Phawker

[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]

UPDATE: Mexico says the World Health Organization has raised its pandemic alert for swine flu by one level, two steps short of declaring a full-blown pandemic. Mexico health department spokesman Carlos Olmos confirms the move. WHO says the phase 4 alert means sustained human to human transmission causing outbreaks in at least one country. It signals a significant increase in the risk of a global epidemic, but doesn’t mean a pandemic is inevitable. Many experts think it may be impossible to contain a flu virus already spreading in several countries.

BBC: Governments around the world have been hurrying to contain the spread of a new swine flu virus after outbreaks were reported in Mexico, the US and Canada. At least 100 people are now suspected to have died of the disease in Mexico. The UN has warned the disease has the potential to become a pandemic, but said the world is better prepared than ever to deal with the threat. Stocks of anti-viral medicines are being readied and travellers are being screened at some airports for symptoms. Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said suspected swine flu cases in his country had risen to 1,614 including 103 deaths. Of those, 20 deaths are confirmed to have been caused by the new virus and tests are being investigated. The US, where 20 people are confirmed to have caught the virus, has declared a public health emergency. There are also confirmed cases in Canada, and investigations are being carried out on suspected cases in Spain, Israel and New Zealand. In most cases outside Mexico, people have been only mildly ill and have made a full recovery.  MORE

HUFFPO: A single sneeze propels 100,000 droplets into the air at around 90 mph, landing on door knobs, ATM keypads, elevator buttons, escalator railings, and grocery cart handles. In a subway station at rush hour, according to British researchers, as many as 10 percent of all commuters can come in contact with the spray and residue from just one sneeze (or sternutation). That means as many as 150 commuters can be sickened by one uncovered achoo. MORE

WIKIPEDIA: The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly Influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the virus.^[1] Most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. The pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920,^[2] spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is estimated that anywhere from 20 to 100 million people were killed worldwide,^[3] or the approximate equivalent of one third of the population of Europe,^[4][5][6] more than double the number killed in World War I.^[7] This extraordinary toll resulted from the extremely high illness rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms. The pandemic is estimated to have affected up to one billion people: half the world’s population at the time.^[8] MORE

RELATED: Well, as it turns out, volcano monitoring wasn’t the only worthwhile public safety program that was deemed extravagant in the stimulus package, funding for pandemic preparation was axed as well. And playing a critical role was Susan Collins — for whom the necessity of obtaining her vote is in inverse proportion to the intelligence she shows in policy making: “Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: ‘Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not’.” Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate’s version of the stimulus measure. MORE

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Mr. Obama told a gathering of scientists that his administration’s Department of Health and Human Services had declared a public health emergency “as a precautionary tool to ensure that we have the resources we need at our disposal to respond quickly and effectively.” “This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert, but it’s not a cause for alarm,” Mr. Obama said. He said he was getting regular updates. The Senate has yet to confirm a secretary of human services, a surgeon general or a director of CDC. The absence of those officials left Dr. Besser and Ms. Napolitano to brief reporters on the swine flu outbreak. The quickening pace of developments in the U.S. in response to the spreading new flu strain was accompanied by a host of varying responses around the world. MORE

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GIZIMODO: The current H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic headlines read like those flashing through the intro sequence of a post-apocalyptical movie. Now you can see the cases spreading in real time—as the WHO declares them—in Google Maps. In case you have not been paying attention to the news during the last few days, there’s a pandemia going on. A spike of infections of the H1N1 Swine Flu—a mutation of a pork virus that jumped from pigs to humans—happened in the city of Mexico (103 dead already) and it is quickly spreading through the world now, thanks to airline connections. MORE

GRIST: Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site.  MORE

BIOSURVEILLANCE: Residents [of La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.’ However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. MORE

RELATED: Timeline Of Swine Flu Outbreak

POSSIBLY RELATED: Missing vials of a potentially dangerous virus have prompted an Army investigation into the disappearance from a lab in Maryland. Fort Detrick is the home of the Army’s top biological research facility. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command agents have been visiting Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, to investigate the disappearance of the vials. Christopher Grey, spokesman for the command, said this latest investigation has found “no evidence of criminal activity.” The vials contained samples of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, a virus that sickens horses and can be spread to humans by mosquitoes. In 97 percent of cases, humans with the virus suffer flu-like symptoms, but it can be deadly in about 1 out of 100 cases, according to Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. There is an effective vaccine for the disease and there hasn’t been an outbreak in the United States since 1971.

