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contents 16

APRIL ~ 2012

INTERVIEWS EDWARD SOREL I 26 The Pope blessed him, Tina Brown loved him, he is an award-winning cartoonist and his illustrations have appeared on the cover of The New Yorker many times, so why the long face?

WILLEM DAFOE I 30 One of the greatest character actors in the business, Willem Dafoe is riding high this season with roles in three very different, yet thematically similar, movies, two of which give him the rare opportunity to take the lead.

FEATURE Robert De Niro. Photo: David Lee.

M FOR METICULOUS I 24 The history of a national treasure and what it took to restore it to its former splendor.

26 OPINION

COLUMNS

Eugene Robinson | 5 Lexicrockery | 53

City Beat | 5

Esperanza Spalding; Matt Wilson’s

Jim Delpino | 42

Arts and Crafts; Alfredo Rodriguez;

Dave Barry | 44

Ahmad Jamal; Chris Standring;

ART

Sally Friedman | 46

Jon Balke

Alliteration of the Month | 6

STAGE

FILM

Regional Theater | 48 Three Sisters; The Outgoing Tide; The Golem; The Belle’s Stratagem;

Harper’s Findings | 59

Manon Lescaut

MUSIC Di Wu Singer / Songwriter | 52 Gretchen Peters; Johnny Cash; Troubadour Blues; Mel Brooks;

Ribera Del Duero

Calendar | 63

Classical Notebook | 50

Guy Davis

WINE | 38

Harper’s Index | 61 The Last Word | 62

The Whistle Blower; A Better Life

Darling Companion; Bully

L.A. Times Crossword | 60

Carrie

50/50; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy;

Jeff, Who Lives at Home; Free Men;

ETCETERA

Linda Elder and Tom Wopat;

Keresman on Film | 16 Being Flynn

Film Roundup | 22

Milt Jackson

Day Trip | 59

Cinematters | 14 Damsels in Distress

Reel News | 20

Jazz Library | 58

Doubt: A Parable; Anything Goes;

Footlights | 49

Bad Movie | 18 The Rum Diary

Nick’s Picks | 56

Music / Dance | 52 Shen Yun Keresman on Disc | 54 Tonight at Noon; Beth McKee; Lambchop; Guy Klucevsek; Weser-Renaissance Bremen;

FOOD Vedge | 39 The Morris house’s 8th Street entrance. 4

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Verdad | 40

Gerry Mulligan Sextet; Cannonball Adderley Quintet

ON THE COVER: Actor Willem Dafoe. Page 30.

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opinion

city beat

Trayvon Martin and dangerous times for black men EUGENE ROBINSON FOR EVERY BLACK MAN in America, from the millionaire in the corner office to the mechanic in the local garage, the Trayvon Martin tragedy is personal. It could have been me or one of my sons. It could have been any of us. How many George Zimmermans are out there cruising the streets? How many guys with chips on their shoulders and itchy fingers on the triggers of loaded handguns? How many selfimagined guardians of the peace who say Norriena Jordan of Springfield, Va., sobs as she listens to the words “black speakers at Saturday's Freedom Plaza remembrance of male” with a Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Members of the crowd had sneer? been asked to wear hoodies similar to the one Martin We don’t yet was wearing when he was shot. Photo: Tracy A. Woodknow every detail ward / THE WASHINGTON POST of the encounter between Martin and Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., that ended with an unarmed 17-year-old high school student being shot dead. But we know enough to conclude that this is an old, familiar story. We know from tapes of Zimmerman’s 911 call that he initiated the encounter, having decided that Martin’s presence in the neighborhood was suspicious. We know that when Zimmerman told the 911 operator that he was following Martin, the operator responded, “Okay, we don’t need you to

PHOTOGRAPHY IS EVERYWHERE IN this intensely photographic city, from Zoe Strauss’s Ten Years exhibit, scheduled to end April 22 (Honickman and Berman Galleries, ground floor, PMA) to Adrian Abounce’s You are Beautiful exhibit, set to open April 6th at Ven & Vaida Gallery in Old City. Abounce, who hails from Columbia, says his first solo exhibit will focus on the effects of light and shadow. He calls his depiction of people, places and things as being “without illusions or distortions.” Trained in graphic design, Abounce has exhibited at the Ice Box Gallery in Northern Liberties’ Crane Building (2009) and had an Hispanic Heritage Month exhibit at the PECO building in 2008….The fever for all things visual continues with politicoturned-filmmaker Sam Katz’s Fever: 1793, about Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever epidemic that killed 5,000 and had 25,000 fleeing for their lives, including then President George Washington, his Cabinet and the entire U.S. Congress. This dramatic recreation of one of Philadelphia’s saddest moments had its premier at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre last month as part of Katz’s multi-series epic, Philadelphia: The Great Experiment. Look for Fever: 1793 showings this month. A vaccine, of course, is the way to nip health disasters in the bud, but what about the earth? Earth Day was co-founded by notorious/convicted murderer Ira Einhorn in April 1970 when many loved to follow gurus, even if that meant forming long KoolAid lines. (Einhorn’s prison blog is mostly book reviews a la The New York Review of Books). For this Earth Day, Abby Sullivan of the Wagner Free Institute of Science (1700 W. Montgomery Avenue; 215-763-6529) tells me that the Philadelphia Science Festival will hold an Earth Day (April 22) panel discussion, Truth, Trust and Fracking. Don’t be put off by the fracky sound of this: “It will be less about the fracking debate,” Abby says, “and more about how we find, process, and trust information about complex issues that affect our lives.” It’s always been my belief that The Wagner should be the talk of the town every bit as much as the new Barnes. Thomas Eakins, the persecuted Philly-prophet artist who had the misfortune of being born ahead of his time, lay in an unmarked grave for decades before he was given a marker and a reputation overhaul. Eakins is the subject of a new play by Bill Cain, the first recipient of the Philadelphia Theater Company’s Terrence McNally New Play Award. Cain’s play, Unvarnished (working title), is the story of the artist’s perseverance in the wake of many obstacles… “Including,” McNally says, “humiliation, and rejection even in his hometown of Philadelphia.” Look for workshops and a possible production of the play at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre sometime in the future. Speaking of outcasts-

EDITED BY THOM NIICKELS

ThomNickels1@aol.com

turned-heroes, after a long and successful run in New York, the Mauckingbird Theatre Company will stage Jon Maran’s 2009 play, The Temperamentals, about pre-Stonewall Manhattan society, in the Skybox of The Adrienne Theatre (April 1129th). This story of the early Mattachine Society in the age of Joe McCarthy (Rick Santorum’s energy source) portrays what it was like to be gay while the world was rocking to Elvis Presley. I saw the first trial run of Maran’s play in New York two years ago and will never forget the prolonged standing ovation. Igor Stravinsky may have cornered the musical market with The Rite of Spring, but the Fairmount Park Art Association is dedicating April to the rediscovery of the city’s wealth of outdoor sculpture. One of the more festive tributes will be a tango dance party in Logan Circle to celebrate the turning on of water in the Swann Memorial Fountain. You don’t need a half-shell Venus de Milo costume to join in, but you may need a flashlight for another FPAA April offering, a “flashlight mob” that will illuminate the Iroquois sculpture near PMA. (www.fpaa.org). Art, it is true, may be anything you can get away with—it’s also something you can do at lunch…..Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has extraordinary hour-long Wednesday lectures beginning at 12 noon… condensed, biting and boredom-free. Philly artist Moe Brooker recently drew a packed crowd there, many munching sandwiches from the Museum café. As a former dyed-inthe-wool Art at Lunch skeptic, I saw the light when Vanessa Bender (daughter of famous Philadelphia Forsenic sculptor, Frank Bender, convinced me to go). On April 11, PAFA’s Art at Lunch will present City as Spectacle: Visual Illusion and the Early Philadelphia Theater. Wendy Bellion, an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Delaware, will take you on a tour of art exhibition theater lobbies in pre-1811 Philadelphia. April’s Museum of the Month has to go to The Philadelphia History Museum at Atwater Kent. Charles Croce, who for years wove his special brand of PR and marketing magic at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is now doing the same thing at the Kent. Croce recently showed me the Museum’s two new gallery spaces, the first phase of an extensive renovation scheduled for completion this summer. Of special note is the design of the Museum’s reception desk, made out of original wood from Independence Hall. Don’t forget to check out Joe Frazier’s boxing gloves (1970) on display in the Phase One Gallery. Famous fighters don’t come along every day, but I’ve been told that a former professional boxer and friend of Frazier’s can now be seen begging for small change in Center City. If I ever get this man’s name and story, I’ll be sure to share. ■

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5 / OPINION / TRAYVON MARTIN AND DANGEROUS TIMES FOR BLACK MEN

do that.” We know that Zimmerman kept following Martin anyway. “This guy looks like he is up to no good,” Zimmerman said on the 911 tape. Please tell me, what would be the innocent way to walk down the street with an iced tea and some Skittles? Hint: For black men, that’s a trick question. Some commentators have sought to liken Martin’s killing to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, an unspeakable crime that helped galvanize the civil rights movement. To make a facile comparison is a disservice to history—and to the memory of both young men. It is ridiculous to imply that nothing has changed.

Jasmine Gordon, 19, left, comforts Krystal Leaphart, 20, both of Detroit, during a vigil for Trayvon Martin on the campus of Howard University. Leaphart, who is the president of the Howard chapter of the NAACP, has a 19-year-old brother who, she says, wears hoodies all the time and drinks Arizona Ice Tea. She said the vigil "put me in that place of, that could've seriously been my brother," referring to what happened to Martin. Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post

When Till was killed in Mississippi at 14—accused of flirting with a white woman—this was a different country. State-sanctioned terrorism and assassination were official policy throughout the South. Today, the laws and institutions that enforced Jim Crow repression have long since been dismantled. Mississippi, of all places,

has more black elected officials than any other state. An African American family lives in the White House. Black America was never a monolith, but over the past five decades it has become much more diverse—economically, socially, culturally. If you stood on a street corner and chose five black men at random, you might meet a doctor who lives in the high-priced suburbs, an immigrant from Ethiopia who drives a cab, a young aspiring filmmaker with flowing dreadlocks, an unemployed dropout trying to hustle his next meal and a midlevel government worker struggling to put his kids through college. Those men would have nothing in common, really, except one thing: For each of them, walking down the wrong street at the wrong time could be a fatal mistake. I hear from people who contend that racism no longer exists in this country. I tell them I wish they were right. Does it matter that Zimmerman is himself a member of a minority group—he is Hispanic—or that his family says he has black friends? Not in the least. The issue isn’t Zimmerman’s race or ethnicity; it’s the hair-trigger assumption he made that “black male” equals “up to no good.” This is one thing that hasn’t changed in all the eventful years since Emmett Till’s mutilated body was laid to rest. It is instructive to note that Till grew up in Chicago and just happened to be in Mississippi visiting relatives. Young black men who were born and raised in the South knew where the red lines were drawn, understood the unwritten code of behavior that made the difference between survival and mortal danger. Till didn’t. Today, young black men grow up in a society where racism is no longer deemed acceptable. Many live in integrated neighborhoods, attend integrated schools, have interracial relationships. They wonder why their parents prattle on so tediously about race, warning about this or that or the other, when their own youthful experience tells them that race doesn’t matter. What could happen on the way home from the store with some Skittles and an iced tea? Whether Zimmerman can or should be prosecuted, given Florida’s “stand your ground” law providing broad latitude to claim selfdefense, is an important question. But the tragic and essential thing, for me, is the bull’s-eye that black men wear throughout their lives—and the vital imperative to never, ever, be caught on the wrong street at the wrong time. ■

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The intersection of art, entertainment, culture, opinion and mad genius

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City Beat Editor Thom Nickels Fine Arts Editors Edward Higgins

Burton Wasserman Classical Music Editor Peter H. Gistelinck Music Editors Nick Bewsey

Mark Keresman Bob Perkins Tom Wilk Theater Critic David Schultz Food Editor Robert Gordon Wine Editor Patricia Savoie Contributing Writers A.D. Amorosi

Robert Beck Jack Byer Ralph Collier Peter Croatto James P. Delpino Sally Friedman Geoff Gehman George Oxford Miller Thom Nickels R. Kurt Osenlund Victor Stabin

PO Box 120 • New Hope, PA 18938 (800) 354-8776 Fax (215) 862-9845 ICON is published twelve times per year. 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. Subscriptions are available for $40 (shipping & handling). Copyright 2012 by Prime Time Publishing Co., Inc.

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a thousand words

STORY AND PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK

PLAYERS

SAMUEL CLEMENS SLOWLY CIRCLED the billiard table. The fingers of his left hand dragged lightly on the wood next to the cushions and swirled inside the lip of the pockets as he rounded the corner. He peered down the long cigar that stuck from his mouth never taking his eyes off the scattered balls, contemplating from a mist of smoldering tobacco the possibilities they presented. He stopped, hand still on the rail. Crouching slightly, Clemens swung his cue and laid it across his thumb. The cigar wagged from side to side in his mouth and smoke rose through his thick, amber-stained mustache. He sunk lower over his stick, jaw and stogie jutting forward. Clemens glided the cue ahead and back twice, then struck the ball with a firm crack. It dashed through the pack to the far side and hit the six, which ran the rail and dropped cleanly into the far pocket. The cue ball banked back to the center of the table leaving a clean shot at the two and five. Clemens stood up smiling, muttered something about a jackrabbit hole, then resumed walking the perimeter though a cloud of his own smoke. I know this because I stood next to the pool table in the bar at the Players Club in Manhattan and painted under the portrait of Clemens, above which hangs his cue. It’s clear to anyone who has been there that he hasn’t left yet. Edwin Booth inhabits a suite on the third floor. The building is a short walk from what was the theater district and it was his home when he deeded it to the Club in 1888. Booth’s bedroom and sitting room are nearly the way they were when he died, with indentations on seats and beds, more tended to than restored, and not entirely unoccupied. No cold drafts or floating orbs, but my sense is Edwin did stop by while I was painting there to monitor my progress. I’m sure he wanders the Club to walk the stage in the dining room or chide Sam about his cigar ashes. Still, I’m a little disappointed that there isn’t some vague glow or shadow in the painting that I can’t account for.

My initial introduction to some of the luminaries that dwell in the Players Club came when I painted a view of the alcove on the first floor. It’s an elegant and intimate space four steps above and to the side of the Reading Room, where I set up my easel. To my back hung three paintings by John Singer Sargent—a full-length portrait of Edwin Booth in the middle, and to the left one of an actor named Joseph Jefferson. Looking over my shoulder was the most unusual and captivating of the three: Lawrence Barrett. Many of the portraits in the Club represent the sitter in one of his or her famous roles so costume and makeup have a lot to do with their appearance. I don’t know in which role Sargent depicted Barrett but he stares maniacally from the frame, his silver hair extending from both sides of his head as if steam was exploding from his ears. His powerful projection coupled with Sargent’s keen observation and bravura

makes for a painting that is difficult to ignore. I have no problem with people watching while I paint but I was constantly aware of Barrett’s burning gaze, and Sargent chuckling from the chair next to the fireplace. The first time I saw the alcove I envisioned two people sitting on the leather couch, in conversation under the large portraits that dominate the wall. That could have been my imagination or a couple of past members lingering. When the time came to populate the painting I asked two women from another room to give me a few minutes. Their relaxed pose is a nice counterpoint to the formal paintings above. The low perspective elevates the scene and forces the viewer to look between the chairs, suggesting distance and privacy. Running down the list of those who have become members since the Players Club was established you not only come

across the biggest names in theater but those of other great accomplishments as well. Nikolai Tesla would meet Mark Twain there for dinner before commencing late night explorations in his laboratory. One of the founders was William Tecumseh Sherman. Their conversations, the laughter, the performances both spontaneous and prepared, reside in the walls of 16 Gramercy Park South. The Club has many other rooms where I intend to paint, and I’m sure I will have more encounters. Perhaps a president, a physicist, a legendary writer, or a screen idol. I can’t imagine a place they would rather spend time than in each other’s good company. ■ Robert Beck’s exhibition, Iconic Manhattan, opens at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park South, May 3 and runs through May 12. Beck maintains a gallery and academy in Lambertville, NJ. www.robertbeck.net

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art

ED HIGGINS

PAINTED POETRY WITH AN ARTIST SUCH as Mary Page Evans, adept at many styles, media and subject matter, it is difficult to assign categories. Better just to take it gratefully and marvel at details. Evans’s work from the 1960s to the present is being celebrated at the Delaware Art Museum in a retrospective solo exhibition. Painted Poetry: The Art of Mary Page Evans comprises more than 50 works and runs through July 15. The exhibition includes landscapes, garden scenes, figures, trees, seascape and above all the glorious skies. Evans is content to explore her world again and again to the point of capturing the same scene in a variety of weather and seasons. These are particular locations with color scenes not conjured up from empty air— and the results show the demands of this approach. If there is such a thing as a visual poem of a sky, then Evans is the poet laureate. No one can quite capture a sky swirling with clouds and color like Evans. Evans’s work is inspired by poetry—not just any poetry but specific works leading to a particular image. Among the poets Evans names are Howard Nemerov, Billy Collins, Moira Linehan, Adrianne Marcus, Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, and Susan Jackson. Their work, with associated images, are in a handsome catalogue accompanying the show. Many of the scenes recurring in Evans’s work are the gardens of Delaware and France, the Florida coastline and a mountain in the Shenandoah Valley. “I am primarily a landscape painter. I work directly from nature, en plein air. I look at a specific landscape, establish its locale, the time of day, the quality of light, and paint it. Becoming involved with its particularities, I get to know it as if I were painting a figure or a still life. During the process, I am always creating and destroying until I arrive at the inevitability of this particular landscape,” Evans notes. She has worked at the gardens of Monet in Giverny and she shows that influence along with other Impressionists and post-Impressionists. There is also more than a little of the later

> Shenandoah Jazz #3, 2000. Oil on linen, 58 1/2 x 48 1/2. Collection of the artist. 8

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Edward Higgins is a member of The Association Internationale Des Critiques d’Art.

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art

BURT WASSERMAN

Masterpieces from the Uffizi make their US debut

OR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, the cultural heritage of Italy has been admired in our country. The respect and love, especially of Italian Renaissance Period art, is an acknowledged fact of life among serious American connoisseurs and collectors. Now, as if to crown this aesthetic enthusiasm, the worldrenowned Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy, has sent a loan exhibition of outstanding masterpieces for presentation in the James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 South Pine Street in Doylestown, the official seat of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The group of 44 paintings and tapestries is titled Offering of the Angels: Treasures from the Uffizi. It will be on public view in the Michener from April 21 to August 11, 2012. The show was curated by Antonio Natali, the Director of the Uffizi Gallery. The principal theme of the installation traces a path to redemption, illustrated by events recounted in the Old and New Testaments. They run from the creation of Adam to the death of Christ as a prelude to resurrection. In addition, the exhibition is supplemented by seven Italian Renaissance Period works from the John G. Johnson Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The items from Florence, a city that has long been called “the cradle of the Renaissance,” have not been seen in America before this occasion. Together, they demonstrate the variety of stylistic directions and the sheer technical brilliance of certain significant accomplishments from the 400-year passage of time represented by the several stages of the Renaissance Period. For the most part, these artworks were commissioned to fulfill the educative potential of pictures for amplifying important religious principles and doctrines. In this regard, they serve a very different purpose from the many examples

Francesco Mazzola, called Il Parmigianino, Madonna with Child. Oil on panel.

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Dr. Burton Wasserman is a professor emeritus of Art at Rowan University, and a serious artist of long standing. Dr. Wasserman’s program Art From Near and Far can be heard on WWFM in Central and Northern New Jersey and Bucks County and WGLS in South Jersey.

of contemporary painting which focus on self-expression and other modern-day issues. Incidentally, the word renaissance was coined by the art historian and architect, Giorgio Vasari. Its purpose was to express the way painters and sculptors in the 15th century were encouraged to make highly credible representational images extolling the human values that brought meaning and depth to a way of life that eclipsed and replaced the Medieval Era. The stylistic practices of the Middle Ages gave way to a rebirth of artistic forms practiced earlier, during the time of the Greek and Roman civilizations that were at their height prior to the birth of Christ.

One of the most exquisite examples of painting in the show is Sandro Botticelli’s “Madonna and Child” of 1466. Rendered in oil on a wooden panel, the picture is a very believable view of a baby boy held by his mother with his hands clasped around her neck. The child’s dependency on the Madonna for her physical support and attentive affection are suggested with profound tenderness and heartfelt spirit. By contrast, Parmigianino’s 16th century version of the Holy Mother and Child theme shows her with hands joined together in prayer while the infant looks out on the world with a book on his lap and a symbolic dove of peace held sensitively in his hands. The overall mood of the artwork is

radiant with rich color and quiet restraint. An eminently striking vision of Jesus as The Savior looms up before you in Jacopo di Chimenti’s early 17th century painting in which the anatomical treatment is reminiscent of standing athletic sculptures from the time of the ancient Romans. The classical period influence on the Renaissance figure is clearly evident. Opportunities to see a show of such magnitude here in America come along all too infrequently. For this reason it is definitely an exhibition not to be missed, especially when it is so near at hand. ■

Alessandro Bonvicino, Nativity with the Sheperds, ca. 1554. Oil on canvas. APRIL 2012

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exhibitions

Density, detail.

Thomas L. Miller Rich Timmons Studio & Gallery 3795 Route 202, Doylestown, PA 18902 267-247-5867 3795gallery.com Through April, 2012 / Artist’s talk 4/27 & 4/28 Opening: Friday, April 27, 7-7 and Saturday, April 28, 7-9 A graduate of Hussian School of Art, Philadelphia, Pa, first worked as an illustrator for the Wills Group, an advertising Illustration service from 1972 to 1980. During his 28 year career as a free lance advertising/editorial illustrator most of his assignments were created in the mediums of pen and ink, dyes, graphite, colored pencil, and pastels. Since 2000 Miller has refocused his vision and career direction. Advances in technology made for great changes in the advertising illustration market. His present focus on portraiture is the result of these changes. Miller’s experience in doing many montage illustrations has enabled him to add dimension to portraiture that is different from traditional portrait artists. He can illustrate an individual’s career retrospective or wedding anniversary or a personal interest, thus creating a family heirloom.

145th Annual Exhibition American Watercolor Society Salmagundi Club 47 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003 Tuesday 1-8; Wednesday-Sunday 1-5 212-206-8986 americanwatercolorsociety.org April 3-22 Opening reception 4/3, 6-8 The AWS annual is one of the premiere watercolor exhibits in the world. Over 1,200 artists from throughout the United States and a dozen foreign countries submitted their work to a panel of jurors chosen from signature members of the AWS. Of these submissions (one per artist), 140 paintings were selected for the exhibition. Forty paintings from the show are selected for the Traveling Exhibition, which will tour museums and galleries across the country during the next year. For the schedule of the Traveling Exhibition, and to see images of the prize-winning entries, visit www.americanwatercolorsociety.org. While inclusion in this exhibition is itself an honor, participants also compete for the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals of Honor, eleven other medals, and over $40,000.00 in prize money. The American Watercolor Society is one of the oldest and most prestigious exhibition societies in the US. Election to the Society as a signature member is one of the most sought-after honors in the painting world. Membership has included many of the greatest names in painting throughout the history of the Society, including the great American Impressionist Childe Hassam, the well-known regionalists Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield, virtually every member of the important “California School” of watercolorists, and everyone in between, up to and including the late great Andrew Wyeth. The Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue at 12th Street, is located in the Chelsea/Greenwich Village section of Manhattan. If you drive, it is recommended you plan to park in one of the off-street parking garages on 12th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place, just around the corner from the Salmagundi Club.

