Why I Love My Mayor
Category: News and Politics

One of the MANY reasons...



At City Hall, mayor has 'Wire' unplugged
It's a wrap for HBO's urban drama.

By Karen Heller
Inquirer Staff Writer

It's good to be king or, in Michael Nutter's case, mayor.

If your favorite television show of all time happens to be HBO's The Wire, which had its finale last night, you could have placed a phone call to the Greater Philadelphia Film Office's Sharon Pinkenson 10 days ago and seen if you could stage a viewing party in City Hall.

Welcome to Mayor Mike's Movie Night, complete with beer and popcorn, Raisinets and Twizzlers.

Not only did Nutter get the viewing of the 93-minute fifth-season finale a full hour ahead of national broadcast, but he lined up nine - count 'em, nine - of the series' stars.

"Omar! Omar!" some of the 100 fans assembled yelled at Michael K. Williams, better known as Omar Little, the bane of West Baltimore drug dealers, who, alas, bit the convenience-store dust a few Sundays ago. Instead of showing up with his customary long coat and shotgun, the actor was incongruously dressed in a vintage Boy Scout shirt. "I've been travelling a lot. This is what I had clean," he said.

Based on photo ops and fans amassed, Williams was the crowd favorite, despite his life of crime. This may have been the first time a vigilante was so celebrated in City Hall.

"I learned a lot from the series, what to do right and what not to do," the mayor said before the screening of his "favorite show of all time." Nutter penned a love letter to the show in yesterday's Inquirer.

The mayor stressed that he in no way resembles The Wire's fictional, opportunistic and severely unctuous Mayor Tommy Carcetti. "He is always focused on getting to the next place." Like the governorship?

"I only have my eye on the office around the corner," Nutter said.

"This parallels a lot of what we do," said Manwell Glenn, the city's assistant managing director, who is married to Sandra Dungee Glenn, chair of the School Reform Commission, who was hooting through the screening with obvious delight.

Deborah Seay, an educational consultant with 35 years in the city school district, said "I put the capital F in Fan." She's an old friend of the mayor's who was thrilled to be watching with the stars. Later, she asked the panel of nine actors "whether there was any possibility of making a movie, like they're doing with Sex and the City" - her other favorite - "then maybe you can save Dukie the way you did Bubbles."

Jermaine Crawford, the 15-year-old who played the troubled, homeless teen, was there with his father, Germantown-born Milton, and his mother, Wanda, as well as his music manager John Gore.

This would be distinct from his acting manager, who was not in attendance.

Clark Johnson, originally of West Philadelphia, had the dual distinction of directing and starring in last night's episode as heroic Baltimore Sun city editor Gus Haynes. "I'm the worst actor I've got," he said, bringing along one of his "30 first cousins in the area," Derrick Lee Sr., a school principal in Delaware.

Many of the cast members, who finished shooting in September, found the night bittersweet, an end to a stellar five-season acting project that produced a thorough portrait of a city ravaged by drugs, corruption and business as usual.

"Lester is the grown-up I want to be when I grow up," said Clark Peters, who played the smooth-talking wire expert Lester Freamon, whose career ends in flames.

Wendell Pierce, known as the can't-hold-his-beer Detective Bunk Moreland, was in attendance, though not with his customary cigar. He was the first to sign on for the movie night, and the most interested in continuing the Wire tradition.

In response to Seay's question about a movie, Pierce said he and Sonja Sohn, who played Detective Kima Greggs, "had secured financing and are hoping [series executive producer] David Simon and others will get on board."

Simon, who was in Los Angeles, addressed the assembled crowd via a video message before the screening. "I expect a key to the city of Philadelphia," said the producer and writer, who has been scathing in his view of his hometown Baltimore's corruption and crime, "because it will be a cold day in hell when I get one in Baltimore."

Had Mayor Mike's Movie Night not come together, "I would just be at home watching like everyone else."

But it did. And in introducing the evening, Nutter said "this is the beginning of other movie programs and, when the weather gets nicer, events in City Hall's courtyard," a political promise he expects to keep.

Link to story on philly.com

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best. memoir. ever.

1:08 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Iraqs and Everywhere, Like, Such As.
Current mood: geeky
Category: Travel and Places

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Phables
Current mood: working
Category: Life

Phables is a great comic about my favorite place on Earth... my beloved hometown!

11:53 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
Current mood: working

don't ask; just go:

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?

10:10 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

el bravo nuevo
Category: Pets and Animals

tenemos un perrito!

2:36 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

married

marriedtothesea.com

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philly recycles. everything.

