News and Opinion Philadelphia Weekly

Puppets, Politics and All The Rest

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:11:07 PST

Meet Morgan Fitzpatrick Andrews: artist, activist, yogi and puppeteer—to name just a few of the hats he wears. On a rainy Friday afternoon he must leave the puppets he’s been repairing in the basement of the Arden Theater in Old City to hurry back to West Philadelphia, where he’s teaching a yoga class at Studio 34 on Baltimore Avenue.

Though many people might recognize Andrews as the co-founder of Puppet Uprising, a company that brings puppeteers from around the world to Philadelphia, he’s been busy doing other things as well. Most recently, Morgan traveled to India to study with the son of Augusto Boal, the Brazilian theater director and founder of the radical popular education movement, "Theater of the Oppressed." He also studied yoga.

These days Morgan uses all of these interests as tools to create the positive social change he wants to see in his community. Click on the video to learn more.

Letters: 'Precious' Moments

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:55:43 PST

Regarding Matt Prigge's review of Precious:

A reviewer has a responsibility to want things to be good. Whether it be a restaurant or a film or what have you, it is the reviewer’s obligation to desire success and recognize failure, otherwise, why go?

Matt Prigge seems to have made up his mind about Precious long before he ever laid eyes on it. Thus, the selfish and unnecessary rehash of Shadowboxer and why he hated that so much, and the mention of Precious as “breathlessly hyped,” with obvious derision.

The phrase “crowd-pleaser” only exposes his limited command of the English language, as does calling the story “slight.” And “chronically” never quantifies ‘obese’.

“Daniels’ trick is to hew so closely to Sidibe’s Precious it often feels the film was made by the character herself.” That is called perspective. And that was the point. That is, like it or not Prigge, craft. 

As for Prigge’s reference to a fellow critic as a hack, I say, ‘o pot, would that you had a mirror, for to see a kettle.’ 

AARON M.  via philadelphiaweekly.com  

Regarding Monica Peter’s interview with Lee Daniels: 

I liked the article on Mr. Daniels. Specifically, I like your insight that you give in the article—especially the part addressing why mothers put their boyfriends/husbands before their children. 

Only a good interviewer could have made Daniels finally fess up that he was sexually abused. Obviously, he was really comfortable talking to you and let his guard down. I look forward to reading more of your articles in the Weekly . 

JUNE TAYLOR  Rittenhouse 

Regarding Joel Mathis’ column about the tough year Philly has had: 

Hmm, I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy. Sure, this city’s taken some knocks, but they’re largely not of its own making. Cities everywhere are dealing with the collapse of the real estate market, but Philly’s is actually still fairly stable. And you may not have noticed, but murders are down 25 percent from 2007. And really, I’m not sure how most cities would deal with a major transit strike, but I thought everybody was pretty level-headed about the whole thing, considering. And, hell, there are 28 teams in baseball that would have traded for our “shitty” year! 

ANDREW  via philadelphiaweekly.com 

Regarding Tara Murtha’s cover series about drug addiction: 

Livengrin Foundation, a nonprofit addiction treatment center of more than 40 years, was the setting of this article. 

It is important for individuals and families to know that Livengrin provides a safe, medically sound environment for the detoxification regimen that cleanses the body of addictive chemical substances. This, in turn, makes it possible for the patient to move into rehab and subsequent outpatient therapies. Once free of the influence of mood-altering chemicals, the patient can begin to make the kinds of positive changes in their behavior and decision-making that can lead to the ultimate goal of a healthier, more productive life without addiction.

Treatment as practiced at Livengrin, and most of our peer organizations, is a safe, medically viable route for the individual to take. Unlike the article’s dramatic depiction of an intense, “cold turkey” detoxification, most patients see their withdrawal from substances to be very tolerable, with a minimum of pain and discomfort due to the utilization of appropriate medication and counseling. 

We encourage the many individuals and families challenged by addiction to seek information and reach out for the help and hope that is available. We professionals cannot, and would not, tell anyone that detox and rehab are easily undertaken. However, we do provide both the calm setting and the high quality medical and therapeutic guidance an addicted person needs to overcome their dependency. 

DR. MARK WALLEN, M.D., F.A.S.A.M. Medical Director Livengrin Foundation Bensalem 

TWU Strikes Again

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:21:16 PST

Philadelphia Weekly has learned that Transportation Workers Union (TWU) Local 234 is considering legal action against SEPTA, alleging mismanagement of workers’ pension funds. Local 234, which ended a six-day strike on November 8, has retained the law firm of Kaufman, Coren & Ress, P.C. The issue at hand: Workers want to know what firm the money is being invested with, what the rate of return is and what fees investors are being paid.

“We believe that SEPTA is not properly managing our pension,” Local 234 President Willie Brown says. “Even before the recession it wasn’t funded at proper levels. We want to ensure for future retirees.”

“I think members are very concerned about how underfunded the pension has been,” says Local 234 spokesperson Jamie Horowtiz. “This is a different era. People from all walks of life want more transparency and more oversight. And the kind of reporting we’ve seen from the authority is not sufficient.” 

Local 234’s allegation that SEPTA is underfunding worker pensions was widely reported during the strike. Workers’ pensions are 53 percent funded, while managers’ funds are 65 percent funded.

SEPTA Press Relations Officer Andrew Busch says, “Our actuary tells us what is required to meet our pension obligation, and we meet that amount. Pension payments are guaranteed. We provide more funding to the union pension fund than to the management pension fund.”  

During the tense contract negotiations the local even demanded a forensic audit of workers’ pensions. Unlike a standard audit, a forensic audit is a highly detailed examination of funds often used to show evidence of mismanagement or wrongdoing in court. SEPTA refused, even though the union offered to pay for the audit.

SEPTA General Manager Joe Casey told the Inquirer that the request for a forensic audit was a “red herring,” saying the annual audit by Milliman Inc. was sufficient.  

According to Local 234, the union first requested a forensic audit early in contract negotiations before the strike began. Busch says the request came late in the negotiating process, and was withdrawn soon thereafter. 

Brown believes SEPTA may be trying to hide wrongdoing. “If I was SEPTA and I wasn’t doing things above board, I wouldn’t want it either.” 

The Local 234 executive board will meet tomorrow to make a decision on whether to pursue legal action. On Friday, union members will vote to take a ratification vote on a new contract with SEPTA. 

In an engagement letter obtained by PW , the union makes it clear that concerns include potential mishandling of funds. Local 234 appears to believe that there are problems beyond complaints over pension funding levels saying, “many Plan Beneficiaries have expressed concerns to representatives of the Union regarding the chronic underfunding and possible mismanagement of the Trust Funds set up under the Plan to support the pension benefits negotiated by the Union.” 

Brown reiterated these concerns, saying “SEPTA has a history of giving out contracts to friends of the board. And we just want to make sure that this isn’t going on with our pension plan. It’s basically a precaution.” 

The letter says that if SEPTA does not voluntarily share the necessary information, Local 234 “will pursue appropriate legal actions to address and remedy the issues of concern to the Plan Beneficiaries.” Kaufman, Coren & Ress, P.C. will likely contract its own pension experts to investigate.

While the demand for a forensic audit was an issue that stymied an early resolution to the strike, the union decided to end the strike after resolving important issues related to health care and seniority, opting to pursue concerns over pension mismanagement through legal channels.

“The audit was the only sticking point, which they had really dug in on—somewhat to the union’s surprise,” says Horowitz. “The feeling was that this was something we would have to compromise on in the contract in order to live and fight another day. So we are pursuing other means.”

Buses, trolleys and subways are once again on the move, but it appears that the conflict between Local 234 and SEPTA is far from over.

“Workers know that this has been a long term problem, perhaps as long as 20 years,” says Horowitz. “And I think the SEPTA administration’s recent attempts during the strikes to blame it on the stock market only hardened the feeling that they need more answers.” ■

Intervention III: Harm Reduction

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:54:47 PST

For Part 1 of this series, click here. For Part 2, click here.

Now that Americans have finally come to grips with the fact that addiction is a disease and requires treatment, business is brisk in the modern recovery industry. Seems we’ve come a long way since addiction was classified as a mental disorder and sufferers were locked up in “asylums.” But while addicts are no longer viewed with moral indignation, at least not in the middle class—whose progressive perspective parallels an unprecedented spike in prescription pill abuse—the addiction-as-disease model still doesn’t extend to include poor people getting their opiate fix the old-school way, shooting heroin.

“I know there’s a lot of stigma about injection users,” says Yaya Liem, Prevention Point Philadelphia’s Syringe Exchange coordinator, while working out of an RV set up on a recent afternoon at 11th and Indiana Ave. in North Philadelphia. “People all have an opinion on what a heroin user is like, but to be honest they are some of the most real and honest people that I’ve ever met,” he says. “They just come by a hard way of life.”

Liem may not be like the typical interventionist you see on TV, or like the one PW profiled at the beginning of this series, but he’s the only help some addicts will likely ever encounter. Liem prolongs life by providing IV drug users with clean needles—along with HIV tests and referrals for training, counseling and treatment.

“It’s a very complicated process to get into treatment, especially if you’re homeless and don’t have some stability in your life,” explains Liem. His work is less about snuffing out the addiction and more about enabling disenfranchised IV drug users to live safer, healthier lives. So the 29-year-old travels throughout the inner city to distribute kits containing new needles, syringes, cookers, bleach, alcohol wipes and Band-Aids in exchange for used needles. Condoms, sitting in a bucket between the driver’s and passenger’s seat, are handed out on request.

A Haverford College grad with an English degree, Liem is a long way from his childhood home in the Philly burbs. The flak he says his parents sometimes get from friends over his work reflects the rift between worlds—between social classes. “They go, ‘I can’t believe you raised Yaya to work with heroin users.’ My parents think it’s great. It’s definitely been the most fulfilling work I’ve had. Before I was doing harm reduction work full-time, I was working for a multimillion-dollar company running their sales department ... but it just didn’t feel right.” 

All afternoon Liem hangs inside near the RV’s door as clients arrive carrying used needles stuffed into soda bottles and wrapped in plastic grocery bags. Everyone who comes by does so with a hearty friendliness, and Liem responds in kind, throwing around “hon” and “no worries” and slips of Spanish with Latino clients. Women wave and call out “have a good day” on their way back home—pockets full of condoms and needles and bleach kits. Liem cheerfully repeats exchange instructions for each client: “Just drop it on in and I’ll push it.” Then the ritual: A client drops a baggie on top of the small garbage bin placed outside the door, then Liem shoves it down with a wood dowel, ensuring no one gets stuck with the needles. Liem is all about making sure no one gets stuck—with needles, with HIV, with Hepatitis C, with infected abscesses.  

Prevention Point advocates the “harm reduction model” of social services. In the sex health sector, that means giving out condoms to reduce disease. In addiction services, it means giving out needles and other paraphernalia to help reduce disease and other harm from sharing or injecting dirty needles.  

“Instead of being abstinence-only and telling everyone they should quit, we’re developing a trust. If you’re not ready or not in the position where you can quit right now, then how can we make what you’re doing safer?” says Liem. “The ultimate goal of any syringe exchange program is to make sure you’re still alive when you’re ready to quit.” After each exchange, Liem punches basic information about the transaction into a portable machine the size of a thick paperback. The machine records the client’s ID number via a program-issued card, how many people they are bringing in needles for and the number of needles brought in, the number received. You have to bring in dirty needles to exchange for sterile ones. One client exchanged for 150 needles. “Have you seen a needle that’s been used? After three to six times, it looks like a Christmas tree when it’s blown up; it’s all barbed and the needle’s bent backwards, and it hurts,” says Liem.

Outside the RV, a man bent forward at the waist is raking the top part of a broken plastic hairbrush through a long grey curtain of hair. “Someone tried to rip my hair out last night trying to steal my diamond dust,” he says, spreading his fingers through the knots. No one seems surprised by the story. Two young volunteers—a pretty girl bundled up in a scarf and coat offering cookies and a guy with a stethoscope slung around his neck—offer casual camaraderie, shake their heads. Liem feels a kinship with the population he serves. “I have my own history, too. I was doing a lot of drugs when I was a teenager and through my college years. I wish somebody had told me that this existed back then, you know?”  

The program, funded mostly through the Philadelphia Health Department’s Office of Addiction Services, claims that 98 percent of the needles given out are returned. Prevention Point enrolled 1,600 new clients last year, and made about 600 documented referrals to treatment—though Liem emphasizes that treatment referral isn’t the yardstick of success.  

Studies show that needle exchange programs are effective. Before Prevention Point opened their operation in Philly, 47 percent of newly infected HIV patients were intravenous drug users. Now it’s projected to be down to about 18 percent. From a financial perspective, the strategy is a sound public health initiative: Liem points out that treating a person with HIV or Hepatitis C for a lifetime costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, while each syringe costs only eight cents. Even so, such programs are still restricted on moral (read: political) grounds. Federal legislation enacted in 1989 that prohibited the use of federal funds for needle exchange programs is still intact, even 11 years after then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala acknowledged that such programs inhibit the spread of HIV and do not promote drug use in 1998. “People have such a phobia about syringes, that’s what makes it really hard,” says Liem. “It makes it really difficult to operate.” 

Though President Obama promised to lift the ban during primary elections, it remains in effect. However, House Democrats announced in July that they would seek a ban lift in 2010. But the new legislation is choked with so many restrictions about where such programs could open—how close to schools, community centers and so on—that even if it passed as is, Prevention Point has only been able to find one spot in all of Philadelphia where it could legally operate: smack dab in the center of the Schuylkill River. “People would literally have to swim to us with their syringes,” says Liem, exasperated.  

