Live From ...

Tomorrow, I'll be blogging live from Wing Bowl, starting by 6 a.m. But here's an item to get things started ...

Check it out. Is it just me? Or does Eagles quarterback Jeff Garcia kind of resemble last year's Wing Bowl champ, Joey Chestnut. OK, it's not as good as Howard Eskin and the Burger King, but, hey, both are champs. (Garcia won a title in Canadian Football League.) Wait, one gave the Birds wings, the other ate the birds' wings. And both succeeded guys who heaved and had to leave. (Sorry, Donovan. Can't resist a joke.)

Got to the center by 5:30 a.m. Plenty of time, you'd think. All my gear seemed good to go. Even rigged up a platform for my laptop, using hooks and a neck strap, so I could type while I walked around. But couldn't get this laptop to properly link. Wireless detected. But no web pages would load. Sorry about that. Back at the office now, I'm filing my photos and reports.

Some might think Wing Bowl lures uneducated slobs. But here's proof to the contrary: Two guys quoting one of the Founding Fathers. Sounds a lot like something Wing Bowl's Founding Fathers, Angelo Cataldi and Al Morganti, might say, but it is an actual quote.

In the catacombs of the Wachovia Center, the contestants and their entourages gathered early, prepping their floats, and waiting for the grand procession, which began at 6 a.m. Rob Lewanowski of Collingswood is an angel who, frankly, looks like hell. He was part of Steak Bellie's crew ... or perhaps some strategy to make other contestants lose their appetites.

While waiting to enter the arena, Black Death (really Philly's own Jermaine Pressley) poses with his Wingettes.

Later, while chatting with a woman who looked like an extra for Rocky Horror, I found that Pressley is a cook at Bertucci's in Center City, and she and others in his entourage are coworkers there. Kira Wolfson, 20, said she was going for the "1940s dead pinup girl" look. To qualify, he ate a half a sheetcake filled with pudding and ate out of a woman’s hand. (See video.)

Hank the Tank gets ready to roll into the area. Being a ground attack, however, didn't seem to help him handle wings. He didn't make the Top 10 this year, though seven other local eaters did.

As Rock the House resounded to the rafters, contestants nervously waiting for the eating to begin. Their Wingettes, however, got into the spirit.

As the first round progressed, WIP's Rhea Hughes (no, that's not her in the picture) reported a surprising showing by a front-row local. Dave "US Male" Goldstein of Voorhees had moved onto this third plate ahead of most of the other contestants. Most contestants sat, but some ocassionally stood, perhaps taking some pressure off gastronomically, or at least help gravity.

But when the first results were read, the hosts and fans alike were pleasantly surprised. Two professional eaters failed to make the Top 10, and last year's champ in "the shock of the world" was only No. 9, while the eater was ... well, here's the list, with local names in bold:

• Dr Winglove
• California's Joey Chestnut
• Curly von Burly, 77 wings
• Bulldog, 78
• Damaging Doug, 81
• Chicago's Patrick Bertoletti, 83
• Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas, 84
• U.S Male, 89
• Beast from the Northeast, 91
• Gentleman Jerry, 112!!!
  That's "Gentleman Jerry" Coughlan eating in the picture above.picture

When the Top Five were announced, however, hopes of a local winner were unceremoniously dashed. The final order of finish, included at third and fourth, the two pros in the picture, diminutive marvel Sonya Thomas (left) and Patrick Bertoletti (right), who sported mowark and headband while tuning out the crowd with decibel-blasting headphones. The list:

• U.S. Male, 130 wings
  
• Black Widow 156
  
• Patrick Bertoletti, 157
  
• Gentleman Jerry, 158
  
• Joey Chestnut, a record 166 wings
  

Just like last year, except for having eaten a record 182, Joey Chestnut again wins Wing Bowl. Here's his crowning moment as captured on one of the Wachovia Center's giant overhead screens.

Wait, who's that woman on the right? No, it's not Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate on Lost. This picture was taken at the wedding of West Chester MTV celeb Bam Magera and longtime sweetheart Missy Rothstein (left). His mom, April, is the other woman next to 'MMR's Preston Elliot. The lookalike? Missy's sister, Jessica.

The radio racket flies by fast no chance I can keep up by typing ... so I'll grab and pass along whatever bits I can ...

Idea today is to capture the sense of this wild, creative, popular morning show (bested only by KYW-AM, according to fall Arbitrons) ... and to talk about ABC's Lost, which resumed its run last night. Preston & Steve talk about Lost the morning after every show.

