Twitter Spammers Get Clever

So I just noticed I have a new follower on Twitter. According to her profile, "Sherry" lives in Wilmington, Delaware with her roomate Jen and two cats, Simon and Holden. One of her favorite movies is Walk the Line. And there's a link to find out more. Seems like a nice enough person; perhaps I'll follow back, I thought. But when you look at "Sherry's" profile, the tweets tell a different story...

Who's this Harold Shults, and why are all of Sherry's tweets actually retweets of this character?

By going to longurl.org you can copy and paste a shortened URL and find out where it leads, without clicking on it and putting your computer at risk for viruses and such. (Not that I'd have ever clicked on this one anyway, but this can be helpful for less obvious spammers.) Needless to say, "Sherry's" link leads to an adult dating website.

A thought just occurred to me: why isn't there more of this on Facebook? It's easy enough to set up fake profiles, I would think.

Mural Mile Update

Just a quick post because I updated my set of Mural Mile photos. I took them two years ago and wrote about the Mural Mile here. At the time there was one mural, "Garden of Delight," that wasn't completed. It was set to be finished in fall 2010. I'm not sure exactly when it was completed, but it is now. When I walked by and noticed it, I took photos so I could complete the set. As I've said often, I love seeing these murals all over the place and the Mural Mile walking tour is a great sampling of them. My pictures really don't do it justice. Go to the Mural Arts Program website and get the route (and download the podcasts for each mural) and walk it yourself.

NYC: Yotel, High Line

I make a quick one-day trip to New York City about three weeks ago. I met up with my friend Mark, visiting from Toronto, and we saw a new off-Broadway musical called "Dogfight," which is based on a movie starring River Phoenix (which was not a musical). I recommend it if you're in NYC. Here's a review from the New York Times.

After the show we met up with locals Steve and Pat, had dinner at the restaurant at Mark's hotel and then we all visited the High Line -- the elevated freight railroad tracks turned into a public park. Very cool. (There are people who want to create a similar park in Philly, on a stretch known as the Reading Viaduct. Money and politics and local infighting will probably keep this from happening for a while.) On Sunday I'm going back to NYC and spending three nights (seeing Ricky Martin in "Evita" is my only firm plan right now), and I may visit the High Line again.

I took lots of pictures of the park and the surrounding buildings, some skyline shots, various art installations in the park, etc. I also have some pictures of the hotel -- it's this very futuristic place called Yotel. Among other things, it's got an automated bag storage system just inside the front door.

Robot arm!

Wawa Hoagie Day 2012

Yum. Free hoagies.

Wawa Hoagie Day is one of the events in the Welcome America festival (which Wawa also sponsors). Every year they've had this I've missed it for various reasons. Finally, this year I made it.

They always hype it as "everyone gets a piece of a giant hoagie" -- this year, they claimed it was 4.5 tons. Actually, it's not one big hoagie. It's a ton of small ones. But who cares? Give me a free hoagie, a bag of chips and a bottled tea/fruit drink/water and you can call it whatever you want. And even with hordes of people, the lines moved very quickly. They had a very efficient operation.

And there was a patriotic/charitable aspect as well. Police, fire and military personnel participated in a hoagie-building contest, raising funds for various charities (and I think the hoagies they made were taken to places such as homeless shelters). The USO show troupe "Liberty Bells" performed. And there was a table set up where you could write a note of thanks to be included in care packages being sent to the troops overseas.

As always, since I've given up on trying to put the slideshow right into this blog, here's a link to the album. If you want to know what I wrote in my note to the troops, go look at the pictures.

Jackson Family Horror Show

The stuff that's going on with this story over the last few days is just sad. These siblings trying to get control of Michael Jackson's estate away from his mother, trying to make a grab for money at the expense of Michael's children, clearly have no shame. These poor kids are going to have enough trouble living a relatively normal life as it is, let alone having these "adults" fighting over their future.

And what really bothers me is that Janet is involved. I can see losers like Jermaine and Randy being involved, but Janet? She used to be the one who, in her days when she sang about being in "Control," seemed to be almost normal. I wonder what her financial situation is like now? She hasn't had much of a career in quite a few years. Has she squandered her fortune? Or is she just plain greedy?