Liem is especially flustered because even though he intelligently slings stats and elegantly explains the financial logic of needle exchange programs, it’s clear he’s working more for the people than the issue.  

“When I started doing this work, every client I met, client is such a stale word—every person I met, they were literally shocked that I would give them a hug or shake their hand,” says Liem. “I think it was because they have been dehumanized and told over and over again by society that they’re dirty. When somebody goes into treatment, they call it getting clean. So it’s like, what were you before?”  

He makes it a point to never say junkies or addicts, only clients or participants. He respects them, even admires them.  

“It’s actually a really tight-knit community,” says Liem. “A lot of us, we see each other every single day, or at least once a week.”  

On request, Prevention Point trains clients in life-saving breathing techniques—basically CPR without the chest compressions—to use in case of an overdose. It also has a doctor on staff to provide prescriptions for Naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an opiate or morphine overdose.  

“A lot of participants now sort of work as outreach workers for us,” says Liem. Some clients use their  Naloxone in the shooting galleries (abandoned buildings used for selling and shooting dope). “I hear stories all the time about people, they come in and refill on their Naloxone because they’ve saved five different peoples’ lives.”  

Liem tells the story of a client who came running into their building this summer, looking for help for a friend who overdosed across the street. “She was somebody who really looked out for other people,” says Liem.  

While they saved that guy’s life that day, Liem just found out that the woman overdosed last weekend. 

“We hear two sides to the story all the time. We hear one side, society, saying, ‘these people have been written off, their life isn’t worth saving’ and all that kind of stuff,” says Liem. “We also see people every day who are saving each other’s lives and helping each other when they can.”  

The mobile RV is all the office Liem needs. He says it’s a calling.

“I look at my life and the life of my clients,” says Liem. “I can’t say I come from the same situation they do, but I know a little bit about it. At the end of the day, we’re all just people.” ■

Bartenders Hate You

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:08:41 PST

My girlfriend tended bar last summer. Right off the street, she managed to land a gig in a Cape May bar with zero experience or connects, a feat in itself but plausible because she’s cool, smart and looks like Kelly Kapowski.

In the beginning, she was bubbly as a Champagne cocktail. A virgin in the restaurant industry, cash in her pocket every night was a beguiling newfound prospect, one that, I can admit as someone who has tended bar myself, makes you question everything you know about college, careers and the 9-to-5 grind.

But bartenders are like reservoirs, big tanks filled with patience, kindness, rainbows and butterflies that start draining soon as their first drink is poured, and it was in July when my girlfriend, sunny, rookie bartender, started saying things like, “I just want to punch all these people in the face.”

It’s not her fault. When a customer scatters spent chicken bones around the bar top, leaves a shitty tip, name-drops, big-times, asks too many questions, just drinks water (or worse, milk), flags a bartender down without having their drink order ready, orders drinks without having their money ready, complains drinks are too weak, complains about the head on a draught beer, asks “what’s the cheapest thing you got,” orders a Bloody Mary after 1 p.m. or exhibits any number of other annoying behaviors, it’s like a little dam breaking in the reservoir. Each well has a different capacity, but they all run dry sooner or later. 

Bartending, one of the great social professions, just has a way of making you hate people. Thanks to bartending, the groups I hate now include the elderly; recovering alcoholics; business travelers that make awkward small talk with each other; graduates of Penn State; NASCAR fans that want to watch the race when, say, the Phillies are playing in the World Series; airline employees and women still drinking cosmos and apple martinis. You are not Carrie Bradshaw, give it a rest.

I don’t hate all people—just most. And often, tending bar can be great fun. But fuck if it isn’t a challenge.  

If you pour drinks, then you understand. If not, then know your favorite bartender at your favorite bar probably hates your guts.  

But never fear, for below are truths of some of the best bartenders in the city. My thoughts on bartending don’t necessarily reflect theirs, but pay attention to what they have to say anyway, and maybe you can get into their good graces. For those that do, know that your future holds free drinks, extra-speedy service and comfort in knowing that when you leave whatever bar you haunt, the staff isn’t talking about how they wish a SEPTA bus would take you down once and for all.

Mike Ojeda, Pub & Kitchen, 1946 Lombard St. 215.545.0350. thepubandkitchen.com

Likes: Customers that shower him with gifts of golden statues, emeralds, diamonds, rubies, exotic spices  and animal pelts. Or just nice people who introduce themselves and remember most bartenders are human.  

Dislikes: Customers that hang out after last call. “As a matter of fact, I hate having to yell out last call and do that whole stupid ritual. If you are at the bar, you are old enough to drink and should know what time you can drink till.”  

Behind the bar: Wed., Thurs. and Fri. nights; Sat. double.

Douglas Fitz, snackbar, 253 S. 20th St. 215.545.5655. snackbarltd.com  

Likes: Pleasant people. “If you open our interaction with a greeting rather than responding to my ‘Hello! And how’s your night going,’ we’re gonna have a much better time together.”  

Dislikes: People with a group who approach a busy bar and upon getting the bartender’s attention, turns to their friends and asks what they want. “Have your order ready! You just waited four minutes for my attention and you don’t know what you want? Get it together.”  

Behind the bar Mon., Tues., Fri. and Sat. nights. 

Phoebe Esmon, Chick’s Café & Wine Bar, 614 S. Seventh St. 215.625.3700. chickscafe.com  

Likes: Friendliness without over- familiarity and a willingness to try new things.  

Dislikes : The phrase “when you have a chance.” “When the only person at the bar decides he or she wants the check and asks for it ‘when I have a chance,’ it comes across more sarcastic than courteous.”  

Behind the bar: Tues., Fri., Sat. and Sun. nights. 

Michael Mariani, For Pete’s Sake, 900 S. Front St. 215.462.2230.  forpetessakepub.com

Likes: Polite people, girls that drink good Bourbon, 2 a.m. 

Dislikes: Rude people, loud college girls, customers you haven’t seen in a long time who come in at 1:45 a.m. and want to hear your life story.  

Behind the bar: Wed., Thurs. and Sat. nights. 

Katie Loeb, Oyster House,  1516 Sansom St. 215.567.7683.  oysterhousephilly.com  

Likes: Customers who take advice. “I’m a trained professional. If we don’t have Miller Light or Cabernet, or whatever it is you normally drink, I can undoubtedly come close, but you need to communicate with me.”  

Dislikes: Your cell phone. “If you can’t engage with me, I have 10 other customers that need my attention right now. I’ll get to you if and when you decide to be engaged in the process.”  

Behind the bar: Mon. nights, Tues. and Wed. happy hour, Thurs. and Sat. afternoons. ■

Absinthe Cocktail Recipes from Philly Bartenders

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:21:40 PST

Last December, Philadelphia Distilling did something that hadn’t been done on the East Coast in over 100 years. The Northeast-based boutique boozier best known for its citrusy Bluecoat gin crafted Vieux Carré absinthe, a spirit that was banned in the U.S. in 1912 for the alleged psychoactive properties of wormwood, one of its primary ingredients. (Read more on page 19.) Nearly a year later, the cradle of liberty has become the cradle of the absinthe revolution. But while we imbibe absinthe with Wilde abandon at the city’s best bars, la fée verte can be a bitch for the home bartender that doesn’t know how to charm her.

We defer to the professionals. Below, four absinthe-minded professors guide the way with their best absinthe recipes.

Corpse Reviver #2

Colin Shearn, Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co., 112 S. 18th St. 267.467.3277. thefranklinbar.com

“I think the Corpse Reviver #2 is an ideal drink. While it uses a mere dash of absinthe, it shows just how powerful it can be. Without it, the Corpse might sit up, but it won’t get up and dance. This drink is a lost classic that was recently brought back into the repertoire of any serious cocktail bar. While it is a fairly simple, straightforward drink, preciseness is a must. Especially the absinthe.”

3/4 ounce gin

3/4 ounce Lillet Blanc

3/4 ounce Cointreau 

3/4 ounce lemon juice (Fresh is a must!) 

4-5 drops Vieux Carré absinthe 

Garnish: cherry (Somewhat superfluous but it looks good.) 

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Hot Phoebe

Christian Gaal, Noble, 2025 Sansom St. 215.568.7000. noblecookery.com

“[This is] a toddy-esque digestive winter warmer reminiscent of mulled wine, inspired by the Prohibition-era Phoebe Snow Cocktail ( Savoy Cocktail Book , 1930). This is one you want on your side after failing to turn down that last slice of pie.”  

1 ounce Vieux Carré absinthe 

1 ounce Dubonnet Rouge (a French fortified wine) 

1 ounce of your favorite brandy (Laird’s Bonded Applejack works nicely.) 

1/2 teaspoon of blossom honey 

3-4 ounces of boiling water 

Garnish: flamed orange peel and a pinch of grated nutmeg 

Pour 1 ounce each of Vieux Carre and Dubonnet Rouge, along with your favorite brandy into an Irish coffee-like mug. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of blossom honey, topped up with boiling water. Garnish with orange peel and nutmeg. 

Absinthe Martini 

Katie Loeb, Oyster House,  1516 Sansom St. 215.567.7683.  oysterhousephilly.com 

“This drink isn’t quite as dry as a true martini, but is a good way to introduce absinthe and its herbal flavors into your usual repertoire of cocktails. It makes for a very tasty and refreshing aperitif to get your appetite up before dinner.” 

1/2 ounce Vieux Carré absinthe 

2 1/2 ounce gin or vodka of your choosing 

1 ounce Lillet Blanc (a French fortified wine similar to vermouth) 

1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh mint leaves 

1 dash orange bitters (Fee Brothers or Angostura Orange bitters, available at DiBruno Brothers) 

Optional (for a sweeter drink): 1 teaspoon simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar dissolved together) or Agave nectar (available at Whole Foods) 

Garnish: Fresh lemon twist or mint sprite  

Pour absinthe into a cocktail/martini glass and rotate to coat the inner surface. Pour excess into an iced cocktail shaker. Add remaining ingredients (except for the garnish) and shake vigorously.  

Strain into glass. Remove a strip of peel from lemon, taking care to remove only the yellow peel and none of the white pith.  

Point the twist over the glass, peel side facing the drink and fold the peel in half lengthwise, spraying the surface of the drink with oil from the peel. Rub the rim of the glass with the peel side of the twist and drop twist into the drink.  

A Darker Word 

Keith Raimondi, Village Whiskey, 114 S. 20th St. 215.665.1088.  villagewhiskey.com 

“The idea behind the cocktail comes from trying to fill my void for the Last Word, a cocktail made with gin, green Chartreuse, lime juice and maraschino liquor.”  

1 1/4 ounce Russels Reserve rye 

3/4 ounce Vieux Carré absinthe 

1/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse 

1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice 

1/2 ounce simple syrup 

1 orange peel 

Mix all ingredients into shaker except peel, add ice and shake. Strain into old-fashioned glass over new ice and add a twist of orange peel. 

PW's Guide to Hangover Cures

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:34:36 PST

Your eyelids peel away from what feels like sockets lined with sandpaper to reveal a spider web of red capillaries. There’s crust caking the corners of your mouth, your pillow, your hair and the pair of jeans you’ve unceremoniously tossed in a crumpled heap on your bedroom floor. As you drag your body Night-of-the-Living-Dead -style toward the sink for a giant glass of water, your head painfully thumps in unison with each beat of your heart and your stomach feels like a family of gerbils have set up shop in your innards—exercise wheel and all. While visions of last night’s beers, shots and Toasted Almond—it seemed like a good idea at the time—dance excruciatingly in your bleary head, you realize you’ve done it again. You’re hungover and you need a fix. Let this list be your go-to guide when you need to get through the worst of it. And try to look on the bright side: You didn’t bring home a fugly … this time.

Menudo

No, not the Puerto Rican boy band that launched the careers of no-talent assclowns like Ricky Martin. We’re talking about the spicy Mexican soup made with honeycomb tripe (cow stomach), a vinegar-spiked beef stock and a bright red, almost-neon chile paste. Add chopped onion, lime wedges and cilantro to adjust the flavor to your liking and dip the house-made corn tortillas into the soothing broth. The traditional thought behind this hangover cure is that it makes you sweat, releasing last night’s toxins from your system and into the air for the rest of us to smell. 

PW Recommends: La Lupe, 1201 S. Ninth St. 215.551.9920

Pho

This staple in Vietnam made with a star anise, ginger and cinnamon-infused beef broth and rice noodles is usually eaten for breakfast, but whatever time you regain consciousness after a night of hard drinking will do just fine. At Pho 75 they’re all about the beef. Try a mix-and-match combination of flank steak, fatty brisket, soft tendon, beef tripe or meatballs, or have them toss all of them into this swimming pool-sized bowl of soup. The beefy broth is comforting and effective at fighting the Irish flu, but we think it’s the plate of add-ons that do the most good against a hangover. Jalapeño’s capsaicin is a known brain pain inhibitor, the essential oils in Thai basil calm the stomach and the nerves, and lime wedges are used to fight everything from fatigue to kidney toxins to scurvy.

PW Recommends: Pho 75, 1122 Washington Ave. 215.271.5866

Coffee + Recovery Shake

The Recovery Shakes at Mugshots are meant to replenish the electrolytes you’ve shed during a long, hard workout, but if you need to recover from a long, hard night with your two best friends Jack and Ginger, it’ll set you straight. Try one made with acai berry spiked with the beneficial bacteria spirulina; both aid in cell reproduction so you just might regenerate some of those brain cells you obliterated last night. If all else fails, go with the caffeine cocktail Mugshot, a cup of coffee with a shot of espresso.

