According to Philly Deals, Comcast will be seeing its day in court in the form of an antitrust trial based off of a nine year old complaint.
Federal Judge John R. Padova Jr. ruled that the case could go to trial based off of evidence from which, “a jury could find that Comcast had monopoly power” by buying up competetitors, that Comcast “acted with predation” by targeting customers of RCN with special discounts in the mission to drive competitor RCN out of the market, and that Comcast’s actions stopped RCN from expanding. The plaintiffs in the case claim $875 million in overcharges by Comcast due to lack of competition. All of that is no good, and yet this is still fine.
Bruce Springsteen fansite Backstreets announced dates for the stadium-leg of his world tour this morning, and the boss will be taking the stage at Citizens Bank Park in September. The show will take place Sunday, September 2nd, at CBP, before the boss moves on to Wrigley Field, Nationals Park, and three dates at MetLife Stadium. Tickets go on sale a week from tomorrow.
This sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, which struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic in what is probably the most famous shipwreck of all time. Titanic was a giant in its time (though our own resident of the Delaware, the SS United States, is over 100 feet longer), and its claim to be “virtually unsinkable” has lived in infamy since the sinking of the ship. Of the 2,224 on board, multiple passengers had connections to Philadelphia:
According to The New York Times, Rush Limbaugh‘s radio show will soon be leaving WPHT 1210 and his time slot will be filled by Michael Smerconish, interviewer extraordinaire. But alas, whackos will not be completely without their hero: Limbaugh’s show will be moving to WKDN, a currently Christian-themed station that will be making the switch to news-talk soon. On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t have even said anything and just hoped no one would find Rush’s show on the airwaves.
We dug into this earlier today, but now we have OFFICIAL WORD. According to a press release, “Bart Blatstein, President and CEO of Tower Development, announced that he intends to compete for the final Pennsylvania casino license and use it to build a “destination entertainment center” at the site that includes the Inquirer building at Broad St. and Callowhill St.” Blatstein is also quoted saying the project will have, “a more significant, positive impact on our city than anything we’ve seen in the last 50 years,” which is pretty much the definition of hyperbole.
The 200-room hotel is planned for the Inky building itself, while the casino will reside to the west of it. The complex will contain the casino, hotel, and a fuck-ton of parking; along with theaters, shopping, concerts, spa service, and … uh … “sporting events.” Can we be the first to suggest a Byko-themed slot machine, where three bicycles across wins the jackpot?
We know we’re not exactly your go-to spot for sports coverage, and we’re far from experts, but when opposing fans come out to a playoff game dressed up in their best “furry” gear, something has to be said.
After walking quote machine Ilya Bryzgalov said the only thing he feared was,”The bear in the forest,” some Penguins fans (about 70 apparently) came to Game 1 dressed in full-on furry bear costumes. And not even semi-realistic bear outfits, we mean ones that look like they belong at a child’s birthday party (or in the box in the bottom of your closet even your closest friends don’t know about).
So this brings the number things we know to be true about the Penguins to three: We have a strong urge from our cores to hate Sidney Crosby, Malkin sounds like Andre the Giant, and Pens fans are into some freaky shit.
Tongues are wagging today at Broad & Whatever as the rumor mill churns a fine, frothy mixture of speculation foam that goes something like this: The Inky building may be/could be/won’t be/will be turned into a slots parlor and/or hotel by its new owner, Bart Blatstein. For the record, this is a rumor we’ve been hearing for a while, but in February, Blatstein flat-out denied that he’d applied for a gaming license there when we asked him about it directly. There may or may not be a story in either one of the papers about this soon, and we’ve also reached out to Blatstein once again for a comment. Either way, Inky/DN/Philly.com peoples: GET BACK TO WORK. IT’S LATER THAN YOU THINK.
UPDATE: WOW. So much for that denial. According to Newsworks, the all-new Piazzadelphia Gameshow Palace® could feature:
· Will front on Callowhill Street · Will consist of of 2,000 parking spaces, a 200-room hotel and 40,000 square feet of shops · Will have six restaurants, a concert hall, event facilities, a spa and fitness center · The casino will be 100,000 square feet
Hey, do you have tickets to see the Phillies face the Boston Red Sox on May 19th? If you do, you will see the final appearance of Pat Burrell, as he throws out the first pitch and officially retires from Major League Baseball as a Phillie. Burrell will sign a one-day contract with the team to make it official.
It is time for our annual plea to every Smart, Self-Respecting Philly Gay out there: CAN’T YOU PEOPLE DO SOMETHING TO STOP THE MR. GAY PHILADELPHIA COMPETITION? For all the same reasons we ask each year, but also this new one: The people behind this are so fucking lazy in their brains that THEY USED THE SAME FLYER TWO YEARS IN A ROW. This year’s:
Even if you don’t care about off-the-rack, boring homosexual identities screaming to the world that this is the mainstream gay male ideal, the fundamental design crimes going on here are just horrendous. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
In which our heroes, Philly’s Toy Soldiers, drive to Austin, TX to play Rachael Ray’s House Party at SXSW (they are nothing if not fearless), see their van poop out its guts, and just decide to have a good time anyway. This track is off the group’s new EP, also called Tell The Teller; the group plays World Cafe Live, downstairs, June 16th. Tickets go on sale Friday.