7:55 Steve growls out some dog-banter song ... party tonight at Bootleggers ... "full horniness level kicks in at 8:30, 9:30 says Steve ... they play a clip that even they censor "my hand on his massive ... and then this nasty stuff ... my husband make the decision he would ..."
NO, I DON'T THINK I CAN REPEAT THAT ...

Bizarre File: German man noticed bump in bar wasn't a nut but a human finger! ... In Peoria, motorist crossed the road to intentionally ram car of a man who was using a cell phone... Seattle: 82-year-old man uses metal cane to whack a guy who was dousing people with lighter fluid and lighting a match. Two women had flames but escaped injury. ... Giant penis design in grass shows up on Google Earth satellite footage. It was made by a couple of 11 year olds ...

Preston and Steve for Beginners. Who's who, a guide to their favorite noises / sound effects, and a couple of hotlines: The Love You, Hate You Line and the Converted Listener Line.

Their site also has lots of (and I mean this in a "good" way) degenerate video clips and pictures. Like:
Video for Losticil, the cure for "Lost" Discussion Deficiency Syndrome, and
a parody of an Action News opening parody.

Wednesday's show, according to the producer's notes, had two stars from "Lost," promoting last night's return show:

The guy who plays Charlie
"Dominic Monaghan on the phone. Having time off. Dominic talking about if LOST airing will change. Dominic talking about the show ending while it’s still hot. Has a great relationship with Evangeline. Loves playing the character Charlie."

The guy who plays John Locke.
"Terry O’Quinn on the phone. New season of Lost on tonight. Comes on the show b/c he is fond of Kathy. Loves the job but it is tiring. Wants the show to keep going on long as it a strong show. Loves watching the show with his family. Growing to love Hawaii more and more but you do need to get out once and an awhile. Going to send Preston this Hawaiian juice he loves."

You can hear them on the podcast of the show. Monaghan's in the middle, O'Quinn at the end.

Kathy reads the traffic, comic / cohost Steve leads a discussion of porn being found after you die. Need a buddy to sneak into your house and find and destroy the porn. Caller says after his dad died, he found his dad was a "a complete and total S&M freak." Another caller says they found a KKK outfit when his grandfather died.

More talk of finding stuff after people died. One guy retrieved his deceased friend's porn, and kept it. Of course! he said. A woman hid drug paraphernalia. Another found naked pictures of Mom and Dad. Woman says she made a friend promise to find a diary and sex toys and destroy them (after reading diary). "My memory's so bad I like to keep a record of it, so when my boyfriend f's up, I go, 'It's right here.' "

Last night's show was mostly about Juliet, played by Elizabeth Mitchell.

Preston TiVo's the show and watches it at 3 in the morning ... Rob McIlhenny was the guard? Nick: It was him! I know that guy! Casey: He was reading a Brief History of Time.

Episode: Preston: I thought it was really good ... he'd like to see more about what's going on with the islanders ... Kathy disagrees, really into her back story ... Juliet's sister apparently had cancer and was trying to get pregnant ... Steve: seems as if the Hanso organization is one that tried to recruit Juliet ... Casey: Desmond's girlfriend's father is behind this ... the girlfriend is still searching for him.

Woman: Is Ben really the father?
Nick (pictured at left): Ben's probably the adoptive / kidnapping father, not the real father.

Casey: what about those messages in the brainwashing scenes?

Chris: Yahtzee! I love you like a fat kid loves cake. What are the chances that she got Sun pregnant?
Steve: I think everybody but Hurley could be getting pregnant.

Emilio: Farfetched theory: What if Henry Gale is actually the mother? Remember Juliet's experiment with mice? Tumor could have been a side effect.

What do you want to know most? Black smoke, says Preston

Caller makes connections about "jacob's list" and number 108 being Ben's blood pressure (same number as countdown clock)

Steve: The bus ... how did they work that piece of magic?

Karis (sp): what about the "purple sky"? Steve: Prince?

Next week: More of the action ... Kate reaches the main island (that's her below with Sawyer)... some building explodes. ...

Had some problems getting posts to publish, so I missed the interview with porn star Ron Jeremy, who has a new book, The Hardest (Working) Man in the Business, who said he never uses Viagra, confirmed a rumor about having a revealing interlude with Paris Hilton, claimed headaches are the worst malady he's ever had, and, in answer to a Casey complaint, said he's not into rude stuff like slapping women or even men spitting.

Behind the scenese notes: Amazing how relaxed these folks seem, with a nonstop piling-on of talk, talk, talk. Steve's interjections seem so natural, fitting into the flow, making the studio group laugh ("Must be a Mormon pig" just cracked Preston up). Casey is also in charge of working in those crazy sound clips.

