BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Never would I have thought that Valanni with its skinny little waist could birth such a heifer of an event as “Big Time” fashion show, but such was the case Thursday night. Designers from around Philadelphia showcased their reinventions of chestnut fashions from the 80’s, from the big hot pink hair, to the clunky jewelry, right down to the pastel spandex. Emceeing the event was interior-design debutante Brini Maxwell, bringing yet another lustrous layer of chic to the homage to retro. Well-wishers, admirers and fashion enthusiasts arrived in droves, dressed to the nines and pack in from wall to wall. Even curious University of the Arts students thronged across the street in their own mock-dance parties, complementing from afar the already gushing festivities. Considering that Valanni’s hull was already threatened to breach, what with the brimming crowds, it seemed appropriate that a stage had been installed outside Valanni’s front window, which functioned as a platform for prancing fly girls.

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BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR It happened on the fairest of Thursdays that I had the pleasure of lunching with two of Brooklyn’s hottest new specialty bakery owners, Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Lately, A-list celebrities have been helping to disseminate news of their revamped line of sugary, and not so sugary treats. Lewis and Poliafito’s Sweet and Salty Cake was recently featured on Martha Stewart; their brownies were featured on the Today show and selected as one of Oprah’s favorite things. And now, for the first time, the duo share some of their treasured secrets in BAKED: NEW FRONTIERS IN BAKING, a book that provides an inside look at Lewis and Poliafito’s cutting-edge concoctions as well as modern takes on old favorites. We lunched at El Vez—figured I might as well show them another of restaurateur Starr’s various creations, since New York City is now home to both a Morimoto and a Buddakan. Being the fabulous, worldly pair that they are, it was by no great effort on my part that we were able to touch on a number of topics in the course of the meal; and if Lewis’ and Poliafito’s Bakery is as sweet and charming as they are—well, let’s just say they are as sweet as apple pie with sharp cheddar cheese melted on top. And so, like most stories, this one begins in the middle.

Phawker: So, what puts you guys above the fierce competition in New York City?

Lewis: Well, I don’t know how it is in Philly. Renato and I kind of did a Philly expedition not to long ago: we went to Reading Terminal. I think we found a cupcake place there. NYC is kind of cupcake crazy. I guess a lot of the United States is cupcake crazy. We felt that, in NYC, the concentration is very much more the grandma’s type of aesthetic, especially in the way everything looks; the goods matched to the actual walls; just the design of the place; and we kind of went opposite to that. We show that a little in the photos in the book; everything being so neat and clean.

Phawker: Yeah, the photos in the books portray your bakery as being very metropolitan.

Lewis: Yeah, totally. And I mean, it’s stays whimsical and sort of quirky at the same time. I think something that also separated us was our location: being in Brooklyn, a part from the neighborhood that was gentrifying.

Poliafito: Yeah, it wasn’t essentially a very cool or hip place, I guess, but it’s certainly getting that way. Are you familiar at all Williamsburg in Brooklyn?

Phawker: No, no so much. But I can provide a place undergoing a similar phenomenon here in Philadelphia. I live in a sector of the city called Fishtown, which borders the outer rim of the gentrification donut. Northern Liberties is the most recently gentrified sector. Fishtown is next.

Poliafito: Yeah, that’s sounds similar. Williamsburg was one of those neighborhoods in Brooklyn that was just a dilapidated kind of area; and then the hipsters moved in and the area just kind of took off. And you know, Williamsburg is so easy to get to: it’s one stop out of Manhattan. So you know, it’s on the train line; there are no issues there. Red Hook, where our bakery is at, on the other hand, is extremely hard to get to.

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BY AARON STELLA I admit I don’t often frequent galleries, save perhaps on occasion when strolling the fairway of First Friday. Other than that, I rarely go out of my way. So this is totally a fluke, but a notable one at that. Just the other day, I saw a photo in the arts section of City Paper of what looked to be the bust of a deer that on its face had the fur and familiar feature of Winnie the Pooh. Sure enough, the caption under the photo read “Pooh Deer,” and that it was being showcased in the Projects Gallery at 629 N 2nd St. I pass that location infrequently when on route to Center City, and so I decided to take a little daytrip to meet “Pooh Deer” up close and personal.

 Although I had journeyed for “Pooh Dear,” I found an unexpected trove of treasures upon my arrival. Projects Gallery is a smaller venue, mind you, yet pieces are given plenty of space, and are not cluttered together, so that observers can enjoy a remote artistic distance from their piece of choice. The wall perpendicular to “Pooh Deer” held scattered about it what looked to be masks of every eccentric makeup. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that in a previous life these masks were not masks at all, but bicycle helmets that had been transformed into bizarre guises, each endowed with a streak of mischief. The artist name is Gregory Farrar Scott, and I think it’s safe to say his imagination is shamelessly child-like, and that he is dauntless in his use of material; that anything can beautify.

