NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR Tina Fey grew up in a household with parents she has described as “Goldwater Republicans with pre-Norman Lear racial attitudes.” But, she says, her parents were always supportive of her career, even when she told them she was moving to Chicago to start a career in improv. “To their credit, they never said, ‘You like entertainment. Are you sure you don’t want to be an entertainment lawyer?’ ” she tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “[They understood] me wanting to pursue this before I had commitments, before I had a family. And I think they knew that neither my […]

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

[Photo by CLAUDE SHADE/CC MEDIA via FRESH AIR] FRESH AIR “His voice would make even Hank Williams cry,” Nicholas Dawidoff once wrote of Jimmie Dale Gilmore in The New York Times Magazine. Gilmore, a singer from West Texas, writes songs that would be described as alternative country. But for his forthcoming album, Heirloom Music — in which Gilmore teams up with the band The Wronglers — he says he was thinking more in terms of bluegrass music — although that’s not an exact description. “We were calling it old-timey music, but that still wasn’t quite accurate,” he says. “But [bluegrass […]

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CINEMA: Horny And Hornier

HALL PASS (2011, directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 98 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Could it be a bout of 1990s nostalgia that had me yearning to see a new film from the Farrelly Brothers? I’ll admit to having a blind spot when it comes to their early hit Dumb and Dumber, but 1996’s bowling opus Kingpin and 1998’s monster hit Something About Mary had a wonderfully unpredictable mix or shock and sweetness that seemed to mark the pair as a major force in film comedy. The illusion was fleeting though, with films like Shallow Hal and […]

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EARLY WORD: Marquee Moon

Acclaimed French auteur Louis Malle’s underrated 1975 surrealist opus, Black Moon, will be screened this Saturday at the International House. Malle’s body of work is characteristically impossible to pin down—he directed over 30 films spanning an array of genres, from My Dinner With Andre to Au Revoir Les Infants. Black Moon is undeniably bizarre and completely unlike any of his other films. It was written in collaboration with Joyce Buñuel, the daughter-in-law of legendary surrealist filmmaker Louis Buñuel, as a coming of age fantasy, set amidst an apocalyptic world war that, according to Malle, is symbolic of the social upheaval […]

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR In a 2004 interview on Fresh Air, Reubens explained that he created the character of Pee-wee Herman in 1977, while working with the Groundlings comedy troupe in Los Angeles. But he came up with the character’s name, he says, after looking for ideas at home. “I had a little one-inch-long harmonica that said ‘Pee-wee’ on it, and I knew a kid whose last name was Herman, and Pee-wee Herman sounded like the kind of name you would never make up,” he said. “It sounded like, you know, a totally real name made up by somebody whose parents didn’t […]

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR In February, the Senate Armed Services Committee discovered that the private security firm Blackwater had diverted hundreds of AK-47s and pistols from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan to Afghan policemen. Whoever signed for the weapons from Blackwater did so under a fake name: Eric Cartman. Cartman is, of course, one of the characters on Comedy Central’s South Park, the animated sitcom that’s been satirizing everything in the news and pop culture for the past 14 years. Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park follows the adventures of grade-schoolers Cartman, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski and Kenny […]

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MUST SEE TV: Zach Galifianackis’ SNL Monologue

RELATED: The considerable cult that has grown up around Galifianakis’s performances over the last few years, both live and on video-sharing sites like YouTube, has done so largely because his routines are, arguably, the most unpredictable in contemporary comedy. A typical hourlong set might meander from carefully composed, conceptual one-liners à la Steven Wright to profanity-drenched tirades against members of the audience to slapstick to solemnly tacky musical interludes (Galifianakis is an able pianist) to Andy Kaufman-esque attacks on the genre that seem less concerned with eliciting laughs from the crowd than with confounding its notions of what comedy or, […]

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ARCHIVE: Thirteen Astonishing Things You Are NOT Supposed To Know About Spoon

[As told to JONATHAN VALANIA] 1. Britt Daniel has never killed anyone. “Technically, no,” he says when asked. 2. “Don’t Make Me A Target” was originally titled “Don’t Blame Me I Voted For Nader.” 3. Spoon is named after the Can song of the same name. Britt first learned about Kraut Rock in the 11th grade from his obsessive study of every word uttered by Julian Cope. 4. Britt Daniel may have voted for Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore in 2000. “I think maybe I did,” he says when asked. 5. Britt Daniel is 38 years old and has […]

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HEAR YE: Vampire Weekend Contra

Out today on XL Recordings. Now playing on Phawker Radio! SIMON REYNOLDS: Already I hear the naysayers bleating, “Something New?! But they’re so derivative!” (This, from Deerhunter fans.) No new instruments have been invented, it’s true, and here and there on Vampire Weekend, you’ll pick up a faint scent of things you might have heard before: a bounce of Beat in “A-Punk,” Orange Juice’s just-brushed sheen, Monochrome Set’s suave wit. The most common reference point (apart from Graceland, which seemingly crops up because it’s the sole example of African-influenced rock most people know) is early Talking Heads. And that’s a […]

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