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contents CONVERSATION 16 Scott Thompson opens up about Buddy Cole and a Kids in the Hall reboot
ART EXHIBITIONS
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Nick Brandt: Environmental Photographer LUAG Main Gallery Lehigh University Just Open Your Eyes: Susan Meiselas on Making Images Grossman Gallery Lafayette College Emerging Artists of Lower Bucks High Schools Artists of Yardley
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A THOUSAND WORDS In With the Swifts
8 | THE ART OF POETRY
Darkest Before the Dawn
10 | PORTFOLIO
Order and Abstraction
12 | THE LIST Valley City
14 | FILM ROUNDUP
The Killer All of Us Strangers The Color Purple Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God
ON THE COVER:
PUBLISHER & EDITOR Trina McKenna trina@icondv.com ADVERTISING Raina Filipiak filipiakr@comcast.net PRODUCTION
Joanne Smythe
Margaret M. O’Connor CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
A.D. Amorosi Ricardo Barros Robert Beck
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Findings Index
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215-862-9558 icondv.com
David Stoller
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Since 1992
18 | ESSAY
The Band Wagon Red Desert Werckmeister Harmonies What’s Up, Doc?
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The intersection of art, entertainment, culture, nightlife and mad genius.
Pete Croatto
2024: Your Year in Taylor Swift
Carl Gustaf Nelson, Central Park (detail), 1934, oil on canvas, 31 7⁄8 x 44 in. (81.0 x 111.8 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.119
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Washington Post Crossword
Geoff Gehman Fredricka Maister Keith Uhlich
PO Box 120 New Hope 18938 215-862-9558
Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. ICON welcomes letters to the editor, editorial ideas and submissions, but assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited material. ICON is not responsible for claims made by advertisers. ©2024 Primetime Publishing Co., Inc.
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a thousand words
STORY & PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK
IN WITH THE SWIFTS It seems I always spend my autumn in the studio, looking out the window at the lovely fall weather while I take care of business and work on projects. I miss being out painting the colors. My annual show in Lambertville always got in the way, followed by the build-up to the holidays, but this year, I had some time. I wanted to paint at Spring Creek Farm, which has an inexhaustible supply of beautiful views, but it was going to be a cloudy day until early afternoon, and the transitional sky would be a problem. I decided to go over and say hi to some of my animal friends (mostly pigs) and then paint in one of the barns C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 9
Robert Beck is a painter, writer, lecturer and ex-radio host. His paintings have been featured in more than seventy juried and thirty solo gallery shows, and three solo museum exhibitions. His column has appeared monthly in ICON Magazine since 2005. www.robertbeck.net ICON |
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exhibitions
Roundabout gazelle (Detail).
Nick Brandt: Environmental Photographer LUAG Main Gallery, Lehigh University 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem, PA 610-758-4580 luag@lehigh.edu January 23–May 24 This exhibition presents works from two of Nick Brandt’s series, Inherit the Dust and This Empty World. Through his photographs, Brandt creates a vision of environmental devastation, with both human and animal victims suffering in the aftermath of progress. Brandt envisions a world overwhelmed by development, where there is no longer space for animals to survive. This exhibition has been made possible through the generosity of Meg and Bennett Goodman, and is co-sponsored by the Department of Biological Sciences, Office of International Affairs, and the Africana Studies Program.
Riverbed Hyenas. (Detail). 6
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Self-portrait. © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
Just Open Your Eyes: Susan Meiselas on Making Images Grossman Gallery at Lafayette College 243 North Third St., Easton, PA January 25–April 14 Tues.–Fri. 10–5, Sat. 12–5 In Eyes Open (Aperture, 2021), photographer Susan Meiselas ends her book with a prompt to “just open your eyes.” Meiselas breaks the notion of the grand narrative, but asserts a sensitive, humanistic approach that zigs and zags between personal narratives and historical moments.
Self-portrait. © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
Emerging Artists of Lower Bucks High Schools Artists of Yardley, 949 Mirror Lake Rd, Yardley January 13–21; Fri, Sat, Sun 12–5 Opening reception & awards, 1/12, 6–8 This show features the artwork of students from Council Rock North and South, Bristol Township (Truman HS), The George School, Neshaminy, and Pennsbury. The exhibition marks the first time that these high schools have come together to showcase their artistic talents. The opening reception and awards presentation it is free and open to the public, providing a unique opportunity for art enthusiasts to witness the diverse and creative works of emerging talents from the region. Jurors: Jean Childs Buzgo, award-winning, oil painter; Joan Cannon, wheel-thrown, rake, and safari pottery; Phyllis Hnatko studies hand-built pottery and sculpture.
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the art of poetry
DAVID STOLLER
Darkest Before The Dawn I dreamt we were sliding, En masse, Into waiting jaws, No checks or handholds To stave off our destruction. Lying in bed, Still in the grip of this portent, I feel anger and despair, And at the same time guilt As a member of the same species Criminally responsible. Outside to gulp some fresh air, And swallow this dark apprehension, I seek comfort and reason In the night sky and dark flowing river. Sure enough, nature has its ways — Looking through the shattered limbs Of a storm-split river birch, The morning star glitters, so bright I think I might touch it. The Lakota say it heralds the dawn; That our destiny is born from the light. I stay to watch the sun rise, Just as it rose 10,000 years ago, Painting the river gold. The world feels … different, It feels flung open! And suddenly, improbably, Everything is possible.
This striking painting, Orange Sunset, is by Desmond McRory, an award-winning Bucks County artist who’s been painting for the last four decades, influenced greatly by local impressionists like William Lathrop who painted in the tonalist style (generally featuring landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere and mist). You might notice that my poem, Darkest Before The Dawn, has as its subject the rising sun, while McRory’s painting captures the setting sun. Well, I’m guilty of artistic license in claiming—to suit my poem—that McRory’s sun is rising. According to experts, there is no inherent, natural cause of a major optical difference between them—it’s often difficult to distinguish a rising sun from a setting sun, except that at dawn the sky is clearer with brilliant reds and oranges, while at dusk the thicker atmosphere tends to dull these same colors. In this short poem, I’ve tried to reflect my great concern that our democracy is under assault and in grave peril, but also my countering belief that, in the end, a new dawn will break and “Our destiny will be born from its light.” (Lakota saying.) n
David Stoller has had a career spanning law, private equity, and entrepreneurial leadership. He was a partner at Milbank Tweed and led various companies in law, insurance, live entertainment, and the visual arts. David is an active art collector and founder of River Arts Press, which published a collection of his poetry, Finding My Feet.
