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Archive: June, 2010
Pssst: Tomorrow at noon, semi-naked LUSH employees will stand outside of their 1428 Walnut Street store, wearing only barrels that read "Time for an Oil Change or Well Lose It All."
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has something to do with the protest, but not everything. Sez Lush nudists:
While the worlds attention is focused on the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico, there is an even bigger environmental catastrophe unfolding in Canada, and America shoulders much of the blame. For two weeks starting on June 7th, LUSH Cosmetics is turning its 103 shops nationwide into campaign centers to raise awareness about the devastating impact of the Canadian tar sands. Shop windows will showcase images of the deforestation and open pit mining associated with the tar sands, while in-store leaflets will be handed out to customers asking them to take action by supporting Rainforest Action Networks (RAN) fight to stop the tar sands.
It seems so long ago seasons when you consider the current chill that Phillys independent promoters, party throwers and house concert presenters were rocked by Bill No. 100267. Like the numerical sequence from Lost, mystery surrounded Councilmen Darrell Clarke and Bill Greenlees promoter bill and its proposed ideas for controlling not only the renegade promoters responsible for over-crowded/under-policed events, but also those that were conscious and law abiding.
Having to announce each date to the Philadelphia police and the possibility of having your event denied a permit within a mere 10 day window of the event without warning or reason sent promoters in to a tailspin. Yet thanks to several weeks of meetings between promoters (namely Patrick Rodgers of Dancing Ferret, the most ardent of collaborators) and Greenlees office, a happier and more agreeable set of amendments will be introduced on Wed., June 9, before the License & Inspection Committee.
After the first major set of time and date stamped changes made by Greenlee that we revealed exclusively, under this amended version of the bill, special assembly occupancies will be responsible for notifying police two weeks in advance only when and if an event occurs beyond a venues regular and recurring business operations whereby an 'outside operator' will take 'operational control' of the special assembly occupancy meaning, maintaining legal occupancy capacity and deployment and supervision of security detail if any exists.
While promoters will now be required to register with the City and have a current business privilege license, the amendments also offer police the tools to redeploy manpower if necessary to accommodate for promoted events beyond a venues regular and recurring business operations. It will also allow police to contact promoters if necessary when a crime occurs.
For now, Rodgers seems satisfied. I am feeling VERY good now, says Rodgers via his Blackberry. Looks like my work here is done.
PREVIOUSLY >> "In the words of one promoter, 'It's chilling'."
PREVIOUSLY >> Progress! Council's promoter bill is marginally improved!
PREVIOUSLY >> The Promoter Bill: No longer as insane
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| awesome photo from Nick Sixers/flickr |
| It looks photoshopped, but it's not. His head just looks like that. |
Yes, I saw that Conan was wearing a numberless Flyers jersey at the Tower show last night (click on that 700Level's got lots of clips). And Trey Anastasio was wearing a Briere jersey. I assume the song is still winding down. I got more Flyered seeing a dude rocking a Brashear jersey on my way to work.
This is funny, but after the last game it has a little less bite. This gets old. This is funny still.
Never forget: Patrick Kane is the kind of guy who would beat up a cab driver for 2o cents.
What's your favorite Flyers symbol subversion? This one with a heart for a dot is nice, but I would loooove a shirt with this one from the Philadelphia Ghostbusters site. That is sweet.
Dear referees: Look at the blood. You effed up.
Are we living in the present? Rich Hofman of the Daily News thinks the Flyers need a new J.J. Daigneault. Then he types his thoughts up for us to read. He's right, though. We need a hero.
Here's some tweets of inspiration from @TastyBakingCo, @Mike_Tursi and Peter Laviolette.
Tomorrow night, people.
Youtube commenter MrKickyourazz sums up the situation sharply: "That is mast up.Kids shoud not be? drink."
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by PhillyScreen LLC., Daily News. Daily News said: RT @phillynewsnow Child driven to drink by Phillies recent hitting slump http://bit.ly/clTrHr [...]
he handles the beer bottle so expertly...
I think my brain just exploded when reading this post. Awesome work.
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| Illustration: Evan M. Lopez |
Charles McPherson, City Council's chief financial officer since 1991, retired a little over a year ago wherein he got a $528,000 payment from the city's deferred retirement option plan (DROP), as well as a $113,500 annual pension.
