Quiz time!

Why is the LOVE Park fountain green?

1. To commemorate Earth Day by showing Philadelphians how much we pollute
   
2. Its green for "Go", as in "Go For It!", the marketing slogan for the 2008 Phillies. It narrowly beat out two of my submissions to the Fightin's, which were: "Fucking Go For It" and "Hurray Phillies!"
3. To symbolize the blood of innocent Iraqis on our hands
4. Cute ploy for our attention by the Eagles, who are cranky because the Sixers, Flyers and Phillies are all winning and thus no one is paying attention to the draft this year.
5. Ecto Cooler is making a comeback
   

Correct answer: fuck this quiz, I just got thirsty for Hi-C

Teddy Bear with Brass Balls

Unless you live in another area or you're living under a rock, you've probably heard quite a bit about the guy that shot and killed Philadelphia police officer Chuck Cassidy during a botched armed robbery last Tuesday. His name, they found out last week, is John Lewis, and they found him in a homeless shelter in Miami this morning.

I wouldn't have written anything about this, save for the revelation that Lewis was in the city as recently as Friday. With the largest police manhunt in Philadelphia history looking for him. Where was he before he hopped a bus for sunny Florida? Oh, hanging out in the Criminal Justice Center.

Wait, what? The Criminal Justice Center located two blocks away from LOVE Park? The same LOVE Park where Matt and I spent our lunch hour watching every politician in the city rain fire and brimstone down on this guy, imploring him to surrender himself to police. In what was supposed to have been an election rally, they instead spoke for roughly an hour about the shooting, the manhunt, and the level of violence in the city of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, every cop is combing the area, taking the wrong people into custody, harassing potential suspects three or four times a day, all while Lewis was hanging out picking his nose in the Criminal Justice Center down the street. Every description I've read about this guy in the newspaper and online has been that he's a big teddy bear - which means that either he has split personalities and one of them is this hard-ass killer that few people have met before last week, or else he's some super law-abiding citizen that shows up for his court dates even when everyone in the courthouse is out to arrest him.

Of course, that's not as ironic as this part: the commissioner of the Miami-Dade police department is former Philly commish and crime crusher John Timoney. His mug is on Philly.com now as his department looks quite good compared to that of current Philly P.D. Commissioner Sylvester Johnson's. Philadelphia cops didn't even know Lewis was on the bus to Miami until he was already halfway down the Eastern seaboard - and yet, Timoney's boys had the cuffs on Lewis within 48 hours of his arrival (yes, they were tipped by an employee at the shelter, but still.) A lot of people would like to see Timoney take his old job back here when Nutter takes office, and I can see that happening unless John is too attached to that warm weather to come back up north in January. Whatever the case, it's probably not good that a "teddy bear" like John Lewis was able to elude the largest manhunt ever administered by the Philadelphia Police Department last week, and one hopes that some sweeping changes will take place if they have a prayer of dealing with the crime problem around here in the near future.

Stu Bykofsky must be an attention whore

In case you haven't seen this yet, yesterday Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky wrote this:

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

America's collective response: "Go fuck yourself, Stu!"

Reactions:
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I just can't imagine a scenario in which both Stu and his editors at the Daily News thought this topic might be appropriate. The premise is so aggressively stupid that I can only come up with one reason for it, and that's that Stu Bykofsky must be an attention whore. The headline for the story might as well have read "I'm an asshole that wants innocent Americans to die! Digg this!"

I'm continually amazed by people that write and say stuff like this, seemingly without a single thought as to what people's reactions might be. They just throw it out there, consequences be damned.

Radio geek links

If you're a radio geek like myself, there are a few crucial links you ought to have stashed away in your special bookmarks folder titled "Nerd Alert!" It's how I stay so up-to-date on current events in the radio industry, and it's also how I got this hot ass.

First, of course, is FMQB. I first discovered this site the morning Jamie called me in a panic early one morning in February 2005 to tell me that Y-100 was going to flip formats that day and that she had been maced and drug out of the studio by Radio One riot police along with the rest of the interns. I read updates on that site for the rest of the day and have been hooked on it for industry news ever since. One of their feature articles today, FCC Opens Commenting On XM/Sirius Merger, deals with a topic we've touched on here at Open All Night a couple of times, and is worth checking out.

The second link was relayed to me by one Dany Sloan and is called Arcane Radio Trivia. It can be a bit dry at times but for the most part it's filled with interesting, uh, trivia. What did you expect?