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portfolio
PHOTOGRAPH AND ESSAY BY RICARDO BARROS
ORDER AND ABSTRACTION Art, and very specifically photography, can help us make sense of chaos. When seen from a particular vantage, the participants of independent events, and often the events themselves, seemingly conspire to unveil hidden relationships. The revelation catches our eyes. A well-seen artwork communicates the presence of order. We need not explicitly understand the order; words may fail to describe it. A certain cadence, or rhythm, informs us of the order’s existence. It is this perception that lifts the artist’s vision. Abstracted works may remain abstract, but we find comfort in our visceral understanding. n
Ricardo Barros’ works are in the permanent collections of eleven museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the author of Facing Sculpture: A Portfolio of Portraits, Sculpture and Related Ideas. 10
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the list VALLEY
CITY GEOFF GEHMAN
Lehigh University’s annual Kenner Lecture pairs powerhouse speakers with powerhouse takes on the world’s temperature. Irish president Mary Robinson promoted climate justice; non-violence champion Arun Gandhi explained lessons learned from his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi, a fellow peace warrior. This year’s Kennerian is the firing-line politician/diplomat Liz Cheney, the former Congress member who helped steer the investigation of the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol and who lost House re-election in Wyoming largely because she was the exceedingly rare Republican Representative who voted to impeach Donald Trump. At Lehigh she’ll discuss the blessings and curses of democracy, a whitewater river in her new tell-all book Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. (Feb. 27, Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem, a conversation followed by moderated Q&A; free; registration required; 610-758-2787; zoellnerartscenter.org) Fats Waller is in the wheelhouse of Wynton Marsalis, the esteemed trumpeter, composer, ensemble leader, and jazz ambassador. On Feb 4 he’ll return to Lafayette College with his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to explore the legacy of Jelly Roll Morton, a Waller colleague; Duke Ellington, a Waller fan, and Charles Mingus, an absolute original. In the second half, the 15-member band will tackle saxophonist Andy Farber’s Usonian Structures, a suite riffing off Frank Lloyd Andy Farber. Wright’s architectural marvels. (Williams Center for the Arts, 317 Hamilton St., Easton; 610330-5009; williamscenter.lafayette.edu) CONTINUED
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A.D. AMOROSI
I can’t ever predict your new year or mine. If I could, I wouldn’t be writing columns and dissing the powers-that-be. I’d work for J.P. Morgan or in the AI sector. What I can say is, despite January’s mayoral inauguration and the promise of rejuvenation, nothing changes for Philadelphia until we get a different district attorney, until everyone forgets about a new basketball arena in Chinatown, and until Taylor Swift announces just one last show on her Eras Tour. Welcome to 2024. Until that Swift date(s), we have the legendary, culture jamming Madonna doing her compilate, contemplative Celebration show Jan-
Celebration Tour at The O2 Arena on October 14, 2023 in London, England. Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation.
uary 25 at the Wells Fargo Center. I’m no Madge apologist, and wish that her TikToks didn’t seem so desperate, but let’s face facts—there would be no Taylor, Pink, Gwen or beyond if it wasn’t for the Material Girl and the litany of post-pop hit compositions and poses she’s created over her 40 years in the game. She’ll come on late, Philly— maybe even two hours late. Deal with it. This one happens on Thursday, January 4 at South Philly’s Solar Myth, so let’s get there. Skronky guitarist extraordinaire (think the best of what Tom Waits and Elvis Costello recorded in the 1980s) and activist Marc Ribot presents his Ceramic Dog ensemble and CONTINUED
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KEITH UHLICH
The Killer
film roundup
The Killer (Dir. David Fincher). Starring: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell. Perhaps surprisingly, this Netflix adaptation of a French graphic novel is the best of director David Fincher’s movies. It’s a leanly structured, thematically complicated thriller about a career assassin (Michael Fassbender) who kills his way up the criminal food chain after a botched hit. With rare exception, we’re near-entirely in the purview of this eponymous killer, who hilariously pontificates via a self-regarding voiceover (written by Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher’s collaborator on his early serial killer thriller Seven) that almost always contradicts the actions onscreen. The ways in which the character’s inner and outer lives fail to mesh should resonate with anyone who’s crossed middle age. What do you do when Keith Uhlich is a NY-based writer published at Slant Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Time Out New York, and ICON. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. His personal website is (All (Parentheses)), accessible at keithuhlich.substack.com. 14
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you realize you’re past your prime? How do you regain control? Can you regain control? These are just a few of the questions the movie raises as it winds its way through several brilliantly staged setpieces (some dexterously verbal, others densely visual), building toward a sublime anti-climax that captures the simultaneous pleasures and horrors of a life lived in anonymity. [R] HHHHH All of Us Strangers (Dir. Andrew Haigh). Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy. Adapting a novel by Japanese writer Taichi Yamada, writer-director Andrew Haigh (The North Water) emerges with a gently told queer ghost story that lingers in the mind the longer you think about it. Once and forever “Hot Priest” Andrew Scott plays Adam, an introvert British screenwriter who crosses paths with one of his neighbors, a younger gay man named Harry (Paul Mescal), after a false fire alarm. An attraction blossoms, though this ocC O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 6
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Kids in the Hall alum Scott Thompson co-stars as a gay investor backing a nightclub venture in Season 2 of the HBO dramedy Sort Of. Photo Courtesy of HBO/MAX.
