelphia in the bucolic farmland flats of Orefield, the Jaindl turkey empire began as a modest 60-acre family farm back in 1937, yielding 2,000 turkeys annually. The farm has since grown to 500 acres, with an annual yield of nearly 1 million birds. Along the way, because the profit margins in agriculture are so narrow and subject to weather and disease, the family has diversified into banking and real estate holdings. The Jaindl family is now the largest landowner in the Lehigh Valley. The Jaindls are no-nonsense folks, so when I sat down recently with Fred Jaindl, the 71-year-old family patriarch, and son David, the 47-year-old who oversees the family’s financial, real estate and agricultural holdings, there were a couple of myths they wanted to dispel right away.

Myth No. 1: tryptophan, the sleep-inducing amino acid turkeys produce that, for a few hours on Thanksgiving Day, turns us into a nation comatose on the couch with our pants unbuttoned. When the subject is broached, father and son shrug. Fred, who’s been working with birds for going on three quarters of a century, says he’s never heard of it. “It’s an old wives’ tale,” says David, dismissively.

Myth No. 2: Turkeys are so dumb that during rain storms they will look up at the skies with their mouths open and drown to death. The Jaindls are passionate about this one; they consider it tantamount to slander. “Very far from the truth. Just ask any hunter,” says Fred. “They are hard to catch.” If nothing else, the Jaindls have respect for the bird that’s brought them riches and power over the years.

When I told these bird barons that we wanted to map the life of a turkey, from conception to the dining room table, we were met with narrow-eyed suspicion. They’ve had enough trouble with animal rights activists. No sir, they don’t plan to dole out any more ammo to some city slicker hack–and just what in hell is a blawg anyway?

Take it easy, Mr. Greenjeans, I said. We’re not looking to do some kind of PETA hatchet job. If you ask us, turkeys aren’t treated badly enough. They lay around all day watching soap operas and gorging themselves, mainlining tryptophan, shitting wherever they like, making no effort whatsoever to find gainful employment.

That didn’t go over too well. First of all, turns out no farmer likes to be called Mr. Greenjeans. Second of all, the Jaindls have built an empire on the backs of their fine feathered friends. And the least we could do is show a little respect. Fair enough. And so, with much prodding and cajoling, I managed to extract the story of the short happy life and painless death of a Jaindl turkey. It goes something like this:

(more…)

PREVIOUSLY:  Ann Coulter Defanged?

LOS ANGELES TIMES: I know, I know. If the report is true, it’s almost as if our prayers have been answered. MORE

[Illustration by ALEX FINE]

FRESH AIR

Producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff helped pioneer the sound of Philadelphia soul. Their renowned record label, Philadelphia International, produced the hits “Love Train,” “Backstabbers” and “The Love I Lost.” Together, Gamble and Huff were responsible for 15 gold singles and 22 gold albums, eight of which went platinum; they were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. “We wanted to take social themes and translate them to commercial recordings,” Kenny Gamble said in 1988. “Philadelphia International was about spreading love.” Gamble and Huff have a new box set called Love Train.

RADIO TIMES

Hour 1
Food, family and ritual brings meaning to our annual feast of the harvest. We’ll talk to Philadelphia chef, JOSE GARCES about his favorite way to cook a turkey. And Philadelphia Inquirer food columnist RICK NICHOLS tells us why Thanksgiving is more than just one day of celebrating this year. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

THE SOUL SURVIVORS: Expressway To Your Heart

RADIO TIMES

Hour 2
Watching football on TV has become another Thanksgiving tradition in homes across the country. Our guest, SAL PAOLANTONIO takes it one step further in his new book, “How Football Explains America.” In it he explores how the game helps us understand the American psyche and how we live, work and play. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

THIS AMERICAN LIFE

Poultry Slam 2008
Special note to chicken enthusiasts: the name of this episode—The Poultry Slam—has nothing to do with slamming poultry. We are not anti-poultry. Our editorial stance is proudly pro-poultry. The show’s name is a pun on Chicago’s Poetry Slam.A man in Pakistan wants to break his friend out of prison. He buys him an amulet that supposedly has the power to protect anyone from harm. But just to be on the safe side, he decides to test the amulet by trying it out first. On a chicken. Stories about the powerful combination of chickens, faith and God in our not-quite-annual, all new for 2008, Poultry Slam. Since our first year on the air, this has been a This American Life tradition, a show about poultry for this time of year when poultry consumption is at its highest.  More…

LOS ANGELES TIMES: A Los Angeles federal jury today convicted a Missouri mother of misdemeanor charges in the nationally watched MySpace cyber-bullying case involving the suicide of a 13-year-old girl. But the jury rejected more serious felony charges against Lori Drew.Drew, 49, was accused of violating federal computer statutes and one count of conspiracy for creating the MySpace account in the name of a fictitious 16-year-old boy and using it to engage in an online relationship with 13-year-old Megan Meier. Meier, of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., hanged herself Oct. 16, 2006, after the fictitious boy, “Josh Evans,” told her the world would be a better place without her, prosecutors alleged. During the five-day trial in front of U.S. District Judge George H. Wu, prosecutors sought to portray Drew as a callous and reckless woman who gleefully took part in the hoax on Meier, despite knowing the girl had struggled with depression for years and had a vulnerable psyche. Among the government’s witnesses were a close friend of Drew’s, a business associate and her hairdresser, each of whom testified that Drew had admitted playing a role in the hoax. MORE