Raise your hand if you have a corrugated box–that probably once housed some electrical gadget, Girl Scout cookies or bulk anything–full of credit card offers, address labels, old bills or check book carbons, just sitting in the corner. It sits, the contents waiting to be shredded. And one day, perhaps,…
Where can you listen to live jazz, get loaded and get religion all in one place? OK, fine. Where, other than New Orleans, can you do all those things? Right. Seriously, now. Where can you do all those things that isn’t New Orleans or Vegas (I still don’t think Elvis…
As a librarian and an American, I’m a big fan of unwavering defenders of freedom and opponents of censorship, and Barney Rosset is one of the big ones. Rosset, as owner of Grove Press and publisher and editor-in-chief of the Evergreen Review, fought against the Establishment to assure that artists…
Today, HBO is a venerable cable institution–a go-to for quality, almost literate programming that has somehow managed to vault TV into cultural and intellectual realms where books and art films once reigned supreme. But in the early days of cable television, HBO was the channel that played Porky’s and Caddyshack…
Sweeney Todd had me captivated at, “There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit, and it’s filled with people who are filled with shit!” But did you know that the character is more than 100 years old? Sweeney Todd originally appeared in The String of Pearls, a…
It was only a matter of time before the knitting craze and the world of chick lit collided into one club, and author Kate Jacobs is the reigning president. The woman behind the soon-to-be-a-motion-picture novel The Friday Night Knitting Club and its sequel, Knit Two, just released what is sure…
Any fan of quality comedy television will instantly recognize Paul Mooney as the “Ask a Black Dude” sage or “Negrodamus” from the funniest show in decades, Chapelle’s Show, a TV show so dangerously hilarious that it amassed a die-hard cult following the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Twin…
Arkansas is one of 25 U.S. states–others include Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska–without a major sports franchise, but it does support the only minor-league baseball team that represents an entire state, the Arkansas Travelers (though one could certainly argue that certain Texas Rangers rosters probably deserved the…
Observe and Report writer-director Jody Hill makes mean-spirited tragedies that studios market as inane comedies because otherwise no one would pay a cent to see them. That’s more or less what happened to Hill’s The Foot Fist Way in 2008. Three viewings later, it’s more unclear than ever whether Danny…
The least important theme in Alan Bennett’s wonderful play The History Boys is that a great teacher can also be a bad person. Hector, an overweight, 60ish instructor at a lower-tier English college prep for boys, is a popular eccentric who believes in the power of big ideas and the…
Pundits agree: The 2008 election has finally and forever rung down the curtain on America’s longest-running psychodrama, namely the Boomerography, aka the ’60s. The long, strange trip is finally over. Still, a few stories remain to be told or retold. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 marks a particular 40th anniversary—not Richard…
The stammered, oh-so-polite, made-up telephone conversations. The wry, deadpan, gently satirical delivery. Comedian Bob Newhart is the guy you wanted to be your uncle, the funny one who cracks up the dinner table at Thanksgiving. At 79, Newhart has become the sort of entertainer pretentious people call “a national treasure.”…
Three is a magic number in popular culture. Trilogies abound in literature (Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy), film (The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, etc.) and television (CSIs Miami, New York and Las Vegas). Joseph Campbell would probably say that the trilogy is a productive way to expose layers and…
Ron White, the hard-drinkin’, hard-livin’, foul-mouthed comedian, is the highlight of the Blue Collar Comedy collaboration, making it (almost) worth your time to sit through a Jeff Foxworthy routine. White, also known as Tater Salad, saunters into the spotlight with a scotch in one hand and a cigar in the…
You know that guy at every party who claims to have a degree in “mixology” while turning out the foulest concoctions ever, trying to impress the ladies? He’s probably not a real mixologist. But they do exist, and they can teach us a few things. Mixologist Sten Lilja hosts Friday…
Lately, when I’m at art galleries, I find myself thinking, “This piece would be so much better if it had skulls. Or birds. Or birds perched on skulls.” I must not be the only one. Through Saturday, the visionaries at Kettle Art are hosting Birds vs. Skulls, a 58-piece showcase…
Whatever happened to the good ol’ days of tossing back booze indiscriminately? Now we have to learn how to taste and savor everything we drink, as though the alcohol content wasn’t already enough. Maybe becoming an aficionado of liquors makes a nice excuse for binge drinking—six shots of sake can’t…
Denis Leary and Bill Hicks were friends until Leary’s No Cure for Cancer, which featured jokes suspiciously similar to Hicks’ material. That prompted Hicks to steam, “I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punch lines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.” Hicks’ death…
We all remember George Washington Carver’s work with peanuts–he invented 105 recipes employing peanuts, and made peanut-based cosmetics, dyes, paint and nitroglycerin. But Carver, born a slave in Missouri, deserves to be known for more than peanut butter, which he didn’t even actually invent. That organic salad you’re crunching is…
There are a few schools of thought on how to fill empty walls in a new house. You can go dark and moody, with an auction piece from some little-known Serbian painter, or hang some pastel beach scenes for that “Motel 6 in Galveston” vibe. You could go conceptual, with…
Tall in the Saddle: Cowgirls, Ranch Women and Rodeo Gals collects black and white photographs by Ann Meredith that span 17 years and provide an intimate glimpse into the lives of women in the West. Countering stereotypes, the images prove that women contribute as much to the rodeo circuit and…
The word “stimulate” is a contender for the most popular term in today’s political jargon. Stimulate the economy. Stimulate growth and opportunity. Stimulus packages. For some, this rhetoric is a stimulant for goodwill, patriotism and hope. For others, it stimulates the gag reflex. Oh, ideological concepts, you tricky devils in…
