NEW YORK TIMES: As a performer, Mr. Curtis drew first and foremost on his startlingly good looks. With his dark, curly hair, worn in a sculptural style later imitated by Elvis Presley, and plucked eyebrows framing pale blue eyes and wide, full lips, Mr. Curtis embodied a new kind of feminized male beauty that came into vogue in the early 1950s. A vigorous heterosexual in his widely publicized (not least by himself) private life, he was often cast in roles that drew on a perceived ambiguity: his full-drag impersonation of a female jazz musician in “Some Like It Hot”; a slave who attracts the interest of a Roman senator (Laurence Olivier) in Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” (1960); a man attracted to a mysterious blond (Debbie Reynolds) who turns out to be the reincarnation of his male best friend in Vincente Minnelli’s “Goodbye Charlie” (1964).

But behind the pretty-boy looks could be found a dramatically potent combination of naked ambition and deep vulnerability, both likely products of his Dickensian childhood in the Bronx. Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, to Helen and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Emanuel operated a tailor shop in a poor neighborhood, and the family occupied cramped quarters behind the store, the parents in one room and little Bernard sharing another with his two brothers, Julius and Robert. Helen Schwartz suffered from schizophrenia and frequently beat the three boys. (Robert was later found to have the same disease.)

In 1933, at the height of the Depression, his parents found they could not properly provide for their children, and Bernard and Julius were placed in a state institution. Returning to his old neighborhood, Bernard frequently found himself caught up in gang warfare and the target of anti-Semitic hostility; as he recalled in many interviews, he learned to dodge the stones and fists to protect his face, which he realized even then would be his ticket to greater things. MORE

WIKIPEDIA: In the early 1960s, he was immortalized as “Stony Curtis,” a voice-over guest star on The Flintstones.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Rahm Emanuel will resign as White House chief of staff on Friday and will begin his campaign for Chicago mayor by meeting with voters in the city on Monday, two people familiar with Emanuel’s plans said. The two people, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Emanuel’s announcement, said he will return to Chicago over the weekend and begin touring neighborhoods Monday. “He intends to run for mayor,” one of the people told The Associated Press. MORE

NEW YORKER: Rahm Emanuel’s office, which is no more than a three-second walk from the Oval Office, is as neat as a Marine barracks. On his desk, the files and documents, including leatherbound folders from the National Security Council, are precisely arranged, each one parallel with the desk’s edge. During a visit hours before Congress passed President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, on Friday, February 13th, I absently jostled one of Emanuel’s heavy wooden letter trays a few degrees off kilter. He glared at me disapprovingly. Next to his computer monitor is a smaller screen that looks like a handheld G.P.S. device and tells Emanuel where the President and senior White House officials are at all times. Over all, the office suggests the workspace of someone who, in a more psychologized realm than the West Wing of the White House and with a less exacting job than that of the President’s chief of staff, might be cited for “control issues.” MORE

ILLUSTRATION: Robert Risko

RELATED: Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s pick to replace Christina Romer as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, talks for two minutes about the Bush tax cuts. He doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been hashed over a million times before, but he says it with cogency and clarity and even a hint of a Texas twang (befitting a proud son of Waco named after Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas”.) But I wonder, who is this aimed at? The public, generally speaking, is in favor of raising taxes on the rich. The sticking point, for the White House, is Congress; specifically, moderate and conservative Democrats who have been browbeaten by tough-talking Republicans. I don’t think Goolsbee’s going to make much headway with these cowards, no matter how forcefully he pushes the case. MORE

FRESH AIR

Richard Nixon is remembered as a ruthless politician driven at times by fear and hatred of his perceived enemies. But a new book suggests that Nixon’s paranoia was based at least in part on his own experience. In Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture, Mark Feldstein describes the epic battle between Nixon and the muckraking syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. Feldstein follows the rise of Anderson’s investigative journalism career and explains how his decades-long face-off with Nixon would become emblematic of the relationship between the press and other politicians. In the two decades that followed, the conflict became so ferocious, Feldstein says, that Nixon ordered CIA surveillance of Anderson and his family — and White House operatives seriously considered assassinating the journalist. “They actually conducted surveillance. They followed him from his work to his house,” Feldstein says. “They staked out his house. They looked at it for vulnerabilities … [and dicussed] how they could plant poison in his aspirin bottle. They talked about how they could spike his drink and they talked about smearing LSD on his steering wheel so that he would absorb it through his skin and die in a hallucination-crazed auto crash.” The plot was ultimately called off, Feldstein says, because Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, the two men who were supposed to assassinate Anderson, were instead tapped to break into Watergate.

