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inside. editor’s note...4 music...7 theatre and dance...21 poetry...23 events calendar...24 art...26 comedy...33
food and drink...35 film...39 books...40 travel...41 fun stuff...43 star stuff...46 business directory...47
“We used to think we were making the world safe for Nabakov and Henry Miller and stuff that was censored. James Joyce. What we got was Larry Flynt.” -Page 27
CAROUSEL triple cities
P.O. Box 2947 Binghamton, NY 13902 (607) 422-2043 carouselrag.com PUBLISHER/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Christopher Bodnarczuk MANAGING EDITOR Heather Merlis ASSISTANT EDITOR Ronnie Vuolo STAFF WRITERS Doctor B, Krissy Howard, Ilana Lipowicz, Felicia Waynesboro, Phil Westcott, Nick Wilsey CONTRIBUTORS Chris Arp, Charles Berman, Natassia Enright, Emily Jablon, Brian Lovesky, Paul O’Heron, Michael Rulli
CALENDAR GURU Ty Whitbeck LAYOUT/DESIGN Christopher Bodnarczuk PHOTOGRAPHY Stephen Schweitzer, Ty Whitbeck ADVERTISING SALES Christopher Bodnarczuk, Brian Vollmer DISTRIBUTION: Joseph Alston FOR ADVERTISING: advertising@carouselrag.com FOR CONTENT SUBMISSIONS: hmerlis@carouselrag.com (by 10th of prior month) FOR CALENDAR SUBMISSIONS: calendar@carouselrag.com (by 15th of prior month) FOR LETTERS, COMPLAINTS, DEATH THREATS, GLITTER BOMBS, AND OTHER INQUIRIES: editor@carouselrag.com
Triple Cities Carousel is published monthly, 11 times a year (Dec/Jan edition is a double issue). Copyright © 2016 by Triple Cities Carousel. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written consent from the publisher. One copy of Triple Cities Carousel is free each month for regional residents and visitors. Anyone caught removing papers in bulk will be prosecuted on theft charges to the fullest extent of the law. Yearly subscription: $25. Back issues: $3. Queries and submissions should include a self addressed stamped envelope. Advertisers own/control all intellectual property rights to submitted advertisements and agree to hold Triple Cities Carousel, its agents, and assignees harmless from all liabilities, claims, losses or damage of any kind arising out of the publication of any ad submitted on behalf of the advertiser.
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editor’s note.
M
Y GRANDFATHER WAS AN old school newspaperman. Like, a real newspaperman, back when that meant a press badge in your fedora and a fifty pound typewriter that folded right into your three hundred pound desk. We tried moving that desk out of the basement once. It didn’t work. Poor bastard got smashed to death with a twenty pound sledge. Oh, that desk. Oh, that basement. Victor Timoner got his start with the Brooklyn Eagle, covering the Harbor Lights beat. Then came the Associated Press, followed by various PR positions at Volkswagon, CBS, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and Ed Koch’s mayoral office. Old school New York City. The Greatest Generation. He met a young teacher named Harriet Sheryl Ring on Turtle Island, in the middle of Lake George. He was camped on one end of the island with some Army pals, and she was camped on the other end with some friends from college. Love at first sight. One moonlit night, rowing back from town, one of them accidentally threw the flashlight into the lake. A few months later, they were engaged. They made a home for themselves in Queens. Even tried to keep it kosher for a few years, god bless ‘em. Had a son, Kenneth, had a daughter (who I call ‘Mom’). The city was no place to raise a family, so they bought a house in Rockland County, part of the first wave of suburban sprawl. In the basement, my grandfather sectioned off a study, the centerpiece of which was that three hundred pound desk. I suspect he put it there before he built the wall. By the time I came around, that study had accrued close to forty years of stuff: stacks of books, thousands of travel pamphlets, a printing press, a desktop bust of George Washington, several mouse infested rugs, my grandfather’s Army issue compass, a half century of tax returns, two wooden ships, et cetera, et cetera. A lifetime of memories, stacked waist deep. The door barely opened, on account of all the stuff behind it. My grandfather had long since moved his study to the center of the living room, which contained a few stacks of stuff itself, much to the chagrin of my dear grandmother. As a kid, I made it my mission to dig through the forgotten basement study and all its stuff. It was a way of bonding with my grandfather: every treasure I’d find, I’d bring it upstairs to him and hear the story behind it. I was fascinated by the tales of his time in Italy during the War. The newspaper stuff, not so much. I was an antsy kid. I wanted to hear about things that went ‘ka-boom,’ not things that went, uhh, whatever sound a Royal typewriter makes. I did my best to feign interest in the newspaper stuff, because I knew it made him happy to talk about it, but I probably dozed off more than him. Today, there’s nothing I want to hear more than those newspaper stories. My grandfather died in 2003, and with him died so many stories I never wanted to hear, and so many more that I never got to hear. I joined my high school newspaper staff the following year, and somehow I became the Opinion Editor pretty soon after that. We had a staff of five. Four of us were editors (screw you, Timothy!). Mostly I just ranted about mall curfews and tried to slip a bunch of sexual innuendo and thinly veiled drug references past the final editorial eye of the Dean. She caught most of them. A few years before, the school had commissioned a former student to create artwork for the yearbook. It printed before they noticed all the pot leaves and mushrooms and lines of cocaine and penises in the background of the Homecoming Parade illustration. After that, they started watching for stuff like that. I almost took them to court when they wouldn’t let me print a gonzo story about Janet Jackson’s nipple slip. Tinker v. Des Moines, suckas! It wasn’t a very good article. I’m not sure how my grandfather would’ve felt about the articles I printed in my high school newspaper. I’m pretty sure he would’ve disapproved of the whole Janet-Jackson’s-nipple-as-an-analogy-for-mankind’s-implosion thing. He was an old school newspaperman. I’m not sure how he would’ve felt about the papers I wrote for after that. I’m not sure how he would’ve felt about Carousel. Half the time, I’m still ranting about mall curfews and slipping in thinly veiled sex and drug references. Who says you can’t go home again? Not too long ago, I got an email from some woman in Florida. My grandfather had written an article about her grandfather in the April 23, 1950 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle. It appeared right above an ad for a $17.95 Beauty Baring Chiffon Dress and Jacket Costume, Underscored with Rayon Taffeta (only at Russeks). It was a short human interest piece- her grandfather had been crippled as a child by appendicitis but then went on to find some acclaim as a circus acrobat. That was the whole article. Apparently, her grandfather held on to the press clipping his whole life. Alvin Schwartz and his whole family knew my grandfather’s name. According to his granddaughter, my grandfather had given their family a great gift with his article about the appendicitis acrobat. She found my name in an online listing of my grandfather’s obituary, and reached out just to tell me how much he had meant to their family. Sixty-five years later. Crazy thing, those internets. It was 2am when I got that email, but I got in the car and drove the three hours down the Quickway to the Sons of Jacob Cemetery. Found my grandparents’ stone. Told my grandfather about ol’ Alvin Schwartz. Told him about Carousel. All those years, he didn’t ever know if I was listening to his stories about newspapers. That night, it was my turn. I don’t know if he was listening, but I sat there and talked about newspapers until the sun came up. I’ve never written about an acrobat with appendicitis, though I very much would like to. -Christopher Mark F. Bodnarczuk
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Have you danced with ransom yet? April Music Schedule: 4/1 The Slim Kings, Matt Burt & the Casual Aquaintances 4/2 Next to Kin, Ruddy Well Band, Max Garcia Conover 4/6 Open Mic Night 4/7 Blackhat
4/8 Binger, Iron Horse
4/9 Black Mountain Symphony, Serene Green 4/13 Brian Tyneway
4/14 Humble Beginnings Band
4/15 Hop City Hellcats, The Smokin’ Crows
4/16 Big Mean Sound Machine, Sonic Lovebot 4/20 Open Mic Night
4/21 Ransom Jazz Collective
4/22 Miller & the Other Sinners, John Scarpulla Band 4/23 Stolen Rhodes, Blishak 4/28 Triple Down
4/29 Brummy Brothers, Jakobs Ferry Stragglers
4/30 East Coast Bigfoot, Tim Ruffo, Doug & Eamonn Hubert
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music.
Kansas. Photo by Marti Griffin.
The winds blow rock legends Kansas into Magic City An interview with multi-instrumentalist David Ragsdale by Ronnie Vuolo ‘Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind Dust in the wind Everything is dust in the wind.’
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TARS ARE FORMED from dust and pockets of gas. The attraction of the various parts to each other causes them to contract and become the coherent unit that is, ultimately, a star. And so it was with Kansas. From cloudy beginnings, the elements circled and shifted until the legendary band burst forth into light. Throughout the ‘70s, Kerry Livgren (keyboards/vocals), Steve Walsh (keyboards/vocals), Robby Steinhardt (violin/vocals), Richard Williams (guitar), Dave Hope (bass), and Phil Ehart (drums) crafted well-developed lyrics and complex instrumentals into songs that soared above the rafters of the stadiums and arenas they were soon filling. The light of that star grew to blinding proportions with the release of their 4th album, Leftoverture, with its hit single “Carry On Wayward Son,” followed by Point Of Know Return, containing “Dust in the Wind.” In the
circle of life, dust returns to dust. In this case, it turned to gold, million selling gold. In a 2014 interview with guitarworld.com, songwriter Kerry Livgren explained that he wrote the song after reading a book of Native American poetry that contained the line, “all we are is dust in the wind.” At his wife’s suggestion, he set the lyrics to the tune of one of his fingerpicking exercises. Slow, mellow, and very different from their other songs, it became one of their biggest hits and one of the most well-known songs in rock and roll history. In the decades to follow, Kansas continued to grow and evolve. Like all living things, stars have a life cycle and they go through changes. Kansas also grew and changed. Members came and went and often came again. Their music changed as they passed through different stages of life and as technology developed. But, as founding member Phil Ehert has oft said, ‘Kansas is about the music, not the individual members.’ And the music has never stopped. The latest incarnation of Kansas came in 2014 when lead vocalist/keyboardist Steve Walsh retired after 41 years with the band.
Change, while often accompanied by a sense of loss, also brings rebirth and revitalization. Ronnie Platt (former lead singer/keyboardist of Shooting Star and ARRA) was signed to replace Walsh, and David Manion (keyboard/ vocals) stepped in to fill the long empty second keyboard spot- a signature element of the original Kansas sound that had been missing for many years. They joined Phil Ehart (drums), Richard Williams (guitar), Billy Greer (bass/vocals), and David Ragsdale (violin/guitar/vocals).
since 2000. I’d like to talk a bit about the new album. There’s a lot of things about the new album that I’m not gonna be able to talk about.
The momentum of change continued in 2015, when the band signed a new recording contract with InsideOut Music and began the process of putting together their 15th studio album- the first since the 2000 release of Somewhere To Elsewhere. Long awaited by fans, its contents are shrouded in secret.
Since the 1st album was released in 1974, there have been many life changes and changes in personnel. You can track a lot of those changes through the differences in the albums over the years. The six albums released in the 70s were much different, in sound and tone, than later releases. And different members have come and gone who were more involved in the songwriting. Last May, Rich Williams did an interview with ultimateclassicrock.com, where he stated that on this album, it was anticipated that all the members would likely be involved in the song-
In my recent interview with David Ragsdale, I quickly learned just how secretive those details are: The big news the past couple of years has been Steve Walsh’s retirement, Ronnie Platt coming on board to replace him, David Manion joining, and the upcoming, studio album- the first
Can you able to tell me if a release date has been set? If there is, I don’t know it. I know that we’re shooting for the fall. Can you tell me the name of the album? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can answer that question, which means I probably shouldn’t.
