We've all been told to turn our phones either off during class, at the movies or at church. Other places, however, people are just expected to silence their mobiles as common courtesy and proper etiquette. Of course, that doesn't always happen.

Yesterday, a journalist's phone went off and interrupted a LGBTQ rights speech being delivered by Barack Obama. But that wasn't even the worst part abou it — the scribe's ringtone was the quacking of a duck, which prompted everyone, including the President of the United States, to burst out in laughter.

A South Philly resident called 311 to tell the proper authorities that there was a huge stinky pile of garbage at the corner of Wharton and Clarion streets. Some 68 hours later, it was still there. So they decided to make a video of the trash. Note to filmmaker: Shooting in the choppy, ominous style of Dateline — complete with spooky re-enactment-of-the-murder music — was a brilliant decision. However, further reporting would've been nice, since it's pretty obvious one of your neighbors either moved out or started a renovation project and dumped all that crap on a non-trash day. Also, the video's a bit too long. This is the Internet, by the time we get to minute two, we're expecting to see a human hand or a giant rat in there. Otherwise, I dig the video.

Go out and get hammered tonight for a good cause — Conrad Benner from Philthy Blog recently got hit by an SUV while riding his bike on Sixth and Spring Garden streets, and Tattooed Mom's is holding a benefit to raise money for his exorbitant medical bills. (This all went down while he was in the bike lane, no less! Oy. It's hard being a biker in Philly, ain't it?) And, if you need a little something to motivate yourself to attend, there'll be raffles from all sorts of great shops like Print Liberation, Bell's Bikes and Exit Skateshop.

Mon., June 29, 7-10 p.m., $10 donation, Tattooed Mom's, 530 South St., 215-238-9880, myspace.com/tattooed_mom.

Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative has just released a report on the cost of city employee benefits (pension and health care). It's not pretty, particularly when it comes to pensions. Money quote from the press release:

Philadelphia’s city pension fund now has less than half the money it needs to make good on its obligation to past and current city workers. The fund has not been this severely underfunded since 1996, and there is little prospect that the picture will brighten appreciably in the next few years.

Basically, the city has been short-shrifting the pension fund for several years now — pushing the obligation down the road and hoping it becomes someone else's problem. And one of our leadership's solutions to the current budget crisis is to ... short-shrift the pension fund.

If you're relatively young and plan on living in Philly for a while, you can probably start looking forward to a day when you're paying a lot of taxes for services rendered a long time ago.

Last week, a spokesman for D.C. 47, the city's white collar workers union, criticized the timing of the report (before it came out — he had been briefed on some of the contents during the fact-checking process), saying that it coincided too closely with the expiration of the public sector unions' contracts.

This seems crazy to me. Isn't this the exact right time for a report like this, when the greatest number of people are talking/thinking/debating about public employee compensation? Pew is giving the public a sense of the scope of employee benefits. It's up to the union now to make the case that those benefits are warranted, and that the city needs to find a way to pay for them, whether it be by raising taxes or what have you.

whyy.org

This is a little late, but just stumbled across a piece on Heard in the Hall last Wednesday which described Al Schmidt, Republican candidate for City Controller, shadowing Mayor Nutter in Harrisburg and lobbying against the city's proposed tax increase, saying they didn't cut as much as they could have.

Sure, Schmidt is a Republican, and railing against tax increases and government waste is one of those things Republicans do. Sure, he's a long shot for winning the Controller's seat. But still, isn't there something a little untoward about his actively trying to derail the city's budget?

Like it or hate it, Council already passed a budget which raises sales tax and delays payments to the city pension fund, both measures that require approval in Harrisburg.

Should Harrisburg decline to approve those measures — which is what Schmidt seems to be encouraging them to do — the city which he hopes to city-control will be, if you'll pardon the expression, royally screwed.

During budget negotiations, Nutter talked about the dreaded "Plan B." But that plan, which is scary enough, counted on a property tax hike, which is no longer on the table.

So we're actually talking about "Plan C."

I don't know exactly what that would look like, but it would almost certainly mean layoffs, the closing of at least one health center, libraries closing, homeless shelters closing and much, much more.

Schmidt wants to be seen as the responsible guy. But is trying to screw over Philly to make his point the way to do it?

Photo | Michael M. Koehler

Perhaps playing off the massive popularity of our "Riding Dirty" cover story wherein yours truly, photographer Michael M. Koehler, videographer Elan Gepner and Dominic Mercier journeyed down the tidal Schuylkill (read it | watch it), Mayor Nutter yesterday announced a free kayaking program — in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation — that'll go down at the Penn's Landing marina this summer. Details will be forthcoming at tidaltrail.org or delawareriverwaterfrontcorp.com

The official word is that the program is "part of City of Philadelphia's efforts to reconnect
residents to the river, and part of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council's efforts to increase recreation opportunities on the tidal portion of the Delaware River."

Which they can say all they want. We know where they got the awesome idea.

Official release after the jump.

Remember those ladies who set up a spontaneous dance party at the Art Museum? Well, they did. Watch it below:

A week ago we put together a profile Dionte Christmas attempting to answer the basic question, does Dionte Christmas have what it takes to make it in the NBA? Last night we got a hint, and the news wasn't good: one by one 60 players were introduced to the world as professional basketballers and, surprisingly, one by every last one, DC wasn't one of them.

This is bad news for the former Temple star, but it isn't the end of the road just yet. In fact, there is a train of thought suggesting that after the gauranteed money of the first round passes, it is actually better for a prospect not to be drafted at all so that they can pick their situation. In fact, immediately following the draft at least seven teams in touch with Dionte and tried to lure him onto their summer league teams. One of those teams were the hometown 76ers, who called him personally minutes after the draft and let him know that he had a spot if he wanted it.