Cameron McGill And What Army [pictured, above] plays the First Unitarian Church tonight with Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos and Lonely Island.

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: A strange, convoluted story this week from Yowei Shaw on a homeless activisit, a young man so fired up about the Palestinian cause in Israel that he’s shunned work, shelter and the mainstream economy. Raphael McNamara appears both passionate and misguided, a combination that has led to accusations of terrorist involvement.

McNamara tunneled his way into the local pro-Palestinian movement in early 2009, becoming a regular participant in events and meetings held by different activist groups, including Stop U.S. Tax-Funded Aid to Israel Now! (SUSTAIN), Bubbies and Zaydes, International Action Center and Temple Students for Justice in Palestine (TSJP).

“He’s a little frantic, but he’s a charming man — energetic as hell,” says Cy Schwartz, co-founder of Bubbies and Zaydes, a pro-Palestinian group of Jewish grandparents. Schwartz met McNamara at one of Bubbies and Zaydes’ Friday vigils in front of the Israeli consulate. “He became this amazing explosion of activity with all the various groups that were working.”

McNamara organized demonstrations and put up fliers and posters. “For him, while this conflict was going on and as he would say, people are being oppressed, it’s not OK for you to do nothing,” says Peter Hayakawa, a member of TSJP. “He considered activism his work. It was a full-time job for him.”

His “work” was omnipresent online: not just Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, but also Xanga, Scribd, Flickr, LinkedIn, Digg, YouTube, PicasaWeb and Photobucket. He posted hundreds of news articles, photos, videos, fliers, academic papers, letters, rants, comments, poems and more — almost all on the Palestinian conflict.

Shaw fills in McNamara’s troubled past, and from the volume and eloquence of his output, it seems like he had gone a long way toward overcoming it. The contradictions inherent in the piece and in McNamara himself — a non-violent crusader armed with a deadly weapon — don’t make it all seem any less true.

PW: The cover heralds a major accomplishment for the civil rights of transgendered persons, and Randy LoBasso digs even deeper into the legal issues surrounding sexual reassignment and transgendered identity. The PA Department of Transportation’s recent move to recognize individuals who identify as the opposite sex but haven’t undergone surgery opens a window into the life of Danielle Finnegan and others who struggle to be recognized and understood.

Finnegan, a male-to-female (MTF) transgender individual, was ecstatic when she got the call about the new policy the morning it went into effect. “I was like a little kid waiting to get … candy,” she says. The 64-year-old immediately printed out the new forms, which were posted at TransCentralPA.com, filled them out, faxed them to her doctor’s office in Carlisle and then called the doctor. “I told her, it’s about a 40-minute ride [to your office]; I’ll see you in 40 minutes.”

As she busied herself with the formalities of legally changing her gender, Finnegan was unaware that she was about to become the first person in Pennsylvania to be affected by PennDOT’s new policy. “I didn’t care so much about being first … I was just happy to finally have [official documentation] in my hand.”

Within hours of receiving her new license, a photograph of Finnegan with her new ID was sent out as part of a TransCentralPA press release, aptly titled “Success!”

“Think of the number of times you have to present a driver’s license just in daily life,” says Lee Carpenter, a professor at Temple Law School and former lawyer for EqualityPA. “It can be while you’re stopped by police, but it could be getting carded in a bar. For most people a driver’s license is the only ID anyone ever has and [they have] to present that picture ID over and over again. This gender marker often caused trouble.”

For Finnegan, the new policy is a long-awaited civil victory. “It was so important to me,” she says of changing her gender status. Especially since almost every doctor she’s ever seen in her life told her she was nuts. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, Danielle, you’re not mentally crazy. There’s nothing wrong with you. Even the state of Pennsylvania recognizes that you’re truly female. And here’s the license to prove it.’” She adds: “After so many years of suffering … to be able to get up in the morning … put my hair in a ponytail … put on slacks or a skirt, whatever … and just be myself. Not thinking ‘I have to act like a boy.’”

