philly

Giants on Tonight?!

I knew that the Giants would be playing on Saturdays for their final two games of the year, but it didn't register that their final game would be on New Year's Eve with an 8p start time! Good god. There better be a TV, with cable, with the GMen on wherever I'm at in six hours. Win and they clinch the division!

24 Hours in Philadelphia

Just saw this Inky piece on a Travel Channel show titled 24 Hours in Philadelphia. It's on at 10p tonight on the Travel Channel.

I expect a full roundup of Philly Boos by 11am tomorrow.

UPDATE 10.55p
Arg, I can't find the Travel Channel on my Comcast cable. Oh well.

Commander in Chief: The Show

I watched Commander in Chief last night on ABC for the first time. Who knew that Natasha Henstrige has left her Species days behind her? Aaaaand Saved by the Bell's own Mark-Paul Gosselaar is now going to be a regular on the show! Will Tiffani-Amber Thiessen make an apperance in the Lincoln Bedroom?

I like Donald Sutherland's character. Kinda frumpy power guy.

Geena Davis is very tall.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Ghost in the Shell and its sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence are two of my favorite anime films. I had heard of the television series version, but never had the chance to watch it until last night. I caught Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late night.

While it didn't have all the gore as in the films and it was dubbed instead of subtitled [I very much prefer subtitles to dubbing], but it was still pretty good. There are fifty-two episodes of the show, I've read, and I'd like to see them all. Cool to see some of the characters from the films transferred to the show.

Aeon Flux

I let out a yelp last night while watching Monday Night Football. But it wasn't during the game. It was during a commercial break when I saw a commercial for Aeon Flux... the movie! Oh man. I loved the TV version on late night on MTV back in the day. It was awesome.

I'm not so sure about casting Charlize Theron as Aeon, but who knows. I hope she doesn't fuck it up. Shit, I hope everyone involved doesn't fuck it up.

Official movie site.

Oooh, also, the complete animated collection three DVD set comes out November 22nd.

Current TV Conert at City Hall

Lots of people were at City Hall last night, some for this Mariano suicide scare [it was almost impossible for him to have tried to jump], but most for the Current TV concert at Dilworth Plaza on the eastern side of City Hall. The concert was, basically, a PR stunt to try to get Comcast to put the cable network [co-founded by Al Gore] into the Philly Comcast market among others. Currently is currently in 13M Comcast homes nationwide.

I took a bunch of shots, mostly in RAW [Nikon .nef] format at ISO 640. I couldn't get as close to the front of the stage as I would have liked, but hey. The shot above is a cropped and edited JPEG of the original RAW. The 'basic' JPEG co-captured simultaneously can be found in my flickr set of the event here.

The concert started off with Philly's own Black Ice, an incredible spoken word artist who is on HBO's Def Poetry. The crowd ate it all up.

Pepper's Ghost, a Philly band, performed next. Not really my style, but the lead singer got some cheers as he jumped down from the stage onto a landing and started dry fucking the landing. I thought it was pretty cheesy and a cheap stunt to get the crowd that was there to see The Roots to have a reaction. I credit him that much that he noticed that nobody was rocking out to their tunes. It was no deeply into the set Jimi moment, no siree.

After them was Suffrajett who got the crowd back into it. Their lead singer was rocking out first with a tambourine, then with the mic alone and for the last song, she brought out an electric fiddle and even belted out a solo from her knees with the strings of her bow tearing away.

Little Brother was up next, I never heard of them, but from what I could tell, they're an underground hip hop trio out of North Carolina. Here's their MySpace. They carried the energy from Suffrajett and got everyone bobbing their heads. The crowd around me [about ten deep from the front row] knew their lyrics and were rhyming with them.

Al Gore got up next. I expected him to be there, but it was still a surprise to me. I got a huge rush as he was announced. "The man that should have been President in 2000...." and the crowd went wild. People started screaming. It was cool to see him up there. It reminded me of the Kerry and Clinton rally in late October right before the 2004 election just across the way at LOVE Park. He urged us to create our own content. "Send us your television. Let us tell your stories, and let us put it on television nationwide." He called out to us. He urged us to fight for a two-way dialogue through television, something that we've lost.

Fishbone came out next. A really lively set. Their lead singer was all over the place, doing cartwheels on stage, jump kicks and then jumping down from the stage and over the fence right into the crowd.

Finally, the group everyone came out to see, The Roots, came on stage. They played a nice set, maybe five songs. The crowd really got rocking. Everyone around me was moving, shaking and enjoying the free show from Philly's finest.

Some other thoughts and observations... The crowd was almost entirely of the twenty-five and under crowd. One of the MC's gave a shout out to Campus Philly, so I'm assuming they hit the local schools up pretty hardcore. It was a great turnout. There were so many heads smoking cloves. I got a little bit of a headache from it. It was pretty thick. I'd say even more people smoking weed. Some seriously dank stuff. There were segments of content from Current TV in between the band sets, some got a little long and the crowd was getting antsy for The Roots, but hey, it was a free concert.

flickr set

Current TV Concert

Well, it looks like I was wrong when I said the concert later today for Current TV may be marking the arrival of Current TV to Comcast Philly. It's not:

Unhappy that Comcast Corp. has declined to carry their youth-oriented television network, Al Gore and law mogul Joel Hyatt will try to draw a crowd of supporters to Dilworth Plaza today, 35 stories below the offices of Comcast chairman Brian L. Roberts.

The network created by Gore and Hyatt, Current TV, aims at an audience between 18 and 34 with a menu of viewer-produced programs that have the look and feel video "podcasts." Viewers can show their own productions on the network, if their work gets a green light from registered visitors to the network's Web site, www.current.tv.

Current TV is carried on satellite distributor DirecTV. Comcast carries the network only on a handful of its systems that were contractually obligated to carry the content of Current's predecessor, a Canadian news network.

Well, another reason to head on over to LOVE Park, stick it to the man. Heh.

The Roots and Al Gore

Judging by this site, I think that Current TV - Al Gore's new cable channel - is coming to the Philadelphia market. Give 'em your email address, print out your paper ticket [probably a way for them to harvest email addresses and spam us to sign up later] and head on over [you could also put in a fake email addy if you'd like of course]. Thursday evening: Dilworth Plaza - 6.30p - 8.30p. Enter through JFK/Broad St, doors open at 5p.

The Roots, Fishbone, Little Brother, Suffrajett, Pepper's Ghost, Rich Medina, and more TBA will be there. I'm assuming Al will be there too since it is his damn network, but who knows.

The Colbert Report

I loved it.

Stone Phillips was a great sport and made me like him some more.

It's French, Bitch.

Tonight is the premiere of The Colbert Report, the spinoff of The Daily Show. And yes, the last name is French, bitch.

I'm excited to tune in tonight to see the show, which follows The Daily Show at 11.30p, for a solid twenty minutes of Stephen Colbert's snark. I just hope that the writers [is Jon one of them?] can keep up the snark for the four or so segments instead of the normal one segment on TDS. Colbert has some time in the limelight. He has filled in for Jon in the past. I think it was when Jon's wife [can't remember her name] gave birth to their baby.

Tonight's guest is Dateline host Stone Phillips. I wonder if he'll breathe all funny like he does on his show. Does anyone else notice that? I haven't seen Dateline in quite awhile, but all I remember about is the weird way he breathes.

He's to take on the same satirical role he has on TDS. He'll take on the media from a reporter's standpoint. I wonder if he'll be behind a desk since he's not supposed to be an anchorman. I wonder if it's filmed at TDS studio with the same crowd as TDS.

Photo credit: Comedy Central