Remember when Molotov cocktails were “in”?
I don’t either, but I’ve read enough about the era: It was the latter half of the 1960s, of course.
Molotov cocktails were so “in” 35 years ago that Jason and Barbara Epstein (“Who?”), back when they were cool, or trying to be cool, or something, earned themselves a bit of notoriety by publishing a design for the device on the cover of their still-new and not-yet-quite-so-painfully-Anglophilic magazine, the New York Review of Books.
And a good laugh -- or a self-righteous smirk, at least -- was had by all.
Well, it appears Molotov cocktails may be back in style, at least in Philadelphia.
This could be one hell of a mayoral race.
The September issue of Philadelphia magazine has a terrific Phila-phorism. (I think I’m going to trademark that phrase.)
It’s in an article by Sasha Issenberg entitled “Raising Philadelphia” [Ed.: The article is not online.]:
. . . Chestnut Street, the downscaled shopping strip which [sic] until recently was “mixed-use” only in the sense that there are both 99-cent and dollar stores.
That about sums it up.
I usually get this kind of list late in the game, so if you already have seen it 100 times, my apologies. I don’t know you wrote it so I’m posting it without attribution but with appreciation.
You know you’re living in the year 2003 when:
1. Your reason for not staying in touch with family is because they do not have e-mail.
2. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
3. Your grandmother asks you to send her a JPEG file of your newborn so she can create a screen saver.
4. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.
5. Every commercial on television has a web site address at the bottom of the screen.
6. You buy a computer and three months later it’s out of date and sells for half the price you paid.
7. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go get it.
8. Using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase would be a hassle and take planning.
9. You just tried to enter your password on the microwave.
10. You consider second-day air delivery painfully slow.
11. Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet.
12. Your idea of being organized is multiple-colored Post-it ® notes.
13. You hear most of your jokes via e-mail instead of in person.
14. You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls.
15. You disconnect from the internet and get this awful feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
16. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.
17. You wake up at 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom and check your e-mail on your way back to bed.
18. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)
19. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.
20. Even worse; you know exactly to whom you’re going to forward this.
A while back, in “100 Things About Me,” posted at TRR on October 18, I mentioned, in item number 43, that so far in my life I have been mistaken for a movie star on at least five separate occasions.
At the time I was speaking (or writing, anyway) generically, in the sense that none of those who made such a comment referred to any celebrity in particular. (“Celebrity,” by the way, rather than “movie star,” would have been more accurate phrasing for use in said list item.)
Instead, I guess, I reminded these people of someone famous, one person or another whose name they couldn’t at that moment recall, or, more flatteringly, I think, that they thought I just look like I should be famous.
Now, as it happens, within just the past two weeks I have heard the same thing again --three times.
However, in each of these three recent instances the observer cited a specific celebrity, namely: Pat Riley, Lou Reed, and Robert Downey Jr.
In each case I was only, at best, vaguely familiar with the names offered. So I did what any good blogger would do: I “Image Googled” them. All three of them: Riley, Reed, and Downey.
Having done so, I can say that I have no idea what I’m supposed to think about these comments, individually or collectively. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with them, individually or collectively. Or that I disagree with them, individually or collectively. Or that I am either flattered or horrified by them, individually or collectively.
What I wonder is whether it be possible to create a composite image of all three men? If so, I might be in a better position to decide.
Until then, I just don’t know what to think. Nor do you, I suppose. Of course, you may think Riley and/or Reed and/or Downey are, I don’t know, take your pick, handsome, stunning, gross, or disfigured, leading you to think that I too am either handsome, stunning, gross, or disfigured, as in, “Wow, Capozzola looks like Pat Riley? Get me his phone number! Now!”
And also until then, you have little to go on, as I’ve never published my photo here or at The Rittenhouse Review and it’s nowhere to be found on the web.
Of course, if the Philadelphia Inquirer had included my photo in its recent feature on Philly bloggers (“Booming Blogs,” by Beth Gillin, August 21), the mystery, such as it is, would have been solved.
On that note, I’m feeling a little insecure right now, because the Inquirer photographer must have taken at least 200 shots of me -- in beautiful Rittenhouse Square, no less -- and yet not one of those photos made the cut. I know I take a bad photograph, but gee whiz, that’s ridiculous! What are the odds?