Elaine Kurtz, Untitled.

Force of Nature Woodmere Art Museum 9201 Germantown Avenue Tues-Thurs 10-5; Fri 10-8:45 Saturday 10-6; Sunday 10-5 215-247-0476 woodmereartmuseum.org. Through April 22 Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia’s premier institution for interpreting the art and culture of the region, presents Force of Nature, a series of two interrelated exhibitions: “Elaine Kurtz: A Retrospective” celebrates the Philadelphia-born artist’s geometric and nature-based abstractions, some of which are ethereal and atmospheric, while others are densely tactile, made of mud, sand and pulverized minerals. Meanwhile, “Elemental: Nature as Language in the Works of Philadelphia Artists” brings together a group of Kurtz’s peers for whom nature has spurred creativity in form, style and composition. “‘Elemental’ tells the stories of Kurtz and other artists who share her fascination with incorporating natural substances into art,” says Woodmere Director and CEO William R. Valerio. Accompanying the exhibitions is the panel discussion “Nature and Materiality,” featuring artists Frank Bramblett, Dina Wind and more, on April 21.

Ana Hernandez, Canyon

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VICTOR STABIN’S UNAUTHORIZED

NPR CAUTIONARY TALES

Quodlibetical Moments What happens when hybrid creatures living in surreal environments go through their daily routines with the radio on.

IT WAS THE LONGEST of necks, it was the shortest of necks, it was the atavistic memory of 220 million years of submarinal migration, it was a common elastic subtropical plant, it was all the songs of the sea encoded on delicate strands of DNA, it was snappin’ gum to pop tunes on the radio, it was the eternal spring of hope, it was death flirting with the circle of life on the edge of the maelstrom, it was witness to the birth of prehistory, the new world and the next world, it had everything before it and seemed, one way or the other, it always would. Like his ancestors before him, Cao-Che’s migratory wanderlust sent him ricocheting around the globe seeing its seemingly never-ending magic. His forebears had seen the invention of the wheel, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the discovery of fire, the burning of the Library at Alexandria (that was a real eyebrow raiser), Abraham, Muhammad, Jesus, and in CaoChe’s lifetime: motor oil, the invention of radio and the end of ship-toshore flag waving. All that and more changed the world a lot, but other than the lack of occasional waving, Cao-Che’s world for the most part seemed pretty stable. For the most part, Mother Nature was never an issue a robust turtle couldn’t handle and, for the most part, he was in for a surprise. For the last two hundred years, his sojourns were solitary ones—actually not an uncommon trait in a turtle, but Cao-Che was different. He was only half turtle, the other half Caoutchouc bush, and bushes enjoyed being planted next to other like-minded bushes. Dramatic pause. Cao-Che attained graceful balance with constant swimming, maintaining an extraordinarily fresh and varied diet, never thinking twice about migrating thousands of miles to follow currents and temperatures depending on what kind of dinner was fancied. Swimming and dining for almost 200 years and barely looking a day over 100, by most Chelonian standards an exemplary life except for one thing: The Bush Thing. Nova Scotia in November, New Orleans in December— no matter how free a man dreams he is, he is never as free as a fish. About 1,400 miles south, a gentle right turn up into the Gulf of Mexico to the coolest place there ever was. Being that it was not the longest of all trips and that Cao-Che had just feasted off the banks of the Northeast, the plan was to wait till N’Orleans before worrying about food. Having vision from

eyes on opposing sides of his head while drifting on Van Allen belts through teeming, streaming life made swimming the phantasmagorical dream, so much so Cao-Che didn’t distinguish consciousness from un-consciousness. For the most part, everything was and everything is, except for the smell. Things looked normal, but there was this DNA-awakening smell that went back 210,000,000 years. More curious than repelled, he followed the smell against

his better judgment, and found himself in what appeared to be an enormous kaleidoscopic lava lamp made of chocolate jellyfish. As much as Cao-Che was hungry from the trip he knew to stay away from this bounty. Oh snap. Oh no, oh my. Caught in smell rapture, Cao-Che started a backward Calderesque dance while eating his way through a universe of...singing, shiny, oily black, smiling, parading giant jellyfish. One moment stinky, next moment knocked back—exit stage left, on his ass in the alley, upside down reptile dysfunction worse than the brown acid at Woodstock, worse than buying a used car from twin gypsy car dealers. Wow. Combatting the disaster, the entire Gulf Coast had been mobilized with emergency vehicles galore. And there, just in

sight of the emergency workers, muscles as loose as a goose with a neck as long as has ever been seen, was Cao-Che. Headlines read: WASHED UP NEAR DEAD! [At this point dear patient reader the author would like to reiterate how thankful he is to have a President that gives a fuck about fish.] The toxic shock wore off as delirium set in. Cao-Che could hear voices, but nobody’s lips were moving. It sounded like a clam having a very impromptu interview with an authority on, of all things, Turtle mythology. In fact, it was Scott “the Quahog” Simon on NPR’s All Things Quodlibetical, discussing the discovery of a new Turtle species! NPR’s on-the-scene expert, Dr. Carl Safina, was explaining an ancient myth from a lost tribe of India. “Well, Scott, to genetically engineer unusually long-necked Chelonia, the tribe fed Caoutchouc nectar to infant turtles. They were a tribe of marinal explorers who believed the iconic neck gave them the ability to see past the horizon. Finding this creature, Scott...well, it’s as significant as finding Atlantis,” Safina said. As the dust settled, Cao-Che became world famous, sought after for his stories of intrepid migration, revered for wisdom, cherished as a symbol of species diversity, and empathized with as the survivor and representative of one of the world’s great man-made disasters. Cao-Che became the venerable star commentator on All Things Quodlibetical. No matter where Cao-Che showed up, the spectacle of his appearance brought waves of conscientiousness, widening man’s concern for life past the shoreline. Cao-Che became the symbol for responsible energy, single-handedly ending offshore oil drilling. In his spare time,when not balancing the weight of the world, Cao-Che loves to hang out with children, loves to chew extremely sugary gum and really goes crazy when The Turtles come on the radio. ■ Victor Stabin’s brain is controlled by a 15,000 square ft. circa 1860s wireworks factory. The edifice has demanded an illuminated alphabet, an ABC Book, industrial design products, a restaurant and authorship. The edifice is an unrelenting beast. In the middle of the night when the beast is at rest, Victor regains control of his brain and tries to paint. His work is on display at the Victor Stabin Gallery and Flow restaurant in Jim Thorpe, PA, and globally at www.VictorStabin.com. APRIL 2012

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cinematters

PETE CROATTO

Carrie Maclemore, Greta Gerwig, Megalyn Echikunwoke.

Damsels in Distress

BURIED AMONG THE HALF-JOKES and half-measures in Damsels in Distress, there is a good movie. I know Whit Stillman, returning to the director’s chair after a 14-year hiatus, could have fashioned a sharp satire on sexual politics, college life, or young adult idealism. How I wish he had. Instead, he stiff-arms us with coyness and pummels us with eloquent, shallow observations: think Jerry Seinfeld if The New Yorker was his lone source material. You feel insulted, patronized. Mostly, you feel gypped—the movie feels woefully incomplete. The action, such as it is, unfolds at the fictional, fancy-pants Seven Oaks College, where even the fraternity knobs wear shirts and ties. It looks like a swell place for aspiring politicians and future tax felons to graduate, but three well-dressed, attractive friends (Greta Gerwig, Megalyn Echikunwoke, and Carrie MacLemore) think otherwise. The student body is depressed; the sluggish male population smells terrible. The ladies do their part, advising troubled classmates at the suicide prevention center to tap dance and to find a “good-smelling environment.” They assist Lily (Analeigh Tipton), a doe-eyed, willowy transfer student who probably gets enough help already. Violet (Gerwig), who dresses like she’s attending lunch with the Kennedys and talks like a 1930s etiquette book, is the clear ringleader. Violet is a dynamo until her lunkhead boyfriend, Frank (Ryan Metcalf, a daft delight), dumps her for a girl (Caitlin Fitzgerald) she saved from romantic despair. Violet leaves campus in the throes of a self-described “tailspin,” but returns re-energized, but shaky. After all, who else is going to start an international dance craze or distribute bars of soap to the unwashed brutes? When Violet returns, Stillman leaves earth. Damsels in Distress has oodles of potential. Clueless campus do-gooder faces a world defined by political correctness and caution? Sounds like a sharper, worldlier Legally Blonde. Stillman, who also wrote and produced, lets Gerwig act as if she’s following Judy Garland’s pill regimen. The movie crumbles into a series of asides that kind of, not really orbits around two unappealing things: Violet and the obnoxious sheltered lives of college students. Look how arrogant the editor (Zach Woods) of the school newspaper is. Isn’t it ironic how agonized students jump from the second floor of a college building, which is too low to kill but just high

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enough to maim? Parents become so determined to brand their kids as “precocious” that the progeny—literally—never learn colors. Few of these observations are funny. And none connect to each other or to the movie as a whole, whatever (or wherever) that is. Seeing Gerwig, terrific in Greenberg and in that pointless Arthur remake, get neglected is almost tortuous. At least she’s not alone. Every character gets lost in Stillman’s intellectual splatter art. If they’re not the butt of a joke, a pointless, interminable subplot sweeps them away. The unlucky Tipton (Crazy, Stupid, Love.) is subjected to both. Lily pines for an attached, arty graduate student named Xavier (Hugo Becker). When Lily and Xavier finally get together, it’s only for Stillman to espouse how religion (in this case, Caharism) can be twisted into what the follower wants it to be. Before hooking up with Xavier, she circles around “playboyoperator” Fred (Adam Brody), who’s in “strategic development.” But hold on, he’s really Charlie, a permanent student, to whom Violet, that determined fixer-upper, takes a shine. Of course, Fred/Charlie serves a grater purpose. He offers an opinion on how homosexuality was more refined when it was forbidden. “Now,” he says, “it just seems to be a lot of muscle-bound morons running around in T-shirts.” Stillman’s first two films (1990’s Metropolitan and 1994’s Barcelona) found him profiling the affluent intellectual sect in a simple, dryly humorous way. It was like reading an article about improv-loving coal miners or some other unfamiliar but fascinating coterie. The Last Days of Disco (1998) was epic by comparison—Dancing on the NYC subway! Actors we actually recognize!— but it felt unwieldy and smug. About that movie, Michael J. Nelson wrote that Stillman was “satirizing a group of people recognizable to the eight people being satirized.” With Damsels in Distress, Stillman is hopelessly absorbed in his own world, where every line is an inside joke, every character a font of sly wisdom. He’s clearly enjoying himself. I doubt anyone else is. [PG-13] ■ A senior critic at Filmcritic.com from 2002 to 2007, Pete Croatto also reviews movies for The Weekender. His essays, reviews, and feature writing have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly, TCNJ Magazine, Deadspin, and The Star-Ledger. You can read more on his blog, whatpeteswatching.blogspot.com.

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MARK KERESMAN

Being Flynn

OVIES ABOUT WRITERS (OR almost any, ahem, “creative” sort, but especially writers) are almost always bummers, and Being Flynn is no exception. (Other examples: Barfly, Factotum, Nicholas Ray’s superb In a Lonely Place, Prick Up Your Ears.) Based on the memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by poet/playwright Nick Flynn, Being Flynn is an unflinching, harrowing look at the lives of an estranged father and son when their lives (finally) intersect. While there are many funny moments—born mostly of father’s outrageous, un-self-editing behavior—this movie shows two lives on a downward spiral, buoyed slightly by hope. Warning: Being Flynn is NOT a movie to see if you are at all depressed…further, I recommend a matinee show, so it’s still light outside when you leave the theater. Nick Flynn (Paul Dano) is a wannabe-writer and unemployed electrician (but we aren’t told why he doesn’t return to being one—I think they make decent money). He cheats on his live-in girlfriend, who upon learning of his infidelity gives him his walking papers. Via his new roommates, Nick hooks up with another gal in short order (funny how that always happens in movies, isn’t it?) that works in a homeless shelter. For reasons never entirely clear, Nick decides that a job serving the needs of the downtrodden is what he needs. Meanwhile, we are brought up to date on his father Jonathan, who deserted his wife (Julianne Moore) and Nick many years before. Jonathan (Robert De Niro) is a self-styled Great American Writer, an alcoholic cab driver that doesn’t like people who are black and/or gay. Jonathan is an irresponsible, bombastic loudmouth and con-man who gets away with it in part because his rants are, to an extent (and in a dark way), entertaining. He’s the type of con man where you know you’re being taken for a ride but you enjoy the trip all the same. His goofy behavior leads to homelessness and to find son Nick to help him out. Nick, a somewhat passive character with (understandably) mixed feelings about his father, agrees to help him out (by moving his dad’s stuff into storage). One night, when Jonathan runs out of luck and scams, he winds up staying in the shelter in which Nick works. As you’ve no doubt surmised, lots of drama ensues. The good news: This is the best performance by De Niro in years. After many years of so many mediocre movies with phoned-in performances, he actually gets back to some serious acting again. His Jonathan is a mostly unlikable excuse for a human being, but De Niro embodies him, makes you care what happens to him (even as he disintegrates mentally). Dano (There Will Be Blood, Cowboys & Aliens) is excellent as this real nowhere man, a somewhat passive lad who (almost) doesn’t realize that he’s straying onto the same path that his father went on years ago. Julianne Moore is superb as his hardscrabble, take-it-on-the-chin mother—Moore makes her supporting role (seen in flashbacks) believable in a very un-Hollywood manner. I don’t know if Moore has actually endured working-class hard-times, but she never comes off as a Hollywood actress trying to “convince” that she has. (Ever notice how every conventionally attractive actress usually/eventually takes one completely anti-glamorous, made-homely, put-on-weight role?) Wes Studi and Lili Taylor (the real-life wife of Nick Flynn) have too-small but neat supporting roles. The less-good news: While we critics aren’t generally supposed to acknowledge that other critics even exist, I’m going to break form for a bit. Some reviews of Being Flynn critique the characters rather than the movie itself. Most of the characters—damaged, oblivious, self-destructive, delusional, borderline psychotic—in this movie are not ones most of us would want to spend a chunk of time with. The situations in which these characters are enmeshed are unenviable, to put it mildly—parts of this movie are indeed depressing. The look of the film, the cinematography, is grayish and bleak. (Doesn’t the sun ever shine in this town, even in the winter?) But as a movie, with great acting, as a story in which there exists a bit of hope with/for the human condition (even at close to its worst), it’s very good…and to put the icing on the gravy, it was scripted and directed by Paul Weitz, the man at the helm of Little Fockers. Go figure. ■

In addition to ICON, Mark Keresman is a contributing writer for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Pittsburgh City Paper, Paste, Jazz Review, downBeat, and the Manhattan Resident.

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bad movie

MARK KERESMAN

The Rum Diary Too much “Rum,” not enough “Diary.”

Johnny Depp. Photo: Peter Mountain. Courtesy of FilmDistrict and GK Films

THE LATE HUNTER S. THOMPSON was and remains an iconoclastic figure in American literature. Thompson took “journalism” to The Edge with a style that was part surreal/speed-freak Beat (Jack Kerouac/Dean Moriarity/Allen Ginsberg), part Truman Capote, part satirical hipster. Somewhat evoking Capote’s In Cold Blood, Thompson’s style put “himself ” in the story he was writing, which could be a little self-indulgent (and sometimes was) but it put the reader right there in whatever action he was covering, burying you in the minutia of the situation until you could practically taste…the boozy delirium, the sweat of corruption, the stink of humanity at its strangest, funniest, and frequently worst. Because the style of HST (as he is sometimes affectionately known) can be intense and unconventional (to say the least), it’s not easy to “translate” to the medium of cinema.

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Take Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas (1998)—many of those that were HST fans liked or loved it, while those unfamiliar with HST did not like it much, if at all. Fear and Loathing was a drug-and-paranoia-filled road trip into the heart of weird America (you have to admit, Vegas is kinda surreal) as seen from the eyes of the anti-authoritarian, freedom-loving madman Thompson. To HST, Vegas was the symbol of “old” America triumphing over the “new weird hippie revolution” America—Thompson was a free-spirited patriot who saw the America ruled by Richard Nixon to be a dystopia. For those too young to recall, in the middle and late 1960s parts of America wanted Change, and the parts of America that abhorred Change looked to Nixon to put his foot down, said foot being in an iron-reinforced jackboot. But The Rum Diary is HST near the beginning—it’s a

fictional work, a novel inspired by his time as a sports writer in Puerto Rico circa 1960. Johnny Depp “was” HST in F&L, here he returns as Paul Kemp, a functioning alcoholic journalist gone to work for an on-its-last-legs newspaper. Kemp gets into all kinds of zany misadventures from the cheap, sleazy taverns to the homes of the filthy rich. The problem is, Rum Diary director Bruce Robinson doesn’t settle on a tone—is this a character study of intense oddballs or a plotdriven film featuring “colorful” personalities? Also, Kemp’s character vacillates between bland apathy and burning zeal. (“We’ve gotta get just ONE MORE ISSUE out, gang! We just GOTTA!”) The result is the film meanders aimlessly from one situation to the next instead of being engaging. As to the “colorful” characters, most of them come off as obnoxious jerks—fellow journalist Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi) is one of those guys that thinks he’s Witty, Deep and Profound when he’s drunk/high but you try to resist the urge to punch him out. Moberg “relaxes” to loudly played 78 RPM recordings of Adolf Hitler’s speeches—golly, he dares to be different! Aaron Eckhart is Sanderson, a wealthy real estate developer that wants to use Kemp’s literary acumen to pimp his ideas (which involve turning most of Puerto Rico into a playground for the wealthy). Eckhart is chillingly good (almost too good) as proto-yuppie scum Sanderson, who projects the image of a genial, fun-loving, chilled-out wealthy playboy—but beneath that amiable surface he’s cold hustle, the kind of control-freak that if this were the Civil War South, he’d have one of his servants whipped for the incorrect number of ice cubes in his mint julep. (I’m not sure if they had ice cubes then, but just let that slide, OK?) Amber Heard is Chenault, Sanderson’s icily lovely paramour. If you think Paul is going to fall for this gal (and she for him), you’re correct. But they don’t seem to really have any chemistry together. Paul’s a well-read writer without a pot to piss in; she’s a gold-digger with seemingly little personality…except the fact that she’s with the avaricious, mean-spirited Sanderson speaks volumes. Kemp doesn’t seem like a dumb guy—anyone with half a brain could see that Sanderson is the kind of guy that’d have a guy’s legs broken for, uh, sipping at his trough of lust. Does that stop Paul? What do you think? Granted, this is set in the time before HST developed his literary voice, but at no point did I “get the idea” that Paul Kemp was a writer. As with the semi-bio of Charles Bukowski’s Factotum, the overriding impression of Kemp was that he was a not-that-interesting drunk. The acting overall is pretty good (I’m still not convinced Heard is more than another pretty bod) in that I got a dislike for the characters, but without a focus it was hard to care about any of them—and over-the-top zaniness only gets you so far in when drama dominates. As with too many movies, the best parts of The Rum Diary are contained in the trailer. How could a movie based on the writing of HST be so tedious? But it is, pilgrim, it is. ■

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reel news 50/50 (2011) ★★★★ Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick Genre: Comedy drama Rated R for language throughout, sexual content and some drug use. Running time 100 minutes. Awards: Nominated for Golden Globes Best Actor and Best Picture Comedy or Musical. Cancer doesn’t have a funny side. So how does screenwriter Will Reiser turn his own experience with spinal cancer into a poignant comedy about a young man with a 50/50 chance of survival? No slap-stick, caricatures, or dumb-and-dumber humor… Just step back and let the victim, Adam (Gorden-Levitt), react in an authentic, stoic not tragic, way to his well-

Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt star in 50-50. Photo: Chris Helcermanas-Bengê

meaning friends’ overreactions and often absurd efforts to help. Adam’s faithful buddy, Kyle (Rogen) isn’t shy about stating the obvious with an encouraging twist (“50/50 odds are great in casinos”) or offering diversions with sexy girls… anything to distract his friend. Meanwhile, with resigned understatement instead of self-pity, Adam deals with the realities of cancer–chemo, a clueless therapist, fortified brownies, an unfaithful girlfriend, and a freaked-out mother (Anjelica Huston). Adam’s determination to live every day to its fullest, as though it were his last, turns a downer film into a humorous, feel-good saga.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) ★★★★ Cast: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt Genre: Spy thriller Based on John Le Carre's 1974 novel. Rated R for violence, some sexuality/nudity and language. Running time 127 minutes. Awards: Oscar nominated Best Actor (Oldman) In the 1970s, the Cold War spy business was an international growth industry. To combat the KGB, the CIA and Britain’s MI5 spread their tentacles around the world, and when possible into each other’s board rooms. At MI5, “Control” (Hurt) suspects a Soviet mole in high places and narrows the suspects to five agents. When the effort to out the double agent goes tragically south, Control and his most trusted agent George Smiley (Oldman), take the fall. Then Smiley is secretly rehired to continue the chase, not in Jason Bourne fashion, but like a methodical Brit bulldog who chews up a clue. The complex plot and plethora of characters require more attention than popcorn-eaters generally invest in a thriller, but the masterful acting and plot twists make this a classic.

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REVIEWS OF RECENTLY RELEASED DVDS BY GEORGE OXFORD MILLER Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

The Whistle Blower (2011) ★★★★ Cast: Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn Rated R for disturbing violent content, including a brutal sexual assault, graphic nudity and language. Running time 112 minutes. In 1999, Kathryn Bolkovac, a police officer in Lincoln, Nebraska, signed a one-year contract as a U.N. peacekeeper in postwar Bosnia. She discovered that keeping the peace meant turning a blind eye to the ongoing evils of sex trafficking, child prostitution, and rape as standard operating procedure. This infuriating story, based on Blokovak’s actual experience, looks deep into the actions of the private security contractor perpetrators, U.N. officials, diplomats, and local police and discovers complicity and compliance at every level. Rachel Weisz portrays a determined Blokovak who stares into the eyes of the male malefactors and refuses to blink, even when her life is in danger. Tension mounts as she peels away the layers hiding the rich and powerful and discovers Rachel Weisz. how vulnerable she, like the victims, really is. Be warned, the film contains disturbing scenes of violence against women.

A Better Life (2011) ★★★★ Cast: Demian Bichir, Jose Julian Genre: Drama Rated PG-13 for some violence, language, and brief drug use. Running time 98 minutes. Awards: Oscar, SAG nominated Best Actor. If there were an award for empathy, Carlos Galindo (Bichir) would win it hands down. Carlos, a Mexican immigrant, does yard work in LA, lives in a rundown house with his rebellious 14-year-old son, Luis (Julian), and at all costs avoids the immigration authorities. He lives in the shadowy world of a undocumented worker with the dream to give his son “a better life.” Early on you know the struggles are overpowering and the story can’t have a happy ending. So does Carlos, but he never gives up trying to save enough money to get his son out of the bad neighborhood where gang life rules. Though the story arch is predictable, the characters are so compelling that you can’t help but feel a heart-to-heart connection. The movie delivers what it promises: Demian Bichir and Jose Julian. The inspiring story of a human spirit that refuses to Photo: Merrick Morton. bow to overwhelming odds. ■ George Miller is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers and believes that travel is a product of the heart, not the itinerary. See his webmagazine at www.travelsdujour.com.

