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(04/21/05 4:00am)
This is it. The end. In 24 days -- a mere 576 hours -- I, with the rest of my class, will graduate. In 24 days it will no longer be appropriate to puke up vodka cranberry for four hours on a Friday morning. Waking up next to a stranger every Wednesday will be considered atrociously slutty and leaving empty jugs of Carlo Rossi filled with cigarette butts on your floor for a month will seem slovenly. In other words, in less than one month, we have to say goodbye to four years of dirty, disgusting, carefree, wonderful self-indulgence and consider finding gainful employment. However, fellow seniors, there are a few things we all need to do before we pack up this party and head towards the gaping black hole known as the real world. I'm not talking about renting your cap and gown -- we all did that, and are all planning to piss in them during the procession to get our $37 worth. Or maybe that's just me. We have to say goodbye to Penn, home of the best, brightest, and JAPpiest, the right way. I present to you Things You Have to Do Before You Graduate.
(04/07/05 4:00am)
Moss Hart, Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin must have had copies of Hamlet firmly in hand while collaborating on Lady in the Dark. The protagonist of this 1941 musical, Liza Elliott, is repeatedly faulted as a woman who, like our favorite Dane, "can't make up her mind."
(02/03/05 5:00am)
You know that summer in St. Trop is only fun if you avoid the army of wrinkled German men in thongs and retreat to Les Caves du Roy nightly. You understand that skiing in Klosters is better than Meribel, and regularly find yourself semi-clad at the Casa Antica at 3 a.m. You can play the name game with the best of them -- e.g. "Oh my gawd, you went to Bryanston? You must know Cornelia Pomkinson-Hurrah-Saxony!" You know that B.A. World Traveler is a kindly euphemism for Steerage. Face it: you're Eurotrash, and you're at a loss in Philly, where the cheese steaks and chicken wings don't measure up to the gastropub delights at Latitude.
(01/27/05 5:00am)
Don't be fooled by the cover of Groton-alum Curtis Sittenfeld's classy debut novel -- Prep. While the pink and green grosgrain belt around the book's middle may bring to mind your wasted summer on Nantucket or that yachtie you fondled at the Newport-Bermuda after-party, Prep's protagonist is not an elitist snob like you and I.
(11/18/04 5:00am)
Tuesday was my 22nd birthday. It was also November 16th -- exactly six months until graduation. I didn't know whether to celebrate in the usual way -- get blackout drunk and make out with everyone I know -- or to finally trade in the Bacardi for the Botox. I'm officially old, and I have five months and twenty eight days until I can no longer justify waking up naked on the porch as a typical Wednesday morning.
(10/28/04 4:00am)
Saved by the Bell -- Seasons 1 & 2
(09/23/04 4:00am)
Popular -- the complete first season
(09/16/04 4:00am)
Stop the pretending; we know your secret. You skipped the company barbeque to watch the finale of Outback Jack. And then you went to the CBS website after missing an episode of the Amazing Race, just to see if those douchebag twins were finally given the boot. (Like I said, we know.) Your Wednesday nights were spent alone with Paris, Nicole and a bottle of Cabernet. So face it -- you're addicted to reality TV. Now that the season is almost over, you need some closure before you sink your teeth into the new Apprentice. We present the winners and losers of summer reality TV.
(04/22/04 4:00am)
What do Burberry-clad yuppies, chimichangas and tequila have in common? All can be found in abundance at Mexican Post, Old City's numero uno Tex-Mex joint and arguably the best place for happy hour margaritas in Philly.
(03/25/04 5:00am)
The last time I ate chicken from a questionable restaurant was at 4:00 a.m. at a dirty KFC somewhere near Notting Hill Gate over spring break. Needless to say, at the time it was the best thing I had ever tasted, although I could barely remember my late-night rendezvous with Colonel Sanders when I fell out of bed the next morning.
(01/29/04 5:00am)
Philly's restaurant impresario has done it again. For his ninth venture, Stephen Starr has taken the skeleton of the failed tapas bar Trust and turned it into a carnival of kitsch and cool rivaled only by his other fabulously popular "restaubars," Continental, Buddakan et al. This time, however, the concept is more impressive than the food itself.
(11/20/03 5:00am)
I'm not a big believer in the supernatural. I don't get my tarot cards read, try to interpret my dreams, carry magical crystals, or burn essential oils. I do believe that Madonna should stop wearing that red string around her wrist and calling herself Esther, but that's another article.
(10/30/03 5:00am)
Over the course of my three years at Penn, I've been threatened with deportation twice, frisked three times -- not just checking my boots for box-cutters, but the full deal, burly mustachioed women and all -- and most recently, over Fall Break, denied entry into this land of the free/home of the brave by a smug U.S. Airways rep with poor oral hygiene.
