Thursday, November 4 Bill Clause says he found the task of reading through the 600 or so 5- to 10-minute scripts submitted to his second annual Five and Dime Playwriting Contest “both exhilarating and very painful.” Clause originally set up the Five and Dime, he says, on “a wild-haired notion,” posting the call for entries on all of the online…
Matthew Rice lives a double life. By day, he’s a mild-mannered litigation analyst, crunching writs and legalese for a big-name law firm. But by night, Rice changes out of his suit and tie to join up with nine others, a small cadre of like-minded individuals known as Hypothetical 7 who dabble in the black arts of improv. And since midtowners…
melia Bedelia Over the course of thirty Amelia Bedelia books, author Peggy Parish put her titular housekeeper in the employ of various dotty families. The domestic’s most notable trait is her literal, concrete take on the world; she’s the kind of person who, when told to strike a match, hits one with a hammer. For Theatre for Young America’s…
Rachel Frank Really, the best way to see this show was to have attended the experimental dance production Elicit, for which Frank’s sculptures provided one part of the set. “Bird-Headed Girl,” a taxidermylike wall plaque, formed one side of a silent dialogue with dancers. “Falling Woman,” a disturbingly lifelike (if spineless) embroidered doll lying among tulle, was splayed out in…
To look at him, Mr. Dibbs probably wouldn’t strike you as one of the hottest DJs in underground hip-hop. No, he looks more like (a) that bald, tattooed guy with the gnarly goatee from Queens of the Stone Age, (b) that bald, tattooed guy with the gnarly goatee from Anthrax, or (c) that bald, tattooed guy with the gnarly goatee…
Penumbra provides three definitions for its name in the packaging to Five Side Square, the most apt of which is “the border between shadow and light.” This group lives at the intersection of dark metal riffage and gleaming pop polish, solidifying its spot with pristine production and immaculate instrumentation. Like Alice in Chains without the oppressive depression and harrowing heroin…
Split Lip Rayfield is a collection of bluegrass aggressors claimed as “local” by roughly 12 municipalities in 3 states, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the band has skipped the traditional path to local-legend status. The band has en-dured no acrimonious breakups or makeups and no personnel changes. There’s not even evidence of onstage bickering, and there is no…
The best thing about Hard Roots is that Mark Stevenson’s voice — a Kansas City treasure — isn’t the best thing about it. Sure, that painful, jagged, disastrously beautiful voice deserves attention. True, Stevenson wrote all ten songs and created the way cool “Sacred Tur-nip” woodcut for the album cover. Still, the best tracks on the album work because the…
Mixing two pre-existing products in an innovative way qualifies as inventive, regardless of how often they have been used in other combinations and contexts. When Reese’s earned kudos (not the granola kind) for mixing peanut butter and chocolate, it didn’t matter that peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches already existed or that George Washington Carver had paved the alternately creamy and chunky path. In…
This Afro-Latin hip-hop fusion ensemble’s last album came out on 9/11, but rather than get swept away in fear-mongering nationalism or a Muslim apologia, the group decided to explore Arabic culture through music. If the idea of music as a unifying force is cliché, Ozomatli nonetheless makes a compelling go of it — hardly a surprise to anyone familiar with…
Some people possess the type of adorable personality that makes Care Bears seem like juvenile delinquents. People like Sondre Lerche. The Norway native’s online journal expounds on the virtues of green papaya (“Such a good fruit when eaten at the right time and place”) with the same enthusiasm he projects in interviews. But the troubadour backs up his sparkling disposition…
Alhough they make exceptions for pop princesses, teen audiences usually ignore their prodigious peers. As an Onion headline declared, “Best Opera Singer of Her Generation Unknown to Her Generation.” Hilary Hahn, a 24-year-old Virginia native, won’t be touring malls anytime soon, but the virtuoso violinist has reached the mainstream-movie masses (her soloist work drove the spooky score to The Village)…
