Phillyist Playlist: Bob Dylan at the Liacouras Center
What to Do with Your Transpass
Jonathan Safran Foer at the Free Library
Playlist Rewind: Stevie Wonder
Constitution Center Invites Artists to Revisit WPA
Arts & Events: November 2009 Archives
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Early in the Mourning is a new play by P. Seth Bauer, currently showing at the Plays and Players Theater. On a howling New Year's night in Massachusetts, an elderly Jewish couple try to come to terms with the loss of their son—a middle-aged, homosexual teacher of writing—whom they never quite accepted during his life. Their grieving process is first complicated by the fact that the dead son has appeared and is hanging around the house, unsure what he is supposed to be doing, and second because one of his former students, an aspiring and tortured writer, pays a late night visit, and has powerful, conflicted feelings for his old mentor.
When I previewed Stevie Wonder's upcoming performance at the Borgata, I was excited to say the very least. The event center at Borgata is large enough to hold the crowds that an artist like Stevie can draw, but it still feels intimate. My husband and I had fantastic seats and while we waited for the show to start we passed the time people-watching, which was a treat as everyone seemed to really dress up for this show. Maybe it was being at the Borgata or maybe it was the thrill of seeing Stevie Wonder in person but we felt under dressed—me in a black dress and heels and him in a suit, that's for sure. The Borgata, by the way, is one of our favorite places to catch a show when we we're down the shore. They always treat people well, especially Phillyist people, and although it's still a casino with casino-like pricing at some of their restaurants, we had no problem heading to Metropolitan and totally annihilating one of the greatest grilled cheese sandwiches we've ever had in our lives. Dinner for two (including a glass of wine apiece) was under $50.00.
Last week at the Annenberg Center, Phillyist attended a performance by trumpeter Herb Alpert and vocalist Lani Hall. Upon hearing about the show, this Phillyist's mother expressed surprise that Herb Alpert could still be alive, and indeed, the average age of the audience was remarkably high. Alpert began the show inviting these gray-haired fans to shout out questions, and by the end of the night he had realized his mistake: voices yelled, unprompted, "We love you!" or "Herb, I just want to say this: I love your music and I love your art!" Phillyist began to worry if Alpert and company would be allowed to leave the theatre at all, or whether he would be consumed in an elderly version of the finale of the movie Perfume.
Author Jonathan Safran Foer is probably best known for his works of fiction, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Everything Is Illuminated. Foer's latest effort, Eating Animals, is a new and, some say, risky non-fiction look at our food industry.
In conjunction with their Posters for the People exhibition, the National Constitution Center is inviting local artists of all ages to contribute to the WPA Poster Contest. The Works Progress Administration, for those of you who don't remember learning about it in history class, was part of FDR's New Deal in an attempt to stimulate a depressed economy and included artists, musicians, and writers back when the arts where considered an important facet of the culture.
The last time Bob Dylan went on tour in these parts, a police officer thought he was homeless and charged him with loitering. And judging from the reviews of his 47th album Christmas in the Heart, the icon's latest sound just might resemble a panhandler's plaintive tunes.
Maybe it's because I love war movies. Maybe it's because I love George Clooney. But The Men Who Stare at Goats, based on a book by Jon Ronson and directed by Grant Heslov (a distant relative-of-a-relative by marriage, but that's not really pertinent), was definitely on my list of most-anticipated movies of 2009. The film, which is based on more truth than you'd like to believe (a paraphrase of the opening title card), follows a reporter's quest to learn more about an elite group of psychic soldiers, nicknamed "Jedi warriors," also features (as Allison so eloquently put it in today's CinePhillyist) "Obi-Won, Kaiser Soze, and The Dude"—a cast list that at once made me giddy with anticipation and totally nervous that the movie wouldn't do its cast justice.
We've been waiting for this tour since the "Very Last" Reggie and the Full Effect show at the TLA in September of 2008. Back then The Get Up Kids reunion and Someting to Write Home About 10th Anniversary Live DVD was just a rumbling on the internet. Fortunately, a rumor fueled by James Dewees is a reliable one indeed. The Get Up Kids' keyboard player and Reggie founder dropped hints all along his tour that a reunion would be upcoming, and all but confirmed it during the encore at the TLA.
Ralph Covert, from Disney's Ralph's World, is coming to Philadelphia on November 8th at the World Café Live and I'm hoping he's bringing Pickles.
With weekends getting rainy and cold and just...horrible, the good city of Philadelphia has given anyone with children dozens of good reason to stay inside.
Sure, we have a bad rap for throwing snowballs at Santa, but do we deserve this title bestowed on us by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart? Phillyist wants to hear what you think!
Somewhere in the midst of the Phillies giving us one coronary after another, we lost track of the fact that we went to the Factory a couple Saturdays ago to check out a couple of our favorite live acts, Paramore (MySpace) and Paper Route (MySpace). It's not that the show was forgettable; we just get a little crazy around Phillies playoff time.
Tomorrow night, the husband and wife jazz team Herb Alpert and Lani Hall will perform songs from their new album, Anything Goes, at the Annenberg Center. Herb Alpert is a trumpet-playing legend: an eight-time Grammy® winner, bandleader of the Tijuana Brass and co-founder of A&M records. Among the friends of Phillyist with longer memories, Herb is famous for his 1965 album Whipped Cream, the cover of which displayed a rather attractive woman wearing nothing but. This time around, however, Herb is performing with his wife, Lani Hall, a Grammy® winning vocalist since the 1960s—we expect both musicians to be fully clothed. They are playing in Philadelphia for one night only.
No World Series game tonight, folks, which means that you can head out to see what's actually going on in the Philadelphia area—as long as you aren't relying on SEPTA to get you there.
You might know comedian Jim Florentine (MySpace) best as Special Ed from the Comedy Central show Crank Yankers. (You know, where you laughed, but then thought you might just be going to hell for laughing?) Phillyist got a chance to talk to Florentine before he yanks your cranks this week with a four-night run at Helium Comedy Club.
You may have caught this on our Twitter feed over the weekend, but after homering twice last night, we thought this love letter to Chase Utley was especially deserved.
Here's one for the standup comedy junkies: Comedy.com has posted their list of 10 funniest comedians in Philadelphia. (Even better, they didn't go with "Phunniest," for which we must give them mad props.)
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if my dad was a militant slam poet who used eardrum shattering electronic beats and industrial hip-hop to communicate his message of individualism, anti-conformity and transcending the shackles of racism that have affected him so deeply.
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