FRESH AIR

In his new documentary, called simply Tyson, filmmaker James Toback turns his camera on Mike Tyson — the controversial former heavyweight boxing champion. Tyson, infamous for taking a bite out of Evander Holyfield’s ear in 1997 — and for his 1992 rape conviction — talks directly to Toback’s camera, telling his own story in between excerpts of archival footage from his life and career. Toback, the screenwriter behind Bugsy and director of films including Two Girls and a Guy, has been Tyson’s friend since the boxer was 19 years old; Tyson premiered in 2008 at the Cannes Film Festival, and opened in the U.S. April 24. ALSO, journalist Elmer Smith first met Mike Tyson when the future heavyweight champion was just turning 18. Smith, who worked as a boxing writer, a general sports columnist and a general news columnist, went on to cover the ups and downs of the boxer’s career. Smith is an editorial columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and a member of the paper’s editorial board.

RADIO TIMES

Hour One
Many students are introduced to Henry David Thoreau‘s “Walden” in high school. Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience is legend in influencing Gandhi and King. In “The Thoreau You Don’t Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant,” our guest, writer ROBERT SULLIVAN dispels the American myth of Henry David Thoreau as an intentional recluse, walking around the Concord, Massachusetts woods. The “secular priest of solitude” may have been introspective, but he enjoyed a robust social life and wasn’t kind to the local trees. Listen to the mp3

Hour Two
“America is an apsirational society” writes Joe Queenan in a recent column the “Guardian.” He should know as he grew up in the Schuylkill Falls housing project near East Falls in Philadelphia and is now a successful culture critic and author of several books. Queenan’s new book, “Closing Time” is about growing up in working-class Irish American Philadelphia in the 1950s and 1960s. Listen to the mp3

PREVIOUSLY ON PHAWKER: Oscar Wilde famously postulated that all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Writer Joe Queenan wasn’t born in the gutter — actually it was somewhere near the false bottom of the Irish Catholic working class of Philadelphia circa 1950 — but you could see it from there. His father was a study in boozy failure and casual brutality whose self-inflicted setbacks would drag the family Queenan — Joe, three suffering sisters and an emotionally-remote, enabling mother — down to the ranks of the lower class for a four-year exile in Philadelphia public housing where they endured all the attendant deprivations, miseries and daily indignities to be found there. It was reading, along with a few fully-functional relatives and the pageantry of Catholic ritual, that showed Joe it didn’t have to be like this. And thus began Queenan’s long ladder climb up from the bottom, all of which he renders with stark clarity and wicked humor in Closing Time, his just-published memoir. It is no exaggeration to call it a heartbreaking work of staggering genius — you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and in between you might even learn something. Today Queenan is a highly-regarded humorist, critic and author with eight books under his belt, including the Baby Boomer-eviscerating Balsamic Dreams and  Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon, his snark-fueled odyssey through the deepest depths of the American low brow. MORE

THE WORLD CAFE

Will Oldham is a bit of a chameleon. The Kentucky-based singer, songwriter and actor has presented his work under a series of monikers, including The Palace Brothers and Palace Music in the early ’90s, as well as his current handle: Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Oldham has acted in indie films such as Junebug and Old Joy, and has released 17 albums in the past 16 years. Embracing elements of folk, Americana, indie rock, punk and country, Oldham embodies the essence of DIY music. His approach to songwriting remains sincere and honest, as his voice exudes a worldly, fragile charm. Beware, Oldham’s seventh album as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, sensitively explores new depths of human emotion through a swirl of guitars, vocals and fiddle. With his own brand of heartfelt and softly sung tunes, Oldham has once again topped his previous work with an album that’s almost frighteningly beautiful. In a session with host David Dye, Oldham discusses what he feels to be the best way to experience music.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie plays the Troc May 22nd