When it comes to San Diego rock alumni, Hot Snakes has the pedigree of a prize-winning showdog. The band is a beast birthed from the loins of SD groups such as Rocket From the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Tanner, Pitchfork, and Clikitat Ikatowi. And whereas some of those bands are still kicking, Hot Snakes exists as a bastard child of…
Razor in your apple? Lame-ass costume? Skittles-induced diabetic coma? If Halloween ’04 didn’t go quite as planned, there’s always Insane Clown Posse. Lots of rockers smash their instruments onstage, a few spit blood and breathe fire, but only one pours cheap soda on your dome and forces you to join the revelry. ICP is that band. Touring in support of…
It’s a shame in this culture of bloat and aggression that light has come to mean insubstantial. It may be justified in the case of, say, 3.2 beer or Phil Collins, but the Weakerthans rock and they’re light, in a flushed and pleasant way, with songs that buzz like a summer crush. The band is tough enough to get you…
Ryan Adams is a lot of things — a brilliant singer-songwriter, an alt-country bad boy, Americana rock incarnate, a cocky bastard. Known for his pissy attitude and staggering confidence almost as much as his musical abilities, Adams is the kind of performer who leaves an audience ready to pick fights with strangers. The former Whiskeytown frontman has had the music…
T’was the night before the election. All through Balanca’s, creatures were stirring, most of them soused. The scenesters clung to the bar, debonair, many hoping John Kerry soon would handle America’s cares. The idea of G-Dub’s re-election nestled snug (like skull-burrowing earwigs) in most of their heads, while visions of the Stella Link, Doris Henson and Silver Shore danced like…
A diverse assortment of people has gathered at the American Airlines Arena in Miami the day before the MTV Video Music Awards. Celebrity freaks (Victoria Gotti), teeny-bop flavors of the month (Hilary Duff), rock-and-roll nonentities (Hoobastank), fledgling stars (Kanye West) and over-the-hill acts (New Edition) are joined by a few musicians who actually resonate beyond the here and now. De…
Miles Bonny’s apartment looks virtually unlived in apart from a ransacked back room scattered with CDs, computer equipment, production gear, and milk crates filled with vinyl. Scotch-taped to the otherwise bare white wall above Bonny’s Dell computer is a magazine photo of a disheveled third-world girl wearing large headphones. “I’m really not a messy person,” Bonny insists, surveying the mess….
Before he made Primer for $7,000, Dallas software-engineer-turned-writer-director-actor-editor Shane Carruth had no idea how to make a movie. Some who see his creation will argue he still doesn’t, while others will lavish upon it hearty praise reserved for visionaries. Such has been the reaction to Carruth’s time-travel riddle since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where…
Writer-director Charles Shyer’s Alfie is less a remake of the misogynistic 1966 film that made Michael Caine a star than it is a cotton-candy retooling. A better title would have been Halfie; it lacks most of what made the original so ugly even as it primped for a night on the town. Shyer offers a sanitized version of Bill Naughton’s…
Since its initial publication in 1986, several filmmakers have signed up to adapt Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic book Watchmen, in which costumed superheroes have been outlawed and are being executed by an unknown baddie. Darren Aronofsky (Pi) is set to direct a screenplay by X-Men scribe David Hayter next year, but no one has yet been cast;…
Pastorization techniques: Regarding the article ” Church Mice ” by David Martin (October 14): It seems that the Pitch is continually looking for opportunities to bash the church. This stems from a basic misunderstanding of the primary aim of the church, which is evangelism: sharing the Gospel of salvation so that people can subsequently have changed lives. But when the…
Threads Off the rack and on the town. The 800 block of Massachusetts in Lawrence, 11:40 p.m. Thursday In the spotlight of a street lamp, four women lounge on a wooden bench, barricaded by camping gear and three mangy dogs. Passing bargoers ignore them. Following some Beat-inspired dream, they’ve been stumbling in and out of Lawrence, where there are plenty…