May 19, 2012: My Festival Fest

On a warm late-spring Saturday afternoon I took in three different festivals in the city. I took many pictures and some video (using my tablet's camcorder)!

I started out at the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival , which has been held for the last seven years in Kensington (in a spot where, I'm guessing, it borders Fishtown). Its attractions are basically as advertised: arts and crafts (such as "Billy Maze," pictured),  food, vendors, etc. However, it also featured the 6th Annual Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby. (Arts festival and derby photos are here.)

The what?


Basically, it's like this: a kinetic sculpture is a vehicle that's powered by humans (such as a bike) but also has some special artistic additions, making them look like parade floats or something. What they do is ride these things along a stretch of the street. There's no race, but there is one element to challenge them: a mud pit. They have to design their kinetic sculpture so that they can get it through the mud. Here's a sample:



Here's a close-up picture of the mud pit...

It's really entertaining. Next year I want to go again, but get a seat nearer to the mud.

Then I headed for Franklin Square for

Quick Review: The Dark Knight Rises

I suppose this is a not-so-quick review. Then again, the movie was 2 hours, 40 minutes long. (And I managed to sit through it without running to the bathroom. Woo-hoo!)

It seems impossible to discuss "The Dark Knight Rises" without mentioning the mass murders in Aurora, Colorado. I'm still angry that much of the hoopla and excitement for this movie was wiped out by the actions of an evil individual -- not to mention our nation's pathetic excuse for gun laws. Since it happened, I haven't seen a single advertisement for the film. (On the other hand, we also got a respite from those slimy political ads, as the Obama and Romney campaigns, and the super-PACs supporting them, suspended their advertising.) Still, it only slightly tainted my enjoyment of the film.

Looking at the trilogy as a whole, Christopher Nolan did a masterful job of telling what is really one long story with multiple themes. "The Dark Knight Rises" goes back to plot points and themes in "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" and weaves them into the film coherently, tying everything up extremely well. It even borrowed some from various story lines in the Batman comic books. (Does Bane break Batman's back? I'm not telling, just like I'm not telling whether or not Batman dies, as has been hinted and rumored.)

Specifically concerning the finale, it lived up to all of my expectations, particularly in regard to two of my fave actors. Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle was her usual marvelous self. She's never actually called Catwoman in the film; no mention of cats at all, only her master skills as a thief, thus avoiding the campiness usually associated with the character. (I'm not complaining about the camp: I adore Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman.) And Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a cop -- the trailers gave away nothing about why he was important to the story at all, but it pays off, especially with a hat tip to another Batman character at the very end.


To be honest, though, I think "The Dark Knight" was slightly better than "TDKR," mainly because of one aspect: Bane. No complaints about Tom Hardy, and I even was able to understand most of what he was saying under that mask with that weird voice, which still wasn't as annoying as Christian Bale's Batman voice. But even before Bane's motives were somewhat undercut by a plot twist near the end, as strong and powerful as he is, there's a little lacking when compared to the brilliant madness of Heath Ledger's Joker. My grade: A.

One More Daily News Post

I don't really want to go on about the Daily News, especially after I had a nice talk with one of their reporters after my previous post. Mainly I just wanted to share this from Monday. Poor Robert Klein...

...and this gives me an excuse to add a few items that I forgot about when I wrote the other post.

One thing that bothered me when ex-Philadelphia Magazine editor Larry Platt took over the Daily News was what you might call stunt-casting. He added Buzz Bissinger and Ed Rendell as columnists. The first "column" from Bissinger was a collection of his Twitter posts and was such utter garbage that, on the rare occasions his column appeared, I never even gave it a glance. And Rendell's sports commentary (which still exists, now relegated to the "Sportsweek" weekend paper) is so dull the column is guaranteed to put an insomniac to sleep. Hell, I could write a column that's as good as anything by Rendell and they could pay me less, if they want to save some money.

Another thing that changed was

Today's Inaccurate Street Art

Can you identify what's wrong with this picture?

If you answered, "The Kardashians have no significance," you are correct!

Billy Penn's Big Brothers...And More

UPDATE: I've added a couple more pics taken on a different occasion. They're after the jump.

The day I visited the three different festivals -- and I will get those pics posted at some point, as I'm in a bit of a catching-up mode -- I was walking from Stop #2 (in Franklin Square) to Stop #3 (Walnut St. west of Broad), looked up and noticed City Hall and the two Liberty Place skyscrapers...

