Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com

How To Be Good at the Future

webmaster[a]phx.com(CHRIS FARAONE) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:48:21 GMT

Tap into technology and make yourself a Master of Tomorrow
One of these days, when the Doc Brown and McFly jokes dry up, you'll have no choice but to start thinking seriously about the future. Not just tomorrow, and the day after, but the next several hundred years, since lifespans are on track to skyrocket.

One of these days, when the Doc Brown and McFly jokes dry up, you'll have no choice but to start thinking seriously about the future. Not just tomorrow, and the day after, but the next several hundred years, since lifespans are on track to skyrocket.

The Greater Boston region, despite being one of the oldest 'hoods in America, is a terrific place to prep for 2020 and beyond. For one thing, the city facilitates a Citizens' Committee for Boston's Future — a think tank composed of experts from fields including the arts and life sciences, whose collective mission aims to attract and retain tech and business talent. Individuals are also empowered here; those who are technologically curious can stuff their calendars with any number of tomorrow-minded meet-ups, from the Boston Media Makers (free) and Boston Book Futurists (free) to the increasingly essential Mass Innovation Nights (free). Like Boston boy Paul Revere, locals are awakening folks to looming developments. Time to saddle up.

Make it last
While it's fun to think about the high-tech goodies we'll all enjoy one day, it's important to first consider how we'll pay for them. Unless you like inspecting shopping carts at wholesale stores, we recommend "Take Command of Your Money Future" ($40) at the Boston Center for Adult Education (BCAE), or the slightly pricier "Smart Choices in Retirement" ($44) at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education (CCAE). At the latter, "you'll learn 10 principles to help make your money last, with the goal of providing a stable, steady retirement income." Ski mask, duct tape, shotguns, and getaway car not included.

Unlocking knowledge

webmaster[a]phx.com(NINA MACLAUGHLIN) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:51:09 GMT

From OpenCourseWare to co-ops, area schools are taking their learning outside the classroom
Back in 2000, when Google was two years old and the all-for-naught panic over a worldwide Y2K meltdown had subsided, the MIT faculty had to answer two questions: how is the Internet going to change education? And what are we going to do about it?

Back in 2000, when Google was two years old and the all-for-naught panic over a worldwide Y2K meltdown had subsided, the MIT faculty had to answer two questions: how is the Internet going to change education? And what are we going to do about it?

Distance learning was about to take off, and there was money to be made. Some MIT professors were already in the habit of posting their course materials online so that students could access them informally. But when monetizing this practice became a possibility, people got concerned that the business model ran counter to the school's mission — a commitment to generate, disseminate, and preserve knowledge.

So they took a step back. "We said, 'Let's stop thinking about money," says Stephen Carson, the director of external affairs of MIT OpenCourseWare, "and start thinking about what we can do to create benefit.' " They asked themselves: what's the Internet good at? (Spreading information widely.) What's MIT good at? (The classroom experience.) The faculty drew up a 10-page report making a case for why the conventional distance-learning model wasn't the right route to take. On top of that report — a one-page memo with a bold statement: let's give everything away for free.

"It was terribly audacious," says Carson.

'Empowering minds'
Such was the birth of MIT OpenCourseWare, the Web-based publication of virtually all course content from the graduate and undergraduate subjects taught at MIT. The site now welcomes an average one million visitors per month with the tagline: "Unlocking knowledge, empowering minds. Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. No registration required." It's a system that means Kunle Adejumo, an engineering student at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, can supplement and complement the materials and experience he's getting at his own school, which has limited resources and computer access.

MLK's ghost visits the ghost of Detroit

webmaster[a]phx.com(DAVID KISH) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:27:17 GMT

Hoopleville
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s posthumous return to Motown.

171 ski events to do this winter

webmaster[a]phx.com(PHOENIX STAFF) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:15:08 GMT

Ride out the snowpocalypse the fun way
We've got everything from the Winter Dew Tour at Killington to the Gravity Control Rail Jam at Smugglers’ Notch.

Review: Canary Square

webmaster[a]phx.com(ROBERT NADEAU) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:21:01 GMT

Remaking a popular spot in Jamaica Plain
Where are the canaries? There are no canaries here. This gastropub is on Jamaica Plain's William E. Canary Square, marked with a sign few read in memory of Corporal Canary, who died in World War I.

GENERIC CANARIES Like a lot of the items on the Canary Square menu, these jerk chicken wings are good, but not outstanding.

Where are the canaries? There are no canaries here. This gastropub is on Jamaica Plain's William E. Canary Square, marked with a sign few read in memory of Corporal Canary, who died in World War I. The attempt at localization has two weaknesses. First, it doesn't really cover up the generic quality of this restaurant, which is part of a small chain including Coda and Common Ground; second, it doesn't erase memories of what was previously here: the Alchemist, which had strong ties to the community and had become a neighborhood meeting place and music venue, in its semi-Gothic way. The new owners have opened up the space to a single room and stripped back to bare brick and ceiling beams (spray-painted black so we know it is a gastropub). They have, on the whole, greatly upgraded the bar and beer programs, and somewhat improved the food, although the Alchemist was serviceable enough. They announced music, but there isn't room for a stage.

