[“Francis Bacon” by LUCIAN FREUD] NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Freud, a grandson of Sigmund Freud and a brother of the British television personality Clement Freud, was already an important figure in the small London art world when, in the immediate postwar years, he embarked on a series of portraits that established him as a potent new voice in figurative art. In paintings like “Girl With Roses” (1947-48) and “Girl With a White Dog” (1951-52), he put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. […]
EARLY WORD: XpoNentialFestivalidocious
[Photo by DAVID SIMCHOCK] BY MEREDITH KLEIBER The only thing that promises to be more scorching than the weather for the 18th annual XPoNential Music Festival this weekend is the music being played there. WXPN, University of Pennsylvania’s public radio station and home to the beloved World Cafe, will be hosting the three-day festival for a seventh consecutive year at Camden’s Wiggins Park. Festival-goers will enjoy panoramic views of the Philly skyline, particularly breathtaking at sunset, while dancing to musical acts performing on the River Stage. In between River Stage sets, lay your blanket out on the lush grass and […]
SIDEWALKING: Hot Town Summer In The City 2
Cambria Street 11:44 AM yesterday by JEFF FUSCO
EARLY WORD: She And Hymn
BY MEREDITH KLEIBER Most bands typically travel by tour bus, hiring one or multiple drivers to chauffeur them around the country from shows to hotels and vice versa. Lucy Tight and Wayne Waxing, however, don’t really fit the definition of “typical”. Better known as the self-described “stomp-grass punk folk” duo Hymn For Her, Tight and Waxing traverse the country in their 1961 Bambi Airstream, fully loaded with myriad instruments, recording equipment, dog, and four-year-old daughter. The Airstream functions not only as their primary form of transportation, but also as a recording studio — Tight and Waxing recorded their album Lucy […]
JUDAS PRIEST: Open Letter To Archbishop Chaput
PHILADELPHIA SURVIVORS NETWORK OF THOSE ABUSED BY PRIESTS: We were disappointed in how Charles Chaput responded to abuse claims as the archbishop of the Denver archdiocese, especially his work to defeat statute of limitations reform in the Colorado legislature. We suspect that the fears held by church leaders in Philadelphia of similar reform are one of the reasons that Chaput was promoted. However, his past record is not as important as the tone he will set for the future. After years of cover-ups perpetrated by Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia deserves better. Survivors of abuse do not deserve […]
CINEMA: There Will Be Blood
BY ALEX POTTER Terrence Malick averages about one film every seven years, but it’s always worth the wait — he is widely regarded as a director’s director and A-List actors wait in line to work with him. He has not made a film that critics don’t consider great. His new one, Tree Of Life is no exception. If you like that, you’ll like Badlands, Malik’s bleak, beautiful 1973 directorial debut, starring a young and very James Dean-esque Martin Sheen and the always-great Sissy Spacek as young lovers on a killing spree across the American prairie. Set in the Badlands of […]
SIDEWALKING: Hot Town Summer In The City
Love Park by MEREDITH KLEIBER
TOM WAITS: For No One
RELATED: ‘Tom Waits For No One‘ was created when two animators, dying to test out a new use for rotoscope, the method of tracing over live action film frame by frame, happened upon a Tom Waits performance at the La Brea Stage in 1978 purely by accident. After viewing the live show, Bruce Lyon and John Lamb, knew it would be the perfect test song for their unique process. So the pair visited Waits at the infamous Tropicana Motel and after getting the okay, they set to work using five cameras, six takes and 13 hours of footage to assemble […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In 1973, an infant chimpanzee was taken from his mother’s arms and sent to live with a human family as part of a Columbia University psychology experiment. The goal of the project was to see if the animal, named Nim Chimpsky, could be conditioned to communicate with humans if he was raised like a human child in a human household. He learned some very basic words in American Sign Language, but Nim continued to act like a chimp — he bit the children in the house and didn’t understand how to behave like a human child. It was […]
MEET THE NEW BOSS: Same Shit, Different Asshole
NEW YORK TIMES: Before he was named on Tuesday to lead the prominent but troubled Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput spent the last 14 years in Denver establishing himself as one of the nation’s most prominent advocates of a politically engaged and conservative Catholicism. He is among a minority of Roman Catholic bishops who have spoken in favor of denying communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. He helped defeat legislation that would have legalized civil unions for gay couples in Colorado. And he condemned the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution, for granting President Obama […]
DAILY SHOW: Fox News Says Reporting On Murdoch Scandal Is ‘Piling On’ But Fox Piling On NPR Was Not
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Q&A: Planned Parenthood’s Mama Grizzly
[Photo by MINDY TUCKER] BY MEREDITH KLEIBER Lizz Winstead, the co-creator and former head writer of The Daily Show, boasts a resume brimming with comedic achievements: included in Entertainment Weekly‘s 100 Most Creative People issue; produced The Jon Stewart Show; co-founded Air America Radio; and nominated Best Female Club Performer by The American Comedy Awards. Since departing from The Daily Show in late 1997, Winstead has continued to blaze trails in the world of entertainment. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, founded a TV/web/theatre-production company called Shoot the Messenger, has appeared on countless television programs, and continues […]
Q&A With The Regulars Photographer Sarah Stolfa
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Pretty much everyone in this town knows about The Regulars, Sarah Stolfa’s stunning Bukowski-meets-Caravaggio portraiture of McGlinchey’s patrons, snapped from behind the bar where she earned the dubious distinction of Unfriendliest Bartender In Town. The series won her first place in the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s Photography Contest For College Students, a long-running exhibition at Gallery 339 and an asspocket full of local acclaim and national recognition, including a residency at the Whitney Museum Of American Art in New York. And now Artisan Books has published the series in richly-appointed book form with a snarky-but-snappy essay […]