PW Recommends: Mugshots, 2100 Fairmount Ave. 267.514.7145.  mugshotscoffeehouse.com 

Pickle Juice

The Russians believe the only way to get over a hangover is to drink the juice of a pickle, but then again they also thought that invading Afghanistan was a good idea. If you’re going to go the Ruskie route, why not drink the juice of a really good pickle? AJ Pickle Patch in the Reading Terminal Market pickles everything from green tomatoes to cucumbers to beets. The theory is that the magnesium and potassium in the pickle will help with headaches and fatigue. We think when you’re hungover and dehydrated, you just crave salt. 

PW Recommends: AJ Pickle Patch, 12th and Arch sts. readingterminalmarket.org

Hae Jang Guk

If you’ve ever hung out with a bunch of Koreans you know one thing they love is drinking. We’re talking Ted Kennedy before Chappaquiddick drinking. Shane MacGowan with a handful of fifties drinking. Ernest Hemingway holed up in a Spanish hotel drinking. Sure, it’s a  stereotype, but in our experience, it’s one based in truth. Koreans also have the perfect cure for hangovers: Hae Jang Guk, translated to stomach relief soup or “hangover soup,” made with digestion aids like napa cabbage, mung bean sprouts, scallion as well as odd cuts of beef and a beefy Korean miso broth (both boosting protein levels and providing the energy for another round). This is sure to knock last night’s booze right out of you. 

PW Recommends: Pastoral Korean Restaurant, 205 S. 13th St. 215.545.8511 

Bloody Mary

Hair of the dog is an obvious choice, but it’s the only surefire solution to your alcohol ailments. While your body is being numbed by the vodka-induced dopamine surge, the tomato juice will actually do some good. Lycopene helps your blood flow and clears your head. Potassium brings you out of the general state of malaise brought on by uber-consumption, and vitamin C boosts your immune system and kills any viruses you picked up while “accidentally” kissing that stranger the night before. 

PW Recommends: Royal Tavern, 937 E. Passyunk Ave. 215.389.6694. royaltavern.com

Philly's Top 15 Drinks

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:43:58 PST

True story: At least two writers associated with this issue got a teensy bit tipsy after sampling one particularly potent drink on the top 15 list. (Oyster House’s Katie Loeb makes ’em strong and delicious.) Light weights, you say? Nope. Just dedicated. For PW’s annual food and drink issue, we went out to get our drink on. We dispatched four of the most discerning drinkers we know to scour the city for the most delicious cocktails. They’re listed here in no specific order, because, quite honestly, we couldn’t choose a favorite. We also challenged some of our favorite local ’tenders to mix up tasty liquid libations using locally distilled absinthe and got the recipes, so yes, please do try this at home. While we’re giving orders, check out the inside scoop on what you can do to make bartenders love you. (Hint: It has nothing to do with tipping.) And if you, like us, sometimes sample too much sauce, we’ve got six surefire edible hangover cures. Just don’t blame that hangover on us. Blame it on the al-al-al-alcohol. (Erica Palan)

James-hattan

Dear brown liquor-averse, please meet the cocktail that will lure you to the dark side. The James-hattan, Jim and Kristina Burke’s riff on the classic Manhattan, is so smooth it rides down the throat like a tyke on a Slip ’n’ Slide. Dispensed from a Green-Glass jug behind the exposed brick-backed bar, whiskey infused in-house with raisins, cinnamon and orange mingles with sweet vermouth in a Boston shaker before being strained into a properly chilled martini glass. The resulting mix is autumn in a cup, really subtle and best enjoyed by James’ fireplace. (Adam Erace)   $10. James, 824 S. Eighth St. 215.629.4980. jameson8th.com 

Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em

Normally, with beer, our rule is “don’t mess with a good thing.” Hence, we approached the London Grill’s new draft beer cocktail menu with great skepticism, and our uncertainty was largely validated. With one notable exception. The Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em, arriving in a highball and looking like a glass of iced tea that’s been sitting out in the sun too long, harnesses the kick of chipotle-infused mezcal to the crisp, hoppy character of Victory’s Prima Pils. The smoked salt lining the rim enhances the smoky flavors of the mezcal. This one burns, but in a very good way. (D.P.)  $9. London Grill, 2301 Fairmount Ave. 215.978.4545. londongrill.com 

Frozen Blood Orange Margarita 

Stop it. We see you rolling your eyes, murmuring under your breath. “Frozen drinks are for resort tourists and sorority girls.” Yeah, yeah. And while we might concede that the frozen blood O at El Vez isn’t as meticulously handcrafted as the other cocktails on this list, you can’t argue about how great it tastes. Tiny bits of plump pulp from blood orange purée spike the drink with delicious bursts of juice. The long bite of gold tequila lingers in the mouth after the original tart kick fades away. Put another way: This shit is the shit, so tough shit. But you know that already, otherwise you wouldn’t be buying the nearly 16 gallons El Vez sells each day. (Brian McManus)   $9. El Vez, 121 S. 13th St. 215.928.9800. elvezrestaurant.com  

Calvados Sidecar 

Unlike the rest of France, there’s very little wine produced in the region of Normandy. Beyond beaches dotted with Nazi pillboxes and the scars of the D-Day invasion lay apple orchards instead of vineyards. That didn’t stop the thirsty and resourceful people of this area from creating their own unique alcohol distilled from fermented apples, Calvados. Evocative of apples and pears, the young liquor is aged in oak casks to round out the flavor and color. At the Rittenhouse Square brasserie Parc, they’ve Normanized their Sidecar by replacing brandy with Calvados but stay true to tradition by finishing the drink with the sweet orange liqueur Cointreau and fresh lemon juice. (Tim McGinnis)  $8. Parc, 227 S. 18th St. 215.545.2262. parc-restaurant.com 

Oyster House Punch(es) 

The Oyster House makes the best version of the storied Fish House punch—a traditionally potent blend of rum, cognac and brandy created in 1848—we’ve had in Philly, where the drink was invented. The secret? Master mixologist Katie Loeb substitutes apricot brandy for peach, making for a drier, less sweet drink. The end result is tasty and complex and will, as written of the original in a poem collected in the 1885 book The Cook , “make you forget your mother-in-law.” Now here’s the bad news: Oyster House Punch was taken off the menu last week. It’s a summer drink, after all, and we’re deep in the throes of autumn. But don’t fret. Loeb has another punch that packs a wallop for the season: Mother’s Ruin—a gin (or “mother’s ruin” in Brit slang) and cinnamon/chai tea-infused sweet vermouth concoction topped with champagne. Loeb borrowed the recipe from friend and mentor Phillip Ward (see “Silver Monk”), mixologist at New York City restaurant/mezcal bar Mayahuel, and we’re thrilled she did. Grapefruit juice and fresh lemon juice give the punch a tart jolt, and will fill you with such warmth you’ll forget summer ever left. (B.Mc.)   $7. Oyster House, 1516 Sansom St. 215.567.7683. oysterhousephilly.com 

Lemonnana 

When life hands you lemons, go for Lemonnanas at Zahav. That’s right, plural. This street-wise Israeli lemonade spiked with Jim Beam was made for session drinking, inspired by the cart coolers served to combat the heat in the Holy Land. “In Israel, they blend it with ice to make almost a slushy,” says Steve Cook, who with chef and co-owner Mike Solomonov, brainstormed Zahav’s cocktail menu “on buses traveling throughout the country” on a company field trip. At the sand-hued Society Hill resto, the hard lemonade is shaken and poured over fresh ice in a tall Collins glass wonderfully swampy with muddled mint and lemon verbena. Ridiculously refreshing and fragrant, the easy-drinking Lemonnana also makes fast friends with any of Solomonov’s za’atar-dusted delights. (A.E.)  $9.50. Zahav, 237 Saint James Place, 215.625.8800. zahavrestaurant.com  

Chicha Morada 

PW’ s food writers are an adventurous lot. We’ve happily tucked into bowls of tripe, picked at braised pork neck and salivated over some of the stinkiest cheeses in the world, but most of us would draw the line at Peru’s chicha morada. A chicha maker chews on purple maize, allowing salivary enzymes to convert the starch into fermentable sugars thus creating alcohol. Luckily, Chifa’s modern interpretation of the drink is served with less risk of swine flu. Their version includes the use of spiced rum as the alcohol component mixed with purple corn and pineapple. Served in a wine glass over ice, the drink is reminiscent of horchata and sangria rather than mucus and loogies. (T.M.)  $8/glass, $32/pitcher. Chifa, 707 Chestnut St. 215.925.5555.  chifarestaurant.com

Silver Monk

Imagine our horrified surprise to discover, after drowning our World Series sorrows in Silver Monks at Franklin Mortgage, that this sprightly tequila cocktail is a Yankee import. Gregarious Franklin barkeep Colin Shearn may have mixed us this tonic of blanco, muddled mint and cucumber, pinches of salt and simple syrup and a dash of yellow Chartreuse, but “the Silver Monk was created by Phil Ward, formerly the head bartender at Death & Co.,” explains Shearn. Poured over a hand-chipped ice “rock” in a double old-fashioned glass, this Monk is the kind of refreshing, invigorating formula that’s perfect to start or end the night with, though we’re partial to Shearn’s apt description: “fucking amazing.” (A.E.)  $12. Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co., 112 S. 18th St. 267.467.3277. thefranklinbar.com  

Vesper 

Blur the line between fantasy and reality at Noble American Cookery by ordering the very same drink imbibed by James Bond in the 1953 book Casino Royale . Composed of Philly’s own Penn 1681 Vodka and Bluecoat gin, the cocktail is rounded out by bitter orange French aperitif Lillet blonde and orange bitters then sweetened with the essential oils of a lemon peel. Order the Vesper from Christian Gaal, who looks like he should be bartending in 1880s Deadwood and who hustles like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. A better martini is simply unimaginable. (T.M.)   $12. Noble, 2025 Sansom St. 215.568.7000. noblecookery.com 

Americano  

“Maybe you’re thinking Manhattan?” Kip Waide says when asked about the Americano he stirs up at Southwark. “Americano is delicious, but we sell very few.” To be sure, if the Manhattan was a religion, Waide’s handsome saloon would be the altar at which to worship, but here you can also sip a lavender-tinted Aviation, a genuine pisco sour frothy with shaken raw egg white and the city’s most dashing Americano, a café cocktail with origins in circa-1860 Milan. Waide creates Gaspare Campari justice with a calibration of sweet vermouth and the bitter vermilion aperitivo. Mismeasured, the Americano can be as ugly as the Americans that occupy Milan’s duomos on Perillo Tours, but Waide’s is thirst-quenching and balanced, cut with seltzer and refreshed with an orange slice. By contrast, the Manhattan seems almost fussy. (A.E.)   $12. Southwark Restaurant, 701 S. Fourth St. 215.238.1888.  southwarkrestaurant.com  

The Hemingway 

In drinker’s lore, Ernest Hemingway may be most widely associated with the daiquiri, a rum drink. But Papa was nothing if not Catholic in his taste for booze. In 1997, Samuel Rogal built an entire book, For Whom the Dinner Bell Tolls , on Hemingway’s published references to food and drink. Distrito’s nod to the literary icon is a daiquiri variant that starts with tequila (in this case Hornitos) infused with chile. The citrus edge comes from grapefruit juice, and there’s a maraschino for good measure. Subtle yet fierce, the Hemingway is the standout on a cocktail menu that’s solid from top to bottom. (D.P.)   $10. Distrito, 3945 Chestnut St. 215.222.1657. distritorestaurant.com  

Bloody Mary 

The spice is right when it comes to Cantina’s bangin’ bloody. Cinnamon, somewhere in there, followed by a punch of chili heat that’ll get your mind right after a long Saturday night at POPE. Weekends, avenue kids roll in around noon, so you won’t look out of place ordering this full-flavored vodka-tomato any time before 3 p.m., preferably paired with the eggs benny on jalapeño cornbread. Just sit back, relax, watch visiting in-laws wonder how the wait-staff got into their jeans and drink away that hangover. (A.E.)  $5. Cantina Los Caballitos, 1651 E. Passyunk Ave. 215.755.3550.  cantinaloscaballitos.com 

De Rigueur 

“They say the recipe for Sprite is lemon and lime, but I tried to make it at home and there’s more to it than that.” So goes a bit by the late, great Mitch Hedberg, and the same could be said for Village Whiskey’s De Rigueur. A heady blend of rye, Aperol (an Italian aperitif made of bitter orange, rhubarb and cinchona), grapefruit, lemon, honey and mint seems easy enough, but an attempt to make your own will be off. For one thing, VW bartender Keith Raimondi tells us, they thin the honey out with hot water, mellowing its overpowering sweetness and making it easier to work with. Inspired in part by the famed Brown Derby, the De Rigueur is perfect, fresh, modern, and best left in the hands of professionals. (B.Mc.)  $11. Village Whiskey, 118 S. 20th St. 215.665.1088. villagewhiskey.com 

Kowloon Taxi  

“It gets you where you want to go” is how the creative bar staff at Kong describe the effects of this Asian-inspired libation, and if your destination is Tastytown, then this is the cocktail for you. Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, Ketel One vodka and cranberry juice are mixed with muddled fresh ginger and orange slices, chilled, shook, strained and served straight up. Trained at the exclusive Groucho Club in the Soho section of London, the barman and creator of the drink is into textures as well as flavors in his cocktails and leaves some of the bits of ginger swimming in the solution for an extra kick. It turns out we’re into both, too. (T.M.)   $8. Kong, 702-704 N. Second St. 215.922.5664. eatatkong.com  

The Midtown Village 

The Manhattan is the baseline. But New York’s other boroughs (and neighborhoods) also lend their names to different takes on the whiskey-based cocktail. So what if we all still call their neck of 13th Street the “Gayborhood”? APO takes the conceit from NYC and shakes up its own rendition. Spicy rye whiskey provides the heart. From port wine, some sweetness and tannins. Amaro, Italian  vermouth and bitters, all for even more complexity. Add showmanship (flames shooting off a twist of orange zest into the drink) and the undeniable essence of orange that accompanies this display, and you’ve got an aromatic, syrupy and potent blend that will warm you at any time of year. (Dan Packel)  $11. APO Bar and Lounge, 102 S. 13th St. 215.735.7500.  apothecarylounge.com 

Big Brother Visits Philadelphia

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:37:27 PST

On January 30th, 2009 Kristina Clair -- a Linux administrator living in Philadelphia, who just happens to share server space with Indymedia.us, a left-leaning online news aggregator -- received a subpoena from a federal prosecutor in Indiana demanding the web site's visitor logs in conjunction with an undisclosed grand jury investigation. Specifically, the visitor log for June 25th, 2008.