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 8)
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KANSAS (CONT’D FROM PAGE 7) writing. He also said that the door was always open if Kerry Livgren wanted to become involved. Ultimately, who did give input for the songs on the new album? Well, you know, that’s another one I don’t know if I can answer, because there is an outside source. Everything that Richard told [them] is certainly true. The band did all contribute to the writing. As to outside sources, I don’t know if I’m allowed to… We’re shooting for a release and a big surprise, and if you blow the surprise, then you blew it. You have an extensive background with classical music as well as rock, not just playing, but also musical arrangement. Did you become very involved in the arrangement of the new songs? We all did. Everyone in the band is very clever, and arranging really comes down to taking something that already exists and presenting it in a slightly different fashion. And everyone in the band is very good at that. So we all did that. Phil (Ehert) has spoken a lot over the years, in different interviews, about how the band is an evolving thing. As people come and go, and people’s lives change, the music changes. It’s not a static thing. It’s not the same sound as 1974. There are always going to be die-hard early-Kansas fans that want a renewal of that early sound. They can hear a lot of it at live concerts, but as far as this new album goes, what can your fans expect? They will be pleased. I can say that. You can never-- I mean, that’s like saying you want to be a teenager again when, you know, you’re 45 or 50 years old. And you just can’t. That was done at a different time, when the industry was different. It was done when equipment was at a different stage of its development. They didn’t have all the cool keyboard-digital stuff, you know? It was just guitars and B3s and amps and microphones. So, things have changed. You can’t go back to the ‘70s. The spirit of composing- borrowing from classical and jazz influences and making the music very integral in the song and, you know, steering away from the verse/chorus/ verse/ chorus/bridge/chorus/out– that formula is barely represented on this record. It’s very adventurous- musically adventurous. It’s not ‘70s Kansas. It will never be 70s Kansas again, because Robby’s gone, Kerry’s gone, you know, I mean Dave’s gone, and it just isn’t. And it’s not the ‘70s anymore. But, the musical adventure is represented in a major fashion. Would you say there is a theme to the album as a whole? I don’t think so. There might be, but if there is, it hasn’t been explained to me. I know that the album is very cohesive. It doesn’t sound like a bunch of different songs that kind of got hammered into a, you know, a production. They’re very cohesive. It’s been over 15 years since Kansas went into the recording studio to do a new studio album- and it’s the first time with Ronnie Platt and David Manion. Can you talk a bit about how the recording process went? It went sur-
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prisingly smoothly. It was hectic. Phil really drove us very hard… because he wanted to make sure it got done. We didn’t have a whole lot of time to do it. We went down to Destin, Florida, for a week and hammered everything into… you know, we had all these ideas, and we had to fashion them into songs. And we did much of that down in Florida. And Phil just wanted to get us out of town so we didn’t have any distractions. In a week we did an amazing amount of work toward molding these ideas into cohesive songs and then, you know, just go home and do your homework. And then go into the studio. And it was produced very efficiently and very effectively. There was almost a militaristic precision, if that makes sense, to the production of it. And it all went very smoothly. It all went very logically. Every song was recorded exactly the same way: drums first, bass, guitar- there was a methodology to the production of each song, and as a result of that, it sounds like it was all done at the same time. When I first listened to concert footage, after Steve Walsh left and Ronnie took over, and David (Manion) was there, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s no mean feat for anyone to come in and take over as lead singer in a long established band with a very definable sound. I have to say I was more than pleased with what I heard. Without (his) becoming a clone, the Kansas sound and dynamic is there. How hard was it to adapt and get things running with two new people on board? Because they knew what they were doing, and because Ronnie is such an outstanding vocalist… I think we rehearsed for two weeks. Phil had a basic set-list; I mean it was an extensive set-list because we knew some of it wouldn’t make it into the set. So it was a lot like being in a cover band- covering your own part. And we went in and we rehearsed and everyone knew what they were doing. No one slacked off and the set became hammered and we just ran that several times and everyone knew what they were doing and it was great. Speaking of smoothness of coming on board and changes- you had to go through that when you stepped in, in ‘91. Part of the dynamism and the soaring sound of Kansas had always had come from Robby’s violin. When he left [in 1985] there was no violinist, which, in my opinion, left a tremendous gaping hole until you came on board 6 years later and filled it. How was it, stepping in and rebuilding that missing part? Well…. I chased them around for years. I started chasing Kansas around back in, let me think, back in ‘86, something like that. And they didn’t hire me till ‘91. But Steve Morse was a part of the band and they had a different theme… they were doing violin-less Kansas and featuring the virtuosity- the extreme virtuosity- of Steve Morse. And then, I’m not sure what path led to them deciding to go back. I had developed kind of a relationship with Phil where he gave me his phone number when I first started chasing them around. I put together a little demo tape that he was impressed with. And if I went into the studio and did anything that was any good at all, I’d send it to him. And I’d call him every six months or so, you know, just to kind of ring that bell. And he called me
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SPECIAL EVENTS:
4/2 pasty white and doublewide 4/9 gals at cals 4/16 pals at cals If we’re open, the kitchen’s open! Burgers, Spiedies, Phillies, Reubens, Wings, Fries, Etc. (At the corner of Main and Beethoven)
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in ‘91 and said that: Kerry’s written a couple of new songs and we’re gonna go in the studio and record them, and we wondered if you wanted to… It’s like, “Well of course.” And I was in LA at the time and he flew me to Atlanta and we went up to Kerry’s and recorded these two songs. And then about, I don’t know, two months later, Phil got an offer- I guess from an agency to do a, a sort of a twomonths greatest hits run, that sort of thing. And I went out on that and it never ended. I think it was supposed to be six weeks, two months, something like that. And it went over very well. And I think that the booking agents sort of went, “Wow, lets get a piece of this.” And it just continued. And this is still a part of the same tour- it just never stopped. So your persistence paid off. Yes it did.
OLD UNION
HOTEL 246 CLINTON ST. BINGHAMTON 607-217-5935 open daILY
There was a period when Robby came back and you left, then he left and you came back. I got burned out. The four years prior to joining Kansas I had been with Louise Mandrell up in Nashville. And that was four years on a tour bus. And then I joined Kansas and that was five more years on a tour bus. And I just had to get off the bus. I ended up out in Vegas, doing some things out in Vegas for however long. But I did all sorts of stuff actually: I released a solo album and tried my hand at that and a couple other things, and finally ended up out in Vegas. And when Robby left the band in… ‘05 or ‘06, whenever it was, the band was in Vegas. Phil gave me a call and we just, you know, nothing was really discussed- we just had a conversation… I said hi to everyone in the band. I had a gig so I couldn’t make the show. And then about, maybe two weeks later, Phil called and said, “Listen, Robby decided to retire and what would you think about coming back? And I was, you know, “Okay.” And that’s how that came about. And then you got back on the bus. No, that was one thing that Phil pointed out. He said, “You know we fly everywhere now, there aren’t any buses.” The bus, that’s a hell of a life. It’s kind of cool at first, you know, but you get tired of sleeping in motion. Years of it will wear you down. It really will take a lot out of you.
do you see, and what would you like to see, in the future for Kansas? Pretty much what’s happening- a lot of which I can’t talk about. But I can say with a high degree of confidence that we ain’t done yet. Along that same line, there have been a lot of bands over the years that have come and gone, and others, fortunately, have lasted in spite of adversity and change. To what do you attribute Kansas’ longevity? The strength of the songwriting and the presentation. There are wonderful songs, they’re just incredibly wonderful songs, musically and lyrically. And the band delivers those compositions in a very powerful fashion. And if you’ve got that, you don’t need much else. If you could choose the five Kansas songs you most enjoy playing, what would they be? Oh gosh, probably the standards, and there’s probably a couple of them that I haven’t played yet that I really like. But I’ll go with the ones that I’ve played: “Song for America” is great; “The Wall” is great; we were doing “Magnum Opus” for a while and that’s a lot of fun to play; “Journey From Mariabronn” was a hoot; “Closet Chronicles,” which we’re doing now, is a lot of fun to play. Those were the first ones that popped in my head, so that’s gotta say something. You make it sound like it’s a lot of fun to play with this crew. It’s kind of amazing because there are personality dynamics in every band, and there’s a lot of bands that aren’t blessed with positive dynamics across the board. But we all like each other a lot. That makes it easy. And there are times, you know: I get run down, someone gets sick, or there’s a distraction at home- everyone has problems. But the rapport in the band is strong enough to where that is either-- I don’t want to say overlooked-- at the very least it’s understood. And everyone will allow that, whatever it is, to pass. Because that happens, there’s a bunch of stuff going on all the time. Your home is whatever Hilton Garden Inn you’re staying in, so there are moments. But we really do like each other a lot. uuu
Are you all based in Atlanta now? For the most part: Ronnie still lives in Chicago, Billy lives in Savannah, but other than that I think we’re all here. And Richard lives about 200 feet from me, so we ride to the airport together. As far as instrumentals, in addition to the violin, a big part of the Kansas sound was having two keyboardists. Yet there were years that the band did without the second. Musically, what’s your feeling on that? A lot of those songs have two keyboard parts. I mean, they’re intricate and developed and when you have to sacrifice one at the expense of another and pick and choose… it’s cool to have all that stuff. It’s big and it’s fun. It’s a rush to play it, it really is. If you include its pre-Kansas, Kansas history, the band has been around in one form or another since 1969 and has gone through many different incarnations. For you personally, what
To date, Kansas has produced: eight gold albums, three sextuple-platinum albums, one platinum live album, and a million-selling gold single. The dictionary defines “classic” as: “serving as a standard of excellence.” Kansas meets that standard. So popular are their hits, that 27 years after it first appeared, “Carry On Wayward Son” was the #1 most played track on classic rock radio. With a new line-up, and a new album coming, change is in the air. Stay tuned for the next chapter in their long history. The Kansas star lights the stage at Magic City Music Hall on April 2nd. Doors at 7pm; show at 8pm. Magic City is located at 1240 Upper Front Street in the Northgate Plaza, in Binghamton. Tickets can be purchased online at themagiccitymusichall.com or at the Box Office (Tues-Sat, 11am-6pm, 11am on show dates). General admission tickets are $35 advance, $40 day of show (under 16 must be accompanied by a guardian).
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Provided.
A fond farewell to the maestro Jose-Luis Novo, Beethoven’s Ninth, and the continuance of culture by Phil Westcott
M
AESTRO JOSE-LUIS NOVO, musical director of the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra, is saying goodbye on April 16th after thirteen years in Binghamton. He will conduct one of “the best - not only symphonic works, not only choral works - but works of art of all time”: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Thirteen years ago, Novo came to Binghamton, looking for his first full music directorship in the United States. He came not knowing what to expect, and learned to love a culture and town across the ocean. After a short time, Binghamton fell in love: with his musical programming, with his boundless enthusiasm for classical music, and his drive to push us all a little bit further. He asked us to question the classical program; he worked with dozens of artists, not all musicians. As he said when I interviewed him about his tenure at the Philharmonic, “We’ve worked with actors, we’ve worked with dancers, we’ve worked with singers, we’ve worked with choirs, we’ve worked with museums; we’ve worked with so many different people connected to arts and culture in the area. That, to me, is one thing as a music director that is a real pleasure, because you get to know the community.” I recall a time in my youth in Binghamton,
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where he conducted and spoke to my high school band. I had never known such enthusiasm and joy for music; in one lesson, he taught me the beauty of the shared responsibility of the ensemble. I watched as he drew more out of me and my high school classmates than we thought possible. When I remind him of this experience, he laughs and says ‘thank you,’ but this is what he does to you. As a musical director, Novo conducts with an eloquence and passion that draws the best out of both ensemble and audience. His interests lie not only in conducting, though. He sees the job of musical director as much more than that, and much more than just programming a concert. “The conductor has to be, really, the musical ambassador for the city, because you are bringing the best symphonic music available to the community. So you have to monitor what you bring, and I’m talking not only about the selection of repertoire, but also the guest artists you invite to solo with the orchestra, and combinations, and the types of events you organize around the content and the season.” He continues, “You really have a lot of say into shaping the city artistically from a symphonic point of view. It’s a great responsibility, to have the capacity to shape the tastes and the knowledge of the symphonic repertoire of the community. We are lucky in Binghamton, that we have so many artistic insti-
tutions: we have an opera company, many great choirs, we have a great university with a very competent music department, we have a public radio station and TV station, and local papers; we have a whole network of cultural organizations, that help you define programs that can branch out to involve many of the constituencies of the community. I find that very interesting, and that’s what I’ve tried to do over the years.”
hamton for having contributed to making people have a better life and understanding music in a way that brings people together, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony does that very well.” Expressing his gratitude towards Binghamton, here are Maestro Novo’s parting words:
Then, we get to the concert itself, its impending finality expressed through the last symphony of The Maestro. Beethoven’s Ninth is immediately recognizable. It is his most often quoted symphony, and one of the most frequently played. It is also incredibly ambitious, and its final movement, a musical setting of Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” seeks to musically proclaim the brotherhood of all mankind. It is gorgeous, sentimental, groundbreaking, and virtuosic. It is one of those rare pieces of music that transcends genre, and defies the limits of beauty.
“The thing I want to say, more than anything else, is thank you for being such a supportive community; for trusting me with musical choices, and for having offered so much support and encouragement. I felt from the first day I started working for the Binghamton Philharmonic that the community wanted me to succeed. I felt very welcome, very supported, and it has been a complete joy of a ride for thirteen years. I’m obviously very sad to leave, but I leave with the peace of mind that I have made great friendships, that we have performed great concerts, and that those will remain in the memories of people. So for all of that, thank you.”
When asked for the reason for choosing this piece, Novo gave me two. The first was, “If you’re going to go, you should go with a bang, as they say.” The second reflected his larger musical vision: “So the meaningfulness of [Beethoven’s Ninth] and the type of feeling that brings everyone together, in the sense of the best of humankind, is exactly what I am after. I hope that I am remembered in Bing-
Maestro Jose-Luis Novo will conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Saturday, April 16th at the Binghamton Forum, 236 Washington St, Binghamton, NY. Tickets and more information available online at broomearenaforum.com. On behalf of all of us at the Triple Cities Carousel, thank you Maestro, and best of luck as you continue on with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra.
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it. Carter was the first jazz musician given that honor, and she later played it again to record her album Paganini: After a Dream, featuring classical works. In 2006 she won the MacArthur Fellows award, known as “the genius grant.” That year was also graced with I’ll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey, an album devoted to the musical loves of her mother, followed in 2010 by Reverse Thread, which explored and reinterpreted African sounds. The ongoing theme is heritage, legacy, and memory. The Appalachians are filled with Scottish, African, Irish, and Native American descendants, and all those fragments of influence can be found in this concert. “When I was growing up in the early 6os, so many peoplewhen they would move up north- would take these courses to try to get rid of that Southern accent. You didn’t want people to know you were from the South.” Currently a New Jersey resident, Carter says, “Now I’m very proud of my Southern roots and what all that had to offer. It was beautiful to be able to look back and embrace all of that.” Some of the music represents long ago summer visits to her grandmother’s house in Alabama, “to the home where my father and his siblings grew up. I play some of these field recordings during the concert; sometimes I’ll have people come up to me afterward and say things like, ‘Oh my gosh, when you talked about being bathed in a tin pail, all of a sudden I remembered…this happening…or that song you played.’ We see how much we have in common.”
Provided.
