Hoodie | Birdland/The Fightins

Beat NY: What they can't buy, we're gonna take

Running a little behind on this, but tell us who's gonna win the World Series and how:

Yesterday our own contributing sports editor  E. James Beale sat down with Daily News sports editor Josh Barnett on Marty Moss-Coane's Radio Times to talk about the World Series. Listen below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Philly Boy Roy, in his natural habitat

Last night, in the early moments of The Best Show on WFMU, PBR made a bold prediction: It will only take one game for nem Phightens to humiliate nem Yankees and win the World Series.

This led to a very improbable bet between the show’s host Tom Scharpling of Newbridge, North Jersey and Philly Boy Roy Ziegler of Roxborough.

Also discussed in this clip:

• Lipstick City, Barney Miller and Raul Ibanez guitars
• The appropriate age to begin dropping the F-bomb
• The Cin-A-Bon/milkshake deathwish
• Spinal Tap, Drum Power and WaWa Records
• An army tank driving through a lake of fudge pudding
• The time Peter killed a grip on the set of the Brady Bunch
• Whether pimpin’ is easy or not
• Whether it’s OK to put Peanut Chews into piñatas
• Whose bathroom area hurts

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Julia Harte with your morning fix.

A Daily News report found that of the $157 million Philadelphia has so far received in federal stimulus money, the city has spent less than $1 million and saved a paltry 52 jobs.

The lending branch of General Motors was begging the Treasury Department for a third infusion of taxpayer money, which would make it the only U.S. company to receive three rounds of aid and possibly make the government majority stakeholder in the company.

A $500,000 shower was among the ostentatious expenses racked up by French President Sarkozy during his European Union presidency -- one of the costliest in history -- and funded by EU taxpayers.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was found to be paying Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai and suspected opium lord, to organize a paramilitary force in Kandahar that follows C.I.A. orders.

The former presenter of "Afghan Star" -- that country's version of American Idol -- sought asylum in the United States after a documentary he produced about the show earned him death threats from extremists. He now works at Voice of America radio, and says "in America, I was born again."

The Philadelphia-based Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which has provided cash assistance to R&B artists in need for twenty years, is now out of money itself because donations have dried up over the last year.

In a picture.

Julia Harte with your morning fix.

H1N1 vaccine was administered to 1,600 students throughout the Philadelphia School District yesterday, part of a city effort to avoid emergency rooms becoming flooded with people demanding the vaccine.

Drug makers have been rushing to market with medicines used to treat heart illness and cancer before adequately testing them first, according to a report out yesterday from Congress.

Israeli authorities and soldiers dangerously restrict access to water in the Palestinian territories, according to a new report from Amnesty International, leaving some Palestinians with only 5 gallons of water per day.

The Senegalese people were outraged to learn that their government gave an official from the International Monetary Fund a gift of $200,000 at his farewell dinner. Prime Minister Souleymane Ndene Ndiaye said it was a traditional African goodbye present.

The Church of Scientology in France was fined $600,000 for fraud after investigators accused the church officials of manipulating members into investing large amounts of money into questionable ventures and using "commercial harassment" to attract new members.

The third-place winner at Saturday's National Sudoku Championship at the Convention Center, the country's largest puzzle competition, may have cheated. Officials say that the suspect completed preliminary puzzles in record time, but appeared to have trouble on the simple opening calculations of the final-round puzzle, and may have used a fake name.

As if one Phillies song - last week's blast from NeeKo, "Ill State of Mind" - wasn't enough, here's one that's one that's a little more sporty: "Unstoppable" from Guerilladelphia.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Guerilladelphia, made up of Don McCloskey, Chuck Treece (Bad Brains, McRad) and Tom Spiker (Kellis) came into effect after McCloskey watched the Phils beat the Colorado Rockies in the first round of the playoffs, then called Treece and Spiker to record what he’d written.

And then the real work began.

• Like phone calls to out-of-town Philadelphia natives G. Love and Kufie (in Boston at the time, they added vocal and harmonica  tracks).
• Getting Jay Davidson, Larry Toft and Patrick Hughes to add horn parts
• Playing a raw demo at the North Bowl and snagging Phil Nicolo to mix the victory track.

That teamwork’s even better than what you see on the field. Get it for free at  guerrilladelphia.com.

We wholeheartedly endorse any zeitgeist-riding/meme-fucking that involves turning Kurt Vile's "Freak Train" into a paean to Carlos Ruiz. Extra credit for the Matador/Black Taco logo mashup.

(h/t Jon Solomon)

CP contributor Andrew Thompson was featured in a WHYY piece by health and science reporter Kerry Grens about the travails of the uninsured.

Grens: Up to what limit are you willing to pay for insurance?

Thompson: I would say that $150 is the maximum I would pay.

That's $150 a month. Few, if any, plans available to individuals are that cheap — especially for someone with pre-existing conditions.

Listen to Grens' report.

Now, I'm still pretty new in town, so I might not have a perfect feel for how these things work up here. That said, I've been around enough union negotiations to begrudgingly admire the insane, ballsy, never-gonna-happen tack the Transit Workers Union Local 234 took yesterday, when it announced that maybe, just maybe, it would strike at the end of this week, which — hey wouldn't you know it? — just so happens to coincide with the World Series. Oh, the happenstance.

