Ah, it's a bad photograph of a car! And that can mean only one thing: the Philadelphia International Auto Show is almost here! We're finding it hard to believe that it's already that time again, but it must be true, because whenever we go within a four block radius of the Convention Center, we see dozens of large trucks full of cars. And we snapped this shot this morning of one classic specimen already......

Let's see if we can keep this straight. John Nolan left Taking Back Sunday to form Straylight Run (MySpace), for which he eventually recruited drummer Will Noon after the band Noon was in, Breaking Pangea, split up. The lead singer of Breaking Pangea had been Coatesville native Fred Mascherino, who then went on to replace Nolan in Taking Back Sunday. While still in Breaking Pangea, Mascherino began work on his own project, The Color Fred......

Racoon Ticket Giveaway
12/12/07-12/14/07
Image via Racoon's MySpace page....

If you have some free time this Sunday and just can't wait to hear more about Mayor-Elect Nutter's vision of "Philadelphia being the next great city," sign up as a volunteer for the The Great Expectations Citizens Convention. Volunteers are needed from 10:30AM-6PM to staff registration tables and act as guides to rooms between sessions. We're betting you'll be able to sneak a peak at some talks while you're at it too, including Michael......

Portugal The Man isn't a country or a person; it's a classic 3-piece band from Alaska whose latest album, Church Mouth, is a collection of indie music with a rich classic rock flavor. Their website says that bands referenced on the disc include the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes, the Mars Volta and Santana, and... yep, we can hear all of those in there. Especially the White Stripes, since lead singer John Baldwin Gourley......

This Phillyist recently took the giant leap from mild interest in comics to full-on weekly comic book collecting, with spreadsheets and everything, so we can understand the attraction of the giant comic book geek gathering going on at the Pennsylvania Convention Center this weekend. Yes, that's right, Wizard World is back in town. Starting today and running through Sunday there'll be tons of panels on every topic having to do with comic books imaginable,......

VNV Nation Giveaway
4/9/07-4/10/07...

Yo La Tengo
1/29/07-2/2/07...

New York City's Goodfinger is playing the balcony at the Troc tonight, along with the intriguingly named The Po-Po's and Ugly Girl Bikini Team, and we thought you should know. Goodfinger is fronted by lead singer Scrappy Calloway, who sounds kind of like Katharine Whalen from the Squirrel Nut Zippers. And indeed these guys are considered "lounge n roll," although their NYC-flavored pop rock is more "roll" than "lounge." Check 'em out for yourself......

It's Saturday afternoon and you still don't know what you're doing tonight? That's sad. We suggest you fill the void in your empty life by heading down to the Trocadero and taking in a show. Who's playing, you ask? We answer: The Bakerton Group, an improvisational, all-instrumental, heavy rock band featuring four of the five members of Clutch. Clutch is easily our favorite contemporary, progressive, Southern-fried, sci-fi, hillbilly metal band, so we can't imagine we'll......

We love Pig Iron Theatre Company. They're dedicated to creating new works for Philly audiences, which is something we can get behind wholeheartedly. And tonight, we get a chance to show them how much we love them, at For the Love of Pig Iron 2007: PIG FEAT! Pig Iron's annual benefit will be held tonight at the Trocadero, and if you buy your tickets before 2PM today, they're only $20. The event will be hosted......

New Years Eve Show Giveaway
12/11/2006-12/15-2006...

Psychedelic Furs Tickets
11/27/06-12/1/06...

Blood Brothers Ticket Giveaway
10/23/06-10/27/06...

My Chemical Romance show
Contest runs 8/23/06 - 9/1/06...

Phillyist was on the 44 bus the other day, when we noticed this helpful (?) message scrawled in the area just behind the driver's seat where a more standard informational poster should be. Now, everything this bit of graffito claims is true - the 44 does not stop on Arch or Race or at 52nd and Market (although Phillyist is quite sure there is some form of bus stop at some of those locations)......

Apparently the ground underneath Philly is loaded with bodies. The Philadelphia School District was using a ground-penetrating radar to scan the abandoned Franklin playground in Kensington - which was a cemetery up until the late 1940s, and which they hoped in the future would be the site of a new Frances E. Willard School - when they discovered that as many as 330 human graves were never removed. They probably won't be able to......

Phillyist has often wondered...just how old is He-Man nemesis Skeletor? (We have lots of spare time on our hands.) On the one hand he has a skull for a face, so we figure he's got to be up there in age. On the other hand, you have to admit, he's got a fit, muscular physique (six-pack abs and all) which suggests he's still in the prime of his life. And then, of course, one has......