For seven years, Marin Alsop has steadily led a major regional orchestra and vigorously maintained a double life as a highly sought-after guest conductor, all the while forging her own style after lingering in the shadows of her apprenticeship to one of the world’s musical geniuses, the late Leonard Bernstein…
When sex-advice columnist Dan Savage sat down to write a book about how he and his partner adopted a baby, he was determined it wouldn’t become “another boring book about parenthood,” all full of gush and sentiment. He succeeded. Savage will never be known as the Erma Bombeck of gaydom,…
More worldly wise than yesteryear’s bar-hoppers, yet every bit as desperate for companionship, the characters in I Love You, You¹re Perfect, Now Change long to secure intimacy without subjecting themselves to courtship’s absurdities. As these legions of swingers, loners and dreamers discover, though, there are reasons (including one or two…
Like any nation governed by an imperious busybody, the grassroots environs of Insectavia regularly buzz about with gossip and intrigue. The tiny duchy’s ant queen — who justifies her absolute authority by claiming to be the kingdom’s wisest inhabitant — has offered one-half of the treasury to any segmented, six-legged…
Before home runs got as cheap as bubble gum, the great Detroit Tiger slugger Hank Greenberg stood out as one of just ten major-league players who had hit fifty or more dingers in a season. In that, the original Hammerin’ Hank’s company was rare: Ruth, Foxx, Wilson, Kiner, Mize, Mantle,…
t has taken moviemakers and, more crucially, foot-dragging movie investors almost a decade to catch up with rave culture — the heady mix of secret warehouses, electronic music, designer drugs and ecstatic dancing that has come to define the yearning and the restlessness of a generation. But now the 5…
or most Americans, the social and political issues underlying José Luis Cuerda’s Butterfly seem remote. The tensions between republicans and fascists in Spain after the fall of that nation’s monarchy in 1931, as well as dictator Francisco Franco’s victory in the bloody Spanish Civil War, may have stirred strong feelings…
Motorcycles were built to roam the big, beautiful landscapes of the West. Despite the cycle’s mythical status, however, our part of the country has only two museums dedicated to two-wheeled wonders. One of these is located, appropriately, in Sturgis, South Dakota. The other is the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Museum in…
I hereby invite you to Indian Hills for the Fourth of July. Indian Hills is neither a suburban golf course, nor a chi-chi gift shop that sells Zuni fetishes, nor a theme park. It’s a rural enclave (pop. 2,500) located thirty minutes from downtown Denver, and it’s been my hometown…
Had Julian Glover not broken his leg at the beginning of January, its quite likely he would be off filming a movie. But, Glover reminds, having a broken leg in the movie business is like being pregnant in the movie business: “It lasts five years,” meaning casting agents dont phone…
Esteban Millan leans over his desk and transfers the thin paintbrush that is clutched between his lips to the brace on his right hand, curving his mouth slightly in order to guide the paintbrush with his head. Tiny purple lines slowly appear on the lamp that he is making to…
Listen up, people: Forget you ever believed in the stereotype of the stone-faced Indian right now, this instant. Sherman Alexie will have none of that, and he’s entitled. One of modern literature’s most talented and committed newcomers, the Spokane Indian fiction writer can shatter that stoic mug with a single…
The appeal of minimalism, in any of its many stylistic guises, is based on the aesthetic philosophy that less is more — even when, as in pattern painting, that idea is not strictly honored. Modern art has embraced the minimal component for nearly a hundred years. It began with the…
Theres a rumor that has been spreading through the art world for months: that one of the states most accomplished artists, Bill Stockman, is set to pull up stakes in the fall and move to, of all places, Philthy-delphia. Now, I was born in Philly, and I can tell you…
The dynamic that develops between student and teacher can either strengthen the intellect or destroy it, depending on either party’s ability to distinguish pedagogy from thought control. Sound confusing? Wait until you enter the landscape of the mind peopled by three “educators” in Fakulty Frolix. The loosely related trio of…
Two years ago, Cirque du Soleil’s Quidam so enthralled local audiences that most people waited until they were well outside the blue-and-yellow big top before asking of the bizarre storyline, “What did it all mean?” This time around, the Montreal troupe’s high-flying virtuosity proves just as impressive in Dralion, a…
Nick Park speaks so softly that the tape recorder barely registers him at all. His is a whisper of a voice, the sound of a man who has spent years in isolation talking to no one but himself. Transcribing an interview with him is like trying to decipher a mans…
In the new Jim Carrey farce, Me, Myself & Irene, the rubber-faced comedian plays a meek Rhode Island state trooper named Charlie whose aggressions are so pent-up that they finally have to break out in the form of a second personality called “Hank.” Where Charlie silently endures potty-mouthed curses from…
Istvan Szabo’s Sunshine, which he’s directed in English, aspires to epic sweep and Tolstoyan grandeur. It runs almost three hours. But there’s still a breathless, hurried quality that doesn’t suit its many tangled dramas very well. The impeccably literate Hungarian director (best known in the United States for his 1981…
About nine years ago, in a humble nightclub, urbane British folk singer Billy Bragg reappraised twentieth-century politics — as is often his Socialist wont — by means of an intriguing correlation. Might it be, he postulated, that contemporaries Leon Trotsky and Harlan Sanders were not merely striking doppelgangers, but, in…
Before we see anything in Croupier, the new film from director Mike Hodges and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, we hear the grainy whir of the ball spinning around the rim of a roulette wheel. When the image of the wheel appears, the sound drops out, to be replaced by the affectless…
The latest designs from the top fashion houses are trashy. And we’re not talking about the current collection of see-through slip/dresses hanging off of slutty-looking models. These really are trash. Some of the fashion world’s most elite designers have forgotten all about silk and sequins, turning instead to garbage to…
