Mysterious Fake Inquirer Fronts

What would you expect to find in the photostream of a Flickr user named Romney 2012? Would you believe parody Philadephia Inquirer pages?!

And there are one and two and three. Number two has a headline saying Pat Burrell left for the money — which is so laughably the opposite of the situation I don’t know where to start — and number three has this awesome skybox above the flag:

The fonts and such are all dead on, but whatever Romney supporter is behind this is probably just editing a .pdf of the front page in Acrobat to change the headlines.

But that’s no fun, so let’s use this theory instead: It’s a disgruntled design employee who stays behind after work to make a parody front page, making sure to put at least one right-wing talking point in each issue. Ha ha, did you see that one page? Peter Griffin of Family Guy died!

Oh, man, this dude also has a photo of a rocket slide! We used to have one of those at Picariello Playground when I was little and it was awesome. Kids today don’t know what they’re missing.

Councilwoman Confused By This ‘Parody’

City Council recently passed Blondell Reynolds Brown’s bill requiring licensing and regulation of Center City tour guides, and Phillymag recently interviewed her about it.

In addition to doing poorly on a Philadelphia history quiz — tsk, tsk! — Brown also… well, you read.

I think the real question here is, why not let tourists believe everything we tell them about our history? It sounds so much cooler if guides say the Declaration of Independence was actually penned by Bruce Springsteen.

Put that in a movie. What do you call it when you take an experience and make fun of it?

… A parody?
A parody! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put it in a parody first and then tell the real story. That’s really not a bad idea. Especially for Bruce Springsteen fans, of which I am one.

Whoo! Thanks, Councilwoman, from saving us from faulty tour guides who tell us Ben Franklin was on the 1983 Sixers with your licensing program and its nonrefundable application fee. The only thing that’d make this bill worthwhile is if the test costs enough to put Ride the Ducks out of business.

Philly Grill: Tour Guide Disciplinarian Blondell Reynolds Brown [Phillymag]

‘UC Review’ Prints Hilarious Anti-Gentrification Missive

In line with such other freedom fighters such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, one “Name withheld” calls the troops to action.

I remember a time not that long ago when it seemed like there was conversation going on in West Philly about gentrification and how to organize against what was about to happen. Then, people seemed to stop being engaged, maybe they got busy or something. Well, while you were having fun and going to dance parties, guess what happened?

THERES A BREW PUB at 50th and Baltimore, and a YOGA STUDIO and a COFFEE SHOP. HELLO.

Now I am not one to argue that everything is black and white and that those things plus a bunch of white folks moving into a neighborhood simply equals gentrification, but in this case, it is really hard to see the situation as anything else.

I suppose partly because nobody seems to give a s�t and ya’ll are going on with your hipster lifestyles. I mean Christ, the brew pub is open and nobody broke the f�ing windows yet. It was bad enough when Trader Joes got a compactor and nobody sabotaged it. IS THIS WEST PHILLY OR WHAT? Aren’t ya’ll supposed to be anarchists or something? If s�t gets to a certain point, should you need to take direct action if you failed to engage in the process that could have stopped it?

A bunch of you are white homeowners, you could have been at the neighborhood meetings. You could have stopped that s�t. And what’s with letting these snot-nosed hipster fu..s move into the neighborhood so they can look cool? Are you really just going to accept this manifest destiny bullshit or are you going to take responsibility for where you live and for what you have helped happen. Silence equals consent remember?

I’ll be honest: This is so well done, I can’t tell if it’s a parody or not, though I’m leaning toward it. Either way, good show.

Open Letter To West Philly From A Concerned Relation [UC Review, line breaks supplied by Philadelphia Will Do]

Milton Street Begins Media Blitz

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger in the mayor’s race, here comes Milton Street with his first television ads. Since it’s the low-budget Ol’ Milty campaign the quality isn’t that great — hmm…. yes, that will do — and there’s a few pops and hisses, but… here we go:

I dunno. It’s a little different. I think this guy might have a shot after all. Especially with that trans fat restaurant idea.

You can’t censor cute wittle puppies!

The current brouhaha on the Internet, especially on righty blogs, is Google’s decision to censor search results on its Chinese search engine, Google.cn. It’s not really defensible, of course, but plenty of companies do shit like this all the time to get a share of market share in countries whose governments do a better job of silencing dissent and quashing free speech than ours.

Still, none other than The Weekly Standard parodied Google.cn’s search results for a query of “human rights.” Search result 6 caught my eye:

Puppies puppies puppies! Oh, nevermind, this is the best search engine ever. Hooray for censorship!

Google.cn
Okay, *do* be evil: Google launches censored google.cn in China [Boing Boing]
Googling “human rights” in China [Weekly Standard]

Weekly (News) Show

With apologies to Will Bunch. But he deserves it after the nice write-up in PW today. This parody to be read with rimshots at the appropriate times.

Philadelphia Weekly — we might “hate” hipsters, but we still write about their events! Nothing wrong with that.

First, let’s get to PW’s groundbreaking, entertaining podcast, one of the only newspapers in the country doing a podcast. Oh, wait, PW doesn’t have a groundbreaking, entertaining podcast. But, then again, neither does the Daily News. (For reference: A rimshot would go here.)

The main story in today’s PW is wishing happy holidays — uhh, hello, we’re on the frontlines of the War on Christmas — to 10 local institutions or people. We’ll just italicize instead of using the more standard blockquote:

It’s tough to love Philly in December. It’s cold, it’s dark by 4, and you have to buy gifts. Okay, so we can’t do much about the short days and the cold, but the gifts we can handle. Especially when we’re the ones receiving them. The following 10 institutions make us feel gifted to live in Philadelphia. Even in December. And since we can’t afford to repay them for everything they do for us, we figured if we printed their names, maybe you would. Happy holidays, and give till it hurts.

See: We do some good community-service oriented work every once in a while. If you can consider this good work.

Also in today’s paper, a story about the Dream Act, which would allow children of illegal immigrants to go to college. The bill is on congress now.

Heroes and Goats: Kanye West and Bill O’Reilly. Guess which one’s the hero.

Shorter Liz Spikol: Jews and Christians, can’t they all just get along?

And the greatest comic of all time, perhaps. No, really. Read it. Now.