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film roundup Jeff, Who Lives at Home (Dir: Mark and Jay Duplass). Starring: Jason Segel, Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer, Rae Dawn Chong. Jeff (Segel) is a 30-year-old slacker convinced that everything in the universe is connected, a theory he refines between bong hits and viewings of Signs. When his harried, widowed mother (Sarandon, her best role in years) sends him out to get glue, Jeff puts his life philosophy into practice. Eventually, Jeff encounters his older brother (Helms), who is at odds with his increasingly impatient wife (Greer).

PETE CROATTO Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

tual people and events” aspires to portray an everyday hero. A bland protagonist makes that impossible: Younes stumbles into his new mission, and we never buy his transformation into a fearless patriot. Historical significance cannot replace vitality. And Free Men, with its sluggish plot that doesn’t twist as much as stroll amiably in a straight line, desperately needs an infusion. [NR] ★★

Diane Keaton and Kasey. Photo credit: Wilson Webb Steve Zissis, Judy Greer and Jason Segel. Photo credit: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle.

Then things get interesting. Smart, poignant character study benefits from the Duplass brothers’ refusal to get cutesy or meta with the concept. A look at three lost souls who get a shot at redemption—if they can only recognize the signs—Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a rarity: an emotionally satisfying film that never panders. Helms is outstanding as the blowhard know-it-all who’s too busy being right to see how wrong he is, and Segel settles into his role with beguiling ease. He shows us Jeff ’s sweet, accepting soul, never allowing the character to become a caricature. [R] ★★★1/2 Free Men (Dir: Ismaël Ferroukhi). Starring: Tahar Rahim, Mahmoud Shalaby, Michael Lonsdale, Lubna Azabal, Farid Larbi. Paris in 1942 is a tough place for an Algerian immigrant. The Nazis either eye you suspiciously or the French want to send you packing. Younes (Rahim, A Prophet) makes money selling black market items until he’s arrested. The French authorities grant his freedom in exchange for spying on the Paris mosque. In this new assignment, he becomes friends with Jewish Algerian singer Salim Halali (Shalaby), which compels Younes to reconsider his motives. Soon, he comes clean to the mosque’s crafty rector (Lonsdale) and inches closer toward becoming a freedom fighter. This “fictional story freely inspired by ac22

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Darling Companion (Dir: Lawrence Kasdan). Starring: Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ayelet Zurer, Sam Shepard. Keaton and Kline, those old, well-preserved pros, play a long-married couple whose strength gets tested when he loses her beloved dog in the High Rockies. This prompts a days-long search by their family and friends that allows for relationships to be born and renewed. Writer-director Kasdan (The Big Chill, Grand Canyon) employs earnestness and folksy touches—Zurer as a psychic Gypsy, Shepard as a laconic sheriff who’d rather be fishing—and little else. Consequently, Darling Companion is pleasant and easygoing to the point of somnolence. (At the very least, show us the dog enduring the elements or have Kline and Keaton spar more.) Resembling the featureless middle of a larger narrative, the film never commits to offering an honest look at getting older. How that happens considering Kasdan’s introspective resume and the talented cast qualifies as one of 2012’s biggest movie mysteries. Even dog lovers may have a tough time sitting through this one: the lovable mutt is barely on screen. Jenkins, as usual, is terrific. [PG-13] ★★ Bully (Dir: Lee Hirsch). Documentary covers the kids and parents affected by bullying over the 2009-10 school year. At the center of the film is Alex, a shy 12-year-old from Sioux City, IA, who is tormented by his peers daily. We also meet Oklahoman Kelby, a 16-year-old whose life has unraveled since she came out, and 14-year-old Ja’Meya, who was so fed up with being bullied that she pulled out a gun on the school bus. As for the adults, two sets of parents who lost children to bullying-related suicides struggle to raise awareness. Though dramatically compelling in spots, Bully feels like a PR campaign—there’s even a URL listed at the end for “The Bully Project.” No one endorses such ignorant acts, but, geez, let’s get some perspective. Why do kids bully? Why, as evidenced by Alex’s daft assistant principal, Kim Lockwood, are schools indifferent? The film’s self-righteousness doesn’t allow for a deeper understanding; it’s too busy pounding its own drum. Hirsch uses good intentions as a shield. You can’t hate Bully for fear of being dismissed as a locker-stuffing troglodyte. Bully doesn’t inspire us; it badgers us into accepting its campaign. [R] ★★ Note: A petition is out to grant Bully a deserved PG-13 rating. ■

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feature

THOM NICKELS

for Meticulous

IN PHILADELPHIA’S MORRIS HOUSE at 225 South 8th Street, I extend my hand to Julie Morris Disston, whom I am meeting for the first time. The handshake connects me to one of Philadelphia’s oldest families, the Anthony Morrises, a line going back to 1685 when Anthony Morris was mayor of the city. But Anthony was only one notable in the Morris family gene pool. Later, there was Captain Samuel Morris, who fought in the Revolution; then the Captain’s son, Luke Wistar, a manufacturer. For most legacy families, this would have been enough, but the Morrises, like the super growing plant wisteria (named after Luke), just keeps going. Julie, who sits with me at a large table in the dining room of the now Morris House Hotel, is reflecting on the house that has been in the Morris family for seven generations and what has changed in the house since she left it as a girl in 1932, the year the family left the home forever. In the dining room, for instance, Julie indicates the fireplace and informs me that there used to be bookshelves on either side of it and that the portrait above the fireplace is not the same portrait that hung there when she was a child. “It was very cozy in here then,” she tells me, “especially with the bookshelves and a big chunk of cattle coal burned in the fireplace.” Luke Wistar and his wife, Ann Pancoast Morris, were the first Morrises to live in the house. For those who can’t keep their Morrises straight, there can be some confusion with Robert Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. While there’s no relation between the two families, the Morris House bears a special relation to the first White House built at Sixth and Market by Robert Morris, who then later handed it over to Washington and Jefferson in 1790 when Philadelphia, for a short ten years, became the capital of the nation. The first White House, which was demolished in 1832, was a mirror image of the Morris House, the only noticeable difference was in the number of dormers, the number of entrance steps and the treatment of window heads. During a guided tour of the upstairs rooms, which are now all handsomely decorated hotel suites, Julie tells me where the nursery used to be. As we enter the room, she lets out an audible sigh. “My, oh my, what they’ve done to this room—beautiful!” The nursery was where Julie and brother Bucky were required to play. When Julie asked if I’d like a tour of the house, I got the distinct impression that this was her first walk through in years, perhaps even since 1932. “Grandfather was scared of fire,” she says. To protect his family, and the house, Grandfather Morris bought the houses on either side and then had them demolished.

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When we come to the attic, excitability is evident in her voice. “The ghosts were up there,” she says. “There was creaking and all kinds of noises. There were very definitely ghosts on the third floor. I never went up there alone.” We stop on the stairway landing. The woodwork is all original, the venerable railings like dense material pathways straight into the 18th century when Jefferson, Washington or Franklin, while stepping up or down the Morris House stairs, applied their hands to these same railings for support. During the Revolution, a musket fired by the British managed to shoot holes in the pendulum of the William Ericke clock that still stands in the first floor hall. Images of the Founding Fathers climbing stairs reminds me of what Washington said of the first President’s House, the one owned by Robert Morris, as being “the best single home in the city.” If Washington could come back, he would feel right at home here. Near the time of this interview, Julie’s family was preparing to throw her a 90th birthday party. The portraits of Luke Wistar Morris and Ann Pancoast Morris that used to hang over the fireplace in the former sitting room during the early 19th century would be unveiled as gifts and restored to their proper place, both portraits having been lost for years and then serendipitously discovered at a Freeman’s House auction by none other than the current owners of the house, Eugene Lefevre and Deborah Boardman.

The House that Lefevre Saved and Re-built

Top: Ms. Julie Morris Disston in front of the original fireplace and portraits of former owners Luke Wistar Morris and Ann Pancoast Morris. Bottom: The once-buried fireplace with original copper pots.

The man behind the purchase of the portraits of Luke Wistar and Ann Pancoast Morris is Eugene Lefevre, a partner in Rampart Holdings, Inc. and owner of the Morris House Hotel and M restaurant. Gene says he had his fifteen minutes of fame when he and business partner, Michael DiPaolo, saved the Lit Brothers building from destruction. “I was president of Growth Properties then, and Michael and I were just dumb kids,” he tells me, “we had done a bunch of stuff in Old City and noticed that the people who bought Lit Brothers were trying to turn it into suburban office space. But when you do renovations of historic buildings, you have to go with the grain, rather than against it. It wasn’t working for the owner, so he gave up and started to tear it down.” When that happened the city exploded in protest. “The owner was ‘the bad man’ in Philly at that point,” Gene says, “so we bought the thing with a little bit of money and a lot of financing.” Finding a tenant was difficult, but then in came the Mellon Independence Center and Lefevre and DiPaolo were de-

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interview Edward Sorel is one of the greatest cartoonists and caricaturists of this century. If I could draw like anyone, I’d draw like Ed. —Jules Feiffer

So, why the worried face?

JACK BYER

And now, over the potatoes and eggs he’d cooked for us, I was to get a first-hand insight into the youthful-looking 83year-old artist and curmudgeon, who wryly warns that “inevitably, so much acclaim has made me impossible to deal with,” but for those determined to try, he lists on his website his telephone number, e-mail address, and “for Luddites, who still write letters,” a home address as well. JB: Jules Feiffer in his memoir, Backing Into Forward, refers to you as “the brilliant cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator, writer, bon vivant, and grouch-about-town.” Grouch about town? ES: I am kind of down most of the time. Even during my happiest days I was always kind of down. I think my life has been happier than most people. I have had the happiest of marriages and have good children. But I walk around with a worried look on my face. I don’t know why.

’VE DINED UNDER ED Sorel’s murals of Greenwich Village bohemians and Broadway hot-shots at the quaint Waverly Inn in the Village and at the chic Monkey Bar in Midtown Manhattan. But never guessed I’d dine in Sorel’s own kitchen, amidst dozens of the drawings that have made him one of America’s greatest political satirists while he made breakfast for me and his wife. I’d caught him at a good time, ready to do anything to avoid cataloging his work, which Princeton University is interested in acquiring. A few weeks earlier, I’d been at the New York School of Visual Arts’ impressive retrospective of Sorel’s work. Four

While Jack Byer brings to interviews and reviews an extensive background in the Arts, he also brings the soul of a romantic who loves to dance and is seldom seen without his signature Basque beret.

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JB: Has the death of old friends and colleagues, like David Levine, Al Hirschfeld, and Ronald Searle heightened your sense of mortality? ES: I didn’t think about death too much until my wife got into the last stages of Alzheimer’s. Suddenly living wasn’t much fun. She has always had a beautiful temperament, so it hasn’t gotten as ugly and paranoid as it frequently does and there is no physical pain, so you keep looking for silver linings, but there are few. Nancy had a beautiful and mystic and poetic mind and she married this crass fellow from the Bronx. But it worked out beautifully and it was a wonderful marriage. [Nancy Caldwell Sorel is the author of several books, and has collaborated with her husband on others.] JB: How do you cope? ES: You cope as human beings cope with whatever is thrown at them. There is no good solution. The only solution is to be born healthy and rich. Outside of that everything is trouble. Old age is really not much fun. Your friends die, you get tired more easily. I didn’t feel old until maybe a year or two ago. I threw a big party for myself when I was 80, and I felt quite young. JB: You identify yourself as a proselytizing atheist. You’re on the Honorary Board of The Freedom from Religion Foundation, along with Richard Dawkins, Oliver Sacks, Katha Pollitt, and the late Christopher Hitchens. You’re fiercely anticlerical. ES: I do hate all religions. And the Catholic Church is the biggest, strongest and craziest. They’re the ones with power. The Catholic Church has the bank, the army, the real estate. To me, they represent a serious fifth column. I really believe, and god knows, present events have shown, religion is the greatest threat to peace in the world.

“I had to do everything over and over and over until I got it right. And I was insecure. I attribute it all to getting laid late in life. I don’t know why some of us are insecure and some of us aren’t. It’s a big puzzle to me.”

large galleries had been filed with hundreds of his illustrations for The Nation, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Fortune, Esquire, Time, The New York Times Magazine, American Heritage, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, GQ, and even Penthouse. Nice Work If You Can Get It, a documentary about Sorel (done by his son Leo) was on view as part of the show. Friends and colleagues like Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Victor Nevasky, Jules Feiffer, and Graydon Carter reminisced in the film about little Eddie Schwartz growing up in the Depression years in the Bronx, his love of the movies of the period, his co-founding of the internationally famous Push Pin Studios, his books and illustrations, and his lovable crankiness.

ES: I’ve always suspected that when I had a really good idea that I stole it. I did a book called Moon Missing about what happened to the Cold War when the moon disappears. Simon and Shuster bought it. I got it into my head that I must have stolen the idea from somebody. I paid 500 bucks to a lawyer to make sure I hadn’t. And there wasn’t Google at the time. Apparently, it was an original idea. I was shocked. [laughs] That’s insecurity.

Edward Sorel.

JB: I can’t believe that people weren’t always chuckling at your wry humor. Your drawings, your books, your children’s books are marvelously droll. ES: Maybe I’m remembering my life all wrong, but all I remember is being scared all my life. Fear of failing. Fear of not being good enough. I’ve always been a slow learner. I had to take the driver’s test about three or four times before I passed it. I had to take the Cooper Union test twice before I got in. I had to marry twice. I had to do everything over and over and over until I got it right. And I was insecure. I attribute it all to getting laid late in life. I don’t know why some of us are insecure and some of us aren’t. It’s a big puzzle to me. JB: How insecure is insecure?

JB: But I hear the Pope blessed you. ES: My son was in Rome and he went to the Vatican. He knew how pleased I would be to have the Pope’s blessing. You pay a couple of bucks and you get a certificate with your name in calligraphy. So the Pope gave me his blessing. JB: You’ve attributed your animus toward the church to your relationship to your father. Was he very autocratic? ES: I was repeating the psycho-babble about the protesters of the 60s really rebelling against their parents. That sons that hate their fathers are against all authority. That may or may not be true, but I’m not sure that it was in my case. My father was too much of a failure to be autocratic. He certainly

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interview

R. KURT OSENLUND

One of the greatest character actors in the business, Willem Dafoe is riding high this season with roles in three very different, yet thematically similar, movies, two of which give him the rare opportunity to take the lead.

W “WELL THIS IS PRETTY wild,” Dafoe says as he eyes up the black, waving serpent. “I feel like I have to kill it.” It’s interesting that Dafoe’s first impulse is one of knightly heroism. For many of today’s filmgoers, this remarkably individual actor is a player of rogues, be they comic book villains (Spider-Man), seemingly demonic silent stars (Shadow of the Vampire), or duplicitous cops (The Boondock Saints). But with a staggering number of films under his belt (he’ll tell you how many), Dafoe has in fact been the good guy, the bad guy, and just about every guy in between. For Martin Scorsese, he played Jesus Christ (The Last Temptation of Christ). For David Cronenberg, he played a twisted, black market video game technician (eXistenZ). For Lars von Trier, he played a gangster (Manderlay) and a one half of a deteriorating couple (Antichrist). For Pixar maestro Andrew Stanton, he voiced a hard-scaled, mentoring fish (Finding Nemo). Dafoe recently teamed with Stanton again for John Carter, Disney’s mega-budget sci-fi spectacle that saw the actor take on his first motion-capture gig (he brings to life a green, six-limbed Martian). It’s one of three movies Dafoe appears in this season. The other two are the Australian nature drama The Hunter and Abel Ferrara’s intimate apocalypse tale, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, both of which cast Dafoe as the lead. In The Hunter, the 56-year-old star plays a mercenary hired to trek to Tasmania and kill a near-extinct animal. A conflicted drifter surrounded by moral and environmental stressors, the titular gunman requires the instincts and introspection Dafoe is wholly prepared to give. In 4:44, Dafoe is an extension of himself—an actor counting down our planet’s last hours in an apartment with his younger artist girlfriend. Again, Dafoe is tasked to project a churning internal struggle, and again, he delivers. For a man in his fifties, Dafoe is in remarkable shape, though he never seems aware of it. Dressed all in black, he takes a seat, kicks out one foot, stretches one arm over his head and grips it with his other hand, like he’s doing a morning stretch. He slumps in his chair a bit, as if he’s meeting with someone he’s known for ages. “So, let’s begin,” he says.

R. Kurt Osenlund is the managing editor of The House Next Door, the official blog of Slant Magazine. He is also the film critic for South Philly Review, and a contributing writer for ICON, Slant, Cineaste, Fandor and The Film Experience. He compiles his work and posts other goodies at his blog, www.yourmoviebuddy.blogspot.com. Email at rkurtosenlund@gmail.com.

R. Kurt Osenlund: This is a big month/year/season for you. You’ve got three movies: John Carter, The Hunter, and 4:44. Do you see a common thread among them? Because I see a planetary theme. Willem Dafoe: You know, I’m kind of literal—I’m in all of them. The connection? You know, because I’ve been doing interviews, I get a little self-conscious and wonder if I’m full of shit, like I’m forcing an agenda, but they’re all passion projects for the director. They’re all special in how they were shot. I’d say with John Carter, it was motion capture, and the sheer scale of it was huge. On The Hunter, it was the fact that it was an Australian movie shot in Tasmania, with a director I didn’t really know, but had a lot of faith in because of how he pitched it. And 4:44 was special in the way that we shot it—kind of loose, with people we knew, working with a scenario and a script in a very fluid way. So I guess they each have their specific process that’s specific to them.

most unique and fascinating faces in film. It’s led you to playing everyone from Jesus Christ to Max Schreck. Was there ever a time when you were dissuaded from pursuing acting because you didn’t have a typical leading-man look? WD: Um, depends who you talk to. [Laughs] Well...does Clark Gable have typical leading man looks? No. Nah, I don’t think about that, you know? Because I never thought of acting as a career. I was lucky. I just followed situations, and people. I didn’t think about what would and what wouldn’t work. I was just dealing with one situation at a time.

RKO: The Hunter and 4:44 are fundamentally human stories, but they also possess these eco-themes that seem to provide more legitimate dramatic stakes these days, seeing as audiences at large, not just select groups, are finally starting to take these issues seriously. Do you see it that way? WD: I don’t disagree with you. But as I’m approaching it, as I’m playing the characters, you can’t play ideas, and you can’t play situations. You play actions. So I didn’t think so much about the eco themes. With 4:44, the fact that the earth is ending, and that there’s some sort of disaster— that’s a convention. That’s really a convention so we can turn up the heat on two people in an apartment trying to find out how to live and trying to see what’s important in their lives. For The Hunter, someone called it an eco-noir. So there are definitely issues and themes about ecology, and a responsibility or relationship to nature, but as I’m inhabiting the character, this is not really a concern of his. He sees it in much more human terms. When I’m working on something, I’m concentrating on the doing. The frame is so specific and so based on the doing that I don’t have that kind of reflection or that kind of consciousness of the themes. I’m putting myself into a place where I’m trying to be responsive in a fictional setting, and find truthful behavior for me and for the character. I’m not thinking about what it means because I don’t have to. If I think of what it means, then I start to interpret, or I start making choices that point to things. I don’t want to be outside of it like that. I want to be the thing. I don’t want to say what the thing is.

RKO: Was there ever, or is there still, a roster of roles you’d like to play? WD: Nope. Not at all. There are some things, you know, that were fantasies that I could invest in because, for whatever reason, it’d be attractive to play certain characters. But I never know what a character is until I do it, and even then I sometimes don’t know. It’s really about the proposal for an adventure, a proposal for an investigation. If I know what the character is, it’s finished and I’m not so attracted to it. I’m attracted to things when there’s something there, something interesting, but I’m not sure exactly what it is. Inventing the character is chasing that thing and finding out what that thing is.

RKO: You’ve made more than 60 films... WD: Oh, more than that. More like 80. RKO: Oh, wow. I stand corrected. WD: Some small things, of course. But still, it’s a lot. I look at the number and I think, how did that happen?

RKO: So it sounds like it’s much more about the interior for you. WD: I don’t know. In a way, yes, in a way, no. I look at a script and I say, what is this person doing? Am I interested in doing those things? I never ask myself what they mean. Occasionally I’ll say, “Am I the right guy to do this? Am I up to this?” Sometimes I’ll do that. Because you want to be careful and you don’t want to get this fantasy that you can do everything. There are lots of limitations, and sometimes I’m not the right guy. A couple of times I’ve said I’m not the right guy to the director, and he’s said, “No, you’re not the right guy, but I thought you were an actor, come on! I like

RKO: I think it’s safe to say that you have one of the

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26 / INTERVIEW / EDWARD SOREL

was not violent. He was simply insensitive. Stupidity makes people cruel and say stupid things. And he was a stupid man. I hated him too much to pity him. But, of course, he is to be pitied as all stupid people are. JB: You’ve had a hard time with authority figures from the very beginning. ES: I found out that people in charge were as powerful as my father. I remember planning my father’s murder when I was about eight or nine years old. I thought if nobody was on the platform, I could really push him in front of a train and say it was an accident. I guess having such hatred in my heart for the man made me mean in some way. Made me the “grump around town” that Jules describes. I don’t know. It varies from day to day. You just got me on a day when I’m feeling kind of down. JB: Did changing your name from Schwartz to Sorel have anything to do with rejecting your father? ES: No. I did it years later. I picked it out of The Red and the Black by Stendhal, who had a similar contempt for religion and who was captive to women, which was very different from my getting laid in the 50s. But I don’t know the real reasons. I was never ashamed of being Jewish, but I wanted to be judged by my art and not who I was. If Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Edward G. Robinson can change their name for pretty much the same reason, I guess I can too. My family wasn’t upset. My father was confused. My mother didn’t care. But I suspect it was a little embarrassing. JB: I thought of you when I read Ross Douthat’s tribute to Hitchens in The New York Times. He said Hitchens was “not so much a disbeliever as a rebel, and that his atheism was mostly a political romantic’s attempt to pick a fight with the biggest tyrant he could find.” ES: I’d agree with it, except I don’t like the idea of ascribing to him any kind of belief. Atheists are not agnostics. Atheists are as certain in their beliefs as believers are and we should have the right to our certainties. JB: I’ve got to smile. I remember that Hitchens did the introduction to your book Certitude, which punctured the pomposities of individuals who are stubborn in their convictions. ES: [laughter] I do see religion in black and white terms. No fucking good at all. I say intemperate things on occasion that are hurtful to people and I wish I didn’t do that. I did a terrible thing at a party last night. One of my very good friends and perhaps one of the smartest guys I know, Cullen Murphy, was there. His book God’s Jury, an unapologetic history on the Inquisition and how it exists to this day, has gotten rave reviews. I’ve known Cullen for at least a quarter of a century. He was my managing editor at The Atlantic. He knows more about the ugliness and sinfulness of the Catholic Church than anybody I know. Last night some guy goes over to him and suggests to him that his next book should be about his faith and about how a person who knows as much about Catholicism and the evil of the church can still have faith. I listened to this with incredulity. It never occurred to me that Cullen was a believer. Then the guy asks me if I, too, was a person of faith. He must have misinterpreted something I said. And I got angry. I guess I must have had too much to drink. And I said, “I’m an atheist, you asshole.” He was a perfectly nice guy. Why did I react with such ugliness. Of course, he walked away. What else would one do when confronted by such a madman. JB: And the moral of the story is… ES: That I’ve never been able to drink more than one glass of wine. But there’s something about it that makes me 34

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really angry. I find it so difficult to understand what an intelligent person’s faith is about. It boggles my mind. Does it mean a belief in some force controlling everything, which seems incredible to me. Does it mean afterlife? I can’t get my head around it. And when you don’t understand something and can’t get your head around it, it makes you angry and it made me angry. JB: But there is a difference between organized religion and belief. ES: Religion is the enemy. Belief isn’t, unless it’s a very narrow religious kind. Belief is something I don’t have. Belief is something someone else has, and I choose to respect because I like them and because they’re intelligent. Often far more intelligent than I. Better educated. Better read. Better writers. Better everything than I am. And, by god, if they have belief, it must be worth having, but I ain’t got it. JB: Of all the tributes paid to you—the St. Gaudens Medal from Cooper Union for Professional Achievement, the George Polk Award for Satiric Drawing, the Hunter College Erikson Award for Social Justice, election to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame—is there one that gives you the greatest satisfaction? ES: Being accepted at The New Yorker. I didn’t make The New Yorker until I was in my sixties. When Tina Brown became the editor, I was in the magazine regularly. I did fortyfive covers for her. Seven or eight covers a year. Suddenly my name was known. I had income. I had a home. The whole world was ahead of me. I owe her everything. The dichotomy was this. I owe you everything. I’ll do anything for you, but don’t make me talk to you. JB: What do you mean? ES: She made me nervous. I’ve been able to talk to millionaires. I’ve been able to talk with people with power. I don’t get nervous. But there was something about Tina Brown that made me nervous. I was intimidated by her. She was too pretty, too flattering “Oh, you’re wonderful!” And you know when you’re not wonderful. I didn’t know how to reply. JB: You had appeared in The New Yorker before Tina Brown. ES: Yes. It’s a silly story. In 1976, my friend Donald Barthelme had an idea for a bicentennial piece for The New Yorker. I did the pictures. I felt certain that with Donald Barthelme, I would finally crack The New Yorker. But they turned it down. We sold it to The Atlantic, and The Atlantic gave us six pages. But I never tried to make The New Yorker after 1976. In 1990, Graydon Carter, who was then the editor of Spy magazine, invited me to lunch to talk about doing work for his magazine. I did a sketch for a gag cartoon and I showed it to him, but he said, “No. It’s got Lee Lorenz’s fingerprints on it,” meaning that it’s something that you’ve shown to Lee Lorenz, the art editor at The New Yorker, and he rejected it. I never did a gag cartoon before, so I said, “No, I did for you.” But he obviously didn’t believe me. So the next day, by an odd coincidence, I had a lunch date with Lee Lorenz. Even though Lee was a friend, I had never submitted anything to him. But I had this cartoon which was supposed to have “his fingerprints,” so I gave it to him. A few weeks later I was in The New Yorker with a full page cartoon. Not just a regular cartoon, but a full page cartoon. From that point on, I was doing gag cartoons and then when Tina Brown came, I did her first cover. So I was riding high for a long time. JB: The cover she chose is of a mohawked rocker arrogantly draped on the seat of a horse-drawn carriage, traveling through Central Park. As one writer wrote, he “might as well be Yeats’s ‘rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem.’” Why did you use that image? And why do you think she chose it?

