BY FELICIA PERRETTI They call him Kid Knish. I call him dad. On January 28th 2000, he was a wing-eating competitor in Wing Bowl VIII. He was always the outgoing, fun one in the family and this event was just another chapter in his otherwise ordinarysurburban dad life in Roslyn. My dad was never the strict parent; he always knew how to have a good time. The first time he went to the Wing Bowl, he was just a spectator. This would be 1999, and back then it was at the Spectrum and it was free to get in. Instantly my dad was hooked on the craziness. Before it was over, he turned to his buddies and declared, “I’m gonna be in this next year!” To be a contestant in the Wing Bowl you must complete an eating stunt in an allotted time down at the 610WIP sports radio station. Since my dad works at a Jewish deli, he thought it would be different to eat an authentic Jewish food. His stunt was completed in 30 minutes, which was eating 6 1/2 lbs ofgefilte fish and drinking the juice from the container. It looked as gross as it sounds, but he did it.

Me being younger at the time I only understood the basics of the event, which was to eat as many wings as possible while being timed. I thought it was the coolest thing because my dad was the local “celebrity” of Roslyn. My dad actually trained for the competition and wound up taking 6th place. He also out-ate El Wingador, who later enjoy a glorious reign as Wing Bowl champion three years in a row and later parlay his local celebrity into a hot sauce business. Afterwards, I vowed to one day follow in my father’s footsteps and compete. To be on stage in front of 20,000 people eating wings while the crowd goes nuts — talk about an adrenaline rush. To be able to trigger that massive, Spectrum-shaking roar just by shoving buffalo wings down your neck is the closest you can get to rock stardom without strapping on a guitar. My dad has gone every year since he has competed and I have even started to tag along. It’s kind of a father-daughter thing.

Now, I know some people roll their eyes at this event, but that’s because they just don’t understand. Over the years, Wing Bowl has drawn more and more professional eaters, which helped draw bigger and bigger crowds. Eventually they started charging admission, and still they came. The entourages and the showmanship of each competitor has also become more elaborate over the years: fog machines, inflatable dolls, you name it. But they never fail to impress. In addition, prizes have improved dramatically over the years. Back when my dad competed, they were not giving out vacation getaways or cars like they do now. 

Half the fun of Wing Bowl is the crowd. On either side of your seat is a drunk guy spilling their beer and cursing out the security guard — the pre-party in the parking lot starts in the middle of the night before — or a girl flashing the entire stadium. You just sit there eating your spicy hot-sausage-and-peppers hoagie with a cold Lager in your hand and a big smile on your face while you soak it all in. I’m a lifer. I have been a spectator in the seats, I have been in the entourage of a contestant, and this year I will be experiencing it through my camera. This kind of spectacle may not appeal to everyone but for those who want to live a little this is definitely the place to be. My only advice is people with a weak stomach should not attend. You are bound to see some one puke their guts up.

[photo by MOOCAT]

WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM FRIDAY TO 7 PM EST SATURDAY

UPDATE: “Accumulations have the potential to reach 2 feet in some areas.” The highest numbers apply mostly from Virginia to through far-southern Jersey, but “Over a foot of snow from Philly to DC,” reads a headline at AccuWeather.com. Meteorologist Tom Kines not only confirmed by phone that the city could get 16 inches of light powdery stuff, but said more is even possible. “Even a 50 mile shift to the north could bring 18 to 24 inches into downtown Philly,” he said. This forecast differs substantially from this morning’s forecast from the National Weather Service, which called for about six inches of snow in Philadelphia. MORE

RELATED: National Weather Service

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: It’s difficult to sum up Andrew Thompson’s cover story on police accountability and excessive use of force, so you should probably just read it all. It’s loaded with figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests and reports of incidents that took place both right outside CP’s office doors and in other places in the city. Here’s the takeaway: “the infrastructure set up to ensure that police are accountable to the citizens who pay their salaries has completely broken down.” Here’s why: the city’s Integrity & Accountability Office has all but dissolved, leaving the police’s Internal Affairs Division to run the show, and they’ve sustained allegations against fewer and fewer cops and let many of them off with simple reprimands.