(10/02/03 4:00am)
Madonna in the world of children's literature is like a priest in a porn film: unexpected, awkward, and not particularly sexy. Yet the queen of self-promotion has indeed reinvented herself once again, this time as a serious author.
(09/18/03 4:00am)
Move over Woody's - you've been shafted. There's a new kid on the block in the Gayborhood, packed nightly with more beautiful men than the front row of a Cher concert. For just over a year, Bump has been filling a major void in the downtown boy-bar scene. Restaurant by day and luxe martini lounge by night, Bump caters to a trendier, classier crowd than its older, more established neighbors in the rainbow flag district. Everything at Bump screams chic, from the dim orange lighting to the extremely attractive staff - picture the cast of Queer as Folk mixing a mean dirty martini.
(09/11/03 4:00am)
When I first heard that Roy's "Hawaiian Fusion" restaurant was part of a chain, I feared the worst: the Olive Garden with leis. Thankfully, there wasn't a breadstick in sight -- just a plethora of palm trees and grinning waiters in Hawaiian shirts offering an enthusiastic "Aloha!" with every refill of the water jug.
(06/19/03 4:00am)
Some days I wake up so hung over that I can't decide whether to stumble to work still drunk and get fired or throw myself in front of a train. On those such mornings, when it feels like an ice pick is slowly being shoved through your skull, and normal noises like a dog's bark turn into insufferable screeching pains, the only logical course of action is to suck it up and start drinking again. The Plough and the Stars does one of the best Hangover Brunches around - after a couple of their perfect Mimosas I was back to my normal, chipper self, able to form intelligible sentences and walk a straight line.
(04/24/03 4:00am)
Do not visit Eastern State Penitentiary if you, like me, have to count your irrational fears on both hands: clowns, rodents, the elderly -- need I go on? If ghosts exist at all, they must be here, darting around the cold, abandoned cells of death row. This enormous, castle-like fortress dates from 1829, and was once the most famous prison in the world, with electricity and running water when President Jackson was still using a chamber pot in the White House.
Open for tours from April through November and popular for conceptual art installations, the cell blocks of Eastern State represent an outdated Quaker belief that criminals could be reformed through strict solitary confinement. Life in the eight-by-twelve cells at Eastern was indeed lonely, to varying degrees -- one horse thief, for instance, almost went insane while locked up for 23 hours a day with only a Bible for company. He sat in silence, weaving baskets and waiting for a food tray to be slipped through a slot in his door. Charles Dickens visited Eastern in its early days, and commented that its creators were engaged in "a slow daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain". The prison tour is conducted by audio guide, so one can navigate the stale, damp, dungeons of Eastern without interruption from the hordes of obnoxious Jersey day-trippers. Narrated by actor Steve Buscemi, who has the voice of a child molester, the tour is full of quirky prison trivia (Al Capone got his tonsils removed on the hospital block in 1939) and accompanied by a cheesy soundtrack of squeaking hinges and gushing air intended as a reminder that "a stew of souls... and restless spirits" remain in the tomb-like corridors. Stark black and white photos cover the chipped paint of the walls in some of the empty halls, documenting the hardships of prison life over the years in the blank stares of the inmates.
Abandoned for good in 1971, the prison thankfully has not been beautified or renovated except to make it safe for visitors -- the baseball diamond, for instance, is overgrown with weeds from three decades of neglect. From the recreation grounds, you can look up and see the modern Philadelphia skyline, with its steel and glass buildings, jutting above the rusting battlements. Eastern State is both fascinating and haunting, and certainly worth a visit. Just don't be surprised if you feel slightly uneasy in the shadows of the crumbling walls -- you might not be alone.
(03/27/03 5:00am)
This weekend I learned a very important lesson: irrespective of the words of a noticeably frightened cab driver pulling over on 54th street, "Historic Bartram's Garden" is not the same thing as "Bartram's Village." One is a beautiful pre-revolutionary home and botanical garden set in 4 tranquil acres of Fairmount Park -- the other is a housing project, where nothing whatsoever could be described as "scenic," unless gutters full of syringes and empty 40s of Olde English appeal to you.
(02/21/03 5:00am)
When most of us think of dancing, we think of either annoying, politically-correct student groups or embarrassing, flailing motions at campus bars. Saturday nights at SoMa are completely different.
So-called for its South of Market location and its Sanskrit translation as "an intoxicating or hallucinogenic beverage," SoMa is no larger than a racquetball court, but you won't find any sweater-vested yuppies here. The d‚cor is decidedly dark and understated -- round blood-red loveseats line the walls, spartan tables and chairs dot the perimeter of the room and mod black-and-white photographs serve as the sole decoration.