DAN GROSS: North Wales’ Tom Cipriano, better known to fans of Howard Stern as Capt. Janks spent the weekend in jail. He was arrested Thursday by Plymouth Township Police for allegedly taking a deposit of $350 in December from the Old Mansion House in Conshohocken to host an event there in March for which he never appeared, according to Detective-Sergeant Karen Mabry of Plymouth Township. The prank phone caller is also alleged to have taken a $350 deposit from the Edge Hill Tavern in Glenside in December for an appearance Feb. 22, which he did not show up for, according to Cheltenham Police Lt. Joseph Gruver. Cipriano was also jailed in February for a similar nightclub scam in New Jersey. Cipriano has not yet posted $2,500 bail and remains locked up at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility since Thursday. Last week Cipriano was also charged in another club scam in Bucks County. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: It’s another TGI Friday night at Brady’s Irish Pub, a colorless suburban rock club tucked away in a Bensalem strip mall. The party animals have been let out of their cages. The beer taps kick into overdrive. A cover band blares yeoman versions of yellowing alt-metal hits from the ’90s by Stone Temple Pilots and Metallica. Brady’s is the kind of place where a backward ball cap is still considered au courant. A 30ish bottle blond wiggles by saucily, precariously balanced on a pair of eff-me pumps, her prodigious bosom tightly ensconced in a canary-yellow wife-beater emblazoned with the words “YOU WISH.” A mullet-headed man walks by, his meaty arms sprouting from a sleeveless T-shirt bearing the noble message “SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HOOKERS.”

It’s here, of all places, that a small guerrilla action in the ongoing ground war over the First Amendment is being waged. Tom Cipriano — the fireplug-sized phony phone caller better known to Howard Stern listeners as Captain Janks — is hosting the indelicately titled Fuck the FCC Freedom Rally to drum up support for the embattled shock jock. Howard’s in trouble. As he reminds his listeners daily, his show, heard locally on WYSP (94.1 FM), is in imminent danger of being fined off the airwaves. And the good folks on hand tonight at Brady’s Irish Pub are answering the call by standing up for the First Amendment while getting their drunk on. [...]

Cipriano — who first made a name for himself by tormenting John DeBella on Stern’s behalf and who today bluffs his way onto Fox, CNN or CBS News with Dan Rather by passing himself off as an emergency official or an eyewitness to some breaking news story before yelling some variation on Baba-booey! — takes over the microphone. “The only way to stop this is to vote Bush out!” he implores the crowd, before leading them in the obligatory chant of “Fuck the FCC!” MORE

BILLY JOEL: Captain Jack

LOS ANGELES TIMES: “God will get you for that, Walter.” Nobody could do more with these words than Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay on the marital warpath. She could slingshot them in fury or release them in a chilling deadpan, but however she delivered them you could be sure they’d hit their mark with a prizefighter’s pop. All the tributes that will be lavished on Arthur, who died Saturday at 86, will extol her impeccable comic timing. Her ability to detonate a joke, to momentarily harness a punch line before releasing at full force, brought her Emmy-winning success in two groundbreaking sitcoms — Norman Lear’s 1970s classic “Maude” and “The Golden Girls,” launched in 1985 and no doubt making somebody crack up in rerun land as you’re reading this. Television critics can pay appropriate homage to the place of these shows in small-screen history. But I can’t help thinking about the stage origins of those unerring instincts for comedy, the hours upon hours of performing in theaters large and small that taught Arthur better than any videotape what worked and what didn’t. Nor can I keep myself from mourning a death that in some respects marks the passing of an entertainment era. MORE

