HAVE YOU SEEN this Paulie Walnuts Wannabe Bagadonuts? He's on the back of every other bus in Center City. And there's something about Joe The Jeweler that reminds me of the last Sopranos casting call I attended. Could a guy named Joe The Jeweler look any more trustworthy than this Joe The Jeweler? There's something about a big Italo-Greco face with full graying hair holding hundred dollar bills in one hand and gold chains in the other that screams "trust me."

Either that or "kneecaps."

Continue reading "In God We Trust. Long as Joe says so." »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 12:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THERE'S A WORD that leaps to mind to describe the events leading up to, and including, Larry Mendte's statement during a press conference following his guilty plea in federal court to a felony charge of hacking into his former Channel 3 co-anchor Alycia Lane's email: cheesy.

The whole thing has been cheesy from start to finish. And Mendte put a cherry on top of the l'affair fromage in his statement during a news conference Friday afternoon in which he took complete responsibility for being a paranoid nitwit. The whole thing has smacked of high school intrigue pitting the insecure big man on campus against the prettiest mean girl on the cheerleading squad.

You could almost imagine hearing Mendte mumbling to himself, "What's she saying about me now?" as he obsessively checked Lane's email accounts hundreds and hundreds of times at all hours of the day and night -- once even during a newscast he was anchoring.

In his lengthy 10-minute statement Mendte actually used the word "bad-mouthing" twice, as in, "I saw more emails bad-mouthing me. I confronted Alycia and asked her to stop. She said she that she would not." Remember, we're talking about two $700,000-a-year major market TV news anchors here.

There was something weirdly Nixonian about parts of Mendte's public mea culpa. After admitting that what he did by hacking into Lane's email accounts was illegal, he said, "I used a device called a 'keykatcher' that is much too easily available on the Internet." This is not unlike an armed robber pleading guilty while complaining that handguns are entirely too easy to buy.

At one point in his statement Mendte almost lapsed into self congratulations, "I know that pleading guilty and cooperating defies the new world order that teaches to deny, deny, deny at all costs. Many people told me. . . with a good lawyer you might get away with it. I have a good lawyer. That's not the point."

Mendte avoided the cheesiest cliche of a public man admitting his guilt by not having his frozen-faced wife standing next to him as he apologized. Instead he talked about her not being there. "Although the image of my loving wife standing by my side may have helped me, I think it would hurt her."

In the end, Mendte's repeated acknowledgement that he was wrong sounded like a Catholic altar boy caught sipping wine in the sacristy. How can you punish someone so eager to punish himself? And that all depends on how a federal judge decides to cut the cheese when Mendte is sentenced.

Continue reading "And the Emmy for Cheesiest Scandal goes to. . ." »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:16 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

IF YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED, it hasn't been hot lately. Not end of August hot. Not Philadelphia end of August hot. And humid. And unbearable in the hot humid way we bear each August since the day I was born. Sure, we have the odd perfect day like today. And yesterday. And the day before that.

But I believe that we'd have to go back to the era of Wally Kinnan the Weatherman on TV in the days before Leave It To Beaver went into syndication to have appreciated such a string of picture perfect summer days like the one pictured here looking west on JFK Blvd. in Center City. Daytime highs highs in the low 80's, breezy, clear and at night the AC off and a light sheet or blanket on.

Nice.

Continue reading "It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 09:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

WHEN JIMMY ROLLINS AND THE PHILLIES return from this disastrous west coast road trip, he'd be prudent to remember the sign that greeted the 1964 Phillies when they returned from their final road trip of the season, where the Fightin's won two in a row against the Cincinnati Reds to finish the season one game out of first place.

Unfortunately those two victories had been preceeded by ten straight losses that dropped the Phillies out of a six-game lead in the National League pennant race with 12 games remaining -- a collapse that seemed to play out in slow motion as it seared the soul of every little boy and girl and man and woman in the city of Philadelphia.

When the Phillies arrived home that Sunday night on a charter flight that taxied to a remote corner of airport, there was a crowd of fans waiting to greet them. From the windows the players could read a sign held up by one of the mob: "Give Us Barabbas!" As the players prepared to step off the plane one of the Phillies said, only half in jest, "Run out in groups of three. That way they can't get us all with one burst."

JRoll would do well to heed that advice when he trots out to his now fortified bunker at shortstop when the Phillies open their first home stand since free falling out of first place like an anvil without a parachute following Rollins appearance on ESPN where he dropped the "F bomb" on Philadelphia baseball fans. The problem with Phillies fans, said the 2007 National League MVP, is that we're "frontrunners."

And just to underscore what kind of baseball club frontrunning fans root for, Rollins and his first-place teammates promptly lost four in a row to the Dodgers to launch a 1-6 road trip to California that vaulted the Phillies into second place to end the week two games behind the smirking New York Mets.