Thing is, he only kinda retired.
He's been working for the past 14 months without a salary, with an office and everything. But that may soon change. According to the Inquirer, he's rumored to be the favorite among applicants for Council's $150,000-a-year financial consultant adviser position, which is a contracted job. If he lands it, that mean's he'll be getting $263,500 a year from the city and that says nothing of the sweet DROP payment he received upon retirement.
Some other lovely facts about McPherson:
He was integral to Council's rejection of Mayor Nutter's proposed citywide trash-collection fee and sweet-drinks tax this year. Council instead raised property taxes 9.9 percent and hiked the commercial-property trash-collection free from $150 to $300.
Ah yes, bring back the guy who's responsible for this year's stellar budget. Oh, and also, he loooooves DROP:
McPherson has been perhaps city government's most ardent advocate for DROP, which he says keeps valuable employees in government. He is adamant that he would have left his post in 2005 if DROP had not been available to him. Council members who have joined DROP drawing public outrage at their large payments have often echoed McPherson's argument that the DROP payments represent their money.
PREVIOUSLY>> The Billion Dollar Boondoggle: DROP is bleeding us dry.
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| h/t @lindros97 |
- Guess what? God is on our side. And this dude. And on the Black Hawks' side? This guy.
- The Hawks are splitting up their top line. Pronger's like whatever.
- Dumbest sub-subplot of the Finals so far? Gotta be this stupid "Flyers Flash Mob" story. C'mon.
- Okay, here's where you can download that insane "Briere Betts and Pronger" song.
- There's a big bike race going on, and at least one of the racers is Flyered Up.
- The Philadelphia Union are Flyered Up in Chicago. Ballsy! I hope you guys get the use of your hands soon.
- Patrick Kane: "I've heard from different sources that the town's not happy with us right now."
- Your refs tonight? Bill McCreary and Dan O'Halloran.
- Claude Giroux is awesome.
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| photo | Patrick Rapa |
| Flyered Up at the Roots Picnic |
Uh, or you know, not really.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said it plans to "investigate aggressively" after natural gas and drilling fluids spewed from an out-of-control well in Clearfield County on Thursday night and all Friday morning.
As Tara Lohan at Alternet reminds us, This spill is likely a toxic mix of who know what (because industry wont reveal whats in their fracking fluid). So yeah, its not just off-shore drilling that is an environmental and human health threat and its not just oil.
CPs own Isaiah Thompson reported on the many environmental dangers of fracking and Marcellus Shale drilling in this story, which is as good a primer as any:
Perhaps more importantly, the need for natural gas is skyrocketing. In Pennsylvania, natural gas prices quadrupled between 2002 and 2008. This surge is driven largely by the fact that the energy sources that powered the last two centuries oil and coal are running out. Not to mention, they are both primary contributors to climate change. Among the fuel sources often discussed as short-term alternatives, natural gas has a special allure. It's a fossil fuel, yes, but it's cleaner than coal, immediately available (unlike solar and wind), and we don't have to buy it from the Middle East. In 2008, billionaire oil magnate T. Boone Pickens made headlines with his so-called "Pickens Plan" to move the U.S. off foreign oil, which relied upon natural gas as the "energy bridge" to the future.
The Marcellus Shale holds enough of it to power an energy bonanza that could rival the California Gold Rush.
The mighty gas-drilling industry powered by the even-mightier oil industry proclaims the shale a godsend. Its gas will create jobs, generate tax revenues and spur growth. The shale, drilling proponents say, is the magic carpet that will carry the United States to the future of energy independence.
But to its critics, the shale is the opposite: a catastrophe of opportunity. They point to the alleged dangers of fracing, which then-Vice President Dick Cheney managed to get exempted from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, thus stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of the ability to regulate it. (U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pennsylvania, has proposed legislation that would remove this exemption.) Environmentalists point to numerous reports of various kinds of contamination associated with fracing particularly an ongoing investigative series by the nonprofit journalism group ProPublica, which has catalogued such troubling episodes as the April 2009 incident in which 16 cows in Louisiana dropped dead after drinking "a mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig," as well as the time, in September 2009, that nearly 8,000 gallons of fracing fluid leaked from a gas-drilling pipe system into a freshwater stream in Dimock, Pa., a small town near the New York border.
