Dear Philadelphia: I have lived here now for nearly six years. I made it through four and a half without buying pepper spray, and only acquired one from a friend when a string of sexual assaults last fall were a little too close to home. It remains attached to my keychain, except for when it isn't: before shows at the Electric Factory or TLA, I make sure to detach it and leave it somewhere......

Colgate-Palmolive has a great little contest running where you vote for one of nine children's hospitals around the country, and the one with the most votes gets a Fun Center where sick kids can go to forget about their illnesses for a moment and remember how to have fun. Each Fun Center will be equipped with a flat screen monitor, DVD player and a Nintendo Wii. Sweet! The promotion has gone so well, all......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Friday: Art Opening: Opening reception for Evidence, an exhibit of local photographers Natalie McDonald, Ellen Rosenberg, and Rachelle Lee Smith, at the William Way Community Center (1315 Spruce), 6-8PM. Free Leave the Glass House at Home: Marc Silver and The Stonethrowers bring their acoustic bluegrass and roots music to Tin Angel (20 S. 2nd), 7PM. $10 Geraldine Brooks: Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Geraldine Brooks reads from her new......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: FRIDAY New Year's Special: Improv comedy with the N Crowd at the Actors Center (257 N. 3rd), 8PM. $10 Caterpillar: Caterpillar, Photon Band, and The Trolleyvox at Johnny Brenda's (1201 Frankford), 9PM. $8 SATURDAY Show Some Love: Dance for a good cause at the Community Education Center and Meeting House Theatre (3500 Lancaster) fundraiser featuring DJ Mr. Cisum, 8PM-1AM. $10 More Spice Than Sugar: Sugartown featuring Lesbians on......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Philadelphia Premiere: ITVS Community Cinema presents Mapping Stem Cell Research at WHYY Independence Foundation Civic Space (150 N. 6th), 6PM. Free (RSVP requested, 215-351-0511) A Soulful Night: Laurin Frierson and Monica McIntyre at World Cafe Live (3025 Walnut Street), 7PM doors, 8PM show. $6-8 The Chance Trio: The Chance Trio, Tim Conley Trio, and Blivit at Tritone (1508 South), 10PM. $7 (21+) Quizzo Mania: Get your Quizzo on......

The latest in the case of Ebony Nicole Dorsey, the 14-year-old girl allegedly killed by her mother's boyfriend: the Daily News has an exclusive interview with the girl's mother, Danielle Cattie, who calls her boyfriend a monster. Meanwhile, the Inquirer quotes Cattie's brother defending his sister; he says she's "a great mom who deeply loves her children," and "She's a good person who made some bad decisions. She's paid a horrible price." It may seem......

The Inquirer has an article about the Philadelphia Community Cats Council, a group of folks trying to manage and reduce the city's huge feral cat population, estimated to be at least 250,000. They do this by trapping feral cats, neutering them, and then returning them where they were found. Both the Daily News and the Inquirer have articles about Sharon Hill native John Patrick Foley and his elevation this weekend to the status of Cardinal......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Robbin Hayward: Robbin Hayward with Anthea Caddy and Newton Armstrong at the Community Education Center (3500 Lancaster Ave), 8PM. $5-$10 Like Us After a Weeknight out Drinking: Slo and Shakey at Tritone (1508 South), 10PM. $5 Die Actor Die: Comedy show Die Actor Die featuring Pat Barker, Mike Berkowitz, Fred Siegel, Kate Bambi, Doogie Horner, Meg and Rob; hosted by Don Montrey at the Khyber (56 S 2nd),......

Fun around town, for $10 or less: Hey, we’re bad Catholics: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, To Bad Catholics, and Trtl Soup, courtesy of the folks at R5, at Johnny Brenda’s (1201 N. Frankford), 9 PM. $10 (21+) Foreskin’s Lament: Shalom Auslander, author of Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir, will be reading from the book at the Free Library (1901 Vine), 7PM. Free. (P.S. Our friends in Boston can give you the skinny.) Trolleyvox: The Trolleyvox,......