Of course, it’s worth noting that, in many of those cases, the police officers IAD investigates shouldn’t be punished. Criminals lie. And, sometimes allegations of abuse or other misconduct simply can’t be substantiated one way or another, so it’s entirely proper for the officers to be given the benefit of the doubt. It’s also worth noting that only an infinitesimal proportion of calls to which Philly cops respond generate complaints.

That said, it doesn’t mean that abuses of power should be overlooked. And anecdotally, you see the evidence that the PPD doesn’t police its own all that well in last year’s headlines: It began with the Daily News report that Officer Jeffrey Cujdik allegedly robbed Latino bodegas and paid off informants, and ended with the discovery that Officer Tyrone Wiggins allegedly repeatedly raped a 12-year-old girl, but stayed on the force for two years after the charges came to the department’s attention.

If the department’s reaction to these high-profile incidents was wanting, what does that say about its approach to the scores of incidents that don’t make the front page, such as the case of Michael Foley? After all, Officer Corcoran was not punished for his treatment of Foley in a highly populated area, where his actions were witnessed by dozens of tourists and diners. Just imagine what happens in the city’s darker crevices.

Thompson had to fight through multiple levels of bureaucracy and was stonewalled by a number of agencies in his requests, which makes the final piece of reporting truly a remarkable thing. Drunks with big mouths might have it coming to them, but tax-paying citizens shouldn’t have to live in fear of public servants whose salaries they pay. Thompson notes that reform is possible, but it’s also very necessary and long overdue.

PW: Another subversive political jawn from Jonathan Valania — er, I mean, Valanni. This go-round, he peers into the ideological foment behind the extreme-right-wing Tea Partiers, last seen hijacking your local healthcare town hall meeting. This meant a trip out to the burbs, a more restrained manner of dress, and, as I alluded to before, an assumed name. Good thing the crowd at the Media Inn aren’t up on the Philly dining scene:Valanni, friends, is a restaurant in the Gayborhood.

The Delco Patriots gather in the dank basement banquet hall of the Inn, which, with its low-hanging drop ceiling, cheap glass chandeliers and musty wall-to-wall carpeting, has a certain dungeon-fresh charm. Before I could get inside, though, I had to negotiate a pair of Tea Partiers with clipboards taking down the name, address and email of everyone seeking entry: time to break out the alias. The guy taking down my info seemed a little hard of hearing and asked me to repeat my email, so I said it again louder: Jgalt@gmail.com. His fellow name-taker, a brassy blonde with a fierce Mary Matalin mien, looked up from her clipboard when she heard this and smiled.

“I am John Galt!” she exclaimed. We exchanged knowing glances, mine a little more knowing than hers. I had established Tea Party street cred; this was going well. Once inside the meeting room, I helped myself to the Delco Patriots literature spread out on a table in the back.

Among it was a statement of purpose declaring: “The Delaware County Patriots is a non-partisan group of ordinary people which is attempting to educate citizens as the effects of proposed legislation in Congress and newly implemented governmental polices. Our goal is to thoughtfully and lawfully PUT A HALT TO, and REVERSE, the escalating governmental control of so many aspects of our everyday lives.”

Another piece of literature railed against health care reform. “It is morally wrong to reduce Medicare (400 billion dollars) to those who have earned it to give in [SIC] new ‘HEALTH CARE BENEFITS’ to people who have not earned them.”

“People who have not earned them” being, perhaps, a nice way of saying low-income, non-white people.

The reportage has the ring of truth, the kind that only a first-hand observer can bring, and JV doesn’t have to poke fun to make his point. It’s clear what theDelco Patriots want, and it’s clear that the gridlocked status quo isn’t acceptable to anyone, liberal and conservative alike. But beyond those simple clarities is a world of complication, one that reveals the Patriots as out of step, out to lunch, or both: as JV points out, where were the Tea Parties against tax cuts for the rich or wiretap surveillance?

INSIDE THE BOOK

CP: The Harrisburg report, flecked with Pennsyltuckian drool. Philly’s ‘Nova much better than Chevy’s. Sundancin’ in the moonlight. Mad about Chew? Not the next Asian sensation.