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A.D. AMOROSI
SCOTT THOMPSON The Kids in the Hall alumnus is mad as hell and he and his new solo show, King, are not going to take it anymore
SINCE 1984, AUDIENCES HAVE known and loved The Kids in the Hall sketch comedy troupe and its occasional solo comic Scott Thompson for their daring, yet still polite improvisational takes on everything from society’s weirdest ills and hokey home truths to Queen Elizabeth II and many a Canadian regal matron. In particular, Thompson’s TKitH-born, gay lounge lizard character Buddy Cole has fed willingly thrilled crowds big spoonfuls of comic sugar so to make the medicine of truth and reason go down smoothly. Perhaps due to their cheery, sober Canadian birthright, everyone has imagined The Kids, and Thompson, as happy-go-lucky (yet biting) social sketch commentators. But with the censorship hassles of 2023’s Kids return to Amazon, the troupe and Thompson in particular—are pissed, and now, unwilling to carry on smilingly.
“The Kids and my solo work—even my punk rock band Mouth Congress—that was my sex life and love life. I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD MAKE IT TO 40, SO WE MIGHT AS WELL DO EVERYTHING. That’s why I came out of the closet when I started my career.”
Starting with January’s TKitH showcase at the San Francisco Sketchfest of scenes “they wouldn’t let us do” and Thompson’s potentially dangerous Buddy Cole King solo soliloquy—a trouble-making live show that Thompson will tour across the United States with a February 10 stop at City Winery Philadelphia—all hell will break loose, and a new Thompson will emerge. “I’m going to make a lot of people mad with my new King show, but I don’t really care,” said Thompson during a long interview in December. “I’m used to ruffling feathers. I’m used to getting myself in trouble.” Along with laughing about his most recent, regular television role in Netflix’s spy action-comedy series FUBAR with Arnold Schwarzenegger [“I am truly proud that I was able to make Schwarzenegger cry during one scene,” said
the comic with a giggle], Thompson was truly pleased to go down memory lane about his time playing the Queen on this first anniversary of her death (“you have to be born with the right genetic mix and come from a monarchist family, let alone the fact that I looked like her”) and all things The Kids in the Hall. Guided by a “personal as political” aesthetic that forever steered him and the Kids from literal social-cultural finger-pointing humor, Thompson focuses on people and human nature. “Political humor dates badly… all the rest of it is dressing.” As an alwaysforward-looking comic artist, returning to Buddy Cole’s lizardy antics or The Kids in the Hall’s fold with fellow founders Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, and Mark McKinney is hardly a return at all. “It was a return for the fans, but we, as a troupe, never broke up,” said Thompson. “We might do things on our own, but we never separated. And once we did get together again, we realized that there is no way Thompson as lounge lizard Buddy Cole. out. You only leave in a coffin. The Kids in the Hall are for life, like the Mafia. There is never any arm-twisting to get us to do things together—our chemistry is extraordinarily rare. And once we went through that period where we thought we wanted to destroy it all, the Kids now spend every one of its waking hours trying to keep it all together.” So too is The Kids’ singular “rock band-like” takes on potshots at C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 2
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2024: Your Year in
what i think
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A.D. AMOROSI
IF WE WERE TO base a solid, future-forward essay on all things Taylor Swift, we wouldn’t have a hard time at all doing so if we rooted the entirety of our fiction on the recent past of 2023’s sales, accomplishments, and sheer presence of her being. Let’s face facts: last year was the Pennsylvania-born, country-to-pop-music-maker Swift’s crowning achievement, one where she became a billion dollar plus (and counting) touring act, tied Elvis Presley’s solo artist record for most weeks atop Billboard’s top 200 album chart, and wound up as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year as a modest recanting of her 2023 victories. If you didn’t see her “Eras Tour,” you saw the movie of “The Eras Tour,” and by 2023’s end, you could buy the home version of “The Eras Tour”—that is when you didn’t catch her hanging around Kansas City Chiefs’ games, watching her beau Travis Kelce play ball. 2024, then, is nothing but net when it comes to all that Swift could do. Here is ICON Magazine’s guesstimate as to what a 2024 in Taylor Swift time could look like. • Busy making platinum-plated revisionist re-dos of her past catalog—such as 2023’s topselling 1989—and running out of old albums under her old name, Taylor Swift continues her retribution against Scooter Braun by deconstructing and rebuilding old albums from other clients of his (say Ariana Grande’s thank u, next and Justin Bieber’s My World 2.0) before going wild and re-doing any old record she can get her hands on. R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction, Paul McCartney’s Red Rose Speedway, and the Human League’s Dare, beware. • On Swift’s last album there is the song titled “Karma,” a wounding, turn-on-the-villain moment from Midnights that could be about Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, and/or Braun, the man responsible for all but stealing her catalog’s publishing from under Swift and causing her to rerecord, for better or worse, all of her pre-2020 albums. Imagining the best-case scenario, the song is about West, the famed antisemite currently in apology mode to all Jewish persons so to be able to release his newest album, Vultures. Nope. At the top of 2024, Swift buys full-page ads in every local Jewish community newspaper reminding them of Kanye’s sins without actually naming him, just like she has in past boyfriend songs such as “Gorgeous” (Calvin Harris or Tom Hiddleston), “I Knew You Were Trouble” (Harry Styles), “Dear John” (John Mayer) and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (On Jake Gyllenhaal). And then she runs those same fireand-brimstone ads again in February, then in March, and more. • While it is true that Taylor Swift turned down the National Football League for its 2024 Super Bowl halftime game, she actually managed to create her own anti-NFL competitive Swift All-Stars game on that same day, utilizing the strengths of her boyfriend Travis Kelce, his fellow Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahone, and Kelce’s Eagles playing footballer Jason Kelce. • With the coveted (still?!) Time Magazine Person of the Year sobriquet already conquered, Swift goes onto the next publication and tops the list at a thing people actually read: AARP Magazine. • Continuing on with 2023’s “The Era Tour,” Taylor Swift takes on Bob Dylan’s nomenclature as the holder of the “Never Ending Tour” and its time-continuing mantle. Unlike Dylan, we can hear what she’s saying and she actually manages to do her songs in the fashion we best remember them rather than simply annoying her fans in continued frustration. • Long questioned about her possible right-wing political stance from the time of country music-focused albums such as 2008’s Fearless, Swift continues her march on the left by becoming Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential partner and setting her up for her inevitable top dog role with “Look What You Made Me Do” as her campaign song. Think the role of President can’t happen for Taylor? Weigh Swiftie’s popularity against Sleepy Joe, any day, and tell me I’m wrong. Just saying. n
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Photo: Beth Garrabrant
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The Band Wagon
film classics
The Band Wagon (1953, Vincente Minnelli, United States) The world is a stage of entertainment in one of the great Hollywood musicals. Washed-up film star Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) hopes to restart his career with a Broadway show, though the subject—a pretension-doused adaptation of the legend of Faust—isn’t exactly the confection audiences are gonna crave. Throw in a full-of-himself director (Jack Buchanan), a chatterbox husband and wife composer team (Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray, gently parodying screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green), and a younger leading lady, Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse), who’d rather be anywhere but in Tony’s arms and you have a recipe for disaster. Nothing left to do, after one horrific preview, but put on an impromptu show featuring some of the greatest dance scenes ever committed to celluloid, culminating in the lavish “Girl Hunt” production number that parodies Gene Kelly’s own dream ballets while giving Astaire’s footwork and Charisse’s incomparably high-kicking legs a prime showcase. This is all catnip for director Vincente Minnelli, who makes the work of play seem sublimely effortless. (Streaming on Criterion.)