The subpoena did not just ask for specific names or IP addresses; instead it demanded the names and IP addresses of all 10,000-plus people who visited the site on that day, where they came from and where they went next. Furthermore, the subpoena gave Clair a final, ominous instruction: "You are not to disclose the existence of this request unless authorized by the Assistant U.S. Attorney."

"I was a little scared and confused at first," says Clair. "But then I realized I didn't have the info they were asking for." In the interest of preserving visitor privacy, Indymedia erases visitor logs after five weeks.

Clair contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit online privacy and civil liberties watchdog group headquartered in San Francisco. Amongst other things, the EFF is currently in the midst of suing the federal government for the Bush Administration's illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of all U.S. communications after 9/11 -- phone calls, email and Internet use.

EFF provided Clair with pro bono legal representation, namely senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston, who assured Clair that Indymedia's lack of visitor logs rendered the subpoena meaningless. However, Bankston was disturbed by an apparent instance of the government using overbroad subpoenas to go on a fishing expedition and he wondered many other federal prosecutors are abusing their subpoena powers in this manner.

"We simply don't know how often this kind of sloppy overreach happens and we are concerned that it is quite common," says Bankston, who points out that unlike wiretaps, which require a judge's authorization, there is no oversight for these kind of Internet visitor log requests by prosecutors. "There is simply too much secrecy and secrecy leads to abuses."

Bankston wanted to use the incident as a teachable moment and alert the media to spark a discussion about online privacy, the law and prosecutorial abuses. But first he needed to get Clair out of the subpoena's. He drew up a letter notifying Assistant U.S. Attorneys Doris L. Pryor, the federal prosecutor who issued the subpoena, that Indymedia did not keep the information she requested -- and added the gag order was a non-starter. While there are secrecy requirements for participants in grand jury deliberations, these extend only to prosecutors and jury members, not witnesses or potential witnesses, like Clair.

Pryor responded that if Clair talked publicly about this incident, it would harm the grand jury investigation and Clair could face obstruction of justice charges. Barston responded that if Pryor could get a judge to issue a gag order they would abide by it, but otherwise there was no legal reason why Clair could not go public.

And then...nothing.

"Basically, the government backed down," says Barston. "They never responded after that, and essentially conceded that [speaking publicly about the subpoena] would not hurt their investigation."

That was back in the spring, which begs the question of why EFF only went public with this now.

"We've been a little busy suing the federal government for spying on the American people in violation of the Fourth Amendment," says Bankston.

So what was reported on Indymedia on June 25th, 2008 that drew the attention of federal prosecutors?

"I was wondering the same thing," says Clair. "But it turns out we don't have that day archived. So it remains a mystery." A mystery that could only be solved by the Indiana federal prosecutors office, which declined to comment on the case.

Lastly, never missing a chance to try and blame Obama for the sins of Bush-Cheney, Fox News falsely reported that the fishing expedition subpoena was the doing of Attorney General Eric Holder. This was quickly parrotted by the Drudge Report and other denizens of right-wing blogosphere. But Holder wasn't sworn in as Attorney General until Feb. 3, four days after Clair received the subpoena. A Justice Department source told CBS News that the Indiana prosecutors never submitted the subpoena to Washington for vetting, as is policy of all media subpoenas. The source would neither confirm nor deny that DOJ's Office Of Professional Responsibility was investigating the matter.

Philly Reps Make the Right Choice

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:30:30 PST

It's not often I get a chance to offer a hearty "well done!" to Philadelphia's stable of Democrats, but last week our delegation to the House really did good. All of them -- from progressives Bob Brady and Chaka Fattah, to so-called "New Democrat" Allyson Schwartz, to our close neighbors Joe Sestak and "Blue Dog" Patrick Murphy -- voted a resounding NO on an amendment authored by Michigan's reactionary Bart Stupak that would prevent women from buying insurance to cover abortion even if they use their own money.

How extremely messed up is Stupak's amendment to the House health reform bill? Jessica Arons at the Center for American Progress Action Fund writes that it "effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans" that get government financing, with only narrow exceptions for the health of the mother.

And if you think that's bad, Stupak's original language would have "limited the government's ability to include abortions in benefits plans to cases of incest, life of the mother, and forcible rape." Silly me, I didn't realize that rape can be consensual.

Although it's perfectly legal, abortion is one of those issues that make politicians incredibly skittish. Democrats in particular hate to talk about it because they're afraid they're going to piss off the shrieking pro-birth brigade. (I refuse to call them pro-life, because the same crowd typically opposes things like national health care, public schools, and family planning policies, which ensure a child or his parents have a life worth living.)

But while no one likes to talk about abortion, it's an increasingly unavailable component of women's health. The Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health, analyzed abortion in Pennsylvania during 1973-2005. Our local reps are swimming against the tide: in 2005, 78 percent of Pennsylvania counties, home to 40 percent of Pennsylvania women, had no abortion provider. According to Guttmacher, in 2005 11 percent of Pennsylvania women in need of an abortions traveled at least 50 miles to obtain one, and 3 percent traveled more than 100 miles.

Guttmacher doesn't explain why women seek abortions, but Booman Tribune's Martin Longman makes a few pungent observations about Stupak's impact on miscarriages. "One thing gets lost when we focus only on the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy," Longman writes, "is that pregnancies terminate themselves all the time. And, when they do, there is frequently a problem that the remnants of that pregnancy do not expel themselves fully or adequately."

As Longman accurately notes, an abortion-type procedure is often the way a dead fetus is removed from the uterus. Under the Stupak amendment, this could be a crime, forcing women to carry a dead fetus until it passed on its own -- a process that can take months and which can endanger the woman's health. In order to get an abortion in those circumstances, individuals and couples would have to plead their case to insurance agents.

And that's where the rubber hits the road. Longman asks, "Imagine having to make sure your doctor would certify that your wife had extreme hypertension, or some other life-threatening problem? Imagine having to prove that your pregnancy resulted from rape, or whether or not to turn your incestuous uncle in to the authorities so you could get your insurance money." Talk about putting a bureaucrat between you and your doctor! Stupak puts entire systems in your way.

So when you're tempted, as I often am, to throw up your hands and turn your back on our dysfunctional political system, think about what our delegation did. And think about how refreshingly different our gang from southeastern Pennsylvania is from the neanderthals in the northern and western areas of the state, where Democrats Jason Altmire, Kathy Dahlkemper, Tim Holden, and John Murtha voted to throw women's reproductive health in the garbage can.

As attention turns to the Senate, the pressure on Senators Arlen Specter and Bob Casey Jr. will only grow. While Arlen is a fairly reliable vote for reproductive rights, Casey is a sworn enemy of choice, earning a 0 from NARAL in 2008. No one really knows if the Senate will add a similar amendment to their bill, so it's worth your time to call Senators Specter and Casey and demand they protect women's health.

But don't forget to call our local representatives and thank them for standing up for women and families.

Peter King Talks Football. Everywhere.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:44:29 PST

Since Sports Illustrated writer Peter King’s aptly titled book Monday Morning Quarterback is about the sport he covers, the logical place to start would be with the Philly shout-outs that appear on his pages. So here goes:

• A sesame bagel at the Center City Starbucks cost 65 cents in 2000 but a plain bagel ran an extra dime. “That would mean, logically, that 100 sesame seeds cost minus 10 cents.

• King’s “Top 100 Players of Today” list includes No. 15 Matt Ryan (the Atlanta quarterback went to William Penn Charter), Eagles’ safety Quintin Mikell (51), QB Donovan McNabb (57), cornerback Asante Samuel (62) and offensive tackle Jason Peters (73).

• His “Top 100 Players of All-Time” list includes one-time Eagles Reggie White (No. 10), Chuck Bednarik (30), Mike Ditka (81) and Cris Carter (88).

When you’re the pre-eminent NFL reporter for the nation’s pre-eminent sports magazine, your opinions carry some weight. But in collecting columns, random tidbits and fun facts from years on the beat for the book, the thing that becomes clear about King’s work isn’t related to the sport he covers. He actually embodies a way for journalists to weather the perceived death of print.

King started writing his Monday Morning Quarterback (MMQB) column for SI.com in 1997, which was years before peers realized that online was future. By embracing a new format to share info and opinion, his workload went from 800-word columns to 8,000; it also served to install King as a multi-platform expert who did print, online, TV, radio and soon – I presume – hologram reports in space. And, he’s done so with a reporting work ethic that staves off questions about veracity, and a Rolodex chock full of stars and special-teams fillers.

What follows are some highlights of the conversation about the book, football and an evolving media landscape.

PW: In the book’s introduction, you write about your transition, via the Monday Morning QB column, from print-only to print-online-TV-etc. Was it difficult to leave the engrained “perfect sentence” worrying behind for volume, a quantity for quality transition?

Peter King: I’ve never been kind of guy to take 45 minutes to write a perfect sentence. I would take 45 minutes, and it’d still be a Peter King sentence. I have a lot of admiration for Gary Smith, Rick Reilly, Tom Verducci and all of the really great writers I have been privileged to work at the same place with. I’m not ripping myself, but I never got hired because I was a wordsmith. I got hired because I was a reporter, or for my work ethic.

Where the business is today, you have to have the ability to do multiple things. If you don’t expand, you will struggle in making it in media world.

When I was at Ohio University, I worked at the school paper. No TV, no radio. Being a reporter is what I wanted to do with my life. Never since 1979 did I think I would ever sit in front of radio microphone, or wear suit and be on TV. It never crossed my mind. But then Will McDunough (who started as a Boston Globe copy boy and was among the first sports writers to effectively transition to TV) happened. And the business changed with the Internet.

PW: You seem to be a perfect example of a print guy who embraced new media.

PK: I’m just willing to give new media a chance when it surfaces. SI asked me to start Tweeting and it certainly isn’t hard to take 10-15 minutes a day to do so, so I tried it. Just answering fans’ questions. Well, now I have 180,000 followers. I promote it, too. They put it in the magazine. Twitter put me on their recommended users.

With the online column, I got a head start, an advantage.

PW: What have you heard about the head-injury/concussions issue since the Oct. 28 hearing in Congress? (A U.S. House Judiciary Committee heard testimony about former NFL players being ravaged by the head-trauma they suffered while playing pro football; the issue has garnered increased coverage of late.)

PK: A lot of players are very interested in it. You saw it with [Brian] Westbrook [being held out of last week’s game vs. Dallas with a concussion]. I think it’s in the back of everybody’s mind that we need to err on the side of caution. If nothing else comes out of it, the players need to stand up for themselves. If they’re having headaches, they must assert their own rights.

PW: Do you sense players are fed up with the NFL monitoring both on- and off-field behavior? It almost feels as if the league as become a second-world nation with much power ceded toward ownership.

PK: I don’t really hear many (people talking about it). Most players, the law-abiding citizens who don’t get in trouble, are not concerned about the ‘NFL as Big Brother.’

PW: Is T.O. done?

PK: I think he’s been fairly quiet and mild this year. To me, he’s past his prime, but might be able to put some good games together.

PW: Any picks for the Super Bowl this year?

PK: Minnesota or New Orleans in the NFC. Pittsburgh or New England in the AFC.

PW: Will Andy Reid win a Super Bowl? Will Donovan McNabb win a Super Bowl? And, if so, will they win it together?

PK: I look at it and say, how many football teams can look at themselves and say if we play well, and things go right, we can win the Super Bowl each season. Well, that’s been the case for nine, 10 years under Reid.

Now, there have been some colossal disappointments, they’ve lost big playoff games during that time. But, you can count on one-hand teams that have been able to say they have a chance every year.

Over the next two-three years? I have a gut feeling the answer is no. Andy is a fervent supporter of McNabb, but a dispassionate architect of football teams.

Lee Daniels' 'Precious' Moment

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:11:49 PST

Lee Daniels exudes confidence when talking about his latest film, Precious, which finally hits Philly—after opening in select cities across the country last week—this Friday. It’s as if he knows this story about an obese, ugly, dark-skinned teenage girl from the ghetto—whose father repeatedly rapes her—is going to impact the lives of millions.

“That truly was my intention, to change how one perceives incest,” says Daniels. “We see Precious in Philly every day on the El, on the bus, 42nd Street to everywhere. She’s there. She’s with my cousins. She’s deep in my family. She’s everywhere, but we are ignoring her.”  

The film is based on the 1996 urban literary legend Push, a novel by poet Sapphire. Back in the day when girls in the suburbs were reading Judy Blume books, around-the-way girls in the inner-city were passing around Push , a timeless depiction of life in the ghetto: poverty, child abuse, illiteracy, damaged souls ... The adaptation closely parallels the powerful and heart-gripping story of main character Precious, played by newcomer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, a 350-pound illiterate teenager who’s about to give birth to her second child by her father, all the while enduring verbal, physical and sexual abuse doled out by her mother Mary, played by actress, comedian and talk show host Mo’Nique.  

