News: October 2009 Archives

Today's featured Twitter user is @bikeambassadors. Brought to us by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, they promote "accessible, safe and fun" biking in and around Philadelphia. Whether your pedals pump gas or turn wheels, they want you to be safe and smart on the roads of Philly. That means playing nice.

Love him or hate him (we love him), Bill Simmons is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, sports columnists on the Internets. Simmons has penned a new book, The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, to be released tomorrow. You can get the book via Amazon for less than 20 bones (or clams or whatever you call them). The book weighs in at right around 700 pages, but don't let that dissuade you from buying it, as Simmons himself said in an interview with the Huffington Post: "If you like my columns, you're going to enjoy the book. At the very least, it's a book that you can stick next to your toilet, read 5 pages at a time and finish five months from now. It will be the best five months of dumping you've ever had. Your colon is going to love this book."

I swear to deliver the picks, all of the picks and nothing but the picks. I just hope they're the correct picks.

Good idea: celebrating the home team.

How are you feelin' this morning, Philly? We're feeling a little banged-up, like maybe we drank a little too much and stayed up a little too late last night. Wonder how that could've happened...

We have utmost confidence in our boys, but we could use a little less "one more game" talk. Our fists are bleeding from knocking wood.

Today's featured Twitter user is @Drew. Known in meatspace as Drew Olanoff, he is a Philly blogger engaged in his own fight against cancer. He was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in May 2009. In an effort to put the disease in its place, he started the #blamedrewscancer hashtag on Twitter, which has since gone viral and turned into a powerful movement.

The Phillies advanced to the NLCS Tuesday night in true Philly fashion: by making the whole town cower in fear, waiting until the last minute, then pulling ahead by a margin so minuscule it could have easily been wiped out in the bottom of the 9th. Tonight our Fightin's square off against the Dodgers at 8:07 p.m for Game One of the series. If the last few games serve as any indication, you might want to keep a barf bag nearby. (Note to the Phillies: It's not exciting when the wins come down to the wire, it's just nerve-wracking. Stop doing that and get big leads early instead. Then keep them. Please and thank you.)

We love interesting socially-focused websites and services. But what we love even more is when they are local operations. Take, for example, WhirtWhirl.com. WhirtWhirl has one purpose: connecting missed connections in Philadelphia. They provide a simple, straightforward interface that keeps the focus on the connections themselves, displaying a timeline of posts. WhirtWhirl also offers the ability to tag words in your post for easy searching later on. Every post has its own "reply" link, too, so if you stumble across the missed connection of your dreams you can try to unmiss it. Best of all, they don't require account creation, so you can dive right in.

Really, Philadelphia? 65% of us don't think President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?

Today's featured Twitter user is @TattedTheBook.Tatted was put together by Philadelphia photographer Marianne Bernstein and explores Philly's tattoo culture. You can pre-order your copy here. While we're pretty sure there aren't any tattoos of the Phillyist logo in there, we're always proud to see homegrown artists turning their talents toward their fellow Philadelphians.

Your favorite weather personality, starting your weekend right.

As the birthplace of all things awesomely fantastic about our country, Phillyist would like to extend a congratulations to President Obama for winning the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

Not that the product of two highly attractive people breeding forgives the black mark on the Phillies postseaon record, but we kind of understand why Cole Hamels's head might not exactly have been in the game yesterday.

Hey there, dreary Philly. We hope you're keeping warm with your pumpkin spice lattes today, because it's going to be a wet one. And to all you Regional Railers out there who are all simultaneously running 15 minutes late, our condolences. Now, headlines!

Heidy ho, Philly! There's a "Chill Gripping Plains and Rockies" and the Phils are up a game in the NLDS. On our side of the Mississippi, it's looking like sunny skies and 70 degrees. And now, Headlines!

Hey, Mid-Morning Philly! We know your mind is probably a one way street down Broad here, so we'll hit up some other headlines quickly so you can get back to finishing all your work before 2:30 this afternoon.