The angle of the picture, because of the route I took when I left Franklin Square, just gave me the impression that Billy Penn was being guarded by his two big brothers. (It took me three tries to get the tops of all three buildings in the shot. Oh, brother.)

Quick Review: Magic Mike

It took me over a week after it opened until I finally got to see the much-hyped "Magic Mike."  After hearing so much about it, being somewhat loosely based on star Channing Tatum's experiences as a male stripper before he hit it big in Hollywood, and with Steven Soderbergh directing a cast that also included Matthew McConaughey, there was an expectation of a really intriguing tale -- while not skimping on the nudity, of course, given its "R" rating.

Unfortunately, there was no intriguing tale. Tatum's Mike, who strips and does odd construction jobs and such, is saving up to start his own business making custom furniture. He helps out a young slacker (Alex Pettyfer) by getting him work at the strip club (McConaughey plays the club's manager) while trying to get a relationship going with the guy's sister. Among the subplots is one involving drugs that plays into the main story, but none of it was very compelling.

I give full credit to Tatum for how his career is progressing. He's proven he can act some, and not just look pretty. His movies are now big hits at the box office. And he can dance, and not just for purposes of getting naked: the man can really move. McConaughey is fine as well, but Pettyfer's just a blank and the rest of the guys (including Adam Rodriguez, Matt Bomer, Joe Mangianello and wrestler Kevin Nash) are completely wasted, with nothing to do except dance. And the worst sin? The hyped nudity wasn't all that. The club scenes kept getting cut off just as they got good, or else there were just brief glimpses of performances. This entire movie was, after all the hype, a real letdown. My grade: C-minus.

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 7-11-12

In honor of the free 7-11 Slurpees...not really...


Falling - Cathy Dennis
Advice for the Young at Heart - Tears For Fears
One Night In Bangkok - Murray Head
99.9 F° - Suzanne Vega
Pump Up The Volume (U.S. Remix) - M/A/R/R/S
She Runs Away - Duncan Sheik
What's New Pussycat? - Tom Jones
Heal the Pain - George Michael
Jackie's strength - Tori Amos
Congo - Genesis
Gimme More (Oakenfold Remix) - Britney Spears
Into the Hollywood Groove (The Passengerz Mix) - Madonna feat. Missy Elliot
The Brothers Cup - Red Hot Chili Peppers

My Issues With The Daily News

A number of things have me wondering whether I want to continue my subscription to the Philadelphia Daily News after it expires in September. Most recently there was this...

Bavel Pure?

and there was this...

...and this (to the left and right of the "NEWS" banner)...

...and these others...

Historic Philly Graves 'N Stuff

This is another catching-up post. One afternoon in March I went on an unusual tour of parts of historic Philadelphia. It's a newer offering from Grim Philly Twilight Tours -- their tours specialize in mixing the traditional history with more macabre things such as places said to be haunted. This particular tour focused on cemeteries and stories of local serial killers. To be honest I was more interested in the history than the serial killers. I did take pictures, though. (Not all of them are at gravesites.)

I'm not even trying to post a slideshow to this blog any more. I'm just assuming it will not work, whether it's due to Google screwing up Blogger or the particular photo storage site's incompetence or my own stupidity. Whatever the reason it still royally pisses me off. So here's the link to all of the pictures.

Six More Summer Songs

Here's the most recent post. I have six more to add, thanks mostly to the item in last week's Entertainment Weekly, a flashback to the Billboard top 10 for the same week in 1984...

Eyes Without A Face - Billy Idol

Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper

Let's Hear It For The Boy - Deniece Williams

The Reflex - Duran Duran

Jump (For My Love) - The Pointer Sisters

Glory of Love (Theme from "The Karate Kid, Pt. II") - Peter Cetera

We're up to 159 songs now.

