Philadelphia City Paper, June 17th, 2010

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SPORTS | The Phils’ new G-town friend FOOD | Beer Week bad for local beer? MOVIES | Adams on Toy Story 3

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editor’sletter

By Brian Howard

REUSEFULNESS ³ FOR THIS WEEK’S Summer Book Quarterly, I

reviewed Mark Frauenfelder’s excellent Made

By Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World (see p. 20) and the book’s been rattling around in my head ever since I put it down.

Frauenfelder founded the tech/culture blog Boing Boing and is the editor in chief of Make, the DIY magazine that teaches you how to turn VCRs into cat-feeders and bell jars into beehives. Frauenfelder loves the latest gadgets, but he also holds true to old-school beliefs like fixing old things rather than simply buying new ones.

Made By Hand is all about his own transformation from consumer to maker/fixer/figure-it-outer.

Once the proverbial lightbulb went off in his head, Frauenfelder made a list of things he wanted to do himself: killing his lawn (and replacing it with a garden), making a still, carving wooden spoons, etc.

It got me thinking about my own to-do-it-myself list. Not that I had an actual list at the time, but if I’d had the forethought to make one, I’d have knocked a few things off in recent years: plane and install an antique door; brew beer; bake bread; brew sweet tea; grow vegetables from seed. Of course, as a relatively newish homeowner, there are about a thousand things I’d like to get done around my house. Some of which will require the dreaded HAE approach (hire an expert is the antithesis of DIY), but many of which demand the courage to screw it up on the first try. On my list: install a dimmer switch; reroute my downspout; preserve tomatoes; make pickles. But the thing that’s crawling around in my brain, night and day, is composting.

I’ve been toting around The Rodale Book of Composting for about a month now, waiting to find enough undistracted time to burrow into it. I got far

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY DON HARING JR.

enough in the last week to realize just how much of what I throw away — with the trash or down the disposal — could be spared from the landfill or the sewer.

Beyond kitchen scraps, leaves and newspapers, there’s hardly anything that can’t be composted: Stuff like slag from iron smelting (not that I do much of that since I quit the Ren Faire), dried blood from slaughterhouses (I’m cutting back), felt waste, fish scraps, granite dust, ash and even hair can all go into the ground.

My composting book is primarily for people with yards, though there is a section for city folk. My challenge: Figure out which of the 5 unused square feet of my concrete South Philly back patio should house a big bin full of worms and trash.

Though maybe it’s not even that big a problem. In discussing my green-thumbed late great-grandfather with my mother over the weekend, she revealed one of his gardening secrets: “He’d take his [biodegradable] garbage and just bury it in the garden.

Even in a sandy beach town like Keansburg, he had great soil.” I think Frauenfelder would have liked him. ✚ Got a DIY to-do list of your own?

Have some ideas for composting in negative space? E-mail bhoward@ citypaper.net.

contents Ring any bells?

Naked City/Bell Curve .............................. 8 Man Overboard!............................................ 9 Loose Canon/This Modern World .. 10 Book Quarterly............................................ 15 Arts & Entertainment.............................. 22 Album Reviews .......................................... 31 Movie Shorts ................................................ 34 The Agenda/Icepack............................... 37 DJ Nights ........................................................ 40 Food & Drink ................................................ 47 Feeding Frenzy ........................................... 50 I Love You/I Hate You ............................... 52 Jonesin’........................................................... 60

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Publisher Paul Curci Associate Publisher Nancy Stuski Editor in Chief Brian Howard Senior Editor Patrick Rapa News Editor Jeffrey C. Billman Senior Writer Isaiah Thompson Staff Writer Holly Otterbein Associate Editor and Web Editor Drew Lazor Arts Editor and Copy Chief Carolyn Huckabay Deputy Arts and Entertainment Editor Molly Eichel Assistant Copy Editor Carolyn Wyman Contributing Editors Sam Adams, E. James Beale (sports) Meal Ticket Contributor Marie DiFeliciantonio Contributors A.D. Amorosi, Janet Anderson, Rodney Anonymous, Mary Armstrong, Nancy Armstrong, Debra Auspitz-Galler, Justin Bauer, Shaun Brady, Peter Burwasser, Charles Cieri, Mark Cofta, Will Dean, Jesse Delaney, Jakob Dorof, Deesha Dyer, David Faris, M.J. Fine, David Anthony Fox, Lauren F. Friedman, Cindy Fuchs, Ptah Gabrie, Julia Harte, Dan Hirschhorn, K. Ross Hoffman, Deni Kasrel, Gary M. Kramer, Gair Marking, Natalie Hope McDonald, Josh Middleton, Andrew Milner, Michael Pelusi, Nathaniel Popkin, Trey Popp, Robin Rice, James Saul, Daniel Schwartz, David Snyder, Jon Solomon, Amy Strauss, Andrew Thompson, Tom Tomorrow, Sam Tremble, Char Vandermeer, John Vettese, Julia West, Kelly White, Lewis Whittington, Christopher Wink Editorial Interns Julia Askenase, Hadley Assail, Katy Bergen, Matthew Cahn, Nyidera Edwards, Victor Gamez, Eric Henney, Marielle Mondon, Jen Rini, Stephen Rose, Valerie Rubinsky, Yowei Shaw, Harrison Simms, Will Stone, Amanda Wochele, Janey Zitomer Associate Web Editor/Staff Photographer Neal Santos Systems Administrator John Tarng Production Director Michael Polimeno Editorial Art Director Reseca Peskin Senior Editorial Designer Allie Rossignol Senior Designer Evan M. Lopez Designer Alyssa Grenning Contributing Photographers Michael M. Koehler, Jessica Kourkounis, Michael T. Regan, Mark Stehle Contributing Illustrators Jeffrey Bouchard, Ryan Casey, Kris Chau, Don Haring Jr., Thomas Pitilli, Matthew Smith Human Resources Ron Scully (ext. 210) Accounts Receivable Coordinator Tricia Bradley (ext. 232) Circulation Director Mark Burkert (ext. 239) Founder & Editor Emeritus Bruce Schimmel Senior Account Managers Robb Allison (ext. 252), Sharon MacWilliams (ext. 262), Mia Salazar (ext. 250), Stephan Sitzai (ext. 258) Account Managers Sara Carano (ext. 228), Natalie Diener (ext. 257), Donald Snyder (ext. 213) Adult Advertising Sales Rick Hicks (ext. 236) Office Coordinator Alexis Pierce (ext. 234) citypaper.net 123 Chestnut Street, Third Floor, Phila., PA 19106. 215-735-8444, Tip Line 215-7358444 ext. 241, Listings Fax 215-875-1800, Classified Ads 215-248-CITY, Advertising Fax 215-735-8535, Subscriptions 215-735-8444 ext. 235 Philadelphia City Paper is published and distributed every Thursday in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Chester, Bucks & Delaware Counties, in South Jersey and in Northern Delaware. Philadelphia City Paper is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased from our main office at $1 per copy. No person may, without prior written permission from Philadelphia City Paper, take more than one copy of each issue. Pennsylvania law prohibits any person from inserting printed material of any kind into any newspaper without the consent of the owner or publisher. Contents copyright © 2010, Philadelphia City Paper. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.

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the thebellcurve CP’s Quality-o-Life-o-Meter

[ - 5]

City Councilman Darrell L. Clarke introduces a bill that would limit the number of TV satellite dishes throughout Philly.

Sounds like a solid bill. What ginormous company could possibly benefit disproportionately from that?

[ -3 ]

Leaders of the state’s public universities place a moratorium on low-enrollment degree programs, like physics and French, because of budget cuts. “Zat ees an outrage,” says the ghost of Marie Curie.“I agree with vous,” says the ghost of André-Marie Ampère. “Who zee hell are vous?” asks Curie. “Enchante, madame! I am anozzer French physiciste!” replies Ampère. “Zen, for a kiss about my bozom, vous may have zom of my frites!” says Curie.

[ +1 ]

The court hears opening statements in a case to determine if the city can evict the Scouts from their rent-free headquarters because they exclude homosexuals.

Looks like some very lucky Webelos will be getting their “Caught in the Crossfire” merit badges!

[ +5 ]

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[ +1 ]

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city

[ -4 ]

[ +4 ]

The city celebrates its 22nd Gay Pride Parade and its 10th annual Comic Con. “We have pride, too!” says Darth Maul. “Oh. Mom just pulled up. Smell you later.”

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. launches Philly Homegrown, a program to encourage the sale of locally grown food. “Thanks,” say tourists, “but we’re tourists. We probably won’t need any groceries during our stay.”

Shortly after Mayor Nutter announces that Philadelphia will no longer fund parades or street festivals, Welcome America’s executive director says the company is an exception. Look, the fucking Goo Goo Dolls are about to play their dickless douchepop on our Rocky steps and everybody’s going to laugh at us. Somebody has got to pay.

Philadelphia is still in the running to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cup. Says one local soccer fan, “BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!”

This week’s total: -1 | Last week’s total: -3

EVAN M. LOPEZ

AMILLIONSTORIES Ahem

E

xciting campaign news: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato released a white paper on arts and cultural stuff last week, and his staffers really wanted us (and you) to read it (voteonorato.com/dans_vision/arts_culture). What do you think, they asked. (Sounds, um, nice.) Want an interview? (Sure.) Want an op-ed?

(No, thanks.) Isn’t this swell? (Maybe we should read it first.)

“Dan Onorato believes that our innovative cultural enterprises and rich arts, cultural and historical heritage are among Pennsylvania’s strongest assets. As governor, Onorato will support art and culture’s role in enhancing the quality of life for all Pennsylvanians, providing world-class educational opportunities and driving economic development in communities across the commonwealth. …”

Oh, hey, what’s that? Sorry, we dozed off for a sec.

Fortunately, the paper’s only five pages long, so after one little bump of crystal meth we plowed right through it. This we discerned: Dan Onorato loves the arts and culture and tourism.

He wants to restore cultural funding where possible; make schoolkids watch ballet; attract big stars; better market our historical treasures; and bring in more sweet, sweet tourism dollars. This, you see, will make Pennsylvania a wonderful place to live, and we will all get diamond-encrusted ponies.

His paper, though, is a bit short on specifics: The only funding

source he mentions is the proposed Marcellus Shale drilling severance tax, which he would use to establish a historic preservation

tax credit. This is by design, we suppose; really, he just wants you artsy-fartsy peeps to know that, despite his tough-guy Italian exterior, you won’t be forgotten in an Onorato administration.

“You gotta look at what the payback is,” he tells A Million Stories.

“What drives revenues: The nonprofit cultural organizations, the impact is about $2 billion annually, $155 million in state revenues and 60,000 jobs. It makes sense for the state to be investing in areas where jobs are created.”

Sounding not unlike Rise of the Creative Class author (and, as Onorato happily points out, former Pittsburgher) Richard Florida, Onorato notes that in the “darkest days” of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the Pittsburgh Culture Trust there and the creation of the Avenue of the Arts here became keys to jump-starting the cities’ downtowns.

“I watched the Cultural Trust save the core of [Pittsburgh] when there was nobody coming into the core of this region,” says the Allegheny County executive.

It’s great that he understands the interconnectivity between the

Diamondencrusted ponies!

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the naked city

AMILLIONSTORIES <<<

arts and livability and downtown renaissances, though you get the sense that Onorato’s enthusiasm is more about the state’s bottom line than art for art’s sake. But that’s fine. So long, that is, that at some point he puts meat on the bone and tells us exactly how far he’s willing to go — in these trying economic times, where lawmakers are searching high and low for programs to cut — to make this state’s cultural assets his priorities. ³ END-ZONE DANCING

E VA N M . L O P E Z

The settlement negotiated between the new and old owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News involves paying departed CEO Brian Tierney $300,000 plus benefits in exchange for Tierney not pursuing further litigation against the new owners, according a transcript of a May 12 hearing in federal bankruptcy court obtained by City Paper.

Which is, you know, exactly what this newspaper reported May 19, citing two sources close to the negotiation [Naked City, “Terms of Estrangement,” Ralph Cipriano]. And it’s exactly what Tierney — who declined to comment for our story — denied to WHYY’s Susan Phillips on May 21.

Ahem.

According to the transcript of the settlement conference, Tierney

agreed to become a consultant in exchange for six months’ salary — $300,000 — and health benefits. The new owners — a group of lenders headed by Angelo, Gordon & Co. of New York, which purchased the papers at auction April 28 for $139 million — would also pay two months’ salary to 21 of Tierney’s managers.

And so ends (sorta) Tierney’s foray into the world of newspaper publishing (although he left as CEO May 21, Tierney will remain the papers’ publisher until later this summer), which began in 2006 when his cadre of local investors bought the papers for $515 million. Within three years, the papers were in bankruptcy. Not Tierney’s fault, of course — if we could solve newspapers’ financial problems, we’d be rich bastards by now — but we’re not exactly shedding tears for him, either.

Tierney’s spokesman, Jay Devine, declined to comment last week; Tierney couldn’t be reached for an interview. Which is a shame, really. We just wanted to tell him his pants looked like they might be a little warm. Also, the smoke … ³ DEPT. OF SAD FACE

✚ This week’s report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Ralph Cipriano and Brian Howard.

E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.

By Isaiah Thompson

THE CAPITAL J ³ NOT LONG AGO, J-Lab — an “incubator for

innovative news experiments” — released a report, authored by executive director Jan Schaffer (a former Inquirer Pulitzer-winner), on the state of the city’s “media ecosystem,” including recommendations for “possible media investment strategy.”

Why all the quotes? Because, what does all that mean? It means money, likely in the form of grants from the William Penn Foundation, which funded the study. Also clear is the fact that Schaffer considers some Philadelphia media outlets more worthy of attention than others.

In: broadstreetreview.com, phlmetropolis.com, pa2010.com, philebrity.com, planphilly.com, The Notebook, septawatch.com, Indy Hall, technicallyphilly.com and Temple Journalism Review. Out (or, atleast, unmentioned): Philadelphia Gay News;Al Día or any other ethnic newspaper; Philadelphia Tribune; Metro; Philadelphia Weekly; and City Paper.

According to a subsequent report by Joshua Breitbart of New America Foundation, Schaffer defended her choices by saying she was looking for “capital J” journalism, and thus had excluded “citizen” or “advocate” journalism. Those omissions warrant the ol’ raised eyebrow: Who gets to decide what constitutes “capital J” journalism?

Todd Wolfson, executive director of the leftist Media Mobilizing Project (MMP — unmentioned, of course), argues that Schaffer’s report deliberately overlooked groups, like MMP, that she deemed too political while giving the nod to other outlets whose association with “capital J” journalism is not obvious: Collaborative workspace Indy Hall, for example, isn’t remotely a news outlet.

Is there an important difference between advocacy and journalism? Of course. But the line can get blurry. As Wolfson points out, even philebrity. com “may not be political, but it speaks to a certain community through a certain voice that projects a certain idea of what Philly should look like.”

He has a point. J-Lab can thumb its nose at “advocate” media — but it’s every reporter’s dirty little secret that we rely on activists to break news. Daily newspapers have long acted as filters through which activists’ work passed to reach a mass audience.

But there aren’t enough reporters for that anymore, if there ever were. So advocates and various interest groups have taken to breaking news on their own. By narrowly defining that “capital J” to cut them out, it’s J-Lab — and the good people of this city — who’ll miss the scoop. ✚ Isaiah Thompson has more dirty little secrets. E-mail him at isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net.

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When we heard last week’s news about the seven layoffs at 88.5 WXPN-FM, we were troubled. Yeah, layoffs always suck. But what did WXPN’s move mean for a project this newspaper had chronicled since its infancy?

The layoffs included Josh T. Landow, who, after the modernrock station Y100 suddenly flipped formats in 2005, had helped keep the genre alive in Philly, first at the web station y100rocks.com, and later with WXPN’s altered-beast web and HD2 station YRock on XPN. (Landow’s Y-Rock on XPN partner, Jim McGuinn, departed for Minnesota Public Radio in early 2009.)

Exiting alongside Landow are the Wednesday-through-Friday evening on-air modern rock shows Y-Rock contributed to the station.

The decisions to oust Landow and drop the Y-Rock shows were “related but not directly connected,” says WXPN general manager Roger LaMay.“When we launched Y-Rock with Jim and Josh, we saw the evening shows on 88.5 as a way to use our air to build awareness and promote the service on HD2.” But HD2 never took off they way the station hoped. “We’ve been doing that for about four years, and our evening weekday programming has not been doing all that well, audience- and fundraising-wise, the last couple of years.

We felt strongly that we needed to have consistent Mondaythrough-Friday evening programming to get it on track.”

The station considered turning its airwaves over to Y-Rock five nights a week, LaMay says, but its “audience was not really showing up in those hours.” Nonetheless, LaMay assures, Y-Rock will stay on WXPN’s streaming and HD2 formats.

And, he continues, the station will continue to trumpet local artists. He’s particularly stoked about a blog “100 percent focused on local music” that the station plans to launch in mid-August.

That blog will be one of 10 single-topic websites funded by NPR’s Argo Project — and of them, the only one dedicated to music.

(The others will be paired with news stations.)

“It will be based here and [run by] a single full-time journalist blogger,” he says, though they’re still interviewing candidates. He adds that the blog “will have a Philadelphia-centric name of its own sometime in the next few weeks.”

If it’s “Y-Rock’s Rock Blog,” we give up.

manoverboard!

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[ is covering its virgin ears ]

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[ the naked city ]

loosecanon

By Bruce Schimmel

CHILD-FREE AND PROUD ³ MY SPOUSE AND I just celebrated our 25th anniversary, and as the congratulations came in, the big question was, “How did you do it?”

My contribution to our marriage’s longevity was to love, honor and obey. With special emphasis on the obey part — especially in the matter of children.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” was what my wife said to me from day one. Thanks, indeed, for all the pleasant procreative preliminaries (which continue to this day). But no thanks to the usual consequences. So praise the Lord, and pass the diaphragm.

Thus spake my spouse, and so it ought to be. For I’ve come to believe that the question of whether to breed should be decided by women. And her choice has worked out well: Unlike some couples with kids, after a quarter-century our marriage is very much alive.

But the decision not to have kids has also had its challenges. Some see us as freakish and selfish. This was certainly so in the early ’90s, when my friend Ronnie Polaneczky wrote a beautiful piece for Philadelphia magazine about (as it was then put) “childless couples.”

Ronnie’s story landed us on WPVI-TV’s AM Philadelphia.Wally Kennedy’s gentle interview garnered phone calls that were surprisingly supportive of our decision. (Though as I watch the VHS today, I suspect my poofy hair may have swayed their feelings.)

Since then, we’ve said it loud: We’re child-free and proud. And, like many City Paper readers at the time, we also represented a most desirable demographic called DINKs — Dual Income, No Kids.

Today, not having kids is no longer pathological. And with gay couples becoming part of the marital landscape, everyone is getting less pressure to breed. This is especially true now, as the world overflows with humans, wanted and otherwise.

Not having kids has even become a Green Thing. DINKs have been rebranded as GINKs — Green Inclined, No Kids. Meanwhile, support groups for the child-free like “No Kidding” have been fruitful and multiplied. (A local chapter is at sjnokidding.tripod.com.)

Fewer women today feel a need to breed. In 1976, 10 percent of American women ages 40 to 44 did not have children, according to U.S. Census data. By 2003, that number had jumped to 19 percent.

We child-free have gone from pariahs to prophets.

Look, both my spouse and I like children. We love my friends’ kids as much as we love their parents. And it’s fine by me to celebrate Mother’s and Father’s Days. Having a child and being a good parent is a wonderful thing.

But so is not having children. Does this make us selfish? Hardly.

After all, the child-free still pay taxes to educate other people’s children, and we don’t get a tax deduction for not having kids.

Maybe we nonparents should have a day of our own: a “ChildFree People Appreciation Day.” Perhaps if not having children were as revered as having them, fewer pubescent teens would be deluded into becoming parents.

At our wedding, my wife’s mom offered her this benediction: “If you choose to have children, I hope you’ll be as proud as I am of you.” In 1985, she gave her daughter the choice, and my wife took it.

For women today, the decision not to bear children is far less onerous — and we are all happier for it. (bruce@schimmel.com)

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Praise the Lord and pass the diaphragm.

feedback From our readers

NOTHING IS W’S FAULT Reading your piece [“Crude Awakening,” Cover Story, Jeffrey C. Billman, June 3], City Paper was a slow-motion tragedy in and of itself. What is your fascination with George Bush? I told a buddy shortly after the oil disaster that it would not be long before some whack-job blames the former president. Thank you for fulfilling my prophecy. Are you kidding me? You whining, crying, left-leaning journalists (I use that word lightly with you because you are far from a journalist) need to stop publishing pieces that serve only one purpose: division. It is your goal to divide this country between left and right and you take every chance to slam President Bush.

The former president is not responsible for the oil rig explosion; is not responsible for Hurricane Katrina; is not responsible for the current state of the economy; is not responsible for 9/11. Perhaps if you and your left-leaning pals would publish the truth rather than smear, this country might get on the road to unity. I suspect you won’t change though; telling the truth is not a good selling point if you want people to read your pieces.

Thomas G. Barnes VIA E-MAIL

STARVE THE BEAST Boosting the Treasury via Cap and Trade taxation would serve to enhance the scope and scale of the federal government’s foreign policy; e.g., institutional mass murder overseas in unending mercantile wars and occupations [Soapboxer, “About Damn Time,” Jeffrey C. Billman, June 10]. That solution is idiotic. Starve the government for peace.

John Giles V I A C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

DUMBASSES How dumb are some people [Cover Story, “Default Lines,” Isaiah Thompson, June 10]? These people moved into a house without walls, a broken water heater, a leaking roof? My God, these are not things that were hidden from them! I don’t feel sorry for anyone that stupid, even though Coyle is an ass and should be made to remember these people.

Chrissy Meyers KENSINGTON

✚ Send all letters to Feedback, City Paper, 123 Chestnut St., 3rd Floor,

Phila. PA 19106; fax us at 215-599-0634; or e-mail editorial@citypaper.net.

Submissions may be edited for clarity and space and must include an address and daytime phone number.