There also isn't bread. The high price of wheat has reached the restaurant universe. Canary Square cleverly offers house-made bread-and-butter pickles instead of bread and butter. They are crisp and sweet-sour, and dissolve any grudge about starch (which is restored among the entrées by a generous use of whipped potatoes, as at Coda).

Great Taste Diner

webmaster[a]phx.com(MC SLIM JB) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:16:38 GMT

Living up nicely to a slightly boastful name
Were I a marketing consultant, I'd tell restaurateurs not to describe any item they serve as "best in the city" or "cooked to perfection."

Were I a marketing consultant, I'd tell restaurateurs not to describe any item they serve as "best in the city" or "cooked to perfection." Similarly, grandiose restaurant names just invite skepticism. "Promote," I'd urge, "but don't oversell." Great Taste Diner will raise some eyebrows with its name, especially as a lot of its humble predecessor, Danny's Diner, is still hanging around: the decrepit sidewalk sign, the same short-order cook, the standard-issue American hash-house menu. There's the familiar plate of eggs, home fries, and toast ($4.25, plus $2 for sausage, ham, or bacon); the same good French toast or pancakes ($5, plus $2.50 for above-average fresh-fruit toppings); old-timey lunch and dinner standbys like BLTs ($5.75), tuna melts ($6.25), chicken noodle soup ($3.50/cup, $4.75/bowl), and Italian-American pastas ($8.75). These will satisfy, but not wow.

But the sunny, modest 30-seat room has fresh paint in tones of paprika, pumpkin, and avocado, plus some Peruvian décor elements. That new accent extends to the menu, where you can now get a breakfast sandwich of butifarra ($6.25), fried sliced chicharrón topped with onion salad on a good roll with sweet-potato fries. Dinner options include lomo saltado ($9.75), a hefty stir-fry of strips of steak or chicken with tomato, red onion, fresh cilantro, and outstanding fried potatoes, plus a big side of good rice. Shrimp in ají (10.75) tops a pile of medium sautéed shrimp with an intense, sunshine-yellow sauce of ají peppers and garlic, with starchy, potato-like boiled yucca on the side. Presumably for gringos baffled by Peruvian fare, there are Mexican items like phenomenal huevos rancheros ($6.75), two eggs atop crisp flour tortillas layered with well-seasoned pinto beans, tomato crudo, melted queso blanco, a beautiful hunk of fresh avocado, and a drizzle of crema.

Interview: Chloë Sevigny

webmaster[a]phx.com(CAMILLE DODERO) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:55:27 GMT

On acting, freaks, nerd roles, the end of Big Love, and why she doesn't want to be any more famous than she is
For the record, Chloë Sevigny is not dating Jersey Shore 's Pauly D.

NEW YORK — For the record, Chloë Sevigny is not dating Jersey Shore's Pauly D. Last week, the Big Love actress and the Situation's less sinister sidekick were photographed courtside at a Knicks game, and gossip blogs gleefully speculated they were an item. But seriously, people? "I was just looking at his hair," says Sevigny, the same week. Amused and mortified by the thought of them coupling (her tone suggests more of the latter), the 36-year-old alterna-kid icon swears she's only seen Jersey Shore "a few times" and only said "one thing" to him the entire game. Mostly, she was mystified by his blown-out guido crown. "It looked like . . . egg yolk. Or Elmer's Glue. [His hair] had a white glaze thing kind of happening and I was like, 'How the fuck? Does he go upside down? What's the process?' I should have asked him, but I didn't think that engaging him would be worth it — not to be mean or rude, I was really interested in the basketball game."

Also for the record, Sevigny finds herself clarifying statements a lot more than she'd like. Last year, the Springfield, Massachusetts–born New Yorker called season four of Big Love — the HBO polygamist melodrama in which she co-stars as Nicki Grant, one of Bill Paxton's three onscreen wives, the fundamentalist daughter of a criminal false prophet — "awful." The word just slipped out during an interview with The Onion AV Club, and she's since apologized profusely to the show's writers. But sitting across from her at Café Orlin in the East Village, to promote Big Love's fifth and final season, it's easy to see how this happens. Chloë Sevigny is not a media-trained Hollywood creation, she's a lifelong East Coaster who grew up hanging with skateboard kids and happened to fall into acting (thanks to her friendship with Kids/Gummo writer/director Harmony Korine). In conversation, she's funny, self-aware, and sardonic — and her profession of pretending to be other people seems like the least fake thing about her. Frankly, she's kind of awesome. You'll see.

HBO's Big Love shows us the inequalities in every marriage, writ large

webmaster[a]phx.com(EUGENIA WILLIAMSON) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:55:14 GMT

Big Patriarchy
For four seasons and five years, HBO's Big Love has dominated the edgy-soap-opera niche once inhabited by Six Feet Under .