In this case, regular old household products evoke the exotic. For example: a seashell is no longer a seashell, but fixed between two India ink bottles, it becomes a nose (suspiciously resembling Groucho Marx), and amputated Barbie doll legs no longer support a busty vixen, but dangle like fleshy fangs, while the remaining slots function as eyes, deep and abyssal. Still, while some masks struck intrigue, others were just plain goofy, and on the whole, they all have some measure of absurdity; yet perpetuate an element of fun. And I divined a message from the outlandish collective, that of community and diversity, in that every mask was uniquely separate from one another, yet none seemed to outshine or be higher in the hierarchical cast from others, making their society appear egalitarian and tribal.

“Fresh!”, ends at Project Gallery on September 29th, so hurry over and feast your eyes on a menagerie of the obscure and ludicrous, and meet the eclectic cast of Scott’s zany world. For more of Scott’s work, visit his website here: www.gregoryfarrarscott.com

BY AARON STELLA Amidst the revelry of the Mr. Gay Philadelphia pageant, I was able to finagle a future interview out of Michael Musto, famed gay-celeb columnist for the Village Voice in NYC. So a couple of weeks later, I hopped on the Chinatown bus headed for Village Voice’s headquarters in NYC. Musto, dressed in a crisp black and white vertical-striped shirt and baggy black slacks, (and of course, wearing his trademark Sally Jesse Raphaels) explained to me that the Voice was moving. Most everything was packed in boxes and hardly anyone was in the newsroom. We found a quiet spot in the building that was for the most part bare save a desk, a few boxes and two desk chairs. I put my recorder on top of an empty cardboard box and said…

Phawker: OK: I guess we’ll just play 20 questions first and get that out of the way, shall we? So, tell me a bit about yourself: your Wiki page says a number of things, but there gaps, and plenty to elaborate on. Perhaps where you grew up is a good place to start.

Musto: I grew up in Brooklyn. I’m an only child, so, I really grew up internally; I didn’t even have any imaginary friends. And I was very shy. I was always the last one to raise my hand in class. I actually never spoke during my entire childhood—I just didn’t volunteer any information.

Phawker: Sort of like “children should be seen and not heard”? You embrace that?

Musto: (Laughter) No, no, ha! I don’t think it’s a good idea. But [taciturnity] did help me develop some internal life, and become an observer. I would go to the movies and write myself little reviews on little index cards that I would file in filing cabinets. I even wrote a full-length play when I was like nine-years-old. It’s in the garage somewhere—along with my boyfriend’s head, or something. (Laughter) I mean, I did very well in school: I was a great student and ended up going to Columbia University. I was 16 when I entered.

Phawker: Wow!

Musto: And they didn’t have journalism major then so I had to major in English. So I wrote for the school paper, and I sat in on graduate Journalism classes.

Phawker: So then, what was your focus as an English major? Or, I mean, what was your passion?

Musto: I had no passion for it. I wanted to study Journalism, but [English] was the closest thing. You know, Jane Austin is a close as you get (Laughter). But by my third year of school, I was way more interested in the activities then the curriculum. I was in the Gilbert and Sullivan shows and did musical theater.

Phawker: Wow, so I guess you’ve got some pipes on you.

Musto: I mean, yeah: I had a band, too. I can carry a tune.

Phawker: Well, what about doing karaoke?

Musto: I won’t get up [to do it]. I reminds me too much of being in a band, and all the things that can go wrong. Unlike Madonna, I want to control every aspect. You probably saw the “Behind the Music” on VH1; it was on for like 40 years. When I had a band, and before she was famous, we used to share a bill at a downtown club. Well, my band never got to sound check before she took over because she had to test the mike from every angle, taking absolutely forever. And also, after we went on, her manager, who was a woman, told us that she didn’t want us receiving guests after our performance because Madonna was getting ready. And we were all like, “Uh, you already denied us a sound check, so…”.

Phawker: Why would she deny you well-wishers?

Musto: Well, because Madonna was getting ready—and we all know Madonna doesn’t want anybody to see her naked, right? (Laughter) Ironic, no? Anyways—but I actually love karaoke because I love watching other people make of a fool of themselves. In fact, I feel a lot of my life consists of observing other people destroy themselves in entertaining ways. I wouldn’t drink; and [I’d] watch them guzzle the booze and fall down drunk; and I wouldn’t gamble, but I love going to casinos and watch people in awful luck, pulling the slots.

