Philadelphia Weekly

Watch soccer star Abby Wambach kick Irish ass.

>>Kicking Balls

U.S. Women's National Team vs. Ireland

Take another look at the Olympics. Softball was unceremoniously dumped out of the games and rightly so, given that it's an inferior and sexist confection entirely designed to keep women out of baseball. In men's basketball--another sport that no other country in the world takes one-tenth as seriously as the U.S.--the NBA superstar-packed "redeem team" narrowly managed to avoid the humiliation of the 2004 games--but only by slavishly copying the rest-of-the-world's much mocked (but actually light-years ahead) passing game. No, the true glory for U.S. team sports came in the final of women's soccer when a tactically brilliant U.S. team outplayed the same technically superior Brazilian team that had humiliated them 4-0 in the semifinals of the 2007 World Cup. Lost among all the Phelps-mania, here was the real story of the games--further proof of America's integration of the world's greatest sport (it's actually more of an art form). The match against Ireland will be the U.S. Women's first post-Beijing match. Go cheer the nation's only real "world champions." (Steven Wells)

>>schwinn Peaks

The Sixth Annual Bike Part Art Show Benefit

Bikes are like liberals-- inherently dorky, great for the environment, easy to ride, vastly superior to the planet-raping alternative and unfortunately prone to generating a culture of badly dressed dickheadedness. Not cool, man. Art made from dead bikes, on the other hand, is very cool. Especially when it's auctioned to raise money for the youth programs at Neighborhood Bike Works, dedicated to fostering bike culture in working-class Philly. All kinds of art from T-shirts to greeting cards will be on display. I think the real art here, though, would be to buy a ton of the stuff, strip it down for parts and then turn it back into a boneshaker--literally the first ever bike in the history of the world to be made entirely out of art. (S.W.)

>>Brown Out

Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl

The Browns sit down for their evening meal in Anytown, USA, smiling and laughing as they prepare to devour large flanks of flesh. Heads bowed, hands clasped together, they give thanks for the carcasses they're about to receive for the nourishment of their bodies and souls, amen. As they sink their teeth into the meaty flesh, gnawing and tearing at the bones, they never stop to think about the frailty of their own existence or the possibility that one day they might slip rank on the food chain and descend a step below the creatures they call food. Geoff Sobelle of Philly's Pig Iron Theater and his partner Charlotte Ford play with the idea of the hunters becoming the hunted in Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl, a dark comedy about a world gone wrong where animals seek out human prey. Complete with taxidermy puppetry and retro audiovisuals, this apocalyptic illustration of civilization's end is performed within the abandoned walls of a 7,000 square foot pharmacy in West Philadelphia. Makes sense, no? (Jazmyn Odokemi Burton)

>>High Fire

Highwire Festival

Highwire Gallery and Fire Museum Records have teamed up to bring about the Highwire Festival, just in time to tie off this summer with some quality noise that'll inspire equal parts of excitement and confusion. The performers have been described as psychedelic so many times that their chaotic conglomeration on Frankford Ave., in front of the gallery, may just bring Humphry Osmond back from the grave. West Philly's Make a Rising will hold down the fort with their usual theatrics--somewhere between musical exquisite corpse and a schizophrenic band recital--while Helena Espvall and Katt Hernandez will sedate and immobilize with haunting string pieces on the cello and violin, respectively. Nico-esque Noa Babayof, drone-mad Zaimph and worldly Eric Carbonara provide some nice variety (although they make strange bedfellows). It seems that "the label that releases whatever pleases [them]" has the same theory in organizing shows, and that pleases us just fine. (Irina Zhorov)