For four seasons and five years, HBO's Big Love has dominated the edgy-soap-opera niche once inhabited by Six Feet Under. Having tweaked the well-worn family-drama genre to make room for Mormon fundamentalist polygamy, Big Love has become a funhouse mirror of contemporary American marriage. The show has succeeded in making the lives of a man, his three wives, and their myriad children appear almost normal.

On a recent visit home to Chicago, I sat at a neighborhood bar with three of my best girlfriends. As we sipped our drinks, I told them which sister wife they most reminded me of. Sensible Bekah was Barb, crafty Sarah was Nicki, and perky Kate was Margene. Rather than throw their drinks in my face, my friends welcomed these appellations, identifying with the sister wives as easily as they might identify with Carrie or Samantha.

The wives are so easy to relate to, in fact, that people often overlook the best part of the show: Lois Henrickson, the wizened, bug-eyed mother of patriarch Bill Henrickson. While praising Sensible, Crafty, and Perky, many miss sour, glorious Lois. Twin Peaks alumna Grace Zabriskie's performance is a revelation: whether she's wheedling, shaming someone, or lying outrageously, Lois always appears to be sucking a lemon. Her pursed lips and twitchy glower steal every scene, yet she never descends into caricature. For this, Zabriskie's empathic grotesquerie puts her in league with Peter Lorre.

Desert Storm: How the GOP and the Sunset State nurture the lunatic fringe

webmaster[a]phx.com(DAVID S. BERNSTEIN) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 01:02:37 GMT

Tragedy in Tucson re-opens the question of the GOP's dangerous embrace of extremists
Two days before Saturday's horrific shooting in Tucson, Arizona, which gravely wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and left six people dead, a woman disrupted the reading of the US Constitution on the floor of the US House of Representatives by loudly appealing to Jesus to intercede against the foreign-born usurper of the presidency, Barack Obama.

Two days before Saturday's horrific shooting in Tucson, Arizona, which gravely wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and left six people dead, a woman disrupted the reading of the US Constitution on the floor of the US House of Representatives by loudly appealing to Jesus to intercede against the foreign-born usurper of the presidency, Barack Obama. Hours after that deranged outburst, Brian Williams of NBC News gave Republican Speaker John Boehner an opportunity to firmly distance himself and his party from such lunacy, in a televised interview. Boehner declined:

WILLIAMS You've got 12 members co-sponsoring legislation [that questions Obama's American birth]. Would you be willing to say, "This is a distraction, I've looked at it to my satisfaction. Let's move on?"

BOEHNER The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That's good enough for me.

WILLIAMS Would you be willing to say that message to the 12 members in your caucus who seem to either believe otherwise or are willing to express doubt and have co-sponsored legislation?

BOEHNER. . . there are 435 of us. We're nothing more than a slice of America. People come, regardless of party labels, they come with all kinds of beliefs and ideas. It's the melting pot of America. It's not up to me to tell them what to think.

This nod-and-wink embrace of insane conspiratorial anti-government ranting is the danger I outlined this past April — a blurring of lines on the political right between honest disagreement and paranoid delusion. Forget the violent imagery of Sarah Palin's (clearly inappropriate) crosshair-targeted map of Democrats like Giffords. The Republican and conservative establishment engages in something far more sinister: validating and justifying the increasingly widespread belief that Democrats are running an evil, illegitimate, unconstitutional tyranny.

American psycho

webmaster[a]phx.com(EDITORIAL) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:30:00 GMT

And the American psychosis
It will be unclear for some time whether alleged Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner will qualify for an insanity defense. But one need not be a practicing psychiatrist to see that the 22 year old is a disturbed individual.

It will be unclear for some time whether alleged Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner will qualify for an insanity defense. But one need not be a practicing psychiatrist to see that the 22 year old is a disturbed individual.

The murder of six people and the wounding of 14 others, including Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the apparent target, was not the work of a right-wing conspiracy, vast or minimal.

Rather, it was the fruit of a psyche as unhinged as those of other assassins: Mark David Chapman (John Lennon's killer), Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme (who targeted President Gerald Ford), John Hinckley Jr. (President Ronald Reagan's shooter), or Seung-Hui Cho (the mass murderer of 33 at Virginia Tech in 2007).

The misfit lone gun is as iconic, and as American, as apple pie. Holden Caulfield morphs into Patrick Bateman and packs — in the cases of Loughner and Cho — a nine-millimeter, semi-automatic Glock "Safe Action Pistol."

Priced at $499 a weapon, the Glock is considered the world's finest mass-market handgun. It is reliable to shoot, accurate, and difficult to trace because of its unique ballistics. It is a favorite of police, sportsmen, and — not surprisingly — criminals, especially gangsters. Mass murderers are still a niche market.

When Loughner was wrestled to the ground on the Tucson Safeway parking lot, his Glock was equipped with an extended magazine that police say doubled the gun's manufactured capacity. At one time, such alterations were illegal under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Thanks, however, to congressional inaction in 2004, it is now perfectly fine in most states to make an already superlatively lethal weapon twice as deadly by modifying its magazine to accommodate as many as 30 rounds.