(Actually, I’m just kidding. The Inquirer’s Gillin assured me the photos were just fine: a matter of space constraints, Gillin said. Or maybe she was just being kind.)
So, if you really want to know what I look like, and you probably don’t, I guess you’re just going to have to wait until my upcoming appearance on “The View.”
I missed this piece -- “Learning History, the Easy Way in Philadelphia,” by Linda Greenhouse -- in Sunday’s New York Times (August 17), so the article, which reviews the newly opened National Constitution Center here in Philadelphia, and is quite favorable, is posted solely for the record.
(Though I can’t help ask, What’s with New Yorkers wanting everything the “easy way”?)
Like their fellow Scandinavians, Norwegians have a reputation for being rather dour and humorless. But it’s an undeserved reputation. After all, the average Norwegian, even the average Scandinavian, is a hell of a lot funnier than the average Finn, who, by the way, geographic proximity notwithstanding, is not even Scandinavian.
And that’s saying something, isn’t it?
The latest evidence of Fun in Norway:
[Y]esterday Kjell Henning Bjornestad, alias Kjell Elvis, that country’s leading Elvis impersonator, set out to break the Guinness World Record for marathon singing of Elvis songs. He’s aiming to sing for 30 continuous hours, beating the old record by almost five hours. […]
Bjornestad, 35, is challenging the record that was set last year by Gary Jay at Planet Hollywood in London: 25 hours, 33 minutes, 30 seconds.
He chose to attempt to break the record in a small restaurant, La Mer, in Vanse, his hometown in southern Norway.
Bonus: A live telecast can be viewed from Bjornestad’s web site.
Enjoy.
Okay, so you’re hanging out, playing basketball at, oh, let’s say in the gym at the county jail. And then all of a sudden, you’re getting wet. It feels like rain, or a leaky pipe, or something. Only it’s not rain, or a leaky pipe, or something. It’s pee. You’re playing basketball in the jailhouse gym and someone is peeing on you from above. And that someone is one of the guards. Well, actually two of the guards.
This really happened.
Not to me of course, but to a group of inmates at the Greene County Jail in Springfield, Mo.
According to the Associated Press (“Ex-Guard Sentenced for Peeing on Inmates,” August 19):
A former guard was ordered to scrub toilets while serving 15 days behind bars for urinating from a roof onto inmates playing basketball. . . . Justin Hastings, 23, also was given two years of probation and 150 hours of community service. He was convicted in June of four counts of assault. [Ed.: A second guard was punished separately.]
You know that’s just mean. Really mean. The peeing part, I mean, not the punishment.
I don’t know how this story is playing outside Philadelphia. I took a quick look and found little, and I’ll say that if there’s any hope at all for the American media this “story” is receiving no attention whatsoever. But here in the Cradle of Liberty, it’s being overplayed to the Al and Tipper Gore/“Love Story” hilt. (The talk radio people, destined for lives on the lower end of AM dial, are the worst.)
Some background. Last week the Sheet Metal Workers Union hosted a forum, moderated by CNN’s Bill Press, that included seven of the declared and expected Democratic presidential contenders at the city’s new National Constitution Center on Independence Mall.
Among those attending was, of course, arguable frontrunner Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who also happens already to have received the endorsement of the event’s sponsoring union.
Political traditions being what they are, it was no big surprise when, while in Philadelphia, Sen. Kerry trekked to South Philly to pay a visit to Pat’s King of Steaks for the ritual ordering and eating of a cheesesteak, a Philadelphia gastronomic I-don’t-know-what that most reasonable people get a hankering for about two or three times a year.
Well, if you haven’t heard already, Sen. Kerry committed . . . a gaffe!
While placing his order at Pat’s, Sen. Kerry, who may or may not be Jewish and who certainly is neither Irish nor Italian, committed the egregious error of asking for Swiss cheese on his sandwich.
As the Swiss might say, or at least some of them anyway, Mon dieu!, but there being either no readily identifiable or locatable Swiss community in Philadelphia, the local reaction was more along the lines of “Dork.”
