NEW YORKER: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” This is how Martin Luther King, Jr., explained matters to Mike Wallace, of CBS News, in 1966. […] In September, 1967, with little more than seven months left to live, King delivered a speech in Washington, D.C., in which he addressed a society “poisoned to its soul by racism” and the question of how to confront and overcome that malignancy. This was in the wake of uprisings in Detroit and many other American cities. King considered the question not in the spirit of endorsement but of comprehension. Urban riots, he […]
CINEMA: Twilight Zoning
THE VAST OF NIGHT (directed by Andrew Patterson, 89 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC The Vast Of Night, the ambitious Amazon Prime sci-fi thriller by first-time filmmaker Andrew Patterson, is setup like an episode of a fictional ’50s TV show called Paradox Theater, channeling Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. The narrative is set in rural 1950s New Mexico, as it follows a night in the lives of Fay (Sierra McCormick), a comely 16-year-old switchboard operator, and her crush, teenage radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz). It’s the night of the big basketball game and Fay and Everett pick […]
CINEMA: Being Steve Buscemi
Photo by FANNY LATOUR-LAMBERT GQ: At 62, Buscemi has spent a lifetime playing lunatics and weirdos, outcasts and oddballs, his wiry frame a guitar string thrumming with rage or taut with the deep discomfort of simply existing in the world. The crown jewels of his visage are his heavy-lidded blue eyes, one of the most recognizable sets in the business, which can jut out maniacally or drown in subdued sorrow. When he pulls off his black baseball cap, I’m struck by how muted and relaxed his features are, as if they’ve all agreed to a nonaggression pact. Buscemi also carries […]
WORTH REPEATING: Can’t Happen Here?
Artwork by JOHANNA GOODMAN THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: A nagging question that first popped into my head while I was a twenty-three-year-old reporter at the Buenos Aires Herald has returned to haunt me lately. What would happen if the US, the country where I was born and spent my childhood, spiraled down the kind of totalitarian vortex I was witnessing in Argentina back then? What if the most regressive elements in society gained the upper hand? Would they also lead a war against an abhorred pluralist democracy? The backlash in the US today against immigrants and refugees, legal abortion, […]
HOT DOCUMENT: Nothing Is Real
CBS NEWS: As President Trump continues to insist voting should be in-person and alleges voting by mail leads to fraud, some Republican officials are moving forward with preparations for an increase in mail-in voting, especially in the upcoming primaries across the country, as well as in the general election. It’s the latest sign that while Mr. Trump might be trying to discredit the mail-in process from the bully pulpit, a growing number of voters are indicating support for such options amid health concerns related to the coronavirus and the uncertainty about how safe it will be to vote in the […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
Self portrait of photographer Astrid Kirchherr. FRESH AIR: Astrid Kirchherr, who took the first publicity photos of a then-struggling rock group called The Beatles, died last week. She was 81 years old. In 1960, young Astrid had just completed a photography course at the College of Fashion and Design in Hamburg when her boyfriend, Klaus Voormann, took her to the seedy Kaiserkeller in Hamburg’s red-light district. He wanted to show her a new rock group from Liverpool he had discovered the night before. When Astrid met the group in 1960, The Beatles consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison […]
INCOMING: The Manson Family Revisited
? ROLLING STONE: A new six-part docuseries revisits the Manson Family murders for a definitive portrait of the infamous cult. Its trailer promises plenty of archival footage, plus haunting re-creations and interviews with the Family that have never been revealed until now. “He was a puppet master pulling everyone’s strings,” says a Family member in a voiceover. Another adds, “I was definitely under Charlie’s spell.” (June 14) MORE
CINEMA: What A Long, Funny Trip It’s Been
THE TRIP TO GREECE (Dir. by Michael Winterbottom, 103 minutes, USA, 2020] BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC The Trip to Greece hit streaming this week, and with it brings an end to the decade-long run of the British sitcom/film franchise,The Trip.The show is a bit like if Curb Your Enthusiasm was made for the Food Network. The Trip to Greecestars comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, who play fictionalized versions of themselves bickering and riffing their way across various countries while sampling local delicacies. The first trip had Coogan taking a restaurant tour assignment from The Observer to impress a […]
EXCERPT: The Wichita Lineman Meets Joni Mitchell
1971 On the surface, Joni Mitchell was a friendly, almost deliberately ordinary Canadian girl with a bright smile and a quick wit. But when it came to music and lyrics she had been blessed with a divine gift. I knew with no envy or jealousy that she was a better writer than I was. I envied her easy conversational phrasing that turned everyday banter into a new kind of song lyric. Her sensual guitar tunings delivered deep, dissonant yet compelling chords that, to use an expression by Linda Ronstadt, “rubbed.” Play that warm chord. I would sit with her and watch […]
TINA FEY: My Walnut Story
RELATED: The Walnut Street Theatre, America’s Oldest Theatre, announces My Walnut Story, a new platform where both artists and audiences can share their favorite Walnut stories online for everyone to enjoy. For its launch on May 7, Walnut artists were invited to submit videos sharing their Walnut Street Theatre related stories. The Walnut has collected scores of unique anecdotes and memories from both artists and theatregoers, ranging from onstage bloopers to their first memories attending the theatre. “You never know who has a story,” remarked Bernard Havard, Producing Artistic Director of the Walnut. A recent submission came from actor/writer/producer Tina […]
REST IN POWER: Little Richard (1932-2020)
Photo by MICHAEL OCHS NEW YORK TIMES: Richard Penniman, better known as Little Richard, who combined the sacred shouts of the black church and the profane sounds of the blues to create some of the world’s first and most influential rock ’n’ roll records, died on Saturday in Tullahoma, Tenn. He was 87. His lawyer, Bill Sobel, said the cause was bone cancer. Little Richard did not invent rock ’n’ roll. Other musicians had already been mining a similar vein by the time he recorded his first hit, “Tutti Frutti” — a raucous song about sex, its lyrics cleaned up […]
JOHN TRAIN: “Where Were We (For John Prine)”
Boss, Here’s a link to a brand new John Train song called “Where Were We? (for John Prine).” The lyrics and credits are in the description as well as a link to my Phawker piece on Prine. I first encountered Prine via my father’s record collection (which is how I discovered the majority of music that still means the most to me!). He had a copy of Common Sense which remains my second favorite Prine LP (Aimless Love from 1984 has always been my number one). I first saw Prine live in 1988, opening up for Johnny Cash at the […]
FALSE PROPHET: Idiocracy In The Hall Of Mirrors
THE ATLANTIC: If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler’s plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen. You may well have an affiliation with an evangelical church. But you are hard to identify just from the way you look—which is good, because someday soon dark forces may try to track you down. You understand this sounds crazy, but you don’t […]