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[ the naked city ]

THE CHOSEN ONE: Recent (as in last Friday) Germantown Friends School grad and Phillies draftee Jesse Biddle faces reporters at a June 10 press conference in the basement of Citizens Bank Park.

NEAL SANTOS

[ grown-ass men ]

A NEW HOPE Can the Phillies’ first-rounder overcome his privileged upbringing? By E. James Beale

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hree hectic days after the Philadelphia Phillies selected Germantown Friends School (GFS) left-hander Jesse Biddle in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft June 7, Biddle met Charlie Manuel, the old-school manager of the hometown team. Shortly after the encounter, Manuel sat back and offered his first impression of the newest Phillie: “He’s big.”

It was a compliment.

Biddle, whose “6-foot-5, 235-pound left-hander” description is used so frequently it might as well be his last name, is in fact big, and has always been so. He claims he was the second largest baby in the history of his hospital — and looking at him, you’d be hard-pressed to doubt him. He has broad shoulders, a filled-out chest and legs built like twin gunpowder kegs, all of which makes scouts drool. When Eric Valent, the Phillies’ area evaluator primarily responsible for finding Biddle, introduced him in the media interview room June 10 in the basement of Citizens Bank Park, he used the words “big,” “physical” or “size” six times in a 61-second talk. His size was the first thing Jimmy Rollins, whose wife also graduated from GFS, mentioned, too: “They said he was 6-5, 235,” the 170-pound Rollins told me before a recent game at Citizens Bank Park, shaking his head in amazement. “That’s a grown-ass man.”

Big and good: Should the Phillies be equating those two? After all, baseball is more a game of skill than force, and as Moneyball has taught us, scouts have been wrong before. It was a question Biddle asked himself as the draft approached: Sure, his size tantalized Valent, but would it really help him on the field?

For two years, Biddle dragged himself to post-practice workouts, where he packed on 45 pounds of muscle. He wanted to know if it was all worth it. So he found out.

Last month, with the help of a schoolmate, Danny Ceisler, Biddle tried to calculate if the scouts’ obsession with size was merit-based. Taking into account the elevation of the major-league

mound and historical examples, like Will White of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the pair looked at pitchers in three weight classes — below 210 pounds, 211-229 pounds and Biddle’s 230-plus — and charted their velocity, durability and success. Ceisler wrote up the project for their statistics class, and Biddle did the math. They got an A-minus.

“Honestly, the draft had a lot to do with it,” Biddle explains, taking a moment away from chatting with Chase Utley and Marlins All-Star right-hander Josh Johnson during a pre-game batting practice to break down the school project. “I noticed that when scouts would hear ‘6-5, 235,’ they’d pay attention.”

Ceisler, standing beside Biddle on the field this afternoon, chimes in: “We wanted to know if there was any basis for that.”

There was, sort of. The two determined that the extra weight correlated strongly enough with velocity for the 18-year-old lefty to stay in the weight room, but not enough with success for it to dominate his thoughts. It helped get his fastball to 96 mph — Biddle also throws a nasty slider, a developing changeup and a get-me-by curve — but as he has been plagued by control issues, the extra bulk never helped him place it.

This process — questioning conventional wisdom, applying academic know-how to figure it out and drawing your own conclusions — is quintessentially GFS. The school — which I, like Biddle and Ceisler, attended from kindergarten through graduation, though years ahead of the class of 2010 — demands that students think critically and apply academic learning to real-world problems. I’ve seen it produce smart, articulate, well-rounded individuals.

“An organization wants a player where baseball is their only real path.”

When Biddle charmed a room full of reporters with one-liners and earnest talk about studying the media relations of stars before him, the press box was impressed that such a young kid could seem so mature. That surprised me. Of course he could speak in public, I thought. GFS kids are supposed to be that way.

What they’re not supposed to be are professional baseball players.

In the 165-year history of GFS, a consistent feeder for the Ivy League, Biddle will be the school’s first major pro athlete.

When Biddle enrolled in kindergarten, it was more likely that by his graduation last Friday he could read Homer in Greek than that he would be a first-round draft pick. “[GFS] is known for cutting off the roughand-tumble boy in the third and fourth grade and snuffing the super-jock self-image,” says David Biddle, Jesse’s father.

By stifling alpha-male attitudes in class, refusing to bend its academic standards for athletes or simply not fielding teams competitive enough to keep its stars, GFS sees most of its elite athletes leave. Athletes are singled out by teachers who feel that their priorities are skewed, and a night game on Wednesday is never an acceptable excuse for a late paper due on Thursday.

In fact, amid the celebration over Biddle’s success, there is a twinge of regret that, once he goes pro, the school won’t be able to boast a 100 percent college attendance rate for the class of 2010. “I had one woman who told me that if he were her son, she’d make sure he went to college,” says Della Micah, the school’s director of college guidance.

He won’t, but he nonetheless thinks his educational background will be a plus. “I think mentally I’m going to be head and shoulders above most [other draftees],” Biddle says matter-of-factly. “I go to these big workouts or showcases, and I look at what the best guys are doing and what they have up top. I think that is something I have on them.”

He’s not the only one. Adam Karon, Biddle’s agent, says he made a point of sending Jesse to workouts without handlers so teams could see his maturity. The Phillies did. Marti Wolever, who as the Phillies’ director of scouting has seen plenty of high school seniors, addresses this directly: “When you listen to him speak, you understand he’s a little bit ahead of where most high school seniors are.”

But at the end of the day, professional baseball teams don’t care what you got on >>> continued on adjacent page

<<< continued from previous page

“He’s a little bit ahead of where most high school seniors are.”

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It was the reaction of a GFS parent, not the parent of a firstround pick.

Biddle, who readily admits that he’s “never really been anywhere else,” will soon be out of his comfort zone. Still, it probably won’t be the end of the world, as he does have a couple of things going for him: Biddle averaged 2.4 strikeouts per inning in high school. He’s been compared to stars like Clayton Kershaw, Andy Pettitte and Cliff Lee. Though he’s known for his pitching, longtime GFS coach Chris Coxe cites him as the best hitter GFS has ever produced.

And, of course, he’s big, and he’s going to get bigger. “I want to max out at 245 [pounds],” he says with the confidence of a man who knows what he’s saying, because he has the data to back him up. (e.james.beale@citypaper.net)

RIVER CRUISE

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NEAL SANTOS

your SATs. And being perceived as a brain can be a disadvantage. Ask Doug Glanville, the former Phillies center fielder who went from Penn to the majors and recently authored a book, The Game from Where I Stand, about his journey from academia to the show.

“Immediately I got the label of being uncommitted and too smart for my own good,” he says from his home in Chicago. “Teams prefer that you have limited options. An organization wants a player where baseball is their only real path.”

For Biddle, baseball isn’t the only path. He could have gone to any college in the nation with a baseball program. He’s also a Biddle, which in and of itself is something of a big deal. The Biddles came to the area in the 1600s and have been prominent figures in the city ever since. His lineage includes diplomats, congressmen, a U.S. attorney general, a bassist for The Roots — and now a professional baseball player. If Biddle wanted to pursue a path that doesn’t end at Broad and Pattison, he most certainly could. But he doesn’t.

After the draft, Biddle made no ploys for more money; he told anyone who would listen that he planned to sign, and to sign quickly. “The best way to get to the major leagues is to play as soon as you can right out of high school,” he said in his first public statement in a Phillies jersey, “and while the signing bonus money is very helpful, that only means so much.”

Where he’s headed next, he won’t have choices.

Minor-league baseball is a regimented, competitive, goal-oriented process. Its “do this, do that” boot-camp nature may help ball clubs figure out which players are ready for the majors, but it’s not altogether intellectually stimulating. Biddle spent his childhood in a world where the fact that he’s smart and interested counted in his favor. Now, and for the first time in his life, his new coaches won’t want to hear, “Why?” He’ll be surrounded by guys who have been singularly focused on baseball their entire lives. Guys who don’t have Biddle’s options.

“I was crying that he wasn’t going to go [to college] this morning,” David Biddle says a few hours after his son was drafted — which, not for

nothing, guaranteed his son a reported $1.16 million payday.

“He’ll make great friends in the pros, but it won’t be the same.”

We’re standing in the atrium outside of GFS’s fieldhouse as Biddle’s college-bound classmates to-and-fro around us.

He pauses, crossing his arms and raising his eyes to watch his son greet well-wishers and autograph-seekers, ranging from nursery-school students to Dick Wade, the school’s headmaster. Then, quietly, he continues: “I actually stood here with those guys, the seniors he was on stage with, and I told them, ‘He’s not going to make the friends you make, he’s not going to get to go out partying, and he’s not going to be able to get laid the way you guys get laid.’ You need to recognize that you’re his boys, and you can’t let him slip away.”

LEGENDARY

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[ the naked city ]

✚ A New Hope

13

HITCH 22: A MEMOIR

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

THROWING THE BOOKS AT YOU ■ You like to read. Not just newspapers and blogs and tweets and status updates, but books.

A 2009 National Endowment for the Arts study put it in no uncertain terms: For the first time in a quarter-century, adults — particularly those ages 18 to 24 — are reading more literature than they used to. It’s a huge leap from the NEA’s last survey eight years ago, which found that 16.6 million fewer Americans took to cracking open those great American novels and breezy beach books. That’s a big deal.

For a paper like ours, one still writing about books on a regular basis, this is encouraging news. We’d like to see that trend grow. That’s why we’re giving away a copy of every single book reviewed — hell, even briefly mentioned — in this summer edition of City Paper’s Book Quarterly. And options abound: We’ve got Bret Easton Ellis’ long-anticipated Imperial Bedrooms (p. 17); Samantha Bee’s hysterical I Know I Am, But What Are You? (p. 28); and Anthony Bourdain’s scathing Medium Raw (p. 18). We’ve got a dozen novels waiting for your down-the-shore tote. We’ve got a book about video games (p. 18); a book about Barack Obama (p. 23); a book about how the Internet is rotting our brains (p. 20). They’re all up for grabs.

Getting in the game is easy: Visit citypaper.net/criticalmass every day through June 23 for Book Quarterly Trivia Week; answer ridiculous questions about the books mentioned in these pages; and if you win, we’ll send you a copy. Free. All you have to do is read.

—CAROLYN HUCKABAY

DON HARING JR.

(carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net)

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

■ In her literary debut, Hilary Thayer Hamann weaves the intricate web of an introverted young woman’s interior life.

In a daring move of realism, Hamann portrays Eveline, our heroine of sorts, as not always likable but almost always painfully relatable.

The events of Eveline’s late adolescence are filtered through her simultaneously lyrical and analytical psyche.

Her senior year of high school is a study in isolation; her romance with boxer Harrison Rourke is cast in terms of youthful idolatry; and her college years pass under the haze of heartbreak.

Originally self-published, Anthropology of an American Girl can occasionally be self-indulgent and, while an engrossing read, overly lengthy. The novel is primarily centered on Eveline’s involvement with three very different men: her nihilistic high school sweetheart, the elusive Rourke and a persistent, wealthy suitor. In this roundabout way, Girl examines a woman’s identity within the world, which is, after all, very often defined in opposition to a man’s.

Even so, readers may feel somewhat betrayed by Eveline’s later actions after she is originally portrayed as a strong, thoughtful woman. This depth of character examination, even if seemingly contradictory, generates the novel’s powerful, sympathetic backbone and propels a complex coming-of-age tale for a new generation.

■ Noted writer and intellectual Christopher Hitchens delves into the private side of his public persona in a new memoir about perhaps his toughest subject yet. Known best as a political writer and avowed atheist, Hitchens offers up surprising revelations about the methods behind his madness as one of the world’s most beloved and often hated scribes.

Hitch 22 flashes back often to the writer’s early days of torment. Hitchens paints himself as a weakling in knickers, lousy at sports, who for most of his life struggles with his mother’s suicide.

Grief is later replaced with heavy drinking, debating and Hemingwayesque globe-trotting with close friends who include writers Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie. The high-energy memoir, while plenty self-indulgent, follows the writer as a young boy into manhood. It’s peppered with a heady mix of boarding-school high jinks, quests for social justice and rigorous examinations of God, politics and America, all the while vividly recounting the “lacerating, howling” moments in his life where the “private and the political had intersected.”

He also addresses controversy, like his support of the invasion of Iraq, and condemnation about how the war unfurled. He doesn’t shy away from embarrassment, either, admitting regret for being an absent father. It’s not quite what you’d expect to find on the pages he writes in Vanity Fair each month. But bold and brassy Hitchens characteristically treats himself as the subject he knows best.

YOU’RE HAVING GIRL PROBLEMS

Spiegel & Grau, 624 pp., $26, May 25

YOU’RE GETTING CRUCIFIED

—Natalie Hope McDonald

15

Twelve, 424 pp., $26.99, June 2

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—Emily Currier

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ANTHROPOLOGY OF AN AMERICAN GIRL

BY HILARY THAYER HAMANN

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the naked city

book quarterly AT LEAST IN THE CITY SOMEONE WOULD HEAR ME SCREAM

BY WADE ROUSE

PACKING FOR MARS

BY MARY ROACH

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THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY

BY RICHARD C. MORAIS

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

■ “You’re investigating a rather unusual aspect of spaceflight,” astronaut Jim Lovell tells Mary Roach — in this case, she’s asking about body odor in the cramped confines of space capsules, but the comment could be dropped just as easily into any chapter of her latest book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void.

Mankind’s giant leaps, it turns out, may cause nausea and certainly require bathroom breaks. Roach’s default journalistic stance is a state of perpetual bemusement, and it’s the eccentricities of decades of weird-butuseful science rather than its results that primarily interest her. (No matter how popular they’d like their science to be, it’s hard to imagine Stephen Hawking or Neil deGrasse Tyson using terms like “splooge” or “fecal popcorning.” Richard Dawkins, maybe, but only in the context of insulting a priest.)

So it’s not the question of if or how we’ll get to Mars that concerns her, but the nagging quirks of biology and psychology that must be overcome in order to make interstellar travel possible: What if you vomit in your spacesuit? Is there any way to make food in a tube palatable? How does one deal with, ahem, “zero-gravity elimination”? And the big issue — sex in space, and more importantly, has it happened? The odds turn out to be 50/50, but if anyone has, it was likely the Russians; as much as Roach obviously adores the combination of macho swagger and geeky humorlessness at NASA, the vodka-swilling, nosebloodying cosmonauts hold a special place in her snarky heart.

■ The concept of a flaming homo like Wade Rouse moving from the city to a cottage in the woods is akin to the poor shark swimming through the oily Gulf.

It’s bat-shit crazy.

Still, Wade and his partner, Gary, agree to forfeit pampered cosmopolitan living in an attempt to find their life’s meaning in the rustic Michigan wilderness. Guided by Thoreau’s Walden and emboldened by I Love Lucy reruns, Rouse sets out in At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life to tackle his self-penned to-do list of 10 life lessons.

For this quintessential girly man, it’s not surprising that some of his greatest challenges derive from the realization that certain urban luxuries no longer make the cut when living among trees and rabid raccoons. His recollection of experiences — like trading his pointytoed Kenneth Coles for “vomit green” waders or desperately driving two hours out of his way for a strip mall and a quadruple-shot vanilla latte — are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

But don’t be quick to count this sister out. Working through the initial tribulations, Wade eventually discovers the fabulosity of rural living. Suddenly he taps into his spiritual side and begins to work those backwoods like Dorothy in her ruby reds. Oh, snap.

■ When a book’s titled Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson, you know it’s not a Pulitzer contender.

British author Robert Sellers explores the hair-raising escapades of the aforementioned film legends, all of whom were much more than troublemakers — they were really bad, and they liked it that way. If much of the inflammatory information didn’t come from quoted sources, you’d be inclined to think the account of this naughty foursome’s high jinks came straight from the tabloids.

But it all seems to be true, testifying to the bold, fearless, lusty personalities of these guys. They recklessly pursued women, drank excessively and tried every drug available.

That was back in the wild ’60s and ’70s. Things started changing in 2004 when Brando, the original bad boy and perhaps the most significant talent, died of lung failure. Beatty married and became a family man — and a Hollywood force. Jack Nicholson never married, although at age 74 seems to have decided that running around chasing women 30 years his junior no longer works. Most recently, cancer caught up with Hopper, in the middle of a divorce from his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy, bringing his life to a close just weeks ago. Through it all, it’s doubtful that any current Hollywood Lothario has had half the success — or gotten away with half as much — as this foursome, though many will try to re-create the bad-boy persona.

■ This lighthearted novel by Philadelphia-based author Richard Morais is simply a delectable treat.

We’re introduced to Hassan Haji, born in Mumbai, whose first sensation at birth is smell. When he observes that his family’s chicken dish tastes dry, he sets himself on an irrefutable course with destiny to become a great chef.

However, Hassan’s journey take a curious turn when his father moves the family to southeastern France. Young Hassan quickly becomes a rival — then pupil — of renowned two-star Michelin chef Madame Mallory, who (to her own horror) acknowledges the teenager as a culinary artist. As he learns French haute cuisine, Hassan finds his place in the world, eventually moving to Paris to open his own restaurant.

Morais fills almost every page of The Hundred-Foot Journey with foodery, from savory trips to Harrod’s and French markets to kitchen scenes featuring descriptions of preparations for ptarmigan and Charolais. There is also plenty of vivid imagery in the text — a character’s face resembles “an onion bahji”; the sun looks like dripping mango sorbet.

While The Hundred-Foot Journey gets a bit episodic at times — Hassan has a brief affair with a sous chef, and has both tax and staff troubles — Morais still makes his points elegantly. He and his characters emphasize the importance of family, selflessness and preparing simple dishes — true food for thought.

YOU’RE FINDING YOUR ZERO-G SPOT

Book giveaways all week at citypaper. net/criticalmass.

HOLLYWOOD HELLRAISERS

BY ROBERT SELLERS

—Shaun Brady W.W. Norton, 336 pp., $25.95, Aug. 2

YOU GOTTA BE OUT IN THE COUNTRY

—Josh Middleton Three Rivers Press, 301 pp., $14, June 2

THE SHERIFF GON’ COME FOR YOU

—Janet Anderson Skyhorse, 336 pp., $24.95, July 13

YOU’RE ALL OVER THE MAP

—Gary M. Kramer Scribner, 256 pp., $23, July 6

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KRAKEN

BY CHINA MIÉVILLE

THE LONELY POLYGAMIST

BY BRADY UDALL

THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE, BY AIMEE BENDER

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

■ Bret Easton Ellis’ new book isn’t just a sequel to Less Than Zero, the 1985 novel that catapulted him to fame while he was still in college; it’s also part of a continuing midcareer self-re-evaluation that started with 2005’s fascinating and frustrating Lunar Park, in which an entirely different Ellis (now married with kids in the New York ’burbs) was terrorized by physical manifestations of his own past literary creations.

Imperial Bedrooms returns to Less Than Zero’s Los Angeles, where protagonist Clay is now a reasonably successful Hollywood screenwriter. He’s working on a movie, seeing old friends and he’s got a new girl, but he keeps getting texts from a blocked number that tell him he’s being watched.

Like in Lunar Park, the basic question is: What exactly happens to the characters you create, decades after you create them? There’s another question, too, though: What has happened to Ellis’ writing in the 25 years since Less Than Zero? To some extent the style here consciously mirrors that of Zero, but now everything seems a little darker, like it’s not as much fun as it used to be, and there’s a new emotional intensity that Clay seemed too cool to reveal before. As usual, it’s hard to tell exactly how Ellis relates to all of this, but those kinds of questions get boring after a while. No matter what, it’s worth following Ellis down this rabbit hole.

■ Trust China Miéville, three-time Arthur C. Clarke Award-winner and self-described “weird fiction” author, to top his 2009 hit science fiction mystery The City & the City. In Kraken, the titular giant calamari — pickled and displayed in London’s Natural History Museum by Billy Harrow — suddenly and impossibly vanishes. The ensuing adventure explores a magical London underworld of competing apocalyptic cults and the police tracking them, unionized animal “familiars” and their disembodied strike leader, and ruthless supernatural gang bosses and their otherworldly henchmen.

All pursue the kraken, and no one knows who squidnapped it: not The Tattoo, a face inked to a poor sap’s back; not the squiddity-worshipping Teuthists; not the death-cheating Grisamentum; not even The Ocean, which in Kraken is a cranky intelligent force. Naïve Billy, his protector, Dane, and hilariously profane cop Collingswood — who has her own special “knack,” or supernatural mojo — close in on the squid and all its mysteries as Miéville’s dark carnival London, “a city of knacks and heretics,” faces destruction by righteous memoryconsuming fire.

Kraken’s a smart, witty read with lots of surprises in its complex, clear and colorful mythology of “gunfarmers” (whose bullets are firearm eggs), “intereffigial unspace” (can’t explain it, but it’s way cool), and, amusingly for us die-hard Trekkers, obsessive Star Trek paraphernalia collectors.

■ Golden Richards’ construction business is falling apart, he’s losing social status in his community and he’s fallen in love with someone who isn’t his wives. Save for his fundamentalist Mormon faith, four wives and 28 children, Golden is like any John Updike character who has lost his way. In his second novel, Brady Udall — whose great-grandfather was a polygamist — shifts perspective from his main character, the terminally indecisive Golden; his fourth wife, the grievous Trish; and Rusty, one of Golden’s many children, whose nickname of “The Troublemaker” is like calling the Richards clan simply unconventional.

The story takes shape as Udall adds layers to each of his characters — keeping some purposefully and tantalizingly vague. While Golden’s actions drive the narrative, it’s Rusty and Trish, relaying the everyday aspects of a polygamous lifestyle, who’re the most fascinating — Rusty justifies trying on his sister’s underwear because all of his own are in disrepair, while Trish’s abject isolation in a household of 33 is at the novel’s ironic core. Udall’s gift is the humor he imbues even at the book’s direst moments: The Richards family dog is often forced to wear underwear, and Rusty would be an insufferable shit if you didn’t want to give him a hug and tell him it’s all going to be OK. But it’s Golden, in a role usually cast as evil and oppressive, that is truly impressive. Because no matter how many wives he has, he’s just a lonely guy looking for love.