ES: Who the hell knows where you get ideas. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why she chose it. She told Lee to get sketches from everybody, including new people who had never worked for The New Yorker before. She picked three sketches and two of them were mine. She used one of them for the first issue, so I was set. JB: The Times’s William Grimes described the punker as Eustace Tilley’s grandson, stretched out in an exaggerated pose of “aristocratic languor.” I thought she might have liked the idea since it was emblematic of the anti-elitist, new face she was bringing to the staid, genteel, tradition-bound New Yorker. ES: There was that element. But when Tolstoy had Anna Karenina die by throwing herself in front of the locomotive, I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of the industrial revolution. And I wasn’t thinking of anything except it was kind of incongruous. To me, a purple-haired punk, who was probably deaf from listening to amplified music, appreciating anything in nature was the joke. JB: A story made the rounds that you refused to do a cover to commemorate Princess Diana’s death and you said that you were glad Diana was dead. ES: On Tuesday morning at 8 o’ clock, I was awakened by a telephone call. It was Tina Brown calling, not her secretary. She was breathless and she said, “We’re doing a special issue on Princess Di and you simply have to do the cover.” Before I knew what I was saying, I said, “Tina, please don’t ask me to do this. To me she was just an empty-headed twit.” There was a silence. And she said, “Thanks a lot.” And I heard her slam down the phone, and there, I thought, goes my whole career. No more covers. No more nothing. The Art Director was there when she slammed down the phone, and Tina told her that I said that Princess Di was an empty-headed twit and I was glad that she was dead, which was not what I said. JB: Are you sorry you didn’t do the cover? ES: I don’t think so. But I would have gotten out of it in a much more politic and cowardly way. She got somebody else to do the cover. It was an awful cover. Very banal and maudlin. More horrifying to me was the cover when John-John Kennedy died. On the cover of The New Yorker was the Statue of Liberty crying. Now one can make the case that Princess Diana was international, but John-John was an empty suit. He was beautiful, but he had no credentials for anything. I hate to compare empty twits, but what was he doing on the cover of The New Yorker? JB: Well, that was after Tina Brown had left The New Yorker. She’s credited for saving The New Yorker. She made it possible for someone who followed her to make The New Yorker into something that could work into the 21st century. ES: It could not have continued in its sleepy way any longer. Her contribution is really underestimated. It was her audacity that saved the magazine, even if there were, to my mind, gaffes of taste. She saved it as she saved Vanity Fair from being a very sleepy and undirected magazine. JB: Some of her latest enterprises seemed to have gone somewhat bust. Her attempt to save Newsweek seems a futile undertaking. ES: I empathize with her. I don’t want to walk off the stage either. I want to be around and do what I do, and she wants to do what she does. Unfortunately for both of us, the entire field has changed. In my case, it’s the fact that you can’t make a fast buck doing advertising because nobody uses illustration in advertising anymore. So we do the best we can. She keeps her name in bold print somehow, and I pay my maintenance, so we’re both getting along.. n

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24 / FEATURE / M FOR METICULOUS

clared municipal heroes. Philadelphia Magazine awarded Lefevre its 1989 “Developer to Watch Out For” Award in its “Best of Philly” issue. “I liken that to being on the cover of Sports Illustrated,” Gene says in total seriousness before delivering a surprise salvo, “but within a year, I was insolvent. Philadelphia Magazine didn’t want to do a follow-up because being noted like that is a curse. I called the guy who nominated me and I said, ‘You’ve ruined my life!’” “The Morris House had been on the market for a while from a pension fund that had foreclosed on it,” Gene says. “DiPaolo and I made a couple of offers on it and eventually they sold it to us.” When Lefevre and DiPaolo bought the building, it was love at first sight. “Once we bought it, we kept looking at it and looking at it, and since our business is to try to add value to buildings and then keep them or sell, we turned this into a hotel.” The first challenge was to install what Gene calls “fine grain” bathrooms where there hadn’t been bathrooms. Then they installed a hidden sprinkler system, new heating and air conditioning. Most of the building’s woodwork and plaster was restored. As a preservation architect and a member of the Preservation Alliance, Gene says he knew what he had to do when it came to retaining the form and shape of all the rooms. A previous owner’s positive legacy was the addition of a porte-cochere with pediment and big Georgian columns on the north side of the building. “It’s a grand entranceway for a hotel to what once had been a modest Quaker house,” Gene says. Yet making the hotel safe for guests meant slicing the house in half in order to create two zones that were distinctly separate for fire purposes, as well as putting in a second staircase and renovating the back yard which had been all grass. The three separate buildings on the site, Gene says, include the carriage house that had been a garage. The Carriage House includes three suites, or one-bedroom apartments. There are a total of 15 guestrooms in the Morris House Hotel and M restaurant seats 50. The complicated process of renovating an historic house sometimes brings good fortune. In Gene’s case, he found a major surprise in the wall near the grand entrance way. In what had been the kitchen of the original colonial house, but which is now the foyer and reception area, was a rather large bump visible underneath the dry wall. Gene kicked it open one day and found an old fireplace complete with a rack and two large copper pots. Today this fireplace is a central feature of the Morris Hotel. Attics, of course, carry their own mystique. “The attic was basically a low space, a place you could barely walk around in. It must have been perfect for a kid. We ended up putting all the AC and duct work that serves all the rooms up there,” Gene tells me, while adding that when one of the pumpkin pine floorboards in the house needs replacement, they are gotten from the attic. I first met Gene when the hotel’s M restaurant hosted a private menu tasting event to introduce its new Italian chef, Aaron Bellizzi. The three-hour hors d’oeuvres and cocktail party was also a celebration of the restaurant’s success, thanks mainly to Gene’s wife, Deborah. “Deborah is the opposite of Michael and me,” Gene offered. “We’re really good A.D.D. kind of people. While she’s a multi-tasker, she follows through.” A former ballet dancer and a well-known Philadelphia photographer with her own studio not far from the Morris, Deborah met Gene while in the middle of changing careers. “When we opened two years ago, we started off with a chef friend of mine, an old family friend,” Gene says “Then we hired a chef whose girlfriend worked as our manager. When their relationship went sour, it made things a little crazy. She 36

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Top: Morris House, St. James Street entrance. Bottom: Original grandfather clock with bullet hole from the Revolutionary War.

left, and then he left. As for our current chef, his girlfriend does not work here! But today we feel like we’ve crossed some kind of threshold, where the whole team between the hotel and restaurant runs like clockwork.” “We are a boutique hotel,” he continues, “and very popular with academics and Europeans. Europeans prefer small hotels when they come to the United States.” Gene actually prefers to call the Morris an Inn “in the classic sense,” because it is much more than a B&B. Boutique, in the style of minimalist modern hotels like the Gault in Montreal’s Old City (where there are no rugs because the heat comes up through the floors, and where it can take 15 minutes to discover how to turn on the lights), or Klaus K in Helsinki (a beautiful hotel, but one in which the room furniture is made more for Cubist sculpture display purposes than for comfort), does not begin to describe the Morris’s uniqueness. “We are definitely not the Hotel Gault,” Gene says, letting out another mantra-like laugh, “We’re not that. If this was the Sixties, we would be Earth shoes and Macramé.” A self-described “reverse Carpetbagger,” Gene’s parents brought the family up from Florida when he was still a boy. “They think of us as sort of old Philadelphians because my father was the first Democratic member of the Union League. But when we got here, my parents asked, “What are we supposed to do?” They were told to enroll their kids in Episcopal Academy or the Agnes Irwin School, go to church at the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, and “you’ll be fine.” At one point during my chat with Gene, Deborah joined us briefly while on her way to check the doings in the kitchen. We’d been talking about traveling in France, and I was telling Gene about my experiences in the George Sand House in Nohant, where visitors can touch Chopin’s piano or seat themselves at Sand’s dining room table. “You know,” Deborah said, “the Morris Hotel is reminiscent of driving along a little route in France and coming to a little French village, walking up to an ivy-covered building and noticing a Mom and Pop working in the garden and you ask them where to have dinner and they say, ‘But, of course—here!’” Gene and Deborah seem to have incorporated this model as their life’s theme. They tell me about their country getaway, a 1755-built farm in Frenchtown that is older than the Morris House, and located in the middle of a field and woods, an isolated and beautiful spot where it is possible, Deborah adds, “To grow as much as we can for the restaurant.” As for those stunning portraits of Luke Wistar and Ann Pancoast Morris that used to hang over the sitting room fireplace, when Gene discovered them at the annual Pennsylvania auction at Freeman’s in 2010, he knew he had to act. “When they were cataloging the portraits they put estimated values on each item. It was estimated that the pictures would be $5,000 each. The Morris family was looking at the same thing, but decided they didn’t want to bid.” The next day Gene was informed that he got the pictures. “While the artist’s name cannot be verified, they are attributed to 1817. Luke and Ann had seven children, four of whom survived,” he said. When Gene took the portraits off the wall to let me have a look, the feeling was energizing, reminding me of Deborah’s comment earlier that visiting the Morris garden was cheaper than therapy, causing many to ask, “Why do I feel so rejuvenated?” That sense of rejuvenation certainly seemed to quicken Julie Morris Disston’s steps when she showed me the garden and pointed to the top of the N.W. Ayer building as well as to another high rise, The Saint James, built a few years back, yet situated at such an angle that it didn’t block the sun in the Morris backyard. “The Morris House was very lucky to have survived all these changes,” I told her. “So many buildings did not.” “Yes,” Julie said, “Yes—it will be here forever!” ■

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first sip

PATRICIA SAVOIE

Ribera del Duero Spain’s primo wines

HOTEL Modern Cuisine h Classic Comfort

food & wine

Corner of Swan & Main Lambertville, NJ 609-397-3552

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RIBERA DEL DUERO LIES north of Madrid—an hour Here are some recommendations of wines that are availand a half by car or 45 minutes on the bullet train. Ribera able in the U.S. But if you cannot find any of these, try any means “riverbank” and the vineyard land is on either side of Ribera del Duero wine. the Duero River, extending for 93 miles east-west. The river continues west into Portugal, where it becomes the Douro, Pesquera is owned by Alejandro Fernandez and his wife which also has many vineyards and wineries along its banks. Esperanza. They are pioneers on the Ribera wine landscape, The Tempranillo grape is king in Ribera. Its name comes having started their vineyards in 1972. Alejandro is acknowlfrom the Spanedged as a great ish word “temTempranillo prano” which grower and wine means “early,” maker. The 2009 and it is an Tinto Pesquera early-ripening shows fruit congrape. (The centration and grape also may intensity along be called Tinto with fine tannic Fino and Tinta structure ($36). de Pais.) A bit of The Tinto PesMerlot, Caberquera 2008 net Sauvignon, Reserva shows Grenache and ripe fruit and Malbec are vanilla spice from grown and usuthe oak ($56). Catedral de Zamora alont the banks of the Duero River in Spain. ally are blended Also owned with the Temby the Fernandez pranillo. The only white is grape is Albillo. family is Condado de Haza. The 2008 is intense with fruit Tempranillo is well suited to the extreme weather and and a pleasant, dusty finish ($28). They produce a Gran short growing season in the Ribera area. Ribera is actually Reserva, and the 2001 Alenza Gran Reserva is an amazing the highest elevation red-grape-growing area in Europe, and wine, with black cherry, smoke and leather notes. Complex. most of the vineyards are planted between 2500 and 2800 2001 was one of the outstanding vintages. ($65-70). feet above sea level. During the short summers, temperaBodega y Vinedos Martin Berdugo showed four wines. tures can range from 100F during the day to 50F at night. Their “Joven” or young wine from 2010 tastes of bright Add to that low average rainfall of 16 inches a year. In other cherry with floral hints. ($14). The Crianza 2008 has a fresh, words, it’s a perfect area for growing high quality grapes. fruity red cherry nose with toast and some chocolate hints. Ribera del Duero received its official Denominacion de Concentrated and a good value ($25). Origin (D.O.) in 1982, but wine was being made over 2000 Emilio Moro family has a long winemaking history years ago by the Romans. The tradition was kept alive by here—over 120 years. The Finca Resalso 2009 tastes of chermonks during the middle ages. The oldest of the modern ry and fig with earthy tobacco hints ($15). The Emilio Moro wineries, Bodega Vega Sicilia, was founded in 1864. 2008 has black cherry and berry in a crisp, fruity wine with I have always felt that Spanish wines are an amazing some mineral notes ($18). value for us consumers. The laws governing production Bodegas Ortega Fournier produces wines under the O. specify years of barrel and bottle ageing for the top wines. Fourier label. The Urban Ribera 2008 is light and fresh with So, when they finally reach the retail shelves, in most cases red cherry, spice and licorice notes ($15). The Spiga 2006 is they are ready to drink. The Crianzas are aged one year in fruity and lush ($28). The Alfaspiga 2006 was Wine Enthusioak and one in bottle; Reservas are aged three years, with a ast magazine’s number 4 wine in its top 100 list in 2011. It is minimum of one in oak; Gran Reservas, made in only the rich and fruity ($50). best years, are aged at least five years, with a minimum of The oldest winery (and one of the top wineries in two in oak. Today, only a half-dozen wineries still make a Spain), Vega Sicilia, presented its Valbuena 2006—a concenGran Reserva. trated, dense wine with black fruit, but a bit “hot” given the Tempranillo produces red wines that are balanced in very warm growing season ($200). The Vega Sicilia Unico sweetness, color and acidity. They tend to be fresh and Gran Reserva 2000 is like an iron fist in a velvet glove. It is fruity with appealing aromas such as black cherry, plum and intense and powerful, with earthy, mushroom notes, slightly licorice. The wines often have a bluish-red tint from the relbitter tannins from many years in oak, and a hint of sweetatively small grapes, which have strong skins, making the ness. Will last several more years ($350-400). ■ ratio of skin to juice higher and producing the bluish tint. At a recent tasting in New York City, the Ribera association presented over 75 wineries, many of which did not Patricia Savoie is a wine and culinary travel writer. She can be have importers in the U.S. The wines showed a real consisreached at WordsOnWine@gmail.com tency in quality.

dining

ROBERT GORDON

VEDGE

Please send comments and suggestions to r.gordon33@verizon.net

Menu items don’t have specific names. That’s because most dishes have no dominant ingredient. Most dishes soar on a synthesis of numerous, virtually egalitarian components. Thus “gold beets, smoked tofu, avocado, capers, cucumber, dill sauce, pumpernickel” describes but doesn’t name a cohesive dish. Of course, you needn’t recite the whole litany. Typical of a Landau-Jacoby operation, the waitstaff is delighted to discourse on each dish. They might tell you, as will I, that the gold beets dish is magnificently presented. A circular stack of avocado and smoked tofu chunks perked with creamy sauce sparked with dill is capped with a glistening golden beet round resting on a spearhead of crispy house-made toasted pumpernickel. Royal Trumpet Mushrooms are the basis for cioppini, the Italian-American/ San Francisco-born dish. San Marzano tomatoes yield savory juices to broth spiked with leeks. Hearty house-made grilled bread sides the dish. Fingerling Fries, slicked with creamy horseradish “Worcestershire Sauce,” as it is dubbed, are simply the best fries I’ve ever tasted. Beauregard Sweet Potato Jumbo brings a deep-dish bounty of red beans and rice in spicy okra-thickened tomato-based sauce. Brussels sprouts shaved and grilled to a smoky edge and smothered with earthy mustard bolster a mélange of greens. Portabella is Portabella-cum-carpaccio, a triumph in presentation and taste: slices of portabella are tipped with a dollop of green arugula cream. Salsa rustica, a crazy quilt of veggies, packs pizzazz into each forkful. Steak Spiced Seared Tofu is enriched with hedgehog mushrooms, kabocha, a pulpy Japanese squash; and spunky picada loaded with walnuts for crunch. Grilled seitan floats in an opaque sea of black lentils. White strips of kohlrabi (a German turnip) and creamy mushrooms bask atop creamy horseradish. Crushed creamy turnips and truffles cap a mammoth island of maitake mushrooms surrounded by a deep green pool of black kale jus. The resulting ensemble of tastes is at once distinct and exciting. The menu is designed to span from basic in the Small Bites to more and more complex in the Dirt List and Plates sections. Freshness of ingredients is paramount. The Dirt List changes daily because whatever appears there growing in the dirt that very day or the day before. Hence the name. In terms of ambiance and eye appeal, dirt is the antithesis of Vedge. Within the spiffy, spotless interior, chic and traditional, classic and homey are tuned to a natural elegance. The number of place settings is a relatively modest 70. But throughout the lovely network of rooms, an air of spaciousness, specialness, and freshness rules. Like The Artist, I'm anticipating an avalanche of national recognition and awards to be coming Vedge’s way. ■

food & wine

THE ARTIST MIGHT SERVE as a cautionary tale for the culinary world. Philly just witnessed a melancholy denouement of Georges Perrier’s reluctance to adapt—a regrettable tumble from near-deity status. George Valentin, the main character in The Artist, opted to wallow in the formulaic and familiar. Blinding himself to impending obsolescence, Valentin’s art grew hackneyed, passé, stale. Certainly Horizons, Philly’s now-departed nonpareil vegan palladium, was light years away from stagnating. For sheer creativity and ambition of menu, few chefs anywhere, vegan or otherwise, could match Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby, Horizons’s husband and wife chef-owner team. The Horizon beat could easily sound for many more years absent any specter of staleness. Yet as 2011 waned, in an unexpected scene from our nationally acclaimed vegan restaurant, there we were waving goodbye to Richard and Katey. It seemed a daring leap of faith to bid adieu to the security of their well-established vegan icon at 611 S. 7th Street, even though the former Deux Cheminées was the new site. Fritz Blanc’s Deux Cheminées, along with the eateries of Perrier, Steve Poses, and Lacroix, were seminal sites—and now hallowed halls–in Philadelphia’s restaurant naissance. And they indeed headed a naissance, not a “renaissance.” The city was devoid of a restaurant scene to revive or rebirth. A few visits to Vedge definitively affirmed the Landau-Jacoby change. Vedge is more than a change of venue. Vedge represents growth and maturity in the masterly creative cuisine turned out by a pair of talented chefs. From my first, long-ago visit to Horizons in Willow Grove, I realized I was witnessing a singular gastronomy, head and shoulders above the vegetarian pack. Rich Landau’s work with seitan was a marvel. Rich explored, unlocked and coaxed several cookbooks worth of spectacular nuance from seitan. The menu was a wizardly display of creative mimicry. Dishes were nuanced impersonations not only in the presentation of savory carnivorous favorites, but also of their taste. To this day, Horizons’s seitan chicken wings are my standard for all chicken wings—including recipes that require the sacrifice of a fowl. But at Vedge, Rich and Kate find new expression. Vedge is a more cohesive celebration that focuses on the vegetable kingdom, tapping that kingdom’s abundance and diversity, exploring its healthfulness and wholesomeness. To be sure, seitan and tofu still see lots of playing time. But their role is markedly reduced. Vedge’s menu consists of three sections: Small Bites, Plates, and the Dirt List. Small Bites lists $4-$5 dishes designed to munch in conjunction with organic libations at Vedge’s liquor bar. There’s also a Vedge bar—in effect a vegan version of the sushi bar.