Love it or hate it, fracing has arrived in Pennsylvania. The state has permitted some 2,765 wells since 2005; in 2010 alone, that number stands to double. The pressure to lease state-owned forestland for Marcellus Shale drilling has been building for years. The development of new technology, coupled with the ever-growing need, made for the perfect storm.
Interesting article, it seems that when drillers are inexperienced, or make mistakes there can be real problems. Through my research I have yet to find evidence of proper drilling and/or fraccing causing any type of environmental problem.
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| photo by Patrick Rapa |
| Let's Go Flyers |
- The Inky's Phil Sheridan has a decent piece on what he's calling the Redemption Line: Hartnell-Briere-Leino. (Related: There's this article which chalks up Hartnell's tough season to undisclosed off-ice personal issues.)
- The Flyers are "oozing confidence," apparently. Oozing it.
- This stupid article says Laviolette and Pronger are full of one-liners and quips, then fails to come up with examples. It's stupid. Don't click on it. (And what is this "fanfeedr" thing, some sort of traffic-stealing spambot situation? Don't click on that either.)
- Will stellar Stanley Cup final signal NHL's rebirth? Dumb headline, but a decent piece. Quotes Drew Lazor's BFF Keith Primeau.
- Why Lappy's going with the smaller helmet/face shield configuration. You could tell that first one he had made it impossible to find the puck near his skates. Also: His brain is healed so why would he need "extra" protection?
- History Will Be Made: Giroux edition. (Also, hockey's so weird/awesome in dead-silent ice-level slow-mo.)
- Oskars Bartulis will stay in the line-up. Anybody read Latvian? And: rumor is Carcillo-out, JVR-in. I have no link for this because I'm making it up.
- Is it just me, or do the Flyers look like prison road crew sewer-dwelling disaster survivors in those huge, overly elasticized hoodies?
- Bored, The Chicago Tribune caught up with Terry Murray for a comment on the Finals. Terry likes the Flyers.
- Which "goal song" is better? Eh. I'll take the one not in the beer commercial, I guess, but I've long since resolved myself to the fact that, besides "Welcome to the Jungle," I'll never agree with my fellow hockey fans when it comes to music.
- Hey look! It's time once again for some idiot from someplace else to say stupid things about Philly. Sigh. Nobody cares. You're a cliché.
- The Flyers and Hawks are in the Finals, which is a great reason for TSN.com's columnists to talk about the Senators and Maple Leafs. Oh, Canada.
[...] Flyered Up: First Flyers Focus :: The Clog :: Blog Archive … [...]
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| Courtesy of Urban Outfitters |
| "Eat Less" tee on a skinny girl? Awkward. |
Check out this "Eat Less" tee sold by Philly-based company Urban Outfitters. Kinda has an anti-fat women/Mean Girls vibe to it, eh? And maybe, just maybe it would feel more anti-American-overconsumption (vs. anti-eating-anything-even-ice-cubes) if it wasn't on a very, very thin young woman?
Or maybe not. What are your thoughts, Clogees?
(h/t Huffington Post)
I don't think it's necessarily a bad message. As a nation, we do tend to overeat. And, in Philly, we've elevated gorging to an annual spectacle with Wing Bowl. Even 20-somethings here are "rockin' the flab". Having said that, I think "Exercise More" is a better message, though not quite as pithy.
The thing is, it's not about eating "less" but eating "better." Yeah, we have the Wing Bowl, and are the home of the cheesesteak, etc...but the message of "eat less" has gotten distorted in our society to encourage various eating disorders.
Have you ever shopped at Urban outfitters? Even normal sized people have a hard time fitting in there!
To their credit, *everybody* hates fat people.
hey jimbo, i probably get laid more than you!!!
If more bike lanes everywhere means more bicyclists will use them and get off the sidewalks, please do it. Even though that will still continue given how easy it is to get way with it and the current police attitude on enforcement. I would be against
Uh... no question, this sh*t is weird and disturbing. Hate fat people? I don't know. Love anorexia? YES.
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