Preston said during a break that they keep from tripping over each other through the use of hand signals. Balderdash. These guys have a kind of psychic rhythm or incredibly intuitive breathing/timing sensitivity ... no pause goes unfilled. Then after the rush, silence, relaxing, more conversation, casual, no panic.

Sound effects are just a touch away on a monitor in the studio. This is just one screenful on Casey's monitor. By clicking tabs and opening other folders, he explained, he can pick from more than 500. Steve has another 500 or more on his computer. When you switch jobs, as happened when this crew got the ax by Y100, it can be days of work to download and reupload all of these collected files, Casey said.

Yikes, look at all those buttons and knobs and sliders on that console in front of Preston. You'd think the guy previously worked at NASA as he explains how these switches control feeds of all sorts, maybe a dozen or more possibilities, from this studio and the room next door. Phone calls, the mikes, CDs, commercials and more.

Preston's head goes down on the console. "I'm tired," he says, as the crew collects its stuff and gets ready to go. After all, he was up at 3:30 to watch his Comcast DVR of "Lost."

That's it. No longer Live From ... WMMR.

City residents are complaining about streets still covered with "wintry mix" (snow, sleet, ice pellets, slush, take your pick). I'm heading out to check this out. If you know of a street I should visit, email me and leave a comment here. If you're in the burbs, sorry, but you can post your own report by clicking "comments" below.

Before I even get to my car, I find my first uncleared mess: It's Callowhill Street, between 14th (just as bad) and 15th. Several inches of snow and slush.

Furrows a half-foot deep face Community College of Philadelphia students as they try to slog across 14th street, along Spring Garden. Wait, there's a plow! With its plow up. Minutes before, a city spreader went by ... without spreading anything.

Some cars were spinning out trying to turn. A couple brave bicyclists were weaving their way along, but managing to keep on rolling.

No, this is for real. The grey soggy sandlike mess is even deep on Broad Street. This is at Race, just a block from Hahnemann Hospital. Ambulances and sick people use these streets.

Don't know if you can read the sign, but it says "Market Street," right in the heart of the city's busy commercial district. "Mobile"? Not very.

Now. now every street's a mess. Kelly Drive was wet and slick, and so was Eakins Oval at the Art Museum. The Ben Franklin Parkway was fairly clear as well.

Turned through five inches of the cold grainy gray claylike stuff onto Front, then just as uncleared Walnut Street to get a gander at this plow which wasn't plowing. Had a Parking Authority logo on the side. Maybe streets aren't their responsibility.

Discover America: Here's Columbus Boulevard (above and below). It's so sunny at the moment, one wonders if had this street been plowed, sun and car exhaust could have rendered even the residual slush into just a bit of slickness. Good thing it didn't rain. All this mush might be clogging the sewers, causing some flooded streets

Here's what Rose McLarin, a bank audit specialist from Mayfair, said in an email about the lack of plowing in the city:

"No big surprise, once again Harbison Avenue and Frankford Avenue are unplowed – both are snow emergency routes – neither road has even seen a salt truck. Since Street has been mayor the only time I saw a snow plow that didn’t take 24-48 hours to show up was when I was able to use a channel 10 link to send the city managing director an email. Isn’t it interesting that the politicians all have nice clear streets to drive down – not so for the rest of us poor tax payers – all we get is the shaft once again."

You can't fight City Hall, they say. So Mark Mogil, 41, who owns a building that includes a pharmacy on Cecil B. Moore Avenue, takes plowing into his own hands. With his $1,500 commercial model Ariens snow thrower -- the one with the "cast-iron transfer case," none of that aluminum stuff for him -- he clears a lot of the street itself, so customers and deliverers can park. He's far from bitter, though. Says: "The city's doing their best. We do our part ... It's part of running a business. ...On the whole, city services are pretty good." Then he adds: "Taxes could be lower."

Inside the pharmacy Lydia Durbin, 48, of Nicetown, had to share her aggravation. She rattled off the names of sloppy streets: "Allegheny ... Indiana ... Germantown Avenue ... All those streets have not been plowed. ... It's crazy. We all were complaining about it."

The temperatures are dropping. The wind is kicking up. This mush is headed for solidity, and I'm soon I'm heading home.

No longer "Live From ... Unplowed Streets." At least for today.

Ready or not, here they come: New $1 coins. Yes, after attempts with Susan. B. Anthony and Sacajawea dollars, the Treasury trying again to get Americans to save some tax money by switching to longer-lasting coins.

So today we're visiting the U.S. Mint at Fifth and Arch, where the coins are made and were designed. The idea this time: Put presidents on the coin. First up: George Washington, with the Statue of Liberty on the back.

