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GUNS & ROSES: 7 Dead In Cali Mass Murder-Suicide
MERCURY NEWS: LOS ANGELES — Police officers stood at the front of a crowded church on Tuesday night, offering what few answers they could to explain why a father would kill his wife and five children before turning the gun on himself. But residents of the suburban community of Wilmington have heard of such violence before. The Lupoe family, whose seven bodies were discovered shot to death Tuesday morning in their home, represents the fifth mass death of a Southern California family by murder or suicide in a year. This time, residents wanted more than updates to another murder investigation. They […]
PHAWKER TAWK: Q&A With Tim and Eric
BY SCOTT COLAN With hack ventriloquist Jeff Dunham and his quasi-racist puppets scoring unprecedented ratings on Comedy Central, you could assume that the state of comedy in America is in as bad a shape as the national economy. Fear not, Philadelphia’s own Tim & Eric and their show “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” provides respite from the mouth breathers and the ankle biters. Their dark comedic surrealism puts them among the latest in a lineage that stretches from Monty Python to SCTV to Kids in the Hall to Bob and David. And now the torch has been passed […]
RABBIT AT REST: John Updike Dead At 76
NEW YORK TIMES: John Updike, the kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit Angstrom novels highlighted so vast and protean a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism as to earn him comparisons with Henry James and Edmund Wilson among American men of letters, died today at a hospice outside Boston. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Farms, Mass. The cause was cancer, according to a statement by Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher. Where James and Wilson focused largely on elite Americans in a European context, Mr. Updike wrote of ordinary citizens in small-town and urban settings. His best-known […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In his new book, We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work, former President Jimmy Carter presents his strategy to end fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. The 39th president of the United States, Carter is the author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and the founder of The Carter Center, an organization that promotes conflict resolution and peace. ALSO, Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, has written about the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than 25 years. Recently, he has been covering the conflict in Gaza. In a Jan. 24 […]
CLIMATE: The Winter Of Our Discontent
VIRAL NERD: These pictures come from a friends friend who lives in Alaska. This caribou froze while standing up in -80°F winds on the North slope at the top of Alaska. MORE CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Authorities in two cities in northeastern Wisconsin are investigating deaths of people found outside in last weekend’s subzero cold. Florence County Sheriff Jeff Ricksby said Monday that a 43-year-old woman was found about 9:30 a.m. Saturday on stairs next to the entrance to her Florence home by her ex-husband and 13-year-old son. The sheriff said in a news release that the woman slipped on ice and […]
RIP: The Shirt Corner
[Photo by SYNDPROD] INQUIRER: The Shirt Corner, the Market Street clothing emporium that celebrates Philadelphia’s distinctive but rapidly vanishing style of retail hucksterism, will shut its doors today, opening the way for demolition of its ebullient, red-white-and-blue-painted building and six of its Old City neighbors. Although the properties remain in the hands of the Shirt Corner’s 77-year-old owner, Marvin Ginsberg, a potential buyer is scheduled to appear today before a Historical Commission subcommittee to request permission to tear down the row of mid-19th-century structures. The vivid facades, with their overscaled graphic signs, account for about half the frontage on the […]
BREAKING: Quick, Look Busy! The Boss Is Coming!
IN THE MIX: Bruce Springsteen first played the Spectrum back in 1973, and the Boss is coming back to South Philadelphia twice more before the arena’s appointment with the wrecking ball this fall. Springsteen and the E Street Band, whose new album, Working On A Dream, hits stores Tuesday, will play the Spectrum on April 28 and 29. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. on the web at ComcastTIX.com, on the phone at 1-800-298-4200 or in person at the Wachovia Center Complex and at select Acme Markets. MORE BACKSTREETS: The wait is close to over for U.S. dates, too […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR How do you make a realistic film about a notoriously “fake” sport? That was the question Darren Aronofsky faced when he agreed to direct The Wrestler, a movie starring Mickey Rourke as a gnarled professional wrestler whose glory days are gone. Both Rourke and supporting actress Marisa Tomei have received Oscar nominations for their work in the film. Aronofsky’s previous directorial credits include Pi (1998) and Requiem For A Dream (2000). RADIO TIMES Hour 1 Last week, President Obama ordered the suspension of all trials at Guantanamo Bay and signed an executive order to close the detention center […]
WINGBOWL: The Feel Bad Video Of The Year
[Dir. by SCOTT COLAN]
INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Was The Spitzer Probe The Ultimate Fed Take Down Of A Dem Whistleblower?
GLOBAL RESEARCH: Let us now consider the financial crisis and the panic bailout. No one should think that the crisis was unforeseen. Back in February Eliot Spitzer, in one of his last acts as governor of New York, warned about the impending crisis created by predatory lending, and reveled that the Bush Administration was blocking state efforts to deal with it. His extraordinary warning, in the Washington Post, is worth quoting at some length: Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices […]
ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL: Romantic Rivalry Escalates To Deadly Stabbing On South Street
DAILY NEWS: A student at the Art Institute of Philadelphia was stabbed to death Saturday morning in Society Hill, just across the street from the Engine 11 Firehouse. Medics returning to the firehouse about 6 a.m. from an unrelated call found the body of Reo Dennis, 22, of McLean, Texas, [pictured, above] on 6th Street near South. They immediately took him to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:43 a.m., Homicide Sgt. Tim Cooney said. By last night, police had charged 22-year-old Alex Naranjo, who lives on Randolph Street near South, just a block away from […]
GREENING OF AMERICA: Obama Set To Allow States To Regulate Auto Emissions, Raise Fuel Efficiency
NEW YORK TIMES: President Obama on Monday will direct federal regulators to move swiftly to grant California and 13 other states the right to set strict automobile emissions and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday evening. The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and marks a sharp reversal from Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions is one of the most dramatic actions Mr. Obama can take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy. The presidential orders will require automobile manufacturers to begin producing and selling cars […]