Frontrunners? Us? Oh, like we've had lots of practice rooting for our first place baseball team. Let's see, last year Phillies fans had, what -- one whole day? -- to wallow in the luxury of being frontrunning fans when the Phillies won the National League East on the final day of the season before being swept by the Colorado Rockies in the first postseason baseball game played in Philadelphia since Mitch Williams didn't need liposuction.

There are Phillies fans entering college in September who have never seen their team play in a World Series. There are 30-year-old fathers who drop a couple of hundred bucks to take their kids to a baseball game at Citizens Bank Park to root for a team those same fathers aren't old enough to remember the last time -- the only time --the Phillies won it all.

Jimmy, you can take that frontrunner comment and do what Tug McGraw said New York could do after the 1980 World Series. Stick it.

Continue reading "Tug to JRoll and the 2008 Phillies: Just do it!" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 09:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? Or ghost? Or robot? Or whatever it is in crosswalks around Philadelphia, especially in the historic district around Independence Hall. These little guys began popping up about a year ago, according to park guards, Philadelphia Parking Authority personnel and tour guides I've spoken to. T

These little figures appear to be made of a linoleum type material that begins to become part of the asphalt after traffc rolls over them in the hot sun. They come in multiple colors -- I've seen tham in red, white and yellow. Some of them appear in the same crosswalks as Toynbee tiles -- the famous and cryptic street messages that began appearing around Philadelphia in the late 1980's and spread to cities all over the country and South America during the next two decades. (Toynbee tiles mention the works of Brithish author Arnold Toynbee and American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's 2001 and mention the resurrection of the dead on the planet Jupitor).

Yes, it's all weird. Could these stickman figures be the work of the same Toynbee tiler(s)? Contact me if you know anything about this urban mystery.

Continue reading "Look Down To See What's Up" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 11:03 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

WHERE, O WHERE have you seen this guy before? I'll give you a hint: He's hiding in plain sight on South Broad Street. He stands in front of a building made famous by the movie Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd (not to mention a debut by Jaime Lee Curtis's "twins".) No more hints. You know where it is. ut did you ever notice what a fine statue and site it it?

Continue reading "Hello Soldier, What'cha Know?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 07:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

THE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO photo deemed by the grand jury report to be "least offensive or gruesome" taken during the autopsy of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly, who died of starvation in her home two years ago today, shows a slab of meat the dappled color of a marbled loaf of pumpernickel/rye bread. This is Danieal as seen from the back from of her shrunken shoulders to her tortured bottom, which is devoured by an impossibly huge oval-shaped bedsore that seems to have Edvard Munch lips around the indentation of a growing cavity large enough to hold a softball. Her torso seems long for a four-year old, but Danieal was 14 and weighed 42 pounds. There is a toe-tag on her left foot which is connected to a flesh-covered shin slightly wider than a man's thumb. On her left shoulder is an adhesive sticker with the identification number 063364. There is nothing human about this macabre image except for two white barrets still clinging to the dead child's hair.

I want to scream. I want to rage. I want to wrap my fingers around some yelping bureaucrat's throat and squeeze. And keep squeezing. I want to spit in the face of these Badlands. I want to bitch slap a smug system called DHS, which is accountable only to the "Department" and never to the "Human Services." I want to go medievel on the bastards in offices who allowed a little girl from Philadelphia to perish in plain sight as indifferently as tower guards at Buchenwald where Danieal's autopsy identification number would already have been tatooed on her wrist. "This is an agency, we believe, that over time became more focused inward that outward," wrote the authors of the Grand Jury report in a blistering 258-page indictment of the Department of Human Servives, the city agency entrusted by us to protect children like Danieal from her abusive parents. "(DHS) existed more to perpetuate itself than to help people. So bad work was not recognized as such -- because it was irrelevent. And good work was not rewarded -- because it was irrelevent." Remind you of any place you ever worked? Sure. But how many children did you watch die because of it?

I know DHS workers I am proud to call friend. I also know DHS workers who wouldn't tell you if your hair was on fire because it wasn't their job. And there is not a DHS friend or drone I know who is suprised. Dismayed, sure. Embarrassed, maybe. But not surpised. The culture of DHS breeds this sort of opportunity for incompetence. The internal politics of DHS is frequently identified with markers of race and sexual identity, rather than what's right and wrong. And that's the problem. Within DHS the only acceptable form of outrage is political, artificial and frequently union related. Where's the outrage from DHS employees about the sins of their co-workers and the shadow of substance that passes for social work? I know where their outrage is and I also know this. It's eating them alive.

Continue reading ". . . And every day is another bite" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 04:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)