The story gains additional cred from a tale of harrassment by Philly police officers of another transgendered person and of members of Riders Against Gender Exclusion continuing to take aim against SEPTA for their M/F stickers on train passes. Conservative nutjobs rear their heads, of course, but the hope and optimism Finnegan shows at the state’s change remains undefeated. Good for her, for the state and for PW.

INSIDE THE BOOK

CP: The Wilma does Macbeth, still has to call it “the Scottish play.” Carpenters Union: Hacks with hacksaws. Tom Corbett still evil, Dan Onorato still disappointing. Down the hatch: Booze journalism at its finest.

PW: A rave review for Green Eggs; Sam I Am was unavailable for comment. I knew those guys by the Electric Factory were up to no good. Not even liquid nitrogen can stop the BRT. Fear, loathing and incompetent waitresses at SugarHouse.

WINNER: Good stuff all around this week, but I have to give the nod to CP. It’s a compelling, confusing narrative, with politics and personalities at odds, and, like most mysteries, it doesn’t wrap up with an easy conclusion. The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association might be onto something here.

BY MAVIS LINNEMANN If you’ve ever been to Europe—or maybe just your local European import store—you’ve come across Nutella, a wonderfully creamy hazelnut chocolate spread. Pietro Ferrero invented Nutella in the 1940s in response to the rationing of chocolate during World War II. Mr. Ferrero used hazelnuts, which are abundant in the Piedmont region of Italy, to extend the chocolate supply, and Europe has never been the same. Nutella is ubiquitous in Europe, but it’s making the rounds in the U.S., too. You can find it stuffed into croissants or pastries, spread onto crepes or crunchy Euro breakfast toasts, or used as a dip for fruit. Today I’m offering you a Nutella sauce to drizzle over a fresh-from-the-oven crespella, or Italian pancake. Pancakes for dessert? YES PLEASE! A crespella is somewhere between a crepe and a pancake, but easier to make because all you have to do it is bake it— no fancy flipping or turning required. This baby does all the work for you, right in the oven.  Simply invert the cooked crespella on a cutting board, sprinkle with powdered sugar, drizzle with Nutella sauce and top with macerated strawberries, if desired. Of course, with this crespella’s crisp edges and tender center, it could be served for breakfast or dessert—or both, if you eat the leftovers the next morning like I did. MORE

2600:  Google Instant is the latest incarnation of the search engine that fills in potential responses as you type them into the Google search bar. Some people think this is great while others feel like Google is reading their minds and are freaked out by it. We believe it’s fun for at least one reason. Like everything these days, great care must be taken to ensure that as few people as possible are offended by anything. Google Instant is no exception. Somewhere within Google there exists a master list of “bad words” and evil concepts that Google Instant is programmed to not act upon, lest someone see something offensive in the instant results… even if that’s exactly what they typed into the search bar. We call it Google Blacklist. Give it a try. Go to the Google home page. Type in “puppy” and see the many results that fill your screen. Now type “bitch” and admire the blank screen. In this case, the two words could mean the exact same thing. But Google Instant is erring on the side of caution, protecting the searcher from seeing something they may not want to see. MORE

BY PELLE GUNTHER It feels wrong to even begin calling this show at the Troc a concert. It was an experience. A musical and visual trip through the bizarre and fascinating sonic hodgepodge that is the art of Nick Zummuto and Paul de Jong, the duo more commonly known as The Books. After releasing their first album in about 5 years, the band was back and ready to play some wild sampledelic folktronica. They played with the assistance of what I assume was a flash drive and PowerPoint, as they flipped from song to song, only once restarting a song due to a computer failure. Along with Nick, Paul and their PowerPoint, a new member joined in their musical experimentation, sharing in melting pot of instruments, which traveled around the band like mono among teens. The new member seemed to be just as musically talented as the original two, playing every instrument they had except for the cello, which I’m sure de Jong was keeping well out of reach for fear of losing the instrument to this new member’s virtuosity. The whole group was extremely witty and humorous on stage, especially Zummuto who was extremely likeable and personable, constantly making witty observations that had everyone in titters.