Jazz great Regina Carter
Serving up some southern comfort this month at BU’s Anderson Center by Felicia Waynesboro
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OST OF THE MUSIC performed in jazz violinist Regina Carter’s concert tour is from her 2014 album, Southern Comfort, and has a distinctly American-South sound for which “comfort” is neither an arbitrary nor a clichéd word. The listener can feel the tender, the rough, and the sometimes-bittersweet legacies behind the tunes, while being pulled into the uplift of modern reflections and contemporary rhythms. But the concert is quite different from listening to something recorded. “You’re there,” says Regina, “and we’re sharing the experience.” The Detroit native is known for her originality and is widely considered to be the foremost jazz violinist of her generation. She spent about 2 years digging into the musical culture
behind her Southern roots, particularly as it relates to the life of her grandfather, a coal miner born in Georgia in 1893 who passed away before she was born. Sometimes alternating with research assistants, Carter made a number of trips to the Library of Congress and spent a lot of time there collecting material relating to the musical history of the South: the work songs, children’s songs, prison songs, the sounds of gospel, and so on. Searching through famed collections of folklorists such as John Works III and the Alabama Folklife Association, she listened to a lot of aged field recordings, read a lot of articles and books, and talked to a lot of people. Then came the time of, “trying to cut down the information I had and make a story which really centers around my grandfather.” Early in her career, Ms. Carter accompanied such performers as Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blige, and Billy Joel, releasing her first, eponymous, solo CD in 1995. She was classically trained in youth in the famous Suzuki Meth-
od in which, “You learn the exact same way you learn to speak when you’re growing up as a child,” by absorbing and reproducing the speech sounds you hear around you. She says it’s no different when learning music. “Music is a language,” and Suzuki is, “a folk-way of learning, if you will. It is organic.” Which may, in part, account for her spontaneity. Later studies took her to master classes under Itzhak Perlman and Yehudi Menuhin, and to institutions like the New England Conservatory of Music. She reports that she is the only one from her Suzuki class who has gone, “the jazz route.” Carter’s classical training and virtuosity led to her being invited to perform on a very special instrument as a symbolic humanitarian gesture after the September 11th attacks: Il Cannone Guarnerius is the name given to a violin made in the mid-1700s that was owned- and apparently adored- by Niccolo Paganini. Outstanding violinists are ceremoniously granted the privilege of playing
“There’s a very special place I go to when I play, and when I’m sharing music with other people and with audiences. I feel like we meet each other on another plain,” she says, ever aware that talent is a conductive power. “Witnessing people that have such amazing gifts, and seeing them do things to themselves and losing that gift, is always a reminder to me that it’s not ours- and it can be taken.” Regina Carter is the only woman performing on this tour. “Now how did this happen?” she laughs. Her husband and long-time work colleague, drummer Alvester Garnett, had to take off to work on the Broadway hit Shuffle Along and is replaced on drums by Satoshi Takeishi. Other musicians in the closely-knit ensemble are: Chris Lightcap on bass, Will Holshouser on accordion, and Marvin Sewell on guitar. The performances do include works other than Southern Comfort, and Carter’s programming can be as improvisational as her musical style. “Sometimes I come up with a set list and we get on stage and depending on the vibe of the audience or how I’m feeling or- many factors- I’ll make a change right on the spot.” To the Anderson Center audience, Regina says, “Come to have a live music experience. Be open to having a fun time because we’re going to be having fun onstage.” Regina Carter performs at Binghamton University’s Osterhout Concert Theater, located within the Anderson Center, at 4pm on Sunday, April 17th. General public $30/ BU Faculty, Staff, Alumni, and Seniors, $25/ Students and Children, $15. For more information, contact the box office at 777-2787, or visit andersoncenter.showare.com.
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preciate the music, they really respond to the music. It’s not like you’re stuck somewhere where only half the people can hear you.” Word about that vibe has gotten out, too. McGirk’s is a regular stop for both regional touring musicians and international talent. The names of many of these bands adorn a brightly decorated ‘Wall of Fame’ adjacent to the stage. Last September, Dirt Farm’s Rob Stachyra approached Ward about hosting a performance series in the style of long-running television series “Austin City Limits.” Within two days there was a big banner behind the stage, and Binghamton City Limits was born. Every Sunday afternoon, Ward picks a different musician to play host, and that musician invites along whichever special guests they choose. The goal is live collaborative performances in an intimate location. Immediate and unrehearsed, the series allows audiences a chance to see a revolving case of local favorites perform in a stripped back, almost home -like setting. Stachyra hosts once a month, as does singer/songwriter Pat Kane. And it’s been a rousing success. The last three times I showed up on a Sunday afternoon the place has been packed. And yet no matter how packed it gets, there’s always one more seat to be had. McGirk’s is just that kind of place. “This is basically my family room,” muses Ward. “It’s like everybody here is an invited guest. I treat people – musicians, staff, everybody – like they are part of my own family in my home. I think that’s what’s made me really successful here. It’s relaxed. There’s no bullshit.”
Songwriter Circle during Binghamton City Limits. Provided.
Binghamton City Limits
McGirk’s Irish Pub offers music, food, and some damn good whiskey in Chenango Bridge by Chris Bodnarczuk
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HERE’S A TWINKLE in Tim Ward’s eyes. It’s the twinkle of a man that’s done alright for himself. Or maybe it’s whiskey. He’s got a lot of whiskey. “I’ve got over 190 brown liquors at the back bar. Bourbons, Irish Whiskeys, blended Whiskeys, single malt Scotch. I have over 80 bourbons right now. I love bourbon.” Be still, my heart. I love bourbon, too! We’re seated in a back corner of McGirk’s Irish Pub, the Chenango Bridge establishment Ward bought in 2009. It’s early on a Friday afternoon and I’ve got a rule about
drinking brown liquor before 3:30pm, so I opt out of libations. Not that I’m not tempted; Ward’s impeccably curated liquor collection is an alcoholic’s enthusiast’s dream: “We carry all nine marks of Jameson, including a very rare, $80 a shot, Vintage Reserve. I go through at least two bottles of that a year. Same thing with our Pappy Van Winkle. I’ve got all four of the Van Winkles. I’m on my third bottle of the 23 Year Family Reserve and that’s over $100 a shot. That’d be $600 in New York City!” Now that I think of it, maybe I could have just one shot. A round of Pappy on the house, eh? (Nay.)
I could spend all day talking to Ward about brown liquor. People drive from all over New York State to do just that. Dude knows his stuff. But this is not a story about brown liquor. This is a story about music. McGirk’s has made quite a name for itself as a regional music destination as of late, hosting local and touring bands seven times a week, including every Friday afternoon for a “Lunchbox” series. Today’s entertainment is provided by local folk favorites Milkweed. I usually have a rule about folk bands before 3:30pm, but today I’ll make an exception. Says Ward, “It’s a warm room. The way the stage caters to the bar and the restaurant; it’s good for the musicians. The people really ap-
Surely there’s food for all these invited guests, right? Right! The McGirk’s kitchen is, unsurprisingly, just as well run as the rest of the place. The food is fresh, made to order. Servings are generous, prices are super reasonable, and the food is to die for. “My favorite thing? I’ve got to say the salmon. The salmon salad. And the skirt steak. And the corned beef – our corned beef, each brisket is roasted with Smithwick’s Beer for six hours. It gives it a flavor that nobody else has.” The Fish & Chips is no joke, either. Sells out every Friday, even when it’s not Lent! Great food. Check. A great performance space full of great musicians. Check. 190 freakin’ bottles of brown liquor. Check. Is there anything McGirk’s can’t do? “Karaoke,” says Ward without missing a beat. “We tried it.” I’ll write that one off as a plus in my book. McGirk’s Irish Pub is located at 1 Kattelville Rd. in Chenango Bridge. Well, technically in Binghamton, but it might as well be in Chenango Bridge. The kitchen’s open daily, there’s music daily, there’s whiskey daily. Bring a friend. Stay a while. More info, menu, and calendar of events available at mcgirks.com.
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WEDNESDAY! 4/6
MONDAY!
a binghamton tradition
Lewis Knudson
starts at 8:30
4/13
TEAM TRIVIA!
Jamie Willard
Coffee! Lattes! Steamers!
FIRST TUES.
sign ups start at 7:30pm
music starts at 8
OPEN MIC!
4/20
Claire Byrne & Brian Vollmer
FRIDAY!
4/27
4/1
Tumbleweed Highway & East Coast Bigfoot
Max Garcia Conover
LIVE MUSIC!
4/8
22 Beers on tap!
Pale Green Stars 4/15
Raibred
Free Wifi! Study Nooks! Comfy Couches!
THURSDAYS!
start your weekend early
with ugly dolphin!
LIVE MUSIC!
4/22
Mel & the Boys 4/29
Enter the Muse
LIVE MUSIC! 4/12 & 4/19
SATURDAY!
on the cyber stage
Tenzin Chopak & Nicholas Walker
sing your little heart out
KARAOKE!
1 76 M ain St. BINGHAMTON
cybercafewest.com (607) 723-2456 open daily 16 carouselrag.com
4/2
4/9
Strauss & Co. 4/16
Sandwiches! Soup! Salads!
Burgers! Wraps! Desserts!
Voodoo Highway 4/23
Intrepid Traveller 4/30
4i & Gypsy Wagon
LIVE MUSIC!
music briefs Killswitch Engage. Provided.
six-piece ensemble that dares you to try and pigeonhole their sound. At times reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac, and then taking a turn to sound like early Yes, they have finished off sets singing old Irish ballads as well. With influences from Motown to Belle & Sebastian, this group of young musicians will be sure to bring down the roof April 9th at the Ransom Steele. Opening up the night is Serene Green, a young bluegrass group from the Lehigh Valley. They’ve been gaining traction in the Eastern bluegrass community, playing original songs, bluegrass standards, and other favorites with a bluegrass twist. With threepart harmonies and technical instrumentation, it’s a show you won’t want to miss. The Ransom Steele Tavern is located at 552 Main St. in Apalachin. The show starts at 8pm, and tickets are $7 the day of the show. More information at ransomsteeletavern.com.
KILLSWITCH ENGAGE WITH MEMPHIS MAY FIRE AND 36 CRAZYFISTS AT MAGIC CITY
ROOSTER AND THE ROADHOUSE HORNS AT THE PLACE ON COURT
Rooster and the Roadhouse Horns will take the stage at The Place on Friday, April 1st. As one of Binghamton’s most-established party bands, you can be sure that they will play an excellent show. Rooster is a fantastic vocalist and brings some extra panache to their songs with his percussion playing. A phenomenal rhythm section as well as a keyboardist and guitarist round out the rest of the band. And then of course, there’s the Roadhouse Horns, whose killer tunes will enliven and shake the crowd. The band plays music of all different styles, from the 40s through today’s hits. Professional, experienced, and unbelievably versatile- make sure you check them out after you’re done hitting the galleries on First Friday. The Place on Court is located at 73 Court St. in Binghamton. The show starts at 8pm; there will be a $5 cover charge at the door, which also includes your first drink (if you’re 21+). More information is available at theplaceoncourt.com
WRECKLESS MARCI AT THE TOPPER SALOON
Wreckless Marci is Binghamton’s premiere party band. Founding members Craig Palmer and Matt Jensen have been jamming together for nearly 15 years, while bassist Mark Sedlock and lead singer/guitarist Sonny Weeks joined more recently. When they all get together, things are bound to get reckless. The band plays covers, but don’t expect to be sitting down. High energy and jumping around the stage, Wreckless Marci is sure to have you moving and grooving. If you’re anywhere
near Endicott on April 2nd (if you’re reading this, you probably are), make sure you stop on down for the show. Wreckless Marci starts at 9pm, and there is no cover charge. The Topper Saloon and Eatery is located at 1001 Union Center Highway in Endicott. Check out their Facebook page for more information, and directions.
For Words takes the stage at 7pm. The Schorr Family Firehouse Stage is located at 46 Willow Street in Johnson City. Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for seniors, students, and children. More information can be found at goodwilltheatre.net.
TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS AT THE SCHORR FIREHOUSE STAGE
Mobday is everything you want from a metal band: vocals that knock your socks off, screaming guitars playing melodic hooks, thumping bass that hooks and shreds, and drums that pick you up and never let you down. You’ll leave their show with your ears bleeding- in a good way. Formed in 2005, Mobday grew slowly for a few years, but their music is now available in stores nationwide and they have shared the stage with notable acts such as Saliva, Tantric, and Queensryche. Back to their music: unlike some metal groups, Mobday never gives up musicality for shock value. This isn’t to say that their music isn’t at times loud and aggressive- it’s just that it’s always earned. They play with genuine feeling and spirit, and even if you’re not a metal fan you can find something within their songs that will make you feel alive. Joining Mobday on April 9th are Silhouette Lies and The Holy Thunderheads. On the Roxx is located at 528 Court St in Binghamton. Doors are at 8pm and music starts at 9pm. There is a $5 dollar cover at the door.
Before Nat King Cole was a pop crooner stealing the hearts of millions, he was a serious jazz pianist in the Nat King Cole Trio. In fact, even as a pop crooner stealing the hearts of millions, he was still a serious jazz pianisthe just tended to let it slide more often. Too Marvelous For Words will be celebrating his legacy of great jazz, jazz that influenced such heavyweights as Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson. Peter Smith, the creator of Too Marvelous For Words, will use his experiences as an actor, a singer, and a pianist, to beautifully craft the stories from the Trio period in Cole’s life. He will be joined on stage by John Storie, a founding member of the New West Guitar Group, and Alex Frank, who, in addition to being a fabulous jazz bassist, can be found playing bass for TV and film- “Modern Family” and “the Jersey Boys.” Naima Kradjian, CEO of the Goodwill Theatre, has this to say about the April 2nd performance: “We are very excited to bring this musical trip down memory lane to the Firehouse. The performers are outstandingly talented in their own right. Then you add Nat’s Music on top of it, and it’s a dream come true. You cannot really afford to miss this show.” Too Marvelous
MOBDAY AND MORE AT ON THE ROXX
BLACK MOUNTAIN SYMPHONY AND SERENE GREEN AT THE RANSOM
One of the most eclectic bands in modern folk-rock, Black Mountain Symphony is a
Killswitch Engage was one of the most popular metalcore bands of the mid-00s, and with the return of original lead singer Jesse Leach in recent years the band has been rejuvenated. Their latest album Incarnate was released in March, and they still carry themselves with the wild energy they were known for in their early days. Magic City may have the highest ceilings of any venue in the area (barring the Forum and Arena), but on April 15th Killswitch will do more than just fill it up; it’ll be a damn miracle if the place doesn’t explode with their vibrant energy. Memphis May Fire could be described as an up and coming metalcore band, but only in comparison to Killswitch. With a debut at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, they’re already a successful group with a positive message. Also playing is 36 Crazyfists. The show starts at 8pm, but doors are at 7. Tickets are $25 dollars in advance, or $28 dollars at the door. Magic City Music Hall is located at 1240 Upper Front Street in the Northgate Plaza in Binghamton.
