Results tagged “commentary”

We told you in June that Nexus was planning a delicious exhibition, and the time has arrived: YUMMY: a celebration of craving, compulsion and culture opens tonight with a reception at the Nexus gallery from 6-9PM. The exhibit is designed to inspire "contemplation about the emotional and psychological nature of food as it impacts the individual experience of life especially within American culture," and seeks to do so through a combination of artifact (read: art pieces) and personal engagement (read: events) that celebrate craving and desire, and the culture that fosters them. You'll be able to dig in through February 1 of next year (yup, it's time to start abusing that).

When a performer is a standard bearer and larger than life in his or her field, it's hard to escape knowing who that person is, even if you only have a passing interest in his or her art. This Phillyist isn't particularly interested in cinema or dramatic theater, for example, but still knows who Orson Welles and John Barrymore are, if only vaguely. Similarly, one cannot be familiar even in passing with modern dance and not have a clue about, and probably even an opinion on, Martha Graham. She, along with the likes of Isadora Duncan (you know, the one with the scarves) and Ruth St. Denis, is credited with laying the foundation for a dance revolution in America, and the world's been reaping the benefits ever since.

...Faux Pas: Jerry Lewis? You, of all people? (Via Actress Archives.)

The best of the internet, squirted out in flavorful neon globules, just for you.

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend.

A tall, icy glass of our favorite internet junk, just for you.

A tall, icy glass of our favorite internet junk, just for you.

By his own admission, Michael Penn isn’t a song-and-dance man. (His stage presence is, one might say, subdued.) Twiddling his strings at his Friday night show at World Café, he confessed “I’m a chronic tuner with no gift of gab,” and encouraged showgoers to grab the audience mic between song breaks to offer up “a really good joke, a fun fact, even a well placed heckle!”

Films: 638 Ways to Kill Castro, Suffering Man's Charity, VHS - Kahloucha

New York native Richard Goode, piano, comes to Philadelphia (thanks to the PCMS) for an evening of hits: Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and Debussy.

Weekend's here, so most bloggers will be taking it light for the next two days. That's because most people blog from work while they're supposed to be getting things done. Yeah you. You know you do it too.

What's new and/or interesting on TV this week.

Happy birthday Bach! Well, it's a little early (3/21/1685 was his actual birthday), but Philly likes to kick things off a little early. We've included a bit of the Bach fun below, but you can find a full list of the Bach Festival of Philadelphia events here.

Martha Graham Cracker

A steaming hot pile of our favorite things from around the internets.

Who doesn't love cartoons? We know we do. We particularly love rare and vintage toons. On the other hand, we're not a big fan of doctors and medicine, but we're still pretty jazzed about The Cartoon Medicine Show, a little event going down at the Mütter Museum Thursday and Friday night this week. The museum will be open for special evening hours beginning at 5:30PM, with a reduced entrance fee, and the screenings will begin at 8PM. Featured will be "a rich sampling of rarely screened animated medical cartoons from the 1920s to the 1960s," consisting of 10 to 15 shorts "by animators both obscure and well known, including Walt Disney, Friz Freleng, Zack Schwartz, Walter Lantz, and Shamus Culhane." A couple of medical historians will even be on hand to provide expert commentary, and that's bound to be interesting. This definitely sounds like a fun time! Plus, if you're into that kind of thing, you can stroll the museum before hand and check out all the creepy oddities they have on display.

No one wants to spend Friday night at home watching television. That’s what your TiVo or DVR is for. Set it for the Sci Fi channel at 9. Why? Because we know what’s missing from your life. You need some Battlestar Galactica.

Fun around town, for $10 or less:

Or, at least, not putting up any new ones for now.



In a victory for Philadelphians and all Americans, on Friday the National Park Service announced that a proposal to enclose Independence Hall within a security fence has been scrapped [Philly.com]. If realized, the plan would have cut Independence Square in half with a six-foot tall black iron barricade, hypocritically restricting access to one of the world's most important symbols of freedom.

After releasing the plan, the NPS also allowed for a period of public commentary, accepting thoughts from citizens via their website. Apparently the people of Philadelphia and elsewhere turned up in droves to criticize the proposal, fueled by local blog protests like this one on phillyskyline.com. In that entry, author Brad Maule summarized the problem this way:



Comments from Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa) during Friday's press conference implied that the local outcry was the main reason for reconsideration of the proposal. The public's statements resonated so well, in fact, that some of the "temporary" bicycle barricades we've endured at the site for years will also be removed. Security upgrades moving forward will focus more on improving "human resources."