MIT blows out 10010110 birthday candles

webmaster[a]phx.com(SHAULA CLARK) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:13:47 GMT

Sesquicentennially yours
When a whole sector of the MIT Museum goes under wraps for months, it's a surefire sign that mad science is brewing.

When a whole sector of the MIT Museum goes under wraps for months, it's a surefire sign that mad science is brewing. This past weekend, the museum finally pulled back the curtain on "The MIT 150 Exhibition," a new 150-artifact showcase celebrating the school's 150th anniversary. What wonders does the collection hold? An official Smoot ruler. A brain slice from world-famous amnesia patient H.M. A prototype for the so-called "Boston arm," the world's first cybernetic limb. Should you drop by 265 Mass Ave for the museum's free "150 and Beyond" event on January 14 — which promises opportunities to get acquainted with the Copenhagen Wheel "e-bike," partake in a slide-rule petting zoo, and "explore synthetic skin" — here are a few choice relics awaiting you:

PENDULUM BALL
MIT vets and connoisseurs of the 'tute's OpenCourseWare lectures (read more on that here) may well recognize this battle-scarred beaut from the physics lectures of Professor Walter Lewin. In his energetic attempts to drive the principles of Newtonian mathematics into your thinkmeats, Lewin has employed rifles, elephant femurs, and fire-extinguisher-powered bicycles — but perhaps none of these props is as iconic as his pendulum ball, which Lewin has been known to ride across the lecture hall, Dr. Strangelove–style.

WHIRLWIND COMPUTER CORE MEMORY UNIT
Sure, WWII was a nasty bit of business . . . but it did give us one neato computer. Whipped up by MIT at the behest of the US Navy (who wanted a flight simulator to train bomber crews) and officially unveiled in 1951, this room-filling beast — boasting more than 12,500 vacuum tubes — was the first computer to display real-time video.

Artists probe atrocities, the atmosphere, and yarn

webmaster[a]phx.com(GREG COOK) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:07:48 GMT

Research and development
For several months, Georgie Friedman has been collaborating with a couple of friends in Oregon who've been launching high-altitude balloons bearing cameras into the stratosphere. Now the Jamaica Plain artist finally debuts this æsthetic research in her show at Carroll and Sons.

EFFACED 1: Denise Marika’s images are charged but don’t always add up to more than the sum of their parts.

For several months, Georgie Friedman has been collaborating with a couple of friends in Oregon who've been launching high-altitude balloons bearing cameras into the stratosphere. Now the Jamaica Plain artist finally debuts this æsthetic research in her show at Carroll and Sons.

Above the Clouds screens each evening until 10 pm in the 12 windows of the Carroll and Sons and Anthony Greaney galleries along Harrison Avenue (through February 26). It's not clear exactly what you're seeing, but there is footage of the curving blue horizon between atmosphere above and earth below captured by the spinning balloon camera. This becomes a too simple blue blur, but the panoramic installation itself is a marvel and gives the curious sensation that the glowing Earth and space are contained inside the building.

Friedman's works can be breathtaking in video installations with sharp, specific footage. In some recent exhibits, however, she hasn't nailed that electric combination of footage and presentation. Her walk-in wave at last winter's DeCordova Biennial was a cool installation, but the watery footage projected onto the structure felt too simple and abstract. Her geyser video at Boston College during the 2009 Boston Cyberarts Festival screened sharp footage on mundane monitors.

Review: The Green Hornet

webmaster[a]phx.com(PETER KEOUGH) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:34:37 GMT

Seth, where is thy sting?
If The Green Hornet were a car, it would be less like the lethally loaded '65 black Chrysler Imperial driven by the film's heroes and more like the homonymous shitbox discontinued by Dodge in 1987.

If The Green Hornet were a car, it would be less like the lethally loaded '65 black Chrysler Imperial driven by the film's heroes and more like the homonymous shitbox discontinued by Dodge in 1987. The otherwise talented screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and the sometimes inspired director Michel Gondry have taken the generic shell of a not-very-interesting '30s radio show and inexplicably cultish one-season '60s TV series and tarted it up with CGI, slow motion, time-lapse pixilation, a "Kato cam" that's like The Matrix effects crossed with the Terminator's cyborg point of view, numerous unimaginative explosions, car chases, and gunfights, and a puzzling motif of bad guys killed by heavy falling objects. Throw in so many ripoffs from every superhero film ever made, it may be pointless to list them — though I probably will anyway. Put on a pair of 3D glasses and it's like watching 118 minutes of noisy trailers from underneath a thin, dark blanket.

Okay, it's not that bad. There are one or two action scenes, like the prolonged brawl between Kato and Britt Reid, replete with Three Stooges–like sound effects, that unroll with satisfying logic and ingenuity. And the badinage between Rogen's Reid, a/k/a the Green Hornet, and Jay Chou's Kato, a/k/a Kato, though not as funny as the Rogen–James Franco match-up in Pineapple Express, still has its moments. Until it starts to sound like Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan in Shanghai Noon.

PBS looks at the darker side of changing the world

webmaster[a]phx.com(CLIF GARBODEN) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:08:07 GMT

Digging up dirt
Sometimes you want to give PBS a big grateful kiss just for staying the course while most of TV, losing ground to the interweb age, hovers between cultural hemorrhage and commercial death.