BIG MEAN SOUND MACHINE AND SONIC LOVE BOT AT THE RANSOM
On Saturday, April 16th, get ready for the return of Big Mean Sound Machine to the Ransom Steele Tavern. Big Mean Sound Machine is based out of Ithaca, but tours all across the East Coast. The band is filled with incredible musicians: from keyboard players to percussionists, trombone, saxophone, and guitar. They use rhythms heavily influenced by West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, to create a funky, fresh afrobeat sound. If there’s one band in this list absolutely guaranteed to make you want to shake your booty, it’s Big Mean Sound Machine. Sonic Lovebot, from New York City, will be opening up the night. With melodies and rhythms reminiscent of the Meters, and soaring, soulful vocals, the night is sure to be one made up of memories you won’t want to forget. The show starts at 8pm with Sonic Lovebot. Tickets are $10 dollars in advance, and $13 dollars the day of. The Ransom Steele Tavern is located at 552 Main St. in Apalachin. (CONTINUED ON PAGE 18)
April 2016 triple cities carousel 17
music briefs HAKAN TAGYA-HROMEK AND PEJ REITZ AT THE PHELPS MANSION MUSEUM
Cellist Hakan Tagya-Hromek and pianist Pej Reitz are both major players in the Binghamton classical music scene. Hakan, as the principle cellist for both the Binghamton Philharmonic and Tri-Cities Opera, is a role model for up-and-coming string players in the area. Pej is one of the most in-demand accompanists in the area because she is one of, if not the most, talented in Binghamton. At the Phelps Mansion Museum on April 17th, they will combine their talents to present a concert as part of the Phelps Chamber Concert Series. The Phelps Mansion Museum is located at 191 Court St in Binghamton. Tickets are $15 for the general public, $10 for members, and $5 dollars for students and children. More information can be found at phelpsmansion.org.
INTREPID TRAVELERS AT THE CYBER CAFE
The Intrepid Travelers are a Buffalo-based band formed out of a life-long friendship. With a mutual love for both well-practiced and defined licks, as well as improvisatory freedom, the four-piece brings you on a journey every show. The Travelers play a mixture of original material and standards, as well as covers of blues and jam bands. While definitely tending towards a jam-band sound, the young men in the group defy some of the caveats that some folks attribute to the genre. Their music never strays into random noodling, and the solos contain an intensity and fire that keeps the other members of the group together and intricately connected. The April 23rd show starts at 9pm at the Cyber Cafe West, 176 Main St. in Binghamton. For more information, visit cybercafewest. com
ALPHA BRASS AT GALAXY
The Alpha Brass Band is one of the most talented groups in the Binghamton area. With a sound that can only be described as New Orleans brass, Alpha Brass Band gets audiences dancing to a new tune every time they play. Influenced by bands such as the Dirty Dozen, The Meters, and Dr. John, the “Alpha Bees” are comfortable playing a variety of different genres, from traditional tunes to more modern covers. The line-up includes Larry Ricciardi, Vic Merrill, Dennis Martin,
The Intrepid Travellers. Photo by Kelly Kaz. Tim Zapach, and of course, Rob Weinberger. Each is a lord of his instrument, whether it’s Dennis Martin on the trombone or Rob Weinberger’s indomitable tenor sax. As you might have guessed, the focus of the band is on the brass, but there is also a sweet percussion section that only adds to the grooviness of the group. At 9pm on April 28th, Alpha Brass Band takes the stage at Galaxy Brewing Company, 41 Court St. in Binghamton. More information is available on Galaxy Brewing’s Facebook page.
MIKE DAVIS AND THE LAUGHING BUDDHA EPISODES IN GREENE
You may have seen Mike Davis around with the Laughing Buddha Episodes. His smile and groove are infectious; you can’t help but feel good after one of his shows. His style of music lends itself towards reggae and jam music. Think bands like Dispatch or Newton Faulkner. Mike is also a master of the guitar, as he throws his fingers up and down the strings with the ease of a swan. Vocally, Mike easily struts the line between a slinger of staccato lyrics, in the style John Butler, to the soulful croon of Aloe Blacc. With the rotating cast of background players that make up the Laughing Buddha Episodes, the April 29th
show will be one that will take you out to space and back again with a giant grin, grooving the whole time. Mimi’s Italian Cuisine is located at 28 Genessee St. in Greene. The show starts at 5pm so come out early!
LADIES CHOICE AT OWEGO ORIGINALS
If you’re a fan of local talent, head out to Ladies Choice on April 29th. Hosted by Dana Stewart of Voodoo Highway, Ladies Choice will feature three ladies from across the region, showcasing their talent. Featured sets will include solo and duo performances from some of the best female musicians in the area, including Devinne Meyers, whose show-stopping solo show can only be beat by her phenomenal band- East Coast Bigfoot. Performers present different genres and styles, so there will be something for you no matter what sort of music you enjoy. Following the final performance is Ladies Only Open-Mic at 9pm. If you’d like to participate in the open mic, you are encouraged to sign up by messaging Original’s Bar and Lounge on Facebook; however, if you’d pre-
fer, you can sign-up at the event. Original’s Bar and Lounge is located at 23 Lake St. in Owego, and is connected inside and out to the fantastic Original Italian Pizzeria. The event starts at 7pm with 3 performances and then switches over to open-mic at 9pm. Fellas, don’t be afraid; go out and support women and music!
JAZZ JAMS WITH MILES AHEAD AT LOST DOG
From 8-10pm on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month, pack up your horn, grab your fakebook, crack your fingers, and hit the Lost Dog Cafe for a night of jazz. Hosted by the Miles Ahead quartet (made up of Tom Westcott, Gene Cothran, Joe Roma, and Mike Carbone), the night is made for both new cats- just cutting their teeth on jazz standards- and old hats who can lay down a tune without opening their eyes. If you love jazz (and really, who doesn’t?) this night is made for you, whether you’re a player or a listener. Pop in with your instrument and tune of choice, or just come to catch the tunes. The Lost Dog Cafe is located at 222 Water St. in Binghamton.
Music briefs compiled by Phil Westcott: music@carouselrag.com
Mark your calendars!
Binghamton Porchfest
returns to the West Side for a second year
Sunday August 28th More info coming soon!
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EXPLODING
FINGERS
GUITAR DOJO
AA monthly from monthlylesson lessonininmusic musictheory theory from guitar Chris Arp. guitar player playerextraordinaire extraordinaire Chris Arp
A
41 court street
binghamton LIVE MUSIC CALENDAR
4/2 Honker Album Release
Featuring Jim Lomonaco (yolk), Tim Linkroum and Matt Massie. Honker plays rock and roll or whatever else sounds cool. $5 cover.
LOHA! LAST MONTH WE DISCUSSED what a major scale is and we could play it on the guitar. We also looked at how we can use the major scale to improvise over a diatonic chord progression. (If you’d like to look up previous columns you can find them and their videos at the web address below.) This month we are going to increase our knowledge of how we can organize these diatonic chord progressions. Then we are going to see a way we can relate these ideas to the 12 bar blues, a common format for improvisational playing. So again, we are going to start out by looking at the C major scale. This scale consists of all natural notes. None of the notes have sharps or flats. These are the white keys on the piano. If we were to simply list the notes of this scale in order from C to B and designate a number to each letter from first to last it would look like this: Fig. 1 Now, let’s look back at the diatonic chord discussion. We learned that you can make a C (major), a Dm, an Em, an F (major), a G (major), an Am and a B diminished chord with notes found in the C major scale. If we then matched up these chords with their corresponding numbers it would look like this: Fig. 2 These notes, their order and the types of chords their order designates are formulaic. We will demonstrate this by now analyzing the G major scale (G, A, B, C, D, E, F#):
4/7 Tom Graham
Scranton’s favorite singer/songwriter returns!
4/14 Castle Creek
Up and coming blues from Syracuse, full of grit and soul!
4/21 East Coast Bigfoot
Original roots/rock from right here in Bing. Featuring Devinne Meyers, Ty Whitbeck, and Stephen Schweitzer.
4/28 Alpha Brass Band
NOLA style brass band music from the likes of Rebirth, Dirty Dozen, Dr John, & more!
DON’T FORGET TO STOP BY AND VISIT US DURING RESTAURANT WEEK
galaxybrewingco.com FOR FULL EVENT LISTINGS AND MORE INFO
Fig. 3 What I mean to point out by introducing the G major scale and comparing it to the C major scale is that the 1 chord is always a major chord. The 2 and the 3 chords are always a minor chord. The 4 and the 5 chords are always major. The 6 chords are always minor chords and the 7 chords are diminished. This is a uniform break down for all major scales. In Fig. 4 it is broken down with M (major), m (minor), and o (diminished) in this order – M, m, m, M, M, m, o. These numbers are often found written in Roman numerals. Major chords are in upper case Roman numerals, while minor and diminished chords are in lower case roman numerals. Fig. 4 So lets use the vi, the ii, and the iii chords and play the 12 bar blues. The 12 bar blues are great because almost everyone at any open jam night found anywhere knows the 12 bar blues to some capacity. If we look at the C major scale and Fig. 5 we’ll see there is an Am, Dm, and Em. The 12 bar blues in its simplest form is three particular chords played in a certain pattern over 12 bars of music. You can truly go off the deep end with ways to change up this format, but for our purposes this will work perfect. Because these three chords are diatonic to C major scale, we can play over this chord progression using the C major scale we learned last month. If you visit my web page, I have placed a video with a backing track for you to play along with so you can practice your C major scale over the Am 12 bar blues. Fig. 5
If you have any questions, comments, or are interested in getting guitar lessons in the Binghamton area, you can contact me at explodingfingers@hotmail.com.
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theatre and dance. face of the earth” speech delivered at Yankee Stadium in 1939, shortly after Gehrig’s retirement was announced. For Van Derbeck, the speech was an inspiration in that it left a mystery open for him to solve. He explains, “The Gary Cooper movie [“The Pride of the Yankees”] has him give that famous ‘Luckiest Man’ speech, then basically going into a tunnel and dying. I would watch that and say, ‘Hold it now, there are two more years to this man’s life!’ He does give the ‘Gettysburg Address’ of sports, and it is a nice way to end a movie, but that’s where I pick it up.” Gehrig made it clear to many people that he wanted to work for the Yankees’ front-office or in the organization as a scout after his retirement. But the team’s General Manager at the time was Ed Barrow, an old-style baseball executive who becomes in some way’s the the villain of Van Derbeck’s piece. To Barrow, front office jobs were reserved for family and the recipients of favors. Players didn’t get them -- even Gehrig, who as a Columbia University man, almost certainly had the intellectual chops to handle the job.
Illustration by Ronnie Vuolo.
The other Lou Gehrig
Local playwright reveals hidden story of Yankee “Iron Horse” by Charles Berman
L
OU GEHRIG MAY BE ONE OF the best-known sports figures in history, but that’s just the beginning. On April 16th, the Binghamton High School International Baccalaureate Theatre Class will present a local playwright’s original vision of a period of Gehrig’s life that has been hidden from the spotlight -- a vision that casts new light on a hero who is revered to this day, seventy-five years after his death. The staged reading of D. Keith Van Derbeck’s new one-act play My Luke, the Iron Horse (Gehrig’s wife Eleanor always called him Luke) tells the story of how the former Yankee first-baseman found fulfillment in the final two years of his life, through his early advocacy of music therapy, his wife Eleanor, and the work New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia offered him as a parole commis-
sioner after the Yankees refused to offer him front-office employment. Half of all proceeds will go to fund research into the disease that disabled and then killed Gehrig, ALS. For Van Derbeck, a first-time playwright, the production is a culmination of three years of work. As he explains, “I was a probation officer for 29 years. And I’m sitting in my friend’s office, another probation officer. The Press used to have a ‘Fifty Years Ago Today’ feature. The June 2, 1991 feature was: ‘Fifty Years ago Lou Gehrig died in New York City as a parole commissioner.’ And I said, ‘Lou Gehrig was a parole commissioner? He did basically what I’m doing?’ So I hold this thing in for twenty years. I don’t tell anybody. And then the New York State Probation Officer’s Association asked me to write an article for their newsletter. I write the article, just a one page article. People like it, and then they ask me if I would write another. So I did. And it kind of morphed into a play.”
Van Derbeck took his idea to his friend Larry Kassan, head of theatre at Binghamton High School and director of the upcoming production. Kassan, a recognized expert on Van Derbeck’s favorite playwright (and Binghamton’s native son) Rod Serling, encouraged him to develop the concept and to take a playwright’s seminar in New York City. The seminar, “The Play Only You Could Write,” featuring Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristoffer Diaz, lit the flame that allowed Van Derbeck to turn little known history into his own dramatic piece of non-linear historical fiction. “I’ve written this play six times. I didn’t even know what an internal monologue was. I took the idea of using a prologue and an epilogue, which Rod Serling had in everything he wrote, and used that in my play.” In the case of My Luke, that prologue-epilogue form centers around the famous “today I consider myself the luckiest man on the
It is legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia that Van Derbeck turns into the hero of My Luke. Mayor La Guardia stepped up to the plate and gave Gehrig a ten-year term as a parole commissioner -- in which capacity he worked hard until his death, always believing he could beat his disease. Gehrig introduced at least one unheard of innovation to the profession -- taking parolees to hear open-air concerts of the New York Philharmonic, so that they could share the delight he took in classical music. Gehrig went to performance after performance of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, crying in the seats as he followed the sung German, his own heritage language. As Van Derbeck puts it, My Luke is “the story the New York Yankees do not want you to know” of how they denied one of their greatest heroes a place with the team. The author looks forward to his first night as a performed playwright, explaining, “I don’t know how I’m going to feel. I feel it’s going to be a sense of accomplishment. The students I know are going to do a great job. I’ve seen several of their plays. Staged readings are great because you get to actually put your mind and your imagination into what is going on. They don’t show everything for you. “ The play promised to tell an inspiring story of a little-known period in Lou Gehrig’s life, as well as to embody the inspiring story of a new local theatrical writer. As Van Derbeck puts it, “If you read about eight books, have compelling characters, and obviously have a good story, you can write a play. It started, and then I did the research on him and found some really interesting things that nobody knows, things that I wanted to share.” ‘My Luke, the Iron Horse’ will be performed just in time for the opening of baseball season, on Sat. April 16th at 3 and 7pm at Binghamton High School’s Black Box Theater. Tickets are $10, available by calling (607) 762-8202. Proceeds benefit the ALS Association of Central NY and the BHS Drama Dept.