While it is far from the world’s greatest problem, those gender stickers on SEPTA transpasses can be a real pain for transgender and gender non-conforming Philadelphians. (Especially when some SEPTA drone in a booth or a bus somewhere gets in your face because s/he’s confused about your M- or F-ness.) But after a long campaign to get SEPTA to remove the sticker policy, a group called Riders Against Gender Exclusion (RAGE) is claiming a victory today, saying that SEPTA is now planning to discontinue to the sticker program. Although, in true SEPTA style, SEPTA says they’ll get around to it, oh, say, by 2015. RAGE is still lobbying SEPTA to get rid of the stickers by 2013, but today, they’re celebrating the change overall. “We thank SEPTA for doing the right thing,” said RAGE’s Max Ray. “New fare system delays may be unavoidable, but SEPTA realized that human rights can’t wait. I’m proud of the tremendous amount of work that the transgender community has put into this project and all we’ve accomplished during this campaign.”
UPDATE: As it turns out, RAGE actually won much bigger than reported. In their haste to share the good news, RAGE mistakenly reported the change will take place by 2015, when in reality the change is set to go in motion in the second half of 2013.
We’re not even really suggesting that you even watch this past the part where Sheinelle Jones as is all like, “Why do you start smoking your Sharpie?” We just love us some Mike Jerrick is all.
After banging our heads against the walls for the last few months over how best to let you share and talk about Philebrity posts, a kindly reader tipped us off to the Disqus comment system. And late yesterday, we installed it! And it works! Now, from the comfort of your home or work or whatever environment, you can:
· quickly and easily share posts on Facebook and Twitter · “thumbs up” or (oooooooh) “THUMBS DOWN” posts · comment either the old way or WITH YOUR FACEBOOK PERSONA · and also enjoy threaded discussions within comments
Now, don’t freak out: At the moment, you may not see older comments (all of them, in fact, from yesterday afternoon all the way back), but they should return soon, as we migrate them from the old system to the new one. And we know, we know: Most other sites have had this functionality forever already. And some of you even think that comments themselves are bullshit. But we’ve always thought that you guys are some of the best, most knowledgeable commenters in town, and we love you for it. So please enjoy, and share, and be nice to another. Or as close to nice as you can be to someone like Zombie Larry.
On the topic of renaming neighborhoods, my friend sent me this snippet from an aerial map he was using at work, and pointed out that the space where the Naval Square compound stands is known somewhere, by someone as the “Devil’s Pocket.” Sounds about right.
It is no dream, dude. Unlike, say, Newbold, which is just a complete fabrication made by realtors who assume that nice Midwestern Etsy grups in the house market won’t like the sound of “15th & motherfucking Tasker,” Devil’s Pocket is a very real thing. From the Wikipedia entry on the matter:
Devil’s Pocket is [...] south of Lombard Street, east of 27th Street and north of Washington Avenue,[1] on the western edge of Southwest Center City. Devil’s Pocket is a very small neighborhood of rowhouses tucked near an industrial landscape along the banks of the river. It has historically been heavily Irish-American. The term “Devil’s Pocket”, not commonly used today, is said to have originated with a priest saying the neighborhood kids were so bad they would steal a chain out of the devil’s pocket.
And if you don’t believe Wikipedia, believe the 1990s Philly folk-rock outfit, The Low Road, who had a WXPN hit back in the day with their song, “The Devil’s Pocket.”
After several run-ins with L&I, trouble with the cops about loud music and disorderly conduct, and thousands owed in back taxes, Watusi Pub II (“The Other Bar On 45th and Locust”) is officially slated to close by this summer. Owner Noel Karasanyi alleges racism as the reason for most of the complaints, according to Philly.com. What’s unclear is whether it will re-open again, like it did after the last time it closed.
The First Lady and the Second Lady (Jill Biden) are speaking at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing right now. They’re in town to unveil a nation-wide initiative that will train nurses in the treatment of war veterans’ “invisible wounds.” This is part of the Joining Forces support effort, which marks its one-year anniversary today. According to the White House press release, via NBC Philadelphia:
Nursing leaders [of the 150 organizations involved] have committed to educating current and future nurses on how to recognize and care for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and other combat related issues.”
Look out for Michelle’s appearance on tonight’s episode of The Colbert Report. It’s second-best to what’s happening RIGHT NOW, but since you weren’t invited, it’ll have to do.
As you know, we here at Philebrity try to make a go of the future every day while being unrepentantly in love with the past. And even today, “Buffalo Stance” by Neneh Cherry still feels like the past scaling the walls of the future and we have never, and we will never, get over it. We don’t have to. It’s a living thing. So imagine the joy we felt when we opened the ol’ tips box to find Neneh Cherry covering our very favorite Suicide song, “Dream Baby Dream,” in advance of her first new record in 13 years. And it’s amazing. It put us right back in the main of why music is electric and the feelings it can give you and how weirdly closely connected it is to this thing that we do in how much it motivates us and never really stops giving us things. We love this. And we love you, Neneh. We’re still not over it.