DEM BONES: PBS’s documentary about two pioneering, feuding paleontologists is as involving as a piece of tragic theater — and certainly more memorable than any prime-time fiction.

Sometimes you want to give PBS a big grateful kiss just for staying the course while most of TV, losing ground to the interweb age, hovers between cultural hemorrhage and commercial death. The season's new episodes of American Experience — "Dinosaur Wars" (WGBH, Channel 2, January 17 at 9 pm), a soap-operatic look at the birth of American paleontology, and "Panama Canal" (January 24 at 9 pm), a documentary devoted to the digging of that mega-ditch — provoke exactly that loving impulse.

"Dinosaur Wars" recounts one of those obscured major stories from the dark underbelly of science. Two pioneer American paleontologists, Yale-based Othniel Charles Marsh and self-taught Philadelphia Quaker Edward Cope, all but invented their field. Between them, in the decades following the Civil War, they unearthed thousands of fossils from the exposed-rock landscapes of the American West and identified roughly 130 dinosaur species. They also collected crucial fossil evidence of Darwinian evolution, putting the US at the center of late-19th-century scientific inquiry.

Oh, yeah; they hated each other. Professional slights and personal antagonisms denied these giants the partnership that the nascent field deserved. Instead, they spent their careers revolutionizing our understanding of the earth's history while deceiving and otherwise aggravating each other with dirty tricks and self-promotional stunts to the extent that each died relatively young, exhausted, and bankrupt. At the height of their most childish spate of bickering, Marsh went so far as to have valuable fossils destroyed rather than leave them behind for Cope to claim.

Rich harvest: Parks and Rec reaps a bounty

webmaster[a]phx.com(RYAN STEWART) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:21:05 GMT

Rich harvest
On the third season of Parks and Recreation , NBC's hilarious yet ratings-starved ode to small-town civil service, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the rest of the gang at the title department decide to revive the Harvest Festival, a town fair that could attract a lot of attention — and revenue.

On the third season of Parks and Recreation, NBC's hilarious yet ratings-starved ode to small-town civil service, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the rest of the gang at the title department decide to revive the Harvest Festival, a town fair that could attract a lot of attention — and revenue. Wooing of sponsors, calling in of favors, and a promotional tour of the local media all follow. The town of Pawnee is, you'll recall, bankrupt, and if P&R doesn't raise the money for its budget, the state auditors are apt to shut it down.

This scenario actually parallels Parks and Rec's current predicament. After a low-rated — and creatively uneven — first season, the show found its identity in season two. Greg Daniels and Mike Schur, who had worked together on The Office, figured out how to write Leslie, who enjoys her job (she's good at it as well) and also enjoys helping others. The writers further discovered they had a fantastic ensemble, and they brought that to the fore, sparking breakthrough performances from Chris Pratt and Nick Offerman.

Review: Season of the Witch

webmaster[a]phx.com(PEG ALOI) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:02:39 GMT

Nic Cage can't save this one
Dominic Sena ( Kalifornia ) directs a wooden Nicolas Cage and an uncomfortable Ron Perlman as jaded Crusade knights whose desertion lands them in hot holy water with the Church.

Review: Leaving

webmaster[a]phx.com(ALICIA POTTER) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:16:18 GMT

Kristin Scott Thomas stays cool
Kristin Scott Thomas doffs her native language, a recent tendency toward shrewishness, and a couple of sundresses to play an elegant South-of-France housewife hot for an ex-con builder.

Review: And Everything Is Going Fine

webmaster[a]phx.com(EUGENIA WILLIAMSON) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:27:11 GMT

Want to know more about Spaulding Gray? Don't start here.
Want to know more about Spaulding Gray? Don't start here.

Review: Country Strong

webmaster[a]phx.com(BRETT MICHEL) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:44:54 GMT

Pretty weak
Too-soon-out-of-rehab country star Kelly Canter (a bronzed Gwyneth Paltrow) attempts to twang her way back from a drunken stage dive in Dallas that resulted in a miscarriage.

Panahi is silenced, but the Festival of Films from Iran goes on

webmaster[a]phx.com(PETER KEOUGH) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:42:36 GMT

Persian Gulf
In an episode in Mohammad Rasoulof's weird and wonderful The White Meadows - one of the best entries in this year's Boston Festival of Films from Iran, at the Museum of Fine Arts - an artist is buried up to his neck in salt for painting the sea red.

SALVE Alireza Davoodnejad avoids easy resolutions in his critique of class and gender injustice.

In an episode in Mohammad Rasoulof's weird and wonderful THE WHITE MEADOWS (2009; January 29 at 3 pm) - one of the best entries in this year's Boston Festival of Films from Iran, at the Museum of Fine Arts - an artist is buried up to his neck in salt for painting the sea red. When the authorities demand that he paint the sea blue instead, he refuses. Burying him doesn't change his mind, so they dig him up and waterboard him. Then they force him to climb a ladder erected in the surf and order him to stare at the sun. As a last resort, they pour monkey urine into his eyes. Finally, he's taken away and shackled to the stark white beach of a prison island.