What was he thinking? the local media wise guys and gals are asking, jaws agape, and rushing to report that every Philadelphian is similarly shocked and appalled, and suitably embarrassed for the junior senator from Massachusetts.
After all, everyone knows that when you order a cheesesteak at Pat’s you can get it with or without cheese -- making the very name of the “delicacy” somewhat suspect from the start -- but at Pat’s they serve only one kind of cheese on their cheesesteaks, namely, Cheez Whiz, “a processed cheese food product” that I’m certain was never in my mother’s refrigerators and -- this is saying a lot -- has never been in mine either.
Keep in mind, this is how it works, this is how it’s done: If you visit Pat’s and you want cheese, meaning Cheez Whiz, on your cheesesteak, you say, “Whiz wit’.” Otherwise they laugh at you, mock you, send to the end of the line, post your photograph about their greasy grill, and so on and so forth. All in good fun; har-har-har. It’s considered high hilarity here. Actually, it’s another one of those silly things that either makes Philadelphia great or just plain sad.
Now, as far as socio-political faux pas go, this one probably ranks somewhere around that committed by Kennedy in-law (How else to identify him?) Sargeant Shriver during the 1976 presidential primaries, also in Pennsylvania, but in Pittsburgh, not Philadelphia.
After a day of campaigning in Pittsburgh, Shriver stopped in a bar at the end of the steelmakers’ day shift, paying a visit to some of the hardest working of the working classes (back when the working classes had things like real jobs, healthcare, and pensions), a beer and boilermaker crowd if ever there were one appropriately assembled, and ordered a Courvoisier.
“We ain’t got that,” the bartender reportedly responded to Shriver’s request. After which, I can only assume some nearly 30 years hence, that he quickly order an “I.C.” In a can. (Assuming, of course, there was a well-briefed handler nearby.)
On the topic of this more recent “gaffe,” Don Russell, writing in the Philadelphia Daily News (“Cheesesteak Bites Kerry: Prez Hopeful Asks for Swiss Cheese!”), goes so far as to say, possibly, but not definitely, tongue in cheek:
[W] e may have just witnessed the unraveling of the Democratic front-runner’s campaign for the White House right here in South Philadelphia, at 9th and Wharton [Streets]. […]
But this is more than just shaking hands and kissing babies. For a pol, eating a cheesesteak is like running the gauntlet -- past the surly counterman, through the variety of toppings, finishing it off without looking lame. […]
Kerry, you may have heard, failed miserably.
He ordered a cheesesteak with Swiss cheese.
Now I suppose in some corners of the world, Swiss is a perfectly acceptable sandwich ingredient. Switzerland, maybe.
But in Philadelphia, ordering Swiss on a cheesesteak is like rooting for Dallas at an Eagles game. It isn’t just politically incorrect; it could get you a poke in the nose. [Ed.: At least that. There’s a reason there’s a municipal judge on hand at every Philadelphia Eagles game.] […]
He got Cheez Whiz instead. The damage, though, was already done.
Worse, as Russell points out, Sen. Kerry not only ordered a cheesesteak, he ordered a cheesesteak hoagie, a monstrosity that typically includes lettuce (shredded iceberg, natch) and tomatoes (at Pat’s, I’m told, usually on the white/yellow side in terms of color, the nearby Campbell Soup Co., of Camden, N.J., apparently getting the first crack at South Jersey’s finest), and sometimes hot or sweet peppers.
Don’t ask. Don’t ask, because I don’t know the answer.
Still worse, according Russell, Sen. Kerry didn’t eat the damned thing right! Says Russell, “So the man who would be president of the people was photographed delicately gripping the sandwich with his fingertips like he’s some kind of Boston blue blood playing the piccolo. You half expected him to ask for a silk napkin, Jeeves.” (A “disparaging” photo of Sen. Kerry holding the hoagie accompanies the article at the PDN’s web site.
By the way, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of this purported political meltdown, “Democrats Join Town Meeting,” was slightly less laden with hysterics.