PW: Portuguese? Yes please! From Camden with love: On the ground in Haiti. A soap opera about… opera. Hmm. A bold, disturbing, slightly wrinkly list.

WINNER: Gotta give it up to Andrew Thompson and CP for their dogged pursuit and deep research in putting forth this week’s police accountability piece. As Brian Howard and Jeff Billman make clear, it wasn’t an easy decision to go forward with it, but we should be grateful they did. [You’re FIRED! — The Ed.]

Jay Reatard, self-portrait, December 9, 2009 via TWITTER

NEW YORK TIMES: A medical examiner said that cocaine and alcohol had contributed to the death of Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., the punk rock musician better known as Jay Reatard, The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported. After an autopsy Dr. Karen E. Chancellor, the medical examiner of Shelby County, Tenn., told The Commercial Appeal that Mr. Lindsey, above, had died from “cocaine toxicity, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in his death.” MORE

PREVIOUSLY ON PHAWKER: Just heard back from a trusted and informed source on the ground in Memphis who tells us the “Jay Reatard was murdered” meme is a dog that won’t hunt. It all started when the local Fox News affiliate blared the news that the homicide division of the Memphis police department was investigating Reatard’s death, failing to mention that that is standard procedure for all DOAs. Pitchfork picked it up and ran with it and it went semi-viral. The story has since been pulled from the Fox News affiliate’s web site, Pitchfork still has it up. Our source speculates that the cause of death if most likely natural causes, an accidental oversdose or heart failure brought on by the cumulative effect of years of hard living. Sad news to be sure, but we can’t help but think Jay Reatard would be pleased to learn he was still fucking shit up even in death. Rock on, duder.

PREVIOUSLY: According to the Fox Memphis, “Memphis Police are searching for a possible suspect in Wednesday’s death of Memphis musician Jay Reatard at his Cooper-Young home. Officers were called to the 900-block of Meda around 3:30am and found 29-year old Jimmy Lindsey, Jr., also known as Jay Reatard, dead on arrival. The Homicide Bureau is handling this as an ongoing investigation.” MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported that a roommate had found him in bed, and the police have opened an investigation into his death. A spokeswoman for the Shelby County medical examiner in Tennessee said an autopsy had been performed but that a cause of death had not been determined. MORE

MUST READ: “Shit Magnet”

NEW YORK TIMES: In an article for The New York Times, Mike Rubin wrote that Jay Reatard’s album debut solo album “Blood Visions” revealed “Mr. Lindsey’s talent for distilling punk songwriting to its most elemental form, a mix of adrenaline, testosterone and sugary hooks. Delivered in an ersatz English accent, songs like ‘My Shadow’ were reminiscent of late-1970s British punk, particularly bands like Wire and the Adverts, whose former leader, TV Smith, was tapped by Mr. Lindsey as the opening act for his recent tour.” MORE

BIG TAKEOVER: Any reader of this blog knows how big of a JAY REATARD fan I am. This was my sixth time seeing him play in the last several years and four of those shows have been at Johnny Brenda’s. On his first visit to Philadelphia since the August release of his fantastic and unfairly maligned new Lp Watch Me Fall, this was also my first time hearing him play material from the album. It didn’t dominate, though, as the set still opened with “Blood Visions”, the title track of his incredible 2006 solo debut, and also featured plenty of songs from Blood Visions as well as the numerous singles he’s released since 2006 as well. It’s hard to really give highlights since his sets are fast, furious and straight to the point. As usual, this was a 35 minute, wham bam thank you mam dropkick that left you wanting more and gasping at the onslaught of speed, precision and melody on stage. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: HEAR YE: Jay Reatard Watch Me Fall

PREVIOUSLY: Jay Reatard RIP

NEW YORK TIMES:  Gen. Colin L. Powell, who as the nation’s top military officer in the 1990s opposed allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military, switched gears today and threw his support behind efforts to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law he helped shepherd in. “In the almost 17 years since the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed,” General Powell said in a statement issued by his office. He added: “I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen.” Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers on Tuesday that they supported President Obama’s proposal to repeal the 1993 law forbidding gay men and lesbians to be open about their sexuality while serving in uniform. Admiral Mullen was the first Joint Chiefs chairman ever to take that position, signaling the evolution in attitudes both inside the military and in the broader society since the debate under President Bill Clinton. MORE

