ONYX TV series part 2

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Scenes from ONYX TV show shot in Philly!

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The Actors Lounge talks with Marlon Wayans star of G.I. Joe

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ONYX TV series on DTN

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Twilight: Pattinson in New Moon breaks midnight record

The new Twilight vampire movie took a record $26.3m (?15.9m) in midnight showings at North American box offices, studio Summit Entertainment has said.

That beats the previous North American record of $22.2m (?13.5m) for midnight openings, taken by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in July.

Experts have predicted that New Moon will have one of the biggest opening weekends for a non-summer film.

The first movie in the series, starring Robert Pattinson, made $69.6m (?42.1m).

It is expected…

Hacked E-mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics

Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

The e-mails, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — i…

Just a simple of myself...

I love to enjoy life by spending most of my time with my pets, my family and friends. I will hanging around at home doing some cooking for my parents, and getting my pets lay beside me while I'm watching tv shows. My favorite tv show is more related to romance and mystery series. I used to watch true blood online with my sister during weekend when both of us have nothing to do... Thank God that I have such a lovely family and pets w…

Help A Family At Christmas!

How many of you know a single-parent family that will
be struggling during this holiday season? Even though we are all going
our own struggles, there are people worse off then us.

This is also a tough year for me with my health and financial issues, but I would like to help someone else this Christmas.
If you could send me an email with a single mom or dad with children
who needs help for the holidays, it would be greatly appreciated. Write up something about them and why they need some fina…

This Weekend: Everybody Sleeps With The Sexy Older Professor At Least Once

FRIDAY: >>> Gotta say: For the second weekend in a row, not a lot of notable stuff is going on this weekend. Sure, you got your regular DJ nights, your local bands and so on, but if you’re looking for once-in-a-lifetime or even just brand new types of shenanigans, you will not exactly be suffering from [...]

Readers Cameraphone: Philly Cops Unleash “Shock And Awe” Policing Of, Er, Dudes Riding Bikes On The Sidewalk

THEY WILL WELCOME US AS LIBERATORS. Seeing something around town of note? Cameraphone it to: tips[at]philebrity[dot]com.

After 3 years, prostitutes' killings still a mystery

ATLANTIC CITY - Denise Hill can't shake her memory of River Man. The acknowledged prostitute, who lives and works in this seaside gambling resort, was entertaining a client - a shoe fetishist - in November 2006 when the man blurted out a confession.

Living testimony from a Pa. ghost employee

HARRISBURG - For decades, Pennsylvania government has been haunted by ghosts - the illegal kind embodied by patronage hires who, though flesh and blood, don't do a stitch of work for their government salaries.

Solomon Jones: For one day, America embraces 'Thank you'

COMPLAINING has become an industry in our country. Pundits make millions complaining about athletics, complaining about the government, even complaining about the red-carpet clothing choices of B-list stars. The rest of us take cues from these pop-culture critics, and then voice complaints of our own.

Cops: 6 men raped woman in W. Phila.

A 24-year-old woman who went for some late-night takeout was accosted by six men who forced her into a nearby apartment building, where they raped her until her screams prompted someone to call for help, police said.

Review the Reviews

BY Michael Alan Goldberg / HYPERLINK "mailto:feedback@philadelphiaweekly.com" feedback@philadelphiaweekly.com

Ben Kweller

Singer-guitarist Ben Kweller, now 27, is a music biz veteran, having released albums both with his old band Radish and as a solo artist since he was 13. He's been a punk rocker, indie rocker, power-popster, and balladeer, and for his fourth solo LP, Changing Horses, he dives headfirst into much rootsier fare. We hit an upbeat Kweller up for a session of Review the Reviews, wherein we read excerpts from recent reviews and get the reaction of the reviewed.

"Changing Horses, his self-produced fourth LP, isn't quite the country & western crossover most would have you believe, more like the dirt road connecting his previous paths. (Austin Chronicle)

"Right! I mean, the album's way more Jackson Browne than Merle Haggard. Country music and roots music has always been one of the side roads that I take once in a while, and for this album I wanted to make it the main road."