Maude Vs. Nixon

BY JONATHAN VALANIA In 1965 Tony Conrad moved out of his New York City apartment, and like many people moving out he left behind a few items, one of which was a book. This is notable for three reasons: First, his roommate was John Cale, a classically-trained violist with a taste for the avant garde who, like Conrad, was a member of the Theater Of Eternal Music, a downtown collective of music-makers exploring infinite drone, endless improvisation and multi-media freakouts. Second, when Conrad moved out, Lou Reed moved in. Third, the book he left behind was a smutty S&M novel called…wait for it…The Velvet Underground. Conrad would go on to explore his dual interest in hypnotic experimental film-making and trance-inducing minimalist musical composition. His 1965 film The Flicker, consisting entirely of rapidly alternating black and white screens that create a stroboscopic effect and lures the viewer into a post-hypnotic state, remains a landmark of experimental cinema and has been screened at both the Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney. His early 70′s collaboration with legendary kraut-rockers Faust, Outside The Dream Syndicate, has become a touchstone of minimalist composition and, much like his association with the Velvets, a bridge between rock music and the avant garde. Conrad will perform Sunday night at Ars Nova/International House in tandem with Keiji Haino, Japan’s pre-eminent experimental music maker. This is not the first time the two have collaborated in a live setting, and sparks are expected to fly. Recently, Phawker got Conrad — who makes his living as a professor of media arts at the University of Buffalo — on the horn to talk about all the above.

*

PHAWKER: Starting back at the beginning, you studied mathematics at Harvard. I’m curious what attracted you to math in the first place, and what intellectual curiosities that satisfies.

TONY CONRAD: Well, nothing out of the ordinary. I had qualified in that area, and not knowing what else to do with my life, I started to study that because people said I was good at it.

PHAWKER: So you were a natural at math.

TONY CONRAD: It seemed that I was going to be natural at math, but in fact, It turns out there’s no such thing as natural. You need to work at these things, and I wasn’t interested in spending enough of my time at it. I learned that, effectively, through exposure to some pretty remarkable roommates who didn’t spend their time working to come up to speed in the field of math, most people around us in the world associate math with things like multiplying fractions or calculating the area of an irregular polygon, but actually, contemporary math has moved way beyond that sort of thing. I’m always accused of being involved with math, because of the fact that the music I do entails number ratios and calculations of frequency ratios, and other proportionality relationships that I get stuff in, but to be honest, this stuff has nothing to do with mathematics.

PHAWKER: The music has nothing to do with math?

TONY CONRAD: Not math like its evolved during the last two thousand years.

PHAWKER: One last question on the math subject. If math is able to explain our reality, does that contradict the notion that reality is in some way subjective? If there is a mathematical framework then there must be an objective truth to reality.

TONY CONRAD: I would say none of that makes sense at all. Good question though. It’s more interesting to ask questions that don’t make any sense. I’ll have to resort to my plan B, which would be to use a pre-arranged answer, which would be that it’s going to be a really great summer.

PHAWKER: In doing some reading on you, I came across this quote that A, I wanted to confirm you said, and B, ask you to elaborate on that. The quote is “history is like music, completely in the present”. Can you put that in layman’s terms, because it seems counter-intuitive.

TONY CONRAD: Well it is in layman’s terms, but I could say a little more about that, why I would want to say something obviously so silly. The reason that I’m interested in trying to talk about history in a different way is that it comes from my experience in working with long durations. I’m thinking now of the way that in my early work in New York, playing music that used extended durations stretched the limits of the critical discourse of the time, and made the works seem very progressive and involved a kind of shift of paradigm in music altogether. By using longer durations, it was possible for me and the group I was working with to change the traditional focus of music activity away from the function of the composer and to turn it in the direction of space and subjective impressions, in particular, related to trance and quasi-hypnotic states, and to take that kind of material and reposition it so that it achieves some kind of relevance in the western tradition of music. I think that, in a way this was important because of what John Cage had done earlier with a piece that everybody knows about called “4 Minutes And 33 Seconds,” which was pure duration. It would be seen as pure duration from one point of view, just like “4 Minutes And 33 Seconds” with those found prescribed to what had occurred in that time span . In that respect, this was the opposite than what had been emerging as the dominant kind of music in Europe, which was very much a kind of constructivist music. It was music that had been pieced together out of broken down parts. Just fragments of organized structures of time or formal elements of music. Instead, this made music completely transparent, and turned it from poetry into a novel. The music of long duration followed in this direction, sort of “let’s stretch the novel out.” I felt the study of long durations is very productive. Of course, human beings only live to be so old so that they really never have experiences of truly, historically long durations. Nobody lives for a thousand years. But at the same time, the events of a thousand years ago are only out of reach in the same way that the events of yesterday are out of reach. We can lose sight of the fact that a thousand year duration is somehow important to us in the same way that an hour or a day is. I like to refocus that and sometimes to try to bring the richness of our historical tradition within reach of the work that I’m doing, to comment on it and to find the knots in the narratives that it conveys.