It’s a story that Daniels, who has been open about the physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his father while growing up, says he had to tell.  

“When I read it, it ripped me open. It ripped me raw,” he says. Daniels was given the book about 11 years ago by actress Ally Sheedy’s mother, a literary agent in New York City. 

“It left me in a place where my guts were upside down. My mouth was open. Every other page was like, ‘Oh my God this isn’t happening. I’ve got to turn this into a movie.’”   

It’s a beautifully warm Monday in October, a welcome treat considering the long rainy weekend Daniels spent promoting the film. As he makes his way inside the green room at CBS 3 TV, it’s clear the filmmaker—sporting a loosely buttoned beige shirt, blue jeans and brown leather shoes with the laces untied—is recovering from a long night.  

“Networking and attending events is like working,” he says, feeling a little self-conscious about his disheveled appearance. The West Philly native gets comfortable on a black leather couch and immediately gushes about how fabulous Nona Hendryx of the legendary soul music group Labelle looks at age 65.  

“She has the body of a 20-year-old,” he jokes of the songstress who has a song on the Precious soundtrack titled “Now That I Know Who I Am.”  

Daniels sets the mood with laughter, but the conversation takes a deep turn as he discusses his journey to bring the story of Precious to the big screen, his toughest critic, and how it feels not to have the support of some African-Americans. He even reveals for the first time that he was sexually abused as a child. A revelation that offers further insight into the director’s penchant for creating dark films like Monster’s Ball , for which actress Halle Berry won an Oscar; The Woodsman , Shadowboxer and Tennessee . The provocative filmmaker tackles sensitive subject matters from interracial relationships and organized crime to pedophilia, child abuse and twisted estranged relationships.

The journey to get Push to the big screen was not an easy one. “It took a long time to get her to trust me to make the film,” says Daniels of Sapphire. The author had concerns that if the adaptation wasn’t done correctly it would change the way people perceived the book.  

“During that time scenes were fermenting in my head because I knew I was going to stalk her down for this if it killed me.” Daniels says the scholar and poet is “a genius, but she’s got a little bit of hot sauce in her.” 

“She’ll use a five-syllable word then bust out with the word ‘nigga,’” laughs Daniels as he fans himself. 

The author finally embraced the idea. “Either that or she was tired of me stalking her,” says Daniels, and from there it was smooth sailing. “I had so many years to understand the story in its DNA.”  

It’s the kind of DNA that is embedded in all of us, even  

Daniels, who recently had to face a repressed childhood memory that forever connects him to Precious. “My therapist said, ‘Lee, your stories are so provocative, were you sexually abused?’ I go, ‘no.’ Then I go, ‘Well, you know I was 12 and this guy who was in his twenties tried something with me.’”  

After his confession, Daniels says his therapist hit him with the news. “She said to me, ‘Lee, you were sexually abused.’ I was like ‘ whoa .’ That was abuse.  

“That was last year and I’m almost 50 years old. I was like, ‘OK, put that on my checklist of things to do,’” he adds, breaking into a hearty laughter.  

With Precious, Daniels does an excellent job of addressing the deep seeded “isms” that people may knowingly or unknowingly possess—a standard trait in his films. The edgy director utilizes the skillful art of “saying something without saying something.”  

The film succeeds at making global connections, and in encouraging viewers to break away from the norm and see Precious as a universal story, not just a black story.  

“I went around the world, Germany, France, and it [the film] just speaks to other people and cultures because there is a little bit of Precious in all of us. White Philadelphians and New Yorkers, I don’t consider to be white. They intermingle with us. They know a lot, so it’s really like the same thing. But, when white people in Oregon were responding to the film, it freaked me out because they don’t see Precious every day.” 

 With controversy comes intense criticism, and given his track record, it’s easy to see why Daniels has had his share of both. Some critics have dismissed Precious as being nothing more than poorsploitation (exploiting the story of what is perceived an urban issue). “Poorsploitation, what’s that mean?” asks Daniels, clearly tickled by the term used to describe his film in a recent PW review. “I don’t know how to respond to that because … it’s a universal story. I’m a black filmmaker so if that makes it poorsploitative because I’m black … then poorsploitation around the house !”  

The novel and film both take place in Harlem with African-American characters, but ironically the novel Push was originally put up as a stage play in London with an all-white cast before Daniels came on board. He admits he wasn’t aware of the full scale of Precious ’ universal impact until he made the film. 

“I told Sapphire, people are responding to this film around the world,” he says, with a trace of a Philly accent.  

She said to me, “Lee, you know we put Precious up as a white play in London ... Precious was white. Mary was white.”  

African-American directors have long been criticized for how they portray blacks in film, and Daniels is no exception. Some members of the black community—and liberal whites—have made it clear they feel Precious makes black people look bad. Indeed, the film delves into some hard-to-take truths: Precious contracts HIV from her father, a reality that’s hard to hide.  

“Black women are dying because everyone wants to pretend to have a certain image,” says Daniels, who visited a gay center in New York while researching the film. “Most of the AIDS patients in this country are black women,” says Daniels. 

The director blames the disconnect between his critics and his work partly on the fact that some African-Americans don’t want to see the truth played out on the big screen. Nevertheless, he refuses to sugar-coat reality.  

“For me to portray and not tell my truth and bring it to the screen would be an injustice to me as a man—forget about a black man, but as a man. I would be lying and black women are dying.” To that end, the filmmaker says, “Yeah, I got your image right here ,” making a hand gesture toward his crotch.  

Daniels already proved he won’t work with those who don’t subscribe to his mission: He fired his last manager for not believing in the film. 

Seeking more truths, Daniels also visited incest survivors, an experience he describes as chilling. “It actually gives me the creeps because they were children and they were innocent … I would have to kill somebody if they did that to my child,” says Daniels, who shares custody of his adopted 13-year-old twins, Clara and Liam—who were abandoned by Daniels’ brother as babies—with his ex-boyfriend Billy Hopkins. 

Surprisingly, the director was most touched by Mo’Nique’s character, Mary, the monstrous mother.  

“She is just the worst of the worst,” says Daniels. “I said to Mo’Nique, ‘I don’t want to feel sorry for you, but I want to understand you.’ Through that understanding and her performance I broke down. I started crying. I said ‘wait a minute, am I feeling sorry for her?’ I think I was just sorry for the whole situation because she was someone else’s child. She was a victim of the culture,” says Daniels. “You know the culture is really the system, and we feel strong about it in the film. The system is the ultimate culprit.” 

Mo’Nique’s character brings to light another big issue, one that leaves kids like Precious subject to prey: When Precious was 3 years old, her mother decided to give her relationship with her boyfriend (Precious’ father) priority over her daughter’s well-being. Daniels stops to think about why women choose men over their children.  

“What I suspect is that we all want love. I think that a true mother should put her child before anything. (His voice trails off, as if this question brings up a sensitive emotion in him.) Also it’s not just about love. I find myself really having to take a great balance because my work is so all consuming and I have two kids. They will be neglected because of my work, so it’s not just about lovers, it’s about work ... It’s very hard to put food on the table and put them first.”  

Speaking of maternal matters, Daniels’ mother is a huge Tyler Perry fan, and wishes her son would do movies like the Madea mogul.  

“My mom would say, ‘Ms. Mabel down at the church, she’s like what’s wrong with you? What did I do to you? Why can’t you make movies like Tyler Perry?’”  

I said to her, ‘I think we all have a voice.’” The filmmaker admits his mother directly impacts his movie decisions. “I was in talks with Samuel L. Jackson to play the pedophile in The Woodsman and I got so nervous because she said, ‘If you have a black man playing a pedophile don’t come back in this house!’” Needless to say, Jackson was not offered the role—which was played by another Philly native, Kevin Bacon. “It’s funny how your mother can have an affect on a movie,” laughs Daniels. Fortunately for Daniels his mother is very pleased with Precious , especially since Perry is involved with the project.  

“I did this movie for African-Americans because my mother kept asking why I can’t make movies like Tyler. Now I go, ‘Mom, you like this movie?’ She goes, ‘Tyler Perry is producing it, hell yeah!’” 

With his biggest critic on board, Daniels can sit back and digest the whirlwind that is Precious . The director initially thought that the film, originally titled Push —the title was already taken by Paul McGuigan’s film—would go straight to DVD. He couldn’t have anticipated the film’s mass attraction.  

“When we got into Sundance I was like ‘whoa!’ When we won Sundance, I was like ‘what the fuck !’” All these white people were responding to my movie and I broke down in tears because you realize that this is not a black story. I’m a black filmmaker but this is not a black story,” he says.  

“This Chinese lady came up and held my hand and started crying. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I still can’t deal with it because I made this film for my family and it becomes universal.” 

By mainstream standards the movie is a word-of-mouth success, racking up its fair share of awards since debuting at Sundance last winter. Plus, for months the Oscar buzz has been circling over members of the cast: There’s Mo’Nique for her riveting portrayal of the teen’s mother, whose character Daniels describes as a “trifling cow,” Mariah Carey for her role as Precious’ welfare caseworker, and of course, Sidibe. Push took home top honors at Sundance: Special Jury Prize for Acting (presented to Mo’Nique), the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. While accepting his third award Daniels got the phone call that changed everything.  

“I’m walking down and I’m winning my third award at Sundance. Someone is calling me from an unknown number.  

“So who answers a phone when you’re winning an award?” Daniels asks in a rhetorical fashion. “I’ll tell you who—a broke filmmaker.” Being quite the comedian, he puts his hand to his ear reenacting the telephone call and imitating Oprah’s voice.  

“Lee, its Oprah.” 

“Heyyy! Oprah? Oprah Winfrey?”  

“Yes, Oprah Winfrey.” 

“I’m winning an award.” 

“Well, why are you answering the phone?” she asks. 

Lee recalls with laughter actually pausing after Oprah’s question to think about why he was answering the phone while winning an award. 

“Call me back,” she says. 

“I said, ‘I can’t. It’s an unknown number.’”  

Oprah called back. The rest is history.  

“She came into the picture because she had known of my work. What [Oprah’s endorsement] means to me is that I have two different demographics that ordinarily don’t see my films. Even though I’m African-American, I really speak to an art crowd. I know that and it saddens me,” Daniels says softly. It’s clear that the lack of support from African-Americans stings him. 

Some African-Americans may not have related to the artsy nature of Daniels’ earlier films, but there is no question that Precious , with all the street-cred backing of the book Push , will bring him a new fan base. ■

Intervention Part II: Detox

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:29:09 PST

This is Part 2 in the series. Read Part 1 of this series here. Read Part 3 here.

Here in the detox center of Livengrin Foundation for Addiction Recovery in Bucks County, drug addicts thrash, jerk and sweat addiction out of their dilapidated bodies under medical supervision, with the worst cases taking drugs to get off drugs. Back muscles clamp into tight fists that force the body to spasm and kick (hence “kicking” the habit), sweat coats the skin in seasick tidal waves, bones ache, guts twist and skulls feel caved in.

You probably won’t die from withdrawal, “but you’ll hope someone comes up behind you and beats you to death with a bat,” says Vincent Ceraso, a professional interventionist who frequently escorts clients to Livengrin after convincing them to enter treatment during an intervention. He makes quick business of it, because wherewithal fades as withdrawal looms.

Once an addict decides—or begrudgingly agrees—to enter rehab, it’s wise to hustle them right to the chosen center before they change their mind. But they essentially hurry up to wait, sometimes for hours on end, as intake administrators sort out what level of treatment they need and whether or not the treatment will be covered by their health insurance. 

The addict is already hunting for a way out. As they wait, he or she is likely telling him or herself that the problem isn’t really that bad, that everyone’s just being really hard on them. They’ll begin to wonder why the hell they’re agreeing to even go.

As the clock ticks, the tug of war between the disease and what Ceraso terms “the authentic self” buried beneath the disease escalates to a fever pitch. Literally.

Ceraso, who says professional interventionists send in the paperwork for clients ahead of time to facilitate the process, concedes the anxious wait “is like waiting for a baby to be born.”

Once the addict is admitted, the responsibility of getting him or her to stay falls on Jack Otto. Otto began working at Livengrin 25 years ago as a staff tech and worked his way up to Director of Detoxification Services. Between his own recovery and all those years of dealing with addicts and alcoholics, he’s explored all dimensions of the delusional, addicted mind. He’s a realist.  

“The one thing you need to know about addicts is if you give them that much space,” he says, as he holds his fingers to show an inch, “they’ll wiggle through it.” Ceraso seconds that emotion. “You know how you tell when an addict is lying?” he asks. “His lips are moving.” 

The addict’s tendency to lie or rationalize is a major problem at this point, because his or her honesty at intake, along with the quality of health insurance, determines the level of care the addict qualifies for—which, as a rule, is always less than they think they need, says Otto. 

“If they meet the criteria for rehab, they’re going to want to do outpatient. If they meet for outpatient, they want to do AA. They always want to bump it down,” says Otto, “because the truth is they don’t want to be doing any of it.”

So how do you convince an addict (who probably doesn’t believe he or she is an addict) to face reality, and potentially withdrawal?

“I’m not above using a little guilt,” says Otto.

To that end, Ceraso helps out. Back in the early stages of the intervention process, Ceraso coached the addict’s family members to write letters that they read aloud during the confrontation. Through the letters, family members created a record of the addict’s life by itemizing specific instances of his or her out-of-control behavior. Ceraso turns over the letters to Otto .  

So when the addict insists that everyone’s exaggerating the problem and swears everything’s just fine, Otto whips out the letters and reminds he or she of the consequences of bolting, whether that’s a spouse’s promise to move on, a boss’s threat or the loss of custody of a child.  