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BY AARON STELLA As enjoyable as modern reproductions of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” can be — especially those flush with glamorous nuances, such as Leonardo DiCaprio dueling in the streets of Verona with pistols instead of rapiers—these reproductions often evoke but a fleeting fondness. By comparison, Shakespeare’s R&J – which closed out an auspicious four-week run at the Adrienne Theater last night — is the stuff of true love, a remake unlike all the rest. Shakespeare’s R&J, prepared under the thespian expertise of Peter Reynolds, Director of the Mauckingbird Theater Company and of Temple University’s new musical theater program, is a radical revamp performed by a mere four actors cast as catholic school boys enduring the repressiveness of closed-minded society. At the same time, indirectly, the production, as per Joe Calarco’s adaptation, attempts to make sense of being gay in today’s world. I specify that the gay aspect conveyed “indirectly”  because this variation of R&J isn’t your run-of-the-mill, in-your-face gay theater—hardly. “The first thing many reporters ask me is, ‘Is this political?’ or, ‘Is this about gay rights?’ and I just say ‘no’,” Reynolds says. “I am but a gay man…[who wants] universal themes to be present in the art that I make.”

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PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A museum on Thursday unveiled a rare copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, a document signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln declaring the end of slavery in the United States.

The document is one of about 24 known copies to survive out of 48 that were originally printed. It was acquired on behalf of The National Constitution Center museum from an unnamed private collector.

“This is one of the rarest, most valuable, most significant documents in history,” president of the non-profit museum Joseph Torsella told a news conference. “With the possible exception of the Declaration of Independence, no document has had a more profound impact on the American vision of liberty.

Torsella declined to say how much was paid for the document, saying only that it was a “very significant sum.” It was acquired by board member Steven Galbraith and will be on loan to the museum, where it will be on display until 2017.

Lincoln signed the proclamation on January 1, 1863, two years into the American Civil War, and in so doing authorized the freeing of slaves in rebel states.

The document contains the entire text of the proclamation and was originally intended for sale at a Philadelphia fair in 1864 to raise money for sick and wounded soldiers. Each copy, with Lincoln’s original signature, sold for $10 at the time.

SAN FRANCISCO Feb 6, 2007 (AP)� A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest private employer, must face a class-action lawsuit alleging as many as 1.5 million former and current female employees were discriminated against in pay and promotions.

The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a 2004 federal judge’s decision to let the nation’s largest class-action employment discrimination lawsuit go to trial, possibly exposing the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailing powerhouse to billions of dollars in damages.

“Plaintiff’s expert opinions, factual evidence, statistical evidence and anecdotal evidence present significant proof of a corporate policy of discrimination and support plaintiff’s contention that female employees nationwide were subjected to a common pattern and practice of discrimination,” the court wrote in a 2-1 decision.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Woman Is The N-Word Of The World

Molly Ivins died Wednesday at age 62 after a long battle with breast cancer. This is her final column, entitled “Stand Up Against The Surge“:

The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that WE simply cannot let it continue.It is not a matter of whether we will lose or we are losing. We have lost.Gen. John P. Abizaid, until recently the senior commander in the Middle East, insists that the answer to our problems there is not military. “You have to internationalize the problem. You have to attack it diplomatically, geo-strategically,” he said.His assessment is supported by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who only recommend releasing forces with a clear definition of the goals for the additional troops.Bush’s call for a “surge” or “escalation” also goes against the Iraq Study Group. Talk is that the White House has planned to do anything but what the group suggested after months of investigation and proposals based on much broader strategic implications. About the only politician out there besides Bush actively calling for a surge is Sen. John McCain. In a recent opinion piece, he wrote: “The presence of additional coalition forces would allow the Iraqi government to do what it cannot accomplish today on its own — impose its rule throughout the country. … By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed.” But with all due respect to the senator from Arizona, that ship has long since sailed.

A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country — we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls. We know this is wrong. The people understand, the people have the right to make this decision, and the people have the obligation to make sure our will is implemented.Congress must work for the people in the resolution of this fiasco. Ted Kennedy’s proposal to control the money and tighten oversight is a welcome first step. And if Republicans want to continue to rubber-stamp this administration’s idiotic “plans” and go against the will of the people, they should be thrown out as soon as possible, to join their recent colleagues.Anyone who wants to talk knowledgably about our Iraq misadventure should pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone.” It�s like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face down and moan: How could we have let this happen? How could we have been so stupid?As The Washington Post’s review notes, Chandrasekaran’s book “methodically documents the baffling ineptitude that dominated U.S. attempts to influence Iraq’s fiendish politics, rebuild the electrical grid, privatize the economy, run the oil industry, recruit expert staff or instill a modicum of normalcy to the lives of Iraqis.”We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

TIME: “Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.”

