Cool article in the Philly Inquirer today about the increase in movies being filmed in Philadelphia (excerpt below in Blue) - I didn't cut & paste the part of the article that references the adaptation of John Grogan's Marley & Me, which is being shot currently in the offices of the Inquirer on Broad Street.   In addition to the movies mentioned here, the following movies/TV shows have also used Philly as a backdrop.  Am I missing any others?

Philadelphia

National Treasure

In Her Shoes

Parking Wars (TV show)

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (TV show)

Good point, Jen!  I missed an obvious one - I didn't think of it, because (embarassingly so) I've never seen it.... Rocky

In the last two months, the region has been one big backlot, generating not only film business but excitement among celebrity watchers. The comedy The Dream of the Romans began filming in Center City and Old City on March 17, with Lauren Graham and Jeff Daniels. The comedy Tenure, with Luke Wilson (Owen's brother) and Gretchen Mol, started shooting April 7, mostly on the campuses of Bryn Mawr and Rosemont Colleges.

And the drama Happy Tears, with Demi Moore and Parker Posey, began rolling on April 24 in Prospect Park, Center City and Old City.  Next month, filming of Michael Bay's Transformers 2 with Shia LaBeouf and Teresa Palmer will begin, and two TV series - FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and CBS's Cold Case - will return for another season.

Two major studio films were shot here last year: Shyamalan's The Happening with Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, in theaters next month, and Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones with Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, due next year.

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I had absolutely no idea this was going on. 

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080516_Police_change_account_of_3_arrests__beatings.html

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My Associate just sent me this link about a new building that is going to be built in Philly.  RIGHT BEHIND our apartment building.  See the little building behind the silver one that you can barely see???  That's our building (I tried to add an arrow to the photos, but I suck at graphic design and gave up after 10 min).

For those of you that visited us in Philly - this building is going on the lot, right behind our building that we have vistors park in.  All that will stand between us and this monstrosity is a little alley.  It's time to MOVE!!!!

New building

Here's the parking lot behind my building that I'm referring to...  looks like this is going to be in the news A LOT!

Parking lot

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Seems our city has its own Bonnie & Clyde, without all the messiness of murder - this has been in the papers for the last couple of days.  The apartment building that these two lived in is just a few blocks from us and is extremely upscale. 

I love, love, love that bitter ex-friends of this girl created a facebook group to swap stories/lies about the couple.  Can't wait to log in and check it out!

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Went in to the office today to get tutored in a topic I've been struggling with.  While I was there, I learned from my colleagues that there was a stabbing on Saturday at the 7/11 in our building.  No joke. 

On Saturday afternoon, Steven Kratzsch, 24, a clerk in a 7-Eleven store on John F. Kennedy Boulevard near 18th Street, approached a man who was looking at photos of scantily-clad women in a magazine and asked him to leave.  Instead, the man flew into a rage, police said, and began stabbing Kratzsch repeatedly.  Detective James Seymour said the store was filled with customers, including children. The attacker ran out, leaving his victim bleeding on the floor, and fled north on 18th Street.  Kratzsch was rushed to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he was in critical but stable condition with a collapsed lung and other internal injuries. Investigators confiscated the King magazine the man had been reading and lifted fingerprints from it.  The attacker is described as a dark-complected African-American, about 5-foot-7 and weighing 150 to 160 pounds.  He was unshaven, with a slight moustache, and was wearing a camouflage jacket with a brown fur collar, dark blue jeans, and a black wool cap.   The man has been seen in the LOVE Park neighborhood, and is believed to be armed and dangerous, police said.

I find this pretty scary, AND, the description of the assailant sounds like this homeless guy that I have seen countless times hanging out on the steps in front of our building by the busstop. 

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It's 8:30 and the damn parade is really up & running now.  It is freakin' loud!!!!!  The parade goes down Market Street (just a block away) and it couldn't be more annoying!!!!  All those cheerleaders and high school bands - ARGH!  I don't know how Adam and I manage to forget each year that we live on the Thanksgiving and New Years Parade route...  We need to remember to get out of the city the night before....  Hmmm... guess we should really think about your NYE plans.  Staying in the city doesn't sound as much fun anymore. 

Fingers crossed that our car didn't get towed!!!!  We gotta move.  I can't take all these hassles anymore.... 

Update: Turns out the car had been towed.  There were plenty of cops around because of the parade and one of them was quickly able to tell us where we had gotten towed to -- turned out to be the same place it got towed when Adam spent two hours looking for it (so at least now we know where to start the search the next time this happens!).  Once again, our car was unlocked, as they had to (somehow) get in to our car to undo the parking break before towing. 

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Looks like Rendell and others were unable to sway the minds of gun-toting politians. I find it sad and extremely disheartening that these politicians aren't doing anything to help the murder and crime rates in what has now been dubbed "Killadelphia", because they have a constituency of back-minded hicks living in rural PA (the article nicely refers to these people as gun-rights stronghold in the southwest -- I like my version better). 