“I can talk anyone into anything,” says Otto, friendly and smiling. “If I didn’t do this, I’d be selling Mercedes. And you’d be driving one today. Selling. That’s what we have to do to get better. I’m living proof. Look at AA, there’s millions.” 

Otto points out that he’s not exactly getting rich pedaling his product of choice: quality of life. 

“Addicts need to know how to deal with life,” he says. “Truthfully, when they come here, I don’t care how old they are, they haven’t done that yet. So any given day, we’re hanging around with a bunch of 50-year-old bodies in 12-year-old mental states. It doesn’t mean they can’t be president of a company. Addicts do it all the time.” 

The sales pitch for recovery begins full force right away. Except for the patients who can’t get out of bed or are collapsing into seizures—a common, dangerous side effect when detoxing off alcohol—all patients are expected to attend three meetings a day. Keep ’em busy and re-focused, says Otto. 

When seizures happen, they rattle everybody in the facility.  

“The seizures, that’s the one thing that as long as I’ve been here and as many as I’ve seen, it’s hard,” says Corie Rosetti, a 23-year-old baby-faced nurse in cartoon scrubs and peace-sign earrings. “I mean, I do what I have to do, but then I go in the back and I’m like, ‘Oh boy.’ It’s hard because then everyone’s on high alert. They say, ‘Well, that woman was fine yesterday and then had a seizure, so what’s going to happen to me?’”

The nurse’s station is flooded with worried patients after seizure episodes. “You’re trained to react appropriately but still, it’s not something you ever get used to seeing, at least not for me.”  

Otto estimates 97 percent of the addicts who need to detox get through it and graduate to rehab. Others fly out like a bat out of hell, or as they say in the industry, take an “irregular discharge.”  

“I’m not going to say that doesn’t increase when they go to rehab,” he adds.  

“I wish no one would relapse, and truthfully, no one needs to if they follow the rules,” says Otto. “But addiction is a disease of ego, and close-mindedness and isolation. To assume that just because I say something to somebody, they’re going to change, that’s unrealistic.”  

Jane (not her real name) is a medical assistant at Livengrin. She’s also an ex- addict. Crack cocaine, coke and alcohol were her drugs of choice. She didn’t kick on a rehab’s watch. She says she did it on her own because there was no one to watch her kid. So she secured some benzodiazepine and went cold turkey at home.  

She doesn’t volunteer this personal history to all patients. But if it means she can help keep an addict in treatment, she will. 

“Sometimes it’s a comfort to the patient if they know, ‘look, I’ve been in your shoes.’ You can have that little bit of a bond with them,” she says. “Sometimes they’ll stay, and other times their head starts talking to them, their disease starts calling, and they just go.”  

The tour is almost over. Otto and Ceraso walk through an empty conference room toward a picture window. To their back, behind a wall of glass, about 50 people—young and old, men and women—slump in folding chairs arranged in neat rows. A handful in the back row turn in their chairs, crane their necks and stare through the glass at us, looking curious and bored.

Otto gestures out the window toward the lawn. Leaves twirl through the air and the early morning November sunlight, gold like in 70s cinema, slants through the trees. Empty now, he says the field is a sight to see on Thanksgiving morning, when the more successful recovering addicts (“the ones with new families and nice cars”) gather to celebrate at the ever-growing annual picnic.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” he says. ■

Philly Wusses Out

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:32:10 PST

Here are some thoughts that came to mind on the morning of Election Day, when a quick check of headlines revealed that SEPTA had been shut down by a sudden, surprise strike.

First: “At least it didn’t happen while the World Series was in town.”

Second: “Oh fuck!”

Third: “Jesus Christ. What else is going to happen?”

Because let’s face it: 2009 has been a shitty year for Philly. The closed schools, stranded commuters and Center City streets jammed with slow-moving but increasingly belligerent rush hour motorists were just the latest indignities in a year filled with them. And here’s the shame of it all: They might be robbing us of our fighting spirit.

Philly, I never thought I’d say this about you, but you’re acting like a bunch of pussies.

I get it, I really do. 2008 was a year of great promise. Mayor Nutter took office promising more than reform of perpetually corrupt City Hall—we’ve heard that one too many times to count—but also a city-sponsored flowering of the arts that might give Philly a chance to be known for something more than rude sports fans, Rocky and cheesesteaks. The year ended with the election of Barack Obama, made possible in large part by Philly voters who celebrated on our streets just as vigorously as if he were one of our own. And in between? A World Series championship, the first in 28 years. Sure, a recession was settling in and we knew it would suck a little bit, but nonetheless: Philly had swagger.

Now the only thing swagging is the tail between our legs.

Mayor Nutter’s hopes for a renaissance were dashed when he could barely keep the city’s pools and libraries open. We got a little too close to the “doomsday” budget for comfort—creating a summer of increasing anxiety about whether Philly would revert to some 1970s urban battlefield if we couldn’t pay the bills. Unemployment rose to the third-highest rate among the nation’s big cities. Then the SEPTA strike. And in the midst of it all, the Phils lost the World Series to the New York freakin’ Yankees!

What did we do about all of this? We bitched a little bit and complained a little more. Resigned ourselves to the idea that we are, after all, Philly. That sound you heard all over town last week? It was the deep sigh of an inferiority complex reasserting itself with a vengeance. You could see the thought bubbles forming over people’s heads: “Maybe we deserve second place.”

Nowhere was the sad sackery more apparent than during the Phillies’ season. In just about any other major league city, pitchers Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge would never have to buy another drink for what they accomplished in winning the 2008 championship. Here, though, the two men struggled through the summer and fans couldn’t throw them overboard fast enough. To be fair, though, Hamels brought some of the problems on himself by providing a growing mountain of evidence of his own wussiness—the widely mocked ad with his wife, Heidi, for Two Liberty Place, was a bad idea—culminating in his World Series whining that he was ready for the season to end. And when it did end, what did Phils fans do? Who knows? They didn’t break one goddamn thing. It’s like we’d given up.

Or take the SEPTA strike. The shock of it all enraged the city; it’s possible there has never been less sympathy for a union in this union town. On Friday, word got out that a Sunday rally was planned at SEPTA headquarters. On Twitter, you could see people spreading word and vowing to be there. It would be a dramatic expression, a sign that Philadelphians weren’t willing to sit by and just take it anymore.

Two protesters showed up. The phrase “impotent rage” came to mind. The assembled journalists were kind of embarrassed.

Again, to be fair, those two protesters had more stones than just about all the strikers. You could see pictures of picketers on Philly.com, but walking around the city—and walking was one of the few remaining options—they were next-to-impossible to find. A few of the liberal bloggers at Young Philly Politics complained the media wasn’t telling us more about the case for the Transport Workers Union, but the truth of the matter is that (aside from union chief Willie Brown) the people to make the case had disappeared. They might’ve earned back some solidarity if they’d taken to the streets and explained themselves to the thousands of passing commuters making long walks to work. Instead, they hid. 

That’s what we’re doing in Philly these days. We’re hiding. We’re waiting on Harrisburg for permission to fix ourselves. We’re accepting defeat. We’ve become Mayor Nutter, taking insults—like “Little Caesar”— and calmly accepting it in public. We’re not punching people in the face for messing with us; we’re not spitting in their eye for looking at us the wrong way. We’re wussing out.

Sometimes our Philly belligerence does us no favors. A battery gets thrown at Santa Claus and we spend the next four decades living it down. People occasionally get hurt. But sometimes it’s the best thing we’ve got going. We’re not wimps in Philly, but we’re sure acting like it. ■

Stools of the Trade

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:39:26 PST

According to a new report from the environmental group PennFuture, we Pennsylvanians are shitting all over our downstream neighbors and, in doing so, killing the Chesapeake Bay. OK, it’s animal poop, but it’s still our responsibility. Just a short drive west of Philly, farm animals in Lancaster and Chester Counties are pooing all over the place. While such behavior is, to be sure, expected from an animal, farmers are dumping a dangerous quantity of their manure into our waterways. The water we pollute in the Octoraro watershed flows into the Susquehanna River and from there, to North America’s largest estuary. 

Attempts to clean up the polluted Bay have fallen short in the past, in large part because its watershed stretches across six states and D.C., fertile ground for coordinated incompetence amongst a host of political and business interests tied to the polluting status quo. A number of factors, however, suggest that a more serious clean up might be on its way. A 1999 lawsuit against the EPA under the Clean Water Act has forced the government to implement a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) plan by 2011, what the EPA wittily describes as a “pollution diet” for the Bay. The 64,000-square-mile area of the Bay watershed will make it the largest plan of such in the country. And on Monday, the Obama administration issued a comprehensive plan for Bay cleanup, following through on an executive order signed in May.

The proposed Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act (S.1816 in the Senate, H.R. 3852 in the House), a reauthorization and expansion of the Chesapeake Bay Program, is another component of Bay clean up. The legislation certainly sets the stage for enforcement that is both more vigorous and more accountable. In addition to providing funds for monitoring and inspection work, the legislation also defines strict parameters for the TMDL and increases penalties for states that don’t live up to their obligations.

Unsurprisingly, the legislation has provoked opposition amongst the agribusiness lobby, and no member of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation has added their name as a cosponsor. (To be fair, it was just introduced on Oct. 20). Seven Pennsylvania congressmen represent Bay Watershed districts. 

PennFuture President Jan Jarrett says the bill should be unobjectionable, given that it will provide funding to help farmers and counties comply with many rules that are going to be implemented no matter what.

“Absent the Cardin legislation, you don’t get the funding to do things right. The TMDL is already going to require better manure control,” says Jarrett. 

The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau told PW they would continue to study the legislation, but it seems likely they will oppose it. Their counterparts in Virginia have panned the bill as an economically harmful expansion of regulation.

But as the debate goes on, the shit keeps building up.

The problem, as PennFuture describes it in this scatological tour de force of a report, is the manure’s nitrogen and phosphorus content. That’s 105,937,008 liquid gallons in the Octoraro watershed each year.

The manure, ostensibly spread on the land to fertilize crops, is really more a backdoor way for farmers to dump waste. Particularly revealing is the common practice of spreading manure on snow or ice-covered land, barren of crops. Even without snow, plants only absorb 15 to 20 percent of the manure—the rest runs off into waterways, fertilizing ecocidal algae blooms downstream. In a process called eutrophication, the manure spurs the growth of algae, which, in turn, consumes the oxygen in water, creating “dead zones” void of aquatic life.  

Much of this excess animal crap is produced by bigger farmers, mainly Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO). Over 75 percent of land in the Octoraro watershed, which covers much of Chester and Lancaster counties, is dedicated to agriculture. Half of the freshwater that flows into the Chesapeake arrives from Pennsylvania.

But some Pennsylvania politicians don’t seem eager to take responsibility for our shit. Republican congressman Glenn Thompson’s spokeswoman Tina Kreisher—formerly in charge of Communications at Bush’s Department of the Interior—says “the congressman has always said that for a Chesapeake Bay cleanup there has to be a dedicated funding source.”

In what could only be described as a Republican sense of humor when it comes to the environment, Kreisher referred me to HR 2227, a bill that would raise money for Chesapeake cleanup by allowing increased offshore drilling for oil and gas. Two birds with one stone for the deficit-paranoid and pollution-sanguine Gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Other congressmen have either yet to formulate a position on the legislation or did not return calls at press time.  

And things are spinning wildly out of control.  PennFuture reports that there has been a 40 percent increase in liquid manure since 2004. That’s 107,539,008 gallons a year, which, in case you have trouble (or are resisting) visualizing the amount of liquid poo we’re taking about, is “enough liquid manure to fill 13,000 milk tanker trucks.” Thanks, PennFuture—that shit is quite, um, palpable. Dry manure, for its part, has increased by 17 percent which, is “equal in weight to more than 30,000 Ford Explorers.”

This shitstorm, in turn, has led to a 20 percent increase in total nitrogen produced in the watershed.  

Jarrett believes the increase in manure is the result of agricultural consolidation in rural Pennsylvania, with farms becoming fewer in number but larger in size. And according to Jarrett, regulators currently fail to take into consideration the sensitivity of nearby waterways when considering an application for a new CAFO or for an expansion of an existing operation—something that would change under the proposed legislation. 

“You finally have the tools to say ‘no’ when there’s a proposed expansion or additional facility,” says Jarrett. 

PennFuture also faults weak monitoring and toothless enforcement mechanisms. 

Larger farms in Pennsylvania are required to have a Nutrient Management Plan (NMP) to ensure that manure is properly handled and disposed of. According to PennFuture, of the 54 livestock operations with an NMP in Chester and Lancaster Counties, only 57 percent are compliant with the standards. NMPs are administered by county Conservation Districts, which rarely refer farms to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for sanction. It usually takes something big like a major fish kill to force a regulator’s hand.  

PennFuture’s biggest concern, however, is that the necessary inspections aren’t being done in the first place. 

“What we fear is that the inspections aren’t even being done to uncover the problems, and that really serves as a deterrent to compliance,” says Jarrett. 

Making matters worse, PennFuture claims to have encountered obstacles getting their hands on NMPs, which should be legally accessible as public documents. According to Jarrett, Conservation Districts are too cozy with farmers, seeing them, she says, more as clients. 

“So their primary mission is to deliver services and information to those guys. Sometimes they feel their enforcement role conflicts with that outreach.” 

While reducing water pollution is clearly in the public interest, increased regulations are always going to rankle businesses benefiting from the status quo. But as Jarrett sees it, the legislation is a fiscal opportunity for Pennsylvania to get its act together.  