Red Desert (1964, Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy/France) For his first color feature, the great Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni created this enduring, endlessly interpretable drama about a woman, Giuliana (Monica Vitti), navigating a postwar Italian landscape of factories and the pollution produced by them. Nothing is easy here; the film is neither angrily anti-industry nor poetically pro a return to simpler times. Antonioni instead deals with the reality of each given moment, and how his lead character’s psychology shifts in ways both major and minor. Red Desert is a parable of adaptation, both the ability and the inability to do so as the world turns ever on. Change comes whether we like it or not, and that theme is amply supported by the revolutionary photography of Carlo Di Palma who, in consultation with Antonioni, conjures haunting visions of both the natural and manmade worlds. Color punctuates the often monochromatic gray frames in innovative and breathtaking ways. Antonioni, as he was frequently wont to do, speaks to his time with the complexity of the greatest artists. (Streaming on Criterion.) C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E
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power, gender, and sexuality (“we never play women as funny unless the character is humorous”) that made it into the most recent reboot of its “old school sketch comedy aesthetic” at Prime Video. The only problem with the 2023 iteration of The Kids in the Hall’s program was that Amazon attempted to shape the tone and tenor of their new streaming show. “What unites us as a group is that we were arrogant— we never allowed ourselves to be shaped by outside forces,” he said. “We weren’t very Canadian about all this, for sure.” Buddy Cole and the idea of speaking truth to power stems from the fact that as “a character no one ever took seriously… he could say any-
There were no Buddy Cole bits in the sixth season of The Kids in the Hall which aired in 2022, years after the original series aired for five seasons from 1988 to 1995. Filmed hermetically on a soundstage without its usual live audience, many topics such as non-binary and trans rights issues, went untouched on the 2022 iteration. “You probably recognized that that new Kids in the Hall show didn’t touch on topics that the world was consumed by,” said Thompson, dryly. “I did present many Buddle Cole monologues and those topics did get touched on—they were all rejected.” Once he got over his sadness and disgust, Thompson realized that his Buddy Cole character was dangerous and needed to be heard, now more than ever. “I performed a magic trick where I took all of my
Scott Thompson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Monica Barbaro in FUBAR (2023)
thing. Being underestimated is a superpower.” Despite his grand, swishy colorful manner and sartorial display, Buddy Cole hates pretension and loathes pomposity. “Even though when I become Buddy I disengage myself from what I’m doing—emotion can get in the way of thinking—Buddy is much smarter than I am in a weird way,” said Thompson of his LGBTQ+ longtime creation “with a very gay voice” born out of one of the actor-comic’s past relationships, a smart, effeminate older man with enormous energy who broke his heart. Buddy Cole, for Thompson, is a true stoic, unafraid of the truth with a sense of humor based on the fact that he came up (“and out”) in the 1980s and thinks of his life as defined by the era of AIDS. “My entire adult life was dominated by those four letters…. The Kids and my solo work—even my punk rock band Mouth Congress—that was my sex life and love life. I never thought I would make it to 40, so we might as well do everything. That’s why I came out of the closet when I started my career.” “I’m not afraid of the truth, but on occasion, I can’t speak to that as people now have such kneejerk reactions. That is why I am doing this new tour as Buddy. He is better at the truth than I am.” Originally designed as a “600-year-old vampire who’d been at the center of everything,” Buddy Cole was the most jaded of characters. And more so now (“within the last ten years”) as opposed to the past, Thompson feels a greater kinship to his Cole creation. “We’ve merged more now than any time in the past. As I got better, personally, from separating my emotions from my brain, I got closer to Buddy. I could see how he did it. I actually didn’t think that I would even turn to him again until this whole Amazon matter.” 22
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David Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson in The Kids in the Hall (2022)
anger, gave it to Buddy, and—in an alchemical way—turned that loss into a victory,” said Thompson. “It made me stronger. It made Buddy stronger. And, no matter what, this material would get its day in the light. I was grateful for the Amazon money and the chance to do the Kids again in a credible way. But, there was a part of me and of The Kids in the Hall that they did not want. My anger would not capsize me. When I’m onstage you cannot touch me. You can keep me from television and you can keep me from streaming. But you cannot stop from getting on and off a stage in front of my fans.” In Thompson’s mind, the new Buddy Cole King show will his character coming to conclusions that will “shock and anger” some people. King is the sound of Buddy Cole doing something drastic, that it’s time to go to war. Young gay, trans, and non-binary people may not know they want Buddy Cole, now, but they do need to hear what he has to say.” n
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Joan Baez was delighted to discover that her beloved guitar companion, a 1929 Martin O-45, came back from the repair shop with a secret subversive message penciled inside: “Too bad your [sic] a communist.” She was delighted enough to request that the message, a conservative technician’s jab at her equality-for-all activism, be labeled inside limitededition signature models of her beloved companion guitar, which became more beloved after it was stolen during the 1969 Woodstock festival and returned decades later on a bus. The original O-45 keys a neat Baez exhibit at the Martin Guitar Museum keyed to the new documentary Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, an exceptional portrait of a powerfully pure performer and humanitarian, a rare honoree of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the American Civil Liberties Union. There are letters, paintings, set lists, and the 1962 Time magazine cover depicting Baez with guitar held triumphantly high, a bare-footed, folk-and-blues queen in a stained-glass setting. (Through April, 510 Sycamore St., Nazareth; 610-759-2837; martinguitar.com) I first heard the Genesis album Selling England by the Pound in a Lafayette College dorm room, a reel-to-reel player spinning a magical carpet ride. I was enthralled by a kaleidoscopic pilgrimage of romance, fantasy and consumerism, orchestral rock, and medieval folk. I was so enthralled, in fact, I listened to the whole album stuck in, and to, a very uncomfortable bean-bag chair. On Jan. 13 the 1973 LP will be played, entirely and atmospherically, by the Musical Box, an