The last link is one I found while trolling around the internet looking for dirt on a former employer that fired me some years ago (not obsessing, I swear - just bored). The search was sparked by a link Bob sent me regarding a station I've applied for work with on more than one occasion and it ultimately led me to this message board: Radio-info.com. Here is the Philadelphia sub-forum, where people call each other names, geeks with delusions of grandeur claim to have inside information, and radio snobs quietly peck at each and every change or rumored change in the #7 market. It is here that I have delightedly taken to trolling the folks that claim that the Kidd Chris show is the zenith of talk radio, or that contestant callers on Power 99 are to blame for the skyrocketing murder rate in Philadelphia. (It's pronounced "Sep-tem-BER" not "Sep-tem-BAH"! If those black folks would only talk right, we might see an end to the violence around here! )

Speaking of racism and radio, check out this commercial for WHIT - Power 102FM if you haven't already.



Link - [FMQB]
Link - [Arcane Radio Trivia]
Link - [Radio-info.com]

A Scout Is Straight

(Note: the picture above is of Douglas B. Smith, a former National executive now serving an eight-year prison sentence for peddling kiddie porn on the Internet. It's kind of irrelevant to what's written below, but the "scumbag" title sums up my feelings appropriately, so it's staying.)

A long-running tiff between the Boy Scouts of America and the City of Philadelphia, two dysfunctional, time-honored institutions I hold dear, is coming to an end soon. And it looks like the Scouts are going to be losing out.

Good.

The long and the short of it is this: the city has been extremely kind to the Scouts. Since 1928, they've allowed the residents of the Council building at 22nd and Winter Streets to hole up there essentially for free. Cradle of Liberty Council has been paying $1 a month lease to Philadelphia hearkening back to the Philadelphia Area Council era - the good old days, when they could do all the atheist-hatin' and fag-bashing they cared to. Last night, City Council came out of nowhere to vote an end to that golden age:

The long-simmering dispute over whether the Boy Scouts of America's Cradle of Liberty Council must publicly affirm it will not discriminate against openly gay people - or pay fair-market rent for the city-owned Logan Square land on which their landmark headquarters is located - boiled over anew yesterday as City Council authorized the city to end the lease.

Basically, Philadelphia said to the Scouts last year that they'd better fucking cut it out or they'd be out on their asses. And, to their credit, Cradle of Liberty council tried. They had a non-discrimination policy in place as recently as 2003, but BSA National would have none of that. Essentially, their right to keep the queers out is protected under the First Amendment. Irving, Texas called up Cradle of Liberty and told them to get rid of the policy ASAP, as it goes against the backwater "morals and val-yoos" of the grand ole' BSA.

In theory, the Boy Scouts elects not to include atheists or homosexuals in their program, as the Scout Law states - "A Scout is Reverent" and everybody knows that atheism and homosexuality are as irreverent as it gets. In practice, this would probably fly if 99% of the troops, crews, ships, and Cub Scout Packs in the rest of the country weren't chartered to various Christian institutions that are notoriously strict themselves regarding the whole intolerance schtick. If the Scouts were to suddenly do an about-face on National policy and begin to include these groups, you'd bet your sweet ass there would be a lot of local groups without a place to hold their weekly meetings.

Thus, here we are in the 21st century, (an era when, in my estimation, we would have a large majority of Scouts and Scouters in support of a national policy change) and the BSA is sticking to their no-gays rule as if it's one of the foundations of the organization or something. In doing so, they're not only alienating scores of young gents from taking part in what is otherwise a great program, and they're not just making bigotry acceptable to thousands of young, impressionable minds: they're making themselves increasingly irrelevant for it.

There's a bumper-sticker that reads "America is returning to the values that Scouting never left" that truly shows how out-of-touch the organization is becoming by clinging to memories of the Scouting hey-day. By doggedly defending these policies, they believe they're protecting the integrity of the organization, when in reality it's that failure to adapt that is responsible for falling membership, participation, and, let's face it - respect. The City of Philadelphia is well within bounds by telling Cradle of Liberty to get with it or get the fuck out of our building - and unfortunately, they'll either end up paying what everyone else pays to rent in the City or they'll find another place to warp young minds. It seems quite apparent now that although the individual council unit (one of the largest and most influential councils in the country) is willing to make the change, the national organization would pull the rug out from under them in such a fashion.

Nothing's going to change right now, and the Boy Scouts of America will whoop and holler about the great injustices done to it while failing to recognize the irony in that they're doing greater injustices to the gays and atheists they're shutting out in the process. They'll pay more money to stay at 22nd and Winter when they can least afford it, and Jay Leno will make some crack about how everyone in the scouts is already gay.