April 2016 triple cities carousel 21
theatre briefs OF MICE AND MEN AT EPAC
The cast of EPAC’s production of “Of Mice and Men.” Provided.
Of Mice and Men is a play adapted from John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel of the same name. The play earned the 1938 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play and was revived on Broadway in 2014. It tells the story of two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. Required reading in many schools, Of Mice and Men has been a frequent target of censors for vulgarity and what some consider offensive and racist language; consequently, it appears on the American Library Association’s list of the Most Challenged Books of 21st Century. Dallas Elwood is the director of EPAC’s production, with assistant direction by Matthew Gaska. Performances are April 1st–3rd at EPAC’s Robert Eckert Theatre, 102 Washington Avenue in Endicott. Curtain is Friday and Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $20 for adults and $18 for seniors (age 65 & over) and children (age 12 & under) and are available by calling EPAC at (607) 7858903 or online at endicottarts.com. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the EPAC box office 9:30am to 5pm Monday through Friday, and one hour before show times.
TAKE A SEMINAR AT KNOW
In Seminar - a provocative comedy from Pulitzer Prize nominee Theresa Rebeck - four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard, an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon and hearts are unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this biting Broadway comedy. “Big laughs! An Authentic rush of pleasure,” says Ben Brantley of the New York Times. Directed by Tim Gleason and featuring Mike Arcesi, Erik Young, Joanna Patchett, Annie Fabiano, and Nick Ponterio. The show runs April 8th – 24th at the KNOW Theatre, 74 Carroll Street in Binghamton, (607) 724-4341. Friday & Saturday curtains at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm. Cost is $20 for adults, $18 for seniors, and $15 for students. There is a Pay-What-You-Can performance on Thursday, April 14 at 8pm. Visit knowtheatre.org for more info.
SEEING RED AT CIDER MILL
The play Red by John Logan has been described as “drama/performance art.” Master abstract expressionist Mark Rothko has just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art: a series of murals for New York’s famed Four Seasons restaurant. In the two fascinating years that follow, Rothko works feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio on the Bowery. But when Ken gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. The New York Times calls it, “Intense and exciting…a portrait of an angry and brilliant mind that asks you to feel the shape and texture of thoughts…Red captures the dynamic relationship between an artist and his creations.” It was the winner of the
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2010 Tony Award. Red plays April 14th–May 1st at the Cider Mill Playhouse, 2 South Nanticoke Avenue in Endicott. Curtain is Thursdays–Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 3pm. All performances except Saturdays are $28 for adults, $26 for seniors (over 65) and students (18 and under); all Saturdays are $32 all seats. Tickets are available online. Visit cidermillplayhouse.com or call (607) 748-7363 for more info.
and Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are $20 for adults, $18 for Seniors (age 65 & over) and $12 for children (age 12 & under), available by calling EPAC at (607) 785-8903 or online at endicottarts.com. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the EPAC box office 9:30am–5pm Monday through Friday, and one hour before show times.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND FROM EPAC KIDS
The king is dead - murdered. And this is one of those productions of Hamlet which dares to cast a woman, Danielle Nigro, in the role of the famed male protagonist. The royal family is torn apart. Hamlet, tasked with avenging his father’s death, finds himself in an impossible predicament which threatens his sanity and the security of the state. Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy is equal parts ghost story, political intrigue, doomed romance and murder mystery, driven by one of literature’s most charismatic and intriguing characters. The production is directed by Anne Brady. The play runs April 28th and 29th at 8pm and May 1st and 8th at 2pm at the Watters Theatre in the Anderson Center in Vestal. All tickets are one price: $14. There is an additional high school students’ matinee on the
Based on Lewis Carol’s timeless story of the same name, Alice in Wonderland is a whimsical musical journey down the fabled rabbit hole. Our young heroine struggles to make sense of her surroundings and - most of all to figure out a way to get home. Directed by Patrick Foti, with musical direction by Paula Bacorn and choreography by Kim Musser, this year’s Kids Theater Workshop has four casts of over 20 kids each. Cast 1 will perform April 28th and 29th, while cast 2 will perform April 30th and May 1st. The third cast will go up May 5th and 6th, then cast 4 will close out the run on May 7th and 8th. Performances take place at the Endicott Performing Arts Center’s Robert Eckert Theater, 102 Washington Avenue in Endicott. Curtains are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm
BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY PRESENTS HAMLET
morning of May 6th (call (607) 777-7323 for more information). Tickets can be purchased online at andersoncenter.showare.com or at the Anderson Center box office, (607) 7772787.
TCO’S SWEENEY TODD CUTS UP AT FORUM
Tri-Cities Opera concludes its 2015-2016 season with Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. This musical thriller stars baritone Philip Cutlip as the razor happy Sweeney and mezzo-soprano Jenni Bank as Mrs. Lovett. The dark and witty tale of love, London, murder, and revenge is directed by Jonathan Pape and conducted by Branden Toan. Note that the show is rated R for graphic content and adult language. Performances are April 29th at 7:30pm and May 1st at 3pm at the Forum Theatre, 236 Washington Street in Binghamton. Admission runs from $20 to $45 for balcony seating, from $60 to $70 for mezzanine seating, and from $20 to $70 for seating in the orchestra. Tickets can be purchased online, at the box office location at 315 Clinton Street in Binghamton, or at the Forum Theatre starting the Monday before the performances. For more information call (607) 772-0400 or visit tricitiesopera.com.
Theatre briefs compiled by Felicia Waynesboro: stage@carouselrag.com
poetry.
THE POETRY OF MICHAEL RULLI
Michael Rulli is a young queer poet on the verge of graduating from Binghamton University with a degree in Creative Writing. His poetry tries to touch on a mixture of humor and melancholy which derides from the loss of his parents and the absurdity that ensued thereafter. He found poetry and drag as a means to save his life. Thanks to the Queens and the Binghamton poetry scene, he was able to find strength and the courage to use his voice and art as a platform for change in his own life. When he isn’t writing he’s either watching reruns of RuPaul’s ‘Drag Race’ or strutting around in some couture he certainly couldn’t afford. A selection of his poetry and weekly blog posts can be found online at myblogisdropping.com.
CHOCOLATE CRUNCHIES
I knew what you were talking about. On that first spring weekend when Ralph’s finally opened for the season. Crocuses had been blooming for a few days and tulips you planted long ago, started to show us their colors. Pinks and yellows. “Do you want to get a sundae with me? You know the one with the chocolate crunchies at the bottom?” I still smelt the Smirnoff from a few nights back, when I told you no. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Now I plant my own tulips for you, and I can never get that sundae again. I knew what you were talking about. I just didn’t want to be seen with you. Your drop foot, your stringy hair, your yellowing skin. I didn’t want people to know you were my mother. My mother should be beautiful, my mother should be able to walk, now I just wish my mother was alive. How alone you must have felt, up in your room, with a liter hidden under your bed. I’m sorry I didn’t know any better, but now I do. I can still turn back the time…can’t I? I can still walk down the road with you, and you can point out the flowers you’d love to grow. We can still float by the pool, or feed the koi fish. Your carpet doesn’t need to smell of dried blood. We can paint the bathroom gold like you always wanted, and afterwards I’ll pay for the sundaes this time—just with your credit card. I’m sorry I wouldn’t walk with you that day, and all the other days. I know you went by yourself and now I know that ice cream doesn’t taste as good when you’re all alone. Interested in having your poetry featured in an upcoming issue of Carousel? Please email 3-5 poems and a short biography to Heather Merlis: poetry@carouselrag.com
FAKE TITS BIG BALLS NO TALENT
I think I’m in love with a lesbian, and as a gay man you can see how this could be problematic. She dreaded, not because she’s fearful but because her hair is like tangled rope. I bald, not because of chemo but because of boredom. We are opposites, most would say. I tall, she short. I a fag, she a dyke. I throw on fake tits, she has big balls Neither of us have any talent. We’re an unlikely duo, but its 2015 and we can raise our booking fee if we market ourselves a brother-sister act I the brother-sister, she the sister-brother. Two ends of gender and sexuality that no one saw coming. When either of us walks into a room they know who we are. They know what we stand for. They know our sexual preference. But together, it’s slightly more unnerving, even unappealing. People can handle a gay or a les but a gay and a les together, who take shots of Jameson and listen to Abba are simply too much. We love coffee, and I love her constant supply of cigarettes. She knows that I like to call myself Faguette, and always pronounced it like baguette. She knows why I cry, and stare at the moon with longing. I know why she loves the bitter cold of Binghamton. She yells at straight men who don’t understand me, and I do nothing to return the favor…but that’s okay because she knows I would if there was something to return. I love this dyke, and I never thought I’d see the day. Perhaps times really are changing.
SMILING BACK
You can’t tell by my expression in the photo, but I used to be happy back then. In my kid’s overalls, and my bleached blonde hair. Stefanie didn’t battle with anorexia and Kristina didn’t get in any bad relationships. Dad still smiled and was alive. Mom still made us stop at scenic overpasses to take our pictures. In the fading colors I can see you more clearly than in my mind. A time where mom’s skin was permanently tinted with red from her obsession with the sun, and Dad’s beer belly just entered its first trimester. Stef still cut her own bangs with a bowl over her head and Kristina was still Geeeena to me. With one strap hanging off my shoulder, I was still happy back then. My girlfriend was Britney Spears and my first concert was Celine Dion. We went camping, and sat around the fire together. I didn’t know yet, that life fades like camera film. I didn’t know yet, that families acquire problems on top of problems, and people lose control of themselves. That drinking a beer when Dad drove us to school was weird. That they’d take Steffy from me one afternoon because she hadn’t eaten in two weeks. Why Kristina had purple legs sometimes. Why mom threatened to burn down the house with me in my room. I didn’t know yet, that love fades like camera film. That I was supposed to be soaking in all of the short shorts and T-shirts you wore, Dad. Or Mom’s cackle and cries to the wolves. I didn’t know—you never told me that I’d be left alone. In my early twenties with the family of a much older man. One who had appreciated his time with who he loved and was ready to let them go. I didn’t know that. In that photo you can’t tell that I was happy, and at the time I don’t know if I knew. With my bleached blonde hair, my kid’s overalls and a scowl on my face. I would have smiled if I knew I wouldn’t get to take new pictures. Pictures that wouldn’t fade so fast because they’re digital. Pictures that I wouldn’t need to tape onto mirrors so that I could picture you smiling back at me, because just like life and love, smiles fade like camera film and you never get used to no one smiling back at you.
WHO ARE WE?
She is a monster that walks the streets at night. She howls at the moon and blasts Cher as she kills. What you think she can’t kill because she’s beautiful? Well I think you’ve seen too much. She is what keeps me awake, and who I see on used makeup remover wipes—sprinkled across my vanity. She’s kept dormant by love but awoken by grief. She’s alone and scared and keeps her claws sharp. She comes from suburbia and forced baseball practices. She comes from Barbies owned by older sisters and crushes on all the other boys. She comes from Smirnoff hidden in Kool Aid, and Budweiser cans hidden behind the pool. She comes from manicured lawns by a mother with manicured fingers and a father that hated little boys in little dresses. From grandparents down the road, but a sense that he didn’t belong. That same sense that all the other little boys in little dresses feel. She is me and I am coffee breath, and weird stomach noises. She tries to hold out from food long as she can each day to keep from bloating. I am creaking leather jackets and occasionally a cup of tea. I am an avid gender neutral bathroom seeker and constant hypocrite. I’m often lazy, but I come from strong, grudge-holding, German blood. I come from a family that broke too soon. So who is she? Why is she the moon I look at through my blinds and think, are you there mom? With candles burning and Patsy Cline wailing. Goodnight Moon, I want to leave you behind but I don’t think I’m ready yet. I come from you. That’s how I became the werewolf in heels and how I became a monster that howls for the ghost of a woman in the night sky. That’s who she is, that’s who we are.
April 2016 triple cities carousel 23
triple cities carousel carouselrag.com mon. sun.
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Digital Planetarium Show (ROB) Junie B. Jones Adventures (CMP) Of Mice & Men (EPAC) Binghamton City Limits: Pat Kane (MGRX) Pretzel Yoga (WSB)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Digital Planetarium Show (ROB) BTOS Presents: Charlie Chaplin Film Fest (FRM) John Adams (FHS) Seminar (KNOW) Odd Man Out/Binghamton City Limits: Rick Pedro (MGRX) Sassy Sundays (TRQ) Sushi Workshop (JCC)
Digital Planetarium Show (ROB) Regina Carter (AC) Newsboys (BCA) RED (CMP) Seminar (KNOW) Binghamton City Limits: Rob Stachyra (MGRX) Chamber Concert Series (PMM) Nathan Bell (SIX)
Digital Planetarium Show (ROB) RED (CMP) Seminar (KNOW) The Look CD Release Party (MGRX) City Limits: Devinne Meyers (MGRX) Binghamton Vegan Drinks: Meet the Chef (WSB) STAP's Rockstar Celebrity Bartending (RMK)
(AC) Anderson Center, BU (ATOM) Atomic Tom’s, Binghamton (BCA) Broome County Arena, Binghamton (BDT) Binghamton DoubleTree (BEEF) The Beef, Binghamton (BEL) Belmar Pub, Binghamton (BFH) Buffalo Head, Conklin (BHMN) Bohemian Moon, Norwich (BSP) Blarney Stone Pub, Norwich (BTP) Blind Tiger Pub, Johnson City (BU) Binghamton University
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(BUN) Bundy Museum, Binghamton (CAL) Callahan’s Sportsman’s Pub, Binghamton (CCW) Cyber Café West, Binghamton (CMP) Cider Mill Playhouse, Endicott (CRAN) Cranberry Coffeehouse, Binghamton (CRT) Chenango River Theatre, Greene (CTR) Citrea Restaurant & Bar, Binghamton (DSC) Discovery Center, Binghamton (DTB) Downtown Binghamton (DTO) Downtown Owego (ELK) Endicott Elks Lodge BPOE #1977
(EPAC) Endicott Performing Arts Center (FHS) Firehouse Stage, Johnson City (FIVE) Number 5, Binghamton (FRM) Forum Theatre, Binghamton (FTZ) Fitzies Pub, Binghamton (GXY) Galaxy Brewing Co., Binghamton (HIB) Holiday Inn, Binghamton (JBC) John Barleycorn, Owego (JCC) Jewish Community Center, Vestal (JS) JungleScience, Binghamton (KNOW) KNOW Theatre, Binghamton
Argentine Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) Mac & Mondays (CAL) Mondays at the Museum (PMM) Jazz Jam #10 (FHS) Off the Beats (MGRX) Queen Latifah Lecture (BU)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Argentine Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) Mac & Mondays (CAL) Mondays at the Museum (PMM)
Argentine Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) Mac & Mondays (CAL) Mondays at the Museum (PMM) Jazz Jam #11 (FHS)
Argentine Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) Mac & Mondays (CAL) Mondays at the Museum (PMM) VINES 4th Annual Spring Dinner (RMK)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Speakeasy Open Mic (CCW) Swing Dance (REX) Team Trivia (MGRX/BTP/LDC) The Kitchen Sink Band (OUH)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Swing Dance (REX) Team Trivia (MGRX/BTP /LDC) Moscow Festival Ballet: Cinderella (AC)
Swing Dance (REX) Team Trivia (MGRX/BTP /LDC) Thunderdome Dance Party w/DJ Woogie (PLC)
Swing Dance (REX) Team Trivia (MGRX/BTP /LDC)
wed.