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

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30th Street Station [Photo by MooCat]

BY ELIZABETH FIEND You already know that you’re supposed to wash your hands after going to the toilet and before food preparation and eating. But did you know it’s recommended to wash up after eating as well? Or that the best place to sneeze is into your elbow? And that you shouldn’t use the hand blower in the public rest room, it might actually be blowing germs onto your just-washed hands? It’s so important to wash hands because the flu, diarrhea and colds are transmitted either in the air or on surfaces you touch. Germs, bacteria, and viruses can live for two hours on hands and on a clean, dry surface. On a wet surface they can live for weeks.
Your average pair of worn undies contains a .1 gram of feces. Salmonella, hepatitis A and rotavirus, all found in fecal matter, can cause violent diarrhea and terrible tummy aches. Water must be at at least 140 degrees to sanitize and kill theses germs, yet only 5 percent of Americans use water that hot for their washing (isn’t it amazing the things we know?). These nasty germs can also survive the average 28-minute drying cycle. Therefore, experts recommend that you wash your hands after doing laundry. Hardcore, huh? Unwashed hands kill a lot of people each year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that poor hand washing contributes to almost half of the 9,000 deaths caused each year by outbreaks of food-borne illnesses like salmonella, shigellosis, hepatitis A and E. coli. More people are killed by germs in hospitals each year than by fires, car crashes and drowning combined, and the government has estimated that about 20,000 of those deaths might have been prevented by the simple act of proper hand washing.

You’ve heard of those disastrous cruises where untold numbers of passengers come down with the super bad-ass stomach flu caused by the norovirus. This bug is so viral some people may be contagious for up to two weeks — after they’ve recovered! The single, most painless way to stay healthy and to stop the spread of illness to others is to wash your freaking hands. Spend 20 seconds rubbing your hands — with soap — under the faucet. Wash all the surfaces, the front, backs and in-between the fingers. Do it every time. And for crying out loud, keep your hands away from your face � your mouth, eyes, nose — and throw away your tissues immediately after use.

As essential as hand washing is to safeguarding our health, it’s actually a relatively new concept. During the 19th century, up to a quarter of all women who delivered babies in European and American hospitals died from childbed-fever caused by the bacterium puerperal sepsis. It was noted in a hospital in Vienna that the death rates in the wards run by midwives was 2-3 percent, but in the wards run by doctors the death rate was over 10 percent. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes (yeah, father of the Supreme Court justice) floated the theory that the fever was spread to patients by doctors who were performing autopsies and then delivering babies, and that it might be wise for these doctors to wash their hands when they moved from patient to patient. The idea was laughed at — by the midwives, who were already washing their hands. One for the ladies! Thirty-eight years later, doctors still weren’t washing up. In 1881, President James Garfield was shot by an assassin and died several days later (in New Jersey). It’s now widely believed that had the attending doctors washed their hands before reaching into the President’s chest to remove the bullet, he would have lived. Soap is a cleansing agent made from the salts of vegetable or animal fats — and by its nature, it cleans and removes germs. Bacterium sticks to the soaps fatty acids and then is enclosed in droplets of water and washed away. But what about antibacterial soap? (more…)

[PHOTO & TEXT BY EVA LIAO]
WHERE: The Art Musuem
WHEN: Sunday 3:42 PM
WHY: This guy rolls into the joint, suave as hell, right? Like he�s John Lurie circa Down by Law and asks me if I can bum him a smoke. I take one look at his 30�s style pants and brown rimmed Fedora and next thing I know I�m back at his place rolled up in flannel bed sheets and I can�t find my panties. Sike. Never happened. Cool pants, tho.

PHAWKER RADIO: Yo La Tengo’s AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT

Gregory Crewdson’s eerie photographs of suburbia at dusk require set-ups as elaborate as a film shoot. “My photographs are about the moment of transition between before and after,” he explains. “Twilight is evocative of that. There’s something magical about the condition.” The eerie effect of twilight crossed with strong artificial light - street lights, house lights, lights from the sky - is exaggerated by Crewdson’s choice of backdrop, which is almost always nondescript suburban America.

He is not the first photographer to be drawn to twilight - “nature at its most impressive”, according to the exhibition catalogue - but his images are uniquely tense, pregnant with atmosphere. Edward Hopper, Ray Bradbury, The Twilight Zone, Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and David Lynch can all lay a claim to influence.

Lynch is Crewdson’s most obvious source of inspiration. When he was a graduate art student in the mid-1980s, the photographer says he was struck by Lynch’s masterpiece, Blue Velvet. “I had the distinct feeling it would change me,” he says. Lynch’s vision of a dystopian world beneath the suburban idyll of Lumberton - in particular, the unforgettable 15-minute scene in which Kyle MacLachlan hides in a cupboard while Dennis Hopper acts out his S&M fantasies with Isabella Rossellini - left a lasting impression: “I love everything about it - the set, the attention to colour, light and mood.”

THE GUARDIAN: The Witching Hour
WIKIPEDIA: Gregory Crewdson, American Photographer
THE SPEEDIES: His Old Punk Band

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents… some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” — H.P. Lovecraft, 1926