BALTIMORE SUN: Those who back the current law argue that letting gays serve openly would damage morale and unit cohesion. But other countries that have allowed gays to serve openly in their armed forces found that integrating gays into combat units does not harm their military effectiveness. America’s armed forces have gone through these arguments before, notably over the question of whether African-Americans should be eligible for miliary service. At the beginning of the Civil War, blacks were barred from participating in combat operations on the Union side, but as losses mounted, the federal government was forced to enlist more than 200,000 black servicemen. Similar resistance to black troops was heard during both world wars, but in both cases the military found black troops not only were vital but that the presence of black units like the famed Tuskegee Airmen, who flew fighter escort missions on bombing raids over Europe, increased group morale. That history makes the controversy over allowing gays to serve in the military seem like a bizarre anachronism at a time when the acceptance of gay civil rights has moved to the point where the nation is debating whether gays should be able to marry, not just whether they should hold any job they want. MORE

THE ECONOMIST: I’M NOT sure why I continue to read Bill Kristol’s work. He seems to get most things wrong, but I have a perverse fascination with his logic, largely because it is so unsound. So today I found myself picking through Mr Kristol’s latest Weekly Standard editorial, in which he makes the case for maintaining the “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy that allows gays to serve in America’s military only if they keep their sexual preference under wraps. Mr Kristol’s argument is familiar. It rests on the notion that some soldiers are homophobic and, therefore, any change to the policy might negatively affect morale. Yet he presents little evidence to back up his claim. Because I am startled by his blatant, unsupported, anachronistic bigotry, I thought I might amuse myself by offering up Mr Kristol’s article in full, peppered with pointed interjections from myself. MORE

LOS ANGELES TIMES: For starters, two-thirds of military members already know or suspect that there are gays in their units, so the policy has failed to achieve even its most basic goal: to protect morale and cohesion by shielding straight troops from knowledge of gay troops. The policy has also failed to preserve desperately needed skilled personnel. Since the law’s inception, roughly 13,500 gay, lesbian and bisexual service members have been discharged. According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly 800 of them had “critical skills,” including more than 60 Arabic speakers. In the meantime, the military has granted an increasing number of “moral waivers” to ex-convicts and drug abusers to fill slots in a force stretched thin by two wars.  According to the military’s own studies, the policy (not the presence of gays) is undermining trust and integrity in the force by mandating dishonesty, a point reiterated Tuesday by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by my own research, in which I spoke with hundreds of gay and straight troops who confirmed that finding. Finally, according to analyses by the Williams Institute at UCLA, every year tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on enforcing this policy and training replacements for fired soldiers. MORE

FRESH AIR

Colin Firth has played Mr. Darcy in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Diary, but it’s his role as a gay British professor in Tom Ford’s A Single Man that may have Firth seeing Oscar gold. Firth was nominated Feb. 2 for the Best Actor trophy for his role as George Falconer, a professor struggling to survive after the accidental death of his longtime partner, played by Matthew Goode. Set in 1962, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the movie follows George over a single day as he contemplates his bleak, monotonous future. Firth has also starred in Love Actually, Girl With a Pearl Earring, Valmont, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, and Fever Pitch.

For years, the name Tom Ford has been associated with fashion: He was, after all, the man credited with reviving the almost bankrupt Gucci empire, and then he started a couture label of his own. Ford has also earned plenty of attention for his provocative advertising, which often uses erotic imagery (including plenty of nudity) to sell fashion and fragrances. Now the Texas native, a onetime actor and model himself, has put his eye for design and his creative sensibilities to work in the service of silver-screen storytelling, translating a ’60s-vintage novel into an elegantly controlled, eloquently stylish film called A Single Man. (See and hear Bob Mondello’s review.) Based on the book by Christopher Isherwood, it stars British actor Colin Firth as a gay literature professor in 1962 Los Angeles, struggling to come to terms with the death of his lover in a society that still insists on the invisibility — the impossibility — of their relationship. Tom Ford joins Fresh Air host Terry Gross to talk about his rise from minor designer to fashion titan, and about his new venture into filmmaking.