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Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Devinne Meyers/Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Mug Club/Beer Share (GXY) Country Line Dancing (MGC) 50 Shades of Men (MGC) Jamie Renfro (MGRX) Open Jam w/Renee Swan Demarco (PLC) Open Mic (RST) Lewis Knudsen (CCW) Jazz Jam (LDC)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Mug Club/Beer Share (GXY) Country Line Dancing (MGC) An Evening with David Sedaris (AC) Open Drum Circle (BUN) Free Jazz Concert (FHS) Milkweed (MGRX) Brian Tyneway (RST), Jamie Willard (CCW) Meet the Farmer: Shared Roots Farm (WSB)
Devinne Meyers/Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Mug Club/Beer Share (GXY) Country Line Dancing (MGC) Robbie Perez & Rob Stachyra (MGRX) Open Mic (RST) Claire Byrne & Brian Vollmer (CCW) Jazz Jam (LDC)
Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Mug Club/Beer Share (GXY) Country Line Dancing (MGC) Open Drum Circle (BUN) 2016 Teen Jazz Project (FHS) Every Other Tuesday (MGRX) Max Garcia Conover (CCW)
(LDC) Lost Dog Café/Lounge, Binghamton (MC) Metro Center, Binghamton (MGC) Magic City Music Hall, Binghamton (MGRX) McGirk’s, Chenango Bridge (MIMI) Mimi's Italian Cuisine, Greene (ORG) Original’s Bar and Lounge, Owego (OUH) Old Union Hotel, Binghamton (PLC) The Place on Court, Binghamton (PMM) Phelps Mansion Museum, Binghamton (POW) KAPOW Art Now, Binghamton (REC) Rec Park, Binghamton
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calendar of events april 2016 sat.
Vinyl Night (CAL), First Friday Art Walk (DTB/DTO) Comedy Crawl (DTB), Rick Iacovelli (BTP) S. Tier Actors Read & AMT: Trumbo (BUN) Junie B. Jones Adventures (CMP) East Coast Bigfoot/Tumbleweed Highway (CCW), Of Mice & Men (EPAC) Living Canvases Body Art Show (JS), ECPW: Stand Up and Fight V (MGC) Lunchbox Sess./Beard of Bees (MGRX), Marv Williams/Da'Brew (ORG) Rooster & the Roadhouse Horns (PLC), $5 Paint a Mug Night (POW) Slim Kings/Matt Burt (RST), Katie Scott & Persuasion (TD) Pete Ruttle (OUH), Brotherhood (FIVE) Unity Group (LDC)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Ugly Dolphin (CCW) Midday Concert (BU), Comedy (MGC) Faculty Recital (AC) Melissa Clark (BHMN) Open Mic (BSP) Chris Mollo (BTP) Tom Graham (GXY) Liz & Jim Hull (MGRX) Blackhat (RST)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Pete Ruttle (OUH), Vinyl Night (CAL) NYC Ladies of Laughter (FHS) Lunchbox Sessions/Woodshed Prophets (MGRX) Adam Ate the Apple (ORG) Binger & Iron Horse (RST) Terry Walker & Mike Melnyk (SCPH) Gravelding Brothers (TD) Werk! (LDC), Spring Speakeasy (DSC) First Birthday Break-Dance-Off (SHP) Pale Green Stars (CCW), Splash (FIVE)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Ugly Dolphin (CCW) Midday Concert (BU) Comedy (MGC) Dove Creek (BHMN), Marv Williams (BTP) Seeds/Snow: Irwin & Fran (BUN) RED (CMP) Castle Creek (GXY) Hummels Mug (MGRX) Devinne Meyers (BFH)
Pete Ruttle (OUH) Vinyl Night (CAL), RED (CMP) Raibred (CCW), Seminar (KNOW) Killswitch Engage (MGC) Lunchbox Sessions/Masterpiece Energy Band (MGRX) Several Sons (ORG) Humble Beginnings Band (RST) Travis Rocco (TD) 2nd Annual Queen Bee Comedy Invitational (RLF) Brotherhood (FIVE) East Coast Bigfoot (LDC)
Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Ugly Dolphin (CCW) Midday Concert (BU) Comedy (MGC) Harpur Jazz Ensemble (AC) The Octobermen (BHMN) Open Mic (BSP) RED (CMP) East Coast Bigfoot (GXY) String of Pearls (MGRX) Wine & Food Fest (ROB)
Pete Ruttle (OUH) Vinyl Night (CAL) Humble Beginnings Band (BTP) Joe Stento (LDC), RED (CMP) Seminar (KNOW) Twiztid Juggalo Invasion 420 Weekend (MGC) Lunchbox Sessions/Persuasion w/Katie Scott (MGRX) Devon Franks (TD) Parlor City (FIVE) John Scarpulla Band (RST) Mel & the Boys (CCW)
Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Ugly Dolphin (CCW) Midday Concert (BU) Comedy (MGC) Nate Gross (BHMN) Chris Mollo (BTP) RED (CMP) Alice in Wonderland Kids Workshop (EPAC) Alpha Brass Band (GXY) Humble Beginnings (MGRX) Mac & Cheese Fest (HIB)
Answer the Muse (CCW), Pete Ruttle (OUH) Vinyl Night (CAL), Hamlet (AC) Kalurah Shriner's Royal Hanneford Circus (BCA) Woodshed Prophets (LDC), East Coast Bigfoot (BTP) Seeds/Snow: A Day's Work (BUN), RED (CMP) Alice in Wonderland Kids Workshop (EPAC) Kane Brown (MGC), Water Monsters (MGRX) Ladies Choice (ORG), Adam Ate the Apple (SCPH) Tret Fure (SIX), Sundown (TD) Brotherhood (FIVE), Sweeney Todd (TCO) Mike Davis & the Laughing Buddha Episodes (MIMI)
(REX) Rexer’s Karate, Endicott (RLF) The Relief Pitcher, Binghamton (RMK) Remliks, Binghamton (ROB) Roberson Museum, Binghamton (RRB) River Read Books, Binghamton (RST) Ransom Steele Tavern, Apalachin (SCPH) South City Publick House, Binghamton (SHP) The Shop, Binghamton (SIX) Six on the Square, Oxford (TD) Tioga Downs Racino, Nichols (TCO) Tri-Cities Opera, Binghamton
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DJ SpaceOne (LDC), Edgy Sketch (BTP), Of Mice & Men (EPAC) Junie B. Jones Adventures (CMP), Too Marvelous for Words (FHS) Honker Album Release Show (GXY), Otsiningo Farmers Market (MC) Kansas (MGC), Parlor City (MGRX) Next2Kin/Ruddy Well Band/Max Garcia (RST), Dirt Farm (SCPH) Burns & Kristy (SIX) Tenzin Chopak & Nicholas Walker (CCW), Polkapalooza (TD) Woodshed Prophets (TD) Molina & the Rightful Kings (JBC) enerjee Jazz with Ayana (FIVE) Devinne Meyers (UNK)
Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) DJ SpaceOne (LDC), CC Ryder & Friends (BTP) Tanzen Und Singen: Music in Motion (EPAC) Seminar (KNOW) Black Mountain Symphony/Serene Greene (RST) Doug & Eamonn Hubert (SCPH) Strauss & Co (CCW), Cosy Sheridan (SIX) Stealing Neil (TD) Busy Bird Spring Fest Fundraiser (ELK) Pete Seeger Songfest (UUC) Anything Goes (FIVE)
DJ SpaceOne (LDC) Bing. Phil.: Beethoven's 9th Symphony (FRM) Amber Martin (BTP), RED (CMP) Voodoo Highway (CCW), Seminar (KNOW) Otsiningo Farmers Market (MC) BDAST Drag Show (MGC) The Stoutmen (MGRX) Big Mean Sound Machine (RST) Anonymous Blondes (SCPH) Vendetta (TD) Devinne Meyers (UNK)
DJ SpaceOne (LDC) L Ectric Brew (BTP), RED (CMP) Artspower's Chicken Dance (FHS) Tanya Wild's Sleepover Birthday Bash (HIB) Seminar (KNOW), Get the Led Out (MGC) Comedy: Nick Marra (ORG) Historic Textile Series (PMM) Woodshed Prophets (SCPH) Intrepid Travelers (CCW) Scott Freeman Band (FIVE) No Vacancy (VPL)
DJ SpaceOne (LDC) 4i & Gypsy Wagon (CCW), Hamlet (AC) University Symphony: Titan (AC) Mike Whittemore (BTP) RED (CMP) Alice in Wonderland Kids Workshop (EPAC) The Shambles (MGRX) Historic Textile Series (PMM) East Coast Bigfoot/Tim Ruffo (RST) Third Soul (TD) Katie Scott & Persuasion (FIVE)
(UNK) Uncorked Creations, Binghamton (UUC) United Universalist Congregation, Binghamton (VPL) Vestal Public Library (WSB) Water Street Brewing, Binghamton (YHPL) Your Home Public Library, Johnson City
April 2016 triple cities carousel 25
Underground at the Mountaintop:
An interview with
Jay Lynch by Heather Merlis
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art.
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the title. [We had been working on] the Chicago Mirror; it was like a humor magazine for hippies. We used to sell it on the street.
RIVING THE HALF HOUR from Binghamton to Jay Lynch’s house feels a bit like making a pilgrimage to question a wary sage, minus the physical exertion. “It’s not my job to make false idols,” he explains, “It’s my job to take false idols and drag them into the gutter.” A founding father of the Underground Comix movement alongside Robert Crumb, he created Bijou Funnies and subverted the Comics Code Authority (and the establishment at large). While working at Topps, he designed Wacky Packages - parodies of popular product labels – which deprogrammed young minds against corporate advertising, and led to the creation of the subversive sticker series Garbage Pail Kids. Today, Lynch considers himself to be one of the last living Satirists.
And, one time - this was when banana smoking was supposedly going on - it was like this thing about how you could get high by drying banana peels and smoking them, which was a myth. Like an urban myth. But a lot of people believed it, and we were doing a satire magazine, so we told them - in a Jonathan Swift Modest Proposal way - that they could smoke dog poop. And it just went on: that people who smoked dog poop were called “shitheads,” like potheads, and it was just a bunch of jokes like that. And we said the most desirable kind is called Lincoln Park Brown, and we told ’em how to cure it and stuff… But it was satire.
He spent many years living in Binghamton as something of a hidden legend, where he serendipitously met local artist and teacher Greg Bohner, whom he befriended and inspired. With Bohner as my Sherpa, we arrived at Lynch’s home on a mid-March evening, where two women were upstairs organizing rooms teeming with artwork, comics, and letters. They were organizing Lynch’s work to be archived in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Ohio, which currently houses the world’s largest collection of comics and cartoon art. With all of us in one place seeking to immortalize this renegade of satire, Carousel sat down to talk with the man behind the pen: When the Undergrounds were first starting out, it seemed like you were pulling back the curtain on a culture that denied the natural state of humanity and tried to fit its citizens into a box. There was the Good Comics Code, so all of these kids, they wanted to grow up to draw comics. But they didn’t want to work for the Code; they didn’t even want to read Code books. Comics got really dull when they instituted a censorship code in the 1950s. Around 1955, the Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency investigated comic books – there was even a book burning in Binghamton. So we didn’t want to draw Archie or Spiderman or anything like that, so we published our own books, and [they were sold at] head shops at the time.
And I was selling the magazine on the street, and this kid came up to me and said, ‘Hey, that last issue was great, man! We’ve been smoking that dog poop all week.’ And I said, ‘No - it’s satire!’ And he said, ‘No! It’s real! I know!’ So, we decided maybe the hippies weren’t ready for that kind of thing. So, I guess I have a question about – that’s really funny – so, the cultureWait, what was the question? I didn’t quite get to it, actually, but that’s okay. But here is the real question, and it’s more of a speculation than a call for an anecdote. So, back then the culture was very cookie-cutter, and you guys were able to be like, ‘that’s bullshit,’ and you were able to lampoon it. Now, the culture that’s being presented to younger people already comes with a gritty, almost lewd, appeal. Yeah, the new censorship isn’t so much the censoring of sex or excrement…
Above: Issue #1 of Bijou Funnies, from 1968 featuring Nard n’ Pat, perhaps Lynch’s most beloved characters. The characters of Nard n’ Pat are featured on this month’s cover of Carousel, in celebration of turning 50 years old. Opposite page: A 2001 self portrait by Lynch, superimposed on top of an early Nard n’ Pat strip. All images © Jay Lynch. Used with permission.