More to come after I get there, hopefully by 11 a.m.

Philly-born John Mercanti is head of engraving at the Mint. Apprenticed here in 1974. As a sculptor-engraver. "I'm actually the last engraver on staff that did steel carving." Gravers, wood handled tools with hard steel blades are used to cut into hard steel, he explains, showing a rack of about 28 antique tools. Gold, silver carving, too. Bald Eagle print on the wall behind him.
"Myself, I've done over 100 coins and medals in my career." Leif Ericcson coin that won coin of the year in 2002 in an international competition. Statue of Liberty commemorative dollar that came out in 1986. Sculpting and design of the back of a half-dozen 50-state quarters, including the Wright Brothers plane for North Carolina, and state outline of Pennsylvania with image of the goddess Commonwealth.

The dollar program hasn't been successful in the past, he said. "I think this program will change that 180 degrees." They're more collectible, "There's going to be renewed interest every 4 for the next 10 years." Four presidents a year. "It was my job to oversee the design process ... I have a highly talented young staff, and I'm really proud of what they've done."

He picks up a coin, explains the reverse will stay the same. Don Everhart designed it. New: Has the number "$1" ... it's always been spelled out before.And get this: ON THE EDGE OF THE COIN is engraved "In God We Trust ... E Pluribus Unum ... 2007P."

Edge lettering was mandated by Congress. But the equipment didn't exist to do that lettering, so engineers here and in Washington developed the machines. In less than a year.

Tells a story about legend about Peter the Eagle, a real eagle that used to live around the Mint. The actual bird. Stuffed. He's been moved to a new area next week in the mezzanine. Artists say prayers in front of the eagle.

Not gold, but an alloy coats the coin to give it its shiny golden color.

Same size as Sacajawea dollar, so it can used in the same vending machines.

All the buzz and enthusiasm ... more than for the state quarters program. "You're going to see it in people's pockets. This program is going to put this coin in people's pockets. I'm going to make that prediction."

Companion coins -- $10 commemoratives -- will bear the image of the spouse who was married to have president at the time that he served. If no spouse, the coin will reproduce the front of a coin from that era.

He's 63, but he's not talking retirement. "Traditionally, sculptors and engravers stay here into their 80s. ... I enjoy working with young artists. I enjoy working with creative people. I enjoy bringing new people into the genre."

One more thing: Bronze medal just like the companion coin, without the text.

His pregnant wife calls ... They allow cellphones in here? Yes, but no camera, he says. No CD or DVD burners on these computers. Says security at the Mint is wary of all kinds of techy devices, like the laptop I'm using. Our security escort says it wouldn't be allowed if he weren't here.

On Menna's computer is scanned-in copy of his original pencil drawing of Washington. "We were provided with very specific references materials from the U.S. Mint headquarters in D.C. In this case it was a Gilbert Stuart portrait." His design was also chosen for the front of the Jefferson dollar, third in the series. The unveiling of his Washington design took place in Washington right next to the actual Stuart painting at the National Portrait Gallery. "That was bizarre," he says. His cubicle has pictures of scultpures he's done. Considers this work fine art. Taught sculpture and drawing in Trenton for four years ...

He's excited about this job ... We're doing things here no one else is doing on the planet, he says. ... 36, lives in Bordentown, N.J.

Handling the technical issues can be overwhelming, he says. Coin has to be able to be reproduced millions of times, stand up to constant use by the public. Not meeting Congressional deadlines is "breaking the law" he says.

5 staff artists and 10 outside master artists were eligible to submit designs for the dollar coins. "Ironically, Washington, I really didn't think I had a shot at." He was assigned to submit a Madison portrait, but his Washington and Jefferson ones were chosen. "Which is fine by me."

THIS IS THE FIRST COIN that he designed and sculpted himself, after he'd been here only six months. He's a bit in awe. "Yeah, it was great," he says. "I might work here another 20 years but this was really a unique opportunity." First coin in a flagship series. "I had a good first year."
Got a lot of support from Mercanti, he says.

A story on the wall says 10 million Sacajawea coins are still in storage.

Largest mint in the world, 35 Million coins a day.

Huge blue machines ... presses ... punch out small disc from metal that comes in big rolls, five foot in diameter, more than a foot thick. Unrolled it might be about 1/4 of a mile long.

this room is full of bins of blank disks ... the banking from the blanking press come out as flat discs ... then the edge is raising by an "upsetting machine." "It smooths the edges and enlarges the edge, " explains Tim Grant, Mint spokesman leading us through.

Below: Coins that have been "upset" come out of a pipe into a bin.