Quick Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

In between the summer superhero behemoths -- "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises" -- comes "The Amazing Spider-Man." "The Avengers" turned out extremely well, and I have similar expectations for "Dark Knight." As for this Spider-Man film, my expectations weren't as high despite some of the hype. So I wasn't overly disappointed that I wasn't overly excited by it. It looks good, it's well-acted, but with it being a reboot of the franchise so soon after the previous three films (the first of which arrived in 2002) it felt like I had pretty much seen it before. Peter Parker's back in high school, with Andrew Garfield taking over for Tobey Maguire. They changed a few details, added some more, swapped out love interests and villains, but otherwise it's the same: Peter's bitten by the spider, gains powers, doesn't stop a bad guy, bad guy kills Uncle Ben, Peter becomes Spider-Man, fights villain... I will say that I liked it more than the first movie in the Maguire-as-Spidey trilogy, so if this new one's sequel improves similarly, the next one should be quite a film. My grade: B-minus.

Another Summer Playlist Update

I don't know if I should just re-post my entire summer playlist in one new post, but until I get to that point, you'll just have to click on this link, which leads to the most recent update, and then keep following links until you get back to the original posts. At any rate, thanks to this recent article, which provided a list of hits from June through August each year going back to the 1960s, I decided on a number of additions to my list that are already in my iTunes library. Also, Amazon has had two mp3 sales recently -- one was for a summer playlist of their own, 25 songs for a quarter each -- yes, $0.25 -- and just in the last 24 hours, recent hit albums for $0.99, and these sales provided some more tracks for the list.

The entire list is now up to 153 songs, although I'm kind of wavering on a few that originally were on the list. I'm leaving them, at least for now. Anyway, briefly, my criteria are: hits during the summer, song titles/lyrics  about summer, sunshine, heat, etc., and a few songs that either made an impression on me personally during summer or just have a summery feel to them, so the list is (as many lists are) a bit subjective. Here are the additions:


Wild Ones (Feat. Sia) - Flo Rida
Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen
Nothin' On You [Feat. Bruno Mars] - B.o.B
Hot In Herre - Nelly
In The Summertime -Mungo Jerry
Sunshine - Matisyahu
Everybody Loves The Sunshine - Roy Ayers Ubiquity
Blister In The Sun - Violent Femmes
Dynamite - Taio Cruz
Viva La Vida - Coldplay
It's Gonna Be Me - 'N Sync
We Like To Party - Vengaboys
MmmBop - Hanson (if I recall, I kept this off the list originally)
Kiss From A Rose - Seal
Whoomp! (There It Is) - Tag Team
Can't Help Falling In Love - UB40
End Of The Road - Boyz II Men
Alone - Heart
With Or Without You - U2
Funkytown - Lipps Inc.
Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes
Dreams - Fleetwood Mac
Love Will Keep Us Together - Captain & Tennille
Touch Me In The Morning - Diana Ross
Lean On Me - Bill Withers
Lovely Day - Bill Withers
It's Too Late - Carole King
The Love You Save - The Jackson 5
War - Edwin Starr
Get Back - The Beatles
Honky Tonk Women - The Rolling Stones
Respect - Aretha Franklin
Help! - The Beatles
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
California Gurls (Feat. Snoop Dogg) - Katy Perry
Firework - Katy Perry
Chasing The Sun - The Wanted

Quick Reviews: Seeking, Ted, Abe

I managed to see three movies in four days, and none of them was "Magic Mike." How is this possible? Someone needs to remind me that I'm gay.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: All attempts to stop an asteroid from crashing into Earth have failed, says the radio at the start of the movie. The world will end in three weeks. We then get Steve Carell in his typical role as lovelorn shlub. We know this immediately because as soon as the radio DJ finishes the news update and resumes playing music, his wife jumps out of their car and runs away, never to be seen again. While some people start partying and having random sex without concern for pregnancy or disease, Carell's character, Dodge, tries going to work as usual, selling insurance. Then he meets Penny (Keira Knightly), and they end up trying to track down his high school sweetheart, the one true love of his life. Since the focus is on their trip and its impact on them, there isn't much focus on the whole world-ending thing. "The Day After Tomorrow" this ain't. So when they're nearly caught up in riots, it comes off as more of a plot device. And the way it ended didn't seem quite right to me. But some stretches of it were quite affecting. My grade: B-minus.

Ted: From the mind of Seth MacFarlane comes the story of a boy who wishes for his teddy bear to come to life, has his wish magically granted, and still lives with the bear 25 years later, both wasting their lives away drinking, getting high, etc. Basically a mediocre episode of "Family Guy" but with more explicit raunch and language, and