Vedge, 1221 Locust Street, Philadelphia. (215) 320-7500. http://vedgerestaurant.com

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ROBERT GORDON

verdad

food & wine

I JUMPED INTO A burnin’ ring of fire. it was way cool, actually. With flames dancing in the middle of the martini glass, I drained a Strawberry Fuego, a hellzapoppin’ blend of tequila blanco, agave nectar, lime-juice and strawberry. There’s a ton of fun and taste packed into this lively libation, which might well serve as poster-child for Verdad ChefOwner Nick Farina’s philosophy: “Pack as much flavor into as few bites (or sips) as possible. Settled into the Bryn Mawr address that formerly housed Carmine’s, Verdad has resonated with the younger Main Line demographic. Farina’s flavor-packing formula appeals to young Liners craving food and ambiance salted with a measure of pizzazz and pop. Verdad doesn’t fish the same high-drama, high-concept waters that flow farther up Lancaster Pike to the west. Verdad is dead-on casual. Still the inviting emporium is sophisticated, smart and savvy. What’s more, Verdad boasts an expansive list of small plates, many of which light up the tastebuds. So when you pack all these assets together, you end up with a festive venue for diving into fun fare that you can garnish unfettered with conversation. A quick menu flyover reveals a broad menu that’s split into nine or so different groupings ranging from “Nibbles” and “Ensalada y Sopa” through “House Specialties.” Most groupings contain a half-dozen dishes, all priced within a few dollars of each other without a hint of sticker shock. Most prices are significantly lower than Verdad’s downtown counterparts—the tranche of eateries that trades in Spanish, Cuban, Brazilian and Mexican specialties. These ethnic traditions kindle ubiquitously in the Verdad menu—some as time-honored standbys, others with inventive twists. Thus, while Pescado Paella, chockfull of whole lobster, shellfish, smoked chicken, and spicy chorizo, sticks to tradition, the über-popular Vegetable Paella strays from the classic, studding the stew with a tempura medley of veggies. Whether leading off a night of serious dining or just throwing a few down with friends, Strawberry Habeñero Guacamole is a flavor-packed blast-off to the evening. A glistening green mountain of guacamole heated with habanero grazes an equally large heap of bright red, fresh strawberries spiked with kiwis. In the Ceviche section, the Hamachi soars on the clean, honest power of sushi-grade yellowtail, sweetened with

pineapple, coconut and puckered with lime, cilantro. Jalapeño supplies sexy finishing heat. Likewise Tuna Ceviche with avocado and tomato rollicks on clear, distinct flavors. The Kobe Beef Taco is good. I thought the upgrade to Kobe was a bit wasted amidst the potent contributions of jalapeño and pico de gallo until I realized the $10 price lacked the turbocharged premium the mere mention of the word Kobe generally precipitates. Flash-Fried Mahi Mahi nicely retains its succulence with accompanying soy ginger sauce adding a cutting edge. Apple Cider Scallop brings a trio of plump, browned scallops, with apple-cider glaze. Parsnip purée dotted with crushed, toasted hazelnuts and chives encircles the plate. Striped Bass and oyster mushrooms on papperdelle are cloaked in a creamy black truffle, grain-mustard sauce. It’s the Clementine Shrimp, however, that most showcases the brightness and coherent busy-ness that hallmark the Chef ’s best work: Clementine orange slices, ginger, pomegranate, red pepper purée studded with fresh corn, toasted almond slices and avocado slices (albeit not at peak ripeness). The energizing atmosphere parrots the Spanish and Latin themes on the menu, with walls painted differing earthy hues, decorative wrought-iron work, an exposed brick wall, and various other old-world and old new-world accents. An attractive copper ceiling glints overhead. Near the entrance, on the left is a handsome, boisterous bar. Chef Farina formerly had Blush, a high-ender not far away from Verdad. Blush, with its rich accoutrements, upscale entrées and high-end wine list, was pricey and specialoccasion. But it was mostly Nick’s passion for tapas that led him to Bryn Mawr, where he can roll out all kinds of food and fun ideas. And there are lots of fun ideas and happenings here. Besides several perky specialty drinks, there are several tequila-centric adventures to embrace, like tequila samplers and flights. There is more to tequila than is probably dreamt of in your philosophy. Verdad’s aim to be a jack of all trades triggered some doubts. A few visits dispelled them. This chef packs a whole lot of taste into each bite, but he’s not one to bite off more than he can chew. ■ Verdad, 818 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 (610) 520-9100. http://verdadrestaurant.com

Please send comments and suggestions to r.gordon33@verizon.net 40

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food & wine

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Whoopee! Winner of the

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DINNER FOR 2: DAVID COCHRANE You can win, too. Here’s how: Send an email with the subject line

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Whoopee! Winner of the

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about life

JAMES P. DELPINO

What women really want IT IS ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that men and women are different. Aside from anatomical differences on the outside we have brains that are wired differently in some profound ways. One of those ways has to do with relationships. The female brain is much more prone to seek relationships that endure. There are certain qualities that make a person more attractive to most women. Women are more likely to overlook physical characteristics when certain relational capacities are demonstrated. For over three decades, women have shared with me their preferences, delights, desires and disappointment with their partners. What they have taught me about needs and wants is invaluable information for understanding what it is they seek in a partner. A man who is kindhearted is one of the top priorities. It is very difficult to teach someone how to love if they are not kindhearted. This is what creates, sustains and deepens the connection between two people. Lack of communication is one of the most common complaints women have about their relationships. Communication skills involve primarily two basic skills: the ability to communicate one’s feelings effectively and being a good and active listener. Being able to disclose and share feelings in a non-defensive way is a bridge to intimacy. Being a good and active listener is achieved first by paying close attention to the words and phrases a woman uses when she speaks. The second step is to repeat and validate those words and feelings. Feelings are not thoughts, they are feelings. Feelings are not right or wrong, they are just feelings. When a woman feels that she has permission to have feelings and have them validated by a partner she tends to feel closer to him. When a woman feels close to her partner all kinds of wonderful things can be explored and shared. An important value to most women is that their partners prize the idea of wanting a deep, enduring, committed and loving relationship. Not all people regard a relationship as central to their lives. The notion of prizing a relationship also means being willing to grow together—and apart. A partner who is growing and deepening is much more attractive to a woman than a partner who is dull and stagnant. Growth and development bring fresh energy and fresh new possibilities into a relationship. Inner strength and calm are capacities that allow a woman to

feel safe, respected and loved. Inner strength and calm suggest that one is able to bare, endure and understand feelings and stresses without exploding or attacking. The ability to ride the waves of uncertainty in life without becoming negative, sarcastic or overly jaded creates a strong psychological attraction for women. When a woman is upset, she is generally seeking a calm, loving and understanding voice to be with her while she processes her feelings. The limbic, or emotional, portion of the female brain is much larger and more powerful than in the male. Being able to stay with instead of trying to “fix” her feelings or problem is one way of staying synchronized with the feelings of the other. Compassion, calm and empathy are more important than trying to change or alter her feelings. Feeling for and with another is a cornerstone of intimacy. It is also the hallmark of the basic mother-child infantile bond. The sense of not being alone with pain and sorrows is a deep bonding experience for all humans. For men in general, many of the skills, abilities and capacities mentioned above can often feel threatening to the idea of “manliness.” Nothing could be further from the truth. These qualities make a man much more attractive, respected and admired in the eyes of most women. This, of course, is also a doubleedged sword for some men. Men who are able to be sensitive, good communicators also risk being seen as a just a friend in the eyes of many women. Sometimes the power of what feels masculine stokes the fires of passion, romance and desire in a woman. This kind of power usually emanates from a sense of confidence. But confidence is not the same as cockiness which, in general, is a turnoff to most women. Confidence comes from being grounded, secure and comfortable with who one is. In short, women want it all: A partner who is equally adept in the boardroom and in matters of the heart will find that combination virtually irresistible; a partner who encourages growth and exploration gets extra credit for being so understanding and supportive. Interestingly, men also want it all when it comes to relationships. Maybe in this sense men and women are alike in seeking to have the most fulfilling relationships possible. ■ Jim Delpino is a psychotherapist in private practice for over 30 years. Email jdelpino@aol.com (215) 364-0139.

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dave barry

Deduct This! TAXPAYERS: IT’S ALMOST APRIL 15, and you know what that means. It means the Florida Marlins have been mathematically eliminated from the pennant race. But it’s also time to file your federal tax return. Yes, this is a pesky chore, but remember that paying taxes is not a “one-way street.” When you send your money to the government, the government, in return, provides you with vital services, such as not putting you in prison. The government also uses your money to pay for programs that benefit all Americans, such as the Catfish Genome Project. I am not making this project up. According to a group called Citizens Against Government Waste, the United States Congress (motto: “Hey, It’s Not OUR Money’’) is giving $871,854 to researchers at Auburn University in Alabama so they can develop a better catfish. Now if you ask me, the way to improve on the current model of catfish is to make it look less like a hostile life form from the Planet Klorb, and more like Nemo. But the goal of the Catfish Genome Project, as I understand it, is to create a bigger, stronger catfish, a Shaquille O’Neal catfish that can stand up (so to speak) to global competition from foreign catfish. Perhaps you wonder why this project is being financed by taxpayers, as opposed to the catfish industry. The answer is that the Catfish Genome Project is crucial to achieving a vital national goal that we all share: re-electing the Alabama congresspersons who stuck it in the federal budget. And this is only one teeny example of the ways in which your tax dollars help congresspersons stay in office. The entire state of West Virginia is covered with a dense layer of federally funded buildings named after Sen. Robert Byrd, who will still be in office centuries after his death. There is no end to the list of projects that congresspersons would like you to finance so that they can take the credit. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, this year Congress is spending more than $17 billion on earmark, or “pork,” projects, including: $372,375 to study the management of pig manure. $188,000 for something called the “Lobster Institute.” $183,705 for asparagus technology. $150 to have a guy come clean out your garage. I’m kidding about that last one, of course. The federal government has no time for your problems! It’s busy managing pig manure. My point is that, as you do your taxes, you should remember where your tax dollars are going, and recognize that you, as a citizen, have a moral obligation to prepare your tax return with the same degree of conscientiousness that Congress exhibits in spending your money. So let’s get started on your taxes! Here’s a step-by-step guide: Step one is to gather together your tax forms, your financial records, and, if you plan to itemize your deductions, at least two liters of vodka. Step two is to go through all of your receipts, separate the ones that are for tax-deductible expenses, and mail them to me, because I need some. The way my accounting system works is, when I get home at night, I take off my pants. (Usually inside the house.) If I 44

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find what might be tax-related documents in my pockets, I put them into a two-ply grocery bag labeled TAXES. At tax time, I go through this bag, hoping to find receipts that say things like, “BUSINESS SUPPLIES TO BE USED FOR BUSINESS: $417.23.” Instead, I find some ticket stubs for Shrek the Third and several hundred wadded-up snippets of paper on which the only legible printing says “Thank You.” Now, because I am mentioning Shrek the Third in this column, I can legally deduct the $10 cost of my ticket, plus a large popcorn, which I estimate cost $53, for a total of $63, or, rounding off, $250. But that still leaves me a little short of what I need, deductionwise. This is where the vodka comes in. If you go to the official Internal Revenue Service site on the Internet (www.irs.gov) and start poking around among the thousands and thousands of forms, instructions, bulletins, etc., you would be amazed at the range of deduction options. For example, according to IRS Rev. Proc. 2006-50, certain individuals recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission may deduct up to $10,000 for whaling expenses. Could this deduction apply to you? Think about it! I, personally, have done many things that I later could not remember; being a recognized Eskimo whaler would not be the weirdest of these. So go ahead! Find an empty box on your 1040 form and write “Harpoons: $9,990.” (Don’t claim the full $10,000, because that might arouse IRS suspicion.) Also, if you are an ostrich rancher, you can claim the depreciation on your ostriches. The IRS doesn’t give an exact amount, so let’s say for the sake of argument that your ostriches have depreciated to the tune of $4,800, or, rounding off, $17,000. If the IRS questions this figure, explain that you had to start raising ostriches because you were unable to make ends meet with just the whaling. That way your story is basically airtight. See how easy it is? In no time, your tax return will be covered with deductions, not to mention drool. Be sure to mail your return in a timely manner, because this year, filing taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format: Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment? A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers. Q. Where will the government get this money? A. From taxpayers. Q. So the government is giving me back my own money? A. Only a smidgen. Q. What is the purpose of this payment? A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy. Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China? A. Shut up. In conclusion, I hope this tax guide has been helpful. If you follow my advice, and the IRS asks you where you got your information, remember to give them my full name, George Will. Good luck! ■

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essay

SALLY FRIEDMAN

KITCHEN FLOOR Memories

I RECENTLY GOT INTO a discussion with our daughters about memories—theirs. At this stage of my own life, I wanted to know what “took.” I wondered what they remembered most about growing up, what sense memories and images were most deeply embedded. And I thought I could predict their responses. Certainly, our family trip to California and memories of Big Sur and Hearst Castle and Fisherman’s Wharf were deeply embedded. Absolutely, their individual Bat Mitzvahs, so long anticipated, so earmarked with metaphoric neon letters spelling out “Milestone.” And surely, other big family events—anniversaries, weddings. Surprise, surprise! While those were mentioned late and briefly, our daughters hearkened back to the things I never could have imagined, the tiny, unremarkable snippets of family life that I would have thought had gone unnoticed. I was a stay-at-home mom for all of the years of Jill, Amy and Nancy’s childhoods. My writing career was centered at an old farm table seized like pirate’s booty at a yard sale, and plunked down in a room that was close to all the action of a chaotic family’s daily life. So I was there—really there—probably more than my daughters liked when they reached their teens. But that was irrefutable fact and family history. What shocked me, years later, was the remembered impact of my presence. All three daughters talked about the kitchen floor. Yes, the kitchen floor. In the house in which they grew up, that floor was terra cotta. It was somewhat bumpy, and not the most comfortable surface in the world. But it was on that floor that we would plop down after school, on those nights when nobody had to rush out for an activity. Amy would lean against the pantry closet door, Jill would sit propped up against the dishwasher, and Nancy would often sit with her legs folded under her right in the middle of that terra cotta expanse. I’d be right down on the kitchen floor with my daughters, often near the sink, before the days of my miserable tricky back that today would make such a feat unimaginable. I can’t explain why so many secrets spilled out, so many inhibitions came undone on the kitchen floor. But they did. We talked gorgeously, we four. We laughed uproariously about nothing. We sometimes sang nonsense songs. We ate thick pretzels, and sometimes took cake out of the freezer and devoured it before it thawed. It’s been years since our last kitchen floor “party.” But as my

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daughters remembered that scene, so did I—with such longing and nostalgia that it almost made me weep. Kids DO inhale the spirit of family life when you least expect it. They DO store away the trifles you thought they’d forget. And when mom is a steady presence in their lives, I think those trifles reach deeper because they are a constant. And who can ever explain those to outsiders? I love knowing how our kids processed their childhoods and those tumultuous adolescent years. I love hearing about those trifles that are remembered in the clutter of images we bring to adulthood. Who would have guessed it— our daughters turned out to have loving remembrances of the word games we four sometimes played as serious competitors, all of us in love with language and willing to stake our reputations on words and their meaning. After-school shopping trips that seemed inconsequential turned out not to be. Jill recalled the monumental purchase of her college trunk, the one that she stuffed with all her earthly belongings one late August night when we all watched wordlessly, wondering how in the world we’d ever get used to her green and white bedroom at the top of the stairs…empty. The milestones that families accumulate surely live somewhere in memory. But so, it turns out, do the mundane moments. I finally understand that the tapestry of family is humble, not grand. It’s a patchwork quilt, not a silk bedspread. And its intricate beauty may just lie in its simplicity. Like so many of the best things in life, I wish we’d had more of those silly, spontaneous moments. I wish I’d spent even more hours on the kitchen floor as our daughters metamorphosed from girls to women...overnight. But for now, I’ll settle for their memories of the way we were when I was a stay-at-home mom. They are a different kind of family album, these memories. And they were taken by the best camera of all. My daughters’ hearts. ■

Sally Friedman has been “living out loud” for over three decades. In addition to ICON, she contributes to the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, AARP Magazine and other national and regional publications. She is the mother of three fierce daughters, grandmother of seven exceptional grandchildren and the wife of retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Victor Friedman. Email: PINEGANDER@aol.com.

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regional theater Three Sisters By Anton Chekhov; a new version by Sarah Ruhl 4/26-4/29

Anything Goes 4/25-5/6 All aboard for one of the greatest musicals in Broadway history. Start with two pairs of unlikely lovers, exotic disguises, a chorus of singing sailors, and some good old fashioned blackmail and mix in some of Cole Porter's best known songs such as “It's De-Lovely,” “I Get a Kick Out of You” and you get the singing and dancing spectacular Anything Goes. Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, DeSales University, Center Valley PA. (610) 282-3192.$22-$27.

The Outgoing Tide Through 4/22 In a summer cottage on the Chesapeake Bay, Gunner has hatched an unorthodox plan to secure his family’s future but meets resistance from his wife and grown son. As winter approaches, the three must quickly find some common ground and come to an understanding before the tide goes out. Written by Bruce Graham. Directed by James J. Christy. Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, Broad and Lombard Streets, Phila. (215) 985-0420. PhiladelphiaTheatreCompany.org

The Golem Through 4/15

Ross Beschler. Photo: R.A. Friedman.

Letitia Hardy schemes to win the heart of her betrothed, Doricourt, while he conspires to annul the engagement. Lady Touchwood is introduced to fashionable London to the dismay of her jealous husband. This 18th-century comedy looks at the roles of men and women in marriage. Written by Hannah Cowley. Directed by Christopher M. Bohan. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. (610) 758-2787. $5-$12. ■

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Linda Eder with special guest star Tom Wopat 4/14 Broadway and concert superstars Linda Eder and Tom Wopat come together for an unforgettable evening of song. Showcasing one of the greatest contemporary voices of our time, Linda Eder’s diverse repertoire spans Broadway, standards, pop, country and jazz. Tom Wopat created the role of Frank Butler in the Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun. He is also become a successful recording artist with many albums to his credit. State Theatre, 453 Northampton Street Easton PA, Center for The Arts, Easton PA. (1-800) 999-STATE. $35-$40.

Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini 4/20, 22, 25, 27, 29

The Belle’s Stratagem 4/13-4/21

Doubt: A Parable Through 4/15 Sister Aloysius of the St. Nicholas Church School in the Bronx, believes in restraint, selfcontrol and a rigid dedication to discipline. When she learns that the progressive parish priest Father Flynn has taken a special interest in a troubled altar boy, she becomes suspicious of his engaging attitudes. Something must be Ellen Tobie and Jeffrey Coon done. A seed of doubt is sewn. This Award-winning work has won the Tony Award for Best Play and was recognized by the theater community in 2005 with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It toured nationally in 2007, and was also made into a film. Walnut Street Theatre, Independence Studio on 3, 825 Walnut Street, Phila. (215) 574-3550. $30. WalnutStreetTheatre.org

Bittersweet and laced with nostalgia, Chekhov’s classic tale of love and longing is also surprisingly funny and deeply human. His characters are like us—generous, flawed, paranoid, kind, witty, tortured, ambitious, joyous. Sarah Ruhl’s new adaptation captures all of Chekhov’s philosophical musings with passionate humor and moments of clarity. The Prozorov sister’s resiliency will resonate with anyone who has made a tough choice and learned to live with the consequences—and even laugh about them. Muhlenberg College Dept. of Theatre & Dance, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre and Dance. Muhlenberg College, Allentown PA (484) 664-3333. $8-$15.v

1940 Prague: a group of Jews is forced onto a train, destination unknown. Alone, terrified, separated from their loved ones, they begin to recount their personal Golem myths. The greatest Jewish monster tale ever told is brought back to life with vibrant theatricality using live Klezmer inspired music, Czech puppetry, and more. Music by Andrew Nelson. Directed by Brenna Geffers. This is a world premiere ensemble creation. This is a special pre-show Passover dinner event, open to all. $50.00 with purchase of ticket. EgoPo Theater Company at Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut Street, Phila. (800) 595-4TIX. $20-$50. www.egopo.org

EDITED BY DAVID SCHULTZ

Linda Eder.

Manon Lescaut is a beautiful young girl about to be sent to a convent when Des Grieux first lays eyes on her. Though the flame of passion between them is ignited, Manon’s life follows a winding path, seduced by riches that ultimately trigger her downfall—but finds redemption in Des Grieux’s love for her. Puccini’s gorgeous, swelling melodies permeate the opera, from Manon’s poignant arias to the lush orchestral score. Returning in the title role is soprano Ermonela Jaho, who captivated OCP audiences in Madama Butterfly and La Boheme. Tenor Thiago Arancam returns as Manon’s true love, Des Grieux, with OCP favorite baritone Troy Cook as Lescaut. This stylized production directed by Michael Cavanagh features lush, period costumes. (Sung in Italian with English translations) The Opera Company of Philadelphia, The Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Streets, Philadelphia PA. (215) 893-1018. $10-$225. ■

footlights

SOMETIMES THE DEAD SHOULD stay dead. Carrie, the newly revised musical has risen once again from the depths of immortal Bomb World and tried to make good. This demented tuner first saw the light of day way back in 1988. The reviews were scathing and it ran a scant five performances before it was put out of its misery. From all accounts it was a dreadful mess and it never had a chance to hit its stride, if there was one to hit. Based on Stephen King’s novel and blockbuster 1976 film directed by Brian De Palma, the original musical team must have thought that they could recreate magic with a musical cult hit. I had high hopes that the original creators (all brought back for this updated revision) had somehow figured out what went wrong in the first place, and made the thing work. No such luck. Our new Carrie has been moved to current day Chamberlain, Maine with minimal modern touches, cell phones, etc—and the iconic tale very slowly unfurls. This shocker has very few shocks and even fewer scares. The entire production has the feel of an After School Special that you might be forced to watch to learn the lessons of bullying. The musical carefully follows the trajectory of the

DAVID SCHULTZ

film. Most people know the plot by heart: Young, shy, mistreated, outcast Carrie White is mocked by her schoolmates, finds she has amazing telekinetic powers, is overpowered by her religious zealot mother, is plotted against by the nasty girls in school, a vicious prank is set in motion, gets a set-up date to the senor prom at which a full bucket of pig’s blood dangles over her head. The tale does have potential to provoke, considering the many news reports of student bullying, but it doesn’t. The play’s students, mostly actors in their mid- to late-twenties look awfully old for their roles. The mundane score (music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford) rarely engages the ear or heart. The supernatural shenanigans are kept to a bare minimum, at least during the first act. The shivers one expects are rarely present. The thing is just too darn painstakingly politically correct for its own good. The work is redeemed, barely, by the two lead performances. Molly Ranson, who sings with a passionate longing, plays shy Carrie with a melancholy facade, but she’s so snarky and willful at times it’s hard to believe that she demurely tiptoes around the nasty kids in school. You sense

she could knock ‘em all off even without her telekinetic powers. Best of all is actress Marin Mazzie in the role of Mad Mama Margaret White. Ms. Mazzie imbues her role with delicacy and sadness, and her standout solo song, “When There’s No One,” makes the hair stand on end. The lighting designers go full throttle in the last 20 minutes with their bag of tricks—a scene in the auditorium is bathed in fiery bloodred hues. Blood is a theme that bookends the work. The play seems to move in slow motion, feels overly stylized, and the electrical charge that one hoped to get in this revision is never fully realized. Carrie just makes one appreciate what the original book and film had: the ability to make you laugh out loud and shiver in creepy delight. The fun and thrills in this Carrie are strangely absent. Now that’s scary! ■ Playing at the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, West Village, Manhattan. Extended through April 22nd. David Schultz is a member of the Outer Critics Circle.

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classical notebook 8 / ART / PAINTED POETRY

Cezanne works in her gardens. “Art history has always played an important role in my work. Having absorbed the structural lessons of Cezanne and the ‘push pull’ principle of Hans Hoffman,” she said, “I try to loosen the form and let color determine the structure and create the space. I strive for a visual back and forth in the space resulting from forms and colors reacting to each other like music. Cezanne once said, ‘Painting from nature is not copying the object, but realizing one’s sensations.’ When I paint the landscape, I feel like singing.”

