Thursday, September 4 Our favorite board games from childhood involved brightly colored mats and cute little place markers. We loved Candyland. But we wouldn’t call it art. The Mexican children’s game called Loteria, however, appears in visual art, but–in addition to being colorful–it has meaning behind it, with cards marked…
The most common misconception about Lewis Black, the once-weekly commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is that he’s an angry, angry man. Certainly, he gives off all the signals of the furious: His voice, the rumble of the chain-smoker who spends his time yelling at passers-by on street…
9/5 Ah, those hot days at Traders Village. You know the place. The smell of pickles and popcorn filling the air. Your accidental step in a pink glob of gum that baked all day in the sun just for you to goo your shoe. Those great knockoff T-shirts that fade…
9/7 The seventh annual 9-Ball Billiard Tournament at Hawley’s Billiards continues Sunday (from Pugsley’s Library the day before), and with it comes a renewed resolve in my life. This resolve is a two-headed hydra bent simultaneously on the annihilation of anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to oppose me in a…
9/5 Children are so easily influenced, emulating parents, peers and the television, for better or worse. See, it’s all your fault. Be a better influence already. Gather the neighborhood posse and minivan it to the Skillman Southwestern Branch Library on Friday at 3:30 p.m. when Aesop’s Fables II: Electric Boogaloo…
9/5 The Pan American Art Gallery opens another season Friday with a reception for new show Landscapes of the Americas. The gallery, which carries one of the world’s largest collections of Cuban, Haitian and Jamaican art, is expanding, with the goal of eventually including artists from all across the Americas,…
9/6 If you know who Renée Fleming is, do not read this concert preview. Because if you know her name, then you are quite aware that she is, arguably (an argument you will lose), the biggest opera star in America today. You know she sang “Amazing Grace” and “God Bless…
Sin Noticias de Dios, retitled Don’t Tempt Me for U.S. release, didn’t fare too well in Spain upon its release there in December 2001, despite its cast of faces famous and almost famous; it wasn’t quite Gigli, but damned near. The reasons for its tanking like a boxer taking a…
Those who remember Javier Bardem as the heartthrob poet from Before Night Falls, or the distinguished detective in The Dancer Upstairs, may be shocked to find that in his latest film to reach these shores, Mondays in the Sun, the Latin hunk is balding, bearded and fat. Admittedly, he may…
On Sunday, HBO will air the final episode of what has been the most consistently entertaining–and aggravating–show of the summer television season. Project Greenlight will fade to black, and the people who populated the series–the first-time screenwriter who’s had the optimism beaten out of her, the rookie directors who’ve had…
Twin beds or no, Rob and Laura Petrie danced a lot of bedroom bossa nova out there in New Rochelle. In those tight capri pants and pointy little slippers, darling Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) embodied the Hefneresque vision of the suburban ’60s sex kitten. The Dick Van Dyke Show somehow…
Of late the cast of Animal House has been making the film-fest and talk-show rounds promoting a movie celebrating its 25th birthday; what else does poor John Landis have to do save celebrate a career highlight that fades a little bit more each time one of his movies gets released…
Thursday, August 21 It’s ironic that Cantoni–the “design store” known for its sleek-lined, vividly colored furniture that we, as almost graceful, very considerate adults, would be terrified to sit on–is hosting a benefit for the Dallas Children’s Museum, which lets rugrats run around, hands covered in finger paint with hats…
This is when all struggling artists wish they were on the staff at Monica Greene’s Ciudad. Of all the population who has ever been a waiter, a bartender, a busboy or a cook, chances are it’s a rarity that any one has ever had the restaurant he works for showcase…
8/23 When I was 20, I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book affected me profoundly. At least I think it did. Like a lot of things from my 20s, I recall only the highlights. I remember that the main dude had a philosophizing nutjob alter ego–wasn’t…
8/25 Maybe you’ve watched them–wafer-thin, 4-foot-tall munchkins scrambling effortlessly up the climbing walls at Galyan’s sporting-goods store or REI. You look down wistfully at your own doughy midriff, feel your spindly upper arms and think, “Fall, you little snots, fall!” No, wait. Did we just type that? Heh-heh. What we…
8/21 Let the sociologists bemoan the tot-culture franchise machine. Sure, very young kids are hooked early by arguably benign tube-born icons. They watch and then wail for shoes, cereal, juice and backpacks with the beloved images. Parents realize quickly if they buy ’em, the kids will wear ’em, eat ’em,…
8/21 Hollywood wasn’t the first to be fascinated with the American West. Decades before moviemakers began cranking out westerns in the 1930s, artists ventured beyond the Mississippi River to document the landscape and native peoples of the frontier’s prairies. Swiss artist Karl Bodmer made some of the first paintings of…
8/22 Call us crazy, but we’re not big fans of BET’s Comic View. Sure, we’re glad that for once there’s something on television besides rap-music-video-booty-athon Flava on late Friday nights, and we’re suckers for some good ol’ stand-up. But it’s not just the editing of 20 different comedians’ routines into…
Kevin Costner appeared in his first western when he was 30 and looked to be in his early 20s. He was a slender, restless actor in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado, the 1985 film in which Costner played the blithe brother of a somber Scott Glenn–all giggles and gunshots, a noisemaker always…
The praising of Hollywood summertime cinema is the pastime of pale critics who, come late July, start to wonder what the strange yellow orb is hanging in the sky. Hence the gallons of kind ink spilled over some of the season’s sequels, which shipped spoiled but were guzzled nonetheless by…
The last thing the Roman Catholic Church needs at this point is another exposé of its misdeeds. The shock of the pedophilia scandals and of the official cover-ups isn’t going away anytime soon, and when last we looked, the former bishop of the Phoenix Diocese was out on $45,000 bail…