■ Aimee Bender may test the limits of quirk, but she’s a treasure nonetheless: a modern fabulist drawn equally to magic and the realities of contemporary life. The heroine of her latest novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, can taste people’s emotions in their food. Do they yearn for love? Are they always late? Rose can tell, a talent she discovers just before her ninth birthday, when a slice of cake reveals that her beautiful, creative mom feels small, distant and hollow — all of which is too much for Rose.

Bender’s cute premise works because, as any recovering picky eater knows, the pure stuff (apples and carrots) and the processed stuff (chips and candy) are for many hypersensitive kids the only palatable foods. At the same time, we know that many a woman has swallowed her sadness to cook something up for her kids. The notion of food being tainted by grown-up pain is of course fantastical, but for the most part, Bender gets the details right, making her fable easy to believe.

As Rose comes of age, food is her gateway to the adult world, which Bender treats with élan. A big brother’s popcorn is “a puffy salty collapsing death,” while holding a boy’s hand makes Rose look at apartments “with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgundies and matte reds.” In this tale of sensory overload, the five senses are, as they should be, richly and fully alive.

—Mark Cofta

—Molly Eichel

YOU JUST CAN’T SAY GOODBYE

Knopf, 192 pp., $24.95, June 15

Del Rey, 528 pp., $26, June 29

YOUR WANDERING DAYS AREN’T OVER

W.W. Norton, 602 pp., $26.95, May 3

YOU’VE EATEN YOUR FEELINGS

—Katherine Hill Doubleday, 304 pp., $25.95, June 1

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—Sam Kaplan

YOU’VE GOT OCEAN MADNESS

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IMPERIAL BEDROOMS

BY BRET EASTON ELLIS

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book quarterly ZIFT, BY VLADISLAV TODOROV TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH BENATOV

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MEDIUM RAW

BY ANTHONY BOURDAIN

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

■ Potent stuff distilled from ugly memories, already a cult movie in Bulgaria, Zift is like a flaming shot of rotgut smuggled in from the old country.

In this 2006 novel now available in English, local Bulgarian prof Vladislav Todorov adroitly uses the American genre of noir to excoriate the political villains of his homeland’s past. Even Todorov’s opening quote from Stalin, “Death solves all problems — no man, no problem,” proves a dictator’s rant can make for great pulp fiction.

Thanks to local translator Joseph Benatov, under local publisher Paul Dry, Zift is gritty and brisk. It’s narrated in savage, haunting tones by Moth, a bookish scrapper put in prison for murder when the fascists took power in 1944. Cut to 1963, Moth is welcomed to now-communist Bulgaria by being stripped, tortured with a crowbar, poisoned, half-frozen, then chased across the socialist ruins of the capital Sofia by an evil military goon named Slug.

Two subplots hinge on a black diamond and Ada, a femme fatale whose name means “hell” in Bulgarian. Amid the bullets, sex and betrayals, a few scenes suffer from obvious social commentary and weak political jokes. (“What’s two stakes, a rope, a saw and a hammer? A Siberian toilet.”) But there’s plenty of stylish gloom and lasting imagery, like Moth’s mentor with “a glass eye that would often pop out, especially when he was boxing.”

History’s demons get the last laugh in this noir fantasy. They stick Moth with a real-world choice: “the forced-labor madhouse” or the grave.

■ “When David Pepin first dreamed of killing his wife, he didn’t kill her himself. He dreamed of convenient acts of God.” That’s the ontologically uncertain bang that begins Adam Ross’ Möbiusstrip debut novel, Mr. Peanut.

Like the endlessly crawling ants on Escher’s famous lithograph, Ross’ book quickly captures its readers with short, tight, evocative sentences. An Escherinspired computer game designer by day and aspiring novelist with visions of uxoricide by night, David weaves several versions of his marriage (and his wife’s untimely demise) together so seamlessly that it’s impossible to figure out where one reality begins and another ends. Did he kill Alice, his obese, self-obsessed, manic-depressive wife? Or didn’t he?

We’re not really sure, and that’s OK. The deceptive simplicity that works so well with Escher’s iconic images also serves Ross’ story well. The beauty of David’s narrative is that what’s real and what’s imagined is never entirely clear. It’s this uncertainty, the way Ross loops beginnings into ends and back again, that is so effective.

But the pressure of two ungainly side plots deforms the skillful, looping conceit of the novel. In these interlocking, overly clever and comparatively clumsy storylines involving the officers investigating David’s role (or lack thereof) in Alice’s death, Ross rips the boundary between reality and perception and loses sight of which ants are crawling where.

■ For better or worse, Roger Ebert’s spent much of the past half decade proving that smart critics should stick to what they know. In 2005, he opined that video games aren’t art — and never will be. It’s a claim he’s been rehashing ever since: Sweeping condemnations are seldom qualified, the intelligence of the reader is frequently insulted and the points he purports to make never materialize. The result looks like old-fogey bitterness at best, comment-baiting blog fodder at worst.

Tom Bissell, for his part, knows video games. Though he wisely wastes few words on the skeptics themselves, his own take is clear: Throughout Extra Lives, he refers to “the classics of the form,” places the video game on the same shelf as sculpture or poetry, and makes convincing arguments for it being “the most dominant popular art form of our time.” You could find these sentiments on any web forum frequented by teenagers, but to hear it from a Guggenheim Fellow is a pleasure both to read and to ponder.

Thankfully, Bissell is no fanboy, and he spends more time exploring his frustrations with video games than his fascination with them. To wit, his vivid descriptions of artful zombie dismemberment in Resident Evil can be enjoyed by anyone, but what will interest the gamer is the way he posits that Evil’s narrative shortcomings set a troubling precedent.

On the one hand, Extra Lives is a fun primer for anyone remotely interested in why video games are so popular. On the other, it’s just the kind of smart criticism the art form has always needed.

■ Her commentary may be controversial, writes Anthony Bourdain of a peer, but she “rarely if ever commits the first and most common sin of food writing — being boring.” The same might be said of him: Whether you find the chef turned celebrity author obnoxious, endearing or both, you can’t accuse Bourdain of being uninteresting.

By that standard, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook doesn’t disappoint. Part personal memoir, part anecdotal exposé, the book reads as a highly engaging account of food culture by someone who’s spent most of his life immersed in it. Bourdain is as funny in Medium Raw as he was in Kitchen Confidential (see the chapter on his “Black Propaganda”-style campaign to turn his 2-year-old daughter off McDonald’s); if you have any sense of humor at all — well, don’t read with your mouth full.

Three highly publicized books into his stint as celebrity author, Bourdain has his recipe down pat, and his simmering blend of audacity, take-it-or-leave-it opinion and often-nuanced insight amounts to a pretty delicious meal. But the main ingredient is the chef himself, hovered over the pot in total control, inviting, provoking us to taste — and winning us over, in his inimitable way, one bite at a time.

THE REDS WANT YOU DEAD

More reviews online at citypaper. net/coverstory.

EXTRA LIVES: WHY VIDEO GAMES MATTER, BY TOM BISSELL

MR. PEANUT

BY ADAM ROSS

—Matt Jakubowski Paul Dry, 200 pp., $14.95, July 1

YOUR WIFE IS DRIVING YOU NUTS

—Char Vandermeer Knopf, 352 pp., $25.95, June 22

YOU’RE ON A KILLING SPREE

—Jakob Dorof Pantheon, 240 pp., $22.95, June 8

YOU’RE FEELING HANGRY

—Hadley Assail Ecco, 304 pp., $26.99, June 8

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book quarterly MADE BY HAND

BY MARK FRAUENFELDER

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THE SHALLOWS: WHAT THE INTERNET IS DOING TO OUR BRAINS, BY NICHOLAS CARR

THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET

BY DAVID MITCHELL

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

FOR WHEN:

■ When it comes to DIY bonafides, Mark Frauenfelder, editor in chief of Make magazine and founder of überblog Boing Boing, is as legit as they come. So it’s a little surprising to learn that until fairly recently, Frauenfelder wasn’t much of a DIYer himself. At Make, he admits, “I was satisfied with helping contributors write their articles and present their projects” — until he paid a visit to the mag’s tool reviewer, Mr. Jalopy, who imparted his DIY credo: “You will screw stuff up.” And that spark of wisdom, that screwing up is a necessary learning step, is what launched Frauenfelder down a road to deeper engagement with his world and, ultimately, his life.

But Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World is neither a navel-gazer nor a how-to guide.

It’s a tinker story in which the author relates not just the practical whys and wherefores of projects like raising chickens, hacking an espresso machine and home fermenting, he imparts the pure joy of discovery and deep sense of satisfaction that comes from figuring it out your own damned self. He introduces his friends from the Post Carbon Institute and their philosophy of Ramshackle Solid, as well as the Japanese concept of wabi sabi — that an object’s beauty lies in its imperfections. One and a half years into his experiment, Frauenfelder makes no claims to be an “alpha maker” — he proudly owns his missteps, which, he’s abundantly clear, are primarily responsible for changing not just his life for the better, but his philosophy, as well.

■ Many love letters have been written to the late, great ’80s: in film, The Wedding Singer; on TV, I Love the ’80s; on the streets, flashback fashion; and in music, countless cover and tribute bands doing their best Axl lizard wiggle or Billy Idol snarl on dive bar stages across the country.

Rob Sheffield has added his name to that list with Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut.

That’s not to say that his collection of essays, each centered around one song, one year and one event in his comingof-age, should be lost in the clutter.

As in his first book, Love Is a Mix Tape, Sheffield is a charming, bumbling nerd who exists solely for music and pop culture. In this latest effort he’s more polished and better able to zero in on a genre, an emotion, a decade. Much like the ’80s, this book is chock-full of pure, guilty-pleasure cheese (see: chapter on Prince). There are gender-bending existential trials (David Bowie, of course). But it’s the section on Madonna, girls and Irish Catholics where Sheffield’s writing is deeply introspective and thoughtful, not just entertaining. Music is, after all, the author’s religion, and why shouldn’t it be? It’s a beautiful relationship, and he wants to share it. So he wrote us this book of psalms.

■ Should you find yourself still thirsty after the following brief review, you’d do well to blame the Internet. The compression of long, complex ideas into tiny doses is print media’s way of trying to stay relevant in an age of snippets.

This is how far-reaching the neuropsychological effects of the Internet are, argues Nicholas Carr in his endlessly insightful book on how the web has changed not only how we read and consume online, but how we think offline, and how pre-web technologies (like altweeklies) have changed their models in response to ever-more-frenzied brains.

Carr’s argument is a temperate one, and he gracefully praises the Internet’s immense usefulness while avoiding brash criticisms. But his argument is powerful: The history of Western thought henceforth, he argues, has been toward contemplation and deepthinking, which he also refers to as “linear” thought — that is, a Westerner opened a book, consumed its entire argument and context and, through the process of silent reading, meditated on its contents. The Internet, however, presents the strongest rupture to this historical arc we have yet seen — an arc Carr brilliantly chronicles from oral tradition to printing press to the present, providing a wonderfully concise primer on how the West came to consume information as it does — because of the web’s omnipresence and its ability to supplement so many of the linear vehicles of thought we once frequently used, like television, radio and books.

Oh, and newspapers.

■ David Mitchell has a knack for identifying a beautiful moment. He strews paragraphs of them throughout The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, moments that decant the essence of a dusty colonial square, or a pastoral physic garden, or the panoramic wheeling of a flock of gulls into a page of bracingly clear, high-proof prose.

This is half the skill set that made Mitchell’s reputation; the rest comes from his audacity with form. In his early novels, he arranged his prose into complex postmodern puzzles. More recently, he’s applied a similar playfulness to genre conventions, in Black Swan Green and now in Thousand Autumns’ swashbuckling historicism.

But by stuffing his abundant inventiveness into the very square historical novel, Thousand Autumns demonstrates precisely how far audacity can carry you. Historical romance relies on its ability to transport a reader through emotion or suspense or plot, or even just simple immersion. But Mitchell’s book comes in the form of three looselinked novellas centered on early19th-century Dutch trade in imperial Japan. Characters disappear for great stretches (even the titular de Zoet stays offstage for the second act), plotlines are muted or discarded, crucial motivations go unexamined, while minor cavils get exhaustively explained.

Mitchell’s purpose might be subversive, denying the easy pleasures of romance and plot. But it’s telling that his writing gets intoxicating and joyful only when he takes a break from his characters, and gets an empty stage to build up some pretty scenery.

YOU NEED JUST ONE FIX

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TALKING TO GIRLS ABOUT DURAN DURAN

BY ROB SHEFFIELD

YOU’RE HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF

—Julia West Dutton, 222 pp., $25.95, July 15

A TANGLED WEB YOU WEAVE

—Andrew Thompson

—Brian Howard W.W. Norton, 276 pp., $26.95, June 7 Portfolio, 256 pp., $25.95, May 27

YOU’VE FALLEN AND YOU CAN’T GET UP

—Justin Bauer Random House, 496 pp., $26, June 29

INVITE YOU AND A GUEST TO SEE

JOAN RIVERS

A PIECE OF WORK Enter to win tickets at:

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Employees of promotional partners are not eligible.

OPENS FRIDAY, JUNE 18 RITZ 5 THEATRE For ticket purchase: tickets.landmarktheatres.com

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fullexposure John Vettese sees what develops

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

³ LIKE FAMILY SNAPSHOTS,memories fade in time.

Exact colors and circumstances, people and places all become a monochromatic wash of foggy nonspecificity as time passes. Photographs are, in a vernacular sense, meant to preserve these moments, and even they are stricken with impermanence.

Kaitlin Mosley embraces that fragility. Her current solo exhibition, “Expiration” (on display at The Light Room’s new salon space at 20th and Wallace), is a collection of hazy, dreamlike images shot on chemically expired color film. The aged medium causes some colors to fade and others to shift. It conjures distortion and noise that pops up across the frame.

Generally, it makes Mosley’s scenes seem on the verge of disappearing into obscurity.

“Ship” depicts a sailboat drifting in a harbor, but both vessel and water are indistinct. Here, the expired film plays with existing conditions — a misty body of water, a purposefully underexposed shot — and compounds them, making the picture translucent and haunting.

Elsewhere, the colors of the old film have blended into a reduced palette. In Chickens, we see a coopside flock digging for seed on a farm, feathers flapping in blurry motion. Everything is no more than a step removed from brown,either in a reddish direction (the animals themselves) or a lighter beige (the grass and trees).

Since Mosley gravitates toward natural surroundings, this range of colors builds only slightly across other images in the show. In Crabbers, a group walking along a marsh with nets and rope is delivered with subtle touches of olive and pastel blue.

The woodsy scene of Chevy Van — an old vehicle, abandoned amid trees — adds flecks of parchment yellow to the mix. >>> continued on page 24

OUR GANG: Andy’s toys refuse to be relegated to the attic and attempt a daring escape to a daycare center — but they get more than they bargained for.

[ movie review ]

THE NEVERENDING STORY Buzz and Woody animate once again as Pixar revisits well-trodden terrain in Toy Story 3.

By Sam Adams

[ B+ ] TOY STORY 3 | Directed by Lee Unkrich, A Pixar Animation Studios release, opens in area theaters Friday

E

ssentially extending the loss-of-childhood montage from its predecessor to feature length, Toy Story 3 finds Woody the cowboy (voiced by Tom Hanks), galactic superhero Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the rest of the gang abandoned by their once-faithful Andy, who is counting down the few days left before he goes to college. Although Andy means to put them in the attic, preserving the possibility of a fleeting return to childhood, the toys fear being left by the curb, so they dispatch themselves to the nearest day-care center. Here, it’s the childish things that put themselves away.

With rooms full of tots and rainbow-bedecked doors, Sunnyside seems like happy hunting grounds for disused playthings, where they can be perpetually new to unending generations of youngsters. But as they swiftly find out, the age of attachment has a beginning as well as an end; the toddlers who lay hands on them aren’t interested in playing with toys so much as testing their limits. Can a dinosaur also be a hammer? What does a spaceman’s head taste like?

In other words, Toy Story 3 is not just about regaining children’s love, but fearing it, as well. In the right hands, the toys come alive, as in the fantastic sequence that opens the film, a mixed-genre action sequence that mashes up the Wild West and outer space.

(Tellingly, the sequence turns out to be part of an old, blurry VHS tape of a much younger Andy.) The younger children at the day care don’t know how to love without destroying.

It emerges that Andy’s former toys are being used as cannon fodder by the day-care center’s older and more calculating inhabitants, a shadowy cabal led by a nappy pink teddy bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty, channeling his craven executive from Network). Lotso’s allies enjoy a less bruising form of love from the older children, a coveted perk they don’t share easily.

There’s intriguing material, although perhaps not quite enough to justify another return to the same milieu. Too many of Toy Story 3’s elements feel like slightly modified versions of the first two films, as when Lotso uses a hidden switch to make Buzz revert to his factory-programmed personality. As always, the visual textures and the attention to detail are dazzling, lending the toys a degree of sentience without compromising the limitations of their plastic forms. It’s a pleasure to revisit the old terrain, but ultimately even toys can’t go home again. (sam@citypaper.net)

Toy Story 3 is not just about regaining children’s love, but fearing it, as well.

the naked city | feature

[ tight-ass killjoy honkie missionaries ] ³ rock book

While we wait for the film version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (starring Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Bennet, destroyer of the undead), Quirk keeps churning out those monsterrific takes on the classics. Android Karenina (June 8), a robotic love story set in a steampunk’d 19th-century Russia, turns Tolstoy’s tour de force on its head — sure, there’s love, jealousy and betrayal, but there’re also cyborgs. The question is, do ’bots have feelings, too?

Jennifer Egan’s fourth novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf, June 8) — concerning the misadventures of erstwhile-punk-turned-producer Bennie Salazar and his kleptomaniac assistant, Sasha — has been earning praise up and down the web for its hip, techno sensibilities. But what did punk-turned-bookreviewer/still-punk Rodney Anonymous think? Visit citypaper. net/coverstory for his review. Then hit the Free Library tonight (June 17, freelibrary.org), where Penn grad Egan will read from —Molly Eichel her latest work.

Rodney Anonymous vs. the world

—Carolyn Huckabay

³ consumer culture clash

To be fair, it’s not entirely fair to write a book about the first year of a presidency — especially for this president, who seems to be beset on all sides by inherited disasters and partisan buffoonery. So, as an assessment of the Obama administration, Jonathan Alter’s The Promise (Simon & Schuster, May 18) is really just Chapter 1. But the book delivers when it comes to fly-on-the-wall insight. Alter reads at the National Constitution Center on Tuesday (June 22, constitutioncenter.org).

—Patrick Rapa

flickpick

Obsessive Consumption: What

Architectural Press, May 1) has gotten shouts everywhere from DIY microblogs to The New York Times Magazine. It’s her daily drawings of purchases — everything from a new iPad (June 8) to a buck’s worth of espresso beans (April 22) — that draws such vastly different crowds to this honest take on consumer culture. So what’d Bingaman-Burt sketch the day her book was published? A $2.99 jar of tamarind concentrate. Way to celebrate, Kate.

—Carolyn Huckabay

[ movie review ]

MICMACS [ B ] JEAN-PIERRE JEUNET’S latest trifle is his first film since 2004’s A Very Long

of the Nobel Prize) for Literature was presented to an anonymous group of Nigerians for distributing an audacious series of e-mails centering around a coterie of fictitious — yet surprisingly engaging — characters who all faced the dilemma of being unable to lay their hands on a great deal of cash without a small investment and a Social Security number provided by some enterprising and goodhearted member of the general public.

Although Tony Oladipo Allen does hail from Nigeria, and is not a fictitious character from an e-mail scam, he’s quite a compelling guy. Allen taught himself to play the drums at age 18 and spent the ’70s playing in Fela Kuti’s Africa 70. Then he moved around Europe for a few decades and finally landed in the band The Good, the Bad & the Queen with members of The Verve, Blur and The Clash.

TonyAllen’s solo effort, Lagos No Shaking,which was recorded in Nigeria’s former capital, is a smoking-hot mixture of funk, dub, jazz and Afro-beats that has the power to make the lame walk and the blind see, and raise Pat Boone’s penis from the dead. This CD is so addicting it should be sold in small vials on street corners, and so infectious it should come with directions to the nearest free clinic. This music is the reason why thousands of tight-ass killjoy honkie missionaries descended upon the Dark Continent.

Verdict: If the song “Awa Na Re” doesn’t stir something inside you, then you are dead. Stop reading and lie down. ✚ More musings on Pat Boone’s penis at rodneyanony-

mous.com.

✚ Tony Allen

Lagos No Shaking

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(HONEST JON’S)

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Engagement, a relatively sober and melodramatic adaptation of a best-selling French novel. It’s something of a retrenchment, harking back to the winsome, Rube Goldberg style of Amélie, with one significant difference. Rather than following the adventures of a twinkle-eyed waif, Micmacs is a story of revenge, albeit of a kind utterly bereft of malice. Bazil (Dany Boon) is a childlike video store clerk who’s lipsyncing scenes from The Big Sleep when a bullet comes through the window and hits him square in the forehead. He lives, even though Jeunet cuts to a shot of the bullet sizzling in his frontal lobe, but he’s not happy about it, and when he finds that the arms manufacturer who made the bullet sits across the street from the company whose land mine kills his father, a convoluted plan snaps rapidly into place. It’s not easy to stage an antic comedy that has at its heart the images of children maimed by leftover land mines, but Jeunet doesn’t struggle with the disparity so much as ignore it.

Boon is one of Europe’s most popular performers, but rather than attempting to win the audience’s heart, he behaves as if he already has it, perpetually clowning like an over-wound toy. The aggressive immodesty of his performance doesn’t fit Bazil’s humble profile. Micmacs is ceaselessly, even relentlessly, whimsical; its French title, Micmacs à tire-larigot translates as something like “nonstop shenanigans,” which about covers it. It’s possible to be delighted by the movie and worn down by it at the same time. There are sections of Micmacs that express the joy of a certain kind of moviemaking so vividly you can’t help but burst into a grin. But the movie leaves you with a hollow feeling, like the crash that comes after a sugar binge. —Sam Adams

Micmacs is ceaselessly, even relentlessly, whimsical.

CANONICAL: Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet returns to American screens after a sixyear absence with wacky revenge tale Micmacs.

So infectious it should come with directions to the free clinic. ³ IN 2005, THE Ig Nobel Prize (an inspired send-up

Kate Bingaman-Burt’s blog-to-book Did You Buy Today? (Princeton

³ obamarama

NIGERIA!