Tuesday Pianist Gary Graffman turned a right hand injury around into a brilliant career performing repertoire written for the left hand alone. Hear him play works by Bach, Brahms, Scirabin, Corigliano, and more. Perelman Theater (Kimmel Center); 8 PM; $22.50 Thursday Crossroads Music presents Kalman Balogh, accomplished player of the cimbalom, a difficult 36-stringed Central European hammered dulcimer. Calvary Center for Culture and Community (48th and Baltimore); 7:30pm; $10-$20 The new chief conductor of......

Wednesday The Opera Company of Philadelphia finishes its run of Verdi's timeless and tragic Rigoletto. The Academy of Music (Broad & Locust Sts); 7:30 PM; $7-$205 Acclaimed concert pianist and teacher Seymour Lipkin gives a solo recital of Bach, Brahms, and Debussy presented by the Philadephia Chamber Music Society. American Philosophical Society (427 Chestnut Street); 8 PM; $25 Thursday The Slought Foundation presents Vincent Royer and Philadelphia-based ensemble Noamnesia in an evening of music by......

Wow-ee! At ten this morning, a brand new Ben Franklin sculpture (this one by James Peniston) was unveiled at 4th and Arch Streets, bringing the total number of sculptures of the founding father in Philadelphia up to 24,367.* To celebrate, we're going to be sure we do First Friday up right this month, starting with the very special reception to welcome the newest Ben in the city. "Keys to Community": The Ben Franklin Project set......

The Inquirer has a nice article about the Community College of Philadelphia's Gateway to College program, which helps dropouts earn high school diplomas and college credits at the same time. There were two car crashes last night involving police vehicles. A teenage girl accompanied by a 5-year-old stole a patrol car at around 5:40PM while the officer was interviewing a complainant on the 1200 block of Gilham Street. She dropped the child off with......

Philadelphia Theatre Company recently received a $3,000,000 grant from the City of Philadelphia's Cultural Corridors Fund, and are now 2/3 of the way to the $30,000,000 they need for their new home on the Avenue of the Arts: the Suzanne Roberts Theatre. Four Democratic candidates for president visited our city yesterday, courting the National Education Association, who are holding their national representative assembly here at the moment, and the Association of Community Organizations for......

Having grown up Catholic, this Phillyist's early experience with bingo (besides the dog song, of course) consisted of the school gym being converted every other Wednesday afternoon into a downmarket The Price Is Right (if The Price Is Right had legions of older folk sitting at long folding tables littered with markers, enough bingo cards to paper said tables, and ashtrays. And if Bob Barker was a priest). It was not really appealing so......

Summer can be hard in the city, what with the smog and humidity and the cement oven beneath our feet. Phillyist plans to balance sticky subway air with some getting back to nature, and you can too. Greater Phildelphia Cares has a bunch of volunteer opportunities that will connect you with the soil. Which we hear is nice and cool once you dig down a few inches. GPC has recently moved their orientation online,......

Here's a very horrifying and surreal story for you: Tuesday night a 10-year-old boy was playing outside near his home on Lindley Avenue near 5th Street in Olney when a 25-year-old man walked up, grabbed the boy, and sliced his throat with a knife. The man was held by the family until police arrived, but he offered no resistance and didn't try to get away. Why he did it is still a mystery. The......

The latest in local politics: it looks like Brady is going to get a bunch of union endorsements. But it could be TV ads that decide the race. Meanwhile, Tom Knox is partnering with Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell to create a "reform ticket" - even though, as the Inquirer points out, Blackwell was the only Council member to vote against reform. Speaking of campaigns and the City Council, the nastiest campaign this election season is......

Knox, facing tough opposition from the other candidates in ads and at a recent debate, decides to fight back with... more of the same! He just bought $400,000 worth of time for his TV commercials. The Kingsessing Recreation Center, site of an April 12 shooting, has long had, and continues to have, problems with drugs and violence. Residents don't feel the city is doing enough. The regular monthly meeting of the Kingsessing Recreation Center......