I have to admit to being a little confused about the whole “controversy.” I don’t think I’ve ever had a cheesesteak from Pat’s. I think I had one at Jeno’s about 10 years ago, and, if memory serves, that sandwich was laden with Cheez Whiz. But on those increasingly rare occasions when I head out for a cheesesteak, I’m not asked to specify my choice of cheese -- I’d like to see the reaction at Pat’s if I asked for Brie or Gouda, but that’s a story for another day. -- and what I usually get on my cheesesteak, without specifying or being asked to specify, is something white, I’m guessing provolone, definitely not the distinctive yellow-orange color we all recognize as Cheez Whiz at its heavily processed finest.
So what the hell is the big deal?
Nothing, I suppose. Just a local story run rampant, locally, I hope.
But I can’t help but conjure up images of idiotic harpie Margaret Carlson -- latest Amazon.com ranking for Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House: 81,401 -- picking up selected bits and pieces of this pedestrian incident, blowing it completely out of proportion, and repeatedly screeching, groundlessly, recklessly, and cluelessly, “He doesn’t know who he is! He doesn’t know who he is!”
[Note: This post was published earlier today at The Rittenhouse Review.]
Okay, so it this yet another Philly-guy thing?
Hawaiian print shirts?
I went to mass earlier today, this being, as I mentioned earlier, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and no fewer than three men at this mass, each of them thirty- and fortysomethings, were wearing Hawaiian print shirts.
Now, as far as I’m concerned, Hawaiian print shirts, like flip-flops, are always the wrong choice, but as a wardrobe choice for attending mass on a holy day of obligation, well, I just don’t know what to say.
It was hot. Hell, it’s been hot here for months, but even I wore a jacket today.
Do you play Mah Jongg? I’m guessing you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re missing out on one of the most entertaining and fascinating games ever created.
Think it’s too difficult?
You’re wrong. (Yes, the scoring is kind of a pain in the neck.)
Won’t be bothered because you can’t imagine finding three other Mah Jongg players to round out the table?
Well, that’s a valid concern. The game’s popularity in the U.S. peaked some time in the 1950s.
So until you get your group together, I highly recommend you download and purchase the PC version of Mah Jongg created by, or at least marketed by, one Berrie Bloem.
You can play alone on your PC against three very capable competitors. To make things easier for the beginner, select “Quick Tip” under “Help,” and “Players Voices” under “Game” “Preferences” “Sound,” and “Ask First” under “Options.”
Trust me, you will find yourself picking up the game rather quickly. Not necessarily winning, but learning this fascinating and beautiful ancient game. You’ll be hooked before long.
I’m a little late in mentioning this, modest type that I am, but the blog you are now reading, TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse, earlier this month was recognized as the Pennsylvania Destination of the Day, a service that, in their words, not mine, has been highlighting Pennsylvania’s best web sites since early 1997.
I’m very honored and I appreciate the recognition.
More than three years ago, while living in Manhattan, I reluctantly sold my beloved second car, an Infiniti J30. I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle, or the expense of a monthly parking space, and I really wasn’t using the car very much.
Oh, and to make things worse, but oh so typical, my then “partner” gave no thought whatsoever to picking up even the slightest share of any car-related expenses (i.e., the monthly payment, insurance, parking, gasoline, etc.). God, what a pig!
Fortunately, a car isn’t really necessary for someone like myself living in Center City Philadelphia. I’m happy without one. I really am. They’re nothing more than money pits anyway.
But -- And there’s always a but, isn’t there? -- the other day I saw a beautiful car parked on my street, and the old yearnings returned.
It was a Cadillac DeVille DTS. And the vehicle was in my preferred (actually, required) color scheme: black and black. Beautiful.
Now, I never figured myself for a Cadillac buyer, but I never really thought much about being 40 either.
Maybe it’s time.
To buy a Cadillac or to think about being 40. One or the other, if not both, I guess.
A friend sent me this list yesterday. It’s also known as the “Top 10 Conservative Catholic Pickup Lines.” (I don’t know the author, so it’s here unattributed, but appreciated.)
10. May I offer you a light for that votive candle?
9. Hi there! My buddy and I were wondering if you would settle a dispute we’re having. Do you think the word should be pronounced home-school-ing, or
home-school-ing?