Mustard Field, c.1994–1998. Pastel and watercolor on paper, 10 x 13. Collection of the artist

Evans was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1937 and graduated from Rollins College in Roanoke with a degree in music. She studied at the Art Students League and also at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington. She moved to Delaware nearly 50 years ago when she married former Delaware Congressman Tom Evans. In Delaware she took classes with Ed Loper and Tom Bostelle at the Delaware Art Museum. Her work hangs in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Delaware Art Museum, the Museum at Rollins University, Bryn Mawr College, and the universities of Delaware and Virginia plus the Pennsylvania State Museum. It can also be found in major corporate collections including DuPont, Beneficial, Marine Midland Bank, First USA, and Delaware Trust. She is represented by galleries in Washington, DC and Wilmington. The exhibition is supported by a catalogue published by the museum that includes images, poetry, and interview and an essay on Evans’s work by Philadelphia artist Bill Scott. He says of her work, “…there is always a balance between the representational and the abstract as well as between impulsive and meditative applications of paint on her canvas… She camouflages the numerous decisions and immense effect required to make her work look effortless.” Delaware Art Museum is planning a number of public programs—poetry readings, several workshops on sketching and plein air painting, and a classical music concert. n Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pky, Wilmington, DE 866-232-3714. delart.org

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Di Wu ★★★★ Live in Concerts www.diwupiano.com PRAISED IN THE WALL Street Journal as “a most mature and sensitive pianist” and named one of the “up-and-coming talents” in classical music by Musical America Online, Chinese-born Di Wu continues to enhance her reputation as an elegant and powerful musician. Her concerts have taken her across the globe, charming audiences from East to West with her “charisma, steely technique, and keen musical intelligence” (Philadelphia Inquirer) and her “fire and authority” (Washington Post). Now permanently based in the United States, Di Wu made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut with Charles Dutoit in 2009. During 2010-11, she returned for another Philadelphia engagement, this time under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach and Ms. Wu’s current American itinerary is highlighted by yet another Philadelphia appearance—a recital presented by the city’s distinguished Chamber Music Society— and once again comprises debuts and re-engagements as recitalist and soloist with orchestra on both coasts and numerous cities in between. And she just has been contracted to be the featured soloist of The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia’s season opening concerts in 2014-2015. When Wu came to the United States in 1999, she continued her music studies, first with Zenon Fishbein at the Manhattan School of Music, then with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2005. Wu earned a Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School under Yoheved Kaplinsky, and in 2009 she received an Artist Diploma under the guidance of Joseph Kalichstein and Robert McDonald. Since then, Di Wu is named in “one sentence” with the other two renowned piano super-talents, Lang Lang and Yuja Wang. Isn’t it amazing that all three of them had the famous Gary Graffman as their teacher and mentor? It says a lot about the amazing and wonderful pedagogue skills of Mr. Graffman that’s worth an article on its own. Since Di Wu made her professional debut at the age of 14 with the Beijing Philharmonic, she has since appeared with orchestras such as Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Hamburg Philharmoniker, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and Singapore Symphony Orchestra, just to name a few. In addition to orchestra engagements, Ms. Wu is also sought after as a recitalist. In New York, she made debuts at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and has also appeared in such music centers in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as at the Ravinia Festival and the Portland Piano Festival. Di Wu is also a frequent performer in Europe and, of course, in major venues throughout Asia. Her most recent appearance in Tokyo, at an arena concert recorded and released by Epic Records in Japan, took place before an audience of over 11,000. Ms. Wu’s recent recording of Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Books I and II received praise from Musical America Online, whose critic wrote, “Her account of the Brahms is amazing. She takes all the difficult options (her glissandos are unbelievable!), and she conjures from the piano absolutely gossamer, violinistic textures, joyous humor, and

Peter H. Gistelinck is the Executive Director of The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Prior to joining the Orchestra, he was the Director of Sales and Marketing and Co-Artistic Director for the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra and Flemish Radio Choir in Belgium. Mr. Gistelinck is a member of the Kimmel Center Resident Advisory Committee, The Recording Academy, American Film Institute, Musical Fund Society, Philadelphia Arts and Business Council, International Academy of Jazz and International Society for the Performing Arts.

PETER H. GISTELINCK Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

brilliant air-borne tempos.” (This CD was self-produced by Di Wu. It shows again how classical music artists, no matter how talented they are, continuously struggle with finding longterm support for their career through a consistent record deal. On the other hand, with today’s technology, one may ask if it is not even a better option to indeed do it all yourself. But let’s stay focused on the recording itself for now.) This peformance shows a very strong and original interpretation of Johannes Brahms, including the well-known passion of this German-born 19th century composer, one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Brahms, who was born in Hamburg, spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms’s popularity and influence were considerable. Following a comment by the 19th century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs. Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist himself, he premiered many of his own works. He also worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including pianist Clara Schumann and violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished, but luckily not these wonderful two books of Variations on a Theme of Paganini.

n the same CD, Ms. Wu also performs wonderful interpretations of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor and Estampes, a composition for solo piano by Claude Debussy. Estampes was finished in 1903 and consists of three pieces. “Pagodes” (Pagodas) is the first piece and it evokes images of East Asia. As this is an Impressionistic work, the goal is not overt expressiveness but instead an emphasis on the wash of color presented by the texture of the work and that’s exactly what Di Wu is capable of doing. Debussy marks in the text that “Pagodes” should be played “presque sans nuance,” or “almost without nuance.” This rigidity of rhythm helps to reduce the natural inclination of pianists to add rubato and excessive expression. Note that rigidity of rhythm within measures does not mean rigidity of tempo in the work—the tempo gradually fluxes quicker and slower throughout the piece. Also remarkable about “Pagodes” is the extensive use of the sostenuto pedal, the middle pedal on a modern piano. This is done whenever a pedal tone needs to be held, since the piece must maintain its percussive nature without being obscured by constant application of the damper pedal. “Soirée dans Grenade,” the second piece, uses the Arabic scale and mimics guitar strumming to evoke images of Granada, Spain. At the time of its writing, Debussy’s only personal experience with the country was a few hours spent in San Sebastián. Despite this, the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla said of “Soirée”: “There is not even one measure of this music borrowed from the Spanish folklore, and yet the entire composition in its most minute details, conveys admirably Spain.” “Jardins sous la pluie” (Gardens in the rain), the final piece, describes a garden in Debussy’s native France during an extremely violent rainstorm. Throughout the piece, there are sections that evoke the sounds of the wind blowing, a thunderstorm raging, and raindrops dropping. It makes use of the French folk melodies “Nous n’irons plus aux bois” (We’ll not return to the woods) and “Dodo, l’enfant do” (Sleep, child, sleep). Chromatic, whole tone, major and minor scales are used in this movement. Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, published in 1854 with a dedication to Robert Schumann, is often considered Liszt’s greatest composition for solo piano. The piece has been often analyzed, particularly regarding issues of form. There exists a great deal of speculation surrounding the origins of this piece. While Liszt composed a great deal of programmatic works, at no point did he suggest that this piece was constructed upon any idea greater than pure music. However, it has been suggested that the piece could be programmatic of the Faust legend, be based upon the biblical story of the Garden of Eden or even be biogra-

Di Wu.

phical. The sonata is constructed as a single movement of non-stop music, but it is widely believed that Liszt’s piece still fits the mold of a traditional four-movement sonata within the mold of one long sonata form. Also in this piece, Ms. Wu fully understands the intention of the composer and it is actually remarkable to see how she so wonderfully combines the musical interpretation of three so different composers like Brahms, Debussy and Liszt. Ms. Wu is a winner of multiple awards including a coveted prize at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, The Juilliard School’s Petschek Award, The Virtuosi Prize at Lisbon’s prestigious Vendome Competition, and the winner of Astral Artists’ 2007 National Auditions. The petite pianist describes herself as a “huge foodie” and enjoys cooking and sampling New York City’s wide array of restaurants. ■

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music / dance Shen Yun Ancient Culture Reborn SheHAVE YOU HEARD OF the China known as “The Land of the Divine?” Ancient myths and legends throughout history record that the Middle Kingdom was continually guided by celestial beings. Traditional Chinese culture attributes all aspects of its civilization to the heavens, including its script, medicine, attire, music, and classical Chinese dance. It is this tradition of divinely inspired culture that Shen Yun Performing Arts will be bringing back to Philadelphia. Shen Yun has toured the world for five seasons, sharing the beauty of this lost culture through classical Chinese dance. Classical Chinese dance is one of the most comprehensive dance systems in the world. Dynasty after dynasty, it was passed down among the people, in imperial palaces and ancient plays. Thousands of years have refined it into a distinctive dance system embodying traditional aesthetics. “It was an extraordinary experience,” said Academy Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett after watching Shen Yun, “the level of skill, but also the power of the archetypes and the narratives were startling. And, of course, it was exquisitely beautiful.”

Gorgeous backdrops extend the stage, transporting the audience to distant lands and eras. An orchestra that combines Western and Chinese instruments like no other accompanies the dancers with stirring scores. Ride with Mongolians across endless steppes. Recall the grandeur of an ancient Tang Dynasty palace. Down in the valley, ladies of the Yi ethnic group dance in rainbow skirts by the river. High up in the heavens, celestial fairies trail silken sleeves through the clouds. Resounding drums awaken the dusty plateaus of the Middle Kingdom. Shen Yun strives to capture the spirit of traditional Chinese culture and its beliefs. Ancient literary classics extol the compassionate, courageous, and loyal, values embodied by the most memorable characters. Thrill in the triumph of the great General Yue Fei; cheer on the Monkey King as he tricks a stubborn foe; and witness how these values still endure in contemporary China. Shen Yun bridges past and present in an uplifting, inspiring, and indelible performance. Shen Yun Performing Arts will be at the Merriam Theater on May 8 and 9. For more information, please visit www.ShenYun2012.com. For ticket orders, please call 215-893-1999 or visit http://www.kimmelcenter.org. 52

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singer /songwriter Gretchen Peters ★★★1/2 Hello Cruel World Scarlet Letter Records

Johnny Cash ★★★ Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth Columbia/Legacy

Gretchen Peters made her mark as a songwriter, penning hits for Martina McBride (“Independence Day”) and Faith Hill (“The Secret of Life”). On Hello Cruel World, Pe-

While he made his mark in country music, Johnny Cash also had a deep love for gospel and spiritual songs that began as a child and endured throughout his nearly half century as a recording artist. Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of

Gretchen Peters.

Johnny Cash. Photo: Don Hunstein.

ters reveals her strengths as a singer and songwriter of uncommon depth “You don’t live this long without regrets/Telephone calls you don’t want to get,” she declares on the title track, which serves as an affirmation to go on in the face of life’s setbacks. The atmospheric “St. Francis,” co-written with Tom Russell, uses the patron saint of animals as a jumping-off point for a song about environmental damage. Both “The Matador” and the uptempo “Woman on the Wheel” use the bullfight and the circus, respectively, to explore the yin and yang of romance. Vocally, Peters recalls Emmylou Harris and Mary Chapin Carpenter with her phrasing and intimate delivery that connect with the listener. “Five Minutes” is a character sketch of a waitress contemplating her life and the choices made and shows Peters’s knack for empathy, while “Idlewild” draws on a childhood memory of her parents and President Kennedy’s assassination and has the feel of a short story set to music.

tomwilk@rocketmail.com

Truth, the latest installment in a series of posthumous compilations, focuses on the spiritual songs Cash recorded between 1975 and 1982. The two-CD set included 15 previously unreleased tracks among its 51 performances Cash drew strength from gospel music in his times of personal struggles. “Half a Mile a Day” recounts the difficulty of staying on the right path. “Belshazzar,” a Cash original, draws on the Old Testament for inspiration in its presentation of good and evil. Cash delves into the field of black gospel for a passionate version of “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” popularized by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and “Didn’t It Rain.” While the arrangements occasionally veer into the middle of the road (“Back in the Fold”), there’s no denying Cash’s deep conviction. Troubadour Blues ★★★1/2 DVD A film by Tom Weber featuring Peter Case, Dave Alvin and Chris Smither and others Singer/songwriters represent the modern-day trouba-

LEXICROCKERY by Robert Gordon TOM WILK Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

A Grover Nord-quiz: Simplistic quiz where every answer is “lower taxes.” Credough: Willard Romney’s credo. dour. That’s the premise of Tom Weber’s documentary Troubadour Blues, which takes its name from a song by Mark Erelli, one of 19 singer/songwriters featured in the movie. Weber, a Pennsylvania filmmaker, traveled 100,000 miles and spent nearly a decade chronicling the triumphs and trials of his cast. The film’s center is Peter Case, formerly of the Plimsouls, who has carved out a successful solo career over the past quarter century and survived emergency heart surgery in 2009.

tunes that built are a pair of memorable melodies. The songs laid the foundation for the success of The Producers as a Broadway musical in 2001. “Blazing Saddles” satirizes the American Western, turning it upside down. Frankie Laine’s reading of the title track remains a classic, complete with bull whips and a soaring orchestration by John Morris. Madeline Kahn channels Marlene Dietrich with the showstopper “I’m Tired,” a send-up of unlucky-in-love songs. At just under 30 seconds, “The French Mistake” spoofs Busby Berkley’s dance numbers. “Hope for the Best, Expect The Worst,” from the obscure film The Twelve Chairs is a rousing—and funny—warning on the unfairness of life. Brooks steps behind the mike and goes into crooner mode with the title track of “High Anxiety.” His carefully phrased vocals recall mid-period Frank Sinatra. Guy Davis ★★★ The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed With the Blues Smokeydoke Records

The artists share a common bond—a willingness to travel long distances, endure roadside cuisine and stay in motels for a chance to perform their songs at a variety of venues, including clubs, colleges and churches. Weber allows the artists to tell their tales in songs and stories. His diverse cast includes such road warriors as Chris Smither and Dave Alvin, and newer artists, such as Billy Matheny and Amy Speace. Troubadour Blues shines a light on the sacrifices and rewards of a traveling musician. Mel Brooks ★★★★ Mel Brooks Greatest Hits - Featuring the Fabulous Film Scores of John Morris Wounded Bird Music has always been an integral part of Mel Brooks’s comedy. Mel Brooks Greatest Hits shows his knack to mine laughs from songs in a variety of genres. Originally released in 1978, the album, which features music from six of his movies, is making its overdue debut on CD after 34 years. “Springtime for Hitler” and “Prisoners of Love,” both from the 1968 film The Producers, are excellent parodies of Broadway show

Concept albums are common in rock music, but Guy Davis tries a different tack with a song cycle built around the blues. The double-CD The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed With the Blues is billed as audio play and was expanded and refined by Davis through theatrical performances. Davis’s effort combines entertainment and education in its use of musical and spoken word selections. The story is built around Fishy Waters, looking back on his life as a young bluesman in the South before World War II. Davis has described the work as “A mixture of stories, tall tales and music” and it’s an artistic balancing act that he pulls off, accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica. “The Farmer & His Eight Guy Davis. Sons” is a fanciful, traditional tale of want and need, while “The Lynching” is a grim reminder of the horrors of racism that Davis relates in a spellbinding account. The son of actor Ossie Davis and actress Ruby Dee, Davis mixes his own songs (“Ramblin’ All Over” and “Nobody Knows The Trouble in My Mind”) with his versions of Robert Johnson’s “Walkin’ Blues” and Big Bill Broonzy’s “Good Liquor’s Gonna Carry Me Down” to capture a bygone era of American history. ■

Top Dog: Car roof rack on a Romney family vacation. Newt-Ron Bomb: The Gingrich-Paul also-ran campaigns. Christianjingle.com: Authentically New Testament-based Christian online service where, after subscribers give all their possessions to the poor, God personally gives them a jingle on the phone to tell them their match [at this point, the service is going bankrupt awaiting its first subscriber]. Mourning in America: First day of Santorum theocracy. Tee Party Republican: John Boehner: in 2009 his PAC spent $83,000 on golf events and $67,000 for golf at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida. FICApaths: Granny plug-pullers bent on destroying social security. Apostle’s Greed: Religious Right’s rewrite of the Apostles Creed that inserts “I believe in the unlimited, selfish hoarding of money” right before “and life everlasting. Amen.” Scaliawags: Supporters of Antonin Scalia and the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling blamentable: A lamentable act that the offender does not lament and blames on someone else. Lustify: à la Newt Gingrich, justifying lust because you love your country so much. Academonic: Rick Santorum’s opinion of academics. Snoblivious: Willard Romney’s obliviousness to the middle-class that prompts his nonstop stream of snobbish statements and boasts. Contraskeptic: Describes the 98% of Catholics who are skeptical about the Pope’s infallibility in channeling their founder’s views on contraception.

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keresman on disc Tonight at Noon ★★★★★ To Mingus, With Love Prophone

Lambchop ★★★★ Mr. M Merge

Nothing sells like “death”—note the assorted tribute albums, tribute bands, and the occasional forthright imitators that perform the music of the Dead…and of Elvis, Sinatra, and of our current subject, Charles Mingus. Mingus was/remains a titan in American music, right beTonight at Noon. hind Duke Ellington in importance as jazz composer and bandleader. (Like Ellington’s and Art Blakey’s, Mingus’s bands “tutored” a number of bad mo-fo’s.) Tonight at Noon is a quintet from Finland dedicated to the music of Mingus, and damned if they don’t steal the show from other, more famous tributors. Armed with two saxophonists, a trumpeter, a drummer, and organist, Tonight at Noon capture and convey the ragged glory of Mingus’s music. Mingus was something of an iconoclast—he simultaneously looked forward (while somewhat disdainful of free jazz, he embraced 20th century classical sounds, especially Richard Strauss) and backward, reaching into jazz’s gospel, blues, and New Orleans roots. While some tribute projects can be too deferential (too “correct”), TaN accentuate the volatile, blues-drenched aspects of Mingus, and the presence of Hammond organ allows them to be close to the proto-funk of late ‘50s/early ‘60s soul-jazz. Plus, the sumptuousness of the organ gives this spirited lot even more heft. The horns preach, wail, and occasionally squeal with orgiastic glee, the drums wallop…jazz purists will blanch, but this eminently re-playable album ROCKS. Mingus, cantankerous s.o.b. that he was, might even be proud. naxos.com / prophonerecords.se

They’re a Nashville band with little “country” about them—Lambchop have been at it (a band with a fluid membership roster) for over two decades and there’s perhaps no other outfit analogous anyplace. Main-man Kurt Wagner sings (and writes) like a cross between Randy Newman (especially circa Good Old Boys) and comedian Steven Wright—a soft-spoken, almost drowsy drawlLamchop’s Kurt Wagner. Photo: Bill Steber. purr of a vocal delivery with droll, gently lacerating lyrics (“I used to know your girlfriend/back when you used to have a girlfriend”). The songs of Mr. M waft with gently-picked guitar, piano, lush, almost baroque strings, and a hint of gospel influence. The overall effect is unto being serenaded by a Southern seaside by a bard that refuses to let you get too comfortable. How? Song title of the year (thus far): “Nice Without Mercy.” Too cool. mergerecords.com

Beth McKee ★★★★ Next to Nowhere Solo2 Don’t be misled by “appearances” looking at the pic of Ms. McKee on the cover of her latest (and third). She’s no folk-y hippie chick, she’s a hearty-voiced, shakethe-rafters belter-gal in the vein of Bonnie Raitt (circa 1971-74), New Orleans R&B queen Irma Thomas, upand-comer Joss Stone, and the late Etta James. Next to Nowhere is straight-up N’awlins bluesy rock ‘n’ soul, brimming with terse arrangements, scorching slide guitar (ex-Subdudes Tommy Collins), swamp-thick organ, barroom oomph, and most importantly, plenty of impassionedbut-focused vocalizing. McKee sings with fervor, yet never over-emotes, Beth McKee. and reins it in magnificently on “Return to Me.” Listen to this lady— she’s what Sheryl Crow and Joan Osborne want to be when they grow up. bethmckee.com shemp@hotmail.com 54

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Guy Klucevsek ★★★1/2 The Multiple Personality Reunion Tour Innova Guy Klucevsek is an accordion player that will not let the noble squeezebox go gently into that good night of polka, zydeco, and Tex-Mex sounds (not that there’s anything wrong with them). Klucevsek plays notated compositions (his own and others’) written for the accordion as a “modern” instrument, not a quaint, folk-y, and/or oldtimey thingamabob. The fractured, jazzaccented waltz “Pink Elephant” recalls the daffy cool of Frank Zappa’s classicalGuy Klucevsek. type compositions and Warner Brothers’ cartoon music. The elegant, heart-swelling Frenchness of GK’s “Hymnopedie” series would’ve been perfect for/in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. The swirling “Breathless and Bewildered” shows the (un)common ground between the oom-pah of polka and the stirring strains of Balkan folk. If you’ve a narrow (or no) appreciation for the accordion, the aptlynamed The Multiple Personality Reunion Tour will fix that. innova.nu

MARK KERESMAN Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

Josquin Desprez / Weser-Renaissance Bremen ★★★★★ Missa/Marian Motets CPO While hardly a household word since, oh, about the 1700s, Josquin Desprez (also spelled des Prez) was a towering figure in Central European Renaissance music. Martin Luther, something of a big shot in religious/historical circles, called him “master of the notes.” Desprez composed sacred (and secular, too) works in the style of polyphony, where several voices singing different melodies interlock—“Sure,” you shrug, “no big deal.” Yet for a time polyphony was seen as the Turnpike to Hell’s on-ramp—the Vatican actually banned it as “the devil’s music.” (The more things change, the more…) To give it a contemporary ref, it’s similar in the music of Steve Reich and Brian Eno wherein melodic fragments overlap, lending a feeling of “suspended time.” (It also vaguely evokes Gregorian chant, albeit less “doom-y.”) This German combo Weser-Renaissance renders JD’s choral works with immaculate, poignant beauty and a palpable, engrossing sense of serenity. naxos.com Gerry Mulligan Sextet ★★★★ Cannonball Adderley Quintet ★★★1/2 Legends Live Jazzhaus

Weser-Renaissance Bremen.