Regular comic books at that time were considered bundle padding: a comic cost 12 cents then. Playboy cost 50 cents. So the distributor would wrap just about every other magazine with comic books; they’d put them on the outside of the bundle, so the other stuff wouldn’t get ruined, the stuff that they could get higher amounts of money for. Magazine distribution in the ‘30s was consignment distribution: they would give the news dealer credit, and if he sold them, they’d give him his percentage, and if he didn’t sell them, he’d rip off the cover and give them back, just to prove he didn’t sell them, and then the guts would be destroyed. That was because of the Depression, because news dealers didn’t have much of a cash flow to lay out for wholesale.
pers at wholesale prices, and ultimately they would sell them, and if they didn’t sell them, maybe they could return them for credit. So our books, in the beginning, were based on the way that head shops were used to doing business, which was good, because we’d get the money up front; they’d buy the books wholesale. Also, the profit margin: in those days, technology was expensive, and human labor wasn’t. We could get time on a press late at night, on a web press to print the books for very cheap: it’d only cost us a nickel to print the book, and we’d retail for 50 cents and get back a quarter, so it’s a 500% profit margin. And it’s not that way now. Now it costs a dollar-something to print a book and the book sells for $2.50. I don’t know why there are comic books anymore.
But when we did the comics, it was at the head shops, and they would buy rolling pa-
I want to come back to that, but I also want to back up a little bit and talk
about the themes, in terms of what you were doing – like pulling the curtain back on the culture that was being, pretty much, imposed upon people. I guess in the 1960s, there was that whole Leave It to Beaver thing, where people would see this nuclear family and this very happy image of America, with your whole “buy your white bread and drive your car with your kids and your wife,” and it seems that the Underground Comix movement was part of a movement that exposed that- The first successful underground comic was Zap, by Robert Crumb, and he sent me a copy of that, and I was doing a satire magazine at the time – it had comics in it, but it wasn’t a total comic book – and I was doing it with a guy named Skip Williamson, who was a cartoonist in Chicago, so when I saw Zap, I thought, let’s just do a whole comic book, and change
This is what I’m wondering. The censoring is the censoring of truth. Say there’s something that’s true, that’s dangerous to the power structure. What happens now is you got the internet – it’s free; anybody can be on the internet – you put something up, something that’s true, and then within six weeks there’s disinformation on the same topic, with UFO’s and crazy stuff added to it. So that’s how, what you might say has a basis in reality, is watered down and, ultimately, made ridiculous. So, you know, the internet is there, but it’s not that effective, because if anything dangerous to the power structure comes up, within a week there’s a dozen other pieces on the same topic saying it’s Martians and lizards and, you know, whatever… Not that there’s anything… maybe it’s true that it’s Martians and lizards; I don’t know! I don’t know what’s truth anymore. Truth is relative. Has your attitude towards affecting social change and making social commentary through art changed over time? Eh…no. I don’t know. We used to think we were making the world safe for Na-
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JAY LYNCH (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27)
third Underground Comic. And, after that, it just became a craze. Within five years there were a thousand titles.
bakov and Henry Miller and stuff that was censored. James Joyce. What we got was Larry Flynt. Which – he has a right to do what he does. But we expected more from the American people, I think.
Do you think a similar movement could happen now, in the digital age, creatively? Yeah. I don’t know how, exactly. I mean, we did make money off of these books, and actually, over the long run, I think each of the artists made more money than if they were working for Archie or Marvel Comics. Because we’d pay royalties. So every time it was reprinted, they get paid again after it’s sold. So, with the Underground Comix, number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven… were all on the stands at the same time. They never went out of print until people stopped buying them. And then later, they were reprinted in book form.
What do you think about the way that language is regulated, in regard to the power structure, and versus the power of the image? Do you know about Korzybski? Count Korzybski who wrote Science and Sanity - well, his first was a paper called “Time-Binding” in the 1920s, and that evolved into General Semantics. But the book that he’s most known for is Science and Sanity. It’s how words connote images that… Well, what’s his name…Trump said “pussy.” What’s the difference? Fuck – “the F word,” we call it now – used to be unprintable. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer’s book: he uses the word “fug.” But it’s close enough. Everybody knows what it means.
What was the importance of meeting places, like cafés and headshops? We had a meeting – Robert Crumb, me, Skip Williamson, and Jay Kinney; our photograph appears on the inside cover of the first issue of Bijou - at a place in Chicago called the Seminary restaurant, and we decided to pick the last bits of flesh off the dying corpse of comics. […] They called it a conspiracy. Playboy did an article on the Underground Comix called “The Great Comics Conspiracy” pretty early on.
Do you think the deceptively silly nature of comics allowed you to seriously defy censorship? I think that whole hippie thing – it was just so mass – such a big cult, that you couldn’t go after them. It was before AIDS. Everybody was a hippie. There were hippie stores, and regular society didn’t know what they were talking about. There were words… like, Janis Joplin did an interview in the Chicago Tribune in 1967 where somebody said, ‘What are you going to do?’ [And she said,] ‘I’m gonna ball! I’m gonna ball all night!’ And they just thought it meant, you know, have a good time. I guess that’s one way to subvert the censors - use a language that they don’t understand. Could you talk about the power of the grotesque, and the way you’ve used grotesque imagery? I don’t think about these things. The main thing was, we were reacting to the Comics Code, so we’d try to do what was the most shocking stuff just to break the ice. But a lot of that stuff is very deep. Justin Green’s underground comic Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary was the first autobiographical comic. And it’s heavy stuff. It’s like Portnoy’s Complaint, but it’s a comic book. It’s like Philip Roth, or something. Graphic novels, now, are well-respected things. Then again, nobody knows how to read anymore, so… When the Underground Comix movement was first emerging, did you realize what was happening, and what you were a part of? Well, there were underground comics always, you know. In 1910 there were WWI political comics that were considered to be like underground comics. Tijuana bibles, the pornographic little booklets – “The kind men like” – that they’d advertise in magazines. And Joel Beck was doing these little comics called The Alienated War Babies Report. God Nose was a comic done by Jack Jackson in Austin, Texas in 1964. But it didn’t really catch on ’til Crumb did Zap in 1968, and he was shortly followed by Bijou Funnies, my book, and Skip Williamson’s book. Crumb even came into Chicago; he was in every issue of Bijou, too. And in Austin, Texas, Gilbert Shelton did a book called Feds ‘N’ Heads, and that was like the
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So you knew what was happening; you were like: we’re making something happen right now. Yeah; I saved everything. What about in a city like Binghamton, where it’s still cheap enough for artists to live, and we’re doing cool things- Well, Art Spiegelman went to college at, it was called Harpur College then. In the Harpur yearbook, for the year 1970, I think it was, there’s a comic supplement called Phucked-Up Phunnies. That’s bound into the college yearbook. Also, Art has my characters, Nard n’ Pat, and the character he had, Little Man with the Big Mustache, stuck in among the graduating seniors.
Above: The December 2008 edition of Mineshaft, featuring a custom cover by Lynch. Below Left: Early days of a most motley crew, featuring, clockwise from top left: Skip Williamson, Robert Crumb, Jay Kinney, and Lynch. Below Right: early Nard n’ Pat artwork. All images used with permission. © Jay Lynch.
You had drawn Nard n’ Pat for that? They reprinted a Nard n’ Pat in that, that was [from] an early issue of Bijou. Art drew my characters in and his characters, because he was going to college [there]. And you had met Art in New York City? No. I met Art when we were kids. We did magazines - which I already gave to the [Billy Ireland] museum – we did fanzines when we were children. So you were living in the same town? No. In an issue of Cracked magazine there was a letter from a guy named Joe Pilati, advertising his fanzine called Smudge. He would interview the people from Mad and the people from Cracked, and he also had comics in there. There’s a movie about this, called Blood, Boobs, and Beast - it’s about Don Dohler, who was one of us then; he did a fanzine called Wild. We all sent for Smudge, and in Smudge there was a review of Wild, and we all sent for Wild. And it wound up me, Skip, and Art – Art did one called Blasé – and we all went and drew these fanzines, and we were like… I was 16 and Art was 14. And later, he won a Pulitzer Prize for the graphic novel
Maus. Before that, we did fanzines and Garbage Pail Kids and Underground Comix. When we were really young, I went to visit Art… we used to draw in the Port Authority bus terminal – this was when Art was like, 15, and I was 17, and we were doing stuff for fanzines. They had wooden benches. So we were on the floor and cutting our Ditto stencils – you know, you’d draw and make a carbon copy: it’s like those things you’d see at the schools if you’re over 40, that were test sheets printed in purple ink – that’s how we printed the fanzines. So we’re drawing our fanzine stuff, because it’s 4am and there’s nothing to do. Or, no, I guess one of us had to take a bus. So, the place is entirely empty – I know that’s unbelievable today – there was like nobody there except us, drawing our cartoons on these stencils, using a bench for a desk. And the only other two people there are a wino lying in his own juices, and a crazy bag lady. And Art’s sitting there, drawing, and the crazy bag lady comes up – and I’m looking at her, so she’s suspicious of me – but Art’s drawing. Well, she pulls up her shirt, but she’s old, and it’s like, we didn’t want to see that. She says to Art, ‘Hey, boy, you gots dynamite?’ And Art doesn’t even look up. He points to the wino and goes, ‘No, no – that guy over there – he’s got the dynamite.’ So, it was obvious that Art could take care of himself. When Art was 16 he went to the bubblegum company, Topps, because of Jack Davis, who worked for Mad magazine. We really liked Mad magazine, Harvey Kurtzman, and all of the… Help!, Humbug, Trump – there was a magazine called Trump, it had nothing to do with what the word means today, but Kurtzman did that, too. He left Mad in 1956; we liked the pre-Kurtzman Mad; we didn’t so much care about the post-Kurtzman Mad. Jack Davis was one of the artists for Kurtzman’s Mad, and he also worked for Topps chewing gum. He did the backs of the baseball cards, and he did some novelty cards: he did a Funny Valentine series and stuff. Art wanted to try to get an original of Davis’ art, so he went to the bubblegum company, and somehow they let him in, and he gave them a copy of Blasé, his fanzine, and they gave him a Davis original baseball card back drawing, you know, pen and ink, not signed. They filed that issue of Blasé, so that when Art graduated high school, they called him and said, ‘You wanna come work for Topps?’ And he did. So he made a lot of innovations at Topps. Before Art, you’d have to explain to the executives what you intended to do on the gum card, and they wouldn’t understand what you were talking about. So Art developed – he used the Kurtzman idea of doing a rough drawing of the card and, ever since, Topps has worked that way. I wanted to ask you about the Wacky Packages. They were owned by Arthur Shorin. [Topps] was owned by Arthur Shorin, who built the Arthur Shorin wing of NYU it’s a show business place for kids in college – he built a couple of heart transplant hospitals. Now, it’s owned by Michael Eisner. Were you the original creator of
Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids? No; Woody Gelman was the head of the product development department at the time – this is when pop art and Andy Warhol was big – and he wanted to do stickers of just products. But you’d have to get the permission of all these companies and all that stuff. And, plus nobody really believed that any kid would want stickers of products. So Art said, ‘Let us do parodies,’ and Woody said, ‘Okay, we’ll try it both ways.’ And the parodies did better than the other with the test group, so they did a series of what they called Wacky Packages in 1967, and these were things that you’d punch out of cardboard, and lick the back and stick them on stuff. So, you worked with them over time, creating them? What I would do, is I would create a rough - and there’s a lot of my roughs online – in the old days I would color it; in the modern era, when they invented the fax machine, I would just do a line drawing and fax it. Now, I would send it to them in an email. The artist for the original Wacky Packs was a guy named Norm Saunders; he painted magazine covers in the ’30s of pulp science-fiction magazines: usually, a woman tied to a pole surrounded by Nazis, or a woman tied to a stalagmite, stalactite, being attacked by space aliens. That kind of thing. Spicy science fiction. What about the Garbage Pail Kids? How did that come about? Cabbage Patch Kids were big. We did a Wacky Packs series: Mark Newgarden did a Wacky Pack called Garbage Pail Kids and it [depicted] the doll in the box, and Arthur Shorin, the owner of the company, was trying to get the Cabbage Patch license. They wouldn’t give it to him, because they thought bubblegum packages were too low-end; the dolls were like $90 each. They started like a handmade thing; then they became a mass-produced thing. They didn’t get license, so Arthur said, ‘Then let’s do a parody!’ Everybody thought he was crazy, to do a whole series that parodies one product, but Spiegelman figured it out: each doll is a kid’s name with an adjective - the opposite of complimentary - before or after it, like, “Dead Fred.” They still won’t do “Nina Levin.” It’s a little girl flying into the World Trade Center. Too soon. So, was Art Spiegelman the first one to draw them? We did the roughs. The first series of Garbage Pail Kids, all the finished art was done by John Pound, who was one of the Underground Comix guys. Me and Art and Mark Newgarden; we all did roughs. I drew the comics on the back of them. Tom Bunk is another guy who did them; he works for Mad now. We’re all the same thing. Like, once Len Brown - who was the editor of the humor cards Topps - said to me, “If Topps ever goes out of business, the only other place we could work is Mad.” It’s funny that you say that you’re all the same thing. The Underground Comix artists that emerged around the
same time as you: you were clearly part of one larger movement, but each of you had a distinct aesthetic. How did you influence each other while maintaining your own individuality? I think all of the influence of the original guys… well S. Clay Wislon might have influenced us to go further and further over the boundaries of bad taste. But LSD influenced us, and in the beginning, all of the Underground original guys were influenced by EC Comics and Mad - Harvey Kurtzman’s version of Mad magazine. So, when we did the last issue of Bijou Funnies that I edited, Kurtzman did the cover and each one of us did an old Mad comic-style parody of the other guys’ stuff.
So that’s why Topps did what we did, in a way, because if we got a cease and desist letter that said, ‘You have 90 days – take it off the stands,’ and the gum only has a shelf life of 90 days or something like that…
Did you make a point to make your aesthetic distinct from your contemporaries? No. I just drew an old man and a cat. It was like a Mutt and Jeff kind of thing.