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³ monsterpiece

a&e

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[ biblioscope ]

Navigate Your Health This research program is designed to assist African American residents in Philadelphia in getting screening for breast, colon, and prostate cancer.

If interested in learning more about or participating in this research program, please call

215-746–7286

75TH ANNIVERSARY

CELEBRATING 75 YEARS OF

LIVE MUSIC IN THE PARK THIS WEEK!

G R E AT SEATS STILL AVA I L A B L E !

Idina Menzel with The Philadelphia Orchestra The Tony® award-winning witch from Wicked & star of Glee

June 24 | 8 PM 215/893.1999 OR VISIT Photo: Stewart Shining

MANNCENTER.ORG PECO Pops @ The Mann

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curtaincall

[ arts & entertainment ]

Fiddler on the Roof

CP theater review

³ head banging

³ WONDER OF WONDERS Another Fiddler on the Roof ? Sounds crazy. But the little village of Anatevka, as seen on stage at the Walnut Street Theatre, is so full of life that the old show feels newly minted.

Fiddler is an icon. For decades, the tale of Tevye, the Russian milkman “blessed with five daughters and a life of poverty” reigned as American theater’s flagship celebration of that indomitable Broadway combination, musicals and Jews. Nearly everybody over 40 can sing along with “Sunrise, Sunset.” So it’s easy to take Fiddler for granted, to forget just how good it really is.

Consider the Bock and Harnick score, so rich in melody and sentiment, or Joseph Stein’s book (based on Sholem Aleichem’s stories), which by turns is folksy, funny and touching. Then there’s Jerome Robbins’ flavorful choreography. All these elements work together, including an opening number, “Tradition,” that remains the touchstone of how to perfectly integrate story and character, song and dance.

Fiddler works so well at Walnut because everybody is vibrantly engaged. The actors seem exactly the right ages for the characters, which is critical to the multi-generational story (but surprisingly few Fiddler productions get it right). That makes for a Tevye who is more youthful than many, and — dare it be said? — even a little bit sexy. Mark Jacoby relishes every nuance of the character and his music, which he delivers splendidly, with cantorial flourishes. And the Walnut’s ensemble is dotted with notable actor-singers (some

✚ DANZIG

of them Philly favorites) in powerhouse supporting performances.

Among the best are Marcus Stevens’ endearing Motel, Ben Dibble’s funny Mordcha, Jennie Eisenhower’s fabulous FrumaSarah and Lee Golden’s scene-stealing Rabbi. Special kudos to the fiddler himself, Alexander Sovronsky, a fine musician and vivid stage presence. (The reduced, synthesizer-heavy pit orchestra is the only real disappointment.)

What more need be said? It’s time to revisit Fiddler, and for younger audiences who may be going for the first time — what a treat you have ahead. Through July 18, $10-$75, Walnut Street Theatre, 825 Walnut St., 215-574-3550, walnutstreettheatre.org.

I first saw Danzig years ago, at one of those early indoor Ozzfests, and damned if the dude didn’t open with “Mother.” Rookie mistake by the metal vet? No! It was a test. With his biggest hit out of the way, he challenged us to find more hell with him via some deeper, darker cuts. It was a little boring, but still: ballsy move. The ex-Misfits/ex-Samhain frontman’s got a new one out now — Deth Red Sabaoth (Evilive/The End), his first in six years. It’s mostly another chance to showcase that hellacious baritone and those grim, vicious riffs (and to flex those massive double-Ds). Stay alert, mothers.

—Patrick Rapa Sat., June 19, 7 p.m., $28, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-6888, thetroc.com.

—David Anthony Fox

FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010 KINDRED & THE FAMILY SOUL JEFF BRADSHAW JAGUAR WRIGHT CAROL RIDDICH SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 2010 NORMAN CONNORS SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 2010 DEACON PITMANN & JUST LIS GOSPEL

C O M I NG SOON…

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Meet Dorothy and Herbert Vogel on Opening Day! This librarian and postal worker assembled one of the world’s greatest collections of minimal art and then gave it away, with 50 works going to each state.

JUNE 19 – AUG. 29, 2010 And don’t miss Pennsylvania’s Vogel collection at PAFA, on view June 26 – September 12, 2010.

OPENING DAY FESTIVITIES Saturday, June 19 | Free with paid admission 11:00 a.m. Screening of Herb & Dorothy documentary 1:00 p.m. Panel discussion with Dorothy and Herbert Vogel 2:00 p.m. Exhibition tour

The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States is a joint initiative of the Trustees of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the National Gallery of Art, with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. | Fifty Works for the First State is made possible, in part, by grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Emily du Pont Memorial Exhibition Fund and a group of the Delaware Art Museum’s individual donors and Members. | Image: Photograph by Nathaniel Tileston (detail), 1975.

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2301 Kentmere Parkway | Wilmington, DE | 302.571.9590 | www.delart.org | www.vogel5050.org

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Announcing service to: • Atlantic City • Pittsburgh • Baltimore • State College • Syracuse • Boston • Toronto • Buffalo • Harrisburg

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FRIDAY JUNE 18.

Open early for the US game Tuesday June 22 Great Lakes promo for the Argentina game Wednesday June 23. 2:30PM Beerheads.com Quizzo at the bar. Carlsberg Giveaways for the quarter-ďŹ nals!

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2301 Fairmount Ave. Philadelphia. 19130 . 215.978.4545 . londongrill.com

³ rock/pop

✚ THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

✚ THE GOLDEN FILTER

—Patrick Rapa Mon., June 21, 7 p.m., $27, with The Dodos and The Dutchess & the Duke, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-9226888, thetroc.com.

³ rock/tribute

✚ NEUTRAL UKE HOTEL A L I C I A J. R O S E

Here’s something really special: Following a successful pairing at San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival earlier this year, two of indie rock’s most captivating performers are taking the show on the road. Thao is all restless energy and bleeding-heart tenderness; with her band The Get Down Stay Down, she drowns out all distractions. Mirah’s all effortless calm and perfectly placed phrases; on her own, she’ll physically wrest the room from talkers if she has to, but you’ll swear she never raised her voice. Both women are seasoned collaborators; Thao’s reworked her songs with the Portland Cello Project, while Mirah’s consistently conquered new territory with fellow Philly transplant Ginger Brooks Takahashi, various Portland luminaries and a series of unlikely remixers. On tour together, they’re co-fronting a band (The Most of All) and doing whatever it takes to best serve the material — sharing songs, trading them or making up new ones, adding harmonies, percussion and verve. If you love Thao’s “Bag of Hammers” or Mirah’s “The Garden,” just wait until you hear them with the teamed-up treatment.

—M.J. Fine

As the title of her third CD, Decisive Steps (Mack Avenue), indicates and her brawny, pungent alto sound demonstrates, Tia Fuller is determined to make herself heard. If there’s a trace of the diva that comes along with the saxophonist’s bold-faced funk — and even in her strong-willed take on a standard like “I Can’t Get Started,” which stresses resolve over regret — well, that could be chalked up to her four years on the road backing the diva-est of them all, Beyoncé. But the ’tude was evident as far back as her 2005 debut, Pillar of Strength, well before she met Ms. Fierce.

—Shaun Brady Fri., June 18, 5:45 and 7:15 p.m., free with museum admission of $16, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Ben Franklin Parkway, 215-763-8100, philamuseum.org.

³ rock

✚ DISAPPEARS Nobody wears black leather jackets anymore, but I sure feel like I should when I’m strutting down the street with Disappears in my ears.

The Chicago band’s cranky, cantankerous, crank-it-upcrank-it-out Kranky debut Lux is total meat-n-spuds post-punk, nary a brutishly basic drumbeat or scuzzy, reverb-soaked riff out of place. It offers absolutely nothing innovative or original, it’s hardly long on melody (frontman/ex-Pony Brian Case wouldn’t know what to do with a tune if he had one), and the songs all basically sound the same. But that doesn’t stop it from being utterly and undeniably badass.

Thu., June 17, 7:30 p.m., $8, with Woven Bones and Far-Out Fangtooth, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-2914919, kungfunecktie.com.

³ rock/punk

✚ EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING

³ jazz RAJ NAIK

TIA FULLER

Sat., June 19, 7:30 p.m., $10, with Hundred in the Hands, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-291-4919, kungfunecktie.com.

—K. Ross Hoffman

Mon., June 21, 8 p.m., $13-$14, with These United States, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 877-435-9849, r5productions.com.

✚

Ah, the fabled Golden Filter, signal processing device of lore and legend, quested after by blog-house producers since time immemorial, rumored to imbue its possessor with the knob-twiddling prowess of an electro-disco Midas. If this N.Y.-based duo hasn’t quite cracked the code of alchemically calibrated dancefloor perfection, they’ve at least crafted one of the more assured, subtle and strikingly pleasant synth-dance debuts in recent memory. And they’re no strangers to the power of the mythic: The album’s named for epic Norse creation sagaVöluspá (thus extending their Scandinavian connection beyond a reciprocal remix arrangement with Peter Bjorn & John) and carries a distinct air of mystic, —K. Ross Hoffman mist-swirled majesty.

JEREMY BOLEN

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THAO AND MIRAH WITH THE MOST OF ALL

J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

³ dance/electronica

File all that cold, minimalist no-fi noise back in the crates. It’s summer — time to go huge, happy and catchy. Time for righteous guitars and head-bobbing beats, for united voices and whistling bridges, for sweet melodies and surprise moments of indiepop bliss. Time for the New Pornographers, whose new Together (Matador) is one big bubbling, rocking block of power pop. Like some kinda Canadian Justice League — A.C. Newman, Neko Case, Dan Bejar, Kathryn Calder et al. — they’re swooping through town to save us all.

✚

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³ rock/pop

JASON CREPS

a&e

feature | the naked city

[ arts & entertainment ]

[ music picks ]

—Patrick Rapa

In one of the great rock ’n’ roll origin myths of our time, some employees at a Melbourne record pressing plant started jamming at a Christmas party and decided to cut a 7-inch. Flash-forward seven years to their third LP, Rush to Relax,which sprawls beyond the brightly efficient garage-punk core of their first pair toward surf-rock, kraut-drone, ocean noises and even sappy-sweet love balladry. Gloved frontman Brendan Suppression might just be the Aussie variant of another notable indie-punk Eddie — Art Brut’s Argos — not only for ECSR’s “look at us, we formed a band” scrappiness but also for his enduring, endearing oddball-everyman charm.

—K. Ross Hoffman

Tue., June 22, 8 p.m., $8, with The Spotted Atrocious, Ukulele Orchestra and Solved with Science, The Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888, thekhyber.com.

Thu., June 17, 9 p.m., $10, with Pissed Jeans and Pop. 1280, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 877-435-9849, johnnybrendas.com.

Yeah, yeah, Neutral Milk Hotel was amazing — and will be again when Lord Mangum returns to us in all his glory forever and ever amen — but do we need to be so glum and reverent? In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was a rock album, right? Neutral Uke Hotel, a mostly solo project by Shawn Fogel (Golden Bloom, The Zambonis), lovingly revives the 1996 opus with high-energy ukulele strumming and a joyous zeal that’s been missing from the NMH conversation of late. No promises, but it might rekindle some of the awe you felt the first time you heard this stuff.

[ jazz ]

✚ OUT LOUD

CROSSING OVER

Hey: Wasn’t their 2008 debut also called Crystal Castles? Yep. Everything this Canadian ravergeist ouijapop duo does is a test. They’re poking, grating, beeping at you, saying does this annoy you? How about this? But, hey: It’s when Ethan Kath’s haunted NES beats and Alice Glass’ barely human moans are really Crystal Castles Castles sawing away at your last nerve that Crystal Castles Crystal (MOTOWN/ is most effective. I mean, hey: It’s kinda harsh for U N I V E R S A L ) headphones, too obnoxious for the morning commute, but there must be some occasion for which this cold, echoey, blippy shit is appropriate. Let me know. So: Annoyed yet?

—Patrick Rapa

✚ DOT MATRIX Call it: a career retrospective of new music. Scottish chanteuse Dot Allison’s fourth solo outing, getting its digital U.S. release Tuesday, echoes her early ’90s band One Dove and all she’s done since. Here: we find the heavenly pop of her 1999 tour de force Afterglow (“Room 7½”), techno much improved from 2002’s electroclash stab WeAre Science (“Portrait of the Sun”) Dot Allison Room 7½ and the earnest Fairport folk heard on 2007’s Exaltation ( I T U N E S ) of Larks (“Jonny Villain”). Collaboration: She wins with Paul Weller on the breezy “Love’s Got Me Crazy,” but not so much with Pete Doherty on the sloppy “I Wanna Break Your Heart.” —John Vettese

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✚ THE PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE

³ “I WANTED TO create a group combining musicians from different backgrounds,” says trumpeter-composer Thomas Madeja of his hybrid classical-jazz brass-percussion ensemble Nu Directions Chamber Brass (one has to come armed with plenty of hyphens to describe what Madeja is up to).

Bass trombonist Barry McCommon alone exemplifies the types of crossover thinking that Madeja is after. A Curtis grad, McCommon is bass trombonist for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, OperaDelaware and Reading Symphony Orchestra, among others; Madeja met him on a gig with an R&B cover band. “Every single person in the group plays multiple genres of music,” Madeja says. “Not one person is a strict straight-ahead jazz player or a strict orchestral musician; everybody’s got a pretty varied background.”

That includes Madeja, who seems to have as many homes as he does influences. Born in Chicago and raised in upstate New York, the trumpeter studied music at the University of Illinois and Baylor University in Texas before landing in Philly four years ago, where he’s a member of both Bobby Zankel’s avant-big band Warriors of the Wonderful Sound and the jam-rock-jazz group Agent Moosehead. Friday’s NDCB performance will serve as a send-off before Madeja moves back to Chicago (though he’ll return in October to celebrate the release of the ensemble’s first full-length CD).

While the band keeps a few jazz standards and classical arrangements in its book, its main purpose is to perform Madeja’s own music, a blend of modern minimalism and improvisatory experimentation. “I guess the main idea is to take Steve Reich’s music, that very minimalist but rhythmic groove-based sound, and add all this improvising and freedom into it,” Madeja explains.

His writing for the band is inspired, Madeja says, by its members: McCommon; Dawn Webster, an experimental trumpeter who also performs with classical and early music ensembles and the Balkan-flavored West Philly Orchestra; trombonist Larry Toft, another Zankel Warrior and co-founder of Tritone’s Avant Ascension series; Gabe Globus-Hoenich, an orchestral percussion-

a&e

First things first:With her five previous albums, Nina Nastasia painted an unsettled, often violent landscape with an increasingly minimalist musical palette. She managed to root through the underbelly of rural life without ever sounding like a Southern gothic cliché.

What now?: Outlaster runs in the opposite sonic direction, with swelling strings, rumbling drums and Nina Nastasia Outlaster Nastasia’s newly sweeping voice taking on a cinematic ( F A T C A T ) scope. “This Familiar Way” tosses a coy glance at 2002’s The Blackened Air, but who could’ve conjured such a fiery tango then? Lasting legacy: Ten years into a solid career, Nastasia turns up the volume but doesn’t sacrifice an iota of intimacy.

—M.J. Fine

[ arts & entertainment ]

MIXED COMPANY: Thomas Madeja (center, with trumpet) and Nu Directions.

ist and jazz drummer; and New York-based drummer Mason Ingram, a Baylor classmate who plays rock, jazz and world music.

The eccentric instrumentation inspires Madeja, but then again, it had to. “There’s no other instrumentation like this, so it’s hard to play other people’s music. I think that’s how I got seriously into composing — I was trying to think of what to play and there just wasn’t much out there. So I had to write it.”

—Shaun Brady

(s_brady@citypaper.net) ✚ Fri., June 18, 8 p.m., free, with El Fin Del Mundo

Trio and The Renamers, Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., bowerbird.org.

✚ ONE TRACK MIND ³ PERNICE BROTHERS “Bechamel” WHERE CAN YOU FIND WEEKEND OMNIBUS, T H E C U R AT O R A N D NEIGHBORHOOD W AT C H ? C I T Y P A P E R .

NET/CRITICALMASS, OF COURSE!

Party Photographers at The Ox, June 12

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JOHN VETTESE

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photoscream ³ citypaper.net/music

The new Goodbye, Killer (Ashmont) is a wonderful specimen of acoustic pop — 10 tracks that flesh out rock ’n’ roll skeletons with twangy guitar solos — but that’s not all it is. Take the album’s breathy, upbeat leadoff,“Bechamel”: While your ears are drawing dotted lines to the Beatles, Paul Simon and Elliott Smith, your subconscious is tracing more sinister connections, between love and consumption. That late-blooming refrain is calling it love, but is it really? Does love go down like a force-fed aperitif, with an “aftertaste like aspartame”? Does it leave you with an unsatisfiable urge to devour and destroy? Pernice is adamant, demanding: “I want her bones and I want her flesh/ and it’s all she’ll give me I want the rest.” The answer, of course, is yes: Love is like that for vampires and we’re kinda all vampires. You’re just not used to admitting it in a rock song.

—Patrick Rapa

the naked city | feature

[ album reviews ]

feature | the naked city a&e classifieds | food | the agenda

world cup new members sign up and receive a world cup team! win each time your team scores.

watch the world cup on over 20 tvs usa vs slovenia friday, june 18

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J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

visit parxcasino.com for additional information.

exit 37 off i-95 or exi

the naked city | feature a&e

philadelphia park racetrack hosted by wmgk’s john debella Friday, June 18 • 4pm • • • • • •

free admission and parking live turf racing bbq and drink specials beach volleyball prizes & giveaways music by beach boys tribute band!

sir rod dj ed smooth

Friday, June 18 masquerade dj johnny b

Saturday, June 19 sensational soul cruisers exceptions dj bryan basara

live s e m a g table july 18*

*pending

roval

pgcb app

P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R | J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T |

off the pa turnpike.

Thursday, June 17

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happy hour racing

33

feature | the naked city a&e classifieds | food | the agenda

movie

“COMPLETELY ENTERTAINING!

shorts

THIS MOVIE WILL BLOW YOU AWAY.” – Mark S. Allen, CBS-TV

FILMS ARE GRADED BY CITY PAPER CRITICS A-F.

“JOSH BROLIN AND MEGAN FOX SIZZLE.” – Jeff Craig, SIXTY SECOND PREVIEW

“THE ULTIMATE SUMMER ACTION FLICK.” – Rick Florino, ARTISTdirect.com

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

34 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

✚ NEW

WARNER BROS. PICTURES PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH LEGENDARY PICTURES A MAD CHANCE/WEED ROAD PRODUCTION JOSH BROLIN “JONAH HEX” JOHN MALKOVICH MEGAN FOX MICHAEL FASSBENDER WILL ARNETT AND MICHAEL SHANNON MUSIC BASED UPON CHARACTERS APPEARING

BY MARCO BELTRAMI AND MASTODON IN COMIC BOOKS PUBLISHED BY DC COMICS EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS THOMAS TULL JON JASHNI WILLIAM FAY MATT LEBLANC JOHN GOLDSTONE RAVI MEHTA STORY

BY WILLIAM FARMER AND NEVELDINE & TAYLOR SCREENPLAY PRODUCED DIRECTED

BY JIMMY HAYWARD

BY AKIVA GOLDSMAN ANDREW LAZAR

BY NEVELDINE & TAYLOR

WWW.JONAH-HEX.COM

MOBILE USERS: For Showtimes, Text Message JONAH and Your ZIP CODE to 43KIX (43549)

STARTS FRIDAY, JUNE 18 - CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR LISTINGS

AIR DOLL|BA major curveball from a great director, Hirokazu Koreeda’s adaptation of Goda Yoshije’s manga could not, on its surface, be more different from the subdued intrafamilial drama of Still Walking and Nobody Knows. The premise is simple, and off-putting: A plastic sex doll (played by The Host’s Bae Doo-na) comes to life and explores the world around her, while keeping up a nightly masquerade for the lonely businessman who first inflated her. But like Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, the concept is more troublesome in isolation than in execution. There’s not a hint of prurience or wish-fulfillment in Kore-eda’s delivery. (Any hint of the latter is quashed by an early shot of the businessman washing out her detachable latex vagina.) Bae, covered in progressively thinning layers of makeup, convincingly builds a humanoid consciousness from the ground up, cobbled together from overheard phrases and overseen behavior; she takes a job in a video store, where facsimiles of human interaction line the shelves. But the movie itself feels artificial, cobbled together from any number of magicrealist tales and without the engrossing sense of detail that characterizes Kore-eda’s best work. It’s possible Air Doll has tactile qualities not conveyed by the low-quality DVDs sent out in lieu of a press screening — cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin’s work with Wong Kar-wai suggests as much — but without them, it’s like kissing plastic. —Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse) JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK|BAging gracefully has never been a goal for Joan Rivers.

That fact is evident not only in the frozen mask that has turned her into plastic surgery’s most famous punchline, but in the indefatigable ferocity of her act. She’s only

10 years younger than Betty White, whose recent SNL triumph was largely predicated on how cute it is to see Grandma say “lesbian.” Meanwhile, Rivers is taking stages nightly to call her daughter a “fucking cunt” for turning down a high-paying Playboy spread. Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg followed the self (deprecatingly)-professed comedy icon for a year, exposing the fragility of a performer’s ego and the challenges of growing old in show biz. Despite and because of her notoriety and legend, Rivers is a curious mix of self-absorption and self-loathing, a workaholic who sees any white space in her datebook as an implicit rejection.

But from its opening extreme close-up of the subject’s blemished, un-made-up face to her frankness about a career on the wane, the film is less brutally honest than it is a desperate assertion of relevance and a plea for work — it’s stated more than once that Rivers never says no to an offer. That, of course, has done more to damage her reputation than she cares to admit; how can you have a comeback when you refuse to go away? Stern and Sundberg don’t seem concerned with how the comedienne wound up where she is, though the contrast between clips of her early career and her current act are revealing: The former show an outspoken comic addressing women’s concerns; the latter are all about Being Joan Rivers. She may still be outrageous, but her frame of reference, in life and on the stage, extends no further than her mirror. —Shaun Brady (Ritz Five)

JONAH HEX A haiku: Thanks for saving me!

Sorry your face is fucked up.

Loved you in Goonies. (See Drew Lazor’s review at citypaper.net/movies.) (Pearl; Rave; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

MICMACS|B Read Sam Adams’ review on p. 23. (Ritz East)

BREATHLESS | A Ritz at the Bourse

IRON MAN 2 | B UA Riverview THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES | C+ Ritz Five For movie full reviews and showtimes, go to citypaper.net/movies.

TOY STORY 3 Read Sam Adams’ review on p. 22.

(Pearl; Rave; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

WINTER’S BONE|B+

✚ CONTINUING THE A-TEAM|C

The Karate Kid is the hardest person

to root against in cinematic history.

That’s why it doesn’t really matter that Harald Zwart’s reboot of the 26-year-old classic is far too long, far too melodramatic and far too reliant on fortune-cookie-caliber Eastern philosophical tenets. Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) relocates with his mom (Taraji P. Henson) from Detroit to Beijing. Jackie Chan, in the Pat Morita/Miyagi role as the handyman of Dre’s apartment building, takes the picked-on youth under his Mao-suited

“����. EXHILARATING. A HUGELY ENJOYABLE KNOCKOUT OF A MOVIE. YOU’ LL STAND UP AND CHEER.” Jeff Craig, Sixty Second Preview

GET HIM TO THE GREEK |BFor his second at-bat, Nicholas Stoller revives Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s decadent rock star, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), and its hearts-andfarts formula — but this time goes down swinging. Joining Brand is fellow Marshall alum Jonah Hill who takes on Aaron Green, a junior music exec who comes up with the idea for Aldous to reclaim his former glory by re-creating a legendary concert.

But the once-sober Aldous is in dire straights and it’s Aaron’s duty to ferry the reeling Aldous from London to L.A. for the big show. That Stoller tried to

“THE BEST MOVIE NOW PLAYING!” -Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

BABIES|CIf there’s a principle behind Thomas Balmès’ casually arranged excerpts from the first year of four infants’ Landmark’s

RITZ FIVE 214 Walnut St.

215-925-7900 or www.landmarktheatres.com

“

9th HILARIO WEE US ” K!

“

�����!

ONE OF THE BEST DOCUMENTARIES EVER MADE ABOUT SHOW BUSINESS…

JOAN RIVERS IS MORE THAN A ‘PIECE OF WORK.’ SHE’S AN EXTRAORDINARY PERSON, AND THIS IS A GREAT DOCUMENTARY.” - Mick LaSalle, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“ A CONVULSIVELY FUNNY FILM.”

SAY NEVER”

INCLUDES “NEVER BIEBER IN PERFORMED BY JUST SMITH FEATURING JADEN

- Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“ GRADE: A. RIP-ROARING. SHARP AND IRRESISTIBLE.”

JOAN - Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

RIVERS A PIECE OF WORK

Directed by Ricki Stern Co-Director Annie Sundberg

www.IFCFILMS.com THEATRES EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT LANDMARK RITZ FIVE STARTS FRIDAY, JUNE 18 Center City 215-925-7900

COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS AN OVERBROOK ENTERTAINMENT/JERRY WEINTRAUB PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH CHINA FILM GROUP CORPORATION A FILM BY HARALD ZWART MUSIC “THE KARATE KID” TARAJI P. HENSON SUPERVISION BY PILAR McCURRY MUSIC COEXECUTIVE

BY JAMES HORNER PRODUCER SOLON SO PRODUCERS DANY WOLF SUSAN EKINS HAN SAN PING STORY SCREENPLAY

BY ROBERT MARK KAMEN

BY CHRISTOPHER MURPHEY PRODUCED

BY JERRY WEINTRAUB WILL SMITH JADA PINKETT SMITH JAMES LASSITER KEN STOVITZ DIRECTED

BY HARALD ZWART CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES

35

The A-Team, long the mold from

THE KARATE KID|B-

[ movie shorts ]

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“We’re all related, ain’t we?” asks 17-year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), who, no matter where she goes in her small though far-flung Ozarks community, finds a relative — by blood or by impulse. They cook meth, drink beer and grow old long before their time, while she dreams of enlisting in the military to support her family.

For now, she hovers in doorways down at the school she’s had to leave so she can look after her young brother and sister, as well as her silent, brainailing mother. When her dad is arrested and then goes missing, she’s also in danger of losing their ramshackle house and 300 acres, which he put up for bond. Ree goes looking for him, trekking through dark woods and over long dirt roads, questioning one hard-faced neighbor after another, including the brutally moralistic Merab (an excellent Dale Dickey). Threatened and warned off by nearly everyone, Ree persists, knowing, as she tells her brother, “There’s a bunch of stuff you’re gonna have to get over being scared of.” No adult wants to help. When Ree suggests her daddy’s ex might “know a thing or two,” April (Sheryl Lee) sighs, “I’m kind of afraid I might.” Debra Granik’s movie — winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize — makes for a complicated viewing experience, taut and rambling, bleak and hopeful.

Even as she solves one mystery, Ree is left with a raft of unanswerable questions. —Cindy Fuchs (Ritz Five)

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP|AIt’s unclear, however, whether Thierry Guetta — the eccentric French-born video enthusiast whose footage provides an invaluable document of street artists at work — is the bordering-on-insane clown presented in the film, a willing accomplice, a patsy manipulated by Banksy’s puppetry or even the elusive artist himself.

Regardless of how much of the backstory can be believed, the result is an authentic assault on the art market, which gleefully hangs itself with Banksy’s acidly-offered rope. —S.B. (Ritz Five)

turn a stupid-but-fun road movie into something more is valiant, but Greek hits its mark when it keeps ambitions low). As Aaron’s music mogul boss, Diddy goes off the rails. Unlike Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, Diddy’s an integral part of Greek, letting go of all inhibitions and saying things like “You’ve got to mind-fuck them ... I’m mind-fucking you right now. Do you feel my dick going into your mind?” all without cracking a smile. —Molly Eichel (Rave; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO | B Ritz at the Bourse

lives, it’s that, no matter what and no matter where, babies are easy on the eyes. But “aw shucks” isn’t enough of a thesis to hang even a 79-minute movie on, and precious little else emerges from the film’s weak juxtapositions. —S.A. (Ritz Five)

a&e

CITY ISLAND | D Ritz at the Bourse

which most modern iterations of the “squad of altruistic, disparate characters with highly specialized skills” gambit are cast, gets an intermittently fun upgrade from Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces, Narc), one that boasts spirited flashes but is ultimately bogged down by its own bells and whistles. The gang’s all accounted for — scheme-hatching Hannibal (Liam Neeson), smooth talker Face (Bradley Cooper), wild card Murdock (District 9 breakout star Sharlto Copley) and brooding muscleman B.A. Baracus (UFC brawler Quinton “Rampage” Jackson). On the big screen, the much-touted foursome, all former Army Rangers who “specialize in the ridiculous,” get framed by some CIA suits and gun-for-hire wartime mercenaries over a set of soughtafter counterfeiting plates. En route to clearing their names, the team hijacks an armored truck using magnets and inline skates, parachutes a tank out of an airplane, successfully acts alongside Jessica Biel and accomplishes other ridiculous mayhem.

But Carnahan provides little opportunity for his leads to really, truly mesh, and assumes for much of the movie that we won’t be able to tell the difference between zany, elaborate military methodology and a straightforward plan dressed up with unnecessary flourishes. At one point, the fellas set off a bunch of fireworks in an attempt at misdirecting a surly gang of armed thugs; the director seems to have taken this tactic to heart. —Drew Lazor (Pearl; Rave; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

the naked city | feature

✚ ALSO PLAYING

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wing, using unorthodox techniques to teach his student “real kung fu” — skills he’ll need to slice through open tournament combat. —D.L. (Pearl; Rave; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

ONDINE|AIf not the best (and it’s certainly among them), Ondine is at least the culminating movie of director Neil Jordan’s career. Colin Farrell is Syracuse, a West Cork fisherman struggling to support himself, let alone his wife and disabled daughter, on the meager proceeds of a life at sea. For him, at least, the fish refuse to bite, until one day he hauls in his catch and finds a woman (Alicja Bachleda) tangled in his nets, who calls herself Ondine. It’s difficult to walk the line between fantasy and the real world without straying too far to one side (or simply cheating), but Jordan masterfully modulates the movie’s tone.

—S.A. (Ritz Five) PLEASE GIVE|BCatherine Keener is a well-off Manhattan woman who co-owns a vintage furniture store with husband Oliver Platt. Keener is crippled by guilt. She presses $20 bills into the hands of street people and surfs the web for photos of children with cleft palates. The happier she ought to be,

the worse she feels. At best, director Nicole Holofcener’s technique is nondescript. At worst, it’s unsightly.

The drawback is more than aesthetic.

Are we supposed to take Keener’s privileged moping at face value? The movie allows no other way. There’s nothing wrong with asking audiences to make up their own minds, but Please Give doesn’t even ask. —S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse)

SHREK FOREVER AFTER|C+ Shrek is undergoing a bit of a midlife crisis — as is his creative team, which has fallen back on the tried-and-true It’s a Wonderful Life formula for the series’ fourth and purportedly (hopefully) final outing. An improvement over its dreary predecessor but not enough advantage is taken of the alternate reality to freshen up the over-familiar cast. —S.B. (Pearl; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

SPLICE |AIn this genetic engineering thriller from Vincenzo Natali (Cube), scientists Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody are tasked with creating a synthetic meat substitute, but instead crossbreed themselves a mutant child. Dren (“nerd” backward) looks purely freakish at first. But as Dren matures, she starts taking on human characteristics, a phenomenon her

✚ REPERTORY FILM Send repertory film listings to molly.eichel@citypaper.net.

THE BALCONY

COLONIAL THEATRE 227 Bridge St., Phoenixville, 610-9171228, thecolonialtheatre.com/about.

Back to the Future Marathon: Celebrate Marty McFly’s 25th anniversary in the pop-culture canon. The first film begins at noon, followed by the second at 2:30 p.m. and the third at 4:30 p.m. Sat., June 19, noon-6:30 p.m., $4-$20.

HEADHOUSE SQUARE Second and Lombard sts., 215-5750444, southstreet.com. No One Dies in Lily Dale (2010, U.S., 84 min.): Profiles the community of Lily Dale, N.Y., where half of the population are mediums. Wed., June 23, 8 p.m., free.

MUGSHOTS COFFEEHOUSE AND CAFE 2100 Fairmount Ave, 267-514-7145, mugshotscoffeehouse.com. Where the Red Fern Grows (1974, U.S., 97 min.): The story of a boy and his redbone hound hunting dogs. Fri., June 18, 7 p.m., free. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, U.S., 126 min.): Badges? We ain’t got no badges.

Mon., June 21, 7 p.m., free.

Toshiro Mifune as a man who weds the daughter of a corrupt industrialist to avenge his father’s death. Wed., June 23, 2 p.m., free.

RITZ EAST 125 S. Second St., 215-925-7900, landmarktheatres.com. The Evil Dead (1981, U.S., 85 min.): Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) fights demons in Sam Raimi’s cult classic.

Sat., June 19, 11:59 p.m., $9.

ROCKIN’ REELS Piazza at Schmidts, 1050 N. Hancock St., 215-467-4603, atthepiazza.com.

Almost Famous (2000, U.S., 122 min.): Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical, wide-eyed look at ’70s rock ’n’ roll. Thu., June 24, 8 p.m., free.

SCHUYLKILL BANKS 25th and Walnut sts., schuylkillbanks. org. The Great Outdoors (1988, U.S., 91 min.): Chet Ripley (John Candy) wants his family to have the perfect vacation but his plans go awry when his obnoxious in-laws, led by Roman (Dan Akroyd), drop in for a visit. Thu., June 24, 8:15 p.m., free.

THE LITTLE THEATER

WOODEN SHOE BOOKS

.”

����

“

A riveting thriller!”

1003 Arch St., 215-922-6888, thetroc. com. Youth in Revolt (2009, U.S., 90 min.): Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) goes to great lengths (including creating a “supplementary persona” named Francois Dillinger) to get the girl of his dreams. Tue., June 22, 8 p.m., $3.

PHILADELPHIA CITY INSTITUTE LIBRARY 1905 Locust St., 215-685-6621, libraryfriends.info. The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Japan, 151 min.) Kurosawa takes on film noir, directing

- Joe Morgenstern,

704 South St., 215-413-0999, woodenshoebooks.com. Zizek! (2005, Canada/U.S., 71 min.): Follows philosopher Slavoj Zizek, whose ideology is a unique mix of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism and pop-culture critique. Sun., June 20, 7:30 p.m., free.

“Stunning!

A gritty, mythic saga about blood ties. GRADE A.” - Lisa Schwarzbaum,

“An

[ movie shorts ]

classic. Spectacular.”

- David Germain,

J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

Michael Douglas’ CV has been short on pricks of late, but he makes up for it in spades with the role of Ben Kalmen, a cocksure car salesman whose luck has finally run out. Written by Brian Koppelman, who co-directed with David Levien, the movie opens with a brief prologue in which Ben is notified of an irregularity in his EKG. Cut to six years later, when he’s trashed his car business, ruined his marriage and narrowly avoided jail, all in the name of satisfying momentary pleasures and burning bridges while he still can. Douglas isn’t coasting so much as collating, taking everything he’s learned and applying it to a man who resists learning from his mistakes at all costs. Koppelman doesn’t quite have the heart to take him all the way down, but you get the sense he’d have no trouble getting there in a hurry. —S.A. (Ritz East)

623 S. Sixth St., 215-925-8000, bistrotlaminette.com. Delicatessen (1991, France, 99 min.): A butcher/ landlord serves up people in a future where food is currency. Mon., June 21, and Thu., June 24, 8 p.m., free.

- Claudia Puig,

���� A MASTERPIECE

36 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

SOLITARY MAN|B+

BISTROT LA MINETTE

7141 Germantown Ave., 215-2473020, mtairyvideolibrary.com. Mary and Max (2009, Australia, 92 min.): An unlikely pen-pal relationship forms between an 8-year-old Aussie (voiced by Toni Collette) and an obese New Yorker (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Fri-Sat, June 18-19, 8 p.m.; Sun, June 20, 7 p.m.; $6.

“

“A

surrogate mother embraces a little too readily. Splice is itself a hybrid, mixing genres unpredictably enough that you never know quite where it’s going to go next. —S.A. (Pearl; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

absolute knockout!

A forceful, breathless thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat.”

- Andrew O’Hehir,

WORLD CAFÉ LIVE

AN ENCHANTING LOVE STORY.

“

CERTIFIED FRESH

3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, U.S., 90 min.): In the immortal words of Jeff Spicoli, “That was my skull! I’m so wasted!” Wed., June 23, 9 p.m., free.

”Neil Jordan expertly mingles whimsy with grit to create beguiling entertainment.”

-Karen Durbin, ELLE

����

WINNER

“

ENTRANCING. A PURE DELIGHT.’’

BEST PICTURE Grand Jury Prize Sundance Film Festival

COLIN FARRELL More on:

-Pam Grady, BOX OFFICE

From ACADEMY AWARD® WINNER

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS FRIDAY, JUNE 18

SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT NO PASSES OR DISCOUNT COUPONS ACCEPTED CHECK THEATRE DIRECTORY OR CALL FOR SOUND INFORMATION AND SHOWTIMES

MOBILE USERS: For Showtimes - Text WINTERS With Your ZIP CODE To 43KIX (43549)

NEIL JORDAN

© 2010 Wayfare Entertainment Ventures, LLC

www.ondinefilm.com www.magpictures.com

THEATRES EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT NOW PLAYING LANDMARK RITZ FIVE Center City 215-925-7900

ALSO AVAILABLE ON DEMAND FROM YOUR CABLE PROVIDER

citypaper.net ✚ CHECK OUT MORE R E P E R T O R Y F I L M L I S T I N G S AT C I T Y PA P E R . N E T / R E P F I L M .

LISTINGS@CITYPAPER.NET | JUNE 17 - JUNE 24

[ Your to-do list, no matter what you’re doing ]

By A.D. Amorosi

JERSEY BOYS: Scott Mosier (left) and his BFF, director Kevin Smith, will record their next SModcast in Philly.

COURTESY OF DEGY ENTERTAINMENT

[ chit chat ]

CP: Has the podcast — taking time out just to have fun with your

’CAST PARTY

SM: For me, it really harkens back to the beginning of our rela-

buddy — helped your professional relationship at all?

Scott Mosier and Kevin Smith discuss throwing poop. And they want you to listen.

By Molly Eichel

tionship. All of the business is taken out of it. … It makes us sit down and interact the way we did in the beginning, which was trying to make the other person laugh as hard as possible.

CP: Have you ever had nothing to discuss?

SM: We’ve had moments where we’ll take a dip. When you’re up

LIVE NUDE SMOD SMODCAST LIVE! (NUDITY NOT INCLUDED)

Mon., June 21, 8 p.m., $40-$50, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-2221400, worldcafelive.com

S

cott Mosier is asking people to pay to watch him sit around and shoot the shit with his buddy. Of course, Mosier’s homeslice is director Kevin Smith, and their powers combine to form SModcast (smodcast.com), a weekly podcast that began as a way to help retain their personal relationship. Mosier, who met Smith More on: in film school and has worked with him since Clerks, talks with City Paper about throwing poop in Fargo, how the podcast has changed his relationship with Smith and the one, the only Fleshlight.

citypaper.net

City Paper: Are you more Robin to Kevin’s Batman, or Oates to

his Hall?

Scott Mosier: I’m going to go Hall and Oates because Robin

S C O T T M O S I E R AT C I T Y PA P E R . N E T / AGENDA.

CP: Can we discuss the Fleshlight [a sex

toy that simulates the feel of a vagina, which serves as SModcast’s sponsor]?

SM: In Zack and Miri Make a Porno, there’s a reference to Fleshlight. The show is free so we wanted a sponsor to cover the cost of maintaining the website. But we’re like, “But who’s going to sponsor us?” We talk about some pretty nasty stuff. Kevin was like, “What about this Fleshlight dude?” They were all for it. It’s kind of a perfect fit for the show. We never have to be worried if Johnson & Johnson is going to be mad if we talk about buttholes. (molly.eichel@citypaper.net)

37

makes me feel like a preteen. I don’t have the Daryl Hall voice, but I’m right next to him. And we can hang out and talk like men.

With Batman and Robin, the age disparity makes it a little weird.

in front of an audience, there’s a sense of urgency to and fill space.

If you go to the show and listen to the show, [Smith] is really Daryl Hall, so he leads and I jump in. There was one night when we were in Fargo and he’s like, “You take over.” I started to talk about how long the audience would sit there if I didn’t say anything. Then it turned into something about how I went crazy and ran off the stage and became a fixture in the town as a READ MORE WITH superhero who threw poop at people.

P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R | J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T |

personal than my choice in mustache wax, even.

But I’ma get closer. Around this time in ’09, my mom, Eda, passed after a long bout with kidney problems and dialysis complications. I’ve spoken to bunches-o-y’all young cats with these hassles, so I know you know the woe. On June 21, ze Monday Night Club collective I started at National Mechanics is doing a pass-the-hat benefit for the National Kidney Org with cabaret doyennes Nicki Jaine, Wynne Alexander, Platypus,Victoria Spaeth’s Cadets and the debut of Radio Eris offshoot Liz+Matt. It won’t be sad.

On June 28, MNC at NatMech hosts the first of the officially sanctioned Live Arts/Fringe networking/performance fourth-Monday-of-the-month jams where artists get all work-in-progress on our asses. I don’t do many things that I’m proud of. These are two. Please. Thanks. ³ Now that City Council Promoter Bill 100267 is kinda-sorta out of the way, little independents should look out for a push on the 5 percent promoter tax already in place for big guys like AEG and Live Nation.

They got the money, though. Take Philly’s grooving Free Energy. People love ’em especially since they’re all DFA’d up. Rumor has ’em being offered upward of $6,000 per gig with Live Nation and AEG in a tiny bidding war. Yike. ³ The Troc’s got a rare gig with Thurston Moore’s buds, local noise generators The Notekillers, on June 18 with TJ Kong and Mose Giganticus. I keep hearing visiting Brooklynite Weasel Walter (ex-Harry Pussy fame) is threatening to stop by. ³ Bam Margera getting batted in the head wasn’t the only bang to come out of West Chester this weekend. I heard my Ital-Market neighbor Sarcone’s Deli may open a spot near Bam’s The Note. ³ In the Gayborhood, word has the long-fought-over Letto Deli spot finally getting taken over by Jose Garces for a wiener+brew haus. Stephen Starr (who looked at Letto) has that corner opposite Johnny Brenda’s for his biergarten. Weeny roasts all around. ³ Mamma Mia! star Pearce Bunting doesn’t just love ABBA. The Philly expat/Barrymore-winner is all about (fruity) punk rock and proves it June 23 at Theatre Exile’s benefit, Cabaret of the Exiled (Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American St.), when he reunites Hoodoo Love Pumpkin (Bunting, Aaron Cromie, Scott Greer and Dave Jadico) and hosts the likes of The Fan and Son of the Philly Fan (Tom McCarthy and Matt Pfeiffer), Joe Conklin and Charlotte Ford. ³ Expats! Bitter(sweet) ex-Philadelphia authorJim Knipfel goes spookhouse fairytale on your ass with These Children Who Come at You with Knives — out last week. ³ More ice at citypaper.net/icepack. (a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

food | classifieds

³ ICEPACK’S ALWAYS PERSONAL — more

the agenda

icepack

the naked city | feature | a&e

agenda

the

a&e | feature | the naked city the agenda classifieds | food

IF YOU WANT TO BE LISTED:

cleanup. Sat, June 19, 10am-12pm,

Submit information by mail (City Paper Listings, 123 Chestnut St., Third Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106), e-mail (listings@citypaper. net) or fax (215-599-0634) to Molly Eichel. Include details of the event, dates, times, address of venue, telephone number and admission price, if any. Listings must be received at least 10 days in advance of publication. Incomplete submissions will not be considered, and listings information will not be accepted over the phone.

FREE, Philadelphia Canoe Club,

✚ ACTION/ ADVENTURE Q BIKE FREEDOM VALLEY 2010

Pick your own route in this scenic bike race. Sun, June 20, 7:45am, $15-$65, Boathouse Row, 4 Boathouse Row, 215-242-9253.

Q CANOPY TOURS AT SPRING MOUNTAIN Zip line through a series of rope courses and challenges.

Every Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat & Sun, 10am, $65-$115, Spring Mountain, 757 Spring Mountain Rd., Spring Mountain, 610-287-7900.

Q FLAT ROCK PRACTICE FOR WHITEWATER PADDLERS

Kayakers who can run Class I/II whitewater are invited to practice with certified instructors. Every Wed & Wed, 5:30-8:30pm, FREE, PCC Clubhouse, 4900 Ridge Ave., 215-487-9674.

Q GO VERTICAL ROCK-CLIMB-

38 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

ING GYM Members get free day passes for each friend they recommend to a beginning level climbing class through the refera-friend program. Every Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat & Sun, 10am-10pm, $11-$23, Go Vertical Rock Climbing Gym, 950 N. Penn St., 215-928-1800.

4900 Ridge Ave., 215-684-9650.

✚ COMEDY Q BILL GATES This comedian probably wont be able to help you when Windows 7 freezes. with Omar, Jonas, Josh Kosh, Nate “The Landlord” Carter, Sun, June 20, 9pm, $10-$15, Millcreek Tavern, 4200 Chester Ave., 267-861-7420.

Q COMEDY SPORTZ Two teams battle it out in a series of improv theater games governed by a referee. Be sure to stay alert — audience members often end up on stage. Every Sat, 7:30pm; every Sat, 10pm, $12-$15, Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 877-985-2844.

Q DOUG BENSON The creator of “The Marijuana-Logues” is, among other credits, a former “High Times Magazine” Stoner of the Year. Thu, June 17, 8pm; Fri-Sat, 18-19, 8 & 10:30pm; $15-$30, Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., 215-4969001.

Q HAMBURGER This longtime comedian stays clean by replacing offensive words with his memorable phrase “haaaamburger!” Thu, June 17, 8, 10 & 11:55pm, $15, Laff House, 221 South St., 215-4404242.

Q IMPROV INCUBATOR People of all experience levels can participate in this mix of improv exercises. Every Sun, 7pm, FREE, Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Ave., 215-387-1911.

Q LAFF HOUSE’S STANDUP THURSDAYS Damon D. and Danny Ozark host a three-act lineup featuring a national headliner every week. Every Thu, 8:30pm, $10, Laff House, 221 South St., 215-440-4242.

Q SCHUYLKILL RIVER CLEANUP

Q LICKETY SPLIT’S STANDUP

Free appetizers and drink specials at Manayunk Brewery after this river

SUNDAYS Host Damon D. wel-

comes all levels of talent, including

professionals, TV writers and up-and-comers, for this open mic night. Just because you’re welcome doesn’t mean he won’t make fun of you if you bomb, though. Every Sun, 10pm, FREE, Lickety Split, 401 South St., 215-413-3434.

Q OPEN MIC EXTRAVAGANZA

Live performances by more than 20 comedians every Tuesday night.

Every Tue, 8pm, FREE, Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., 215-496-9001.

Q OPEN STAGE NIGHT The quar-

ter-century-old comedy club opens its stage every Wednesday night.

Every Wed, 8:30pm, FREE, Comedy Cabaret, Northeast Ramada, 11580 Roosevelt Blvd.

Q PATRICE O’NEAL The standup

comedian has appeared on HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central, as well as the late-night circuit. Thu, June 24, 8pm; Fri-Sat, 25-26, 8 & 10:30pm; $20-$30, Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., 215-4969001.

Q TERRY GILLESPIE “Mr. Rubberface” is known for his impressions of animals. Sat, June 19, 9pm, $15, Comedy Cabaret, Northeast Ramada, 11580 Roosevelt Blvd.,.

Q THE COMEDY WORKS Tired of the same old dinner and movie date? Try dinner and comedy instead. Every Fri & Sat, 9:30pm, $15-$35, Georgine’s Restaurant & Lounge, 1320 Newport Rd., Bristol, 215-785-0666.

Q THE N CROWD Short-form

improv comedy from the Philly mainstays, with plenty of opportunity for audience participation. Every Fri, 8pm, $10-$15, The Actors Center, 257 N. 3rd St., 215-253-4276.

Q TURAE AND FRIENDS Turae celebrates his birthday with a Father’s Day weekend extravaganza. Fri, June 18, 8:30 & 10:45pm; Sat, June 19, 8, 10 & 11:55pm; Sun, June 20, 8pm; $20, Laff House, 221 South St., 215-440-4242.

[ the agenda ]

✚ EVENTS/ FESTIVALS Q 18TH ANNUAL ISLAMIC HERITAGE FESTIVAL This event, hosted by the Islamic Cultural Preservation and Information Council, includes vendors, children’s games, speakers and entertainment. Sat, June 19, 2-8pm, FREE, Penn’s Landing, 301 S. Columbus Blvd., 215-222-0520.

Q 2010 CHINESE FESTIVAL

Celebrate Chinese culture in a three-day event hosted by the Chinese American Community Center. 2010 Chinese Festival Fri, June 18, 5pm; 2010 Chinese Festival Sat, June 19, 11am; 2010 Chinese Festival Sun, June 20, noon; FREE, Chinese American Community Center, 1313 Little Baltimore Road, Hockessin, Del., 302-239-0437.

Q ADOPT A PIG EXHIBITION AND FUNDRAISER Local artist James Dupree is selling oneof-a-kind piggybanks to benefit children’s cancer research. Every Fri & Sat, 12-12pm, Dupree Gallery, 3617 Haverford Ave., 215-386-1804.

Q BRYN MAWR TWILIGHT CONCERTS Bring a beach chair or blanket to this outdoor concert.

Every Sat, 7pm, $10, Gazebo Park, 9 South Bryn Mawr Avenue, Bryn Mawr, 610-864-4303.

Q CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH ANNUAL ALL-CULTURAL DAY

Food, entertainment, vendors and more. Sat, June 19, 4-8pm, FREE, Calvary Baptist Church, 6122 Haverford Avenue, 267-235-9623.

Q CITIBANK SUMMER SOLSTICE CELEBRATION Music and dancing lasts till dawn. Sat, June

³ GAY CARTOONISTS

TY AT PADDY WHACK This website

launch party includes giveaways, raffle items, and free food. Fri, June 18, 8-11pm, FREE, Paddy Whacks, 150 South St., 215-464-7544.

Q FATHER’S DAY CRUISE Cel-

ebrate Dad with dinner (or lunch) and dancing aboard the Spirit of Philadelphia. Father’s Day Cruise Sun, June 20, 9:30am, 12:30, 2, 6:30 & 7pm, $24.95-$64.90 $24.95$64.90, Spirit of Philadelphia, Columbus Blvd. & Lombard Circle, 866-455-3866.

Q FATHER’S DAY LUNCH Graeme

Park’s lunch will also explore the duties of dads of yesteryear. Sun, June 20, 11am-3pm, $15-$20, Graeme Park, 859 County Line Rd., Horsham, 215-343-0965.

Q FLEA & CRAFT MARKET AT

Quince Productions’ second annual cabaret series is crammed with all sorts of delicious gayness. Artistic director Rich Rubin says over half of this year’s performance slots incorporate LGBTQ characters and themes. Among the gay players is eye candy Peter Andrew Danzig, who will sing ditties about his journey as a gay man discovering love in “Dirty Pop.” Also, local fag icon Melissa Kolczynski will pull an Eddie Murphy à la The Nutty Professor in her multi-character portrayal of a transsexual, gay man and dominatrix in “’Round Midnight.” Rubin says series packages are available to make it easier (and cheaper) to see a variety of shows and each ticket comes with a free drink.

Thu., June 24, 7 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., June 25-26, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.; Sun., June 27, 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.; $25 (single show)-$77 (all seven shows), Society Hill Playhouse, 507 S. Eighth St., 215-923-0210, quinceproductions.com.

GRAEME PARK Look for vintage,

antique or used items in this outdoor market. Flea & Craft Market at Graeme Park Sat, June 19, 9 & 9am, FREE FREE, Graeme Park, 859 County Line Rd., Horsham, 215-343-0965.

Q NEW LIGHT FESTIVAL 2010

The non-profit organization Green Light Arts honors and displays the work of female artists who are enriching society. New Light Festival 2010 Thu-Fri, June 17-18, 7pm, $15; New Light Festival 2010 Sat-Sun, 19-20, 3pm, $15 $15, Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-681-0211.

festival has food, entertainment, music and more. Sat, June 19, 10am-6pm, FREE, St. Albans Place Garden Club, 2345 St. Albans Place, 215-820-7570.

Q TOILING IN OBSCURITY Phila-

delphians with day jobs present an evening of literature, music and comedy. The show will feature: Jaime Fountaine, Doogie Horner, Lee Klein, Steve Manheart, Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum, Becca Trabin and music by Tinmouth. Fri, June 18, 7-10pm, FREE, The Dive, 947 E. Passyunk Ave., 215-465-5505.

✚ GALLERIES Galleries are usually open Tuesdays through Saturdays; please call the gallery for exact days and hours. Receptions are denoted by a *.

Q 2424 STUDIOS, 2424 E. York

St., 215-423-1800. FREETHINKERS FANCY FISHTOWN, Features the debut of Art Machine Productions. Showcases tattoo and artwork of local artists. Runs through July 10.

Q ABINGTON ART CENTER, 515

Meetinghouse Rd., Jenkintown, 215-887-4882. SOLO SERIES, Features four separate exhibitions in different parts of the space, each celebrating the 70 year tradition of the Abington Art Center. Runs through July 25.

³ LESBIAN ROCKERS @ SUGAR TOWN

Q PENN STATE GREAT VALLEY IN THE CITY Meeting manage-

Sara Sherr says LGBTQ rockers The Shondes will headline her monthly celebration of lady musicians. The Brooklyn-based indie punk group is in town to promote their second album, My Dear One (Fanatic Records). Rounding out the evening are sets by queer-identifying Rachel Tension and DJ Lil’ Sis. Fri., June 25, 9 p.m., $7, Tritone, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475, tritonebar.com. (josh.middleton@citypaper.net)

ment corporation The Hub teams up with Penn State Great Valley to highlight future program courses offered in the city by the latter.

Thu, June 17, 5-7:30pm, FREE, The Hub Cira Centre, 2929 Arch Street, 215-479-4924.

Q AMBERELLA GALLERY & BOUTIQUE, Piazza at Schmidts,

Q ST. ALBANS PLACE 59TH ANNUAL OUTDOOR GARDEN BAZAAR & FAIR The 59th annual

Q BURRISON GALLERY, University Club at Penn, 3611 Walnut St., 215-898-5994. 10 YEARS PAINT-

Have an upcoming LGBTQ event? Give it here. E-mail listings@citypaper.net.

food | classifieds

³ FULL HOUSE: A SERIES OF CABARETS

Q EVERSAVE.COM LAUNCH PAR-

the agenda

Peep this month long exhibit of illustrations

by LGBTQ cartoonists. Giovanni’s Room owner Ed Hermance says more than a dozen gay-themed sketches like Howard Cruse’s Wendel, Glen Hanson and Allan Neuwirth’s Chelsea Boys and Maurice Vellekoop’s sexed-up Pin-ups will adorn the walls of his beloved bookstore. Warning: You may see a penis. Through June 30, free, Giovanni’s Room, 345 S. 12th St., 215-923-2960, queerbooks.com.

[ the agenda ]

the naked city | feature | a&e

queerbait Josh Middleton on the LGBTQ scene

19, 3pm, $5-$10, Kimmel Center, 300 S. Broad St., 215-893-1999.

1050 N. Hancock St., 610-2835669. BEACH TRAGEDIES AND HOMEíS HAVEN, Features photography by Melissa Blue Sweeney.

Runs through July 7.

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39

a&e | feature | the naked city the agenda classifieds | food

dj

b h1@Club Polaris, w/Danny the Wildchild, Vaski, I-Cue, Joppa, Da Botz, Dub C, MC High IQ, $15-$20. KJ215 brings the massive to a new venue with bumpin’ sound and on-point lighting so you can rave proper to the heavy bass.

This joint is all-ages, which is pretty rare for DJ events in Philly, so if you’re a youngin’, you best take full advantage of the opportunity to rage out with the big kids. The headliners are sure to rock your body, and if you keep your ear to the ground you may just hear about an all-night after-party. Get yourself there and give the old man High IQ some birthday punches!

A SELECTIVE GUIDE TO WHAT BANGS IN PHILLY. | BY GAIR MARKING, AKA DEV79

W M 1 N/C U V

Weekly Monthly One-off No Charge Breaks Downtempo

h b O A e 9

Adobe Café

460 N. Ninth St., 215-769-1530

Vango Lounge

1221 St. James St., 215-735-5772

613 S. Fourth St., 215-629-0565

THU., JUNE 17

Grape Room

105 Grape St.

Q WHO RUN IT!? M O G b @ Fluid

w/EPROM, BD1982, Elucid, Dev79 (that’s me!), Dr. Ew. San Fran’s glitch master, EPROM, makes his Philly debut, $8.

LAVA Space

4134 Lancaster Ave., 215-387-6155 M Room

15 W. Girard Ave., 215-739-5577

FRI., JUNE 18

Medusa Lounge

Q HANDS AND KNEES 1 O t y

27 S. 21st St., 215-557-1981

@ M Room w/Ian St. Laurent, Jhn Rdn. Hosted by Jonny Sorber, the illustrious indie dance party is back for one night only, $5.

Random Tea Room

713 N. Fourth St., 267-639-2442 Silk City

435 Spring Garden St., 215-592-8838 Tattooed Mom

N

530 South St., 215-238-9880

Voyeur Club

Fluid

OW

Drum ’n’ Bass Dubstep/Garage Electro Experimental Funk/Soul Goth/Industrial

116 S. 18th St., 215-568-1020

Club Polaris

J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

✚ KONKRETE JUNGLE PHILLY

nights

1919 E. Passyunk Ave., 215-551-2243

40 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

FRI., JUNE 18

Q ROC PRESENTS JAMES CURD 1 t @ Fluid w/James Curd, Carl

G t i s <

Hip-hop House Latin Progressive House Reggae

Michaels, Bryon Stout. The man from Greenskeepers is ready to rock ya body proper, call for price.

Q BANANA CLIPS 1 O G t < y > @ Adobe Caf&eacute; w/Sammy

Slice and Cool Hand Luke. Vice and Colt 45 sponsor this South Philly get down so everyone can forget the bad (read: good) decisions they made, $5.

Q SO SPECIAL M O G t < y > @

Silk City w/Emynd, Bo Bliz. The Crossfaded Bacon boys are jumpin’ it off at the NoLibs hotspot, $5.

Q TANTRUM TONIC M A @ Ran-

dom Tea Room w/John Schenk and friends. Chill with low key grooves, ambient timbres and unique sound explorations, call for price.

Q ULTRA M t @ Voyeur Club

w/Jerome Farly, Barbara Sheree, Reenie Kane, Lee Jones. Mega

EN

y ! > z P

Rock/Pop Techno Top 40 Hip-hop/ R&B Trance World

M Room w/Vakashi Sensei, Fredy Blast, Shish Boom. Celebrate the release of Vakashi’s new mixtape, My Spaceship is Parked Outside, $8.

party action on three floors, call for price.

SAT., JUNE 19 Q BROKETRONICA 4 YEAR ANNIVERSARY 1 V A ! @ LAVA Space

w/Morgan Packard, Joshue Ott, Ingo Vogelmann, Attentat, Radere, Zooz, MAD, Jason Carr. Celebrating their birthday of bringin’ experimental electronic sounds, these cats have a serious all-night affair in store, $10.

Q WE SNACKIN’ M O t @ Medusa

Lounge w/Turbo P, Whowe, Big Snax. Brooklyn Fire bad boy hits Philly for the first time, no cover.

SUN., JUNE 20

Grape Room w/Art Cuebik. The selector from Let Me Ride is back with party bangers, call for price.

Q RHYTHM & BOOZE 1 e G y @

Q LEGENDS OF DRUM & BASS 1 h @ Medusa Lounge w/Twisted In-

dividual, Sourdiesel, Hydrophonic.

The U.K. don drops through, $5.

Q FALL OUT W t @ Vango Lounge

w/Zepherin Saint, Christian James, Deep C, Niko. London’s deep house staple swings by, no cover.

MON., JUNE 21 Q BACK 2 BASICS MONDAYS 1 e G t @ Silk City w/Venus 7, Dozia,

Ron Clark, B2B Band. Mondays don’t have to be lame, $7.

Q GET WITH THIS! 1 e G < y > @

WED., JUNE 23

TUE., JUNE 22 Q RUDIE TUESDAY 1 e < y @ Tat-

tooed Mom w/Ruder1 and Honkytron. The sounds of ska, rocksteady and Jamaican funk, call for price.

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SAT, JUNE 19TH

The Official Musician/Artist After Party continues featuring musicians straight from the Festival Stage, The George Burton Trio feat.

Byron Landham on Drums, Nimrod Speaks on Bass and George Burton on Piano

EVERY SUNDAY LXG w/ spec guests

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a&e | feature | the naked city the agenda classifieds | food

Toasters, Mustard Plug, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal’s Gone Bad, Last Martyrs of a Lost Caust & Victim’s Lament, 7pm, $15-$17, Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. 9th St., 215-7691530.

Q AA with Hume, Dinowalrus &

TRTL, 9pm, $5-$10, Danger Danger Gallery, 5013 Baltimore Ave., myspace.com/dangerdangergallery.

Q ANDY SHERNOFF, 7pm, $10,

M Room, 15 W. Girard Ave., 215739-5577.

Q BOBBY LONG with He Is We,

Alex Starling & Jake Snider, 8pm, $19-$26, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400.

Q CRICKET JOE with The Echo

Base & Trench Mouth, 9:30pm, $5-$10, Millcreek Tavern, 4200 Chester Ave., 215-222-9194.

Q ELISE HAYES with Felili & Tim

Hein, 8-11pm, $8-$10, MilkBoy Coffee Ardmore, 2 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, 610-645-5269.

Q EVELYN EVELYN, 9pm, $25,

TLA, 334 South St., 215-922-1011.

Q GOODNIGHT LIGHTS with The

Ugly Suit & The Quelle Source, 9:30pm, $10, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684.

Q JOSIAH WOLF with Chocolate

Horse & Steve Goldberg and The Arch Enemies, 7:30pm, $10, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215291-4919.

$57-$152, Wachovia Center, 3601 S. Broad St., 215-336-3600.

Q JULIA TYME & THE TRAVELERS with Maria Kacanda & Nomad

Super Highway, 8pm, $10, MilkBoy Coffee Ardmore, 2 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, 610-645-5269.

Q JUSTIN CURRIE with Graham

Colton, 7:30pm, $18, Tin Angel, 20 S. 2nd St., 215-928-0770.

Q POISON CONTROL CENTER

with Music For Headphones & Folklore, 7pm, $8, M Room, 15 W. Girard Ave., 215-739-5577.

Q PRUSSIA with Secret Cities & Ava Luna, 9pm, $5-$10, Danger Danger Gallery, 5013 Baltimore Ave., myspace.com/dangerdangergallery.

Q RHYTHM AND BOOZE, 11pm,

$8-$10, M Room, 15 W. Girard Ave., 215-739-5577.

Q THE CITY MUSIC PROJECT

AFTER PARTY Hosted by Jill Scott.

Q THE NOTEKILLERS with Mose

Q THE REVELATIONS with Tré

Captive Kin, 9pm, $10, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-684-0808.

SATURDAY 6/19 Q THE SKA IS DEAD IV TOUR with

Toasters, Mustard Plug, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal’s Gone Bad, Last Martyrs of a Lost Caust & Victim’s Lament, 7pm, $15-$17, Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. 9th St., 215-7691530.

Q BLOOD DINER II with Causeway,

Faster Than Fate, The Flatline Symphony & A Dream Worth Dying For, 9pm, $8, Khyber, 56 S. 2nd St., 215-238-5888.

Q BRAD PAISLEY with Darius

Rucker & Justin Moore, 4pm, $26.50-$59.75, Susquehanna Bank Center, 1 Harbour Blvd., Camden, NJ, 856-365-1300.

Q DAMIEN JURADO with Kay Kay

and His Weathered Underground, 7pm, $10-$12, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-7399684.

Q DANZIG with Gorgeous Fran-

kenstein & Seventh Void, 7:30pm, $28, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-5483.

Q GOLDEN FILTER with Hundred

In The Hands, 7:30pm, $10, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215291-4919.

Q THAO AND MIRAH with The

Q THE DEPRECIATION GUILD

Troubadour, 3pm, $10, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-684-0808.

11pm, $20, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684.

PANY with Josh Olmstead Band &

Toasters, Mustard Plug, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal’s Gone Bad, Last Martyrs of a Lost Caust & Victim’s Lament, 7pm, $15-$17, Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. 9th St., 215-7691530.

Q O’ BROTHER with Deas Vail &

& The Mint, 9pm, $8, Khyber, 56 S. 2nd St., 215-238-5888.

Q TRUTH AND SALVAGE COM-

Q THE SKA IS DEAD IV TOUR with

Most of All & These United States, 8pm, $13-$14, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 215563-3980.

Q THE OFFICIAL JILL SCOTT

Stephen Rose, 10pm, $10, Tin Angel, 20 S. 2nd St., 215-928-0770.

MONDAY 6/21

Man Cactus & Adam Web, 9pm, $8, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-684-0808.

Q MATT GAUSS BAND with Old

Angel, 20 S. 2nd St., 215-928-0770.

Q THE QUIXOTE PROJECT with

[ the agenda ]

Q JILL SCOTT with Maxwell, 7pm,

Q MARY FAHL, 7:30pm, $22, Tin

Giganticus & T.J. Kong and the Atomic Bomb, 10:45pm, $10, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-9225483.

J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

Static Radio, 6pm, $12, Barbary, 951 Frankford Ave., 215-423-8342.

with Soul Cannon & The New Connection, 8pm, $12-$17, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215222-1400.

Q PANIC YEARS with Atomic Tom

42 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

Q GREY AREA with Lighten Up &

Williams & The Right Now, 9pm, $12-$14, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400.