“The way to clean up the Chesapeake Bay is to clean our water up here first.” ■

Life Line

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:34:22 PST

Regarding Tara Murtha’s cover series about interventionist Vincent Ceraso:

Great article. Just one problem and that is the 12 step programs are not for everyone and it would be nice to have some alternative treatment methods out there.

AARON via philadelphiaweekly.com

What an informative and thought-provoking article. So well put together and full of heart. Ceraso is truly doing God’s work for those who can’t get through to their loved ones.  

His having “been there and done that” is so valuable to those he seeks to help. Addiction of any kind is devastating to those who live with it, and what he does helps ease the way to lasting recovery for these people. Keep up the great work!

C.M.  via philadelphiaweekly.com

Regarding Brendan Skwire’s recent column which discussed balancing quality of life against a pharmacutical companies profits:

That’s a balance that needs to exist. Drug companies do research to make a drug that they can sell. That research costs money. Lots and lots of money has to get spent before they can even enter clinical trials. Lots of drugs never make it that far.

Every successful drug has to pay for 10 failures.

I get it—there are people worrying about whether or not they can afford a drug. But without those profits, the next drug doesn’t get made. Knowing that there is a treatment you can’t afford must suck. But preventing the next treatment from ever coming to market might suck more.

Even countries that have national health care have for-profit drug companies.

We balance lives for cost every freakin’ day.

ALEX via philadelphiaweekly.com  

Regarding Brendan Skwire’s defense of the Transport Workers Union at philadelphiaweekly.com:

Thank you very, very much for this story. The harsh judgments placed by workers on other workers is so disheartening. The ruling class loves the fact that working class people are pressuring other working class people to simply take what’s being given to them. Funny how it becomes “let’s all stick together!” in a very twisted, anti-worker style. 

JENN  via philadelphiaweekly.com

SEPTA Management was not funding the pension they agreed to fund. They could not be trusted to fulfill their contract without some arm-twisting (the strike).

Driving a bus is a specialized skill. They need a special license and on-going training. I hope you tell the uneducated firefighter that saves you from your burning house what a lazy idiot he/she is.  

I love how the public and the papers are screaming about but how much they need SEPTA workers, but fuck them, we don’t need to honor past contracts.  

Get ready for the teachers strike—we do have skills and we are essentially prison guards who are desperately trying to teach through the madness.

AMY via philadelphiaweekly.com

SEPTA: The Union Stands Tall

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:05:52 PST

Editor's note: Read Jacob Lambert's critique of the Transit Workers Union strike here.

While I sympathize with the riders who have been put out, I have no problem at all saying I support the Transit Workers Union. The Daily News reports that SEPTA management has been underfunding the pension fund by 52 percent, and Willie Brown says it's been up to 12 years since the transit company contributed. "We don't want to end up like AIG," Brown says, and I don't blame him: salaries cap out at $50,000, which really isn't that much money when you're raising a couple of kids, saving for the cost of college, and trying to save for retirement. And for the record that's that cap: bus drivers start at less than $30,000.

But more shocking to me is the crazy anti-worker attitude taken by so many in our city.

Look, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of transit workers can be jerks. But I think it's also worth noting that some of the worst aspects of using SEPTA aren't their fault: SEPTA's dysfunctional culture extends down from the very top. It wasn't the drivers who decided to jack the fare to $2 (PDF). It ain't the union that made the "no change" policy. And whether the transit workers themselves are unsympathetic or not is hardly the point anyway. It's about workers defending the benefits they fought for. It's about management keeping up its end of the bargain. And maybe it's because union membership is so low in the U.S. that people kind of forget why unions are important.

Unionized labor may have its downsides, but the steady decline of union membership has been disastrous for American workers, including Pennsylvanians. It's one of the reasons health care costs go up. And its one of the reasons so many of us don't have pensions at all anymore. It's why Wal-Mart gets away with treating its employees like garbage.

The Economic Policy Institute provides a long list of how unions benefit everyone, including non-union workers. For just a few examples:

• Unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree.

• Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries.

Most importantly, "Unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job."

Yet, I've heard way too many people follow our mayor's lead, who said "People have lost their jobs, they've lost their pensions, they've lost their health care, and most are just happy to have a job." Not that I expected more from a man whose first reaction to the city's financial crisis, ironically brought on in part by underfunding its own pensions, was to try to shut down pools and libraries (although notably not the one in his neighborhood), but this is a truly repulsive statement.

So people who are lucky enough to have pensions should bend over and take it when management doesn't fund their retirement savings properly, because other people don't have jobs? "My 401K is in ruins, so yours should be too"?

Or as Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky put it, without a drop of irony, "your negotiating hasn't been just about getting more for yourselves. It's been about getting more - much, much more - than the rest of us." This, from someone who's in a union herself.

So I emailed staff at the Daily News to get a sense of what a columnist makes relative to a transit worker. Everyone spoke to claimed ignorance. Then I called the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, where i was told "salary information is confidential".

But if Editor and Publisher magazine can be believed, some of those columnists make quite a pretty penny. In the case of sports columnist Stephen A. Smith, it was more than four times as much as the most well-paid transit workers.

Still wanna talk about "much, much more than the rest of us", Ronnie?

I'm sure that the next time there's a disagreement between writers and management at 400 N. Broad, no one would consider walking out, because hey other people are lucky to HAVE jobs, right?

In fact, it looks like when the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia was going to strike, it was a VERY different story:

The company and the Guild have clashed over management's proposal to freeze and take over the pension, cut sick pay benefits and disregard seniority when it comes to layoffs.

Holcomb said he hadn't heard directly from the council about its willingness to cross picket lines. If they do, they would be breaking a long Philadelphia tradition, he said.

If the Guild does go on strike, the support of the other unions would be critical, notably that of drivers who could disrupt newspaper distribution even if management publishes papers.

Shorter Philadelphia dailies: "Our pensions are important, yours are not".

Our local papers should be ashamed of themselves. Instead of educating the public about the issues at stake, local media are going out of their way to pit riders against the transit workers, pitching a one-sided story that favors management. They're openly trying to bust the union. Way to encourage working people to advocate against their own interests.

Instead of bemoaning those awful grabby transit workers who want their pension plan fully funded (how dare they?) and want an actual contract after six months on the job without one (the outrage!), why not do some of that angry finger-pointing at SEPTA management, which isn't fully funding its employees' pension?

And more to the point, I'd like to see every unionized reporter and columnist in this city that's complained about the TWU to walk their talk. All I've seen any of you do is bitch that the unions are too greedy. Well, back it up: quit your union if you think strikes and organized labor are so bad for the city.

But pardon me if I don't hold my breath waiting.

SEPTA: The Union Failed Us

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:25:53 PST

Editor's note: Read Brendan Skwire's defense of the union here.

Early in the week-long SEPTA slap-fight, Willie Brown, head of the striking Transport Workers Union Local 234, displayed the indifference required of his position. “I understand I’m the most hated man in Philadelphia right now,” he said to the Inquirer. “I have no problem with that.” Such blitheness was impressive. After all, he had just brushed aside a contract offer that seemed utterly reasonable—even generous, given the economy. For commuters, the denial meant lost work hours, missed school days, and a status quo of disruption. Brown, obstinate as a toddler, was absolutely correct: there was little reason not to hate him.

Perhaps he was comforted by the support he was receiving from an unlikely constituency: the city’s left-wing progressives. As Brown blustered in the press, as his workers blockaded non-234 buses, and as the public’s frustration grew, liberals across Philadelphia leapt to their keyboards. On YoungPhillyPolitics.com, a repository of local progressive thought, Ray Murphy announced his solidarity:

“More than anything you have to support this strike because you have to support unions," Murphy wrote. "As union density has declined, we have all suffered. We should ALL be in unions.”

This was followed by a piece entitled “SEPTA Strike: Why I support the TWU,” by “Dan U-A”:

“Every single job in Philadelphia that still pays decently, is secure, and doesn’t require a higher education, is an absolute blessing for our society, and is an avenue to empowerment," he wrote. "The higher we pay our janitors and security guards and nursing assistants and hotel workers and construction workers and SEPTA bus drivers and mechanics, the better off we all are.”

Both essays—each followed by a string of sympathetic responses—were heartfelt and sensible. America’s widening income gap can be partly attributed to unions’ decline; nurses and janitors deserve an honest wage. Yet neither writer offers a cogent case for why, exactly, support for the concept of unions should translate to blind support for 234. If I’m a rock fan, do I have to like Spin Doctors? If I love movies, should I also love Norbit? Their arguments assume that if you don’t stand with one union—no matter how mulish it may be—you stand against all unions. You stand against the working man, a modern-day Pinkerton.

What the pieces do offer plenty of—especially the second—is nostalgia for a more labor-friendly era:

“From each generation to the next, parents worked to make the lives of their kids easier," Dan U-A wrote. "And at each step, they were helped with an implicit and explicit social compact: that Americans could work hard, earn a decent living, and make the lives of their kids better. Signatories of that same compact included unions, big companies like GE, the American government, and quasi public employers like SEPTA’s predecessor, the PTC.”

Those sepia-toned days—if they existed at all—have passed. Any illusion that “big companies,” “quasi public employers,” and “the American government” have any interest in the working class has vanished. So are unions our only remaining “signatories” of that compact—an aggrieved mass of Gompers-quoting idealists who simply want justice? Or have they become as bloated and grasping as those who, they insist, block their path to the American Dream?

234’s posture over the past week points to the latter. Brown’s rationale for the strike keeps shifting: first it was pension funding and job rules. Then it was the prevention of SEPTA “from sending maintenance work out of state” in order to “create jobs in Pennsylvania and keep riders safe.” He barred Mayor Nutter from future negotiations, calling him a deceptive “Little Caesar.” I suppose this makes Brown our own Marcus Brutus.

I agree that unions, while diminished, can still play a valuable role in our society. It’s important to speak as one voice, to put a check on power. And it’s unfortunate that over the decades, that voice, along with a viable middle class, has waned. But in that time, unions, fairly or not, have come to be seen as obstructionist and thuggish; more Hoffa than Norma Rae. It’s an image that 234 hasn’t done much to dispel.

Perhaps things haven’t changed so much, anyway. In 1964, Hubert Selby wrote of a machinists’ strike in Last Exit to Brooklyn. After a few months of deadlock, the union president delivers a progress report to his men:

“You know what we said when they tried that shit on us. I’ll tell you what we said. We stood up and looked those bastards right in the eye and told them, right to their fat faces, FUCK YOU! … that’s what we told them … we left those bastards standing. And you can bet your sweet ass those sonsofbitches know there’s no weak link in this union—and we’ll see them dead and buried and piss on their graves…”

Willie Brown would no doubt say that the man just wanted what’s fair.

Little Jazz Man

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:14:02 PST

Nazir Ebo has a tough act to follow. His older brother, 18 year-old drummer Justin Faulkner, already has a list of credentials long and impressive enough to make musicians twice his age green with jealousy. Last year Justin finished his senior year of high school on the road while he toured with Branford Marsalis. Luckily, it seems that 9-year-old Nazir isn’t fazed by his brother’s glory, only inspired.

“When I was about five I would listen to songs Justin played in his band, and then try to remember all of them and play them,” Nazir recalls. When he had gotten enough practice on Justin’s drums—seizing any moment Justin rested as a drumming opportunity—the boys’ mother bought Nazir his own set.

Now Nazir has taken over end of the Faulkner’s living room as his own domain, and he supplies the neighborhood around 51st and Walton Avenue with the breathtaking sounds of his drumbeats. After he’s finished his homework.

Intervention: Philly

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:39:39 PST

Read Part 2 of this series here. Read Part 3 here.

Vincent Ceraso is standing in the living room of a posh house in the suburbs of Philly with a group of people he just met a few weeks earlier. The mood is somber as they quietly wait for the doorbell to ring. It’s a surprise party of sorts. Ceraso’s never met the guest of honor, but after weeks of investigating him, Ceraso feels like he knows him inside-out. “The only thing I don’t know at this point, is what [he] looks like,” says Ceraso, who’s likely been up the night before playing this scene out in his mind. It’s Ceraso’s job to get the target to surrender. So many things could go wrong. “They get extremely emotional, sometimes violent,” says Ceraso about the people he’s hired to confront. It’s not easy getting between an addict and his or her drug of choice.  

The bell rings and Ceraso instructs the guest of honor’s wife to answer it. From where Ceraso’s standing, he can see the woman at the door, but her husband is still obscured from everybody’s view. She takes a deep breath and opens the door.  

“He starts yelling at her, ‘Back up! Back up!’” remembers Ceraso, whose big blue eyes widen behind boxy dark-framed glasses (with mini skulls emblazoned on the sides) as he recalls the story. “So she’s like this, like it’s a stick-up,” he says, raising his hands up high in the air like in a Western. “All I see is her backing up … she looked like she saw a ghost.” In that moment Ceraso, a modern-day mercenary who travels all over the Northeast executing confrontations with addicts, envisioned a worst case scenario: the ghost holding a gun. “That was running through my mind because I didn’t know the guy, but … I knew he had some issues,” says 44-year-old Ceraso. “He just kept saying back up, back up, and then he walked her in.” With hand over heart, he says, “God as my witness, I swore I was going to see a homicide.”  

It turns out the guy was just flipping out, terrorizing his wife in typical abuser fashion. Thankfully, there wasn’t a gun, but there was indeed a showdown: a battle of wills between an addict, an interventionist and a shattered family who just couldn’t take it anymore.

The drama unfolds like an episode of Intervention, the popular television show on the A&E channel that follows addicts who supposedly believe they are participating in a documentary about addiction. Cameras tail the subjects as they cop in dubious scenarios, like the episode where a girl desperate for a fix steals morphine from her dying father’s stash. Then the addict gets high on camera and blows long streams of smoke up everyone’s ass about where he or she was all night. Meanwhile, family and friends of the afflicted have secretly hired an interventionist to help wrangle their loved one into treatment. The show rides on narrative arcs full of quick-hit exposition, montages of addicts freebasing and snorting lines and assorted can-you-believe-that-shit schaudenfraude, happy endings and big blowout fights—basically, all the spectacle that makes for addictive TV.  

Ten years ago, most Americans didn’t know what an intervention was or that there was a growing demand for the service. Popping pills on the regular has become so commonplace that the first pause brought on by an overdose isn’t surprise at drug use, but a question of whether or not the overdose was an accident. Death has become an acceptable casualty of roulette for the growing number of Americans who subscribe to the high life, as reflected in the pageant of accidental overdose celebrity deaths: Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and most recently, DJ AM, aka Adam Goldstein from Philadelphia. 

As the face of junkies continues to shift from unsavory characters scoring in the backrooms of shady countercultural hangouts and clubs to teens nicking OxyContin and Vicodin out of the medicine cabinet and Percocet- popping moms, the role of the interventionist has hit pop culture full force. There’s Intervention of course, and now MTV’s Gone Too Far , filmed with DJ AM serving as the role of the interventionist before he OD’ed himself, and the inevitable Dr. Drew show. The idea’s even parodied on sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother. 

Now, thanks to mainstream  awareness—not to mention the ever-expanding supply of middle-class and upper middle-class clients—a previously niche corner of the recovery industry has become one of the most rapidly expanding careers in addiction services.  

The change in our drug habits has not only increased the demand for interventionists, it’s changed the game itself. For one thing, pills are a more expensive habit than alcohol and users have to be stealthier to cop.  

“A lot of people don’t have $500 a day. You wake up in the hole every day and you have to make that up as you go,” says Ceraso. “With that sort of behavior you really need to be able to manipulate these people.”  

So while politicians continue to throw endless rhetoric and money at the futile, decades-old war on drugs, there’s a growing list of guys like Ceraso who are pulling bodies out of the trenches with almost military conviction: You don’t leave one of your own behind.  

Ceraso’s endearingly South Philly. He’ll tell you he’s just a married man with kids who now lives in New Jersey. But it’s the tough street-smart South Philadelphian that surges to the surface as he passionately recaps intervention war stories over coffee. 

“Somebody always holds the key,” he says, referring to intervention. “There’s always all the people [in the room], but there’s always the person that holds something extra that helps you.”  

Ceraso recalls an old man who held the key to the surrender of a 19-year-old star athlete who turned to drugs after he got benched with an injury.  

“He was a tough kid, by all standards a badass,” says Ceraso. “We went and did this intervention at the kid’s friends house.” Ceraso says when he walked in and saw the frail, elderly man, the kid’s grandfather, he was hesitant to let him participate. “I mean, he was 80, pulling an oxygen bottle. I told his son, the kid’s father, I recommend against it. The guy said, he’s a tough old man and he wants to be there.” Ceraso allowed it.  

The plan was to wake the kid up as he came off a crash on his buddy’s couch, but “he came out of his sleep and started to freak,” says Ceraso. “He got more and more violent and started taking runs at people. The kid was mostly swinging at his father, but the grandfather is the one who stopped him cold.  

“This old man, this tough old union roofer, literally lifted the kid off the couch and shook him like he was a stuffed animal,” says Ceraso. “The kid started crying at that point.” He surrendered to treatment.  

Ceraso says following the Fifth tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous—the one about carrying the recovery message to those who still suffer—ultimately led him to his peculiar job. No one knows the devil like a priest, and no one knows the addict like someone who’s kicked.  

“I think like a drug addict,” says Ceraso, blowing steam off yet another cup of coffee. (“I was a speed guy,” he shrugs.) 

Spiritually, Ceraso believes it’s his job to reach into the muck, past the elaborate fortress of an addict and rediscover the nice husband, wife or kid buried deep inside. He began facilitating interventions about nine years ago, though he didn’t think to call it intervention back then. At first, he was just giving back to the recovery community by informally working the program, helping out friends and friends of friends with their addiction problems.  

“You’re involved in many of these interventions before you figure out it’s an intervention,” he says. “It was just that the family needed you, so you go over there and get with the family and the person, and together you’d convince the addicted individual into treatment.” 

Now he says, “it’s a lot more planned, a lot more time and effort go into them.” Ceraso formalized his career by organizing recovery programs at his former job as an airline worker. Then three years ago, when he started working in recovery full-time as Northeast Regional Director of Treatment Solutions Network, a constellation of treatment centers, he began performing interventions regularly; he began studying it like an art form, convinced it was the next logical step in his own spiritual recovery. 

“Am I a born again Christian?” he asks. “No, not with my background. I’m still doing what I can do to get into heaven.” 

The packed diner is full of characters that know Ceraso, including another Vinnie, who comes by and chitchats for a while—they talk about getting their motorcycles tuned up in time for this year’s annual Toys for Tots ride. Every time his phone rings, which is every few minutes it seems, it plays the theme from The Godfather .  

Though friends and family call him Vinnie, he answers the phone as Vincent. “You can’t be Vinnie on the phone,” he explains. “They think, you know, Vinnie from South Philly ,” he says, in his best Balboa accent.  

He’s an intense, high-energy guy. He fields calls, takes basic info, arranges to speak again later then slips right back into conversation without missing a beat. Then he spots someone else he knows, a ghost of his troubled past.  

“Judge, Judge!” Ceraso calls into the diner din, and a strikingly handsome older man comes up to the table. “This is the honorable Judge Anthony DeFino,” he gushes. “This guy saved my life!” 

DeFino, retired now, was an attorney in the ’80s when a young Ceraso was running around South Philly drinking booze—Ceraso says he started drinking at 11 or 12 years old—messing with drugs and getting into trouble as a teen.  

Then, in August 1986, Ceraso got picked up and was told he’d have to spend time behind bars for sure.  

“I started thinking, how can I get out of doing time? I came up with this plan … to convince my lawyer to get me into treatment.” Ceraso campaigned to go to a rehab in beautiful Palm Beach, Florida, instead of the Roundhouse.  

The judge agreed to the deal, but warned Ceraso that if he screwed up again, the court would get their “pound of flesh.”  

“I knew what he meant,” says Ceraso. “He meant, you get arrested again, you’re going to go away.” 

Ceraso coasted into rehab, pleased that he was getting one over on the man.  

“It took me about a week there to realize I actually had a problem,” he says. A few weeks before his 21st birthday, when most kids ceremoniously pound shots until they black out, Ceraso got sober.  

Ceraso relies on the basic foundation of the program and attends meetings occasionally, but he’s already working the program around the clock with his job at Treatment Solutions Network and moonlighting interventions. The real work of an intervention is in the prep work, and the prep work takes a lot of time.  

They say the devil’s in the details. This couldn’t be truer than when planning an intervention. Prep work requires days, weeks, sometimes months of planning.  

“Without prep work, you’re nothing,” says Ceraso. “Your chances of success are slim.” 

Interventions are not cookie- cutter affairs; the interactions need to be tailored. If you’re dealing with a meth addict, for example, the intervention should be scheduled for the early morning because the last thing you want to do is get into a person’s face who needs to cop their first fix of the day.  

“I also want to know what are the good qualities about this person? I think of it as a before and after,” says Ceraso. 

Ceraso spends most of the time building up to the confrontation part of the intervention in clandestine phone calls and meetings, interviewing every participant to find out all he needs to know about the addict. He has to figure out how to unlock what he calls “the authentic self,” program-speak for the essence of a person before they became addicted.  

The education goes both ways during this phase. While he learns everything he can about the target, he schools the family in everything they never wanted to know about addiction. 

For starters, Ceraso breaks it to the families that they’re not dealing with their loved one anymore. That may look like your sweet grandson, but it’s the addiction inside that you’re battling, the chemical deficit he wakes up to each day that programs him to get high again. By the time a family reaches the stage of intervention, they’ve endured months, maybe years of agony watching as loved ones slide into the gutter parade of the hopeless undead, transforming into strangers who lie, cheat and steal like common junkies. So Ceraso’s first order of business is to take control. He becomes a drill sergeant with the family.  

“It’s my show,” he says. “My rules.”  

First rule: There’s no time for pussyfooting. 

“I tell people up front. Your family member might die,” he says. “So cut the shit with me. You call me up to tell me something you just thought of because you didn’t feel like telling me last week, I’m going to be pissed. If [the family] wants this to work, I need to know everything I possibly can about this person.”  

When he says everything, he means everything.  

“What used to make this person tick?” asks Ceraso. “Was she a good mother? A great wife? Was there sexual trauma?”  

This information is mandatory in order to prepare for the confrontation, but it also helps Ceraso to select the right rehab. Part of the job of a good interventionist is to maintain a database of treatment centers and know which ones specialize in “secondary issues” a person may have going on. He says placing people in the closest or cheapest center without considering secondary issues is one of the reasons for a high relapse rate. (The national relapse rate is somewhere between 40 and 60 percent; Ceraso, who says he monitors cases for a year, claims a relapse rate of “just over nine percent.”) 

Second rule: You can’t rush an intervention. Families in crisis often call Ceraso in a panic, desperate to arrange an intervention for the next day, that moment even.  

“They’re like, ‘You don’t understand, he’s going to kill himself. It’s Friday, let’s do this tomorrow morning!’” he says, shaking his head. “You could offer me all the money in the world and I would never do an intervention the next day.”  

You can’t rush it because you only get one shot to get it right. Pros are asked all the time to try to fix botched and makeshift interventions. It’s dangerous business. When an intervention backfires, the addict can run away, or go underground, amp up their defenses and become even harder to reach. 

The one-shot principle leads to the most important rule of all: Once the mechanics of the confrontation are in gear, there’s no going back.  

“The addict has a way of convincing you that you’re nuts,” warns Ceraso. “I tell the family, ‘Unless you’re willing to do something now, be prepared to live with this until the day you die.’ You say no, and your loved one OD’s three days later, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself.’” 

That’s the guiding light of such work: loved ones intervening on the situation, creating a custom rock bottom of sorts before the addict actually hits the rock bottom that they’re spiraling toward.  

For Ceraso, tough love means no bullshit. “I’m relentless,” he says. “I know what it’s like to go through withdrawal, I know what it’s like to sit in the Roundhouse at Eighth and Race sts. I’ve literally walked in their shoes.”  

 Though overcoming personal addiction issues isn’t a prerequisite to becoming an interventionist, old-school types like Ceraso tend to come up through the underground networks of AA and NA, building networks of referrals and rolodexes and honing their chops one job at a time. Despite the insane schedule and grueling nature of the work, interventionists are springing up everywhere since Intervention became popular. 

“People watch that show a few times and think they can do it,” says Ceraso. 

Some of the people signing up to train want to become an interventionist after they experience their own, like the new bride who wants to be a wedding planner. Then there are the academics. O.G. interventionists shrug off the former and roll their eyes at the latter.  

“You have guys who get their master’s degrees, then there are guys like me and Ken,” he says, referring to Ken Seeley, star of Intervention , one of the most well known interventionists in the country.  

Indeed, between street-smart guys who have innovated their own niche job in the recovery industry and so-called “guys with PhDs” lays a Wild West. With no real governing board or required formal degree, both Ceraso and Seeley talk with disdain about the sudden new minefield of hacks, hucksters and those who mean well, but just can’t cut it.  

“Right now, everybody is just building a website and having 20 days clean and calling themselves interventionists,” says Seeley, on the phone from his office in L.A. To that end, Seeley and co-horts from the show, lead by co-star Jeff VanVonderen, established a governing board called the Association of Intervention Specialist Certification Board in an attempt to regulate practitioners. Still, it’s only a recommendation and voluntary and serves mostly as a guide for rehabs who don’t have their own in-house interventionist.  

Even as qualifications become standardized, there’s no way to predict how a person is going to react under pressure, or when they realize that behind the telegenic cowboy confrontation lies a weird, grueling, emotionally exhausting job.  

While organizing an intervention is tough work for a family who has to make the call, it’s no picnic for the interventionist, either. The hours are long. During the week, conference calls and prep meetings take place after everyone else’s working hours.  

On weekends, a simple, close-by intervention can be a 15-hour Saturday when you add up the drive, the pre-intervention meeting, the waiting, the confrontation, escorting the target to rehab, then getting back home. Once home, Ceraso’s drained. 

“The time I put into interventions … takes away from my family,” he says. “But it can’t be done 9 to 5.”  

Ceraso says his family is more than understanding. The golden rule to retain sanity in his home life is no phone calls at the dinner table. Other than that, everyone knows Dad’s in his office on the phone after dinner. 

“It’s like you’ve built up to this highly emotional procedure, and it’s over and you can exhale,” he says. “Most of these are on Saturdays so I can get real lazy on a Sunday after an intervention.”  

Ceraso says he chills out from the stress of his round-the-clock job by cruising Jersey roads on his motorcycle—customized with Eagles colors and symbols—while puffing on a cigar.  

It’s a rare moment alone for a guy whose livelihood—and the livelihood of those around him—depends on interacting with others constantly, calming people down, talking them off the ledge.  

By nature, people usually call an interventionist when it’s almost too late. Because despite everything we know about addiction, despite watching the shows and likely knowing someone who lost the roulette to an accidental overdose, it’s always a shock when someone you love turns into an addict. People don’t call the interventionist because they want to, they do it because nothing else has worked. They do it because it’s time to hear the bells going off, open the door and confront the ghost in the room. 

“If you keep a united front, the addiction never wins,” says Ceraso. “One on one, the addiction always wins.”