But to be clear, they don't WANT to strike during the World Series. No, that would be mean, and terribly impolitic during this city's moment in the national spotlight. Just, if SEPTA doesn't give them everything they possibly want, right now, they'll have no choice. And shucks, that would be so darn unfortunate.

"This is the last week we are going to work without a contract," said Willie Brown, local TWU president, whose more than 5,000 members have been working without a contract since March 15.Yet Brown's message to World Series fans was this: "We're going to do everything we can not to have a strike."

Everything, that is, except be reasonable. See, everywhere else on the planet, workers — especially government workers — have taken to the warm embrace of the words "wage freeze." Because "wage freeze" is slightly less-sucky than "massive layoffs" and "draconian pay cuts." Our friends in the TWU, however — some of whom might be considered slightly overpaid — are balking at two years of wage freeze, followed by a 2 percent raise the years after. And that's understandable, I suppose. I've spent the last few years in companies with "wage freezes" too, and it definitely is an undesirable situation. But their reasoning — that they got raises a few years back, when SEPTA was in even deeper in the hole — strikes me as a bit flawed. As in: If you rolled your car down a mountain and flipped it a bunch of times and totaled it a few years back, what's the harm in driving it into the ditch now?

Predictably, the union is refusing to up workers' healthcare contributions, and wants the city to increase its allocation to the union's pension plan. In a normal universe, where the city is cratering in fiscal crisis, these are the kinds of demands that get laughed out of the negotiating table. But this universe is not normal. This is the week of the Series, where thousands of crazy, drunk, poll-climbing, car-flipping freaks will crowd into South Philly to watch the Phils try to repeat. And then they'll want a ride home.

To the TWU, this is, of course, leverage, which is a polite word for extortion. The city hardly wants its moment in the sun sullied by having its major transit system effectively shut down. So the union figures this is their week to make a move. Can't argue with the strategy.

Of course, if the trains stop running this weekend — which is also Halloween, wouldn't you know — people are gonna be pissed. At SEPTA workers, not the city. And rightly so; I doubt SEPTA workers will find much sympathy in an era of 10 percent unemployment and budgets that already ooze red ink. So when the TWU says it doesn't want to strike, it doesn't. It just wants Nutter SEPTA to blink first. It's a schoolyard dare. The TWU wants to see how much backbone City Hall SEPTA officials have.

I'm curious to see what happens if the tables turn: If Nutter SEPTA turns them away, does TWU have the gumption to follow through, to strike during the Series?

EDIT & CORRECTION: As Gary from the comments pointed out, SEPTA is not a city agency and therefore TWU does not negotiate with Nutter and co. You learn something every day.

Photo | AWD44

Road to Another Championship

As of last week, Photostream will no longer appear as a regular print feature in City Paper. Stars of the Photostream, however, will become a regular feature on The Clog. To submit your city photo, visit citypaper.net/photostream.

Today's photo comes from AWD44.

Julia Harte with your morning fix.

The Upper Darby township was preparing to release its first "bait" cars -- cars equipped with GPS tracking devices and hidden cameras -- to trace car theft in the area.

Kids in southern China were being ordered to salute passing cars, according to the latest in a long stream of Chinese bureaucratic edicts denounced by critics and local media as arbitrary and senseless.

Solar-powered and hybrid vehicles were racing 1,800 miles across the entire continent of Australia in the Green Power Challenge, one of the world's first competitions for cars fueled by renewable sources.

In a region where women are 14 times as likely to die from childbirth as British women, one village in Malawi appeared to have eliminated the problem by maintaining a "bicycle ambulance" that ferries women entering labor 18 miles to the nearest hospital.

The president of Philadelphia's Transit Worker's Union vowed that a strike could be called by the end of the week -- perhaps affecting the first local World Series game -- if negotiations don't result in wage and pension increases for SEPTA employees.

Let's break down the week ahead.

Tomorrow night there's an Eagles Monday Night Football game against divisional opponent the Redskins. That normally would be about as big of an event on the radar here, but this week it's small potatoes. Nonetheless, we'll be watching and we'll be tired on Tuesday morning.

Just in time for Pearl Jam to begin their 4 night stand to close up shop at the Spectrum. Lots of fond memories there. If you think PJ doesn't know about the Spectrum's place in rock history go back to last summer. While launching into a Baba O'Reilly encore to cap a two night run in Camden Eddie says, "Say goodbye to the Spectrum for us." Little did they know they'll be saying goodbye to it for us.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The next night, Wednesday, Pearl Jam continues their shows. And oh yeah, the Phillies play game one of the 2009 World Series at a site yet to be determined. Are you tired yet? Don't be, cause there's more.

Thursday night is game two of the World Series. Pearl Jam is off that night. No worries here on what to do. I may be wringing my liver out for a brief respite.

Friday, it's the reverse. No Phillies game that night, but Pearl Jam brings us show #3 of the Say Goodbye to the Spectrum For Us run.

Thank the lord that week is over. What? We're just getting going? OK...

Saturday. D-Day. Last night of the Spectrum, home Flyers game at 1 and a World Series game at Citizens Bank Park. And it's all happening on Halloween.

Now, let's sandwich this bonanza with an Eagles game at home against the Giants on Sunday afternoon at 1. Then another home World Series game that night.

OK, now I'm tired.

What happens next is yet to be written by the Phillies. Could be more games, could be another celebration.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to take a nap now.

(Go Phils)