NEW YORK MAGAZINE: You have to start by disregarding the well-told narrative: The soi-disant vagabond’s rise through folk music to a place of utter domination at the highest level of literate, passionate, and difficult pop and rock music, all by 1966; a retreat and Gethsemane until 1974, when he came back, roaring and vengeful, more passionately focused than before, adding a remarkable personal dimension to his ’60s work. After that, depending on how generously you view his career, there has been either a long decline or decades of remarkable and kaleidoscopic creativity, culminating in the triumphs, late in life, […]
RIP: Mike Nichols, Creator Of Much Of The Greatest Cinema, Theater & Comedy Of The 20th Century
NEW YORK TIMES: Mike Nichols, one of America’s most celebrated directors, whose long, protean résumé of critic- and crowd-pleasing work earned him adulation both on Broadway and in Hollywood, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 83. Dryly urbane, Mr. Nichols had a gift for communicating with actors and a keen comic timing, which he honed early in his career as half of the popular sketch-comedy team Nichols and May. An immigrant whose work was marked by trenchant perceptions of American culture, he achieved — in films like “The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Carnal Knowledge” and […]
WORTH REPEATING: ‘No One Wanted to Talk About Bill Cosby’s Alleged Crimes Because He Made White America Feel Good About Race’
THE NEW REPUBLIC: the possibility that this extremely rich man lambasting poor people for everything from stealing pound cake to wearing low-slung pants to how they named their children—might have drugged and raped more than a dozen women would have made our heads pop off. It would have made us question every single good, reassuring, optimistic thing that Bill Cosby ever made us think about ourselves and our country. It might have made us rethink the way he had held up wealthy people as model feminists, and about exactly how screwed up it was that that his progressive cheerful […]
BRETT NEWSKI: Dirt
He plays the RUBA Club Studios on Friday with Carter Hulsey as part of the Folk Catastrophe Tour.
RIP: Jimmy Ruffin, Motown’s Silken-Voiced Shepherd Of The Broken Hearted, Dead At 78
DETROIT NEWS: One of Motown Records’ most memorable voices is gone, as balladeer Jimmy Ruffin died at a Las Vegas hospital late Monday. He was 78. Ruffin’s most enduring hit has to be 1966’s “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” with its majestic, stately rhythm and Ruffin’s deeply soulful, sorrowful vocal. He followed up that Top 10 hit with “I’ve Passed This Way Before” in 1967. In 1980 he enjoyed a comeback hit with “Hold on to My Love.” Ruffin was born May 7, 1936 in Collinsville, Mississippi, the older brother of singer David Ruffin. The brothers made their way north, […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Dave Davies speaks with Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) DAILY BEAST: Bennett Miller’s tragic, true-life saga Foxcatcher is about many things: Familial strife, American exceptionalism, the corrupting influence of money, and Steve Carell’s prosthetic schnoz. It will also introduce many viewers to one of cinema’s most unstable and chilling villains in John du Pont—an ornithologist, philanthropist, conchologist, philatelist, sports enthusiast, and murderer. The film centers on Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum). In the wake of his gold medal win at the 1984 Olympics, he’s depicted living in relative poverty, subsisting on a diet of ramen and accepting […]
BECAUSE REALITY HAS A LIBERAL BIAS: Q&A W/ Comedian & ex-Totally Biased Host W. Kamau Bell
Illustration by GARY TAXALI© BY JONATHAN VALANIA Comedian W. Kamau Bell has been fighting the good fight in the stand-up comedy trenches of San Francisco since the phat pants ’90s. It was there that Chris Rock discovered him and eventually brokered a deal with FX for Bell to have his own TV show. In 2012, Totally Biased, a much-buzzed-about late night sketch comedy show starring Bell and produced by Rock, debuted to strong reviews and a big enough viewership to justify a second season until its ill-advised migration from FX to FXX, subsequent plummet in audience share and ensuing cancellation […]
TERROR AT 700 FEET: Russian Daredevils Snap Death-Defying Skywalking Selfies In Hong Kong
As someone who has a very rational fear of heights, this is probably the most terrifying horror film I have ever seen.
Bill Cosby Joked About Drugging Women For Sex
VILLAGE VOICE: Cosby’s dozen-plus accusers tell similar stories: that, after having a drink with Cosby, they felt drugged and confused as he had his way with them. Curiously, Cosby himself once made such scenarios the center of a stand-up routine: Witness “Spanish Fly,” a cut from his now-unfortunately titled 1969 LP It’s True! It’s True!. In it, Cosby describes being a kid and hearing about a wonder drug — “Spanish Fly” — that would make a girl go crazy once it was put into her drink. He presents this as a horny/goofy lark of an idea, a myth that kids […]
SMUS: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
Artwork by POASTERCHILD BY WILLIAM C. HENRY The pundits all crowed that the Republicans won a sweeping victory in the just-passed mid-term election, but in fact the REAL winners on November 4th were, in no particular order: self-defeating no-nothingness, sociopathic obstructionism, irrational fear of the other, bald-faced misogyny, seething homophobia and above all else, abject racism towards the nation’s first black President and First Lady. Yep, that’s what won out on November 4th. I’d congratulate the American Kakistocratic party (you can call them Republicans if you like) if there was even the teeniest of reasons for doing so, but, uh, well, you get the […]
EARLY WORD: David Bowie Is
At the Ritz 5 for one night only Wednesday November 17th @ 7 pm.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Satanic Coloring Book Shuts Down Bible Giveaway In Florida School
THE FRIENDLY ATHEIST: In January of 2013, World Changers of Florida, Inc. held Bible distributions at a number of public high schools in Orange County, Florida. No student would be forced to take one, but there would be a table set up where interested students could take a copy if they wanted. This alone could have been illegal, but the Orange County School Board agreed that non-Christian groups could also have a distribution if they wanted. When the Central Florida Freethought Community (CFFC) called their bluff and planned their own giveaways, they were heavily censored. Many of their books, […]
THEE OH SEES: Drop
They play Underground Arts Monday November 17th.