Monthly Archives: November 2007

I highly encourage you to read the opening page in this months Philadelphia Magazine. It is written by D. Herbert Lipson, whose family has published Philly Mag since 1946. It’s called “Off the Cuff”, and here are a few choice excerpts:

Philadelphians are ugly…what the world sees is the layer of crud over everything, including us. We’re not clean …or safe…I’ve been railing for a long time about how shabby we are, how Philadelphians present themselves poorly.

It gets better.

Not so long ago, a national high end retailer wanted to put a store on Walnut Street. A couple of executives drove down from New York one day, parked their limo on Walnut, and gazed out through tinted windows…at the slovenly crowd passing by. Then they drove back to New York, after coming to an easy decision: Philadelphia is not the place for high end retail.

Oh, no! We lost a chance to encourage a couple of blue blood aristocrats from New York to put a chain store on Walnut Street because we weren’t all dressed like we care what blue blood aristocrats from New York think of us? What is wrong with us? Why can’t we start living our lives to impress the obscenely wealthy?

We sometimes invite staffers down from Boston magazine…an they’re startled by what they see…we prance around in public like we’re walking the dog in our backyard.

We don’t just disgust New Yorkers, we also disgust those vanguards of taste and class, the Bostonians? How embarrassing! This isn’t the first time Lipson has blasted Philly while praising Boston. In an article written about him for his alma mater, we get this little gem: Boston magazine, he says, is classier than Philadelphia both in appearance and writing. That reflects Lipson’s opinions of the two cities.

There’s plenty more jewels in the write up: how disgusting Rittenhouse Park is, how he recently had lunch at the Palm, and how our lack of fashion is going to be difficult for the new Mayor to deal with. Now all of this would be pretty funny if Bobby Badtimes wrote it, but I don’t think D. Herbert is kidding. I think he really finds Philly to be a cesspool, and an embarrassment when compared to the crown jewel of haut couture, Boston. So shape up, Philadelphians! If you want your mag to get the classy treatment like Boston, you need to start wearing expensive suits and eating at the Palm and rooting for the Patriots.
RELATED: The Best of Statler and Waldorf.

Short 1887 write up I came across concerning a Mr. Williamson, a Philadelphian who was apparently the richest bachelor in America 120 years ago. Anybody have any idea who this guy is?

• Oh boy, Smackdown just sent me this exciting Pee Wee info. Start getting excited, America. Laurence Fishburn better be making an appearance.
• In a parallel universe, quizmasters are worshipped as living deities. So if this does turn out to be an alternate universe, I am totally going.
• You know how those new cell phones can show your friends where you are, so now they can stalk you at all hours of the day and night? Well, guess who else might be using those cell phones to stalk you? The federal government.
• Dunno if you missed this over Thanksgiving, but Bill Conlin is caught up in a bit of a firestorm after he said that Hitler should have eliminated bloggers in an email to a blogger which the blogger then published. Had Hitler eliminated bloggers, would that have made him benevolent?

When they first came out, it was a great thing. The good people at Myquizzo.com were gonna give everyone in Philly a source to go to to know when and where to find a quizzo that night. Even better, they were gonna do reviews of the various quizzos and bios of the various quizmasters. It was a great set up. And then, nothing. Under news, they have made one entry in the past year and a half. The site is covered with ads for porn and various annoying pop-ups. The Dive, which hasn’t hosted quizzo in over a year, is still listed, while the Rendezvous and the Black Sheep are not. Come on, guys. Either do it right or shut it down. You’re the first thing that comes up on google when you type in quizzo, and your half-ass site is giving the game a bad name.

• Quizmaster Chris reports that some corporate quizzo entity is trying to make it’s way into Philly. That doesn’t bother me so much as the fact that, as Chris points out, this corporate entities website doesn’t mention Philly in it’s history of pub trivia in the US, but does mention New York. Which, um, has virtually no quizzo. That’s like talking about the United Nations and mentioning Philly but not New York. Except this is worse, because people care about quizzo, and nobody cares about the United Nations.
• href="http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20071121_John_Baer___Gun_cultures_clash____Pa__lost.html">Why can’t we limit guns in this city? Because idiots in rural PA need them to shoot rare animals. I so hope that bears raid one of these redneck towns and eat all the villagers. That would be awesome.
• Cataldi’s column this week was much better. He actually veered off his McNabb/Reid dead horse diatribes and wrote about how cheap Phillies ownership is. Since this is something that drives me clinically insane, I’m glad someone is writing about it. This ownership is, instead of trying to build a champion around it’s three superstars, trying to take advantage of them to get people in the park while keeping payroll low.