(more…)

Oh noes!

July 10th, Frawley Stadium, Wilmington, Delaware. With Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band. New Wilco album June 30th. See your dealer for details.

YAHOO: The company that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News hosted a $233,000 trip to Rome for about 70 people a year before filing for bankruptcy protection. The six-day Philadelphia Newspapers trip was an incentive for advertising managers and major advertisers, Executive Vice President Richard Thayer told a U.S. bankruptcy trustee Thursday. The three top executives — Chief Executive Brian Tierney, Thayer and Executive Vice President Mark Frisby — and their wives also attended, he said. Philadelphia Newspapers LLC filed for bankruptcy protection in February 2009, citing $395 million in debt. Recent court filings also show that Tierney collected $1.175 million in salary and bonuses last year, somewhat higher than previously disclosed. Tierney’s compensation included $650,000 in salary, a $350,000 bonus for 2008, a $175,000 bonus for 2007 and $81,000 in transportation costs. In questioning from a creditor’s lawyer, Thayer defended his own 2008 bonus of $150,000, a sum that came atop his $420,000 salary and $60,000 cash housing allowance. He called it appropriate for a financially troubled company to boost executives’ pay because there is more work to do and a need for incentives to keep them onboard. “The bonuses aren’t related to whether the company makes money or not ,” said Thayer, who called his compensation package “a very low number” for the work he does. Amid layoffs and the company’s worsening financial outlook, editorial and other unionized employees late last year agreed to give up their scheduled raises of about $25 per week. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Bankrupt Phila. Newspapers Denies That Paying Out $1.4 Million In Exec. Bonuses Was Mismanagement

PREVIOUSLY: HECKUVA JOB, TIERNEY — Inky/DN Big Wigs Were Paid $650,000 In Bonuses As Papers Went Bankrupt

PREVIOUSLY: Inquirer/Daily News Go Bankrupt

SHAME SHIT, DIFFERENT ASSHOLE: Earlier today WHYY laid off 16 full-time employees and one part-timer throughout the public radio and television stations. [...] Several WHYY employees today questioned whether the salary of CEO Bill Marrazzo would be cut. His compensation of more than $400,000 plus over $300,000 in expenses and benefits has long been a bone of contention among ‘HYY empoyees. MORE

RELATED: “While very difficult on a personal level,” Marrazzo wrote, the layoffs were necessary to “keep our fiscal house in order.” Marrazzo’s compensation, including $280,000 in deferred compensation he is scheduled to get this year if he meets performance goals, totaled $740,090 for the year ending June 30, 2007, the most recent tax filing to be made public – or 62 percent of the amount to be saved by the 17 layoffs. Staffers reported that at the meeting, Danny Miller, executive producer of Fresh Air, WHYY-FM’s flagship program, asked Marrazzo if executive salary cuts were considered as a way to save jobs and that Miller himself volunteered to take a cut if it could save staff. Marrazzo said that was not an option, people at the meeting said. The CEO told The Inquirer in February that a cut in his compensation would be on the table if the station had economic troubles. MORE

THE SOLOIST (2009, directed by Joe Wright, 109 minutes, U.S.)
EARTH (2007, directed by Alastair Fothergill & Mark Linfield, 96 MIinutes, U.S./U.K.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC

This is what Oscar-bait looks like when things go wrong.  A true story based on the popular best seller of the same name, The Soloist stars Jaime Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers, a mentally ill former Julliard student who is discovered playing music on the streets by L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez (RobertDowney Jr.).  Over time they strike up a mutually beneficial friendship which supplies the homeless Mr. Ayers with some much-needed stability and supplies Mr. Lopez (formerly of the Philadelphia Inquirer) with a career-making news story.That summary should tell you everything you need to know about why Hollywood was attracted to the story; you got a cross-racial friendship, a crusading reporter, a mentally ill genius (and Oscar loves actors who play the mentally ill) and a life redeemed by the power of music.  How could it lose?  Decisively, it turns out.  Originally primed for release in the Fall (where potential Academy Award winners dwell), the release was finally pushed back to the pre-Summer blockbuster doldrums, a savvy decision because like Beethoven’s ears, The Soloist just doesn’t work.

Director Joe Wright (who mounted the glossy WW2 flick Atonement) takes an approach that is too smart by a half.  Seeking to minimize the sort of TV movie sentimentality the story’s outline is prey to, Wright begins by directing this story with an in-your-face style that seeks to recreate the sense of danger felt by the paranoid Mr. Ayers.  Much like the recent Diving Bell & The Butterfly, The Soloist traps its story its character in a claustrophobic present, unnerving the audience with a visual attuned to Mr. Ayers’ jittery experience.  It is an uncomfortable place to visit but once the troubled musician is brought in to watch the L.A. Philharmonic perform we escape with him into a psychedelic lightshow of music and color (shades of Fantasia!) that is meant to express Mr. Ayers liberation through music.

The film gets more conventional from there, with flashbacks supplying Mr. Ayers’ tragic backstory but somehow along the way their friendship goes unillustrated.  Oh, they’re together constantly yet missing is any sense of camaraderie, humor or ease between them.  Without this sort of chemistry you’re left to guess why Mr. Lopez is spending all his time hanging out on skid row.  Perhaps this is best explained by the ill-founded idea of writing the real Mr. Lopez’s wife and child out of the picture, in an attempt to create a character who is just as isolated as the man he is covering.  It’s a typical writers’ trick, drawing parallels between two apparently dissimilar characters but it only pushes the film away from the truth, or any truth for that matter. And poor Jaime Foxx , he’s acting his heart out here, he even reportedly chipped his teeth for greater authenticity.  Left adrift by Wright’s unsure direction, his manic performance comes off as more of a stunt than it should.  You want to applaud the film for side-stepping sentiment but if you’re going to remove the surefire heart-tugging you better replace it with something more than two hours of pure liberal pity.

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And if you think the streets are mean, the wilderness isn’t much better.  Disney’s return to nature documentary, Earth chronicles how climate change is threatening many of the iconic superstars of the great outdoors.  Without dwelling on the man-made details, Earth captures the struggles of polar bears, pachyderms and assorted other whiskery friends as the attempt to survive in an increasingly unfavorable landscape. Cobbled together mainly from footage shot forBBC’s Planet Earth mini-series, Earth serves as a sort of highlight reel of that show’s more spectacular moments.  And blown up on the big screen, they do look truly mind-blowing; exotic birds and amorphous sea life will remind the reverent among us that yes, the creator did indeed invent acid as well.  Shortchanged is the science or illuminating context but new is the morose feeling (perhaps fed by the narration by Mr. Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones) that we better see ‘em now, ’cause only the magic of CGI will be able to summon these critters within a couple generations.