8. Sorry, but I couldn't help notice how cute you look in that knee-length, shapeless, plaid jumper.
7. What's a nice girl like you doing at a First Saturday Rosary Cenacle like this?
6. You don't like the culture of death, either? Wow! We have so much in common!
5. Let's get out of here. I know a much cozier little Catholic bookstore downtown.
4. I bet I can guess your confirmation name.
3. You've got stunning scapular-brown eyes.
2. Did you feel what I felt when we reached into the holy water font at the same time?
1. Confess here often?
And don’t forget, friends, tomorrow is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, a holy day of obligation. (As a kid I really resented this day. I mean, an HDO in the middle of summer? What a pain.)
Okay, so I just recent learned -- vaguely -- who Justin Timberlake is, and, more than that, that Timberlake is somebody, a “somebody” rather popular among the older of my nieces and nephews, my reference for much of the relevance of pop culture.
And now I read in the latest issue of Metro that Timberlake will be performing in Philadelphia at the Electric City -- with someone named Christina Aguilera -- tonight, August 13.
No big deal except Timberlake’s concert at the Electric City is open only to those aged “18 and older.”
So I ask you: Who the hell is going to show up?
Okay, so this story, a “slice of life” from Southwest Philadelphia, is both sad and gross, as well as disturbing.
A woman found dead Monday (August 12) in the southwestern section of Philadelphia has been identified by police as Susan Brennan, of an as yet undetermined south New Jersey address.
Brennan’s body was found at 49th Street and Grays Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia.
According to the Philadelphia Daily News (“Police Identify Pregnant Woman Found Strangled, by Catherine Lucey):
A young pregnant woman whose naked body was found in Southwest Philadelphia Monday -- bound with an extension cord and smeared in peanut butter -- was identified last night by police. [Ed.: Emphasis added.]
Now for more details about that peanut butter we turn to the city’s broadsheet, the Philadelphia Inquirer, where Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. colorfully adds, in tabloid style (“Police Identify Dead Woman”):
Police said they suspect the killer might have put peanut butter on the victim to attract rats to devour the remains.
Lovely.
God, I love this city.
TRR’s Continuing Series of Local Eavesdropping
I overheard this conversation earlier this afternoon while placing my order at the Taco Bell at the Gallery at Market East in Center City Philadelphia. (Food-court dining at its very best, I assure you.)
After being greeted by the cashier -- “May I take your order?” -- a twentysomething female customer in the line to my left said, “I’d like a number-five combo.”
For those readers not periodically compelled to make a run “to the border,” the number-five combo consists of Nachos Grande Supreme, a Taco Supreme, and the beverage of one’s choice.
Let’s listen in from there:
Cashier: “A number-five.”
Customer: “Yeah, but I don’t want none of that white stuff on it.”
Cashier: “No ‘white stuff’?”
Customer: “Right. None of that white stuff.”
Cashier: “Do you mean sour cream?”
Customer: “I don’t know what it’s called. That goopy white stuff.”
Cashier: “It’s called sour cream. . . . For future reference.”
Boy, talk about a “slice of life” story. This one, from today’s Philadelphia Daily News, “S. Philly Melee Leaves 1 Hurt, 2 Jailed,” by Erin Einhorn, is a humdinger.
An excerpt:
By the time it was over, no one could say for sure how fight number one led to fight number two which led to the really horrible fight number three and the potentially even more horrible standoff with police.
But by the end of the 15-minute drama, a man was stabbed in the chest, a baby was threatened with a knife, a restraining order was about to be issued, a woman was arrested for spitting at a man who’d spit at her son[,] and cops were commended for saving a child.
It was a day that the people of the 900 block of Cantrell Street won’t likely forget.[…]
In a weird way, I’m kind of sorry I missed it.
A Weekly TRR Feature
In today’s edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer: a line in the sand for gays in America (What would Midge Decter think of that metaphor?*); the sad story of a Villanova University history professor and her daughter; some promising suggestions for improving Fairmount Park and an editorial on the same subject; readers respond to (ridiculous) accusations of anti-Semitism against cartoonist Tony Auth; mayoral hopeful Sam Katz tries again to ride a skateboard (I guess nobody told Katz young people -- let alone young thugs -- don’t vote); Father Divine’s hotel is going condo; and Springsteen fever -- Enough already!
(* The reference is to Decter, Midge: “The Boys on the Beach,” Commentary, September 1980, pp. 35-48. Probably the most deranged, hysterical, psychotic, and mean-spirited “analysis” of “gay culture” ever published in an American “intellectual” magazine. Decter’s second husband, Norman Podhoretz, was editor of Commentary at the time of publication. If you would like a copy, in PDF format, please send me an e-mail.)
It took me a while, I’ll admit, but I have learned that “Philly guys,” a demographic that encompasses teenagers, young men, the middle-aged, and beyond, regardless of whether they’re gay, straight, or whatever, really, really want to keep their new white tennis shoes, well, really, really, white.
To me this is very strange. Inexplicable. Bizarre.
I say that as one who has neither purchased nor worn a pair of white tennis shoes in nearly 20 years, and as one who believes that wearing white tennis shoes with blue jeans is among the worst of all conceivable errors.
Moreover, as one who did in the distant past buy white tennis shoes -- when I was actually playing tennis actively and seriously, I preferred Adidas Stan Smiths (long since updated) -- the first and foremost task upon purchasing these shoes, both for me and among my friends, was . . . to get them dirty.
Adidas Stan Smiths
Not necessarily obscenely filthy -- that surely would come with time -- but at least a bit scruffy, dusty, marred . . . imperfect. I can’t imagine thinking anything else, then or now.
The unique take of Philly guys on this issue was brought home to me in no uncertain terms when, a few weeks ago, I ventured out to meet a new friend for a few drinks. Not once, not twice, not three times, but four times, my friend D.M. berated me for allowing my feet, shod that night as they often are, by Adidas Sambas, to brush up against his gleaming white K-Swiss shoes, each contact being, I assure you, entirely accidental and devoid of deeper meaning or significance.
Adidas Sambas
D.M. that night at first was simply irritated, then annoyed, then outright angry and hostile about my egregious faux pas. I swear, after the fourth accidental brushing of our shoes D.M. either was going to cry, or try to punch me out, and or call me names or something.
And so, tired of his fussiness, I did the only thing I could think to do under the circumstances: I left. And I never turned back.
Let me assure you: D.M.’s fixation on the unnecessary brightness of his cherished footwear is widely shared among men in Philadelphia, particularly those who were raised in the Northeast or in South Philly.
I suppose I may someday adjust my expectations accordingly. But for me, for now at least, this is yet another of the ever-growing list of date-killers: Obsessing about how white one’s tennis shoes are and can conceivably continue to be.
A Weekly TRR Feature
In Sunday’s edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer: architectural critic Inga Saffron reviews the spanking new footbal stadium, Lincoln Financial Field; Larry Eichel sets the stage, so to speak, for the Linc’s debut: tonight’s soccer match between Manchester United and FC Barcelona; Philadelphia’s murder rate is again on the rise; an editorial on gay marriage; an outbreak of ethnic tolerance in Kosovo; more about that despicable Israeli fence; President George W. Bush, “in fine health,” heads to the ranch for another vacation, and many see ample brush cutting in his immediate future; recently announced closings of underperforming Lord & Taylor stores sparks still more fretting over the future of the department store (L&T, though, is technically a “specialty retailer,” not a “traditional department store”); an editorial about Philadelphia’s jewel, Fairmount Park, along with favorite park memories and still more Fairmount Park memories; and last but not least: in praise, I think, of mullets.
Jennifer Weiner
Okay, so it’s not scripture. It’s “just” In Her Shoes, the latest worldwide best-selling novel by Philadelphia author, mother, and blogger, Jennifer Weiner (of SnarkSpot), who happens, by the way, to be married to Philadelphia attorney (no, not the creepy one) and blogger Adam Bonin, of Throwing Things (who I hope will pass me his incredibly well situated seats in the Linc in the extremely unlikely event he finds himself bereft of other takers on a given Sunday).
Weiner will be reading from In Her Shoes at Borders Books & Music, Broad and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, on Tuesday, August 5, at 6:00 p.m.
Be there. I will.
Either way: Buy the book!
[Note: This post was published earlier today at The Rittenhouse Review.]