A Penn State football player and his girlfriend got into "an altercation" with some guys on the street, and then later called up his other football-playing buddies and they all went and broke into the apartment building where the guys lived, where "a melee ensued." All of this is allegedly, of course. Anyway, half a dozen Penn State football players are facing charges ranging from criminal trespass to burglary. (Via reader Ross) A senior......

Apparently the NYPD recruits, and often holds their police-entrance exam, right here in Philly. In fact, they just had the test on Saturday at Temple. We were wondering what they were doing set up in the Gallery on Friday... Yo, dude, Kumar's gonna be teaching at Penn! Seriously, Kal Penn (no relation) is going to be a guest instructor for the Asian American Studies Program in the spring 2008 semester. Appropriately enough, the classes......

Holy crud! Well, this Phillyist's prediction about how the whole casino thing was going to go has just been totally shot to hell: yesterday the City council unanimously approved putting that referendum about casinos on the May 15 primary ballot, which "would change the city charter to ban casinos within 1,500 feet of any residential neighborhood." We'll be jiggered! All the Brady news that's fit to print! First of all, he and his legal......

The Philadelphia Inquirer has some more details about the madness that went down at West Philly High on Monday, as well as fall-out over the removal of the school's principal last week. Meanwhile, West Philly High isn't the only Philadelphia school experiencing violence and insanity; the Abigail Vare Public School on Moyamensing Avenue and Morris Street in South Philly went into lockdown Monday afternoon after a shooting occurred at a basketball court across the street.......

Area anti-casino forces are attacking on various fronts. Next month the City Council will vote on whether to include a question on the next ballot which could put the decision of whether to have casinos in the city or not in the hands of voters. Bill Cosby gave another of his patented controversial talks at a Save Our Children forum at the Community College of Philadelphia on Wednesday. Meanwhile, (perhaps at Cosby's insistence?) cops......

Senators Arlen Specter and Robert Casey Jr. held a joint hearing on Mentoring and Community Based Solutions to Delinquency and Youth Violence in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center on Monday. The Inquirer article talks about the hearing in general and how the community leaders there decided mentoring is indeed a good short-term solution for preventing crime. Meanwhile, the Daily News article focuses on what school district head Paul Vallas had to say at......

Tonight at 7, the International House will be showing the premiere of Precious Places, a documentary put together by Scribe Video Center's Precious Places Community History Project. That's a mouthful, but what it translates to is local folks from largely non-touristy areas of the city and some parts of Camden were given cameras and asked to record the goings-on of their community. There are interviews and looks at out-of-the way historical and cultural sites; Scribe......

The Inquirer and Daily News are making some changes, in print and online, to try to stay alive. Website-wise, they've launched PhillyCars.com, PhillyForRent.com, and PhillyForSale.com. There was a shooting at the Brunswick Adams Lanes Bowling Alley in Northeast Philly on Sunday, and most of it was caught on tape by surveillance cameras. Two people were injured in the incident, including one of the shooters, who is now in custody. But police are looking for help......

Scary story: a bus got out of control, apparently due to a mechanical problem of some kind, on the campus of Bucks County's Pennsbury High School and injured 17 students, one of them critically. Philly police have invited the family of Bryan Jones - the 20-year-old that cops shot during a New Year's Day gun battle - to meet with them, in order to discuss the details of his death. The cops need your help......

Yo, Philly Orchestra rocks, man! It received "one of four MetLife awards for Excellence in Community Engagement.... for its Camden Community Partnership Initiative, a three-year-old partnership committed to using musical engagement as a means to improve the economic condition, emotional health, and future outlook of the city." Very nice. Speaking of cool local music stories, check out this article about an 11-year-old sixth-grader who's a talented and accomplished jazz pianist, with his own band......

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is almost upon us, and with it unique opportunities to volunteer in the community. As promised, we give you the 12th Annual Martin Luther King Day of Service. The day grew out of national legislation aiming to create a day of citizen action in honor of Dr. King’s work. And it grew, and grew, and grew. Philly’s celebration is the largest in the nation and we're gearing up for record......