A week ago, I got astride my bicycle, turned my phone off, and set off for a leisurely five-day ride to Pittsburgh. Amazing how much can happen in a week: I arrived to the news that the state budget had finally passed and that table games (blackjack, poker, etc.) were legalized as part of that budget.

Only they weren't.

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pic from bleacherreport.com

"I'd be shocked if John Stevens is the coach by the end of the season."

Now, I like Bucci. He knows a lot of things about things. But I was like, no way, dude you been listening to too many Guster songs (which is to say: any Guster songs). Then I saw the comments his column inspired and holy crap. A lot of people think Stevens sucks. Like Flyersfan 1981, who says:

"I really hope Bucci is right about Stevens...I've been praying for his firing for about 2 seasons now...time for a coach in Philly, not a babysitter!!"

Praying? I was and am shocked, so I wrote to Buccigross and asked him to elaborate. He replied with two simple words, as I told my brother ...

Julia Harte with your morning fix.

Ex-Mayor Street's mostly unsuccessful initiative to transform neighborhoods by demolishing derelict buildings and constructing new homes failed to make payments and timely reports on its progress, according to a new audit, whose authors warned that the city may owe the IRS millions of dollars in penalties.

Government corruption in Afghanistan threatens to thwart the U.S. army's efforts there no matter how many more soldiers the government adds, Army General Stanley McChrystal wrote in a still-secret request for between 10,000 to 80,000 extra troops.

Iraqi schoolchildren were starting school and reading textbooks that have replaced long sections of accolades about Saddam Hussein with more realistic descriptions of his regime, including Hussein's oppression of the country's Shiite and Kurdish minorities.

Saudi negotiators were declaring that wealthy countries would be obliged to assist oil-producing countries with economic diversification if they reduce their oil consumption to combat climate change.

Hybrid auto companies were working with Hollywood special-effects producers to create fake motor sounds that the notoriously silent vehicles will emit out of their bumpers to warn pedestrians of their approach.

Philadelphia's Clean Air Council opened a new hotline that people can call to report trucks and buses that are idling their motors for more than the legal limit of five minutes.

Nos. 1 and 2? Raleigh-Durham, which has lots of "researchers" and "smart people, and San Francisco, which has the braniacs who follow technology (and perpetually temperate weather). Here in Philly, TDB says: "From education to civic participation to reading habits, Philly, home to the University of Pennsylvania, scored well across the board."

My biggest bitch? I'm new here and all, and don't really know the city that well, but seriously — we lost to Baltimore? Baltimore? You people should be ashamed.

Incidentally, my former hometown of Orlando ranked pretty close to the bottom, which shouldn't surprise anyone who's ever lived there. In fact, the Daily Beast ranking dump on virtually every Florida burg, which gives me a lot of faith in their veracity even though I haven't the time or inclination to do a look-see on their methodology.

Last night's series-clinching 5-4 win over the Rockies, featuring a 3-run, 2-out rally in the ninth, was quite possibly the most tense contest in the Phils' current three-year playoff run.

In response to my exaltations about the game on Facebook, Chuck Meehan dropped this bit of wisdom: "Craziest shit I can remember since the 1980 NLCS."

To those who remember the 1980 NLCS game five — a flip-floppy affair which saw the Phils fall behind by 3 in the seventh inning while facing a height-of-his-powers Nolan Ryan, rally for 5 runs in the top of the eighth, surrender 2 in the bottom of the eighth to tie and eventually win the whole series on a Garry Maddox double in the 10th inning (the fourth extra-innings game in the five-game series) — which game was crazier?

Julia Harte with your morning fix.

A Colorado insurance company that denied coverage to a 17-lb, 4-month-old baby on the grounds that he was "too fat" changed its mind after the story made national headlines over the weekend.

To protest an Internet video of Burlington schoolchildren singing songs in praise of Obama, 70 people stood outside the children's school yesterday chanting "Education not indoctrination!" and "Free children, free minds!"

Preliminary data indicates that teachers have benefited the most from the $787 billion stimulus package issued earlier this year, state officials around the country reported. In most states, teaching jobs represented two-thirds to three-quarters of all jobs saved by the funding.

Teachers in the eastern Pennsylvania district of Saucon Valley were planning to strike this week after working without a contract for more than a year.

AlliedBarton security guards at the Philadelphia Museum of Art voted to join the Philadelphia Security Officers Union. Not since the 1990s, when Art Museum guards were city employees, has that workforce been unionized.

Unionized electric workers were furious and planning a massive protest on Thursday to protest Mexican president Felipe Calderon's closure of a state-run energy distribution firm, which resulted in at least 40,000 layoffs.

