Outside Minnesota, the month of August has nary a holiday. Many people just let the hot, humid month hang there, lazily dipping its toes off the dock. But here, we know August shimmers like the last few grains of sand falling through the hourglass, telling us our time in the sun is waning. So we … Read more
Dean and Gene Ween, aka Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman, operate in a zone bounded by stoner novelty songs, Frank Zappa, and Captain Beefheart—never taking themselves a bit seriously, but with genuine chops and the ability to project total sincerity whether they’re playing Prince-style funk, 70s soft rock, country, or some strange concoction best fit … Read more
I’m sorry to be morbid, but I’ve been thinking a lot about death again lately. This time, it’s the simple fact of mortality that’s got me flustered. It’s as if it never dawned on me that I won’t live forever, and neither will my family and friends. I keep overhearing people at stores and in … Read more
In her time a bigger gospel star than even Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was possessed of a terrific voice and, most significant, a bluesified guitar style that helped her become the first major crossover from African-American church music to secular songs. A clear influence on the Chicago electric blues of the 1950s, she’s also … Read more
Hallelujah and amen! You know what time it is. I can smell the cornmeal and sizzling fat in the air already. Set aside petty concerns of the pending apocalypse and don the raiment of joyous festival! Bring me my cutoff jeans, and my baseball jersey that depicts the beer swilling cartoon bear! Unearth my novelty … Read more
Do we really need to try to convince you on this one? If you’re building a DVD library and don’t plan on including Casablanca, there’s just plain something wrong with you. This double-disc edition includes 10 minutes of newly discovered deleted scenes, plus a couple of choice bits of nearly forgotten Casablanciana—a radiodrama adaptation, the … Read more
“Equal justice under law.” These words, emblazoned over the entrance to the United States Supreme Court in Washington, really represent the “bottom line” of our court system. No matter who you are—Joe Blow or Joe Biernat—if you do the crime, you should get the same time. In unguarded moments, however, lawyers will tell you what … Read more
Watching Arnold Schwarzenegger lumber his way through Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, I was struck by a nagging, persistent quibble. Why on Earth would anybody build a 55-year-old android killing machine? That’s like building a sex robot modeled after Bea Arthur. Granted, at no point in T3 does the Austrian oak actually pull out … Read more
The sight of 10 road-weary but cheerful unicyclists whizzing down the road would make people take pause in almost any city. For the onlookers in these small northern Norwegian villages, it’s a bizarre and thrilling event. So why are these determined folks riding over, around, and through Norway’s mountains and fjords, nearly 600 miles to … Read more
If it’s possible to credit the last three years’ resurgence of the movie musical to one person, it has to be the late Bob Fosse. His highly physical, breathlessly sexualized choreography has influenced nearly all the genre’s post-millennial successes—most obviously last year’s Oscar-winning Chicago. Fosse also directed two of the last great musicals before the … Read more