ARTSY: Why Album Covers Used To Matter

MVD Entertainment Group (MVD) has created two posters for recent Devo and Ween releases. For a limited time, fans can purchase these limited-edition silkscreened posters of the cover art bundled with their respective release. The Ween posters are signed by the band. DEVO – Watch Us Work It LP + Silkscreened Poster This package comes “Watch Us Work It” vinyl plus a 5-color, handmade, silkscreened poster of the cover art. The record contains four versions of the song “Watch Us Work It”: Teddy Bears Version, Original Devo Demo Version, Karaoke Version, and “Still Workin’” Version. It was recorded at Mutato […]

FETISH FATALE: Philly Dominatrix At Center Of Bizarre Murder-Suicide-Kidnapping Tragedy

NY POST: [Prominent Manhattan attorney] Anthony Ottaviano and [ex-Penn grad student/part-time dominatrix] Edythe Maa partied together at kinky New York City fetish parties, sometimes with him wearing lipstick, a garter belt, stockings and high heels. His secret leather-loving lifestyle — seen on photos posted on fetish Web sites — turned out to be his downfall. The violence began when Ottaviano, 40, and his girlfriend returned to her Philadelphia home after a cozy dinner, police sources said. David Krieg, a former client of Maa’s who had been stalking her for months, was waiting for them in a parking lot near her […]

NEWS CLUES: Painfully Ordinary Local Edition

BREAKING: Local Man Gets Dog West Philly’s Ben Morgan, who books bands at the Mill Creek Tavern (42nd & Chester), didn’t want a dog, but his live-in girlfriend, Allison Paul, did. In March, Morgan, who also plays in the Rare Birds and occasionally performs as a German rapper, MC Digga, told Paul they could get a dog when “Chinese Democracy” came out. Morgan assumed the long-awaited Guns N’ Roses record, 17 years in the making, would never come out. He was wrong. The record, which can be listened to here, was released Nov. 23, days after he agreed to take […]

UNCONFIRMED SOURCES: Luke Wilson’s Twitter?

VALLEY WAG: Stars — they’re just like us, if by “us” you mean “people who use the Internet too much.” Luke Wilson, the Hollywood B-lister best known for playing a schlubby everyman, also appears to be a typical user of Twitter, the blogging service which sanely limits its users’ oversharing to 140 characters at a time, when it’s not actively destroying the news business. Someone signed up for a “LukeWilson” account back in April. Here’s why I think it’s really the actor. It’s not the autobiographical details, like a love for Austin or Blue Moon beer, which any pretender could […]

PAPERBOY: Special ‘Who Hit Hickey?’ Edition

Brian Hickey at Citizen’s Park in better days [Photo by MICHAEL T. REGAN] “Brian Hickey was managing editor of City Paper from 2003 to 2008. He sat in a corner office, usually wearing his ratty Cubs hat or a Broncos knit cap (Brian is too stubborn to root only for local teams), and listening to Springsteen, classic rock, hair metal, or — sorry for putting this out there, Hic — Top 40. He slicks back his long hair, shaves irregularly, chose a rumpled white suit on his wedding day, and spends a lot of time in a bar called Krupa’s, […]

NEWS CLUES: Like An Industry Shake-Up Of the Truth

IMPLICATED: Cops Charge Kids With Computer Snooping On Murdered Dad ARUNKUMAR Ingle never knew that he allegedly was being watched for four years by the very people he once watched over. Ingle’s children, Parth, 22, and Avnee, 25, were charged Tuesday in Delaware County with repeatedly hacking into their dad’s e-mail account and tracking his whereabouts with concealed GPS devices in his cars. It was only when Arunkumar Ingle, 55, was discovered beaten and stabbed to death inside his Middletown Township home on Jan. 21 that the alleged spying came to light through state police investigations. The Ingle children were […]

LIPSTICK ON A PIG: What Ed Said

INQUIRER: This morning, CNN confirmed that Rendell said of Palin: “Look, she has a right to be here. I think she has great instincts. … She has very good political instincts … cooperate where we can because that’s what the American people want to hear … not bull—-.” PolitickerPA.com, however, reports that the full quote includes, “She’s not a genius, but she has very good political instincts.” The “not a genius” part is so difficult to hear, it’s uncertain if Rendell said it, according to CNN. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Yesterday in Philadelphia, Gov. Ed Rendell made some blunt remarks that could […]

FLEECING CHANGE: Obama Quietly Deletes Promised Windfall Tax On Big Oil From Official Web Site

Make a Donation Today and Get Your Official Obama Fleece This holiday season, celebrate our historic victory with a limited edition Obama fleece jacket. Your donation will support the Democratic National Committee and help recover the enormous resources they committed to this campaign. Make your donation of $50 or more by December 15th and your fleece jacket will be delivered by December 24th. [via OBAMA.COM] HOUSTON CHRONICLE: President-elect Barack Obama has quietly shelved a proposal to slap oil and natural gas companies with a new windfall profits tax. An aide for the transition team acknowledged the policy shift Tuesday, after […]

GAYDAR: My Own Private 9/11

BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Today we set the Wayback Machine to September 11th, 2001, which will forever live in infamy as the day I was expelled from the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA). Freshman year at ASFA, I boarded in the high school dormitories, until the dorm directors permanently banned me for illicit acts of sodomy. By the time my sophomore year rolled around, I had accepted the mantle of ‘delinquent in the making.’ And so, one afternoon, September 10th, 2001 to be exact, I snuck back into the dorm to have one last romp in the sack […]

TONITE: South To Rise Again

Southern rock-and-roll may have started with Skynyrd, but thankfully it didn’t end there, and some bands with down-home roots have got enough passion and polish to make “Sweet Home Alabama” sound downright sour. Tennessee’s Kings of Leon are the current, well, kings of the region’s rock, with a couple albums’ worth of delightfully scuzzy boogie topped with an aching drawl. At the other end of the spectrum of what Dixie can dish out is the arty, inscrutable jangle of Athens, Georgia’s REM, who add space to their riffs where other acts add swagger. Fresh out of Atlanta, The Modern Society […]

WE SHALL OVERCOME: Folk Icon Odetta Dead At 77

NEW YORK TIMES: Odetta, the singer whose deep voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was 77. The cause was heart disease, said her manager, Doug Yeager. He added that she had been hoping to sing at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Odetta sang at coffeehouses and at Carnegie Hall, made highly influential recordings of blues and ballads, and became one of the most widely known folk-music artists of the 1950s and ’60s. She was a formative influence on dozens of artists, including Bob […]