· Awesome upshot of the SEPTA strike, which thus far has been about as anti-Good Motherfucking News as you can get: Based on counts conducted by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia yesterday, Day Two of the SEPTA strike saw a 38% increase in bicyclists during rush hour. What! That’s awesome! And there’s more: There was also a 27% increase in the number of women bicycling during the strike. Which means that, even if the math (or armpits) is fuzzy, there is a great likelihood that there are more cute girls on bicycles in the City of Philadelphia now than in any time period since the 1930s. And if there’s a person in the world that doesn’t like a cute girl on bicycle, well, we don’t wanna know them. Hopefully, this will make attendance at this weekend’s Philly Tweed Ride go through the roof. A new day! A new way!

· Good news for artists and the people who feed them: Responding, perhaps, to fears that the recession could put a damper on its fellowships, Pew Fellowships in the Arts has announced that they will continue to award up to 12 fellowships a year of $60,000 each. What’s more, in a break from tradition, Pew will consider applications from originating artists working in any artistic discipline each year. Up until now, if you were an artist wanting to apply for a Pew, you had to wait until the year in the cycle where your discipline came up. No more! Say the Pews: “This change will make it possible for PFA to identify and reward artists of exemplary talent currently working in the region, without waiting for a particular discipline cycle to come around. It also takes into account the fact that many artists work in and across multiple disciplines.” As the t-shirt says, fuck dance, let’s ART!

· And finally, now that baseball is over, you can finally get back to your life now. Tell the truth: You haven’t read a book or watched a movie or listened to a record or went for a walk or drawn a picture or made love or given someone your phone number or done any work in weeks. Let the blessings of autumn be upon you and may your social calendar flourish and here’s welcoming back the life of your mind. THAT IS SOME GOOD GODDAMNED NEWS, PEOPLE!

So there you have it: The world is not totally made of shit. Have you got some good news? If so, send it to tips[at]philebrity[dot]com with “GOOD MOTHERFUCKING NEWS!” in the subject header — we’d love to hear about it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 3:30 pm.