I've spoken to a lot of scouts, former scouts, and leaders about the subject. I've spoken to folks from all over the Mid-Atlantic region in person, and to scouts from all over the world online. The reactions I've received are mostly supportive of change, which makes the discussion even more frustrating to keep having. The consensus on the topic has been pretty unanimous: if Scouting doesn't want to change an unjust, exclusionary policy, fuck 'em. They deserve what they get.

Link via [Philly.com]

Shut up about the horse

When it comes to horses, I make my opinion known. I don't like them. They are large, they are stinky, and they suck at jumping over tiny fences. A horse was responsible for putting Christopher Reeves in a wheelchair. Let's face it -- they are monsters. Graceful, majestic monsters.

Now, the only thing I dislike more than a horse is a horse that gets large amounts of publicity to the point that it's treated like a human being. Barbaro was one such horse. For a while there, it was quite easy to mix up Barbaro with David Koresh (pre-Waco siege) due to the overwhelming amount of people claiming this horse as their personal savior. It was really good at running around in a loop, it beat some other horses, it broke it's ankle, and suddenly the animal becomes front page news like it just brought peace to the Middle East. In fact, after recovering from his surgery a little over a year ago, Barbaro was overheard by the scientist people that operated on him saying that he was bigger than Jesus Christ. Yessir, I hate this horse in particular more than other regular horses. And I know I'm not the only one.

So during one of my neurotic, thrice-daily check-ups on Philly.com, I found this:


Your "beloved" Barbaro? Oh please, lady. I may not like horses, but I agree with people who do like horses: if you truly care for a horse, you won't race 'em. It's that simple -- horses that race other horses around a loop too much end up making millions of dollars for their owners but end up with a lifespan equivalent to that of a fruit fly. If Barbaro was truly "their beloved", they would've let it sit around the house and watch TV all day, not raced him until his legs shattered into bone dust.

No, Barbaro was beloved because he was worth more than all the veterinarians that operated on him, combined. That's why they kept him alive for eight months longer than they should have, and that's why the Inquirer and Daily News keep revisiting this ridiculous story each time they're given the chance (it's his birthday! it's the anniversary of his win at the Derby! it's the anniversary of the day he broke his ankle! it's the anniversary of the day he broke wind!)

I have no statistical evidence to back this up, but I imagine that a newspaper with Barbaro on the front would sell better than one with Michael Nutter on the front. In fact, to expound on a thought from yesterday, Barbaro could probably beat Chaka Fattah, Milton Street, and Mumia Abu Jamal in a race for mayor (but not in a regular footrace -- everyone knows that Chaka Fattah would whup the shit out of that horse).

Mayor Mumia?

On the way back from Quizno's this afternoon, I stopped to gawk at the Free Mumia protest that was blocking the intersection at 15th and JFK in front of City Hall. I'm guessing there were about 150 people crowding around with signs, t-shirts, banners, and megaphones. I'm always game to sit and watch the drama that always unfolds when people decide this to be their preferred method of expressing opinions, so I found a bench and ate my delicious toasted sub right there. It was one of my more memorable lunch hours since I started working in Center City many months ago.

The thought occurred to me on the way back to my cubicle, then, that Chaka Fattah organizers had tried to block that same intersection with a protest on Monday afternoon and, from what I heard, had failed miserably. Back in March, Milton Street held a rally there with probably the same intentions, as he had said that he would not run for mayor unless 5,000 people showed up -- and that failed spectacularly as well. WHICH MEANS: if Mumia Abu Jamal were in a race against either Chaka Fattah or Milton Street for mayor, MUMIA would probably win.

I know it's a joke and most likely untrue (I certainly hope that more people would come out and vote for a guy convicted of unpaid parking tickets before they vote for a guy convicted of shooting a cop) but the thought itself is entertaining. Also entertaining: the "Welcome to Philadelphia" t-shirts that display a silhouette of a Philadelphia P.D. chopper firebombing the MOVE group on Osage Ave.

This fuckin' city.

And now, a humorous chat sequence in the style of the Dugout

TJ: challaahhhh

TJ: guess what we are now

Jiye: challllah

Jiye: gbuds?

TJ: wait for it....

TJ: NUTTER BUDDIES

Jiye: hahahaha




Mix Master Mike Nutter for Mayor - [Philadelphia Weekly]
The Official Chatroom of Major League Baseball - [The Dugout]

Man, I'ma double you up

While on the way to Exton Station this morning, I was listening to this report on KYW: (I know the link says ABC but I couldn't find the story on 1060's website yet)

Detectives tell Action News that someone shot the person near the concourse at 15th and JFK.
Officers found the victim in a stairway at around 2 a.m.
The victim died a short time later at a local hospital. Right now, police are looking for the shooter.
SEPTA officials say, the investigation will not affect the morning commute.