[via The New Republic via U.S. Department Of State]

“Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice….The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment.” — George W. Bush, June 26, 2003

RELATED: Iraq’s government has recorded 87,215 of its citizens killed since 2005 in violence ranging from catastrophic bombings to execution-style slayings, according to government statistics obtained by The Associated Press that break open one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. Combined with tallies based on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and an in-depth review of available evidence by The Associated Press, the figures show that more than 110,600 Iraqis have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The number is a minimum count of violent deaths. The official who provided the data to the AP, on condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, estimated the actual number of deaths at 10 to 20 percent higher because of thousands who are still missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without official records. MORE

FRESH AIR

Author Craig Yoe explores the risque art of the man behind Superman in his new book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art Of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster. As Yoe explains, artist Joe Shuster did not earn much money for his part in the creation of the man of steel. After suing D.C. Comics over the copyright for Superman, Shuster drew art for an obscure series of magazines called Nights Of Horror. In Secret Identity, Yoe collects Shuster’s racy drawings and details the scandal and murder trial related to Nights Of Horror. The author of over 30 books, Yoe runs the New York design firm YOE! Studio.

PREVIOUSLY ON PHAWKER: Joe Shuster was paid the princely sum of $130 by DC Comics (then called National Comics) for all rights and ownership of Superman — which he invented in his bedroom in Cleveland with the help of Jerry Siegel, his high school buddy from down the street. Even back in 1938, that wasn’t a lot of money, but Shuster was just glad somebody had finally bought into the concept of the Man of Steel after years of knocking on the doors of publishers, to no avail. Shuster and Siegel were  tasked with creating future episodes of Superman, which, as history shows, was a  super-hit with the comic book-buying public, drawing some 20 million readers by the early 1940s.

Even though both Shuster and Siegel earned about $50,000 a year each in newspaper syndication royalties, both men deeply resented the gross disparity between what they were paid and what their creation earned for DC Comics and, after their initial 10-year contract with the comic book publisher concluded, endeavored to sue for a more equitable split. This ingratitude did not go down well with the powers that be at DC Comics and when the judge eventually ruled against Shuster and Siegel, both were promptly fired and their names removed from any future association with The Man Of Steel. Desperate for money, Shuster took a shady gig drawing up outlandish fetish scenes — whipping, spanking, cactus dildos, teen age sex cults, dope smoking, blood letting, foot-kissing, and bizarre bondage machines –  to accompany the spicy tales included in Nights Of Horror, a low-rent smut fiction ‘zine that would raise the ire of both Congress and the Supreme Court, which duly issued an injunction against its sale and ordered all existing copies be destroyed.

Fortunately for modern-day preverts like you and me, Shuster’s fetish work — in which the guys all look just like Superman or Lex Luthor and the girls look just like Lois Lane — has been retrieved from the dustbin of history by comic book archivist/scholar Craig Yoe and handsomely repackaged in SECRET IDENTITY: The Fetish Art Of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts). It’s hard to say which is more shocking or surprising, the sadistic tableaux of Shuster’s forbidden art or the exceptional circumstances that triggered their creation and eventual destruction. Recently, Phawker got Yoe (pictured above, with keeper) on the horn and asked him to explain…MORE

[Photo by Adrian Buckmaster]

BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. 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 center. Why? Because we love you!

ON THE COVER

CP: In this time of hand-wringing and handouts, it seems the banking industry could use a breath of fresh air. Andrew Thompson takes a look at two Philadelphia residents who are trying to give business-as-usual an injection of environmentalism by starting e3. It’s a banking venture that aims for sustainability both through its lending –homebuyers who build their houses for energy efficiency qualify for lower rates — knowledge of fair-trade and sustainable practices, and their scaled-down, green-as-it-gets headquarters. It’s a tall order, but Frank Baldassarre and Sandy Wiggins have already cleared a few major hurdles to make it happen.

On Sept. 26, 2008, the day after Washington Mutual collapsed and became the largest bank failure in U.S. history, Baldassarre and Wiggins sat in the FDIC branch office in New York to pitch their idea for e3. Given the crisis of confidence rippling throughout the financial sector, they weren’t sure what to expect.

But the FDIC reps received their idea well. So well, Wiggins recalls, that by the end of the presentation, he and Baldassarre were getting pats on the back for a job well done. “I think they were really tired of regulating an industry with no value system,” says Wiggins.

