December 2007 Archives

IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN Kenn Kweder live you'll have you last chance of 2007 on New Year's Eve at the Tin Angel on 20 S. Street in Old City. Kweder (left) and guitar virtuoso Greg Davis (right) are the two feel-good front men of Kenn Kweder And The Men From W.A.W.A. I say "feel good" because what else can you say about a lead singer who refers to his audience -- affectionately -- as "Motherfuckers!" And a Kweder audience loves to give it right back.

A LOT CAN CHANGE IN A YEAR. Then again, a year can go by and it seems like nothing has changed. The French, who have a knack for saying unremarkable things ("I don't know what") that sound remarkable ("Je ne sais quoi") in a foreign language, have an expression, "Plus ca change. . " that means, "The more things change. . . the more they remain the same." Or in the immortal words of Gilda Radner's Saturday Night Live (before-it-didn't-suck) character, RoseannE Rosanadanna, "It's always sumpthin'"

YEARS AGO MY CITY EDITOR walked over to my desk in the Inquirer newsroom with a letter in her hand and a look on her face. "What do you think?" she said, handing me the letter. "Is this for real?" I asked. There was a return address on the envelope and a listed phone number, so I called to see if this letter could possibly have been written by a child in 1988.

ALYCIA LANE IS SCREWED no matter how this thing plays out. There's no putting this story back in the box. Either the KYW-TV anchor did or did not strike a New York cop. Either she did or did not call said cop a "fucking dyke" or a "dyke bitch" or both or neither. It doesn't matter. The truth won't save Alycia Lane, whatever the truth may be. She is the quintessential example of damaged goods in a business where nine out of ten female reporters are attractive and the ones who are most attractive seem to end up in front of the camera. Alycia Lane is a beautiful woman I couldn't pick out in a beautiful crowd of TV lookalikes. She is an empty bra in a world of empty suits.

TRUE LIFE CONVERSATION between a bartender and her customer:

SARAH: (Not that Sara) "Oh I almost forgot. Here's an invitation to our Christmas party."

CLARK: (Reading aloud the first five words of the invitation.) "'Christmas Eve at the Eisensteins.'" (Pause). Sarah, I believe this may be the first invitation in the history of mankind the begins, 'Christmas Eve at the Eisensteins.'"

SARAH: "No, that's this year's."

CLARK: Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, I'm just saying. . . '

SYMPHONY HOUSE IS THE TALLEST building on Broad Street south of Pine Street. If you are travelling north on Broad from South Philadelphia, the 31 story-condominium tower is the first Center City skyscraper you notice. Although it seemed like construction on the project took forever, it wasn't until it opened last month that the buildings true impact on the skyline was noticable. That's when the night lights were turned on. Suddenly, from certain perspectives, it seems as if Center City had taken a giant step southward.

CONTRARY TO RECENT REALITY, the sun does shine in Philadelphia in December. As recently as Dec. 4 this was the brilliant dawn over Belmont Plateau looking down on Center City. Of course it clouded over within hours to become a uniformly gray day which we've become accustomed to since our unbelievably long and beautiful autumn finally gave up the ghost.

HERE'S A THOUGHT that bears repeating. Without the death penalty, would the world still care about what happened in Center City Philadelphia on Dec. 9, 1981? Because of capital punishment the name Mumia Abu-Jamal is more frequently associated with Martin Luther King than James Earl Ray.

YOU'VE GOT TO ADMIT that these African scam artists are getting funnier and funner. Get a load of the email I just got:

ADMIT IT. YOU THOUGHT this fall would never end. I mean, what do you call an autumn that doesn't begin until November. This is my Autumn Runs Out Of Time photo I took on the second day of December on 13th Street near Cypress. What looks like snow is actually ging-ko. Leaves. I think. They're ginkho, right?

At any rate, this is what the ground looked like just a few days ago. All ginkhoed up!

IT WILL BE 26 YEARS SUNDAY since the most famous murder of a police officer in Philadelphia history, and it's probably fair to say that the name Daniel Faulkner who was shot to death more than a quarter of a century ago, is more familiar to Philadelphians than the name of Officer Chuck Cassidy, she was shot and killed in the line of duty last month. It's doubtful that 10, 15 or 20 years from now that the the name of Cassidy's admitted killer, John Lewis, will be part of this city's institutional memory, but the same is not true of Mumia Abu Jamal, whose name hovers over Philadelphia like smog that won't go away.