Just like their albums, The Books were quirky as hell. With a few exceptions, every song they played was accompanied by odd assortments of video clips, sometimes seemingly random, and many times manipulated along with the music, which in many cases made the songs finally feel complete. The opening song, “Group Autogenics I,” (which is also the first track on the new album-The Way Out,) had the whole crowd fighting back a bad case of the giggles as band told us that “…this music, specifically created for its pleasurable effects on your mind, body and emotions…is mixed with a warm, orange colored liquid.” The music itself wandered from a wild death march called “We Bought the Flood,” to a very educational tune about Golfing called “I Didn’t Know That,” which could almost be classified as dance music (or as close as folktronic could come to dance). Although I still don’t know that and remain quite cloudy on what exactly they were teaching us, there were definitely a few video clips of people vacuuming a golf course. Although they played mostly tunes from the new album, the band did take time to revisit some of the classics like “Tokyo,” and “Smells Like Content,” which was accompanied by witty misspellings of the lyrics.

After finishing their set the band came out for an encore, which, Zummuto remarked, they had previously been against; however he had to admit that they loved hearing the crowd cheer for them. They ended this lovely evening at the Troc with “Cello Song.” Although they didn’t have Jose Gonzales with them to add his dulcet vocals, Zummuto took lead vocals, taking home the night with a powerful performance of one of their best-known tunes. After 5 years away from composing, the Books definitely still have got IT, whatever IT is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pelle Gunther is a recent graduate of Kimberton Waldorf High School. 

ABC NEWS: A Rutgers University freshman posted a goodbye message on his Facebook page before jumping to his death after his roommate secretly filmed him during a “sexual encounter” in his dorm room and posted it live on the Internet. Tyler Clementi were found by the George Washington Bridge last week, according to authorities. Clementi’s freshman ID card and driver’s license were in the wallet. Clementi’s post on his Facebook page, dated Sept. 22 at 8:42 p.m. read, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.” Clementi’s body has not been recovered, but police have pulled an unidentified male body from the Hudson River just north of the bridge. Two students, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have been charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy after allegedly placing a camera in Clementi’s room and livestreaming the recording online on Sept. 19, according to a written statement by New Jersey’s Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan. A Twitter page that appears to have been operated by Ravi but has since been taken offline shows messages in which the accused student takes credit for the alleged videotaping of Clementi. On Sept. 19, Ravi appears to tweet, “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.” MORE

TALKING POINTS MEMO: James O’Keefe, the young conservative activist who secretly recorded meetings with ACORN and was convicted in May of entering Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office under false pretenses, allegedly tried to “punk” CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau by luring her on to a boat and seducing her. According to CNN, Boudreau was trying to get O’Keefe to let her and a camera crew tape a video shoot O’Keefe and some of his friends were doing. He told her he wanted to meet her alone, in person, beforehand. When she arrived at his house in Maryland, she was approached by Izzy Santa, the executive director of Project Veritas, O’Keefe’s investigative journalism project. Santa told Boudreau that O’Keefe actually wanted to meet with the reporter on his boat, which he had set up into a “pleasure palace,” where he would try to seduce her in front of hidden cameras. Boudreau left. CNN then obtained emails and a 13-page document outlining the plan. The plan, which Santa confirmed was real, had a list of “props,” including a “condom jar,” “dildos,” sexy music (like Alicia Keys, as Marvin Gaye was dubbed “too cliche”) and a camera on a tripod, which the filmmakers dubbed “an obvious sex tape machine.” MORE

CNN: Among the props listed were a “condom jar, dildos, posters and paintings of naked women, fuzzy handcuffs” and a blindfold. According to the document, O’Keefe was to record a video of the following script before Boudreau arrived: “My name is James. I work in video activism and journalism. I’ve been approached by CNN for an interview where I know what their angle is: they want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort…. “Instead, I’ve decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I’m going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I’m going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she’ll get seduced on camera and you’ll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath. MORE