I finally came into possession of an old guitar someone had given me at a nightclub in San Francisco awhile back; Eric Drew Feldman had been holding it for me there on Haight Street.  He convinced me that it looked cool (it was black) and had been given in the spirit of benevolence.  Every time I picked it up a nice chord came out and so I lovingly cleaned it with red wine in the dressing room the following night and began to write.  I told the tour manager that we would drive in my Cadillac directly to a recording studio in Los Angeles (and could he book one, oh, and a rhythm section, too?) from the gig in San Luis Obispo which would put us at the studio at about 4am.  It all happened according to plan and we cut the initial tracks there in the wee hours over a few days, and then moved on to an equally haunted studio in London and Eric Drew Feldman joined us there and we finished the record in St. John’s Wood.  Like I said the studio was haunted and I wrote many a couplet by candlelight in the studio accommodation, slept very little, and only felt the need to get the fuck out of there fast on the last night.  The spirits had not ever bothered me, other than low drama moral support, but I was informed that they had heard enough and it was time to move on; plus I had a gig in Ireland.

When I was a boy the plant we boys called a fern was code for vagina, and to this day I love fern plants.  In my heart the vagina is almost everything, and almost everything else could be summed up in what cock and seed have to offer; and everything else?  The love of the father, dead or alive, the pain of too much pleasure, till death do us part, the voice of another song man from the other side, with or without God, Teri and the Possibilities, where ever you may be, the smell of sex in the air, seduced, slain, on my knees in prayer, sucking at the only thing that matters, my own personal Meret Oppenheim, I am Man Ray and I want you and to be all the way inside you, the cameras whirring as we put some elbow grease into the scene, the audience watching us in the dark.

Black Francis
January 2010, Central Oregon

Recorded in Los Angeles, London and Brooklyn, NonStopErotik was produced by Eric Drew Feldman and Black Francis, and features 10 original songs plus a cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers track “Wheels”. It will be released March 30th on Cooking Vinyl

PREVIOUSLY: Burying The Hatchet With Black Francis

BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY A word of warning: The story you are about to read is neither fair nor balanced; just true. The other night I snuck into the Tea Party, like a spy in the House of Glenn Beck Love, and nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. You know about the Tea Party movement, right? The populist jihad—sponsored by Fox News, FreedomWorks, the Taliban wing of the Republican Party and the rest of the Dick Armey—that’s putting the RIOT back in PATRIOT. They’re white as hell and they’re not gonna take the 2008 presidential election anymore. It’s all the rage, and judging by the buzz on the Internet, there’s quite a lot of rage in this region.

There’s The Pennsylvania Tea Party Coalition, The Loyal Opposition, The 912ers, Independence Hall Tea Party Association, Citizens for Constitutional Government, The Thomas Jefferson Club, The Kitchen Table Patriots, PA Tea Party Patriots and the Valley Forge Patriots. The party is holding a candidates forum next week at the Crystal Tea Room in Center City and pretty much every Republican running for higher office in Pennsylvania is expected to show. There’s also a national Tea Party convention this week at Opryland in Nashville, where Sarah Palin is the featured speaker (her fee: $100,000). It’s closed to the press, so my original plan was to infiltrate one of the area Tea Parties like a liberal narc, gain their trust and try and tag along to the convention, find out what they were hiding and drop the dime. Then at the last minute they opened it up to the press and announced plans to televise the convention. Plus, they were charging $560 to get in, so I decided to think nationally and act locally.

As far as I can tell, there is not much Tea Party activity going on in Center City Philadelphia: All the action is out in the suburbs and exurbs. So I crashed a meeting of the Delaware County Patriots, an organization based in nearby Media. I elected to go incognito because the Tea Party people don’t much cotton to Huffington Post -reading, NPR-listening, latte-sipping media types like yours truly. It’s a crowd with little demonstrable patience for opposing views or dialogue with the enemy, but if some skinny white kid can dress up like a pimp and bring down ACORN, at the very least I can pretend to be all Fox-News-in-the-head for a few hours to find out what these people are so darn mad about.

