CINEMA: Milk Cow Blues

FIRST COW (directed Kelly Reichardt, 122 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Directed by Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women, Night Moves), First Cow is the story of a cook named Cookie (John Magaro) and a migrant Chinese laborer named King Lu (Orion Lee) set in the newly settled Oregon Territory circa 1820. After a chance meeting one night, when Cookie comes across King naked and on the run in the forest and Cookie provides the stranger with both clothes and provisions Good Samaritan-style, they meet again some months later in a small town where they begin an Odd Couple-esque […]

REALITY CHECK: The Stone Cold Truth About Trump’s Tenure At The University Of Pennsylvania

  PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: It was, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, a day that will live in infamy. When President Donald Trump emerged from his mysterious one-on-one summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of 2018, the respective visages and body language of the two world leaders could not have been further apart. The Russian president looked smug and sated, like a vampire with a bellyful of peasant blood; Trump looked like a man who’d just received a painful enema. Or, as grizzled, now-banished White House aide-de-camp Steve Bannon describes it in Siege, Michael Wolff’s […]

QUESTLOVE SUPREME: Q&A W/ Rick Rubin

I HEART RADIO: He has coined himself the great “Reducer”. However, his imprint on hip hop can not be reduced. Rick Rubin established one of the greatest record labels of all time, which we know as Def Jam and has been going ever since. His sound has been requested by the greats of our time. From LL Cool J and Red Hot Chili Peppers to Kanye West and the Dixie Chicks to Mick Jagger and more. Rick Rubin is the guru of sound. He is also one of Questlove Supreme’s most awaited and anticipated interviews. Yes, class is back in […]

EXHUMING MCCARTHY: The Father Of Trumpism

  FRESH AIR: On Feb. 9, 1950, Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator from Wisconsin, stunned the nation — and stoked the paranoia of the Cold War — when he alleged that there were 205 spies working within the U.S. State Department. It was the beginning of a four-year anti-communist, anti-gay crusade in which McCarthy would charge military leaders, diplomats, teachers and professors with being traitors. Author Larry Tye chronicles McCarthy’s infamous smear campaign in the new book Demagogue. He describes the Republican senator as an “an opportunist and a cynic” who deliberately preyed on public fears. “His tactics included playing […]

WORTH REPEATING: Hail To The Karen-In-Chief

  PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: Because hell hath no fury like a mildly inconvenienced middle-aged Caucasian lady, the Internet gave this genus of white privilege a name: Karen. In Internet memes, she is invariably pictured with a South Philly mom cut — think Kate Gosselin’s kicky cowlicked bob gone rogue. Current mood: She would like to speak with the manager, please. Lately it seems like the Karens have gone wild in America, as you’ve no doubt seen all over the Internet: freaking the fuck out at Red Lobster and Trader Joe’s, calling the cops to report flagrant BWB (barbecuing while Black), calling the […]

CINEMA: The Founding Brothers

HAMILTON (directed by Thomas Kail, 180 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Originally planned for a fall 2021 release, it’s hard to see Disney’s move to drop the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning musical Hamilton on their proprietary platform FREE to subscribers on July 3rd as anything less than a response to current events. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip hop musical about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton tapped into the politico/sociocultural zeitgeist, generating the kind of rabid fandom usually reserved for things like Marvel or Star Wars. After a bidding war, Disney copped the theatrical rights to the […]

MT VENGEANCE: Thugs

Mt Vengeance is a Philadelphia rock trio first formed in 2016 out of the ashes of Philly blue collar rock royalty. Singer/guitarist Rich Fravel has been in numerous indie rock bands including Uptown Bones, Latimer, Ashtabula, and Blue. Brian Campbell (bass) was in Philly 80s punk legends The Electric Love Muffin and is currently also in Poppy. Nicky Santore played drums in Valsalva and Providence, RI noise rock band Glory Hole in the early 90s. Mt Vengeance’s first LP Covered in Dust garnered rave reviews in the local Philly press and set out the core sound of the band which […]

This wins the Internet today.? https://t.co/svroHuB8p1 — phawker (@phawker) June 30, 2020

In The Land Of Cotton Old Times Are Forgotten

NEW YORK TIMES: I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow. According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern […]

MADAME GHANDI: Waiting For Me

Multi-talented artist, percussionist, producer and activist MADAME GANDHI today releases her newest video for Visions track “Waiting For Me” – watch here.  Directed by Misha Ghose, “Waiting For Me” was conceptualized and produced by an all-female team and features queer, trans, female and gender non-conforming cast members and marks Madame Gandhi’s first-ever video shot in India.  With its contrasting industrial imagery and color palettes, the visual brings to life the song’s empowering message, an eco-feminist call to action that eschews institutionalized power structures in favor of forging new narratives of self-expression.  Of the video, Madame Gandhi explains: “We as artists […]

THE LINCOLN PROJECT: Treason Weasel

CNN: Russian bounties offered to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to kill US or UK troops there are believed to have resulted in the deaths of multiple US troops, the Washington Post reported Sunday, citing US intelligence gathered from military interrogations. […] CNN previously reported that Russian intelligence officers for the military intelligence agency GRU recently offered money to Taliban militants in Afghanistan as rewards if they killed US or UK troops there, according to a European intelligence official. The official told CNN the incentives offered by the Russians had, in their assessment, led to Coalition casualties, which would be service […]