exquisitely faithful recreator of Genesis’ meta-theatrical tours, at the State Theatre, just about a mile from where I was baptized by such “Selling” numbers as “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)” and “Firth of Fifth.” Steve Hackett, Genesis’ former lead guitarist, encored the latter tune with the Musical Box at the Royal Albert Hall in London. (453 Northampton St., Easton; 800-999-7828; statetheatre.org) Textiles can be texts that tell where, how, and why they were woven, stitched, and/or spun. The Allentown Art Museum, which has an enviably global collection of textual textiles, is exhibiting a collection of Angela Fraleigh’s large paintings and small studies of the intimate, eternal, alternative bond between fiber works and women, real and
imagined. Inspired partly by the museum’s holdings, the Moravian University professor moves traditionally overlooked workers to the center of a universal tapestry of life, death, and resurrection. Threaded with Moonlight includes a wall installation that adds branches and roots to tree-of-life textiles. (Through April 21, 31 N. 5th St.; 610432-4333; allentownartmuseum.org) Lyricist Andy Razaf memorably described his songwriting partner Thomas “Fats” Waller as “a bubbling bundle of joy.” Indeed, the Harlem-raised Waller was a whiz at composing, piano playing, and making whoopee at midtown theaters and uptown joints. Ain’t Misbehavin’ is a bubbling, joyful revue featuring five musicians going to town on 30 Wallerian tunes famous (“Honeysuckle Rose,” “The Joint Is Jumpin’”) and less so (“Viper’s Drag,” “Cash for Trash”). (Feb. 2325, March 1-3, March 7-10, Civic Theatre of Allentown, 527 N. 19th St.; 610-433-8903; civictheatre.com) Touchstone Theatre has devoted 42 years to viewing humans through adventurous prisms. The experimental ensemble filtered the fall of the local Bethlehem Steel plant through a Greek myth and Asian immigration through an ancient Chinese fable. The company’s new musical, HeadEye, revolves around the intergalactic quests of a rogue crew headed by a Tralfamadorian space ace. (Feb. 29-March 3, March 7-10, 321 E. 4th St., Bethlehem; 610-867-1689; touchstone.org) n
Genesis circa 1973. Photo: Michael Ochs. 24
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Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry). He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net
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curs exactly at the moment Adam returns to his hometown and discovers the ghosts of his dead parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) living in his childhood home. Back and forth Adam goes, from his haunted past to a potentially more gratifying present. But Harry has his own issues that come to the fore as the story goes on, and they ultimately reveal Adam’s own timorous tendencies toward real life. Brilliantly performed across-the-board, Haigh’s film is a horror movie disguised as a tearjerker, a deceptively serene examination of how easy it is to retreat from the world and live more comfortably among the dead. [R] HHHH The Color Purple (Dir. Blitz Bazawule). Starring: Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks. The Broadway musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel gets the big screen treatment, and the results are mostly uninspired. If you’ve seen the 1985 Steven Spielberg film then you’re familiar with the story’s broad strokes: Young African-American woman Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as a youth, Fantasia Barrino as an adult) is under the thumb of a variety of abusive men in early 20th-century Georgia. After much hardship Celie comes more and more into her own. This is in large part due to a treasure-trove of letters from her exiled sister Nettie (Halle Bailey young, Ciara older), which have been hidden away by Celie’s brutish husband Mister (Colman Domingo). Fun stuff for a song-and-dance movie, in other words! And director Blitz Bazawule never quite reconciles the odd approach to difficult material. The songs run the gamut from innocuous to awful, and though the cast is often in fine voice, it’s to the detriment of their characters that they’ve been directed to go Broadway-Big during the musical numbers. The screen is not the stage, and the actorly overemphasizing sadly neuters the performances, with the exception of Taraji P. Henson as singer and Celie soulmate Shug Avery, whose scenes do manage to hit more right notes than not. [PG-13] HH
The Boy and the Heron
Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God (Dir. Hannah Olson). Documentary. The stranger than strange tale of a woman named Amy Carlson is jaw-droppingly unpacked in director Hannah Olson’s three-part documentary. It opens with the discovery of a mummified body (Carlson’s own), then traces how this seemingly normal suburbanite turned hard toward spirituality and
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became the figurehead of a cult that worshipped her as Mother God. You know you’re in crazy town early on when one of the former cult members displays a flowchart of the group’s many saints, among them Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Donald Trump, and Amy’s purported second-in-command, Robin Williams. (The scene in which the group members watch Mrs. Doubtfire as if it was a holy text sets a bonkers tone that the documentary then keeps topping.) It’s strange that the movie never feels like a gawk-at-the-freaks sideshow, perhaps because Olson favors the cult’s perspective primarily, with only a few asides provided by the ostensibly sane (reporters, police officers, and family members left behind). In this way we come to see how easily madness becomes the norm—a theme, of course, scarily applicable to our current cultural moment. [N/R] H n
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their “politically-pointed post-fusion” music with bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer Ches Smith. This is an epic never-miss, so run. Not so long ago, when I saw comic actor Sean Hayes appropriate the soul of America’s most damaged contrarian, Oscar Levant on Broadway in Good Night, Oscar, a large portion of his saving grace came
Brett Goldstein.