So will Dionte get a chance to team up with The Damaja and form a Christmas/Holiday backcourt? It’s hardly set in stone. Over the next couple days Christmas and his team will sort through his options and then move onto the next stage of his odyssey – the summer leagues. If he stands out there he’ll have a chance to make a roster. If he doesn’t, he probably won’t. This makes picking a team where he’ll get that chance critically important, and there are no signs he believes the 76ers to be that match (or that he doesn't).

But all of that is a battle for his agents and for tomorrow. Dionte doesn’t “have a clue where [he’s] headed.�

Today, for the first time in more than a month, Christmas is taking a day to rest. Tomorrow? Back to work.

ATJ, where he could end up

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Friday: Swing it back old school to with COMING UP, which deal with late '80s, early '90s nostalgia and artifacts from the era, like CDs. Speaking of out-of-date technology, Ashley John Pigford rocks it hackman-style. Mama guesses you can still get the Most Serene Republic or Telepathe on CD but why do that when you can see them up close and/or personal?

Saturday: Mama's fave movie when she was but a mamacita was called Kansas City Bomber, in which Raquel Welch played an aging roller derby queen who spent most of her time balancing caring for her kids (including Jodie Foster!) and beating the shit out of ladies. Now it's your turn to the see the Liberty Belles make Ms. Welch proud at the East Coast Derby Extravaganza. After all that girl-on-girl action, you'll mos def be hot and bothered so take a dip at the Making Time Pool Party.

Sunday: What's better than boozin'? Boozin' for a a cause! Check out Hops and Cops at Yards Brewing Co. where you can suck down some brews and support the FOP Survivors Fund. Know what goes great with beer. Cheesesteaks. You should eat one this weekend. Or 10. We have some suggestions for you.

1. Waterfront Connection shuttle: Now you can take a round-trip from Independence Hall Philly to the Adventure Aquarium and the Battleship New Jersey and Camden for only $2. Anything, anything, would be better than that post-concert ferry ride to hell. (Inky)

2. Delta Cancels Boston-Philly flights: That's pretty much the whole story. Bad economy, nobody up there can pronounce an R, etc. (Inky)

3. AAA says Fourth of July Traffic Won't Be So Bad: What, somebody got paid to make that prediction?  (Inky)

Wow, talk about a goddamned sad day yesterday, huh? Local shop Print Liberation just started offering this T-shirt this morning, for a mere $16. If only they could make some for the three other legends — Farrah Fawcett, and our two Philly boys Irv Homer and Steven Wells — who passed on yesterday, too.

Two local groups opposed to casinos - Asian Americans United and Casino Free Philadelphia – have teamed up to lease a store front office directly across from the proposed location on the 700 block of Market of the Foxwoods casino.

They celebrated the new space yesterday by hosting . . . a circus. The "Anti-Casino Circus" included such acts as the "amazing two-faced mayor," – a reference to mayor Nutter's complete 180 with regard to his own stance on casinos – and and "Chi-Chi the casino contortionist," – presumably a reference to Councilman Dicicco and the "contortions" of local ordinances he's proposed to allow Foxwoods to move in.

Isaiah

"Chichi" - or something like that - the amazing Council contortionist

Isaiah

Is Dail News reporter Chris Brennan trying to stick a pencil in "The two-faced Mayor's Ear?"

The film is about the Ma'an News Network, "the only major independent news source in the Palestinian territories." I saw some rough footage maybe a year ago and I remember it rendering everyday life in the territories with a greater degree of nuance and intimacy than anything I was accustomed to seeing.

Anyway, trailer here. It's playing tonight at the Yards Brewery at 10:30 and tomorrow at the Piazza at 1:40.

Last night, 10 minutes into an onstage presentation at Eastern University, the infamously opinionated radio host, ‘Evil’ Irv Homer died from a sudden heart attack. Whether you agreed with him or not, and there are plenty of people on both sides, no one could say that he wasn’t true to himself. The 'Evil' moniker was bestowed upon Homer for his general hardassery and his relished position as devil's advocate.

A World War II veteran-come-crop duster-come-bar owner who so frequently called into talk radio, he got his own show, initially on WXUR, then WWDB and the odd spot on WPHT. Homer broadcast up until the day that he died. You can listen to archived material on his website, irvhomer.com. Even at 85 (as health records report, although his family is saying 86), Homer's Web site includes a blog and web video (check out the March 16 show below). Despite his gruff, opinionated exterior, friends, family and familiars recall him as one of the kindest people they knew. Immensely active in public service, he donated so much time and money to the Sunshine Foundation, which grants wishes to ill or abused children, that they roasted him in 1984.

Homer was a local legend, the workingman’s radio host, that crazy uncle who always makes you think at family gatherings. He will surely be missed.

Remember how we used to gush about Adam Arcuragi around here? We called his first album the awesomest. We kept blaring that "1981" song. We put the dude on the cover. Well guess what? The new album is frickin amazing, too. Seriously. Listen to I Am Become Joy, which is being put out by High Two. It's an earthy, dreamy, Neutral-Milky, catchy-but-not-too-catchy little epic. Apparently he lives in L.A. now, so catch him tonight while you have the chance. This video's kinda choppy, but the sound is sweet.

Adam Arcuragi plays tonight, Thursday, June 25, 9 .m., $10, with Gianmarco Cilli and Peasant, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 866-468-7619, johnnybrendas.com.