Rep. Ron Marsico (R., Dauphin), the committee's ranking Republican, said that he sympathized with Philadelphia's high crime rate, but that he did not believe "feel-good" gun-control bills were the answer.

Why don't they see that gun control is an important first step in improving the crime rate????  It's not like these laws are saying people who have guns can't have them.  Is it really so bad to make it just a little harder for people to be getting their hands on a gun????  Buying one handgun a month - that's the rule they wanted to make.  Why would a law-abiding citizen need to be buying more than one a month anyway?  This is just curbing the activities of criminals.

Stuff like this drives me nuts!

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So, at 8:15pm last night, we get a phone call from the front desk last night telling us that there is a policeman waiting for us downstairs to talk to us about our car parked by Kelly Drive.  Kelly Drive is by boat house row and the art museum, at least a mile from where we live, work, and PARK. Naturally, we were both puzzled. 

Turns out our car got towed there because of Wednesday's funeral procession for that cop that got shot going in to the Dunkin Donuts.  I don't understand why they needed to tow cars because of the funeral procession DRIVING PAST.... extremely frustrating.  The traffic cop was nice enough to drive me to my car to go pick it up.  Apparently, we were one of the lucky cars that didn't get broken in to. 

She wasn't able to get a hold of another woman in our building who also had her car towed to the same location, and asked that I try to contact her when I get back to the building.  I went to the front desk and tried to call her, but she wasn't there.  I figured I would try again myself instead of having the front desk people handle it -- I know if I were on the other end, I would rather here what was going on from another resident that had something similar happen, and not the clueless security workers. 

As dumb luck would have it - this woman got in the elevator with me!  A few elevators were shut down last night, so there was a big group of us in my elevator.  I mentioned to everyone that if they park in zone 6 and haven't checked on their car in awhile they should, because mine had been towed.  This woman mentions, "I'm parked on 20th Street", where I had been parked.  Just then, the elevator stops at the 12th floor and she proceeds to get out.  I holler, "Wait, are you in apartment 1208?"  She was.  I get out of the elevator with her, hand her the paperwork, and bring her up to speed.... 

This traffic cop was very nice to go searching us out.  A few cars had been reported and were turning up there, so she realized the rest of us must not know yet what had happened.  Quite a few cars had been broken in to, but not Molly... I had asked Adam to check on my car on Saturday when he was driving to my mom's but he forgot to do it - I guess that turned out for the best, since he would have had me freaked that the car was missing and I would have been one of those people stressed out and reporting my car stolen...... 

Time to sell Molly.  And no more parking on 20th street.....   

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I'm assuming that people (mostly Adam) are getting sick of the bitching and moaning I have been doing about the construction noises.....  In an attempt to defend myself, I rounded up photos of the Comcast building to show just how big of a project this is and HOW CLOSE it is to our apartment building. Hmmm... do I sound defensive?  Probably, but I don't care.

In theory, you should be able to somewhat compare this photo to my bar at the top with the phillyscape

Comcast Building (summer)

This photo was taken at the corner of 18th & JFK - just across the street from our apartment building (which you can see a little piece of in the top left corner). 

Comcast (summer)

There is a Philly Photographer who has been taking photos of the project since its inception (that's where I snagged these photos from).  he's got some pretty cool shots, especially the ones taken on the day they let him up to the top of the construction site. 

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I just can't catch a break when it comes to get a good night's sleep these days. 

Adam and I felt that we had been going to bed too late, so starting last night, we decided we would shut off the TV at 10:30pm.  After a little chit-chat, I realize that I wasn't close to being tired, and instead of tossing and turning, I decide to get up and read.  At 11:15pm, I crawled back in to bed... After about about 10min, I hear this odd howling/whistling noise - definitely not construction related.  After much tossing and turning, I decide that I would rather sleep in a room that is a bit warm, but quiet (this is after getting up numerous times to play with the blinds, switch pillows, etc)....  All of my tossing and turning woke up Adam and he was supportive of shutting the window, if it would make me stop. 

Even after our super-thick windows were closed, I could still hear this noise.  The best way I can describe it is that it sounded like a tuning pipe.  A little after midnight, I get up and grab some earplugs (that we got in first class on our way to Japan).  All the other noises completely disappear, EXCEPT this damn howling/whistle noise.  It must have been the wind - whipping around the construction site maybe - that's my best guess. 

I give up!  MERCY!  I just can't take the city noises anymore... I'm ready to move somewhere peaceful and quiet.  Man! I sound like such a little old lady!   In all seriousness though, I got the "bad sleeping gene" from my mom.  On a good night it takes me at least 30min to fall asleep.  It's a little odd that after 5+ years of living on this block, the noise has suddenly become unbearable.  I guess I just reached my breaking point.  Make the madness stop!!!

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