"He's nodded to his Texas roots before, but on this collection meant to play up his twangy side, he seems scared of edging too far into the darkness of country music's long, rich tradition." (Paste)

"Hmm. Whatever. They don't know me. I mean, I opened the album with a whore and ended it with a junkie. I don't need to explain too much. I don't need to prove anything to anybody."

" ... the best is 'On Her Own,' a number in praise of female self-determination with a precise, pedal-steel-driven chorus that would fit nicely on a Faith Hill or Brad Paisley album." (Rolling Stone)

"That's really cool that they would even reference that shit because it's so far from ... I'm obviously not a Nashville pop-country guy. But the whole thing about this album is that all of a sudden there are people in the country side of the business that are finding out about me for the very first time. So for Rolling Stone to even say something like that, I'm psyched. I'm over the whole indie-hip--I just feel like I paid my dues for so fuckin' long in the indie-rock world that if my stuff took off in country, that'd be really exciting and refreshing."

ESSAY: The Thinner Blue Line

BY Daniel McQuade / HYPERLINK "mailto:dmcquade@philadelphiaweekly.com" dmcquade@philadelphiaweekly.com

Saying goodbye to Officer John Pawlowski.

Watch Jeff Fusco's slideshow from the funeral.

It was a fearfully cold day, and thousands of police officers marched past the memorial squad car for yet another fallen officer. They shared the same small steps, the same grave looks, the same stiff backs. They marched into the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul past a sea of fellow well-wishers who stood outside, cheeks red and cold in the wind. They marched inside until the Basilica was nearly filled with people; those left outside stood solemnly during the Catholic funeral of Officer John Pawlowski.

After the service, the officers marched out, same as before, then police cars zoomed off in an endless line. The hearse carrying Officer Pawlowski was followed by a phalanx of motorcycles and sparkling white cars from the Police Department. The motorcade went up I-95, toward the neighborhoods where the grid system breaks down, where so many of the police officers live in stout postwar houses near the Delaware. (Pawlowski still lived where he grew up, in Parkwood Manor, a stone's throw from the suburbs.)

The procession swept past officers and firefighters on overpasses, past officers paying their respects in solemn roadside salutes. It went into the suburbs and by the schools and strip malls on Street Road. It went through fire-truck arches and past bikers holding American flags in the brisk February winds. Finally, it went through the gates of Resurrection Cemetery.

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Seven police officers have died in the line of duty since May 2006. This was after nearly 10 years without any shooting deaths of police officers. But things feel commonplace when they cluster this way. The local TV stations didn't interrupt programming for the funeral of Officer Pawlowski, and the crowd in the plaza outside the Basilica was smaller than in the past.

Yet the number of police officers who memorialize their fallen brother or sister seems to grow each time. The services, the procession, the officers at the cemetery--it all seems like more this time. Even actor David Morse, the guy who played a former Philadelphia cop in the TV show Hack, stands against a light pole outside the church. With each loss, the department grows stronger.

Enormous groups of police personnel gathered in John Pawlowski's memory last week. They lined the pews at St. Anselm's in Parkwood on Monday night. They marched down Academy Road on Thursday at dusk to the funeral home for the wake. They processed in and out of the Basilica and stood still at the cemetery as the cold wind swept across the hillsides lined with headstones. The fierce, consistent presence is an impressive show of unity. It shuts down streets; it silences cities.

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Police officers hold an immense amount of power, both individually and as a group, and that power is public. They are imposing when they walk down the street. Their contract talks are daily news. They are frequent topics of household debate.

They are feared and comforting, loathed and respected. They are always late and always on time. They inspire strong emotions.

So it's fitting the police funeral has become such a spectacle. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey came here from Chicago, where police funerals almost stop time. He felt Philly needed more pomp and circumstance. He wanted to march with the mayor to the funeral home for the wake; he wanted police recruits to dot the road to the gravesite; he wanted the horse-drawn carriages and the symbolic reminders that one good man is missing.

At the cemetery, helicopters flew overhead in a missing-man formation. Police officers from the 35th District signed off Officer John Pawlowski for the last time: "From members of the 35th District and your entire police family, we thank you for a job well done."

The words of the service, the procession of cars, the final words at the cemetery are ritual and tradition, done the same way many times over the last few months.

But they are done with a precision that shows great care. The pallbearers practiced in the days leading up to Pawlowski's funeral by carrying a casket stuffed with dumbbells. When the time came, they marched despite the cold weather. The spectacle of it all is maybe the most uplifting thing the police department does. They just do it right.

The Man Who Brought Philadelphia to Its Knees

Jessica Kourkounis

Almost overnight, Willie Brown, the "bullet-shaped" — as Philadelphia Inquirer scribe Jeff Gammage described him — bombastic, unapologetic, strike-leading president of the Transport Workers Union Local 234, rocketed from obscurity to near-ubiquity in the worst way possible. Editorials mocked him. Columnists skewered him. Commuters cursed him. Online commentators made the above look like a fan club.

Brown didn't seem to mind; in retrospect, he says he wasn't paying much attention. The "most hated man in Philadelphia," as Brown christened himself, presided over a strike despite contract offers from SEPTA management that seemed, to many an angry, recession-stricken SEPTA patron, overly generous in the first place. He didn't flinch, he didn't back down and, for the most part, he didn't care. And he won. At least, he claimed victory. (The union will vote to formally ratify the contract Nov. 20.) He may be reviled. But Brown says he'd do it all over again, whether you hate him or not.

Since the union boss said so little to the press during the strike, we thought it was high time to find out why. On Nov. 12, City Paper sat with Brown for nearly two hours inside his North Second Street offices. In person, Brown comes across as affable, polite and 100 percent steadfast in his conviction that he did the right thing. While he occasionally waxed idealistic —allusions to Martin Luther King and the U.S. Constitution came up — his position was simple: His job is to get from SEPTA as much for his members as possible. Period. The end.

The following interview is not meant to be a fair and balanced look at the strike's merits. Nor is it an attempt to either lionize or vilify the union boss at the heart of it. Rather, it's a chance to hear a side of the story you probably haven't heard, straight from the proverbial horse's mouth, and edited only for clarity, space and grammar.

THE BUILDUP

The Transport Workers Union Local 234 threatened to strike at the m...

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Color Guard

1967-1985

Longtime Sixers (and Warriors) public address announcer Dave Zinkoff was known for his velvety bellow and clever score-keeping ("Two for Shue!" "Gola goal!"). After he died, Zink's mic was retired and his name raised high in the rafters.

1967-1995

Jovial TV/radio announcer Gene Hart was "The Voice of the Flyers," and the soundtrack to just about every Spectrum hockey highlight. His call of the 1974 Cup Finals still gives us chills.

1969-1996

Bodacious Kate Smith's version of "God Bless America" has become a kind of lucky charm for the Flyers. Smith died in 1986, but when her voice has opened a hockey game (live or recorded), the Flyers are said to be 77-21-4.

1972-1996

Dave Leonardi, aka the Sign Man, had something ready for every Flyers home game. After the Flyers beat the Russians, he summed it up thusly: "Bring on the Martians." Sign Man moved with the team into the Wachovia Center.

1973

Before he became a lovably nutty Flyers broadcaster, Gary Dornhoefer was a tough-as-nails right wing with the Broad Street Bullies. His 1973 OT game-winner against the North Stars at the Spectrum remains immortalized in bronze outside the rink.

1976

Kenzo bum Rocky Balboa lost in his Spectrum debut to reigning champ Apollo Creed, which is how million-to-one shots usually end up. The rematch, also at the Spectrum, came three years later with Rocky eking out a win.

1976

According to oft-confirmed legend, Flyers winger Reggie Leach scored five goals in one home playoff game against the Bruins while completely, utterly drunk. Alcoholism!

1976 and 1981

Bobby Knight and his Indiana Hoosiers won two NCAA titles at the Spectrum and they're not even from here.

1977

After fighting and getting kicked off the ice, Flyer Paul Holmgren and Bruin Wayne Cashman continued their fisticuffs in the no man's land between the two locker rooms, leading to the install...