'OITNB' star stops by WXPN's XPoNential Music Fest

"Orange Is the New Black" and "Hemlock Grove" star Madeline Brewer, who hails from nearby Pitman, N.J., stopped by WXPN's XPoNential outdoor music fest Sunday evening.

From the audience, she took to social media to express her enthusiasm for headliner Grace Potter.

But she experienced a bit of confusion when she put a call on Twitter for "bubbles," and instead got fans thinking she wanted drugs.

To clarify, she was looking for champagne.

Kevin Vaughan nearly "hawked" to death

A WELL-KNOWN guy in local political circles, Kevin Vaughan has held a variety of city positions, from within the managing director's office and the health department to chairing the Commission on Human Relations.

Now retired, Vaughan has devoted much of his free time to photography, particularly of birds, and especially the peregrine falcon, a bird of prey.

And prey is exactly what Vaughan felt like recently when one of those falcons swooped down and attacked him while his camera lens was trained on the endangered species from a high vantage point. The attack caused him to smash an expensive lens and sent him to the hospital.

"I was photographing the peregrine falcon on the 25th floor balcony of the PNB building," Vaughan told me yesterday. "They were kind enough to let me stand on their outside deck.

"I was standing up there, as I do almost daily, getting some very good shots on a nice, sunny day. The female peregrine falcon was feeding her babies in the nest atop City Hall . . . She flew off the nest - I was quite astonished - the next thing I know there were talons and wings on the other side of my camera."

Vaughan said he darted for the door, but tripped, stumbled, and he and his camera went down. He broke his wrist and his camera. He got a glimpse of the falcon on a perch just above the 25th floor as first responders rushed to his aid.

Vaughan got all patched up in the emergency room, and now has a titanium plate and screws in his wrist.

He went back up to shoot the next day.

One of my downashore spies says he personally saw the ex-Mafioso Joey Merlino at Johnny's (9407 Ventnor Ave.) in Margate on Sunday night.

I hear he was dressed casually, accompanied by four guys and about eight females.

David Yadgaroff has been named the new senior vice president of CBS Radio in Philly. Beginning Monday, he'll oversee all the network's properties, including KYW-AM, WIP, WPHT, WOGL, WZMP and WXTU.

Yadgaroff, a graduate of Penn State University, has been with CBS Radio for more than 20 years and worked his way up from the sales department of KYW, where he also served as vice president for a time.

Former Philly top cop John Timoney traded in the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet for the Schuykill Navy one day last week, when he was spotted protecting our waterways in a quad scull.

Daily News cartoonist Signe Wilkinson ran into Timoney on the docks of her University Barge Club on Boathouse Row last week before he went out for a morning row up the river.

Club sources say that Timoney is a member of the Vesper Boat Club and was out for a row with friends. He now works as a security consultant in Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy's prestigious Fifth Fleet is located.

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