Inqlings: WPHT yanks Frank from Friday

Friday With Frank

: Nov. 11, 1955-Dec. 31, 2010.

Sid Mark, who's been ring-a-ding-dinging the sounds of Frank Sinatra for 55 years, has learned that WPHT-AM will eliminate his Friday radio program.

Sunday With Sinatra - Mark's five-hour marquee show (8 a.m. to 1 p.m.) - is not going anywhere, he's been told. He expects to inform his audience Sunday morning about the imminent change.

WPHT (the Big Talker 1210) is retooling its lineup over New Year's, moving morning talker Michael Smerconish to 3 to 7 p.m. and eliminating the syndicated talk shows of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity (who have not yet found new Philadelphia stations).

WPHT has not announced who will follow Smerconish at 7.

Friday nights were a challenge from spring till fall, when Phillies games affected Mark's 6-to-9 p.m. time slot. For a spell several years ago, Friday night Phillies games were carried on WIP-AM (610), lest they bump Sidney.

That a Sinatra show exists on a talk station is testament to the appeal and passion of Mark, who joined WPHT one month after the death of his longtime station, WWDB, in 2000. WWDB had briefly shifted the Friday show to Saturdays.

Mark's Sinatra affiliation began in November 1955 when the overnight rock-and-roll DJ on WHAT-AM failed to show up for work and Mark, a jazz spinner, solicited requests because he had no playlist. From 2 to 3 a.m., Mark played Sinatra, and all station owner Dolly Banks had to hear was that the phones had lit up.

The Spaghetti Warehouse at 1026 Spring Garden St. gave a lump of coal last week to its 50-plus workers: Monday will be the last day after 191/2 years. No comment from the corporate office in Texas.

The Four Seasons has a seamless way of handling change in kitchen management. Three days after fielding the resignation of David Jansen, chef at the Fountain restaurant for 10 years, the hotel announced the promotion of William DiStefano, an 11-year veteran.

When Bravo assembles highlights of

Top Chef All Stars

, the favorite clip probably won't be a happy chef. It will be

Jennifer Carroll

's profanity-laced meltdown in front of the judges over a pork-belly-and-eggs dish. "The 'Philadelphia' came out in me," says the Somerton-bred chef at 10 Arts at the Ritz-Carlton, recounting Wednesday's ouster from the reality series, which has assembled chefs from previous seasons. "Sometimes that attitude and aggression shows through. But I went down swinging. I was upset, and I got emotional. I didn't want to go home." Now, nearly four months after the taping, Carroll says she wishes she'd had more time to conceptualize her dish and wants people to know that she apologized to the judges. On a sad note, the next morning was the funeral of her grandmother

Joan Lynch

, one of her inspirations, who died at 86.

Alex Bartasius

, 13, an eighth grader at Medford Memorial Middle School, is the envy of all her friends. Alex says she was in the aisle, shooting photos, at the Susquehanna Bank Center Wednesday night during the Q102 Jingle Ball. "Two people were looking at me, and they looked like VIPs, and they were like, oh, my God: 'Do you want to be

Justin Bieber

's "one less lonely girl"?' "

They gave her a pass, whisked her backstage for a bit, and led her to a chair onstage, where the teen popper sang his hit "One Less Lonely Girl" to her. "I was sitting there, and he was rubbing my face and looking right into my eyes, and he gave me flowers," Alex says. "It was so amazing. At the end, he kissed my cheeks and I hugged him."

Justin 'n' Alex were a One Time thing, to borrow a Bieber title. TMZ.com reports that Bieber and Selena Gomez were, like, totally holding hands while eating pancakes at the IHOP on Walnut Street before the Q102 show.

April 1 is now the national wide-release date for

Tim Chambers

' movie

The Mighty Macs

, which Sony's Provident Films has picked up for a March Madness-timed tip-off. The film, which won all kinds of prizes on the indie circuit, follows the 1972 Immaculata basketball team's unlikely national championship.

The Mighty Macs

- known previously as

Our Lady of Victory

- was filmed here in 2007 with

Carla Gugino

,

David Boreanaz

, and

Ellen Burstyn

.

Tickets ($10) go on sale at 9 a.m. Tuesday through ComcastTIX for WIP's gustatory battle, Wing Bowl, on Feb. 4 at the Wells Fargo Center. Proceeds go to the Fraternal Order of Police's Survivor Fund and other charities to be named later.

Peter R. Kowey

, the noted Main Line cardiologist, says his debut novel,

Lethal Rhythm

(Pavilion Press;

» READ MORE: www.lethalrhythm.net

), came about while he sat in on a malpractice trial as an expert witness. "The doctor was practically psychotic" at the accusations, Kowey says. "I remember thinking that it would be a good idea to tell the story about the impact this has on doctors. They have insurance, and people think it's fine, but it leads to practicing defensive medicine." Kowey's taut plot is a heart-stopper - a Main Line cardiologist's life spirals out of control after he is accused of malpractice.

Steve Lopez is out with Dreams & Schemes (Camino Books), a collection of his columns from the L.A. Times. Land of Giants: Where No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (1995) collected columns he did for The Inquirer.

Oh, that Charlie Manuel. The Phillies skipper and fiancee Missy Martin share a cake recipe in From Our Home to Yours: A Collection of Phillies Recipes, a cookbook that Phillies Wives did as a fund-raiser for Covenant House ($20 through the Phillies clubhouse store and phillies.com). As you'd surmise from the folksy Manuel, Milky Way Cake is simple: a box of yellow cake mix, a stick of butter, and six cut-up candy bars. Manuel explains that he picked up the idea from the wife of Cleveland Indians pitcher Paul Shuey, who baked one and sent it to the ballpark for Shuey's birthday. "I was tossed during the game and ate the whole cake while watching the game from the clubhouse," Manuel confesses. Ah, those days before NutriSystem.