Mikey Wild, R.I.P.

The story of the Mayor of South Street, Part I (9:05):



Part II (10:00):



Part III (9:09):



Fuck the American healthcare system that failed to get him the cancer medicine and treatments that he couldn't afford.

Tonight: Phillyist Framed 2010 photo contest show

Tonight at Studio 34 (4522 Baltimore Ave) is the opening reception for the Phillyist Framed 2010 Photo Contest. The gallery show includes work by such talented local artists as Phillybits.

The reception starts at 7:00. It's free, as in no cover charge, but you're encouraged to bring a can for the local food relief organization PhilAbundance. After-party is at Local 44 (44th and Spruce).

Men I've dated, part n in a series

A couple of days ago, I picked up a copy of Sarah Stolfa's The Regulars, a compilation of portrait-snapshot photos the author took while "she earned the dubious distinction of Unfriendliest Bartender In Town" at McGlinchey's. I'd gone into the bookstore for something else but thought I'd enjoy flipping through the portraits to see if there was anybody I recognized.

To my surprise and delight, I found a photo a guy I'd slept with a few times in the first year after my ex-husband and I split. The photo must have been taken about the time that we were seeing each other -- I don't mean from his expression, which is a little wary and perhaps unhappy, but from what he's wearing, and from the year noted by his name, and from the length of his hair.

Though we didn't meet at McGlinchey's. We'd found each other thru Craigslist, and the first time we met was at the Locust Bar, another, similar dive. On one date, we went to a Sixers game and bought nosebleed seat tickets. I got some kind of vertigo and woke up in the morning with a nasty, nasty headache. On another, we stayed at his place and watched Secretary and he got to try something new. We didn't really click, however; we may have had a third date, but if we did I don't recall it.

One morning some months later, we passed each other on the sidewalk, going opposite directions to work. After that, I started taking a different route, and then I started law school and didn't need to walk down that particular street any more. I haven't seen him since. But apparently I just need to go to McGlinchey's sometime if I want to say hey and catch up.

Banksy identified

The British Daily Mail tabloid reports that it has discovered Banksy's true identity.

Profoundness: on this year's Grammys

Alison Krauss is completely outclassed, vocally, by Robert Plant.

I mean, really.

Monday art house: vacation

The daughter and I are off to north central Pennsylvania for a vacation in the woods. Though it's a mostly unstructured vacation, we do have a few activities planned: picking apples, fishing in pristine trout streams, and avoiding being shot or run over by gun-slinging ATV-driving wingnuts. We'll be roughing it at a friend's old family homestead, which he and his siblings and uncle use nowadays as a vacation cabin and hunting camp. No land line, no internet, no cell phone coverage. It's like paradise, this yearly unplugging from constantly being informed and updated. Except that it can get darn cold at night, even in August.

The last time he was up at the cabin, my friend saw 5 bears wandering in the hills around the house. That's about 6 bears too many for me, but I don't own my own vacation cabin, and beggars can't be choosers. We'll just have to build bigger campfires at night for the fish we catch.

On the way to the cabin is the fabulous metropolis of Coudersport, home of the Olga's Living with Art gallery and shop: hand-painted glass, fiber arts, pottery, and intricately painted Ukrainian eggs. The shop features a wider variety of work by Pennsylvania artists than what you usually see in my area, which is dominated by work by Pennsylvania Dutch artists or those working in that style. Which is very nice work, but you can have only so many hex signs tacked up to the garage and so much salt-glazed blue-hued pottery in your cabinets before it starts getting a little monotonous.

If you ever do the historic Pennsylvania Route 6 tour, a stop at Olga's Living with Art is probably worth your while. The building is just a block from the county courthouse, and Coudersport is a good place for lunch or dinner.

Chinese girl lip-sychs singing in the opening ceremonies, and I'm OK with that

A lot of people are righteously angered that the little girl singing in the Olympics' opening ceremonies was actually lip-synching, because, according to officials, the real vocalist is not as cute.

You know what? That wasn't a terrible thing. It's show business. It happens all the time. The most "egregious" case is probably Marni Nixon, soprano and musical film star extraordinaire. Actors who have lip-synched to her voice include Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Deborah Kerr (at least twice), and Margaret O'Brien. Most of the time, she wasn't even credited.

Where's the outrage?

Oh, yeah, there is none, because it's show business. Both of these Chinese girls had their unique talents -- one is adorable and can skillfully lip-synch, and the other has a beautiful voice -- and the talents were put together for the show. Likewise, Audrey Hepburn could fake a Cockney accent just fine, but she couldn't sing her way out of a paper bag, as we all learned in Breakfast at Tiffany's. So, like the Chinese singer, Marni Nixon took one for the team (and a paycheck) by singing Hepburn's part in My Fair Lady. Nixon was and still is an accomplished actress on her own, as she demonstrated earlier this year by playing Professor Higgins's mother in a touring production of My Fair Lady.

Although, the conventional wisdom is that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences snubbed Hepburn for even a nomination for Best Actress as Eliza once word got around that she hadn't sung a single note herself in the film. But the scandal, if I may use that word to describe the situation, wasn't that Hepburn didn't sing her own songs. The problem was that Nixon's performance hadn't been credited. People were upset that the wool had been pulled over their eyes, not that Nixon had been considered too ugly to perform the role on-screen.

I think it's the same thing here. The issue isn't that the girl everybody saw wasn't truly singing. The only real issue is that nobody was upfront about it.

You know what was really worse, though -- when that little girl sang the French national anthem at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville. She was six or something, a sweet tiny little girl, and here's my professional translation of some of the relevant lines of La Marseillaise:

The bloody flag of tyranny has been raised against us! (Contre nous de la tyrannie / l'Étendard sanglant est levé.)

[Our enemies] are coming among us to disembowel our children and our families! (Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras / Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes.)

I drink your milkshake! I drink it up! (Qu'un sang impur / Abreuve nos sillons.)

And that's just the first verse and refrain. Some of these lines are sung twice!

(Actually, I lied about that last line I quoted. The more correct English is, "May our neatly plowed fields slurp up the impure blood of our enemies.")

Welcome contributor clarin8!

clarin8 is an old friend of mine. She's a musician here in Philadelphia and expects to post mostly about the local arts scene. I'll let her talk about herself more on her own.

Everybody please welcome clarin8!