Hide your turntables, and buy a shitty car; cassettes are back again. We investigate why.
There’s a nostlagia-drenched sound quality to audio tape, weak and tinny though it may be. Over e-mail, Lushlife, a.k.a Raj Haldar, a.k.a. Philebrity guest editor, who released last year’s mixtape No More Golden Days as a limited-edition cassette, wrote: “The inherent tape compression that happens when you record to magnetic media like audio tape and VHS is so beautiful. And that’s just how we heard recorded sound before digital became the norm.”
On a practical level, tapes are cheap to make. “There’s really no way to ever make your money back on [a 7”] unless you’re like, you know, War On Drugs,” observed Kyle Costill of BITBY.tv in a recent phone interview. This Friday, BITBY will host a tape release party at Kung Fu Necktie for their latest, Tape Club Volume I. It’s a seasonal compilation tape of eight tracks by eight local bands. To save money and buy cool, Costill snapped up “vintage tapes” off eBay; they’ll be available for purchase inside “vintage Walkmen.”
Tapes can be pushed out relatively quickly, with basic analog recording gear. But some, like Tape Club and NMGD, rely on a science of cross-over technologies, mix-and-matching digital and analog equipment like tape duplicators. Costill describes the hands-on process, orchestrated by Ian Nauroth of the band Faux Slang: “We’re taking an MP3, burning it to CD, using the master CD and an old CD player to dub a tape, and then taking that tape and putting it on a dual tape deck and dubbing those tapes. So we’re like five copies deep by the time we get to the tape.”
Other bands have been approached by labels that specialize in cassette releases. Local indie noise-rockers Pet Milk’s upcoming live release, recorded at WKDU on the last leg of their tour, will come out on Accidental Guest Recordings in June. They’re a label that puts out material deemed too “niche” or “test-run” for LP or 7” and that’s run by one of the founders of Fan Death Records (Leather, Clockcleaner). Burger Records released surf-rock outfit Dry Feet’s 10 Songs By The Band tape last month.
More art-project than artifact, tapes often use repurposed cases, lettering, photos, and other found materials. For 10 Songs, Eddie Austin, longtime friend of Dry Feet singer/guitarist Perry Shall and Philebrity Radio co-host, shot the three band members goofing off in the singer’s West Philly basement, Shall told us. Shall then hand-lettered the cover with distinctive vinyl sticker letters purchased from a crafts store and scanned onto paper.
Finally, a cassette is thing you can hold. It’s hard to get rid of. And it can serve as a keepsake that’s more emotionally powerful than it is playable, according to Pet Milk songwriter/vocalist Herbie Shellenberger: “If you have a tape that has a download code in it, even people who don’t care about the tape, they’ll buy it more [than a download card alone]. I don’t really know why that is.” Haldar has an idea. Asked why he released a limited-edition tape, he quipped, “So I can sell the last ten on eBay if I’m on the dole in twenty years.”
Buckminster Fuller, a man so interesting they named molecules after him, was a systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and (coolest of all) futurist. Fuller inspired what is perhaps Disney’s most famous structural icon. And on top of all of this, he spent the years from 1973-1980 residing in Philadelphia. A man this interesting probably deserves his own film, and thanks to the Kickstarterification of America, some people are trying to make that very film.
The goal is to make a film that combines experimental film, documentary, and live music (including use of Drexel’s magnetic resonator piano). The film’s planned premiere is April 28th at International House Philadelphia, “with subsequent presentations in the USA and Europe later this year and in 2013.” The additional $8,000 the filmmakers are seeking (of which $2,000+ has been raised) will be used to finalize the film and cover travel and accommodations for the guest musicians. And at the smallest donation scale, you can earn yourself a download of the film and music.
According to Philly Deals, Comcast will be seeing its day in court in the form of an antitrust trial based off of a nine year old complaint.
This sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, which struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic in what is probably the most famous shipwreck of all time. Titanic was a giant in its time (though our own resident of the Delaware, the 
While it is far from the world’s greatest problem, those gender stickers on SEPTA transpasses can be a real pain for transgender and gender non-conforming Philadelphians. (Especially when some SEPTA drone in a booth or a bus somewhere gets in your face because s/he’s confused about your M- or F-ness.) But 
After banging our heads against the walls for the last few months over how best to let you share and talk about Philebrity posts, a kindly reader tipped us off to the 
The First Lady and the Second Lady (Jill Biden) are speaking at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing right now. They’re in town to unveil a nation-wide initiative that will train nurses in the treatment of war veterans’ “invisible wounds.” This is part of the Joining Forces support effort, which marks its one-year anniversary today. According to the White House press release, via 
On a practical level, tapes are cheap to make. “There’s really no way to ever make your money back on [a 7”] unless you’re like, you know, War On Drugs,” observed Kyle Costill of BITBY.tv in a recent phone interview. This Friday, BITBY will host a tape release party 
Other bands have been approached by labels that specialize in cassette releases. Local indie noise-rockers 
Buckminster Fuller, a man so interesting 