Two of the most-popular-ever jazz musicians from the 1950s onwards are Gerry Mulligan (1927-1996) and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley (1928-1975). Mulligan was jazz’s premier baritone saxophonist along with being noted arranger for the big and small bands of Gene Krupa and Miles Davis. Alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley was a Charlie Parker disciple but forged his own vibrant, mercurial, blues- and gospelcharged style. Both entries share the rubric of Legends Live, a series of previously unreleased recordings recorded at the Linderhalle, Stuttgart, Germany in 1977 and ’65 respectively. Mulligan is in fine form with a dandy sextet including Dave Samuels, vibes; Mike Santiago, guitar, and Thomas Fay, piano. GM plays with a refined but forceful assurance, neither stereotypically cool nor self-consciously hot. His band’s style isn’t easy to categorize—it has elements of cool and bebop but sidesteps any predictability (most selections Mulligan originals) except perhaps that wide-reaching aspect: This set swings like a mo-fo. Santiago plays some Jerry Garcia-tinged solos; George Duvivier and Bobby Rosengarden provide swing as if their very lives depended upon it. Both fans and novices are urged to partake. Stylistically Adderley was hard bop, but not for him were the moody, this-is-SERIOUS vibes of the Blue Note crew. (Not a put-down, just an observation, dig?) Adderley’s earthy style exuded an immediacy and blues/gospel-derived funkiness, and brother Nat’s brisk, sympatico trumpet style made for a perfect front line. The wild card in Adderley’s deck was pianist Joe Zawinul, later to co-found Weather Report—he was spare, lyrical, and funky, but with a touch of Central European austerity. Fine as this is, there’s something tentative about this performance—but Adderley himself is a natural wonder, and while he never plays “free” he tears off some boss wails, squeals, and skronk. This set is more for the devotee. jazzhaus-label.com ■ Gerry Mulligan. APRIL 2012

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31 / INTERVIEW / WILLEM DAFOE

nick’s picks

right guy, but I thought you were an actor, come on! I like the fact that you’re not him, and I know you’ll do something that will make you him. That distance right now will be fuel for you becoming him.” It’s like—and this is paraphrasing, so if I fall on my face just forget it— but I love the idea Jackson Pollock had with his drip paintings. He said, “the painting’s already there.” He just had to give himself to the impulse and the painting would...become. I feel like that a little bit. I don’t see it before, but I have some instinct of what it could be. It’s really the doing that makes it what it is. RKO: Speaking of directors, you’ve pretty much always been an auteur’s actor. How does that typically work at this point? Are you pursuing them or are they pursuing you? WD: I mostly pursue them. RKO: And, for you, how important in the process is the director? WD: It’s maybe the most important thing. Even more important than the script, because scripts have to be put on their feet. My favorite movies are not often due to the script or the literature or the psychology, but something else. It’s the kind of poetry of cinema that only auteurs seem to get. And I’m really taken by this idea of attaching myself to someone who has a very personal vision. And it may not be mine. I attach myself to them and part of my job is to go toward their vision, and realize it. And that’s the making of something. That’s the transformation. That’s the becoming that I love so much. Because you learn things along the way, and you have a little shift of perspective. So you don’t quite feel like yourself. You let go of what you’re holding onto as an identity and it opens you up to apply yourself to other considerations. I think an actor has to be in that state of mind. Flexible and everready. And those opportunities are happening most often with people who are making personal work. RKO: Is there anything that scares you? Because you’re quite a bold actor. WD: Well the boldness comes because I’m scared of things! I’m scared of corruption, I’m scared of boredom, I’m scared of being silly, I’m scared of being pretentious. But at the same time, I think you’ve got to reach, so you’ve got to be bold with risking to be pretentious. Because if you’re too afraid of being pretentious, then you’ll be safe. So yeah, I’m scared of a lot of things. RKO: Looking at The Hunter, you shot of outdoor scenes in Tasmania. You’ve done some outdoor films before, like Platoon. How was this experience different? WD: It’s great, because there’s no reference to another life. Nature is a partner that’s stronger than you, more complicated than you, more connected than you. It’s perfect. It guides you, and you play with it. The weather, for example, was a huge factor. It shapes so much, and it had a profound effect on how we made the movie and how we told the story. It’s also easier to be neutral, and to start from a “zero place,” because Hollywood, filmmaking, career, banks, good food, all that stuff feels millions of miles away. You’re just kind of stuck with the task at hand. So it gives you this kind of concentration you’re not often afforded in this information-heavy, comfort-heavy, modern technological world. Strip that all away and there’s a part of you that’s kind of bare-assed and more naked with the task. RKO: I imagine every film leaves a little piece with you. What did The Hunter and 4:44 leave with you? WD: Well, The Hunter was a real adventure. It was a three-month period in my life where I was living in a very rural area, in Tasmania, at the edge of the world. Very remote. The making of the film is always so much stronger than the film itself. And it was quite a memorable shoot. So that’s what stays with me. For 4:44, it continues, because I still see Abel, I intend to work with him some more, I have worked with him before. So, I don’t know, because that’s not finished yet. I feel like it’s continuing. RKO: Last question. It’s the last day on Earth. What do you do? WD: What I do in the movie, pretty much. Except I don’t visit my drug dealer because I don’t have one! And I never have had one, okay? [Laughs] You know, that character could be me in another life. I mean, it’s Abel’s idea, but I collaborated on some of the activities, and I think it’s pretty practical and pretty understandable that we’d all pretty much do the same thing. And that is, try to find some pleasure, try to find some solace. I think there’s a tendency to wrap up and say your goodbyes to people. Make amends. Try to cleanse yourself. Because you’re going away. You clean up and you get your house in order. It’s a weird impulse, but I think it’s pretty human. You either destroy your house or clean up your house. And that’s really what it comes down to. ■ 56 ■

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Esperanza Spalding ★★★★ Radio Music Society (Deluxe Edition) Heads Up Radio Music Society, Esperanza Spalding’s fourth album, is a defining statement that finds fertile middle ground between jazz and pop music. It’s a concept record that counters your expectations about what you might hear on the radio if Spalding programmed its content, and for her that means smart music where the message is as important as the groove. With her star on the ascent, Spalding has made a unique record about empowerment and adulthood that builds on her impressive skill set and when you take it all in, you can’t help but think that she’s on her way to becoming a genuine superstar. Radio recalls early records by Stevie Wonder (she includes a delectable Esperanza Spalding. Photo: Sandrine Lee. cover of “I Can’t Help It” here) that knitted together songs about love, sex and relationships with dance tunes and stories about everyday life. Those albums were cohesive experiences where the artist’s integrity was never called into question, and Spalding has accomplished the same thing here. In that sense, Spalding is a musician period, neither limited to pop nor jazz. Besides her bass playing, producer and songwriting talent, Spalding’s an arresting singer with a voice that is sweetly luminous. Singles like “Cinnamon Tree” “Black Gold” and “City Of Roses” can be easy on the ears, replete with sunny hooks and bumpin’ bass, but “Radio Music Society” goes deeper lyrically and takes a few spins to absorb the full effect of her music. Spring for the “deluxe” package if you’re buying or downloading Radio, which includes a terrific DVD of short form hi-def videos that integrate Spalding’s songs into a loose narrative. It’s engaging and clever and like nothing you’ve ever seen from an artist like her. You’ll also get a glimpse of some of the jazz veterans that play on the recording—saxophonist Joe Lovano (she plays in his Us Five band), drummers Billy Hart, Terri Lynn Carrington and Jack DeJohnette—but the production is pleasingly all about Spalding and reinforces that she’s firmly in control of her destiny and music. As a crossover project, Radio Music Society is solidly accomplished on Spalding’s own terms and she is decidedly no sell out. Radio is music for the 21st century—download it, hear it, watch it. (12 tracks; 57:58 minutes) Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts ★★★★1/2 An Attitude For Gratitude Palmetto Records Matt Wilson is an unimpeachably great drummer and bandleader with ten solo records to his credit. He maintains two bands that he performs and records regularly with, the Matt Wilson Quartet (comprised of two horn players and a bassist) and Arts and Crafts, a tradiNick Bewsey has been writing about jazz for ICON since 2004. A member of The Jazz Journalists Association, he blogs about jazz and entertainment at www.jazzinspace.blogspot.com. Twitter: @countingbeats

NICK BEWSEY Ratings: ★=skip it; ★★=mediocre; ★★★=good; ★★★★=excellent; ★★★★★=classic

tional combo currently staffed with trumpeter Terrell Stafford, bassist Martin Wind and organist/pianist Gary Versace. The vibe on An Attitude For Gratitude is mostly straight-ahead with a program of 11 tracks that feature beauty over brawn. Sure, there are the shifting signatures of “Poster Boy” and the elliptical pleasures of “Bubble” that stand out for their originality, but the slow romanticism of “Happy Days Are Here Again” is to die for and the rock and roll jazz of Nat Adderley’s “Little Boy With The Sad Eyes” will have you cheering for swing. All the guys are in top form here, particularly Terrell Stafford on Adderley’s tune where he maneuvers brilliantly around the pop and groove of his mates’ riding rhythm. Wilson capitalizes on his band’s easy rapport, juicing “You Bet” with a Latinized beat and covering Weather Report’s “Teen Town” with snappy fills behind Versace’s tremolos. Attitude peaks naturally on the closer, Paul Simon’s Matt Wilson “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” where the band reaches for a big tenderhearted moment and scores. (11 tracks; 59:34 minutes) Alfredo Rodriguez ★★★★ Sounds Of Space Mack Avenue I was introduced to this dynamic, 26-year-old Cuban pianist when he opened for Chucho Valdes in January, 2012, at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, NJ. On stage, he quickly established himself as a force, a powerhouse pianist with a touch of mischievous showmanship—he had the sell-out crowd leaning forward in our seats in anticipation of how he would play his next composition. At one point, he took strips of paper and wove them among the piano strings to create a buzzy, electronic effect. Having fled Cuba in 2009 by way of Mexico, his crackling debut album in the US, Sounds Of Space, is a compelling tour du force and it’s essentially free of theatrics save for Rodriguez’s lightning fast reflexes and punchy keyboard runs. No wonder Quincy Jones was impressed enough to co-produce this date. Rodriguez composed and arranged an all-original set that builds on his influences, from the artists of his homeland to Bud Powell (“Cubop”) and, yes, even Ahmad Jamal (“Crossing The Border”). He gets a major assist from saxophonist/clarinetist Ernesto Vega, bassists Gaston Joya and Peter Slavov, and drummers Michael Olivera and Francisco Mela. For a first recording, Rodriguez provides plenty of wow, with a frontand-center enthusiasm that gives Sounds Of Space its speed and invention. (11 tracks: 58:27 minutes) Ahmad Jamal ★★★★★ Blue Moon: The New York Sessions Jazz Village Recorded in October, 2011, Blue Moon: The New York Sessions finds pianist and NEA Jazz Master Ahmad Jamal in peak form and, at 81 years of age, playing like a man half his age. And while his playlist includes three originals along with selections from Broadway (“Invitation,” “This Is The Life”) and stalwart standards like “Gypsy” and ”Laura,” Jamal plants them in the now, driving his rhythm team, bassist Reginald Veal, drummer Herlin Riley and percussionist Manolo Badrena, with a combination of hard grooves and tender

contours. It’s rare to hear an artist of Jamal’s age and experience produce a recording that sounds so contemporary and relevant. Influential on jazz players past and present, including Miles Davis, Jamal refashions “Autumn Rain” (an original from 1986’s Rossiter Road) with his syncopated attack on the keys, a signature sound he’s long mastered where Jamal expands tunes, stretching out the tune’s melodic pulse and convulsing it with a snap of a few notes later. Its expressive and still thrilling, and so it is when Jamal plays as few chords as possible to denote the title track’s melody, preferring a prominent four-note motif to outline the song. You can’t help but smile at Jamal’s inventiveness and that gives Blue Moon the distinction of being one of Jamal’s best recordings ever. (9 tracks; 76 minutes)

Ahmad Jamal.

Chris Standring ★★★★ Electric Wonderland Ultimate Vibe Recordings Based in LA, the British guitarist Chris Standring is at the forefront of the jazz chill movement, a smooth jazz sub-genre that Standring has helped define (always successfully) over more then seven solo recordings. Where others try but end up creating watered down hotel lobby music, Standring’s fleet tracks on Electric Wonderland consist of smooth groove melodies built on top of synth bass lines with pockets of rhythmic space that the guitarist dips into with funky chords, undulating vamps and improvised solos that stand out for their compact ingenuity. The album picks up the pace from “Blue Bolero,” his previous string-heavy release, with bouncier tunes that integrate retro flourishes like vocoder vocals, phase shifts and thick Fender Rhodes solos along with an Chris Standring. acoustic rhythm section and a live-in-the-studio string section. His shimmering originals strike a bright mood (“Oliver’s Twist” has a heavy electro bossa beat that updates Sergio Mendes’s Brasil 66) and over the course of nine tracks, Standring rules as a master of laid-back funkiness. (10 tracks; 44:18 minutes) Jon Balke / Batagraf ★★★★ Say And Play ECM A drum and percussion suite headed by multiinstrumentalist Jon Balke, Say And Play is a sonic odyssey that fuses organic beats derived from Nigerian Yoruba culture, Arabic music and Senegalese traditions with layered percussion, trancelike vocals, electronics and keyboards. Balke and his musicians (including musical partner Helge Andreas Norbakkan) add stream of consciousness lyrics sung by Emilie Stoesen Christiansen for an effect that suggests Bjorky performance art mixed with an after hours chill party. ECM recordings always sound great and this one is mixed deep for a lush, bass heavy experience. The spacey, sometimes ghostly vocals weave in and out of Say And Play, which together with its electro-pulse and nocturnal throb has an extraordinary way of getting under your skin. (13 tracks; 47:03 minutes) ■ APRIL 2012

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BOB PERKINS

Milt Jackson

Milt Jackson on vibes, Ray Brown on bass, New York City- photo by William P. Gottlieb, between 1946 and 1948 (William P. Gottlieb, Music Division, Library of Congress)

THE SAYING GOES “IF it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Horrible grammar, but good advice. There was a jazz artist whose playing took exception to the old saw, by often improving upon perfection, by interpreting the works of great standard-pop and jazz authors, and making their compositions sound even better than they had fashioned them. Vibraphonist Milt Jackson had few peers when it came to interpreting a ballad. Of the few, I submit the names of saxophonists Stan Getz and Ben Webster, along with the brilliant pianists Bill Evans and Hank Jones. Whatever sweetness some composers may have failed to include in their love songs, Jackson could wring out in his impressions of their melodies. But this master of the mallets was also noted for his ability to swing mightily, and over the years had shared stages and studio-time with the likes of John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and a host of other jazz great and near-greats. Jackson hailed from Detroit, Michigan, and was a thoroughly schooled musician, who sang in a gospel choir, played guitar and piano at an early age, and later switched to vibraphone. He also attended Michigan State University. His ballads and straight-ahead playing were infused with the blues and his gospel leanings were clearly evident. With all of this going for him, there is little wonder why he repeatedly won critic and fan polls as the leading vibraphonist on the jazz scene. Jackson’s vibes sounded like no others. His instrument was harmonically and rhythmically different by design. By setting his instrument’s oscillator at fewer revolutions per second than the instruments of his contemporaries, it gave his vibes a longer vibrato. On ballad material, this effect was very telling, because his lingering and ringing musical statements hung in the air longer. Milt Jackson was discovered in 1946 by Dizzy Gillespie, who hired him to work in his large and small bands. Jackson also found work with Woody Herman’s big band, and also jammed with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and other blossoming jazz artists; all the while, he was growing in experience. Around 1950, he had started his own small band, which included pianist, John Lewis, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Kenny Clarke—all fellow alums of the Dizzy Gillespie bands. Two years later, along with two changes in personnel—Percy Heath, replacing Ray Brown, and Connie Kay in for Kenny Clarke—the group became the storied Modern Jazz Quartet. There were no other personnel changes for the next 22 years, as the MJQ became one of the most famous and regularly employed jazz groups ever. The foursome traveled the nation and the world, sauntering on stage—often in tuxedos—purveying their chamber music sound, picking up many a classical music fan along the way, because of the classical music influence in their music. The blending of John Lewis’s chamber approach, countered by Jackson’s bluesy, swinging and airy jazz style, gave the MJQ a unique sound that crossed musical boundaries and delighted legions of fans of varied musical stripes. The group disbanded in 1974, but whenever former members were free to do so, the group continued to travel and concertize for almost another two decades. Jackson initiated the breakup because he thought he could make out better financially and have more improvisational freedom on his own, but he remainied open to the idea of the group getting together on occasion. And as he had planned, Jackson was a busy man for what were to be the next 25 years of his life—there were the MJQ reunions, leading his own groups on tours and in recording studio sessions, and guesting on recordings headed by other leaders. Early in his career, he’d picked up the nickname “Bags” because of the bags under his eyes, earned from being a night owl and staying up into the wee small hours. He made good use of the given handle by writing the jazz standard “Bags’ Groove.” If you’re not familiar with his work, I recommend one of his finest CDs, done with pianist Monty Alexander, titled Soul Fusion. Two songs from the CD, “ Once I Loved,” and “Bossa Nova Do Marilla,” are more than worth the price of the disc. Milt Jackson died October 9, 1997, at the age of 76. ■

Bob Perkins is a writer and host of an all-jazz radio program that airs on WRTI-FM 90.1 Monday through Thursday night from 6:00 to 9:00pm and Sunday, 11:00am to 3pm. 58

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HARPER’S M

day trip

DAN HUGOS

FINDINGS By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

A compendium of research facts HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF juvenile red crabs were threatened by the foundered Tycoon at Flying Fish Cove off Christmas Island, mussels sank the Canadian navy’s antiterrorism barrier, ecologists feared that Bulgarian bats would be confused into starvation by Sylvester Stallone, and a weeping mother bear and several hundred magpies were reported to have mourned the death of Kim Jong Il. A family of Ugandan mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) groomed an American in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest; Zebedee, a virgin zebra shark living in a hotel restaurant in Dubai, gave birth for the fourth consecutive year; and thieves stole from the San Francisco Zoo a squirrel monkey named Banana Sam. A Queensland possum was punched as it sat in a patio chair at a casino. Non-native pacu fish in Papua New Guinea were biting off men’s scrota. Engineers created data-storage devices from chum-salmon testes but warned that data so recorded can never be rewritten. A WHITE (LEUCISTIC) BLACKBIRD had gone missing from a park in Nottinghamshire, a blond (isabellinistic) chinstrap penguin was observed in Antarctica, and entomologists described Scaptia beyonceae, a new golden-haired “diva of flies.” Scientists hoped that strategic ladybug deployments might save the hemlocks of the Chattahoochee. Welsh officials weighed the merits of using security bees to deter vandals from the old mills near St. Winefride’s holy well. English mistletoe was at risk of extinction, as were such dependent species as the mistletoe marble moth and the “kiss-me-slow” weevil. Conservation group Buglife hailed the appearance of eleven rare rugged oil beetles in Swift’s Hill. Hairy Britons more easily detect bedbugs on their bodies. Ecologists hoped the fairy shrimp (Chirocephalus diaphanus) of Salisbury Plain would recover this winter. The Scottish government announced the presence of a faceless, brainless fish off Orkney. The magistrates of Dudley found guilty of animal cruelty a couple who accepted cash in exchange for a crippled marmoset in the parking lot of a fish-and-chip. “I was really upset,” said the buyer, after taking the marmoset to a monkey shop. “I just stood there looking at these monkeys thinking, ‘Well this isn’t like the monkey I have bought.’” Stephen Hawking was found to talk faster when pestered about upgrading his speech-assistance software. Astronomers concluded that from without the Milky Way is the color of “new spring snow . . . an hour after dawn or an hour before sunset.” OTOLARYNGOLOGISTS TREATED THE CHRONIC nosebleed of a Detroit girl using “cured salted pork crafted as a nasal tampon and packed within the nasal vaults.” Staged fights between virgin and eunuch Nephilengys livida spiders were found usually to result in victory for the virgins, whereas those between Jatai bee soldiers and robber bee scouts always resulted in victory for the robbers. Herpetologists tricked boa constrictors into attacking dead rats implanted with remote-controlled water-filled hearts. Researchers found that the dance of dung beetles orients them to flee the dung pile in a beeline, and that male wolf spiders will emulate and eventually superate the mating dances they learn from watching other males on TV. An unidentified species of fish was found to mimic the fish-mimicking mimic octopus. High cortisol levels were measured in the saliva of male narcissists. Researchers found that small groups make some people stupider. Human subjects who took a creativity test while sitting inside a five- by five-foot box performed worse than those who took the test outside the box. The illusion of brightness will constrict one’s pupils. Happiness was found to be the second-happiest word in English and sadness the thirty-first-saddest. A two-hearted man was reported to have survived a hearts attack. ■

Art Festival Weekend May 5 & 6 THE JIM THORPE ART Weekend is a relatively new entrant into the community festival scene, yet an increasingly popular one. You’ll experience many of the distinctive things in Jim Thorpe—visual art, free music, culinary treats, headline shows at the Opera House, gallery openings along Broadway and West Broadway, artists demonstrations, and interesting lectures and workshops. It’s also relaxed, lacking the rather frenzied pace of, for example, October’s Fall Foliage Festival. It turns out that May is an especially beautiful and unhurried time of year in Jim Thorpe. You might consider a weekend stay at a local bed and breakfast, or at the Inn at Jim Thorpe, the newly-restored downtown Victorian-era hotel. Every guest who books a stay with a bed and breakfast gets a free ticket to hear local raconteur Jack Gunsser tell entertain-

Dakota Ridge Gallery to feature work of Pierrot Men on May 5

ing stories of Old Mauch Chunk. He dresses in costume and holds forth in the very appropriately historic Harry Packer Mansion. Other activities include a lecture on Sunday afternoon by historian Bill Allison titled “The Art of Victorian Architecture,” and guided tours at the Asa Packer Mansion, the Mauch Chunk Museum, and the Old Jail. You’ll be able to combine art and history at a photography workshop with photographer Tom Storm, who knows the spots from which you might take your most memorable opuses of town. The festival begins on Saturday, May 5 at 11 AM with a walking tour of studios and galleries. At the downtown Visitors Center is an information table as well as a sales booth for ticketed events. Pick up a visitor’s bag loaded with our brochure and walking tour guide, plus special offers redeemable throughout the historic district. That evening we celebrate Cinco de Mayo at the Mauch Chunk Opera House with a performance by Marko Marcinko’s Latin Jazz Quintet. Directly across the street, an opening at the Dakota Ridge Gallery will present the deeply moving photography of Madascar’s Pierrot Men. The event is open to the public. Sunday is a day for museums, art lectures, and art demonstrations. Stained glass artist Nic East will demonstrate how to make a stained glass window, then lead a tour through his casa d’art that features more than 30 stained glass doors and windows. On Sunday, Stone lithographer Ron Chupp demonstrates the fine art of printmaking in his West Broadway gallery on Sunday from a stone he will prepare on Saturday. It’s an excellent chance to see how prints were made before the modern printing press. ■ For more information, visit http://www.jimthorpeart.com for the details on Jim Thorpe’s newest festival. APRIL 2012

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The Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle FRONT MONEY By Robin Stears Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Golden Raspberry, e.g. 6 “__ Fideles” 12 “__ doctor, not a bricklayer!”: “Star Trek” line 15 “Frontline” airer 18 What Fuzzbusters detect 19 Some boas 21 It can be hard to refold 22 Cut off 23 Pride of a collection 25 Admire to excess 27 Pacific Surfliner operator 28 Authority figure 30 Thornfield Hall governess 31 Golfer’s slice, say 34 U.S. document publisher 35 Taken down a peg 37 Nexus One, for one 41 “Scrumptious!” 42 Judges on “Top Chef ” 43 Food spearer 44 Summoned 45 Bach work 47 Prefix for calling 49 401(k) relative 52 “Joyeux __!” 53 Pro __: for now 56 Sister of Clotho 57 The 5 in “10 ÷ 5,” e.g. 59 Loaded, in Logroño 60 2012 rival of Mitt and Rick 61 Like LAX, around the clock 62 Methuselah’s father 63 Chevy SUV 67 Isr. neighbor 69 Org. with quarantine authority 72 Kroner spenders 73 Horse play 74 DOJ employee 78 Charged things 80 One of the deadly sins 81 “Fear Street” series author 84 Less wasteful 88 “Well, __-di-dah!” 89 Green of Austin Powers movies 90 Giant legend 91 Stuffed, cylindrical dishes 93 Slathered on, as Brylcreem 96 “Categorical imperative” philosopher 97 Data 98 Accustomed 100 Killer in a classic “SNL” sketch series 102 Accountant’s creation 104 __ Square, adjacent to the Boston Marathon finish line 60

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105 106 107 108 111 116 118 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

Item in a lock 1987 Beatty flop “Real Dogs Eat Meat” brand Upbraid Whitman’s dooryard bloomers Colorful arc Line in many a British dairy ad Somme one Preschool group? Custard-filled desserts Divider of continents Conscription org. Hrs. in classifieds Minute Maid Park team Geeky types

DOWN 1 Instrument for Giuseppe’s glissandi 2 Not so hot 3 Mine entrance 4 Motorola flip phone introduced in 2004 5 Emulated Alice 6 37-Across download 7 Salon supply 8 Artwork in a clichéd come-on 9 Islamic sectarian 10 Large volume 11 Loafer’s lack 12 “There’s no step 3!” computer 13 “Why is a raven like a writingdesk?” inquirer 14 Kwik-E-Mart operator 15 1994 Sony release 16 Sacred Indian fig 17 Earns a citation? 20 Beat others to, as sale merchandise 24 Train for a fight, say 26 Slightest 29 Appian Way builders 32 They’re rarely seen on rainy days 33 “Such a lonely word,” to Billy Joel 36 Judge’s determination 37 Union Sq., e.g. 38 “See, señor!” 39 Work without __ 40 Back 46 Joey in a Milne book 48 Volcanic formations 49 2011 Colbie Caillat hit 50 Upholstery problem 51 Street sign abbr. 54 Brutus’s “Behold!” 55 Eponymous mineralogist 58 Forbes rival 59 Messenger molecule 62 Father of Henry II

63 Squeal 64 Cyan 65 Shoes with a basset hound logo 66 Tagged between bases 68 Hamelin critter 70 Word whose last two letters are an example of it 71 Noble’s crown 75 Madre’s hermano 76 Blowup cause 77 On the other hand 79 Some earth tones 81 Aircraft carrier pilot’s waiting area 82 Old Ford luxury car 83 1984 Cyndi Lauper hit 85 “We wear short shorts” brand 86 Tracy Turnblad’s mom in “Hairspray” 87 S&L offering 89 Hook’s right hand 92 Beethoven’s fifth? 94 DuPont acrylic 95 “Oh, my” 96 Region known for its wool 98 Ill-fated son of Daedalus 99 “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” family 101 Beethoven’s Third 102 Complain about 103 Neptune’s largest moon

109 110 112 113 114 115

Ladies on a lea “__ fair in ...” Valentine trim Maker of Aspire computers Sudan neighbor D.C. 100

117 Lingerie item 119 El Dorado treasure 120 __ Nautilus

Answer in next month’s issue.