Heard about big crane accident in Rittenhouse Square that killed a guy and decimated a building? We did too, and promptly dispatched intern extraordinaire Julia Harte down to the scene. She filed this report (and the pics up top):

A 40-year-old construction worker fell 125 feet to his death today after the crane holding him up toppled over at the intersection of 21st and Walnut. William Walker, 33, a Comcast technician who was working half a block away at the time, saw the whole incident and ran over to help the worker, who fell onto a Verizon truck at the intersection. Walker tried to talk to the guy, but he was unresponsive.

"He was bleeding out of his nose, bleeding out of his ears, partially out of his eye," Walker says. "He was pretty much dying." At 1:42 p.m., about half an hour after the accident, the unidentified worker was pronounced dead, police said.

According to Walker and other eyewitnesses, the crane began to tilt after the crane operator tried to turn it around, inadvertently catching a tire in an open manhole in the process. As the wheel slid firmly into the hole, the crane teetered back and forth three times, and came crashing down on 21st Street, tearing a chunk off the roof of a corner florist shop as it fell. The piece of scaffolding hit an elderly woman passing by, breaking her arm. By all accounts, she got lucky.

"The crane just missed hitting her," Walker tells The Clog.

The construction worker was performing a routine check on the face of the First Presbyterian Church when his crane toppled over. When Walker got to him, the man was hanging off the side of the Verizon truck. He had to be cut out of his harness by Fire Department officials.

A driver was inside the truck, unhurt but "afraid to get out because of the guy hanging outside his window," Walker says.

Nicole Saylor

Anyone out on Second Street between Chestnut and Market this afternoon may have seen one hell of a lanky guy with a busted top hat and an acoustic guitar. If they stopped to listen to him sing, they would have heard tunes about Charles Darwin. Yes, that Charles Darwin.

Educational songs about Darwin and the survival of the fittest were performed on the street by Brett Keyser in full Darwinian-era regalia. It's a sneak peek of Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man, a one-man show at the American Philosophy Museum dedicated to dispersing the facts on the Father of Evolution.

An employee from Rotten Ralph's just around the corner came outside with a grin and just had to snap a picture on his phone, but most people just passed by, only somewhat interested. This is a man, a top hat, a guitar and a deep love for Darwin. How could you not watch? According to APS Marketing Coordinator Jackson Shellenberger, they were testing out different areas to have the teaser performances. Northern Liberties was next on the list, but he said that they would be back at Second and Chestnut next Monday at noon.

Oh, and did you catch the sculpted beetle on top of the VW Beetle?

Nicole Saylor

Very clever.

UPDATE: Video of the performance after the jump!

Fri. & Sat., Oct. 16-17, 24, 6:30 p.m., Sun., Oct. 18 & 25, 3 p.m., $5-$10, APS Museum, 104 S. 5th St., apsmuseum.org/performance

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ruckfocktober.com

Today's Philies T-shirt of the day is more of an anti-Rockies shirt, but hey, we're feeling a little anti after last night's 49584739820-hour game, even if the ol' Phils did pull it out in the end.

The Ruck Focktober T-shirt, seen briefly on-screen during last night's this morning's telecast, is available in Phillies red/white, Dodgers blue/white and Giants orange/black (aw, remember when the Giants had playoff hopes?), and has its own Facebook page. (Rocktober, of course, is the annoying Rockies' October baseball motto.) This is, of course, one of those shirts with a very limited relevance window, and given that the eBay site where this is being sold offers Priority Mail as its fastest delivery option, you'd really need to hate the Rockies — and really, why wouldn't you, I guess — to order this given that the series will almost definitely be over by tomorrow (rain, snow, sleet, hail notwithstanding).

Speaking of lousy game conditions, how much of last night's game did you tough it out for?

Jessica Kourkounis

The Squidling Bros. swallow

Saturday: Artist Jun Kaneko goes avant garde with the East Coast debut of his production of Madama Butterfly. Before the fat lady sings, pizazz up your wardrobe at Philadelphia Fashion Week. Or just hit up the just opened Men's Mezz.

Sunday: Have you read Brian James Kirk's new nerdcore column Peer-to-Peer? You should, 'cause if you don't, you won't know about Video Games Live where Super Mario is a symphony and Sonic the Hedgehog a work of art. If you don't would rather just be out than geek out, OutFest is this weekend and our fab Art Phag columnist Josh Middleton gives you the scoop.

Last night, an insane hockey game between the Flyers and Penguins — one full of hard checks, bad bounces and nice goals — finally collapsed into a pile of angry people. That's cool. In Philly, we like our teams to go do swinging. Mike Richards went careening into the net awkwardly. Chris Pronger grabbed Chris Kunitz by the collar and started choking him from behind. That cool.

But from the scrum behind the net, the Pens' Chris Kris Letang (holy crap that's a lot of Chrises holy crap that's two Chrises and one Kris) came skating away visibly upset, holding one hand in another, claiming that the Flyers' Scotty Hartnell had just bitten him on the finger. After the game, Letang, with a bandaged finger, told the press to ask Hartnell wtf. Hartnell's reply wasn't really a denial: "a lot of stuff happens on the bottom of the pile. He had his hands in my face doing the face wash and we're rolling around. I can't say what happened."

