>>> Attn. Philly rock band Kill You In The Face: You have the best band name of anyone, ever. And guess what? You don’t suck! (Check video at right.) You even have an early Built To Spill/Verlaines thing that we can dig! Also, you are headlining the Khyber on a Tuesday night. Don’t blow all those drink tickets in one place.
>>> Bloc Party at the TLA: Dudes jumped the shark so long ago that you can’t even see the ripples in the pond. It’s just a calm, placid body of water, and I can’t hear anything. What will you play when you DJ afterwards at Snacks at Woody’s? I hope it’s whalesongs.
>>> Aimee Mann at the World Cafe Live. And it’s. Not. Going. To. Stop.
The Twitter/Facebook personality “Rittenhouse Square” invited his followers to gather at the square for a potluck dinner this past Saturday night. A handful of Twitter groupies showed up with various dishes and cupcakes to eat together and make small talk. Stargyrl, one of our Phileb interns, who doesn’t even twitter, was invited by a friend and showed up for the free food. Let the awkward begin. She tells the tale after the jump. (more…)
In the picture at right, you will discover that Philadelphia is having today one of those very San Francisco kinds of moments, where the whole city basically becomes a hipster Hooverville as a sizeable fraction of the populace is out on the street, waiting for some kind of salvation, usually in the form of concert tickets, Barack Obama or free nitrous oxide. In this case, the line is for — we shit you not — the ?uestlove x Nike 1World Air Force 1, the sneaker designed by Philly’s most famous drummer and assembled most likely by small children who earn four animal crackers and a tube of Plumpy’Nut for each pair produced. Dope! A reader sent in the pic of the line at right, but there’s more at PhillyChitChat. Also, this story also somehow popped up on someone at NBC10’s radar who was apparently unaware that people sell sneakers on eBay and shit. No matter now, though, as the scuttlebutt in the line seems to be revolving around the increasingly blurred line between who is actually homeless and who is just really, really into Freeway. Previously:?uestlove Sneaker Debuts Today, Kind Of Looks Like Lizard Balls
National Night Out and National Town Watch are projects that make us feel good, for the most part, and today is NNO’s 25th Anniversary. In a city without a lot of foot patrols by police, and with a fair amount of tension between police and residents (both in relative fancy-town and not-so-fancy-town), NNO offers a chance for the police to see regular folks as less of a threat and as possible partners in improving city life, and regular folks get to learn that not all cops want to knock their heads in for chilling on the corner with a beer. These projects do churn up some unfortunate self-reflection, though: what have we become that we need a national organization to remind us to look out for each other and to generally live in a civilized manner? We should just, you know, do that all the time, right?
Anyway, we thought that Philadelphia’s Operation Town Watch would provide links to all the events, making our lazy interns’ lives easier, but nope! So there’s a slew of things going on all over town - click through to see some of what’s up and for further thoughts… (more…)
North Philly: Several dead chickens, dogs, and cats were found in Juniata Park Monday. How does it get weirder? The decaptiated heads of the chickens were found wrapped in bandanas and stuffed inside the chickens. Sort of like a Turducken, but for satanic rituals. [KYW] South Philly: A new resident, curious about the safety boundaries in the South, posts an innoncent enough question: What Should I Avoid? Naturally the answers have been flying in, and boy are they gold. Some of the best: “Never talk badly about another neighbor to another, it’s pretty true that everyone knows everyone - even if not blood related.”, “Avoid S Philly women who wear pajamas in public and all women at Chickie and Pete’s”, and “Are you planning to sell drugs on street, or stay in and watch TV?”. Oh the places you will go! [PhillyBlog] West PhillyA new ID scam covered by the Daily News, but something tells me this story won’t having the staying power as another ID stealing couple. Sorry, no bikinis, no front page. [DailyNews]
Remember when they toured with Diplo and Bonde do Role back in ‘06? If you missed it, you get another chance to shake it with fine-lookin’, fun-music-playin’ CSS and wallow in (or celebrate, depending) self-referential hipsterist lyrics Thursday night at the Troc. We have a pair of tickets to facilitate said shakin’, because how can you not fall in love with a band whose breakout song was titled “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above?” See? Even if you haven’t heard them, you now adore them already. To enter to win, email ihopeiwin[at]philebrity[dot]com with “I NEVER, EVER, EVER GOT TIRED OF BEING SEXY” in the subject header. Added value: The Go! Team opens, and we hear they got two drummers! We’ll pick the winner mid-day Thursday.
Any observations about Nutter’s use of mild profanity in his public address concerning the DHS saga — and the local media’s seeming willingness to play along? Last night, Action News ran a clip in which he said both that he was “pissed off” and that, were he the father of a child in DHS’s care, he “would kick their ass myself” (or something like that). This second statement was aired on KYW radio this morning as well. It’s curious to me on both counts - that the mayor of a major city would choose to communicate his emtions that way (especially this mayor, who is, well, a little nebbishy), and that his choice of words would pass right through the broadcast outlets. Just a thought. I’ll totally leave you alone now.
No, no, it’s cool. You bring up a lot of good questions. And actually, we have a bunch of thoughts about this. (more…)
It’s been a recurring story over the last few years how our urban indigent populations have taken to mining precious metals (copper wire, manholes, car stereos, you name it) in order to subsist/feed their habits/keep themselves in fresh socks. But over the last week or so, what with the NY Times blowing up the spot on the whole manhole racket, we’ve been a little worried that the manhole-gold-rush may over-exploit the base. Worry no more: Say hello to the Streets Dept.’s Tire Round Up Program! There’s gold in them thar hills:
Registered participants are offered a “tire bounty” of $.50 for each illegally discarded tire they collect and drop off at one of the designated sites around the city. The tire drop-off limit is 1,000 tires per group. Reimbursement is limited to up to $500 per registered participant.
Not bad, and while the Streets Dept. suggests that this program is geared at community groups, but there’s no language to suggest that a lone junkie or skex — our new favorite word, taken from this This American Life episode — couldn’t up and do for self with the myriad discarded tires that line this great city. Hey, it beats beer cans.
Was just on the 15 trolley. Left before more police and medical personal arrived on the scene. Trolley had about 15, maybe 20 passengers on board. No serious injuries among passengers though the driver was in pain. You can never tell how serious internal injuries are until checked out but again, no blood. Accident occurred around 10:45 a.m.
We had just made the large turn off Richmond St. onto Girard Ave, (over the large hill and under 95) and were slowing down when the flatbed, carrying no cargo tried to make a u-turn on Girard (was traveling West trying to go East/North).
Trolley horns/honks plus curses when we hit the empty bed of the truck. We were stopped dead in the tracks. Visible damage to the front end of the trolley. Door was open so I left. Didn’t think it appropriate to ask driver for transfer. Like I said, he seemed to be in pain.
Didn’t have a cell phone so no pictures. Also, the license plate of the flatbed was Pennsylvania issued not New Jersey.
We love the principles behind the Marian Anderson Award, we really do. Each year, the award — given “to celebrate the fundamental importance of the arts—those individuals who have used their talents for personal artistic expression coupled with a commitment to the betterment of society” — is given here in Philly in loving memory of Marian Anderson, who knew a thing or two about all of that. And while the list of past recipients has its standouts (Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Harry Belafonte), it’s also a repository for those who have arguably done more harm than good, culturally speaking: Oprah Winfrey, anyone? Dame Elizabeth Taylor, I presume? And after the embarrassment that was last year’s selection of Richard Gere (freed the gerbils/kickstarted the celeb Tibet bandwagon), we were really hoping that this year, we’d get somebody awesome. You know, like a posthumous honor to Sun Ra, who settled any and all future space wars, or John Oates, who was John Oates. But this year? No dice, again. Say hi to Maya Angelou (shown here with a muppet of indeterminate origin), quite possibly the worst published poet of the 20th Century, and Living God to all who serve in Oprah’s Kingdom Of Lowered Expectations. Norman Lear gets the nod, too, which is perhaps a step in a better direction, but it still feels like a bummer. Each get $100K to do with what they wish, and the rest of us get another shot at hoping next year’s nod won’t be, in bowling terms, a turkey of cringe. Inky: We Won’t Even Try To Imitate A Maya-ism Here
Trust us, it looks a lot better if you’re on Prodigy.
So, PhillyMag launched their new, years-in-the-making website today (although we are assured that this one did not cost $500K to build) and… meh. The pros: It looks a shit-ton better than Philly.com (not saying much), and, ah, well, that’s about it. The cons: They’ve pretty much buried their blogs. None are mentioned by name on the front page, which is either a gross misstep, or a sign that PhillyMag, as evidenced by this mostly, has lost its blog de vivre. Are they pulling the plug on The Daily Examiner? Do you care? More to the point, do you want to know the best stores to shop this month? Same as it ever was.