for so long that people outside of London and Los Angeles forget that he is a wicked stand-up comedian and storyteller. So, miss Goldstein’s two-night stand at the Met Philadelphia—January 25 and 26— on his current The Second Best Night of Your Life tour at your peril. If Philadelphia theater has ever had a VOICE—someone speaking directly to the language and pace and politics of the city—it is, and has been Bruce Graham. From Burkie, to Coyote on a Fence to Something Intangible to Any Given Monday to The Outgoing Tide to Rizzo to North of the Boulevard to Belmont Avenue Social Club to The Philly Fan and beyond, whether speaking about our neighborhoods, or in its familiar funky patois, Graham is Philadelphia,
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down to the joy and reverie regarding George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, an innovative jazz/Tin Pan Alley symphony topped with some of the most irresistible rhythms known to a classical string and brass section. Now alive for 100 years, Rhapsody in Blue will be celebrated by conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Philly Orchestra and eloquent jazz pianist Marcus Roberts and his Trio (along with Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2) at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall January 18 through the 20th. Nothing funny about this—only sacred and storied.
through and through. What better company, then, to traffic in new Graham theater at the Rittenhouse region’s 1812 Productions at Plays & Players Theatre. From January 25 to February 18, married thespians,1812’s Artistic Producing Director Jennifer Childs and actor Scott Greer, will tackle a world premiere co-production (with the Delaware Theatre Company) of Graham’s The Flatlanders, and its local tale of a Poconos blizzard “putting a chill on a couple’s relationship… uncovering truths, secrets, and new ways to heat things up between them.” And, since it is a wise and wooly Bruce Graham production, expect the comedy to be glad to be unhappy. n
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Great Britain’s Brett Goldstein has been the viciously crabby yet ultimately vulnerable Roy Kent in the Peabody-winning Apple TV+ dramedy, Ted Lasso (as well as its co-executive producer and writer)
A.D. Amorosi is a Los Angeles Press Club National Art and Entertainment Journalism award-winning journalist and national public radio host and producer (WPPM.org’s Theater in the Round) married to a garden-to-table cooking instructor + award-winning gardener, Reese, and father to dog-daughter Tia.
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Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France) This is probably the best place to start with the Hungarian master filmmaker Béla Tarr, king of both the elaborate shot sequence and the hypnotically depressive, and equally black-comic, narrative. His masterpiece is often considered to be Sátántangó, a 7-1/2 hour, multi-character dirge about the slow decline of a Hungarian village. Werckmeister Harmonies is, by comparison, a short subject at a mere 145 minutes and only 39 impeccably constructed black-and-white shots. Like Sátántangó, it is similarly adapted from a novel by the author László Kraznahorkai and also constructed around musical principles (in this case, those of the baroque theorist Andreas Werck-
where the light would be relatively consistent. I first stopped at the pig pen located behind the bee hives (the apiary). The seven young pigs were lying in the dirt at the far end and didn’t pay me any attention as I came trudging over, calling and whistling. When I clapped my hands—the signal that food had arrived—the heads came up, and they lurched onto their feet. The pigs figured out immediately that I was an imposter, but that didn’t matter; I was company. They surrounded me, sniffing the knees of my jeans and chewing on my feet.
meister). However, harmony does not become the film’s characters, the denizens of a small town who are stirred up by a visiting circus and its two star-attractions—an unseen “Prince” and the rotting corpse of a whale. Surreal occurrences and existential quandaries abound, helped along by Tarr’s inimitable ability to choreograph onscreen movements so that we feel the myriad weights (psychological and philosophical) of this particular world, one that seems evertrapped between harsh reality and elegiac nightmare. Tarr’s work is an acquired taste, no question, but one well worth the effort. (Streaming on rarefilmm.) What’s Up, Doc? (1972, Peter Bogdanovich, United States) Pay homage to the recent passing of actor Ryan O’Neal by queueing up this early-’70s screwball comedy, young turk Peter Bogdanovich’s homage to the Hollywood Golden Age. O’Neal plays nerdy, bespectacled musicologist Howard Bannister whose trip to San Francisco with his uptight fiancée Eunice Burns (a scene-stealing Madeline Kahn) is disrupted by free-spirited troublemaker Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand). Bogdanovich melds the rat-a-tat fantasy of the old films he loves with the New Hollywood penchant for realism, overseeing a number of insanely manic and inventive on-location setpieces. Hotel rooms become farcical slamming-door hideaways, a Victorian mansion is defiled by gunshots and pies to the face, and the twisty San Francisco streets play backdrop to a careening chase that culminates with a dip for almost everyone in the city’s iconic Bay. Streisand also serenades O’Neal atop a piano that overlooks the San Fran skyline. Like many of the best onscreen couples the duo work well together for being so disparate, much as the howls of laughter elicited by the film complement its swooning romanticism. (Streaming on Max.) n
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he gray sky gave no hint of when it would break. I decided to see what was on offer in the big equipment barn. There is usually a lot of room there that time of year, as much of the machinery is in use, and they like keeping everything accessible. It’s a substantial farm and they do a lot of things, including a full spread of recycled and regenerative agriculture and livestock management. There’s no time for jockeying tractors and attachments around. It’s good to have a large barn and several tractors, so you don’t have to keep swapping out the attachments, which can include blades, rakes, buckets, hoppers, brush grapples, root grapples, rock grapples, graders, diggers, harrows, tillers, pluggers, plows, and pallet forks. I’m sure I missed a few. I set my easel up just inside the sliding door at the Northeast end, but out of the way of things that might need to be moved. A worker came and left a few times with a replacement shaft he was fitting into the brush hog—a large mower that you drag behind a tractor that chews up most anything. He tried to help me by turning on the interior lights, and I had to convince him that I really didn’t want them. He was puzzled; it didn’t make sense to paint in an unlit barn. I had the drawing in place when Farmer Matt came in and told me he would need to use the tractor parked in front of the far door. Not right away, but in about ten minutes. I usually approach the overall environment first and add the more specific subject elements later, but since I didn’t know when or if he would return with the tractor, I painted it in right away. As it was, he only had the tractor for about fifteen minutes and then brought it back, putting it in the same position, but that was enough to start me building the painting in a different way. By then, I had three tractors painted in, and I was working dark to light rather than from the middle values out. The danger with that is when painting in low light, the tendency is to paint lighter, and when I got to the windows, there wouldn’t be the value difference I needed to make them appear bright. To guard against that happening, I roughly put the windows in at the beginning, but not as bright as I could, to give myself some headroom. It made me paint the inside of the barn on the dark side, to keep a distance to the almost-light windows. At the end, I added brighter, purer color on the windows to take them up a notch, and they popped. Without properly placing those light and dark values, the painting would feel unnatural and lack the sense of light entering the far windows and the subtle illumination coming in the door behind me reflecting off the bales and far wall. The other challenges were to depict the organic signature of the ground and the sense of volume in the quiet, metal building. With those in place, you can smell the hay and the machinery, and hear the swifts nested in the girders. n ICON |