Q YES with Peter Frampton, 8pm,

$55-$70, Borgata Casino, 1 Borgata Way,Atlantic City, NJ, 866-692-6742.

SUNDAY 6/20 Q THE SKA IS DEAD IV TOUR with

with The Wild Nothing, Creepoid & Ports of Call, 8pm, $8, M Room, 15 W. Girard Ave., 215-739-5577.

Q THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

with The Dodos & The Dutchess and The Duke, 7:30pm, $27, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-9225483.

TUESDAY 6/22 Q THE SKA IS DEAD IV TOUR with

Toasters, Mustard Plug, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal’s Gone Bad, Last Martyrs of a Lost Caust & Victim’s Lament, 7pm, $15-$17, Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. 9th St., 215-7691530.

Q 12 MILE CIRCLE with Mark

Thousands & Carla Bean, 8pm, $7, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-684-0808.

Q CAROLE KING AND JAMES TAYLOR, 7:30pm, $39.50-$275,

Wachovia Center, 3601 S. Broad St., 215-336-3600.

Q FROG EYES with Br’er, Beach

Fossils & Pearly Gates, 8pm, $10, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-291-4919.

Q RYAN STAR with Tim Williams,

7pm, $13-$15, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400.

Toasters, Mustard Plug, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal’s Gone Bad, Last Martyrs of a Lost Caust & Victim’s Lament, 7pm, $15-$17, Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. 9th St., 215-7691530.

Q THE SPOTTED ATROCIOUS

Q ANDY DAVIS with Trent Dabbs

8pm, $10, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 215-563-3980.

& Andrew Belle, 7:30pm, $10, Tin Angel, 20 S. 2nd St., 215-928-0770.

Q BETH NIELSEN CHAPMAN

with Carsie Blanton, 8pm, $23, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400.

with Neutral Uke Hotel, Ukulele Orchestra & Solved With Science, 8pm, $8, Khyber, 56 S. 2nd St., 215238-5888.

Q VILLAGERS with Homophones,

WEDNESDAY 6/23 Q THE SKA IS DEAD IV TOUR with

Q CEREMONY with Skin Like Iron,

3pm, $10, Barbary, 951 Frankford Ave., 215-423-8342.

Toasters, Mustard Plug, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal’s Gone Bad, Last Martyrs of a Lost Caust & Victim’s Lament, 7pm, $15-$17, Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. 9th St., 215-7691530.

Q CORROSION OF CONFORMITY

Q CINDERELLA, 8pm, $35-$40,

with Age of Despair & The Ghost of Saturday Nite, 8pm, $12, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215291-4919.

Q KATHY SLEDGE, 12-4pm, FREE, Penn’s Landing, 301 S. Columbus Blvd., 215-928-8801.

Q THE BAMBOOZLE ROADSHOW with All Time Low, LMFAO,

House of Blues, 801 Boardwalk Ave., Atlantic City, NJ, 609-2362583.

Q DRIVING VEGAS with Lennen,

8pm, $8, Khyber, 56 S. 2nd St., 215238-5888.

Q E-FUNK with DJ Champe, 9pm, FREE, Millcreek Tavern, 4200

Chester Ave., 215-222-9194.

Third Eye Blind, Boy Like Girls, Good Charlotte & Hanson, 12pm, $32.50, Penn’s Landing Festival Pier, Columbus Blvd. & Spring Garden St., 215-629-3200.

BELLER, 8-11pm, $8-$10, MilkBoy

Q THE FALCON LORDS with

Q PARTY PHOTOGRAPHERS,

Fisher Meehan, 8pm, $8, Khyber, 56 S. 2nd St., 215-238-5888.

Q KIRA SMALL & BRYAN

Coffee Ardmore, 2 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, 610-645-5269.

8pm, $8, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-291-4919.

[ dude, where’s my comedy club? ] Q SAMANTHA CRAIN with

Frontier Ruckus, 8pm, $13-$15, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400.

Q THE GLORY with The Loose

Q THRICE with Kevin Devine, Bad

THURSDAY 6/24 Q THE SKA IS DEAD IV TOUR with

Toasters, Mustard Plug, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal’s Gone Bad, Last Martyrs of a Lost Caust & Victim’s Lament, 7pm, $15-$17, Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. 9th St., 215-7691530.

food | classifieds

Veins & The Dig, 7:30pm, $18.99$22, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-5483.

the agenda

Screws, The Boils & Toxic Life, 8pm, $10, M Room, 15 W. Girard Ave., 215-739-5577.

the naked city | feature | a&e

[ the agenda ]

✚ AGENDA PICKS

Q ARC IN ROUND with Naked

Hearts & Midnight Sounds, 7:30pm, $5, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-291-4919.

Q ASTRAL THRONE with The Fe-

³ DOUG BENSON

tals, Assayer & Barbarism, 9pm, $8, Khyber, 56 S. 2nd St., 215-238-5888.

Comedian Doug Benson is afraid of broken dreams as much as broken bongs.

Many may know him as one of the floating heads on VH1’s Best Week Ever or as a contestant on NBC’s Last Comic Standing.But he’s just as well-known outside comedy circles in a similar field: Benson is a world-class stoner. Anchoring the doc Super High Me, Benson took on Morgan Spurlock’s conceit with a darker shade of green. Instead of investigating the war on obesity, Benson investigates the war on marijuana. Benson took a 30-day break from weed and then smoked for 30 days straight to compare his physical, mental and spiritual differences. How do we get his job again? Benson continues his research, when he’ll bring his pot, paraphernalia and hopefully some jokes. Thu., June 17, 8 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., June 18-19, 8 and 10:30 p.m.; $15-$20, Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., 215-496-9001, heliumcomedy.com.

—Stephen Rose

Q KAT EDMONSON, 7pm, $18,

World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400.

Q ORIGIVATION MAGAZINE MUSIC SERIES with Hannah Zaic,

Todd Carey & Cheers Elephant, 9pm, $7, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400.

Q PHISH, 7:30pm, $50, Susquehan-

na Bank Center, 1 Harbour Blvd., Camden, NJ, 856-365-1300.

Q SAGE FRANCIS with Free

Moral Agents & B. Dolan, 7:30pm, $17-$19, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-5483.

Q STREETLIGHT MANIFESTO

with The Supervillains, The Wonder Years & Dan Potthast, 7:30pm, $16, TLA, 334 South St., 215-922-1011.

[ the bee’s knees ]

³ PHILADELPHIA BEEKEEPERS GUILD

Q SUN AIRWAY with Ravens and

[ trans-ylvania ]

Vultures & Eat Your Birthday Cake, 9pm, $10, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684.

Q THE JEFF BECK BIRTHDAY EXTRAVAGANZA Hosted by Needles

Jones. with Chris Dipinto Band, Mister Hawkins, Yeah Clementines & surprise guest, 9pm, $8, M Room, 15 W. Girard Ave., 215-739-5577.

Q WAKEY WAKEY with The Spring

Standards & Onufrak, 8pm, $10, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-684-0808.

Q YOUNG MAMMALS with Data

Dog, 8pm, $5-$10, Danger Danger Gallery, 5013 Baltimore Ave., myspace.com/dangerdangergallery.

✚ READINGS/ BOOK SIGNINGS Q ALDENA HALPERN Aldena

³ TRANSFAGS TAKING OVER: A SEDUCTIVELY SMOOTH NIGHT OF GENDERFUCT POETRY A stacked roster of Philly’s red-blooded young rhymers have picked their muse: Transfag. In an evening of gender-identity-fueled poetry, participants venture into what for most is untrod transsexual territory. All notions of gender >>> continued on page 46

Halpern, author of “The Ten Best Days of My Life” and “Target Underwear,” will discuss her new book “29.” Thu, June 24, 7pm, FREE, Barnes & Noble, Downtown, 1805 Walnut St., 215-665-0716.

Q DANA LOVITZ Legal scholar

and attorney, Dana Lovitz will discuss her new book on the role of

P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R | J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T |

For the inner Thoreau within every city-dweller, there is the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild.

Established in 2009, the organization teaches and encourages urban beekeeping. Monthly meetings school attendees on the ABCs of apiculture, such as how to build a hive and extract honey. But urban beekeeping is more than just a hobby — it’s a habit of sustainable development. Maintaining a colony may just be the solution to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious occurrence in which the adult bees in a hive suddenly disappear. Serious stuff aside, you can make your own soap and candles out of the beeswax you collect. Maybe Winnie the Pooh was ahead of the curve on this one. Thu., June 17, 7 p.m., free, Unitarian Society of Germantown, 6511 Lincoln Drive (meetings continue Thu., July 15, 7 p.m.; and Sat., Aug. 7, 2 p.m.; Wyck House, 6026 Germantown Ave.), phillybeekeepers.org.

—Matthew Cahn

43

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foodanddrink

portioncontrol

By Tara Nurin

classifieds

SHANK ME LATER: Chef Slim “Sam” Ben-Ouhiba showcases his interpretations of Tunisian cuisine with tasting menus at Tutto Mario. His lamb shank and cous cous dish, served with grilled vegetables and pan-fried chickpeas, is one of many standouts.

NEAL SANTOS

[ out of africa ]

FROM TUNISIA WITH LOVE At an Italian BYOB, an unlikely tasting menu celebrates a resonant cuisine.

By Brion Shreffler

S

citypaper.net

>>> continued on page 48

47

itting in Tutto Mario in Chalfont, I can’t help but feel a bit special. Even as I watch a server expertly remove the flesh of a branzino at the table next to us, the feeling’s unshakeable.

Although the chef trained in Italy, I’m not here for anything Italian. I’m eagerly awaiting the commencement of chef Slim “Sam” Ben-Ouhiba’s seven-course Tunisian tasting.

Ben-Ouhiba, a native of the capital city of Tunis, says his approach to this “chef’s table” differs greatly from the skills he applies to his regular Italian menu. In our case, the chef’s acting as an ambassador for a cuisine many Americans have little experience with. “[With More on: the tasting], you’re taking from a solid heritage of cooking and giving it an adequate representation,” says Ben-Ouhiba. “You have to be creative, but you can’t go too far — you have to maintain the subject.”

In doing that, he serves up his own interpretations of the national dishes of Tunisia, ranging from street eats to the robust food most common to home cooking. “In seven courses,” says BenOuhiba, “I’m trying to give you everything.”

Though Tunisian cuisine can be as regional as Italian food, matters of climate, economics and cultural ties bind everything

together. In a country that lacks widespread refrigeration while being encroached upon by the Sahara and abutted by the Mediterranean, simplicity is key. Caraway, cumin and coriander inform many spice blends. Lamb, bluefish and sardines are common along with couscous, squash, zucchini and, of course, olive oil, given that Tunisia is a bulk producer of the staple.

It’s evident how much weather shapes Tunisian cuisine, as the first two dishes were a cooling respite from a humid day. Slata mechouiya featured tomato, garlic, onion and pepper in equal chorus — first roasted, then finely chopped and blended, and topped with kalamata olives; fresh, cold tuna; and a drizzle of olive oil.

The omek houria featured a chilled carrot purée executed with white wine vinegar and harissa (a hot chili paste), seasoned with garlic, drizzled with basil oil, accompanied by a trail of sriracha and served with a sliced hard-boiled egg.

I hardly have time to share my thoughts before Ben-Ouhiba begins rhapsodizing about keftagi, the snack so ubiquitous he refers to it as his MORE FOOD AND DRINK COVERAGE country’s cheeseburger. A boldly seasoned AT C I T Y P A P E R . N E T / and lightly fried veggie filling is finely M E A LT I C K E T. chopped and stuffed inside a roll, the soft insides of which are often scooped out, dipped in olive oil and harissa, flash-fried and then placed back on top of the sandwich as a sort of condiment. For this tasting, though, Ben-Ouhiba subbed the bread for a sunny-side-up egg.

It’s easy to see how the chef’s role in this dizzying cultural exchange has been shaped by his background. He carries with him the nuances of his mother and grandmother, whose shared love of

P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R | J U N E 1 7 - J U N E 2 4 , 2 0 1 0 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T |

³ PHILLY BEER WEEK (PBW), though hailed as a coup for the city’s craft-beer reputation, does not guarantee enhanced revenue for local bars and breweries. In fact, this year, many in the beer business came out of the 10-day event disappointed in sales, citing a variety of causes and effects for why PBW is a tricky proposition.

Gene Muller, co-owner of Flying Fish, hoped he wouldn’t witness a repeat of previous years, when bars that requested up to three of his kegs a week took a month or more to resume that practice.

Unfortunately, he saw several events featuring Flying Fish canceled.

It’s a lot of the same for proprietors. London Grill’s Terry McNally spent hundreds of dollars on beer for an event featuring Belgium’s Boon Brewery that failed to attract a single customer. McNally and others we spoke with blame the crush of PBW events, which numbered nearly 1,000 this year.

Another commonly cited scapegoat for PBW troubles is the 2010 festival’s migration from March to June — it’s believed an already-hectic event season, combined with the existing dearth of college students and shore-going residents, compounds difficulties. Some participants want to urge board members to cap the number of events and shift the festival back to March.

PBW executive director Don Russell doesn’t think either option is necessary. “Philly Beer Week is not just about 10 days in June,” says Russell. “It’s about promoting Philadelphia as America’s best beer-drinking city. … Plus, we’ve had outstanding outdoor events. You don’t have a dunk tank on Fairmount Avenue in March.”

Some bar owners have recognized the strain PBW can put on local breweries. Clark Newman of Lucky 13 programmed Yards and Philadelphia Brewing Co. nights and kept a draft line open for each throughout the week. But Mike McKee, who handles purchasing for the Pub on Passyunk East, thinks PBW provides an opportunity to gauge what customers like. “Local brewers get to spend 355 days a year on most bars’ taps,” he says. “This way, for 10 days, other breweries get a chance.”

These are points brewers and other local industry insiders readily concede. However, that doesn’t change the reality that PBW, for all of its benefits, puts a short-term hit on many balance sheets.

“Brewers across the region work so hard all year long to put on the circus,” says Victory president Bill Covaleski. “But when the circus leaves town, somebody’s scooping up some pretty big heaps of elephant shit.” (editorial@citypaper.net)

food

THE BEER BLUES

the naked city | feature | a&e | the agenda

f&d

gracetavern.com

THIS YEAR, TAVERN 17 PICKS UP THE CHECK FASTER THAN DAD CAN.

DAD’S MEAL IS FREE WITH ANY ENTRÉE PURCHASE FROM OUR MENU 10AM – 3PM CALL NOW TO MAKE YOUR RESERVATION! 220 S 17th St., Philadelphia, PA 19103 215.790.1799 | Tavern17Restaurant.com

the agenda | a&e | feature | the naked city food classifieds

[ food & drink ]

HOPWORLDTRANCER&BHOUSE ELECTROBREAKSTECHNOP UNKSOULD&BINDIEROCKELEC TROREGGAEGOTH/INDUSTRIAL HIPHOPWORLDTRANCER&B HOUSEROCKELECTROBREAK STECHNOPUNKSOULD&BINDIE ROCKELECTROREGGAEGOTH/INDUSTRIALHIPHOPROCKWORLD TRANCER&BHOUSEELECTRO BREAKSTECHNOPUNKSOULD& BINDIEROCKELECTROREGGAE KGOTH/INDUSTRIALD&BHIP REGGAEGOTH/INDUSTRIALHIP HOPWORLDTRANCER&BHOUSE ELECTROBREAKSTECHNOP UNKSOULD&BINDIEROCKELEC TROREGGAEGOTH/INDUSTRIAL HIPHOPWORLDTRANCER&B

from street carts across the subcontinent. Hasan Bukhari — who owns the Desi Village restaurants in King of Prussia and West Philadelphia — opened up the Desi Chaat House, aiming at the lunch/snack/cheap-dinner crowd.

There are about a half-dozen chaat options here, with most consisting of a starting point of fried, salted and spiced bread accompanied by a blend of condiments, herbs or vegetables. Favorites include the panipuri, balls of fried dough with a curried chickpea filling, and the samosa chaat, two savory pastries filled with a chickpea mixture and dressed in yogurt. Prices top out at a very reasonable $7.99. 501 S. 42nd St., 215-386-1999, desichaathouse.com.

✚ ITALIAN APOLLINARE

djnights get a life

citypaper.net/djnights OUTDOOR DINING • SUNDAY BRUNCH • PRIVATE PARTIES • BANQUETS • LATE DINING NIGHTLY

Fabio Auguadro and chef/partner Andrea Scotacci have a restaurant by the same name (he was a Syrian saint) in the Umbria region of Italy; here, the duo has upgraded the facilities to produce some highend but affordable Euro-inflected Italian fare. Specialties include 10 different pizzas, wild boar braised Umbrian style, Chateaubriand steak with a béarnaise sauce prepared tableside, prawns in a Cognac flambé (also tableside, watch your ’brows) and a slew of housemade pastas. Piazza at Schmidts, 1001 N. Second St., 215-923-2014, apollinarerestaurant.com.

✚ JAPANESE

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DOMA

Robert and Patti Moon of Shiroi Hana (222 S. 15th St.) have contributed a new player to Franklintown’s restaurant row with Doma, a Japanese/Korean BYOB serving lunch and dinner.

The 36-seater’s menu features atypical and upscale sushi dishes (a trio of uni, or sea urchin; monkfish liver pâté), bento boxes, a selection of signature and hand rolls and Korean specialties like bibimbap. Also on offer is an omakase platter, featuring a chef’s selection of eight individually prepared sushi, sashimi and special rolls.

1822 Callowhill St., 215-564-1114.

JAY’S FAVORITE SUSHI BAR

Jay Zou, formerly of Johnny Chang’s, is the chef and namesake at Jay’s Favorite. The BYOB is doing all the usual sushi, sashimi and maki options, plus a selection of more than 20 specialty rolls. Check out the deep-fried (!) “Oh My Goodness” roll, with chopped lobster and shrimp and spicy tuna; or the “Pink Lady,” with lobster, shrimp, crab and avocado. Open Mon.-Thu., 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri., 10 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sat., noon-11 p.m.; Sun., 1-10 p.m.

1526 Sansom St., 215-564-0526, jayfavorite.com.

MOMIJI SUSHI

Teeny Momiji offers a large selection of sushi, sashimi and hot entrées (teriyaki, tempura).

Chef/owner Benny Lin also has Nagoya in Cherry Hill. Specialty

rolls here include the “Hulk Roll” — soft-shell crab, spicy tuna and salmon, and avocado, topped with wasabi mayo and wrapped in green seaweed — and the Tri-Color Roll, with crunchy spicy salmon and cucumber topped with tuna and roe. They offer daily lunch specials for $8 to $9. Open Mon.-Thu., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri., 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sat., 12:30 p.m.-11 p.m.; Sun., 12:30 p.m.-10 p.m. 522 S. Fifth St., 215-574-1557.

MUNTIN

Located on the ground floor of the Center City One building at Broad and Spruce, Muntin’s cooking up a friendly mix of Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian dishes.

Signature rolls like the “Yummy Yummy” (lobster tempura topped with mango avocado caviar) have a place alongside dumplings, tempura, rice and noodle dishes and Thai stir-fries. Open Mon.-Thu., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun., noon-10 p.m. 1326 Spruce St., 215-546-0180.

✚ SANDWICHES/ HOAGIES/WRAPS FROG BURGER

Steve Poses, of the Frog and Commissary restaurants, has been out of the public dining sphere for some time now, concentrating instead on his catering business.

This seasonal burger stand marks the chef’s easy-breezy return to the Philly fray. Frog Burger, which is open daily from noon till dusk (weather permitting), serves several varieties of burgers, dogs, crab rolls, shakes and desserts, namely the Commissary’s carrot cake and chocolate fudge “killer cake.” Seating is split up between picnic tables, communal tables and provided picnic blankets.

The stand’s signature item? The Love Burger, a flame-grilled patty sandwiched between two grilled cheese sandwiches in lieu of bread.

Franklin Institute (front lawn), 222 N. 20th St., frogcommissary.com.

PAESANO’S

Peter McAndrews (Modo Mio) and partner Nathan Baynes have brought their Girard Avenue sandwich shop south to the Italian Market. This Paesano’s location features all of their well-loved standards — think the Paesano (beef brisket), the Arista (roast pork) and the Gustaio (roasted lamb sausage) — along with new eats, like the Liveracce (seared beef liver, onions, iceberg, roasted tomato, garlic mayo, Gorgonzola).

Open Wed.-Sun., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

901 Christian St., 215-922-2220.

More on:

citypaper.net ✚ MORE LISTINGS, AND THEY SCROLL!

I LOVE

EATING! C I T Y PA P E R . N E T / F O O D

Let the feeding frenzy begin.

Food news, recipes, menu exclusives

Sushi Bar

www.OldCityAsianBistro.com Follow us on Twitter @ OCasianbistro

Business hours

citypaper.net/mealticket

Monday – Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Friday – Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Sunday 12:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Available for private parties BYOB until liquor license

food | the agenda | a&e | feature | the naked city classifieds

[ i love you, i hate you ] DECISIONS, DECISIONS I know that I was asking you when you were going to break up with your girlfriend. but actually I don’t care..I am tired of the fact that I keep asking you and I am not getting a straight answer. You and I pursued each other, actually it was more you than me! Then after we had sex, I looked at you and said, do you have a girlfriend..you said yeah..I had tears in my eyes..cause I could have died at that moment. I was tearing up because I was thinking about my ex boyfriend and how much he loved me..even though he cheated on me..I knew him and I could work it out..it has been a long time that I have know him...I let you destroy that..I can’t believe I let you destroy that.. you know what..do what you do..it doesn’t matter anymore! But I know one thing..if someone made me unhappy and I didn’t love them..why would I be there with them..

broken up for about 6 months or so and it seems like a lifetime without you in my life, By my side where you should have been the whole time. I lied, I cheated, I turned my back on our love, and everything we stood for. We are still good friends, barely hanging on, I’m still in love with u and yearn for you at times I know I shouldn’t, my heart should be all for the man I’m with but it still yearns for you! I miss what we had, I compare you to him and realize that I wish it was me I lay next to at night. when I asked you at dinner if you got laid yet, your response took me back and knocked the breath out of me, I guess I was expecting...well hoping for

marriage, kids, eventually. So now I just write to you hoping that one day you will be mine again and things will be how they were supposed to be.