Rasoulof must have had a foreboding of his own fate. Last month, he and Jafar Panahi - the renowned director of The White Balloon, The Circle, Crimson Gold, and Off Side, and also the editor of Rosoulof's film - were found guilty of similar artistic intransigence by an Iranian court. They were sentenced to six years in prison and banned from making movies for 20 years - which in essence means the end of their careers.

Two Door Cinema Club embrace dance hooks

webmaster[a]phx.com(REYAN ALI) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:00:39 GMT

Pop rocks
If a band play and no one is around to hear them, do they make a sound?

JOB CORPS “A lot of the songs are about trying to do the band as a career,” says Sam Halliday (right, with Kevin Baird and Alex Trimble).

If a band play and no one is around to hear them, do they make a sound? That must have been the kind of philosophical quandary bubbling in the heads of Two Door Cinema Club around 2006. Before the Northern Ireland trio produced compact indie pop, they were a bunch of teen lads in LifeWithoutRory, who've become an uncomfortable subject for guitarist Sam Halliday. "We were trying to re-create At the Drive-In songs, pretty much. It wasn't very good. It wasn't quite emo, but it was definitely more emo than what it is now." Shows were attended by "hardly any people." Desperation set in. "We just wanted to make music that people could enjoy, because it's not very fun playing to no one."

In 2007, the young band were reborn. They rechristened themselves Two Door Cinema Club, ditching their mangled angular rock and embracing a taste for melody. Actually, they kidnapped melody and jammed it into every guitar line for a sound that Halliday now simply calls "super-melodic." The approach came out of their newfound interest in poppier rock like Death Cab for Cutie and "stuff like Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel — stuff our parents would play. If you want to remember a song, it has to be super-catchy, and the melodies have to be there."

The Big Hurt: Biebs's babe

webmaster[a]phx.com(DAVID THORPE) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:15:44 GMT

Plus Bach's split, Thude's Justin, Blu in Seattle, and Muse in space
Biebs's babe, Bach's split, Thude's Justin, Blu in Seattle, and Muse in space

BIEBERWATCH! The lusts of our burgeoning manlet have been aroused by teen starlet Selena Gomez, with whom he's just been photographed in various states of PG-rated canoodlage. The two young lovebirds were vacationing together in the Caribbean, and blurry telephoto paparazzi snaps show Bieber kissing, embracing, and gingerly butt-touching the 18-year-old Gomez. Meanwhile, heartbroken teenage girls everywhere are venting their rage and grief the only way they know how: on Twitter. "Selena Gomez is dangerously close to a LONG,SLOW,PAINFUL DEATH. =)," tweets a user going by the name of Selena Killer. "I hope I get an axe for my next birthday ;) I know who I would use it on :)"

But if young girls are distraught that they've lost their shot at Bieber, they can turn to the warm embrace of shitty clichés — God doesn't close a door without opening a window. Skid Row singer SEBASTIAN BACH has just split up with his wife of 18 years! Bieber may be young and hot this week, but Sebastian Bach has been throbbing hearts longer than Justin's been alive. He's just as Canadian, his pipes are more impressive, his hair is longer and more flaxen, and it would really, really surprise me if he didn't own a motorcycle. Plus, since he just split up with his old lady, he's probably ready to bird-dog for plenty of fine young ladies. And if Bieber fans are a little young for him, I'm sure he'd at least let them text him bra photos or whatever.

Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker display their indie artifacts

webmaster[a]phx.com(MATT PARISH) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:49:08 GMT

Antiques roadshow
It was on a whim roughly 25 years ago that a young David Lowery called up a friend at SST Records to see how SST had been promoting records that year. "He just said, 'Hey, we've been sending a lot of our stuff to college radio stations, and they seem to be playing them a lot.' I mean, this is literally like how this all started."

AGING PROCESS Camper Van Beethoven’s Key Lime Pie was “definitely difficult music,” allows violinist Jonathan Segel (left, with David Lowery, third from left, and the rest of the band).

It was on a whim roughly 25 years ago that a young David Lowery called up a friend at SST Records to see how SST had been promoting records that year. "He just said, 'Hey, we've been sending a lot of our stuff to college radio stations, and they seem to be playing them a lot.' I mean, this is literally like how this all started."

Lowery's band, Camper Van Beethoven, had just self-released their first album, and he was glad to hear that he could borrow the contacts if he wanted. He made the trek down the California coast from Camper quarters in Santa Cruz, figured out who was playing new records by the Meat Puppets and the Minutemen, and spent the next two days copying it all down into a legal pad. A few days later, they mailed swarms of LPs out into the great unknown. "To me," he says, "that was a very key moment in how indie rock came in."

Lowery has crafted one of the more unlikely careers you're bound to run into in the circuit of over-40 indie-rockers. It's been nearly 10 years now since he reunited Camper, who have sailed on into middle age in a rare coexistence with his far more successful alt-rock project, Cracker.