This is great news. Thank you, National Park Service, for trashing this ill-conceived plan.

DJ Shadow - who's playing the TLA tonight - is not a band: he's a man. His name is no cutesy moniker, either; he's really a DJ. Thus his latest album, The Outsider (released last month), is not really an album: it's just a set of tracks he's helped compile and spin for us. From track to track, it's often hard to believe you're listening to the same CD; it sounds more like a very odd playlist or mixed tape. There's the fantasy movie epic spoken-word intro track, then the Frank Sinatra-style "This Time (I'm gonna try it my way)." Then all of the sudden we get some straight-up rap tracks featuring appearances by a number of San Francisco Bay Area hip hop musicians. The topics are typical: cruising for women, living the gangsta life. But then there's the catalog of political commentary/conspiracies that is "Seein Thangs," which seems to be leading into more of the same in "Broken Levee Blues," until that becomes more of a traditional blues/rock guitar instrumental, leading into a high-speed, beat-heavy dance rock instrumental ("Artifact"), leading into the incredible fusion of genres that is "Backstage Girl," an amusing story-song about some groupie nookie which drifts from blues to jazz to rock to hip hop to rap. Before you've recovered from that, it's time for a lovely string instrumental ("Triplicate / Something Happened That Day"), and then a handful of quite excellent contemporary pop rock tracks in the style of Radiohead and Coldplay ("The Tiger," "Erase You," "You Made It") with a weird but pleasant fantasy-spoken-word-folk-Enya-Legend-soundtrack kind of thing thrown in for good measure ("What Have I Done"), before finishing up with more rap and hip hop (including the inevitable remix of a previous track).

.) (Future performances.)

It's become cool to watch family slideshows, thanks to the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players. As we explained in our ticket giveaway post (congrats again to the winner, btw!), this band is a real family of three - which includes a talented twelve-year-old girl on drums - who add their own bouncy indie pop musical commentary to a live slideshow of real photos taken by other families and collected by the band at yard sales and the like. Sounds weird and fun to us, but if you're still confused about their style and their mission, just listen to the explanatory theme and various other songs playing on their ecard, check out their MySpace page, or read about them on the R5 Productions site. This seems like the kind of band you can't really enjoy to the fullest unless you see them live, so join us down at the First Unitarian Church tonight for their all ages show.

Mission of Burma is back in Philly this weekend, playing the Church with NYC rock outfit Pela. That's right, Mission of Burma. If you don't know who Mission of Burma is, you need to go. If you do know, you already know you need to go. MoB is indeed, as it says on their website, "one of the most important American rock bands of the last 20 years." This is despite the fact that the main body of their career covered only 1979-1983, and produced only two albums worth of studio material and one rather crappy set of live recordings (entitled The Horrible Truth About Burma...that truth being that their live show is often not quite as great as their studio performances...but what can you do?). Those two albums alone make them worth listening to, full as they are of such a fantastic blend of punk/pop/rock, with such intelligent lyrics full of humor, scathing political commentary, and powerful artistic statements. But in 2004 MoB returned to the stage and the studio, picking up right where they left off with the amazing OnOffOn. And just a few months ago MoB put out a brand new disc - The Obliterati. With incredible songs like "2wice," "Man in Decline," and "Careening with Conviction," they sound just as fresh and raw and relevant on this album as if they'd formed yesterday. R5 Productions is doing the show, so check out their site for the usual colorful descriptions and awesome music files.

The shapeless dough of the internet, formed into tasty pellets and baked to perfection, just for you.

Phillyist spends a lot of time (more than it should, honestly) reading a range of British and American soccer magazines to keep up with the latest soccer news. Specifically, we read three publications from each side of the Atlantic.

We try, we try hard, but sometimes, we just can't come up with a headline. And so we'll save the commentary for later and just leave you with the other -ists.

- From the Philly LiveJournal Community, This is the City of Brotherly Love, we learn about two events taking place this very weekend: a straight-edge, vegan-friendly Scavenger Hunt and the local manifestation of the 2006 Global Cannibis March.

...Anarchy: Apparently, the Clash were really just advocating terrorist attacks. (Via The BBC)

The best of the internet, chopped into tiny bits and grilled for your enjoyment.