Poohbear I will always love you!!

I LOVE YOU Raquel please come home. We haven’t seen you since Memorial Day. Things just haven’t been the same without your fiery, red fenders or your brown, sexy basket or the sweet noise you made when we rang your bell. Raquel, listen, if you come home we promise to bring you inside every night and keep you warm and safe. Love and miss you, M AND M.

PLAIN OLE NASTY

This girl is the worst dental assistant please don’t go to her she would mess your teeth up and she is a fat whore who fakes that she goes jogging everyday all she those is drink alcohol all the time she is a fat drunk a nasty dirty dizzy dusty fat whore....... someone please help her she need rehab.........

This goes to the bitch that I was walking behind.. you stinking ass bitch..you were digging in your ass and pulling you panties out how fucking nasty is that...you should of pulled yourself to the side and did that shit...how dare you do that shit at the window where everyone can see you...I wish you would of did that shit not near the window so everyone can see you! I am tired of all the nastiness that goes around with women. Guess what that bitch probably will serve someone food later and not washed her hands from when she did it the first time! I hate nasty ass women..

FREAK PLAY

PLOYAMORY: DOUCHEBAG PREFERRED

I Love the freaky sex we had. but I guess u were having it with everybody. Such a old ass man whore Really when does it stop? After a minute u will b as old as jesus dust. Lets see who will want u then.Hkkennedy.Dumb shit.

How can you make such generalizations? Are you a socio-biologist? Most likely not dumbass, but you surely had some evolution in your educational upbringing. How can you blame a whole sex/gender or label them as being something? Makes me think you’re a woman hating closeted homosexual. The grand unifying theory is self-preservation, humans breed, we mate monogamously to rear our young. No one wants to guess who’s daddy. But then you have a double standard. There are plenty of homo sapien sapiens that mate for life, monogamously, and are happy as a pig in shit. So, you and your mindless cult can suck my left tit, because you pretty much suck manbaby. Cults love to destroy the Ego.

FAT SLOB

GET OUT OF MY LIFE

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PLEASE, I have enough respect to give you your space, now give me mine. I’m tired of hearing about you... being reminded... don’t you have enough friends of your own? Have you no shame? You’ve moved on; please let me do the same. I want to forget all about you; you aren’t the person that I thought you were

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reason A. did that was to try and get back at me, so consider yourself not just a backstabbing slut, but a used one. Let me save you some time, next time you two find yourself on a bed in a dark room: she likes it inside for a while and then move your fingers to her clit when she’s ready to explode. Also doggy style is a new thing for A., so definitely flip her onto all fours and give it to her hard. She’s a Main Line girl that likes to slum it sometimes, so looks like you were good for that. OH and another thing- nice work trying to drive back to S. Philly completely wasted after I kicked you to the curb, you have so many endearing qualities I’m stunned that you’re single. Not really.

PRETTY GIRL

GIVE ME SOME SPACE This goes to the bitch that was standing next to me on the dam train! All that fucking space in the world and you had to stand next to me! Couldn’t you tell that I was uncomfortable! I hate that shit, why do people on the train migrate to one little space on the train where there is plenty of fucking space to move around and occupy! Try using it! This makes me hate the train more and more each day when shit like this happens. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable with someone sitting or standing all close.

Dam, I definitely need my space and I know a few other people agree with me! Stand at least at a nice distance and we all can enjoy our fucking ride! Sign Tired of the bullshit on the hot ass train!

HANCE You know I LOVE YOU! So why you playin’ me?

Take off your meanie pants and put on your sexy pants. Talk dirty to me. Make me want you more.

Slap me when I’m being bad and slap me harder when I’m being oh so good. You know where I like it. Make me hot... Princess Pea!

HURTS ON THE OTHERSIDE Hey Poohbear this is your girl kitty, so here we are

To the gorgeous girl who works at Cantina. I eat there quite often, and I’ve never seen you there before.You were impressed that I finished all of my pancakes like a good little boy. I would have stayed and ate a dozen more just to gaze upon your beautiful face. By the way, the girl I was with was just a very good friend of mine. I think I need to start hanging out with guys. a no, but who can go without sex for 5 months?? I don’t know. so u said she’s a Colombian, now these thoughts race through my head, how does she look, was she better then me? Do you still feel anything for me, would there ever be a chance for us again?

Why am I feeling so hurt by the thought of you being with someone else? I am in a relationship and I’m “happy” or so I think I am, but thoughts of you cross my mind all the time, and how we could of been what we should of been without me fucking around behind your back. I wish I can turn the hands of time, and not fall to temptation of another man, you were everything I needed and enough but I had to be selfish and greedy and think that it wouldn’t change me. It did and it ruined us, so now I just daydream and wish things were how they were supposed to play out, me and you apartment,

KILL YOUR DARLINGS This is my first mistake. You have no idea how much I fashioned my whole life to please you. Just open your goddamn laptop and let me back in.Throw me a goddamn bone woman! I’m young enough to be your daughter - I screwed up! Once! If you’d had e-mail when you were my age you’d have f****ed up too!!!

PANTIES IN YOUR FACE To my good friend S. and my ex A.,Wow- you are both dumb sluts that can spend the summer in crazytown. How dare you disrespect me in my own house, at my party, on the bed I shared with A. for so long in front of all my friends. You dumb mother fucker, I busted through a door and all you two could do was give blank/terrified stares. The only

TEL-E-SEX WORKER You are a wannabe lesbian. Why you talk to women, engaging in fantasies with them, when you know you are straight boggles my mind. And what is your deal with that hot pony ride? You know pony rides are for little kids. You, my dear, are NOT little. Have you ever mated with an Alaskan King Crab? I bet they’d be your type. All CRUSTacean, king sized claws, long appendages, all bright red and white. Too bad you’re just a soft bellied blue crab from the Chestapeake. Fuck you. Eat me. ✚ To place your FREE ad (100 word limit), go to citypaper.net/ILUIHU and follow the prompts. ADS ALSO APPEAR AT CITYPAPER.NET/lovehate.

City Paper has the right to re-publish “I Love You, I Hate You”™ ads at the publisher’s discretion. This includes re-purposing the ads for online publication, or for any other ancillary publishing projects.

the naked city | feature | a&e | the agenda | food

classifieds

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By Matt Jones

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“ALL THE RIGHT ANGLES”— THEY’VE GOT THE MARKET CORNERED.

the

C A L L 2 1 5 - 7 3 5 - 8 4 4 4 F O R A D V E R T I S I N G I N F O R M AT I O N PLACE YOUR FREE ONLINE CLASSIFIED AD ATCITYPAPER.NET/CLASSIFIEDS

C L A S S I F I E D S D E A D L I N E S Billboard Friday, 5 PM | Adult Friday, 12 PM All Other Classified Categories Monday, 4 PM POLICIES: It is the responsibility of the Advertiser to check his or her ad the first time it runs. This newspaper can assume no

responsibility for errors beyond the first printing of the incorrect ad. City Paper will not be responsible for failure to insert an advertisement. City Paper reserves the right to edit advertising copy, graphics and photos.

classifieds

food | the agenda | a&e | feature | the naked city

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classifieds

jonesin’

22 26

market place

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1 Little Women sister 5 His famous role is being reprised in 2010 8 List with activities for kids 12 ___ con pollo 14 Wyatt of the Old West 16 Apple pesticide banned in the ’80s 17 Play ___ in (affect) 18 It may stick out of one’s pants 20 General Colin’s nickname in the dynamite business?

22 Old synthesizer brand 23 Albuquerque coll.

24 Kind of dye 25 Helper, for short 27 Goddess of the dawn 29 “Humble” homes 34 The Office actor Steve made up of many parts?

37 Snoring cause 40 Its chairman was Yasser Arafat 41 Long-limbed 42 Thurston of Gilligan’s Island moving to Missouri?

45 “The Worst Comedian of All Time,” according to Maxim 46 Betty White recently hosted it 47 Tater 51 Fashion line?

53 Madness’s musical genre 55 ___-Locka, Florida 56 Soundgarden frontman Chris

✚ DOWN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 15 19 21 26 28 30

Shearing sound Baseball stats They get deployed Ian of Ratatouille Body type somewhere in the middle Obama Chief of Staff Emanuel “I could ___ referee” (line from Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”) Down Under pal Airline with a hub at Ben Gurion Finger part Online address Asian mammal also called a “humped cattle” Elizabeth Wurtzel autobio drug Blue solid on a pool table Lower-level apartment number Network that merged with UPN Missile storage buildings Some tests

✚ ©2010 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com)

Cub Scout group Antlered beast The Family Stone leader Some motorcycles On the cheap end It may get in gear Greek consonant “Smoking” alternative Tissue swellings Nevada county The Writer’s Almanac subject Burning the midnight oil Cowboys’ home Office notes Part of NEA Busy workers during April Latvian capital Right on the map?

“Get going!”

Playwright Coward The whole kit and caboodle

LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION

Automotive Marketplace

ADOPTION

Public Notices

ADOPT: A nurturing, loving teacher hopes to adopt

31 32 33 35 36 37 38 39 43 44 48 49 50 52 54 56 57 58 59 60 61

PREGNANT? CONSIDERING ADOPTION?

Adoptions

ADOPTION:

crushed by the other team?

61 Polynesian capital 62 Its ads compare cereal bowl quantities 63 Falls behind 64 Dirty 65 Simmons competitor 66 Major event for a law student 67 Abbr. in many Canadian city names 68 Caustic substances

intestinal fistulae, you may be entitled to compensation.

Attorney Charles Johnson 1800-535-5727.

Talk with caring agency specializing in matching Birthmothers with Families nationwide. LIVING EXPENSES PAID. Call 24/7 Abby’s One True Gift Adoptions 866-413-6293.

Adoption: Loving parents and their 9 year old adopted daughter would love a baby brother or sister. Stay at home mom, professional dad. Expenses paid. Please call Becky/Mike 800-472-1835.

✚ ACROSS

newborn. Financial security, unconditional love, extended family for your baby. Expenses paid. Denise @ 1-877-3095298.

HEALTH/NOTICES

HERNIA REPAIR? DID YOU RECEIVE A COMPOSIX KUGEL PATCH BETWEEN 1999-2008? If the kugel patch was removed due to complicatons of bowel perforation, abdominal wall tears, puncture of abdominal organs or

2006 FORD MUSTANG

2006 Ford Mustang - $13,800 OBO - Yellow, 49k miles. V6 manual with rare pony package i.e. GT wheels, black leather interior, Shaker 500 surround speaker system with 6 disc changer in dash, 5 spd manual, and fog lights. I also upgraded tail lights to sequential lights. Car is extremely clean and fast. CARFAX is clean and all maintenance is up to date. I just found out I’m going to be a dad so the Mustang has to go. Any other questions let me know. Call 484-886-8467

Business Services AMAZING OPPORTUNITY!

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PROCEEDS BENEFIT SEGER PLAYGROUND

Looking for 10 SHARP guys & gals to represent Fashion & Music Publications. Must be Free to Travel. No Experience Necessary. 888-297-4698.

EMPLOYMENT LAW ATTORNEY

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Musician’s Services SONGWRITERS WANTED

Go to WoofiePublishing.com Click on “Songwriter Registration” For Details

Lessons & Workshops DRUM LESSONS

Edward Watkins offers instruction for drumkit congadrums and sightreading. all levels of experience welcome. styles taught- jazz afrolatin blues funk rock. free consultations. fees are $15 half hr $25hr. call 215 877 4627. serious responses please.

Business Opportunity AAA SCHOOL OF TRUCKING INC

4 WEEK CDL A & B & REFRESHER COURSES. 2-on1 Training & In-House CDL Testing. Serving PA since 1997. Small classes & flexible scheduling, convenient Philly location. Employment, funding, financing opportunities. (267) 324 - 5957. 442 e. Girard Ave. AAASCHOOLOFTRUCKING. COM BUSINESS PARTNERS WANTED

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Most Unique Home Business On The Planet. Change Your Life, Change The World. Feel GREAT about what you do.Visit www.GiveHopeAndPossibilities.com for more information.

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Adorable, lovable fl uffballs waiting to cheer your house and home. Family raised with T.L.C. and socialized with children. Ready May 31 for a good home. Born April 5. All shots and dewormer are up to date. Come with a health record and guarantee. Delivery to your doorstep and shipping is available. Will accept cash/Visa/Mastercard/Discover. For contact information regarding these adorable little furballs please see our website, www.LancasterPuppies.com BEST ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS

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puppies are akc registered and potty trained.updated in all their health papers and mellow with good temperaments.home raised and excellent with kids.contact for more information and pictures GPS TRACKER (RENTALS)

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Health Services CERTIFIED MT WANTED CAPEMAY

Certified Massage Therapist wanted in Cape May. Part-Time FRI, SAT & MON. EXP. Preferred Please call 609-465-4200 for more information.

COMMUNTIY ACUPUNCTURIST

Wellness Studio in Cape May, NJ looking for an EXP. Acupuncturist to start/run community acupuncture clinic at the wellness studio.

Call 609-465-4200 for more info. Must have NJ Acupuncture License

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jobs

Help Wanted – Regional DRIVERS:

Drivers- Highway Transport Chemical. Now Hiring for Regional Runs. Driver with the Elite-Tanker Freight. Limited positions Available! Great Pay & Benefits, Pd. Orientation, Assigned Trucks, Pd. Fuel Card, PrePass. Must Have: TWIC Card, CDL-A w/Tanker & Hazmat End. 18mo Current TT Exp. HIGHWAY TRANSPORT CHEMICAL. EOE/M/F/V/D Call Tony Today! 800-7644034 www.hytt.com NANNY WANTED:

Family Seeks Nanny for 2 Children. FT Mon. thru Fri. Live Out or Live In. WEEKLY PAY $750. Car Also Available.

Please Email: (linda.mari0@ live.com) if interested, with message containing work experience. *See ad below for details.*

Help Wanted – General AIRLINES ARE HIRING:

Train for high paying Aviation Maintenance Career. FAA approved program. Financial aid if qualified-Housing available. CALL Aviation Institute of Maintenance (888) 834-9715.

GOVERNMENT JOBS

Earn $12 to $48/hr. Full Benefits, Paid Training, Health Care, Admin/Clerical, Construction, Law Enforcement, Finance, Public Relations, Park Service & More. Call 7 days. 1-800-858-0701.

HELP WANTED

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earn up to $150/day to stand in backgrounds of major film. Experience. not required. CALL NOW! 1-888-664-4621.

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Apartments for Rent ART MUSEUM

Sunny 4 rooms, yard, basement, central air, hardwood floors $700’s LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400 SOCIETY HILL APARTMENT

$1,500, 3xx Delancey, garden, fireplace, cathedral ceiling, georgian pine floor, all appliances, washer/dryer, cable.

SOUTH PHILADELPHIA

2 bedroom duplex! Bring pets!

No credit check! $500’s LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400

Studio/ Efficiency 15TH/SPRUCE

Beautiful Art Deco High-rise Studio Apt, Desk Attendant, HW Flrs, Updated Kitchen, Onsite Laundry, Intercom Entry, Amazing Location! $960/Mo. 877-856-2947. Lic #219789.

9TH/PINE

Spacious Studio in Charming Brownstone, Walk to PA Hospital in Seconds, Intercom System, HW Flrs, Hi Ceilings, Modern Kitchen. Avail Aug. $750/mo. 877-856-2947. #216245

One Bedroom 15TH/SPRUCE

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Huge 1Bdr m in Beautiful Brownstone, Large Rooms, Abundant Closet Space, Modern Kitchen, Walk-In Cedar Closet, Laundry, Intercom Entry. Avail July. $925/Mo. 877856-2947. lic# 380139 ADORABLE 1 BEDROOM!

Homes for Sale

Adorable 1 bedroom apartment has hardwood floors, C/A, W/D, D/W and large closets. Spacious living/dining area and tiled bathroom. Pet friendly. Available 215-9257500 ext 213.

HOMES FOR SALE

CENTER CITY

FORECLOSED HOME AUCTION 520+ NE Homes/Auction: 6/24. Open House: June 12, 13 & 19. REDC/View Full Listings: www.Auction.com RE BrKr SB065259.

HUGE EAST FALLS COLONIAL

5 brs 3+baths, Huge double lot, $649,500 www.henryave.com, Jon Christopher Cell 267-342-1856, Citizens Premier Real Estate O 215396-0500 x3539

Open Houses NE PHILLY MVE IN COND

1532 McKinley St. will be Open for your viewing pleasure this Sunday the 6th of June from 2-4PM http:// w w w. 1 5 3 2 M c K i n l e y S t .

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1234 Disston St. will be Open for your viewing pleasure this Sunday the 6 t h o f Ju n e f r o m 2-4PM http://www.1234DisstonSt. View24Hours.com Call Brian w/questions at 215317-0082

UNIVERSITY CITY

No credit check! 1 bedroom apartment, negotiable lease!

Pets ok $500 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400 WEST PHILADELPHIA ROWHOUSE

One bedroom available for rent $100/wk. Fresh paint, cleaned carpet. Will have to get own phone line. Cable also available @ additional cost.

Will have access to full kitchen and bathroom. Need 2wks upfront to cover 1st wk & last wk.

Pls call 215-495-9527.

Two Bedrooms

1.5Bath, in South Philly.

15XX S.19th St. Washer/ Dryer, Backyard. $750/Month plus utilities. First/Last/1 month security to move in. $45 Credit Check fee. Pets Ok with addt’l security. Avail 7/15/10 Possibly sooner.

Contact Channell 267-4807116.

CARROLL PARK

OVERBROOK

COBBS CREEK

OXFORD CIRCLE

AVENUE OF THE ARTS: PENTHOUSE AVAIL!

COBBS CREEK

One of a kind spacious bilevel penthouse in historic Art Deco High-Rise, 3bdrms/ 3 Full Baths/ 2 half baths, 4 Lrg Terraces w/Amazing City Views, Entertainment Rm w/ Wet Bar, New Kitch w/ Granite Countertops, W/D, CA, Vaulted Ceilings, HW Flrs.

Avail Sept. $4300/Mo. 877856-2947. Lic #219789.

NORTHERN LIBERTIES

Lease purchase! 3 bedroom, 2 story, pets ok $1200’s LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400 NORTHERN LIBERTIES

BREWERYTOWN

New kitchen! 3 bedroom 2 bath with security system! $700’s LOCATORS INC 215922-3400

Three+ Bedrooms

BREWERYTOWN

OVERBOOK

3 BDR HOUSE FOR RENT

Spacious 3BDR House

No credit check! 3 bedroom 2 story, pets $675 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400

Near park! 3 bedroom house, yard, patio, pets ok! $650 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400

Have pets? Section 8? 3 bedroom, hardwood floors, washer/dryer $800 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400 Pets welcomed in this 3 bedroom single! Garage, patio $900’s LOCATORS INC 215922-3400 PASSYUNK

Modern large 3 bedroom house, great location! Yard, basement, $850 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400 PENNYPACK PARK

Do you have pets? 3 bedroom, 2 baths, yard, patio $850 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400 PORT RICHMOND

Have pets? 3 bedroom house, no credit check! Yard $650 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400 RITTENHOUSE SQUARE

Enormous 3bdrm w/ 2 Full Baths in Beautiful Historic Brownstone, Full Size Washer/ Dryer in Apt, HW Flrs, 2 Decorative Fireplaces, Hi Ceilings, Newly Remodeled Kitchen w/ Granite Countertop, Separate

NANNY WANTED Family Seeks Nanny for 2 Children. Full Time Monday through Friday. Live Out or Live In. Must have Related Experience, Excellent References, Speak English, Love Children, AND have the Patience, Kindness, and Energy required to care for them!

WEEKLY PAY $750. Car Also Available. Please Email: (linda.mari0@live.com) if interested, with message containing work experience.

HELP WANTED:

Seeking Kitchen Chef or Helper, and Sushi Chef.

Call (215) 432-4695, between 9am and 9pm to apply.

We offer great health and dental benefits, 401K, Life Insurance, 2 weeks vacation, personal days, uniform maintenance, meals and great opportunities for growth!

CURRENT OPEN POSITIONS:

Have pets? 1 bedroom, 1st floor, private entrance! Patio $600 LOCATORS INC 215922-3400 NORTHERN LIBERTIES

Renovated in 2006, 1 bedroom, 1 bath apartment for rent. Hardwood floors throughout, washer/dryer access and AC units. Off street parking.

Small pets ok. $800/month.

Available 7/1. Call Jason at 215-327-2217.

OVERBROOK

Victorian 1 bedroom apartment, bring pets! No credit check! 500’s LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400

(NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE) Job Hotline: 215-231-7263 Apply Mondays: 2:30 P.M. – 5:30 P.M. Fax: (215) 231-7308

RITTENHOUSE SQUARE

Lrg 1Bdrm in Beautiful Brownstone seconds to the Square, NEW Kitchen w/ Breakfast Bar, New Bathrm, HW Flrs, Hi Ceilings, A/C, Intercom

No credit check! 3 bedroom, 2 story house, all new! Yard $700’s LOCATORS INC 215922-3400

No credit check! 2 bedroom, private entrance! No security deposit! $800 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400

COBBS CREEK

Duplex! 1 bedroom apartment, eat in kitchen, great setting $550 LOCATORS INC 215922-3400

All new! 3 bedroom house, no credit check! Yard $700’s LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400

Renovated in 2006, sunny 3 bedroom, 1 bath apartment for rent. Hardwood floors throughout, washer/dryer access and AC units. Off street parking.

Small pets ok. $1890/month.

Available 8/1. Call Jason at 215-327-2217.

BELLA VISTA

No credit check! 1 bedroom with washer/dryer, air, hardwood floors $600 LOCATORS INC 215-922-3400

OVERBROOK PARK

Rehabbed 3 bedroom, 2 story house, patio, storage $800 LOCATORS INC 215922-3400

E-mail:phihr@loewshotels.com 1200 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107 AA/EOE – M/F/D/V

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Extra Income! Assembling CD cases from Home! No Experience Necessary! Call our Live Operators Now! 1-800-4057619 Ext. 2450 http://www. easywork-greatpay.com.

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