Down in the folk trenches with the Old Edison

webmaster[a]phx.com(BARRY THOMPSON) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:38:21 GMT

A fighter's chance
In a messy Allston kitchen, in unison, a mob of about 20 or 30 persons start screaming at the Old Edison. And as is their custom, the Old Edison shout right back. Welcome to a typical Old Edison performance, but please watch your step.

UNPLUGGED “The only reason this isn’t a punk band,” explains Liam Boyle (second from left), “is because we didn’t have a drummer, and we couldn’t afford amps.”

In a messy Allston kitchen, in unison, a mob of about 20 or 30 persons start screaming at the Old Edison. And as is their custom, the Old Edison shout right back. Welcome to a typical Old Edison performance, but please watch your step.

"One time, Liam passed out and fell into the recycling bin mid song," recalls singer/guitarist Will Good. "People just lifted him up and were like, 'You're halfway through the second verse! C'mon!' "

Not only do these displays of homespun, gruff-and-tumble exuberance stick out in my memory more than a dozen concerts that I saw at the House of Blues last year, they also hold more psychological staying power than the two or three times I've seen the Old Edison at clubs. Not because nobody stands to make any money or get more famous off a house party. Not because of any haughty notion of DIY "purity." Not for novelty's sake. Those shows were simply a shit-fuck-ton more fun.

"There are some lines that you have to yell," declares multi-instrumentalist Liam Boyle, mid rant over tiresome comparisons with Defiance, Ohio and early Against Me! In so doing, he inadvertently explains his band — who unveil their stellar second album, Story Yelling, at the Midway on January 15 — more precisely with nine words than I can with 670. Boyle and most of the rest of the squad — Good, banjo player Rory Lee, and bassist Squallie Greenthumb — are nursing 40-ouncers in the Allston living room where they rehearse, adjacent to the aforementioned kitchen. Fiddler and whistler Catherine Joyce is, I presume, nursing a 40 elsewhere.

Jokes and the unconscious spar in Hysteria

webmaster[a]phx.com(CAROLYN CLAY) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:40:45 GMT

Sang Freud
We're given the Freudian slip early on in Hysteria, or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis - and it comes with several other silky undergarments summarily discarded by a nubile visitor to the London study of the Father of Modern Psychoanalysis in Brit writer Terry Johnson's Olivier Award-winning 1992 comedy.

HELLO, DALÍ! Salvador drops in to ask Sigmund what’s the nudes — er, news.

We're given the Freudian slip early on in Hysteria, or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis - and it comes with several other silky undergarments summarily discarded by a nubile visitor to the London study of the Father of Modern Psychoanalysis in Brit writer Terry Johnson's Olivier Award-winning 1992 comedy. A curious mash-up of What the Butler Saw and serious consideration of the über-shrink's flip-flopping theories of infantile sexuality, the play (presented by Nora Theatre Company at Central Square Theater through January 30) is of the same cloth as Tom Stoppard's Travesties and Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Like them, it builds an elaborate construct on a historical coincidence — in this case, the 1938 teatime call of Surrealist Salvador Dalí on the man who had unlocked the unconscious mind that became the painter's playground. But that meeting between exiled Austrian psychoanalyst and egotistical Catalan symbolist is just the spark. Johnson's play may be a dream; it may be a morphine-induced hallucination, complete with Dalí's melting clocks and a corpse that bursts from the closet. But it's no documentary.

Hip-hop history

webmaster[a]phx.com(CHRIS FARAONE) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:45:35 GMT

Dan Charnas's story is bigger than the music
Dan Charnas is aware that some disgruntled rap purists may eschew his epic tome on planet hip-hop's animated cast of titanic dick swingers.

CREEPS TO GEEKS Charnas delivers detailed goods that could surprise even the most learned rap aficionado.

Dan Charnas is aware that some disgruntled rap purists may eschew his epic tome on planet hip-hop's animated cast of titanic dick swingers. The author says so right there in the intro: "My approach may not appeal to hip-hop fans who believe that the culture existed in some pristine state before it was sold, nor to those who believe that corporate executives assembled in a room and decided to promote violent, misogynistic hip-hop for profit and the degradation of Black people." His point is understandable - the rise of rap in the mainstream is a black-and-white tale only in terms of its characters. But in many ways, The Big Payback validates the spite that righteous heads have for contemporary bastard-issue boom-bap, and it confirms the notion that nefarious interests have always threatened authenticity and stained the commercial face of hip-hop.

It turns out that the story behind the rap business, though at times confusing, isn't very complicated. The dozens of leading and peripheral personalities portrayed by Charnas can be divided into three basic categories: salesmen who believed in hip-hop as an art form, sharks who dabbled just to stack chips, and dopes who rejected rap altogether and in turn faded out. But though Charnas is an industry veteran of Profile Records, Def American, and the Source magazine, he presents them all objectively, from the creeps to the geeks. The Big Payback isn't just the most comprehensive journalistic account of hip-hop ever written — it's a mature, Pulitzer-worthy work, an integral account of essential urban history on a par with Robert A. Caro's The Power Broker.