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harper’s FINDINGS The average American girl born in 2019 will take prescription drugs for more than half her life, former members of the U.S. Special Forces with various neuropsychiatric problems experienced positive effects after taking ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT at a clinic in Mexico, and depressed patients given either ketamine or a placebo during a routine surgery reported significant improvements. Researchers using the Defeat Scale confirmed that internal migrant workers in Shenzhen felt defeated. Autistic people are less susceptible to the bystander effect, and ADHD trebles the chances of an Israeli adult developing dementia. Excessive fluoride in the well water of rural Ethiopian communities causes cognitive impairment in children. Homozygosity among the Namibian Himba people decreases female fertility. Primatologists conclusively established the occurrence of menopause among adult female chimpanzees of the Ngogo community, and noted that the chimpanzees were post-reproductive for about a fifth of their lives, half the time observed in female hunter-gatherers. The presentation scene on the Ivory Pyxis Lid of Mochlos may not depict the crowning of a short king. Ur was not as resistant to urban sprawl as was previously thought. Declassified Cold War satellite imagery revealed 396 previously undiscovered Roman forts spanning from Aleppo to Mosul on an east–west axis, contradicting the theory of a north–south axis introduced by Father Antoine Poidebard following his biplane survey of the region in the Twenties. Before the colonization of Australia, many aboriginal people buried dingoes with rites indistinguishable from those used for humans. Mummified mice discovered atop desolate, high-altitude Andean volcanoes were found to have traveled there on their own, and were not accidentally transported by the Inca in the course of ritualistic child sacrifice. The Long Valley Caldera is unlikely to erupt again soon but may still cause earthquakes, Siberia’s permafrost crater is growing, and the Ruki may be the blackest large blackwater river on Earth. Engineers developed a cost-efficient smartphone attachment to better analyze the pupils of people with very dark eyes. Hoarders can more easily part with their possessions if they first do so in virtual reality. Shortages of carbohydrates, above other foodstuffs, were deemed most likely to trigger civil unrest in the United Kingdom. Headless compression screws were found not to cause significant tendon damage when inserted into the metacarpals of eight fresh, frozen cadaver hands, different species of planarian flatworm independently evolved the ability to regrow a lost head, and a new worm species was discovered in the intestine of a black-necked swan in Patagonia. Bird flu reached Antarctica. Roosters appear to understand that their reflection is not another rooster. Tau regulation in kingfishers may protect them from diving-related brain injuries. A male streaked shearwater trapped in Typhoon Faxai for eleven hours completed five loops around the eye of the storm. Severe space weather was found to reduce nocturnal bird migration over the Great Plains by 9 to 17 percent. NASA’s new moon suit will be designed by Prada. 30
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INDEX Chance that an item purchased by an American during the 2022 holiday season was returned : 1 in 5 Portion of American men who say they binge drink on New Year’s Eve : 1/2 % change over the past decade in the number of Americans making New Year’s resolutions to lose weight : −54 % of Americans who have used Ozempic to lose weight : 15 Who say they know someone who has : 47 % of doctors who have used Ozempic to lose weight : 14 increase since 2000 in the average U.S. family health insurance premium : 272 % increase over the past year in the number of U.S. home foreclosures : 22 Minimum number of Americans who live out of their cars : 50,000 Portion of employees who say their employer has recently asked workers to take on additional responsibilities : 3/5 % decrease over the past year in the number of Americans quitting their jobs : 14 In the number of job postings : 6 % increase over the past year in the number of U.S. students starting accounts on LinkedIn : 73 % by which Gen Z-ers are making more connections on LinkedIn than millennials : 29 Than baby boomers : 144 % increase since 2018 in use of the phrase “generational opportunity” on corporate earnings calls : 3,800 % change in the value of a U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF in the month after Hamas’s attack on Israel : +9 % of Americans five days after the attack who said it was important that we cooperate closely with Israel : 65 That we protect Palestinians : 15 Portion of Americans who think the term “moderate” describes their political views well : 1/5 Percentage by which more Democrats than Republicans think this : 39 Percentage of U.S. voters who think Joe Biden is too old to effectively serve another four-year term : 68 Who think Donald Trump is too old to effectively serve another four-year term : 34 Percentage of Republicans who support instituting a maximum age limit for presidential candidates : 57 Of Democrats who do : 60 Portion of Americans who believe that climate scientists are influenced by their personal political views : 3/5 % of Democrats who believe this : 43 Of Republicans : 86 % of Americans who say climate scientists understand the causes of climate change “very well” : 14 % of Ukrainians who expect to join NATO in the next decade : 69 Who expect to join the European Union in the next decade : 73 % decrease over the past year in the number of Ukrainians who approve of U.S. leadership : 20 Portion of Americans who believe they are smarter than the average person : 2/3 % of U.S. adults who are at least somewhat pessimistic about the country’s education system : 59 About the country’s moral and ethical standards : 63 Minimum estimated number of U.S. children in foster care : 391,000 Average age of a child in foster care : 8 Percentage by which more U.S. households have a dog than a child : 12.5 Percentage of Americans who are hoping to inherit money : 58 Who are hoping to inherit a pet : 59 SOURCES 1 Appriss Retail (Irvine, Calif.), 2 American Addiction Centers (Brentwood, Tenn.), 3 YouGov (NYC), 4 Tebra (Newport Beach, Calif.), 5 Tebra (Newport Beach, Calif.), 6 Tebra (Newport Beach, Calif.), 7 KFF (San Francisco), 8 ATTOM Data (Irvine, Calif.), 9 Harper’s research, 10 Gallup (Washington), 11 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13 LinkedIn (Sunnyvale, Calif.), 14 144, 15 AlphaSense (NYC), 16 iShares (NYC), 17 YouGov, 18 YouGov, 19 YouGov, 20 YouGov, 21 Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Conn.) 22, Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Conn.), 23 Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Conn.), 24 Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Conn.), 25 The Survey Center on American Life (Washington), 26 The Survey Center on American Life (Washington), 27 The Survey Center on American Life (Washington), 28 Pew Research Center (Washington), 29 Gallup, 30 Gallup, 31 Gallup, 32 Chris Chabris, Geisinger Health System (Lewisburg, Pa.), 33 Pew Research Center, 35 Pew Research Center, 36 Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (Dublin, Ohio), 37 Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (Dublin, Ohio), 38 U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)/American Veterinary Association (Schaumburg, Ill.), 39 OnePoll (Brooklyn, N.Y.), 40 OnePoll (Brooklyn, N.Y.).