The FDIC also likely knew the same thing as investors, who poured $1.5 million into e3 over two meetings last spring, according to Baldassarre. That is, they knew it had a market — a crucial part of getting government approval to start a bank.

Wiggins speculates that had Al Gore’s environmental warning calls not invaded mass consciousness in the past few years and created a “perfect storm of awareness” in the U.S., e3 never would have gotten past lunchtime conversation.

It might be a tougher sell in Philly than it was to the bigwigs in NYC, though. Thompson has some skeptical sources who don’t see average city residents fitting into e3′s target consumers, and the banking system, as a whole, is predicated on maximizing a different kind of green. Still, e3 — it stands for enterprise, environment and equity — is tough to beat in the boldness andgutsiness departments, and even in this climate, it’s rare to find someone with both money and morals. Kudos all around.

PW: Tara Murtha digs into the mess surrounding the city’s Animal Care and Control Shelter. Only a few months into the Pennsylvania SPCA’s resumption of control over the facility, things have really gone to hell: countless sick animals, vaccines being administered late, if at all, and a steady and consistent stonewalling from officials in a position to comment on or correct the situation. Murtha summarizes:

The situation is so grave that some local rescues say they’re going to stop pulling animals from the shelter altogether and instead focus on trapping and rehabilitating animals right off the street.

It’s a depressing development given that just a few months ago, PSPCA was promising to put Philadelphia on track to becoming a “no-kill” city in five years. No-kill cities only euthanize animals as a last resort, not as population control to make space. Now, with anxious rescues turning to street animals and sick animals bogging down the lifelines out of the shelter, the bad news gets worse: Kitten season is just starting and the shelter is already posting notices on Craigslist that it’s full and desperately needs foster parents and rescue partners to take animals off its hands.

As far as investigative journalism goes, this is the real deal, and it’s not even the first time a crusading writer has taken on the problem; Murtha cites a five-part expose in the Daily News from five years ago that shed light on “The Jungle”-esque conditions. All that, and the city still can’t get it right? Here’s hoping the mounting outrage will get the PSPCA to instate a citizen advisory board like they said they would. Short of that, it seems there’s little hope that the operators will clean up the shelters, much to the city’s shame.
INSIDE THE BOOK

CP: Fat-bottomed girls, you make the opera world go ’round. Sorry, Civil War buffs, this is a Revolutionary kind of town. Philly pantheon: Ben, Penn, and Harry. See third entry here: Holy crap.

PW: Three R’s in Philly schools: Reading, writing and (armed) reinforcement? Bringing everyday drama to the stage. Apparently, Steven Wells has been reincarnated as a “pop super god.” Chifa: Satisfying your mustard air cravings.

WINNER: Solid stuff all over this week, but props to PW for issuing some much-needed takedowns and for digging in their heels against uncooperative sources. Troubled times demand it, and I salute it.

MCCLATCHY: A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration’s advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. At the same time, the narrative suggests that then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell were largely left out of the decision-making process. The narrative, posted Wednesday on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Web site and released by its former chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., came as Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that he’d “follow the evidence wherever it takes us” in deciding whether to prosecute any Bush administration officials who authorized harsh techniques that are widely considered torture.

In a statement accompanying the narrative’s release, Rockefeller said the task of declassifying interrogation and detention opinions “is not complete” and urged prompt declassification of other opinions from 2006 and 2007 that he said would show how Bush Justice Department officials interpreted laws governing torture and war crimes. These developments come days after the Obama administration declassified four Justice Department memos from 2002 and 2005 that revealed in detail authorized interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, sleep deprivation and putting detainees in containers with insects. The drafting of the narrative began last summer, at the prompting of Rockefeller. The Senate Intelligence Committee staff drafted the document, with heavy input from the Bush administration, in a multi-department effort largely coordinated through the Director of National Intelligence’s office. Bush’s National Security Council, however, refused to declassify it. MORE

RELATED: Man Bets He Can Withstand 15 Seconds Of Waterboarding

…he is wrong.