To pass for a Tea Party type I needed to make some changes—these people may be crazy-mad, but they ain’t stupid. I needed to look more like I live in the suburbs and less like I hang out at The POPE, and so goodbye skinny black jeans and Timberlands, hello dad jeans, Adidas sneaks and ball cap. I debated shaving off the indie-rock beard, but decided it would give me a faintly Unabomber-esque countenance that just might tickle the Tea Partiers’ anti-gummint bone. Next, I needed an alias since my name is too easily Googled-back to an unmistakably liberal paper trail. To keep things simple, I decided to just add another ‘n’ and drop the last ‘a’ on my surname: Valanni. Easy enough to remember, but different enough to throw off Google, plus I could simply claim poor penmanship if my true identity was somehow detected and things turned ugly.

I also needed a new Gmail account to go with my assumed name. I elected to go with JGalt@gmail.com, a tip of the hat to John Galt, the benignly self-interested protagonist of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, one of the sacred texts of the Tea Party movement. The one hitch I ran into was vastly underestimating how long it would take to scrape the frickin’ Shepard Fairey Obama bumper sticker off the back of my car. With time running out I said ‘fuck it, we’ll do it live!’ and jumped on I-95, setting the controls for the mouth of the right wing lion, hoping against hope my tender liberal ears could withstand its mighty roar. MORE

RELATED: Republican partisans — aided by lobbyists and corporate front groups — are exploiting the legitimate feelings of anger and distrust among many struggling Americans. These operatives and profiteers, many of them experienced public relations professionals, have set up sophisticated social networking portals and online solutions to control the flow of information within tea party organizations. As gatekeepers to ostensibly open forums, these political operatives and profiteers have been able to set the political agenda of the tea parties and hand out marching orders. And tea party profiteers are making millions cashing in on the movement. They are selling tea party support to candidates and policies which continue the legacy of Bush-era unregulated capitalism and corporate bailouts.

The profiteers say that the original American revolutionaries cast their tea into the Boston harbor as a simple rejection of taxation, so the modern tea party movement should similarly reject increased financial regulations, health reform, and taxes on the rich. But the history tells a different story. Boston revolutionaries rejected subservience to the East India Company, a British-run international corporation. They cast the tea into the harbor as a symbolic message to say that their taxes should go back into the American community, not subsidizing the profits of London elites and foreign corporations. Now, Republican tea party profiteers are trying to exploit the movement, pushing them to oppose policies which would actually liberate the middle class and crack down on international corporations. Despite the populist rhetoric, the profiteers see the tea party movement as a pool to extract fundraising dollars and volunteers for Republican campaigns. Indeed, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, himself a former lobbyist, has said that he has an “expectation” that tea partiers loyally toe the Republican line. MORE

Dead pigeon, 20th & Springarden, October 1st, 2008 [photo by RAY SKWIRE]

DAILY NEWS: Animal-rights activists, buoyed by the donation of $1 million to their cause by former game-show host Bob Barker, say that the money will go to help fight a Bucks County gun club known for its live pigeon shoots. The Philadelphia Gun Club, located on the Delaware River, in Bensalem Township, is “secretive” about the shoots, and protesters don’t know when the next shoot will be but plan to be there to voice displeasure, Steve Hindi, founder of an anti-cruelty group called SHARK, said late last week. Barker, now 86, said in an interview Thursday that he also will take an active role in fighting pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania. Barker said that he would come to Harrisburg himself, if necessary, to urge the state Legislature to pass a law ending what he termed the “horrendous” practice of using live birds for target practice. Barker, former host of the TV game show “The Price is Right,” and a longtime supporter of animal causes, said that Pennsylvania is the only state in which live pigeon shoots still are legal. Leo Holt, president of the Philadelphia Gun Club, which dates to 1877, and is said to have a wealthy clientele, declined to comment after learning of Barker’s $1 million gift, citing ongoing litigation in the case. Club attorney Sean Corr also said that pigeon shoots are legal in Pennsylvania - although bills to ban them are in committee in both houses of the Legislature. MORE

Yesterday the Philadelphia Parking Authority released a list of the names of th top 25 scofflaws in the hopes of shaming them into coughing up the combined $308,000 they owe in unpaid parking tickets. They are as follows:

Faraco Knife Grinding Services, Pennsburg, Pa., $40.580

Sergio M. Claudio, Philadelphia, $21,444

Sharwin L. Coates, Philadelphia, $18,812

Alberto Galue, Philadelphia $18,398

New Century Travel Inc., Philadelphia, $16,320

Sharonda Everett, Philadelphia, $15,972.70

Anthony G. Dowd, Philadelphia, $14,477.25

Willians Nafis, Philadelphia, $13,408.75

James P. Fiscaro, Philadelphia $12,972

Faith Brown, Philadelphia, $12,473

Kenneth Brockington, Philadelphia, $11,991.40

Lafayette Outen, Philadelphia, $11,149.20v

Christopher Harden, Philadelphia, $11,106.65

Frederick Tarasatana, Philadelphia, $10,485

Abraham Vaughn, Philadelphia, $9,777

Donagew Builders, Drexel Hill, Pa., $9,632

Joseph Doe, Philadelphia, $9,206.20

Arnetta Johnson, Philadelphia, $8,351

Joanna Pakuris, Philadelphia, $8,021.75

Tom and Susan McShane, Maple Shade, NJ, $6,679

Colmon Holmes, Philadelphia, $6,353.00

Shirley T. Bryant, Philadelphia, $6,219.30

Kesha Blue, Philadelphia, $5,958.95

Avery Copeland, Philadelphia, $4,700,25

James Bruson Jr., Philadelphia, $3,705.50

[Photo via BUZZFEED]

Happened in 1976, miraculously a photographer captured the moment. And then the men in black took him away, never to be heard from again.

BY TIFFANY YOON This morning Phawker joined many familiar faces of Philadelphia media at the Kimmel Center for the announcement of a new Philly-based arts festival.  The festival, entitled Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA), is scheduled to begin on April 7th, 2011, and it will run for three weeks until May 1st, 2011.  It’s quite a way’s away, but with a grant of $10 million from the late Leonore Annenburg, PIFA certainly has the resources to make a splash. This morning’s press conference didn’t shed much light on the specifics of PIFA’s line up of events or venues, rather it focused on delivering the organization’s mission statement and goals.  The arts festival is themed after the decade 1910-1920 in Paris, which PIFA deems “one of the world’s most artistically creative places and time periods.”  The PIFA icon will be a giant cube emblazoned with PIFA, “inspired by the Kimmel Center,” which will sit on Broad and Spruce for all of the city to see. Mayor Michael Nutter offered the city’s unconditional support. “Philly rocks when it comes to arts and culture,” he said.  He was also happy to note that though the program isn’t scheduled, Philadelphians should expect a performance from the city’s own The Roots and PIFA will be forming a first-time collaboration between The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pennsylvania Ballet.  The PIFA program emphasizes new collaborations, creativity and innovation and “new works and emerging artists not found in other arts festivals.” As a preview of what to expect from PIFA, a portion of the Philadelphia Orchestra joined Making Time DJ Dave P and DJ Static in a live performance.  As Dave explained, “what we’re doing may sound really simple, but it’s really difficult to play a dance track under a full orchestra.” Dave P played a Kavinsky track while Static put some scratches in to soften the sound and they were accompanied by a small brass and string section as well as an upright bass. PIFA executives were not at liberty to share much, but more information is promised to be released on April 7th, 2010, exactly one year before the actual commencement of the 3 week festival.  Today’s events were intended to simply introduce the idea of PIFA, but as the months pass and more details of the program are released, it will be interesting to see what opinions some of the other Philadelphia arts organizations have on the festival and its impact on the city.

RELATED: The hasty remake of REM’s classic “Everybody Hurts” hits the airwaves and Interwebs today as part of a campaign to raise cash for Haiti. Produced by American Idol’s Simon Cowell, the tune includes vocals by Leona Lewis, Mariah Carey, Jon Bon Jovi, Robbie Williams, Kylie, Rod Stewart, Alexandra Burke, Miley Cyrus, Take That, Joe McElderry, Cheryl Cole, JLS, Mika, Michael Bublé, James Blunt, James Morrison, Susan Boyle, and Westlife.