Which got us to thinking: You know, PhillyMag’s web presence has been so half-hearted and half-assed for so long that it’s a kind of tradition. This led us back to The Wayback Machine of course, to find the most startling detail in all of this: PhillyMag’s best website might have actually been its first. I mean, look at that little bat guy! That wasn’t just some random clipart, folks, that was a legitimate branding exercise! He was on every page! Plus, the polls — they paid somebody for them! Hilarious, I know. But you know what? At least in 1996, PhillyMag had no qualms about telling you, in bright colors and low-grade HTML, just how stupid it was and just how proud it was of the stupid people it was all for. I don’t know just how they’d integrate that into the new site, but, oh wait: It’s covered. Previously:Best Of Philly: We Read It So You Don’t Have To
We’ve been meaning, for a while now, to discuss the topic of Yelpies: The bizarre community that populates Yelp events in Philadelphia, as well as, to be sure, populating the Yelp site with user reviews on a plethora of establishments for which, we are told, they are not paid. (Here at Philebrity, Yelpies are called “interns.”) In addition to being able to do unlikely things like get Mexican Post probably the most press it has had, ever, the Yelpies have also constructed a social scene unto themselves that would mostly be, to paraphrase Anthony Michael Hall, “demented and sad, but social” were it not for the super interesting post-post-modernness of it all. OK, maybe not super interesting, but you get my drift. Here’s the deal: The Yelpies populate the Yelp with content for free. Yelp invites them out once a month as a thank you. One Yelpie meets another, and suddenly, you’ve got, like, Friday night at the Barbary minus everything that may make the Barbary interesting in its own right. It’s a bizarre thing. We once asked our buddy/Yelp Philly editor Carrie Estok about the phenom, and the exchange went something like this:
PHILEBRITY: So, hey, nice to see you! So, uh, [surreptitiously points to back booth] are these your Yelpies? CARRIE: Um, they’re called Yelp-ers. But yes. That is them. PHILEBRITY: So, uh, what’s the deal? Where do they come from? CARRIE: I have no idea!
Well, we do. Yelpies come from that weird intersection of College Friends Who Stayed In College Town and The Village Of Promosexuals. To wit: At right, is local publicist Paige Wolf, nice lady buuuut… prominent Yelpie. Yelp-I-P? Anyway. She’s singing a song, at a Yelp event, with words she wrote about Yelp and MySpace and Facebook. After the event, she posted it on YouTube… and then sent Philebrity an email about it. And then we posted about it. I’m sorry, my brain just imploded. Whoever these Yelpies are, well, one thing is for sure: They’re not afraid of the meta.
>>> Thinking of leaving Philadelphia? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass. But on your way out, just remember: There’s two kinds of ex-Philadelphians you can be. The one kind, the good kind, takes what he learned here and applies it to the rest of the world; we cheer him when he does awesome stuff and revel in the notion that we once cheered him on in his quest at a closer remove. More on him in a moment. The other kind uses Philadelphia as a brick wall they can stand in front of while they deliver some hack rant a la Evening At The Improv. We’re thinking of people like, oh, say, Joe Queenan, who’s basically built a career off of this kind of lameness (that, by the way, nobody pays attention to anyway, unless they themselves live or have lived in Philly), or, oh yeah, this is a good one: Buzz Bissinger (pictured). The Biss — whom we last encountered making a ginormous ass of himself – has been a guest columnist at the NY Times for the past few weeks, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve wanted to punch a writer in the face harder. This week, Buzzy goes back to the 10,000 Loss Well, that giving, loving item geyser that perfectly encapsulates the civic mindset of every mouth breather on your block:
Because disappointment has become our badge of honor. It is our temptress, our goddess, our Aphrodite, and we have grown to embrace and love her.
