There is only so much to be said about Monday. We are running out of metaphors, puns and descriptive analogies. So, let's make a brief mention of walking etiquette. You can read a more in-depth discussion via a past edition of Monday Manners. The people who can't walk a straight line must be corralled into maintaining a steady course. Often, as was the case this morning, these people are not homeless or drunk: they......

Last Friday & the weekend: Michael defended his decision to cut $21 million in funding to Philadelphia Safe and Sound, the program that, as we mentioned last week, John Street had shifted money to in the waning days of his administration. And he announced that the Department of Public Welfare would be auditing Safe and Sound's finances for the last couple years. Michael also ignited Governor Rendell's fury with his revocation of SugarHouse's casino license,......

The Price is a play by Arthur Miller, which pretty much means it's about half an hour too long and a little dated, especially when you get to talking money (which, let's face it, most of his characters outside of The Crucible do). That being said, when you can embrace the fact that this is what you get from Arthur Miller, you have to admit that he's a helluva writer. There's a reason that his......

Warning: This whole review is basically a spoiler. Despite its infamy, there are apparently people out there who are still surprised by the "twist" at the end of M. Butterfly, currently being produced by the Philadelphia Theatre Company. These are the same people who are confused by Ru Paul. Please proceed with caution. Let's just get this out of the way, folks. Butterfly in David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, just like Dil in The Crying......

I showed up at Mauckingbird Theatre Company's The Misanthrope with a combination of excitement and trepidation. Excitement because I love Molière and Dito van Reigersberg. Trepidation because an all-male production of a French farce? I expected half the cast to be in outrageous Marie Antoinette-like drag costumes. It's not that I don't love a good drag show – it's just that I didn't see that combining it with Molière would be anything less than......

Governor Rendell has proclaimed January 11, 2008 “Sister Rosetta Tharpe Day” in the State of Pennsylvania. There will be a benefit concert to honor the gospel music legend that night at the Keswick. (Via Bob) You can catch a film profile of Allen Iverson by rapper Nelly tonight at 10:30PM on IFC. The Inquirer has a short interview with A.I. about the project. "A federal judge refused yesterday to release on bail the five men......

Phillyist, like untold thousands in the Delaware Valley, resolved to be more active this year. If you’re one of those thousands and are looking for a place to start, consider combining it with that other favorite resolution, volunteering in the community. Back On My Feet running club lets you do just that: you’ll run in Center City with homeless men from local shelters. It may seem odd at first glance, but the non-profit is committed......

What do you do when you've been a concert pianist for 50 years? Why, give a concert, of course! The Ama Deus Ensemble was more than happy to host Romanian pianist and Ama Deus regular Dan Grigore for an Anniversary Gala in Perelman Hall. The first piece on the program, Beethoven's Egmont Overture, incidental music for a play by Goethe, was plagued by some ensemble problems. Conductor Valentin Radu's animated style was a delight......

Wednesday: Celebrate Halloween with ballet’s favorite vampire. Pennsylvania Ballet continues their run of Dracula. Creature of the night? Join the company for their Halloween party after the performance at the DoubleTree Hotel. The Academy of Music, 8PM, $22-124. (Halloween party $25) This performance runs through November 3. Don’t you love a little extra? Miro Dance Theatre offers a bonus Open Studio this week when they host Japan’s Ikyuo Kuroda and the US premiere of her......

Rock chamber ensemble? What does that even mean? In case you were a bit fuzzy on the concept like I was, it means classically trained musicians have taken up rock instruments and play music composed by classically-trained composers. In short, high-art rock music. Not a bad idea, right? As a result, I was pleasantly surprised and very impressed with rock chamber ensembles Newspeak and Electric Kompany presented by Chamber Music Now! in their season opener.......

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With - Jeff Garlin plays a rather pathetic Chicago actor who lives with his mother, and who, in the opening scenes of the film, gets dumped by his girlfriend, loses a part to Aaron Carter, and leaves an Overeaters Anonymous meeting to go to an ice cream parlor. When he falls for a girl there (Sarah Silverman), it could mean......

The main problem with Shakespeare is that he wrote so darn much. Any group tackling this monstrous body of work in any form is certainly in for a ride. LyricFest's "Biography in Music - Shakespeare" was a fairly successful attempt. The amount of material covered by the program - the life of Shakespeare, readings from his works, and song settings of his works - certainly presents a problem for even the most dedicated programmer. LyricFests's......

Performances: Flamingo/Winnebago (The Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental/Le Chat Lunatique/Thaddeus Phillips) (Future Showtimes); The Fantoccini Brothers Return (Mum Puppettheatre) (Future Showtimes) A note for next year to the PLAF organizers: however long someone tells you that a performance is, add ten minutes to it before you print the program or update the website. People who love the Festival want to see as much during it as they can, and so they schedule performances more or less back-to-back,......

Performance: An·'tis·a·lon (Kaibutsu) (Future Showtimes) One of the things I love so much about the Live Arts and Fringe Festivals is the audience who goes to see the shows. The people waiting to see these shows usually aren't your standard theatre-going audience, or, if they are, they're more relaxed than they are at more traditional shows. They talk to you while you're standing in line. They offer alternative suggestions about other shows to latecomers who......

Cardinal Justin Rigali was tearing it up at Finnegan's Wake in Northern Liberties last night as part of a national program called Theology on Tap "where Catholic speakers - theologians, mostly - lecture at bars and taverns popular with young Catholics." It's only the third time in the 26-year history of the program that a cardinal has participated, and the first time a bishop of the Philadelphia Archdiocese has done so. The nearby city......