RELATED: The Plot To Punk CNN (seriously makes you wonder if anyone involved in this hare-brained scheme has ever had sex with an actual woman)

PREVIOUSLY: Four conservative activists accused of trying to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office pleaded guilty Wednesday to misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses. James O’Keefe, 25, an activist already famous for his videotaped conversations with ACORN officials in several cities, was sentenced to three years probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The FBI has said O’Keefe used his cellphone to try to capture video of two others who posed as telephone repairmen and asked to see the phones at Landrieu’s office in New Orleans. O’Keefe has said they were trying to investigate complaints that constituents couldn’t get through to Landrieu’s office to criticize her support of a health-care reform bill. MORE

RELATED: Alluding to the deceptive tactics the activist used to produce the videotapes shaming ACORN, Judge Knowles explained his decision to be stricter with O’Keefe by saying, “Your record concerns me.” MORE

RELATED: O’Keefe — who already had a well-established, if entirely unreported, record of lying to the media and the public about his phony, highly-doctored and illegally-recorded ACORN videos — then went on to offer a preposterous public statement to explain his New Orleans scheme.But now that O’Keefe’s superstar GOP attorney was successful in pleading his client’s felony charges down to a misdemeanor — to which he and his conspirators pled guilty yesterday before a federal magistrate — lo and behold, the FBI has released their own account of the arrest and plea deal. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: The End Of ACORN Philadelphia

PW: Tuesday night the board of ACORN Pennsylvania voted to dissolve the Keystone state chapter of the embattled community-service organization and re-invent itself as Pennsylvania Communities Organizing For Change, according to Craig Robbins, the former Head Organizer for ACORN PA, who will now serve as executive director of the newly formed PCOC. The board’s decision came in the wake of an announcement Monday from ACORN’s national leadership that it was ceasing operations and that state chapters would be given the option of closing up shop or re-branding themselves as standalone statewide community-service organizations. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Why The Right Hates ACORN, How They Took Them Down, And Why Philly Didn’t Take The Bait

PREVIOUSLY: The Nutcracker Strikes Back!

PREVIOUSLY: WHAT HE SAID: Cracking The Nutcracker

PREVIOUSLY: Q&A: With ACORN Founder Wade Rathke

PREVIOUSLY: BRAVE NEW FILMS: How Fox News Slimed ACORN

PREVIOUSLY: Harshbarger Report Clears ACORN Of Illegality In ‘Pimp & Hooker’ Gotcha Videos

PREVIOUSLY: ‘Pimp’ From ACORN Sting Videos Arrested By FBI For Wiretapping Senator’s Phone

PREVIOUSLY: Brooklyn DA Clears ACORN

PREVIOUSLY: JUDGE: Defunding Of ACORN Is Unconstitutional

WILL BUNCH: It’s 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night in the intensive care unit at Bryn Mawr Hospital outside of Philadelphia. The lights are out in the hallway, and it’s relatively quiet — relatively. The one patient who repeatedly screamed out “Help me!” every hour on the hour has been moved upstairs, and now I’m getting used to a nearby patient whose breathing monitor occasionally plays a bizarre jazz riff in the mode of Charlie Parker. My ICU Room 1 is illuminated only by flickering lights, the TV with its endless-50-something-guy loop of Sportscenter, and a pale green monitor showing my heart rhythms, pulse and blood pressure, thanks to a cuff that strangles my left arm when I least expect it, usually as I’m drifting off to sleep. The cuff is just one element of a tangled web of tubes and wires, EKG leads taped to the hairs of my chest, while a pint of fresh blood drips slowly into an IV line, and oxygen meter taped to my left ring finger that glows red and adds a weird ET vibe to the whole affair. There’s also another glow in the room, coming from my laptop computer, where my IV-bruised arms are typing to finish a blog post about Karl Rove and the Delaware Tea Party before I finally doze off. My new book has been on the market for less than three weeks, and if I don’t do something to promote it, it will disappear from the proverbial map, never to return. For one year, I worked my tail off to write what I hoped was the book of a lifetime. Now, amid the strange beeps and flickering lights of the ICU, I wondered if I’d taken that “book of a lifetime” thing a little too seriously. MORE