Whiny New Jerseyans Complain About Rock Festival

Pressure from Philadelphians forced the proposed music festival in Philadelphia to move to Vineland, but the promoters there are facing an even bigger challenge than some connected local businessmen. People in Vineland have organized to protest the concert!

The group is hilariously called NARCS, for Neighbors Against Rock Concert Site. This extremely specific advocacy group has a Yahoo! email address and are sure to have a crappy blogspot site any day now as well. They are rallying to keep the Red Hot Chili Peppers (or whoever) out of Vineland because of their hippie attitudes and their rock and roll music.

“This is a rural neighborhood. It’s surrounded by houses. There are farm fields. It just does not seem like the place that they should be having a concert with an unpredictable number of people coming.”

There’s only one way for Vineland to stop the concert now: Banning dancing. Just wait.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Elmer Smith: Hey, that whole “contacts for minority-owned firms” thing they say they’ve been doing for like 25 years isn’t really happening.

Christine Flowers: Somehow, the Duke rape case was political correctness gone wrong. Whatever, she hadn’t mentioned it in a while, she had to put it in there somewhere.

Friday Morning Image Mixup Fun

And then he used the money to make himself look like Alycia Lane, like that creepy MTV show? Weird.

Yes, if you’re wondering, I used to go to this man’s masses.

D.A.: Priest from Ryan stole 900G [Daily News]

Philadelphia Sure To Win American Idol Knockoff

Clearly, I should have been watching more Clash of the Choirs, featuring an absolutely out-of-control Patti LaBelle. The finale is on tonight.

[via Philebrity.]

Nobody Can Stop Talking About Alycia Lane

Yesterday, House majority leader Sam Smith (who?) whined about Alycia Lane calling Ed Rendell after she was arrested. A day after his spokesman confirmed the call, Rendell called into 610 WIP’s morning show (stay with me here) and said, naw, it was just a friend calling a friend.

Michael Klein says Mr. Smith doesn’t believe Rendell and Lane’s stories: “You know, he said, ‘Just because she wanted somebody to listen to her.’ Well, if you believe that, I got a bridge for you… I can’t imagine that she called him for any other reason than to help her out.”

Meanwhile, a few people fired up their bootleg copies of Photoshop and made funny graphics and now there are tons of places to buy crap; by tons of places, I mean “Cafepress.”

Kerri-Lee Halkett Attempts To Regain City’s Attention

If you’re a more recent visit to this website, you might believe Alycia Lane is my favorite news anchor in the city. You’d be wrong. The news anchor thing goes back a while, but earlier this year Kerri-Lee Halkett was chronicled with Alycia Lane-like precision. (And, really, I can’t believe there isn’t a feature on Philadelphia Will Do called “Erin O’Hearnspotting.”)

Halkett didn’t do anything like punch a cop, but she did hold off Vince Fumo’s advances (stay with me here) to eventually date NBC 10 anchor Jamison Uhler.

Yesterday, Dan Gross reported the two have split, and Michael Klein says they’re just too busy to date. I’m not really sure what this means — that thing where you stop dating someone but still sleep with them? — but the 36-year-old Halkett said something about relationships and time and I dunno.

Halkett is also apparently busy with a local “Dancing with Local Celebrities” event along with new Fox 29 weatherguy John Bolaris. No word on what other news anchors are included in this list of, uhm, celebrities.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Ronnie Polaneczky: Wah, wah¹, why doesn’t anybody want to hear the good news I have to tell them! They only care about Alycia and Jocelyn!

Michael Smerconish: Smerconish finally figures out this new-fangled “Internet search” thing and plugs his stupid book again. On the plus side, he’s writing about Alycia Lane. Oh, and he has a completely inaccurate part of his column where he says the tabloids up there don’t write about her, even though she’s in the New York Post a ton.

¹ “Wah, wah” is a trademark of Christine Flowers.

Local Russians Too Scared Of Putin To Comment

In an award that’s apparently still given out, yesterday Time named Russian overlord Vladimir Putin its Person of the Year. Wait, did that dude get poisoned with polonium this year? I guess so.

KYW 1060 went to Northeast Philly to ask the city’s sizable Russian contingent what they felt about Putin’s honor. And, uh, clearly the city’s Russian community understands him pretty well.

What did people in Philadelphia’s Russian community think about that? “No politics — no!” Many people like this woman were refusing to answer questions about Putin being named person of the year by Time.

Another woman said only that she is this country now and would like to talk about American politics. She thinks Hillary Clinton will be the next president.

Still another Russian immigrant to Philadelphia, Oxana, has been in this country for about two years. She didn’t care very much about the distinction that Putin has received from Time but says he is a good leader: “I don’t know what to say about it and I don’t care about it very much. All I just want to say, he is a good president for the country right now and hopefully the country will continue to develop.”

“No, really, I don’t know much about it. No, I didn’t think anything bad about Dear Leader. No, don’t put me into the re-education camp!” It’s good to see Hillary Clinton is not as frightening as Putin, though; that’s a good sign for her next November.

Area’s Russian Community Reacts (or Doesn’t) to Putin Being Named ”Person of the Year” [KYW 1060]

Your Holiday Shopping Is Officially Over

Just make sure to order this “Daily News Sports Department” shirt, which is the perfect gift for the person who has enjoyed being yelled at by Bill Conlin and Marcus Hayes this year.

Porn Triumphs In New Jersey

It’s been just over a year since I wrote about Cherry Hill’s never-ending battle against smut, and with good reason. Cherry Hill has been defeated by smut in a rout, and even the group fighting against “smut” has this message on its website’s messageboard: “Sexy Models and Beauty Queens looking for Sugar Daddy!”

Absolutely, 100 percent total loss hasn’t stopped everyone, though. Today the Courier-Post tell us the fight is “heating up” and gets the relevant quotes:

“The mayor will continue to fight against the invasion of deviant businesses and the sale of explicit material from corrupting our strong neighborhoods and family values in Cherry Hill,” said township spokesman Dan Keashen.

Of course, this deviant business blocking comes with a price. Cherry Hill Township’s insurance carrier agreed to pay $225,000 to the businesspeople blocked from opening an adult video store. But the township hasn’t signed the order, so it’s going to cost a lot more than that in the end.