Interview: Bob Saget

webmaster[a]phx.com(ROB TURBOVSKY) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:51:36 GMT

Balls-deep introspection
For those who know Bob Saget, the only thing funnier than the surprise that the star of Full House is a relentlessly filthy stand-up comedian is the perception that he was anything like his squeaky-clean sit-com persona in the first place.

For those who know Bob Saget, the only thing funnier than the surprise that the star of Full House is a relentlessly filthy stand-up comedian is the perception that he was anything like his squeaky-clean sit-com persona in the first place. And, to be sure, Saget's brand of scatological humor — seen in The Aristocrats and his most-recent HBO special, That Ain't Right — is more silly than disturbing, like a large, absurdist child who has strange ideas about interacting with animals. Off stage, he's more introspective. When Saget called before a gig in Mississippi to talk about his upcoming shows at the Wilbur Theatre, the conversation touched on mortality, comedic honesty, and, of course, his testicles. Well, it didn't literally touch on his testicles, but . . . you get the idea.

You seem like a pretty happy guy. Are you just one of those really well-adjusted people who does filthy comedy?
I’ve had a lot of therapy. Here’s what I’ve learned. The ultimate thing is to be able to channel your filthy comedy into something that you do when you’re doing the comedy and not do it when you’re out with your kids at a school function. There is something to be said for channeling in it at the proper moments. When I was younger, especially, I’d just be on all the time. It gets annoying. And, I would meet people that I revered, like Richard Pryor and Rodney Dangerfield, and in between their sets, they were maybe thinking of the joke but they were just quiet, talking, being thoughtful. I’ve split the difference. I’m a functional person with people I care about, but when I’m sitting around with my girlfriend and I’m riffing on a bunch of a stuff, there are times where I realize, “This is not the time to be doing this. This is supposed to be a romantic dinner. Maybe you should shut up for a few minutes, instead of telling your little jokes.” Save them for a non-romantic occasion.

The Smith Westerns | Dye It Blonde

webmaster[a]phx.com(RYAN REED) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:27:55 GMT

Fat Possum (2011)
If the Smith Westerns' homonymous 2009 debut perfectly captured the awkward, waning days before high-school graduation, then their sophomore effort is the Chicago indie quartet's college existential-crisis record, more sprawling and a tad wiser while still hitting its target of raw, British Invasion–style psychedelia

The Decemberists | The King Is Dead

webmaster[a]phx.com(MIRIAM LAMEY) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:32:15 GMT

Capitol (2011)
It may be called The King Is Dead , but the latest Decemberists album screams "rodeo" rather than "royalty."

Social Distortion | Hart Times and Nursery Rhymes

webmaster[a]phx.com(Michael Christopher) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:24:13 GMT

Epitaph (2011)
There aren't many punk stalwarts who can weave a tale of being down and out quite like Mike Ness, and for the most part he's in top form on this seventh studio release from Social D.

White Lies | Ritual

webmaster[a]phx.com(REYAN ALI) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:23:06 GMT

Fiction (2011)
If the bombast of Ritual is any indicator, nights out with White Lies must be dramatic, humorless affairs. Life-altering monologues will be recited, voices will be raised, glasses will be smashed, blood will be spilt.

Joe Lovano Us Five | Bird Songs

webmaster[a]phx.com(JON GARELICK) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:38:18 GMT

Blue Note (2011)
It's worth taking Lovano's word that this is not a Charlie Parker "tribute" album.

Country Strong | Soundtrack

webmaster[a]phx.com(TED DROZDOWSKI) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:29:22 GMT

Sony (2011)
This steaming pile of songs is emblematic of the state of mainstream country music — all artifice, no heart, calculated anthems written to formula and meant, like the film itself, to do no more than capitalize on the genre's current success and rob its undiscriminating fans.

Photos: No Pants Subway Ride Boston 2011

webmaster[a]phx.com(DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:32:12 GMT

No Pants Subway Ride | From Alewife to Hynes Convention Center | January 9, 2011
The No Pants flash mob prank returns to Boston public transit once again.

Photo: DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN

No Pants Subway Ride | From Alewife to Hynes Convention Center | January 9, 2011

What gap?

webmaster[a]phx.com(DAVID SIPRESS) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:08:28 GMT

Reality check
Reality check

What do you think it all means?

webmaster[a]phx.com(KARL STEVENS) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:03:34 GMT

Failure
Failure

Boehner's Agenda

webmaster[a]phx.com(BRIAN MCFADDEN) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:59:21 GMT

Big Fat Whale
Big Fat Whale

Crossword: ''The Worst of 2010''

webmaster[a]phx.com(MATT JONES) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:51:24 GMT

just when you thought it was over...
just when you thought it was over...

Panhandling

webmaster[a]phx.com(MATT BORS) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:14:12 GMT

Idiot box
Idiot box

British Sea Power | Valhalla Dancehall

webmaster[a]phx.com(MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 02:31:37 GMT

Rough Trade (2011)
It sounds as if British Sea Power were determined to shrug off those turn-of-the-millennia comparisons to Joy Division by making things harder, faster, stronger. But is it better?