Answer to March’s puzzle, LE PUZZLE

HARPER’S M

INDEX Facts compiled by the editors of Harper’s Magazine

Percentage of political ad spending during 2010 elections that would have been prohibited before Citizens United: 72 Percentage increase since 2009 in investment fraud targeting adults over 50: 100 Age at which a typical person’s financial decision-making ability peaks: 53.3 Amount in BP oil-spill recovery funds spent this winter on a prom for senior citizens in Panama City Beach, Fla.: $166,000 Number of its 1,875 streetlights the city of Highland Park, Mich., has stopped illuminating in the past year to cut costs: 1,387 Amount of Homeland Security funds spent in Michigan last year on Sno-Cone machines: $6,279 Cost of an IED-resistant “Tactical Protector Vehicle” purchased by the Fond du Lac, Wis., Sheriff ’s Department: $220,000 Estimated number of parking spaces per car in the United States: 3 Width, in feet, of the narrowest home in New York City: 9.5 Cost of a 50-square-foot storage unit in the basement of the One57 building on West 57th Street in Manhattan: $200,000 Median sale price of a single-family U.S. home sold last year: $166,200 Years by which the average life span of a homeless person is shorter than the overall average: 30 Number of U.S. home sales double-counted by the National Association of Realtors between 2007 and 2010: 2,970,000 Annual savings the U.S. Mint estimates will result from aborting its efforts to circulate $1 coins: $50,000,000 Factor by which the average white resident of the District of Columbia out-earns the average black resident: 3 Rank of D.C. among urban U.S. school districts with the widest achievement gap between black and white students: 1 Factor by which a black American is more likely than a white one to use Twitter: 2.4 Percentage of the world’s Christians who lived in sub-Saharan Africa in 1912: 1 Today: 24 Number of Predator drones patrolling the U.S. border with Mexico: 6 Minimum number of persons whose remains the U.S. Air Force dumped in a landfill between 2003 and 2008: 274 Number of U.S. servicepeople dismissed for pre-existing “personality disorders” between 2002 and 2007: 22,656 Amount that each dismissal saves the federal government in annual treatment costs: $13,890 Percentage increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States in 2010: 50 Estimated amount of money Hezbollah laundered through U.S. used-car dealers between 2007 and 2011: $329,552,000 Date on which Saudi Arabia last executed a woman for sorcery: 12/12/11 Number of contestants in an elephant beauty pageant held in Sauraha, Nepal, in December: 5 Percentage increase since 2001 in female participation in target shooting in the U.S.: 46.5 Percentage of Americans who have been arrested by the age of twenty-three: 30 Chances that a U.K. diaper-changing table carries trace amounts of cocaine, according to a 2011 Guardian Media study: 9 in 10 Estimated number of methamphetamine labs busted in Missouri in 2011: 2,000 Percentage of bypass-machine doctors who admitted to talking on cell phones during heart surgery in a 2010 survey: 55 Amount Miami’s Miller School of Medicine pays female “professional patients” for each student breast or pelvic exam: $40 Amount it pays males for each genital or rectal exam: $30 Chances that an employed American works in the service industry: 6 in 7 Rank of the Mafia among Italy’s largest lending institutions: 1 Rank of Goldman Sachs employees among the largest funding sources for Mitt Romney’s campaign: 1 For Obama’s 2008 campaign: 2 Percentage of Americans who believe that the population of the United States exceeds one billion: 28 Who believe that Mitt Romney’s first name is “Mittens”: 2

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Index Sources 1 Center for Responsive Politics (Washington); 2 North American Securities Administrators Association (Washington); 3 David Laibson, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.); 4-- Bay County Tourist Development Council (Panama City Beach, Fla.); 5 City of Highland Park Law Department (Mich.); 6 Region 6 Citizen Corps (Stanton, Mich.); 7 Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office (Fond du Lac, Wis.); 8 Mikhail Chester, Arizona State University (Tempe)/Harper’s research; 9 Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (N.Y.C.); 10 The Brandman Agency (N.Y.C.); 11 National Association of Realtors (Washington); 12 Crisis (London); 13 National Association of Realtors (Washington); 14 U.S. Department of the Treasury; 15 Brookings Institution (Washington); 16 National Center for Education Statistics (Washington); 17 Pew Internet & American Life Project (Washington); 18,19 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (Washington); 20 U.S. Department of Homeland Security; 21–22 U.S. Department of Defense; 23 Linda Bilmes, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.); 24 F.B.I. Criminal Justice Information Services Division (Clarksburg, W. Va.); 25 U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York (N.Y.C.); 26 Amnesty International USA (N.Y.C.); 27 Chitwan Elephant Festival (Sauraha, Nepal); 28 National Sporting Goods Association (Mount Prospect, Ill.); 29 University of North Carolina at Charlotte; 30 Real Radio U.K. (Manchester); 31 Missouri State Highway Patrol (Jefferson City); 32 SUNY Upstate Medical Center (Syracuse, N.Y.); 33,34 University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; 35 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 36 Sos Impresa (Rimini, Italy); 37,38 Center for Responsive Politics (Washington); 39,40 CBS News Polls (N.Y.C.). APRIL 2012

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the last word THE NEW BARNES FOUNDATION Art Education Center on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway has some beautiful features. The architectural firm of Todd White/Billie Tsein (TWBT) of New York chose Ramon Gold/Grey Gold stone for the exterior walls. The stone was quarried in the Negev Desert in southern Israel, and is beautiful to look at. Referred to as a mosaic of stone artwork, this creamy translucent fortress wall blends into the Parkway scenery so discreetly it’s easy to imagine missing the structure from a moving vehicle. The unobtrusive new Barnes is like the son of royal parents being told to dress down for his first day at a city charter school. The flaunting of peacock feathers occurs inside the fortress where the Museum becomes a mega space complete with café, meditation or transition rooms where visitors can sit while going from exhibit to exhibit, a glassedin-court and a reading room. The idea, of course, as The New Times so eloquently stated, is to “draw out the experience,” a design plan with superfluous space that has visitors walking and walking (to reach the 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, etc., so that by the time they arrive, “they’ll need a drink.” The Times asks: “Can a design convey an institution’s feelings of guilt?” That question, of course, refers to the overturning of the will of Albert C. Barnes that stipulated that the collection remain in Merion. Barnes, a social outlaw in the eyes of Philadelphia society, wanted his art kept out of the city, and why not? City art power brokers and critics at the time denigrated his collection as tasteless. Who can blame Barnes for codifying the collection’s permanence in a mansion filled with creaky floors and cluttered rooms? Fifty years from now, the legal drama (and sting) of the Barnes affair will have disappeared into the memory hole, and visitors to the Museum will read The Times’s assessment of the new building with some degree of puzzlement. The established fact of having the Barnes on the Parkway will become as normal as going to 30th Street station for a New York-bound train. “I can’t even imagine people opposing the Merion move!” I can hear people muttering. I WATCH A LOT of You Tube videos, but when a friend sent me one of a grandmotherly type smoothing out what looked to be a large piece of clear plastic wrap to dorky game show music, I knew something “per-

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THOM NICKELS

ThomNickels1@aol.com

verse” was up. Like a goal-inspired Martha Stewart, the smiling “grandmother” was precise in the way she folded over the plastic so that it came to resemble a hood. When she put a large adhesive tape along the border of the hood and inserted a nodule or a tube connector at the bottom of it, she flashed the camera an extra large smile. Then she held the finished product in front of her face and told viewers to imagine the plastic hood over her head, with the tube connector hooked up to a helium tank. Let me say for starters that we’re not talking about deep sea diving here. Our adorable grandmother was making a do-it-yourself suicide kit. As writer Derek Humphry states in his best selling book, Final Exit: “…[W]aiting 30 minutes to have the bag removed is not necessary—if anoxia (zero oxygen) is complete with a properly closed system and no leaks due to faulty tubing, the brain stem will have died in 15 minutes. The cause of death is severe brain damage, not suffocation….” The 79-year-old Mr. Humphry, who founded the Hemlock Society in 1980, says the hood system is a “legally, safe procedure.” The hood-helium system, in fact, has been responsible for hundreds of successful suicides. Furthermore, the procedure is absolutely painless. The user simply falls into a deep sleep in about two minutes. “Everybody has their own style of approaching death and the way of handling their own dying event. It’s called choice,” Mr. Humphry writes. Ideally, the “self-deliverance” kit is for the terminally ill who do not wish to spend months or years withstanding the painful and sometimes devastating effects of medical treatments that often do nothing but cause more pain and agony while prolonging the inevitable and making doctors and insurance companies rich. There can no doubt that for surviving loved ones a death by suicide generates more emotion than do so-called “natural” deaths. Ending one’s own life, regardless of your feelings about suicide, is a frightening act. Granted, it might be foolish or rash, since many of life’s problems have a way of disappearing over time, but what does one say to a terminally ill person who feels that he or she has no other way? “Life is meditated suicide,” Susan Sontag once wrote. If this is true, then the person who smokes, drinks or uses drugs against specific doctors’ orders is fashioning their

own homespun helium hood. Some religious people like to say that people who commit suicide go directly to hell, but no truly spiritual person would dare pretend to know the mind of God when it comes to this issue. While I generally loathe the idea of suicide, for one terrifying day back in 1994 when my mother lay dying of lung cancer, our family had to decide whether or not to follow a doctor’s advice—to give her a little more morphine so that she could pass quickly and painlessly, rather than endure more torturous days. As a family, we knew instantly what we had to do: We loved our mother, and to see her suffer was not acceptable. Luckily, we were spared that decision because very soon after the doctor’s proposition Mom died in her sleep. WHAT DOES IT MEAN to talk like a Philadelphian? Unfortunately, having a Philadelphia accent doesn’t carry the same cache as having a Boston, English or south-

ern accent. A Philadelphia accent is regarded as something to get rid of, like crossed eyes or nasal hair. The reasons for this are self-evident: a Philadelphia accent just doesn’t sound as nice as all those other accents. It lacks the charm of a Georgia drawl, and it doesn’t sound as sophisticated as the English accent, where the “unlearned” sound learned, and where even criminals can sound like they are members of Parliament. The Philly accent is hardcore, like the sound of breaking glass under the Frankford El. “Where youze going?” sounds like a line

out of a cartoon, and yet it is unadulterated Philadelphese. “Hey dude, I’m toad-a-lee broke of corders though I need to go to the lie-berry to get a book on IT-lee,” a Philadelphian might say. “Gee, then I gotta go to the Ack-ame cause my Mom’s got arthur-it-is and can’t go downashore.” Okay, so maybe they don’t speak mouthfuls like this on the Main Line or in Chestnut Hill. While a Main Line clip might not be as ritzy sounding as the upper-class Boston Brahmin accent with its pretentious British overtones, it has a stuffy quality nevertheless. Come to think of it, Philadelphese only affects folks in the inner city and seems to stop mysteriously at City Line Avenue as if the preponderance of single dwelling homes there, rather than city row houses, acts as a kind of linguistic transformer. Go to any school on the Main Line (Haverford College?) and you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone there who pronounces beautiful “beauty-full,” not to mention replacing the very ordinary sounding “mine and yours,” with the Philadelphese version: “Mayan and Urine.” The question is: Why do so many of us talk like this? Is it something in the wooder? Our great but ailing city is already too much maligned. Is it our fault that the Philadelphia accent is the only accent in the world (wrongly) associated with stupidity? It’s interesting to note that Philadelphians who become famous nationally go to great lengths to tone down their Philadelphese. Chris Matthews of MSNBC has small traces of Philadelphese, but I’ve never been able to detect the accent in Philadelphia-born Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money. The big stereotype, of course, is (bubble gum-mouth) Rocky Balboa, but Zack Smith, author of (the online) “Philadelphia Accent,” says that Rocky is representative of the New York working class dialect, not Philadelphia. For the most accurate Philadelphia accent in any movie, Smith says, go to Toni Collette’s performance in The Sixth Sense. One can try to rid oneself of a Philadelphese but it’s not easy. I have educated friends who say “youze” even though there’s no such word in the dictionary. Most people who have accents don’t even know they have accents. We are “infected” in ways we cannot imagine. All it takes is for one word to slip out, a stray “Yud” or even mention of a “pros-tee-tute,” and the dye is cast. At that point you’re likely to hear, “You’re from Philadelphia!” ■

calendar ART EXHIBITS THRU 4/8 Eric Fausnacht, Fowl Images.Opening reception 3/9, 6-9. Twenty-Two Gallery, 236 S. 22nd St., Phila. 215-772-1911. twenty-twogallery.com THRU 4/15 Eleanor Voorhees: New Paintings. The Quiet Life Gallery, 17 So. Main St., Lambertville, NJ. Wed.-Sun. 609397-0880. www.quietlifegallery.com THRU 4/15 Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad St., Philadelphia. 215972-7600. pafa.org/tanner

4/4-4/29 Strings + Things. Opening April 6, 5-9pm, Reception: April 8, 1-4pm. 3rd Street Gallery on 2nd Street, 58 N. 2nd Street, Philadelphia. 215625-0993. 3rdstreetgallery.com 4/13-5/6 William G. Middleton: Body Aesthetic. Reception 4/13, 6-9. Artist’s Talk 4/15, 1-3. Twenty-Two Gallery, 236 So. 22nd St., Phila. 215-7721911. twenty-twogallery.com. 4/14-5/12 Sculpture Annual 2012 at New Hope Arts. Featuring more than 30 artists. Opening reception & awards, Sat., April 14, 6-8pm. 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope, PA. 215-862-9606. newhopearts.org

Thru 4/21 Emergence & Structure. Lafayette College, Grossman Gallery, Williams Visual Arts Bldg., 243 No. 3rd St., Easton, PA 610-330-5361. http://galleries.lafayette.edu

4/21-8/10 Offering of the Angels. Treasures from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, PA. 215-340-9800. michenerartmuseum.org

THRU 4/22 Force of Nature. Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave., Phila. 215-247-0476. woodmereartmuseum.org

5/3-5/12 Robert Beck: Iconic Manhattan. National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park So., NYC. Receptions 5/3 & 5/5 - RSVP joychasan@aol.com.

THRU 4/22 Alternative Views, alternative process group show. Monochrome Winter and Moments de Curiosite continue in Upstairs Gallery II. Red Filter Gallery, 74 Bridge St., Lambertville. 347-244-9758. redfiltergallery.com. Th-Sun., 12-5. THRU 4/30 Corinne Lalin: Encaustics. SFA Gallery, 10 Bridge St., Suite 7, Frenchtown, NJ. 908-268-1700. www.sfagallery.com THRU 5/13 Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present. Allentown Art Museum, 31 N., 5th. St., Allentown, PA. 610-4324333 allentownartmuseum.org THRU 5/26 Hidden Realities: Mavis Smith. James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 So. Pine St., Doylestown, PA 215-3409800. michenerartmuseum.org 4/3-4/22 American Watercolor Society: 145th Annual International Exhibition. Salmagundi Club, 47 5th Ave., NYC. americanwatercolorsociety.org.

5/6-6/17 The Art of the Miniature. Invitational exhibition of fine art miniatures from around the world. The Snow Goose Gallery, 470 Main St., Historic Bethlehem, PA. 610-9749099. thesnowgoosegallery.com.

THEATER 4/13-15 Mr. Dan Rice’s Traveling Show. Touchstone Theatre, 321 E. Fourth St., Bethlehem, PA. 610-867-1689. www.touchstone.org 4/25-5/6 Anything Goes. Act 1 Performing Arts, DeSales University, The Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, PA. 610-282-3192. desales.edu/act1 4/26- 4/29 Three Sisters, by Chekhov. Muhlenberg College Studio Theatre, Trexler Pavillion for Theatre & Dance, 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA. 484-6643333. muhlenberg.edu/dance 5/1-5/3 Beauty and the Beast. State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton, PA. 610-252-3132. www.statetheatre.org

5/8 & 5/9 Shen Yun, classical Chinese dance company. Presented by The Greater Philadelphia Falun Dafa Association. Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., Philadelphia. 215-893-1999. kimmelcenter.org ShenYun2012.com DINNER & MUSIC Saturday nights: Sette Luna Restaurant, 219 Ferry St., Easton, PA. 610253-8888. setteluna.com

CONCERTS Some organizations perform in various locations. If no address is listed, check the website for location of performance. 4/13 Claremont Trio, 8:00pm. Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem, Faith United Church, 5992 Route 378, Center Valley, PA. lvartsboxoffice.org. cmsob.org 4/15, 16 Sibelius, “Valse Triste,” Schumann, “Cello Concerto,” Beethoven, “Symphony No. 7.” Sara Sant’Ambrogio, cello. Dirk Brossé, conductor. Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center, Broad St., Phila. 215-545-1739. chamberorchestra.org. 4/17 Sibelius, “Valse Triste,” Schumann, “Cello Concerto,” Beethoven, “Symphony No. 7.” Sara Sant’Ambrogio, cello. Dirk Brossé, conductor. Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Lew Klein Hall, Temple Performing Arts Center. 215-545-1739. chamberorchestra.org.

5/13 Wister Quartet. Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem, Foy Concert Hall, Moravian College, W. Church & Main Streets, Historic Bethlehem, PA. lvartsboxoffice.org or cmsob.org 5/19 Broadway Revue. Symphony Hall, 23 N. 6th St., Allentown, PA. 610434-7811. LVArtsBoxOffice.org PASinfonia.org ARTSQUEST CENTER AT STEELSTACKS (Musikfest Café) 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA 610-332-1300. artsquest.org 4/12: 4/13: 4/14:

4/20: 4/29:

5/3: 5/4: 5/9: 5/10:

5/12:

MAUCH CHUNK OPERA HOUSE One of America’s oldest vaudeville theaters, built in 1881. 14 West Broadway, Jim Thorpe, PA 570-325-0249. mauchchunkoperahouse.com

4/22 Organist Stephen Williams. Arts at St. John’s, St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 37 So. Fifth St., Allentown, PA. 610-435-1641. stjohnsallentown.org

4/14: 4/20: 4/20:

5/4, 5/6, 5/11, 5/12 The 105th Bethlehem Bach Festival. The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Bach Festival Orchestra, Greg Funfgeld, Artistic Dir. & Conductor. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. 888-743-3100, ext. 10 or 15

4/28: 4/29:

5/5 On-Stage Jazz Cabaret with Kevin Mahogany, 6pm dinner/7pm show. Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. 610-758-2787. zoellnerartscenter.org

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Civil Twilight Ryan Montbleau Band W/ Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds Comics Of The Daily Show: Rory Albanese & Al Madrigal An Acoustic Evening With Mary Chapin Carpenter & Shawn Colvin Kathleen Edwards Salsa Night With Hector Rosado Y Su Orchestra Steve Kimock With Bernie Worrell, Wally Ingram And Walter Trout & The Radicals RiverJazz Presented By Concannon Miller Preservation Hall Jazz Band RiverJazz Presented By Concannon Miller

4/21: 4/27:

5/4: 5/5:

5/12: 5/13: 5/19:

The Janis Experience The Funk Ark Mighty Mystic and the Strings of Thunder Band Charlie Hunter Duo Stop Making Sense with special guests The Great White Caps Wishbone Ash Pianist Thomas Pandolfi Plays Gershwin Childhood’s End - A Tribute to Pink Floyd Cinco de Mayo Celebration featuring the Marko Marchinko Latin Jazz Quintet Bennie and the Jets A Tribute to Elton John Pianist Giorgi Latsabidze MiZ: folk, rock, bluegrass

5/25:

Bill Kirchen and Too Much Fun EVENTS

THRU 5/1 Rock Through the Valley, a Collaboration of Art, Music, and Fashion, is a cooperative effort undertaken by the Allentown Art Museum, and local businesses to go hand-in-hand with the Museum’s “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955Present.” rockthroughthevalley.com 4/11 & 4/12 Christine Marx shares her process to beautiful still life painting at the Rich Timmons Studio & Gallery, 13pm. 3795 Route 202, Doylestown, PA. 267-247-5867. 3795gallery.com 4/27 & 4/28 Artist Talk: Portrait artist Thomas L. Miller at the Rich Timmons Studio & Gallery, opening reception, Fri., 79pm, and Sat. 11-4pm. 3795 Route 202, Doylestown, PA. 267-2475867. 3795gallery.com 4/28-5/20 SOTA Designer Showhouse & Gardens, farmhouse on Three Chimneys Farm. 610-432-4333, ext. 145. Thedesignguide.com/?p=1470 5/12 & 5/13 47th Annual Fine Art & Craft Show. Historic Main Street, Bethlehem, PA. bfac-lv.org 5/19 Arts Alive! Arts & crafts for sale, kid’s activities. East & West Broad Streets, Quakertown, PA. 215-5292273. quakertownalive.com, 5/19 7th Annual Young Playwrights’ Festival. Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. 610-867-1689. touchstone.org 5/19 27th Annual Baum School Art Auction. 510 W. Linden St., Allentown, PA. Auction preview night, May 17th, 6-8pm. 610-433-0032. baumschool.org 5/24-5/28 Mayfair Festival of the Arts, Art Without Limits. Enjoy dancers, storytellers, art exhibits, local & national musical acts, hands-on craft demonstrations. Cedar Beach Park, Allentown, PA. MayfairFestival.org

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