So, um, yeah. Thanks for that, Ms. Poundstone. [NYT]
>>> Oh, but the good kind! Ex-Independent editor Mattathias Schwartz popped up in the Sunday Times mag, intrepidly stepping inside not only the psyche of trolls, but also the weird little dogshit places they live in. Totally ace reporting here. [NYT]
>>> And what’s up, Brendan Newnam? I remember that dude! Check out “Dinner Party Download,”, Newnam’s new radio program on Los Angeles NPR affiliate KPCC, or just listen to the mp3 here. [SCPR]
sketch·bur·ger · noun, adjective, slang. 1. Person who behaves in socially suspicious ways as a general pattern of behavior. Behaviors tend to relate to problems with SEX and/or DRUGS, although, just as often a SKETCHBURGER could be suffering from a crippling SOCIAL ANXIETY that colors everything they do in an inadvertently suspicious light. Most often, however, if you’re getting a SKETCHBURGER vibe from someone, there is in fact a higher-than-average chance that they are indeed a SKETCHBURGER. 2. Unfortunately named new hamburger restaurant on GIRARD AVE. that has unwittingly caused Philebrity staff to call each other SKETCHBURGERS about once an hour. Syn.: SHADY MCSHADESTER, BURGERTIME, MUSICIAN, BOYFRIEND. Ex.:“Jimmy totally disappeared with that girl who was by herself at the end of the bar all night long. What a SKETCHBURGER!”
The Philebrity Lexicon seeks to put down for posterity the words we’ve been saying all our lives. Got a suggestion for the Lexicon? Just make sure it’s a word; no grunting “YO”’s our “YOUSE”’s here. And send it along to tips[at]philebrity[dot]com. Previously In The Philebrity Lexicon:DOMERS, HAMMERS, JITBAGS, NOUGARS, PAIN CAVE
Last week, we alluded to the gentle rain of what we believed was the piped-in typewriter-tip-tip-tip playing in the background of this city’s towering monument to news radio, KYW 1060 AM. Turns out, we’re even wrong about shit in our own sweet memories. Damn. A reader clears up the confusion:
Duuude, those aren’t typewriters you’re hearing. Teletype machines. They fed the newsroom with the AP wire, UPI, etc. Like at the end of All the President’s Men. [But these days] it’s just a recorded track the play under the live mics. Silly, I know, but a few years ago - maybe several now - they tried to do away with it and got the same violent reaction that Action News got when they tried to update their musical intro: No timpanis, no love. They still had a couple working ones in the newsroom at Temple News back in the 80s, and by the time I got to working at an AM radio station in farm country, Delaware, the early 90s, the old machines had been replaced by dot-matrix printers, effectively performing the same task. Then came the Internet.
Philebrity is a cityblog covering the arts, gossip and media in Philadelphia. We've been here since October 2004, and we'll be here long after you move back to New York. Got a tip? Send it to tips[at]philebrity.com.
NOTICE:Interns wanted.
When we learned yesterday afternoon that two people very close to Councilman Kelly - chief of staff Christopher Wright and former campaign treasurer Andrew Teitelman are allegedly crooked, we thought, “NO!… NOOOOOO!” Councilman Kelly, we’re sure, is involved in funny stuff - but only of the humorous variety! How do we know?
The Twitter/Facebook personality 
In the picture at right, you will discover that Philadelphia is having today one of those very San Francisco kinds of moments, where the whole city basically becomes a hipster Hooverville as a sizeable fraction of the populace is out on the street, waiting for some kind of salvation, usually in the form of concert tickets, Barack Obama or free nitrous oxide. In this case, the line is for — we shit you not — the 
North Philly: Several dead chickens, dogs, and cats were found in Juniata Park Monday. How does it get weirder? The decaptiated heads of the chickens were found 
Remember when they toured with Diplo and Bonde do Role back in ‘06? If you missed it, you get another chance to shake it with fine-lookin’, fun-music-playin’ 
It’s been a recurring story over the last few years how our urban indigent populations have taken to mining precious metals (copper wire, 
We love the principles behind the 
>>> Thinking of leaving Philadelphia? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass. But on your way out, just remember: There’s two kinds of ex-Philadelphians you can be. The one kind, the good kind, takes what he learned here and applies it to the rest of the world; we cheer him when he does awesome stuff and revel in the notion that we once cheered him on in his quest at a closer remove. More on him in a moment. The other kind uses Philadelphia as a brick wall they can stand in front of while they deliver some hack rant a la Evening At The Improv. We’re thinking of people like, oh, say, Joe Queenan, who’s basically built a career off of this kind of lameness (that, by the way, nobody pays attention to anyway, unless they themselves live or have lived in Philly), or, oh yeah, this is a good one: Buzz Bissinger (pictured). The Biss — whom we last encountered 
sketch·bur·ger · noun, adjective, slang.
Last week, 