I knew 15th and JFK was the address of the buildings where I work, but either I wasn't really awake or didn't really think twice about it. It hit me when I got off the train and was walking through the Suburban Station underground and heard this exchange:

Homeless Dude who holds the door for people at Dunkin Donuts: "Man, I'm a double you up."

Other dude: (inaudible)

Homeless Dude: "Some guy got killed down here last night, man. Yeah, I was down here when it happened."

Now, I know this might sound callous, but being in Center City and commuting to the 'burbs each day is a little like living in a bubble within the City of Philadelphia. When you hear about "the killin's" as Milton Street put it so eloquently a couple weeks ago, it's on the radio, it's on TV, it's in the newspapers, but it's not a common topic of conversation outside your workplace. In fact, it still seems like it's happening in another area. Hell, look at this map from the Inquirer that maps the incidents in the city from 2006. Up until now, these shootings HAVE been happening somewhere else -- there are dozens of blocks that make up that blank area that represents where I've been going to work every day for the past six months.

But today, some dude was shot and killed in a spot I walk through every day, six hours before I walked through there. And while it might still seem to be some sort of surreal, alien issue to me that I only hear about on the news, to the folks who can't just hop on a train out of town every day at 5PM it's a fact of life.

T. Milton Street: The "T" stands for "Tirade"

I came back from Milton Street's "rally" (read: small get-together) in front of City Hall about an hour ago. I still have no coherent words or thoughts from what I saw there.



For those of you who refuse to follow politics (or maybe just aren't interested in Philly politics), T. Milton Street is Mayor John Street's crazy older brother. He's decided that he's going to run for mayor in a race that already has like a dozen candidates in it already. He's also decided that he's going to say and do all the comically insensitive and outlandish things that politicians AVOID doing if they're going to run for public office. This guy has been in the limelight of the mayor's race for maybe two weeks now, and already he's calling opponents "Watermelon Man", gotten arrested for years-old parking ticket violations, and the list goes on and on. I could list all of his wacky missteps, but instead I'll just let you peruse the archives of the world's preeminent Milton Street analyst / historian, D-Mac over at PhillyWillDo.

Some choice statistics from today's event, courtesy of D-Mac:

2: Number of members of the reggae band that was supposed to perform that were killed this morning, according Milton Street
1: Number of hecklers who yelled "You're going to jail, Milton"
1: Times Milton Street returned fire against the "white people heckling me over there"

To call this rally a circus would be accurate, except for the fact that people usually come out to see the circus by the thousands. And, even though he promised he wouldn't run unless 5,000 people came out to this event, Street of course went back on that when it was clear that no more than 200 curious onlookers and a couple of news helicopters were going to make it today. He said God was telling him to continue on, likening his struggle to that of Jesus' toil in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. This, of course, was AFTER he drug a casket out onto the stage and launched into song in the middle of his rambling, hour-long speech.

You're sure to see a replay tonight on TV, as every media outlet in town was there gathering up the precious footage to chuckle at on the evening news. Even WIP, the sports-talk station, was there asking people what they thought about the whole thing. It's good for a laugh, if nothing else, and you might even see some B-roll with me in the back of the crowd, looking dumbfounded.

Links and pictures via [Philly Will Do]

Edit: Forgot to mention that I saw the Inquirer's Peter Mucha there doing his "Live From..." blog. Here are the entries (typically short and unfiltered) he posted while walking through the crowd with his laptop caddy attached to his torso: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

"Gnarliest Dudes You'll Ever Meet" base jump off the Comcast Tower

I felt compelled to post this after seeing it on Philly Will Do. I've been watching this building go up, a little at a time, for the past six months. On Sunday, these guys parachuted out of the unfinished tower from 20 floors up.

That's badass.

Sixers going back to the red unis

No word on when they're going back to not sucking.

Honestly, why the blue triangle on the shorts? What's with the white piping? Can't you just have a blue stripe down the side of the jersey and the shorts so it looks like something normal:



Link via [Uni Watch]

I am doing this as hard as I can

So by now, you've probably heard or read about the Great Boston Bomb Scare of 2007 -- the guerilla marketing of Adult Swim's Aqua Teen Hunger Force mistaken for explosive devices. They're being ordered to take them all down, but that could be a little time-consuming and difficult, since the two guys who put them up are being arraigned this morning.

Apparently, there were approximately 56 of these devices put up in the City of Philadelphia recently. Now, here's the rub: with all the hype, people are putting them up on eBay and netting in excess of $500 per bomb-like device.

So, in the name of public service, I am currently soliciting information on the whereabouts of the remaining devices so that I may remove them and calm the hysterics (aka sell them on the internet at a 1000% profit).