Hey there, readers! I'm back liveblogging the second day of the First Annual BlogPhiladelphia "unconference." This post will be constantly updating throughout the day, so it's going to stay at the top of the Phillyist main index. But be sure to scroll down for the rest of our regular content, and see full liveblog after the jump! (Meanwhile, forgive us any resulting funny HTML, folks. We're fixing mistakes as soon as we find them.)......

Monday The Philadelphia Art Alliance's New Music Mondays series presents works by Jan Krzywicki, Professor of Composition at Temple University. Philadelphia Art Alliance (251 S. 18th St.); 7:30 PM; $20 Wednesday The Philadephia Chamber Music Society Presents the American Quartet with Lydia Artymiw, piano, in a program of Haydn, Shostakovich, Dohnanyi. The pianist will even give a free pre-concert lecture at 6:45! Perelman Theater (Kimmel Center); 8 PM; $22 Thursday The Academy of Vocal......

I must admit, I'm usually wary of early Beethoven. For me, it lacks the drive and passion of his middle and late periods. I was pleasantly surprised last night, however, by Miklós Perényi (cello) and András Schiff (piano) in their all-Beethoven program presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society at the Independence Seaport Museum. Both Perényi and Schiff hail from Budapest and tour the world with vibrant solo careers. Schiff, while known more for his......

Films: The Bothersome Man, The Kovak Box Future Screenings: The Bothersome Man - None The Kovak Box - Sat, April 14, 5PM at the Ritz East; Wed, April 18, 6:15PM at the County Theater, Doylestown Well, crap. I did indeed jinx myself, as I feared I might, when I said in my last diary entry that I hadn't seen a bad movie yet. Because last night, I saw my first "Poor" of the festival, The......

Film: Consequences Future Screenings: No future screenings scheduled Once in a while, you hear about a movie that gets booed at a film festival, that film festival usually being Cannes, a.k.a. the film festival to end all film festivals. Having your film booed at Cannes is almost a death sentence: the film has to be re-edited, new scenes have to be filmed, and even then, chances are that it won't do very well in the......

Monday New York native Richard Goode, piano, comes to Philadelphia (thanks to the PCMS) for an evening of hits: Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and Debussy. Perelman Theater (Kimmel Center); 8 PM; $22 Tuesday Feel-good concert of the week: NPR’s Classical music program, From the Top, hosted by pianist Christopher O'Riley, returns to the Kimmel Center to showcase the next generation of Philadelphia’s classical musicians. You’ll be sure to leave the hall uplifted and awed. Verizon......

Time to gear up, people: the 16th Philadelphia Film Festival starts tomorrow! As we did last year, Phillyist is planning plenty of coverage, mostly taking the form of film festival diary entries from various staff members (including, of course, yours truly, whose schedule can be seen here, in case you're interested). But what's going on this year, and what should you look forward to? Well, we're glad you asked. Let's pick through the overview press......

A tall, icy glass of our favorite internet junk, just for you. Get your Lovecraft fix, and learn a different interpretation of March Madness, courtesy defective yeti. Check out the trailer for the next Bourne movie, The Bourne Ultimatum! Looks like more of the same... and we like that! (Via reader Mike V) The former editor of Australia's Official PS2 Magazine says he was offered "sex, money, gifts, overseas trips and advertising support" in exchange......

Nothing about talking about AIDS is pleasant. It's a disease that still has an enormous stigma attached to it, based largely on decades-old misunderstandings of what it is and who gets it. To me, it always seemed like an abstract concept well beyond my level of comprehension, like quantum physics. I knew it was out there, and I knew it was important, but I didn't feel qualified to weigh in on those rare occasions during......

Wow! Did this creep up on anybody else? We were thinking this was still a ways off, and then all of the sudden the website is live, the schedule is up, and tickets go on sale TODAY (although as of this writing, the links for purchasing don't seem to be live yet online)! (UPDATE: Online ticketing now appears to be up and running.) We haven't had a chance to look over this year's list of......

As we reported yesterday, Milton Street got arrested! Will this deter him from continuing his run for mayor? We're betting not. Our favorite parts of this story are the details: the cops found him outside a 7-Eleven near his Moorestown, NJ home, arrested him because of two traffic tickets that led to contempt citations, and he ended up in jail because he couldn't pay the combined fine of $3,250. (Btw, non-imprisoned mayoral candidate Chaka......

A tall, icy glass of our favorite internet junk, just for you. Frank Darabont might adapt Stephen King's The Dark Tower into a movie series?! Now that's some good geek news. Here's a list we obviously couldn't not post: Fifteen Geek Movies to See Before You Die. We could quibble with the inclusion of Darkman (never understood why people like that movie - it's just really bad!), but the rest of the list is pretty......

To all the knitters out there: It's not yet time for spring cleaning, but consider a mid-winter de-stash for a good cause: the women at Interim House, a 6-month drug and alcohol addiction treatment center located in Mt. Airy, are in need of your donated yarn, needles, and notions. Kathryn Duffy started a knitting group at the center 3 years ago, and finds the process of knitting to be helpful in the recovery from addiction.......

A very cool event for a very cool cause is going down tomorrow night, and we wanted you to know about it. The event is a winter-themed dance party called Shake & Shiver, featuring music, film screenings, a raffle, refreshments, and a holiday photo booth. It's the first fundraiser for a non-profit organization called Girls Rock Philly, who are working to establish Philly's only rock camp for girls: The week-long summer day camp serving junior......

Before you read this review, go read the plot summary for Valhalla. I’ll wait. Done? Good. Confused? Yeah, I figured you would be. I certainly was, too. But because I loved the last Philadelphia Theatre Workshop play I saw, and because as a child I was fascinated by King Ludwig II of Bavaria (and particularly enamored of Neuschwanstein, the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland), and because, hell, I’m from Texas, I couldn’t......