PhillyFreeCycle - THE free online materials exchange in Philadelphia.

www.phillyfreecycle.org




Click to join phillyfreecycle

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library elf
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

http://www.libraryelf.com/

"Elf is a web-based and email tool for library users to keep track of their library borrowings. Elf is like a personal assistant, whose task is to help with keeping track of what one has on loan from the library.

"Designed with the busy or avid library user in mind, Elf is ideal for families with multiple library cards or for individuals (writers, researchers, students, readers, etc.) who have cards from different libraries.

"Elf makes it easier to keep track of what's due, overdue or ready for pickup from one or more library accounts. Users have the option to consolidate their library accounts into one account if they wish. This account is checked everyday and email notices are sent when items are coming due, overdue or when holds are ready for pickup."

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ben franklin: techie

philadelphia's very own library company - the first successful lending library, started by ben franklin - will be on the history channel. this is big, folks.

more info follows. i hope you'll tune in.

***

Modern Marvels: Ben Franklin Tech
Thursday, May 25th
10:00 pm (EST)
The History Channel



Tune in to The History Channel on Thursday, May 25th, at 10:00 pm (EST) to watch the premiere of Modern Marvels: Ben Franklin Tech, featuring footage from the Library Company's collections and an interview with Librarian James Green.

Created by Actuality Productions, this one-hour documentary takes an in-depth look at some of Benjamin Franklin's most significant inventions and scientific breakthroughs. Some inventions changed the course of science and technology like the lightning rod. Others are eminently useful and deceptively simple like bifocals, or the first successful lending library (our very own Library Company). Then there's the invention that gave Franklin the most pleasure the glass armonica, the sublime musical instrument that captivated Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. On Modern Marvels: Ben Franklin Tech we'll look at Franklin's long-standing obsession with heating homes, which produced the ahead-of-its-time Pennsylvania Fireplace (the Franklin stove). We'll also look at his fascination with water, which led to the first chart of the Gulf Stream and a host of ingenious nautical devices. Each of Franklin's inventions sheds light on a different facet of the man: scientist and statesman, meteorologist and musician, philosopher and printer.

Dont miss this opportunity to see the Library Company on national television!

The Library Company of Philadelphia
email: nscalessa[at]librarycompany.org
phone: 215-546-3181
web: http://www.librarycompany.org

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flickr
Category: Art and Photography

my new flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kbravo/

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may 6th is free comic book day
Category: Writing and Poetry

as a dutiful public servant, it is my obligation to inform you that this saturday, may 6th is FREE COMIC BOOK DAY.

go here for more info: www.freecomicbookday.com

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natalie dee says: one day having a blog will be useful
Category: Parties and Nightlife

nataliedee.com

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harvard for free. no joke.
Category: School, College, Greek

Harvard University recently announced that from now on undergraduate students from low-income families will pay no tuition.

In making the announcement, Harvard's president Lawrence H. Summers said, "When only 10 percent of the students in elite higher education come from families in lower half of the income distribution, we are not doing enough. We are not doing enough in bringing elite higher education to the lower half of the income distribution."

If you know of a family earning less than $60,000 a year with an honor student graduating from high school soon, Harvard University wants to pay the tuition. The prestigious university recently announced that from now on undergraduate students from low-income families can go to Harvard for free... no tuition and no student loans.

Visit http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/03/30-finaid.html for the full text of this announcement.

For more info, visit Harvard's financial aid website at:

http://fao.fas.harvard.edu

or call the school's financial aid office at (617) 495-1581.

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911
Category: Life

i need to get heavy for a minute:

when we think of the victims of september 11, most of us think of those who lost their lives in the twin towers, the pentagon, and flight 93 on that day. however, there are many more victims of this tragedy whom few acknowledge. i met one of them last night at the library where i work. he was a kind and gentle muslim man from pakistan. i helped him scan medical documents so he could email them to his cousin in pakistan. the whole time we worked together (nearly two hours) it was apparent that he was in great physical pain, but despite this he was cheerful and grateful to me and profusely apologetic to his quiet little son who had come along with him for a library visit that was taking much longer than expected. towards the end of our session, once he felt completely comfortable with me and there was no one else around, he told me in his soft voice and broken english why he so urgently needed to send these documents to pakistan: he needs an operation that his insurance company here in the states will not pay for; this operation would (hopefully) relieve the blinding pain that he has lived with everyday since november 15, 2001, the day he was attacked and brutalized and very nearly murdered by his neighbors. his attackers insisted that he was partly to blame for 9/11 simply because he is a muslim man from pakistan. my heart broke when he told me this. it is one thing to hear stories of such incidents in the news; it is something else entirely to meet a victim of such an incident.

so when we "remember 9/11" let's make sure that we remember and honor ALL of the innocent lives damaged and lost as a result of this tragedy.

peace.

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