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
The letters of the musicals that go beyond the grid spell out ASIDE.
BY REBECCA GOLDSTEIN
ACROSS 1 Prelude to a rimshot 4 Raring to go 9 Loops in on an email, briefly 12 People of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation 16 Channel that many watch for kicks? 18 Do a deep dive, say 19 Type of steak represented in a steak emoji 21 “I’ll have what she’s having” 22 Country where ceviche originated 23 Stainless stuff 24 Person born in late March or early April 25 Instrument that is typically about 18 feet long when fully stretched out 26 *1988 30 Traveling players 32 Galena and bauxite, for two 33 Took to court 34 *1950 38 Cream-filled pastry 42 Gator tail? 43 Trained for roller derby 44 Having burst (open) 45 Condo board, for short 48 One of 23 in a spine 50 Sacred oath 51 *1952 53 Early bird hrs. 56 Sound at goat yoga 58 Hydroelectric power plant component 59 Get-quick connector 60 Sunrise Movement cause 67 Enjoyed every bite 69 *2017 70 Chemistry rules 71 Enjoying a little too much, say 72 H.S. course where one may earn college credit 75 Make a request 76 Hello, in Rio 77 Photography choice that fills in the blanks of “In_tagram fi_te_” 78 Cosmopolitan competitor 79 Lifetime buds, briefly 82 Vegetable sometimes served with marshmallow topping 85 *2021 88 Singer Grande, to fans 89 Performance spots 92 Warming phenomenon 93 WWF, e.g. 94 Tony Award won by the starred answers in the years of their clues 97 Coke Zero alternative
99 Get ahold of 100 Uno + cinco 102 Egyptology subject 105 Delivers an aside, as this puzzle’s starred answers literally do 113 Tater 115 Twinkly topper on a princess 116 Cuisine with orange blossom rolls 117 Italian for “melody” 118 “Goodness me” 119 “Nightmare ___” (2021 Guillermo del Toro film) 120 Mary-Kate, Ashley or Elizabeth 121 Reward correlate 122 Great song 123 “___ this mess” (rhyming cross-stitch phrase) 124 Line in a child’s drawing of the sun 125 Tablespoon, e.g. DOWN 1 Put a little ___ in your step 2 Get mileage out of 3 Pledge drive swag items that display a three-letter logo 4 Promo parlance 5 Walter White’s product 6 Desperate request 7 50-50 8 Muscle targeted by an overhead press 9 Elaborate 45 Down ’do 10 “Your guide to a better future” site 11 Shortened word after study or jam 12 When to see Phoenix in Phoenix or Chicago in Chicago 13 Neutral color 14 Insert, as a crossword puzzle on a website 15 Heat, as meat 17 “I don’t believe you!” 19 Not very exciting 20 Fratty moniker 27 Actor Omar of “This Is Us” 28 Malevolent Middle-earth monster 29 Endorse in a PDF 30 Frog’s kid-lit companion 31 Former CNN anchor Bakhtiar 35 CLE baller 36 Manga artist Junji 37 Not many 39 Reputation, briefly 40 Gage of “The White Lotus”
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Faux fur fabric Doja Cat or Lady Gaga, e.g. Chop shop? A single time Condition that is underdiagnosed in women 49 Sources of photographic evidence 52 Microbrewery jug 54 “I’ll Take You There” singer Staples 55 Reeked to high heaven 56 Chutney fruit 57 “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” photographer Adams 60 Jo Ann Jenkins of AARP, e.g. 61 John on a jet 62 White-hot rage 63 Come to a close 64 “In the Heights” director Jon M. ___ 65 AI film villain 66 Doc treating sinusitis 68 Mini ___ (device used to clean a keyboard, briefly) 72 Brosh who created the web comic “Hyperbole and a Half” 73 Shell-less mollusk 74 Mariposa lily 77 With 96 Down, 2020 Olympic all-around gymnastics champion 79 ___ ghanoush 80 Lose sleep, say 81 Receive with a closed hand? ICON |
82 “Affirmative” 83 Singer-songwriter DiFranco who created her own record label 84 Cheese partner 86 One who is wise beyond their years 87 From the Antarctic Circle to the Arctic Circle 89 Parisian pal 90 Put pitchers on one’s card, say 91 Struts down the catwalk 95 After the bell 96 See 77 Down 98 Scaredy-cat 101 “In that case ...” 103 “It’s-a me, ___!” 104 Complete ecstasy 106 Waste, as time 107 Shopper’s lure 108 Número that’s half of 100 Across 109 Group that disbanded in 1991, briefly 110 Perlman who played Ruth Handler in “Barbie” 111 Microscopic, maybe 112 Place for crafts at summer camp? 113 Cry loudly 114 Soup often garnished with lime and basil Solution on page 26 J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 4 | I C O N D V. C O M
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