This isn't the first biting incident in the NHL. Just last year, Jaarko Ruutu of the Senators sank his teeth into Andrew Peters of the Sabres, through his glove. Ruutu got a fine and a two-game suspension. I'm guessing Hartnell totally bit Letang. He's a nut, usually in a good way. Not sure whether the NHL will punish him for ii.

Here's my question to you, dear readers:

Would you, could you, bite another human being's finger in anger (as opposed to self-defense)? If so, who?

Today's Phillies T-shirt of the day is an oldie but goodie: The Birdland/Fightins.com Matt Stairs Moon Shot shirt (submitted by friend of the Clog/CP contributor Matt Hotz)  that's an appreciation of the take-and-rake slugger's mammoth home run and subsequent ass-hammering in last year's League Championship Series vs. the Dodgers.

However, we're making special notice of the available Moon Shot hoodie, given that the whole team could probably use one or four of these tomorrow night in Denver where the high temperature is predicted to be 34, the low 28 and, oh yeah, there's snow in the forecast.

All of which makes this armchair analyst a little suspicious of Charlie Manuel's burning potential game-3 starters Joe Blanton and J.A. Happ in yesterday's loss, meaning that the guy they're now more likely to start  (unless Manuel pulls another trick from up his sleeve) is Pedro Martinez, a frail, aging hurler who hasn't thrown more than four innings in a start since tossing 119 and 130 pitches in back-to-back starts Sept. 8 and 13.

Granted, that would seem to make Kyle Kendrick Pedro's caddy should the great one get bumped early (or should his arm, say, freeze, drop off his body and shatter), and given Kendrick's ground-ball tendencies, that might actually be the decent Plan B for (given that yesterday, original plans A and B limped off the field and threw 19 pitches respectively). Though, now that we think of it, pitching at Coors is probably Kendrick's main role on this roster.

Anyway, back to shirts: Let me add that I've always appreciated the clever way the people at Birdland/Fightins get around the licensed team logo issue by just popping the player's uniform number on the front panel of the hat/helmet.

Got a nomination for a Phillies T-shirt of the day? e-mail it to bhoward (at) citypaper (dot) net.

And don't forget, Phils play again Saturday at freaking 9:37 on TBS (unless, y'know, it's snowing).

Ballantine, Aug. 25

In today's Shelf Life lit column, Justin Bauer compares four novelists who grapple with notions of identity — Boualem Sansal, Rawi Hage, Michelle Huneven and Dan Chaon — with varying success.

He particularly dug Chaon's Await Your Reply:

Chaon's characters — three sets of them, in three independent, loosely linked storylines — each willingly shuck off the lives they've been given. They get into their cars and set off to create entirely new selves, in the barrenness of the Michigan backwoods or an abandoned Great Plains motel or trekking through the Canadian tundra.

On one hand, Chaon's bleak, thrilling high-wire stories celebrate the freedom of losing yourself, even as this lack of stability opens up his narrative to weirdness and terror. But in showing the ease with which his characters cast off one identity and assume another, Chaon questions the basic existence of a single identity.

Since today feels like the kind of day we'd like to trade our identity out for someone else's (maybe someone who has Phils playoff tickets?), we're giving away a copy to the first Clog reader who can answer the following trivia question:

At which Midwestern college does Chaon teach?

E-mail me at carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win. (Go Phils!)

Let's try to do this every day of the Phillies playoff run:

Today's Phillies T-Shirt of the day comes from woot.shirt.com Todd Marrone, was submitted by CP's own Drew Lazor and depicts Big Phoot, the Phillie Phanatic's wild cousin:

Todd Marrone | woot.shirt.com

Big Phoot

Got a nomination for a Phillies T-shirt of the day? e-mail it to bhoward (at) citypaper (dot) net.

And don't forget, Phils play again this afternoon at 2:37.

Julia Harte with your mid-morning fix.

The U.S. Supreme Court was debating whether a cross erected in the Mojave National Preserve to honor fallen soldiers violated the First Amendment's ban on governmental establishment of religion.

A Northeast Philadelphia couple was on trial for attempting to faith-heal their two-year-old son rather than seek medical treatment. The boy died of bacterial pneumonia in January.

France's Culture Minister, Frederic Mitterand, was facing intense pressure to resign over his defense of Roman Polanski as well as an autobiography in which Mitterand stated that "the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys" in Thailand "put me in a state of desire."

A new study suggested that the birth control pill, by suppressing hormone levels, has made women more likely to seek a responsible, long-term mate rather than lusting after the men with most sex appeal.

More than 600 Jane Austen fans were preparing to descend on Philadelphia for the the 31st-annual general meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America.

The German author Herta Mueller, whose novels and stories about political alienation have been periodically censored in her birthland of Romania, won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature.