New to the Metro column, I headed out on a hot summer night to the best farce on either bank of the river: one of two limited shows of the Delaware River Port Aurthority rate-increase hearings.

You can read the column I wrote here: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/25844649.html

The authority is more than $1 billion in debt, grossly mismanged, rife with political paybacks and a web of cozy relationships that make the soaps look tame. Executives are overpaid and gifted with gorgeous pensions. Meanwhile, bridges and PATCO cars in need of repair.

DRPA, largedly funded by New Jersey commuters, continues to hand out gifts, mostly for Pennsylvania "economic development" projects launched by rich friends of certain politicians, projects most commuters will never use.

If you routinely paid tolls or used PATCO in recent years, for example, you helped pay for Lincoln Financial Field where most of us are unable to score a ticket to a single Eagles game.

Personally, I would like two seats at the Oct. 5 matchup against the 'Skins. 

Check the oversight board, law firms and executives and you begin to see very tangled web of one hand helping the other. 

Alas, neither of those hands belong to you, the average commuter. 

Despite the debt, the calling for toll and rate increases, not once did a DRPA executive commit to using the $35 million for debt service or repairs.

So here's the challenge: Can you name any other regional political entity that matches DRPA's incompetence and arrogance?

 

 

Okay, here's a first. Actually, a second according to the Phillies website.

August 5th, a Tuesday on your calendars, is Stitch n' Pitch night at the ballpark.

Yes, you can bring your needles into Citizens Park and knit. Just don't used them as an implement of destruction against the visiting Florida Marlins. That's no way to secure first place in the division.  

The evening, we kid not, is sponsored by Motrin IB.

You can knit while they pitch in the Cit.

What promotion could possibly be left? 

 

What did we do wrong? How did we not land a job that paid $700K or whatever K, but extra serious special K, to allow us so much free time that we were so bored than we could spend it all spying on gorgeous co-workers?

Except, maybe we would have spent that free time to write a novel, or take up painting, or do some work, something legal perhaps, in all that free time.

The whole Larry Mendte mess should be labeled Exhibit A in the argument that television newsreaders -- as opposed to the hard-working broadcast reporters, camerafolk, producers and technicians -- are overpaid to do little. The object of Mendte's obsession, Alycia Lane, was known to BlackBerry newspaper reporters during commercials breaks while she was on the air.

 

Finally, we have a great Thunderous comedy on the horizon. Went to a screening of Tropic Thunder on Monday night at the Bridge in West Philadelphia. (If you haven't been, it's the nicest place to see movies in the city, especially during the sweltering summer.)

Directed, co-written and starring Ben Stiller -- who knew he had these gifts? -- Thunder is a send-up of Hollywood, machismo, racial stereotypes, popular culture and a plain hoot. The movie, about a Vietnam action movie that goes horribly wrong, manages to astonish on many levels.

First, there's Stiller's advancement as a writer and director of the first order. (His acting is still hammy.)  Robert Downey, Jr. is terrific as a Russell Crowe-type method actor who stays in character, as a black sargeant, long after the movie cameras stop filming. Matthew McConaughey, usually pretty but wooden, is very good as a clueless agent. And an unrecognizable Tom Cruise almost steals the movie in an unbilled cameo as a crass movie producer. He should stop playing  pretty-boy heroes and only take on comedy and villains, at which he excels. (See Magnolia.) The cast includes two great one-time insurance risks in the business, Downey and Nick Nolte as Vietnam vet memoirist, and both are wonderful.

Intelligent, funny and fast, it makes you want to see it again and own a copy.

The preview audience loved it. Funny to 14-year-olds  and their parents. Opens Aug. 13. See it. Thank me later.

When considering the true foods of summer, it's impossible to overlook lemons. They're essential for lemonade, cockstails, shellfish, fish, happiness.

So, it's became disconcerting to watch their cost spike, a basic food cost that is outstripping almost everything else.

We drove to Maine for July 4th weekend where lemons were $1.09 a piece in the supermarket, more than the oyster it was to accompany.

OK, it's Maine, a long trip from where lemons grow. Still, it's not a good sign when such an essential is more than double the average of last summer. When was the last time limes cost so much less?

This weekend, lemons were 89 cents a piece at a Philadelphia fresh produce market. That would make for one expensive homemade lemonade. Instead, we just had a ice water with a slice.

This isn't a good sign for our economy when the price of lemons leaves such a sour aftertaste.

What defines an elitist, a word slung around more these days than muck in a farm stall?

For instance, France is considered elite and Ireland is not even though recent political and economic history turns this argument on its head.

Wine is considered elite, and beer is not, though the advent of terrific craft beers and microbreweries has made drinking beer far more interesting.

Baseball  is the beloved sport  of  poets, novelists and pundits while football is considered the game of the common man yet most of us can't score tickets to NFL games.

Jazz is considered elite and country music is not, though it costs the same to appreciate either and it is entirely possible to appreciate both

How is that classical music is only considered elite in the United States and nowhere else?

Reading books on the bestseller list is not elite, but reading anything off is.

For more, click here.

 

 

Visited Stephen Starr's latest boite, Parc, on Rittenhouse Square Thursday night. The place is extremely lively and incredibly loud.

This is clearly the restaurant to be seen these days. Near us was a table of five blonds of various ages.

"Do you think we would be excluded from membership?"

"Remind me sort of like Paris."

"With bad hair. And untrained waiters."

Our waiter, clumsy and overly friendly, explained what branzino is without asking if we knew. He informed us that the anchovies in one dish weren't particularly strong. It never occurred to him, that grown women might like anchovies. He complimented us on our choices, as if our job was to please him. He spoke to us as if we were five or very slow.  

"Three out of your four choices would have been mine," he said.  Now we can die fulfilled.

One of the three women at his table happened to be the food editor of the Inquirer. The other two women have lived in other American citities and Europe, where customers, of any age or income, aren't dumb-downed about their palates or praised for their selections. 

Immediately, all efforts at sophistication were obliterated.

In an interview I once asked Starr if, with a gazillion restaurants in his empire, he worried about a waiter shortage.

"Someone turns 21 every day."

True, but that won't necessarily make him a good waiter.

We would have been treated with more intelligence and respect at a diner which reminded us that we weren't exactly in Paris.

Treat customers like idiots, and you'll end up having only idiots for customers.

These are the dog days of summer when you regret failing to join a pool or kick yourself, if you had the energy for such rigorous activity, for deciding to backload summer vacations in August.

All you think about is water.

Large, cool bodies of water.

And why you don't know more people with pools. Or access to pools.

Or lakes.

Or oceans.

And how the tiny lap pool in the basement of the gym just isn't going to do it.

Nor is a tub of Bassett's butterscotch vanilla ice cream.

Though it can't hurt.

 

Omar was robbed.

Emmy nominations were announced this morning. While we love Mad Men, 30 Rock, Entourage and The Office, which all received multiple nods along with our love object Jon Stewart, HBO's stunning The Wire was once again overlooked. While the fifth and final season, which centered on newspapers and featured several congenital liars, wasn't the strongest in terms of affecting plots, the acting was astounding. Prop Joe, Bubbles, Bunc Moreland, Clay Davis. One of the most indelible performances was delivered by Michael K. Williams as Omar Little, a complex avenging angel of the street. "True dat" entered into the lexicon. When Mayor Nutter hosting a finale screening party, nine actors attended. Williams was, by far, the phenomenon of the evening. 

Sometimes it seems like members of  the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences aren't watching the same television we are.