See, we were the first to do the Underground Comix, so it was fun. Then it became a thing. It’s just like anything: it’s not fun to repeat something, especially when they realize it’s making money, then they oversee it more heavily and screw it up. You see it throughout history.
That’s Nard n’ Pat; they’re on the cover of this issue of Carousel. Do you want to talk about the significance of their fiftieth anniversary? Now, comics are an adult medium. They weren’t then. They weren’t even a kids’ medium. I didn’t like the comics that came right after the [Good Comics] Code; there was no surprise. Before the Code, a character could commit a crime and be apprehended. After the Code, you couldn’t show a crime being committed. So, these superheroes were fighting these vague organizations that wanted to dominate the world. I just - I can’t identify with that. Fair enough. What are you working on now? Greg [Bohner] had mentioned Mineshaft. Well, that’s the only thing left that prints the old Underground Comic artists on a regular basis. It’s mostly half old guys and half new guys. It started as a literary magazine, but it gets less literary and more comic-y. But now he’s going to do it more often, and I hope he gets more printed word in it. I drew the covers for these [issues of Mineshaft]; Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb is in there. Mostly, the old ones are “fancy” cartoonists that who do really detailed things, as opposed to cartoons that take less time to draw than they take you to read. Their concerns are with chaos and detail. As a satirist, you seem to have an appreciation for satirizing a brand and knocking it off its pedestal and deprogramming. Yeah, it teaches kids to think for themselves. In the beginning, Wacky Packages were critiques of the product. Like, Good & Plenty was Good & Empty, because the box would settle and it’s always half-full. But they don’t do that anymore because it’s true. You know, if it’s true, then, they can’t do it, because they’ll be stopped. Mad used to run ad parodies, until they started doing the reprint books - and the reprint books were selling well – and they knew that whenever they parodied something they’d get a letter that said, ‘You have 90 days to stop circulating this.’ They were monthly magazines, so they’d be gone in 90 days; they didn’t care. But then, after that, if they did parodies that would preclude the possibility of ever reprinting it.
And, even then, it’s not that palatable. One would hope, after seeing parodies, that one would think, these brands: this is ridiculous; we don’t need this. You need something, but they’re never actually where they… Like, if they changed the name of the “Big Mac” to the “Big Motherfucker” this week, you could sell a whole lot of Big Macs, but they’re not gonna do that until Spongebob does anal on TV.
Mad is just a shadow of its former self; because, I keep thinking of: who’s buying this? Originally it was bought by adults, and then they thought, oh, the college students’ll buy it; we’ll market to them. Then they get to high school students, and they think, oh the high school students: we’ll market to them. And then they hit the nine-year-olds, and they market to the nine-year-olds. Now they’re not even reaching the fetuses. Now they’re… I don’t know what it is. It’s simple stuff. It now has ads – there are ads in Mad, real ads – it’s in color… they’ve even been known to do three different covers for one issue, so the collectors will have to buy all three, whereas they started out mocking consumerism. The same with Wacky Packs: they have different color borders collectors need. It’s like the opposite of what it was. They don’t even actually criticize the product anymore. Do you have any words of wisdom, for the generation coming up, as someone who’s seen this happen? Well, you know, there were half as many people on the planet when we did the Underground Comix, or at least when Kurtzman did Mad, the world population was half of what it is. So now, everybody that’s been born since then has only a fraction of the electrical energy than the people that were born at an earlier time, and there’s only so much electricity to go around there. I think, in a thousand years, the satire that existed within our time: from Lenny Bruce to George Carlin, to Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, all the dead… If it lives in history, it will be considered, in a thousand years, that our time that we live in is the latter days of the Enlightenment. Because that’s what those guys seem to have been doing: they were talking to a deluded audience, though. I like to do comics these days because no one understands them. Usually, I would say that I would have something to sell, but I don’t really, except Mineshaft, and maybe the idea that people should think for themselves. For more information on Jay Lynch and his cohorts, or to order a copy of Mineshaft, check out mineshaftmagazine.com.
April 2016 triple cities carousel 29
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was more envious than angry. “He was an artist and he knew he was an artist and he knew from the time he was 16 years old he was going be an artist; where I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. So to have that, to know that has got to be an amazing thing. I never had it. And I envied that even as a kid.” But he reflects that the degree of his father’s passion was not worth its consequences in the end: “He did a lot of printmaking, and using solvents and acids, and he just did it and he didn’t wear masks, he didn’t have ventilators, and ultimately all those fumes and things killed him.” Kirk flailed a bit more for his father before landing on a vocation. He quit art school after two years, having always had the feeling that he was stuck in his father’s shadow; all of his art teachers since 8th grade were friends of Viggo’s. “Every one of them was somebody who had come and eaten at our table. It was somebody that was like, Bob at home, and Mr. Carter in the classroom.”
Viggo Madsen. Photo Provided.
Viggo Madsen retrospective opens at Phelps Looking back at the life of a prolific local legend by Ilana Lipowicz
I
N 1998, THE YEAR Viggo Holm Madsen passed away, the search engine Google was founded, Bill Clinton was still president, and the movie Titanic broke box office records. Now, 18 years later, the prolific Long Island artist’s work will for the first time be displayed as a retrospective, at Binghamton’s Phelps Mansion, curated by his wife Lois, his son Kirk, and Kirk’s wife Theresa. Viggo was a man who had the special combination of extraordinary discipline and unfaltering love for art. While he was primarily known as a printmaker, he produced in a huge variety of media: printing, watercolor, etchings, leatherwork, jewelry-making, photography and drawing. “Viggo Holm Madsen: A Life of Art: A Retrospective,” opening April 1st, will showcase the evolution of his work, from his early watercolors to his final works in fabric dying. Viggo was born in Kaas, Denmark, where his father was apprentice carriage builder to the royal family. With this skill, his father earned himself a ticket to the United States to work for Fisher Body. “He built the original wooden station wagons – the ‘woodies,’ as they’re called,” tells Viggo’s son Kirk. “He took the job here - and he came here with nothing, with zero - and he had a piece of paper in his pocket that somebody had written out for him in English that said, ‘A cup of coffee and a ham sandwich, please.’ And for months he ate nothing but ham sandwiches and a cup of coffee.” He worked hard for two years to save enough money to bring over the rest of his
family, and with that money and the sponsorship of missionaries of the Church of God, Viggo arrived with his mother and brother in Connecticut at the age of five. Viggo began to seriously pursue art when he was 16, at the encouragement of an art teacher named Ms. Pratt. On the back of one of his pieces from that time, Viggo wrote down the story of Ms. Pratt warning him to “stay away from Truman Capote,” who was in his class. A copy of the story will be displayed in the gallery next to the original work. Viggo was pulled in several directions in his early life. His religious parents pushed him to become a preacher, but he didn’t take to the idea. He was also a talented jazz trumpet player, and he played with a group for a while before deciding that the musician’s life wasn’t for him. With that, he chose to be an artist. He earned his BFA and MFA, both in Syracuse, and would later on study at the prestigious Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. He also returned to Denmark, where he learned batik, a technique of wax-resistant dying applied to cloth. Viggo’s continual investigation of new media and techniques was due in part to necessity in his vocation as a teacher. He began teaching art in Marathon, New York, then at Roslyn High School on Long Island, and later at Nassau Community College. Kirk recalls: “He needed to stay on top of a lot of different things, and if a student expressed an interest in a different thing, he needed to know how to encourage them into doing it, give them some instruction.”
Kirk took an interest in art from a young age as well, which was undoubtedly fed by the wealth of it in his surroundings growing up. Viggo collected art, produced a continuous flow of his own, and took advantage of Long Island’s proximity to New York City to take his family to museums. “By the time I was ten years old, I’d been to every museum in New York City and all the major galleries. As a kid I got yelled at for running down the ramp at the Guggenheim,” Kirk says. But he also remembers that the activities that other kids enjoyed with their fathers were different with his own. “He didn’t do things with his son; he took me to do things while he did art. So he would, for example, take me to a baseball game, and I would sit there and watch the baseball game and he would sit there and draw pictures of everybody around us. Or take me fishing, and I would fish and he would do watercolors. It was like whatever I did, I did by myself and then he was there, but he wasn’t there; he was lost in his world.” It’s not that he was closed-off; Kirk remembers waking up one morning and hearing a bunch of men in his kitchen speaking Spanish. It turned out that a van had been parked in front of their house all night, and when Viggo found out, he went out and introduced himself. They turned out to be migrant farm workers on their way to a rally for Cesar Chavez, and he invited all eight of them inside for breakfast. Viggo was outgoing, just often preoccupied. While his father’s relative absence stirred up a normal level of youthful resentment, Kirk
When Kirk decided to go into the world of rock and roll, Viggo supported him wholeheartedly. Kirk worked behind the scenes for the likes of the Village People, the Beach Boys and the Kinks. After years of travelling between New York and London, he moved to Las Vegas, where he worked at the House of Blues while Theresa worked at the Riviera Hotel. Then, four years ago, they moved to Binghamton to be closer to Kirk’s mother, Lois. Here they manage Gallery 41 in Owego and involve themselves where they can in the local arts scene. Kirk has come back to making his own art as well. He does batik and Japanese shibori dying among clothing and other work, often looking to his father’s work to try to learn his techniques. “Now I learn a lot from my father by looking at what he did, and I sit there and I go, alright dad, how the hell did you do this? It’s kind of like reverse engineering.” Having showed in his lifetime over 200 solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe, Viggo never had a show which encompassed his life’s work from start to finish – or in this case, finish to start: it will be ordered backwards chronologically, for a sort of Benjamin Button-like effect on his work. There is always an element of mystery when viewing the work of an artist who’s deceased, but with 18 years between his life and today, that mystery will be felt even by those who knew and were closest to him, his family and his many colleagues and friends. Says Kirk, “The frustrating thing is there’s so many times I look at his stuff and I read- he left like journals and all kinds of things, and I found poetry he wrote, and he made books from scratch, the paper the binding, he wrote in them, did illustrations in things. And I know him a lot better now than I knew him when he was alive.” “Viggo Holm Madsen: A Life of Art: A Retrospective” will be shown at the Phelps Mansion from April 1st–14th, with a First Friday opening reception from 6-9pm. More info on Viggo and Kirk is available at madsenarts.com
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From 1:00-3:30pm, April 9th, the winery will welcome guests to enjoy wagon rides, live music, animal meet & greets, kid crafts, snacks, and tastings. At 1:30pm, Animal Adventure & Black Bear Winery will make a big announcement about their recent collaboration and unveil a very exciting new wine & animal resident at Animal Adventure! There is no cost for this event! Wine will be available for tastes or by the glass. Please join us & spread the word!
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Tues-Thurs 12-6, Fri 12-9, Sat-Sun 12-6 32 carouselrag.com
comedy. morist’s City of Birth. Well, that changed things. The people were very interested in seeing how I could help to promote the upcoming event, the one taking place on April 13th at 7pm in the Osterhout Theatre at the Anderson Center, located on Binghamton University’s campus. They were so interested in my skills as a writer that they wanted to know if I would be willing to hand out fliers and hang posters around town to promote the reading. But! - I told them - my article would be the equivalent of free advertising! They asked where they should mail the promotional materials. I gave them my address. I am not above street-teaming for David Sedaris. In fact, when the people of Binghamton see me taping a poster inside a café window, they are probably thinking, “Who is that smirking, handsome devil whose visage appears before me on such a finely printed poster? Why, it’s humorist David Sedaris, author of bestselling books such as Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked! What fine collections of essays those are. Miniature memoirs, even. That guy is hilarious!” They will then go on to deduce that I, the mysterious and lovely woman with a dispenserful of invisible tape, must have some sort of in with Mr. Sedaris, or perhaps even the entire Sedaris family, to have been entrusted with these posters.
Better than this. David Sedaris. Provided.
David Sedaris returns to the motherland by Heather Merlis
D
AVID SEDARIS IS NOT giving interviews. I had to be told a few times before coming to terms with it, and am still not sure that one could say I “respect” this fact. When I first learned that “most beloved living American humorist” David Sedaris was coming to town, I had been lying in bed, when I received a text message from my editor-in-chief: “David Sedaris is speaking at the Anderson Center in April [on the 13th at the Osterhout Theatre]. This is your chance to get a killer interview.” No pressure. But this was January! I had plenty of time. So I jumped out of bed and, flinging open my rickety laptop, emailed Mr. Sedaris’ people immediately.
Maybe I should have slept on it. Maybe I shouldn’t keep my cell phone next to my bed, because it’s a really unhealthy habit. But the deed was done, the email sent. And after being told (in a very prompt reply) that “David isn’t giving any interviews at this time,” I had to make really, really sure that he wasn’t, so I emailed just a few more times. Just to be sure. After a few resounding “not giving interviews at this time,” I finally accepted the truth: David Sedaris is too good to give us an interview. That’s not to say that he has a superiority complex: he never puts himself on a pedestal. In his work, he scrutinizes others without elevating himself. He takes no umbrage admitting to his shortcomings, while still somehow justifying his questionable actions. And he writes it all down and to share
with the world. This is his livelihood, and it’s also probably a big part of why he wouldn’t talk to me: why should he give away the milk for free? With the interview out of the question and Mr. Sedaris as my inspiration, I decided to stoop to a new low: I would shamelessly request comps. I would be sure to barely introduce myself before asking for something at no cost, and, after being ignored, use words like “pester” in my follow-up email. I, too, can make questionable decisions and hold my head high. I can even write about it. After a couple of no-replies, I reconsidered my approach. I reached out yet again to his people, only this time, I took the time to explain who I was, and let them know that I wrote for a paper based out of Our Dear Hu-
The truth is, that the biggest in I have with Mr. Sedaris is that I have read a lot of his stories. I inexplicably owned two copies of Me Talk Pretty One Day for several years. I even made the ill-advised choice to read his breakout story, “SantaLand Diaries,” to my seventh-grade English class a while back, an event to which my students would forever thereafter recall as the time I read the “vagina story” (note: the story is not about vaginas; it merely refers to menstruation, among many other things). Needless to say, I am no longer a teacher. Now, living the glamorous writer’s life, I sometimes find myself with a drink in hand during school hours. I would feel guilty, drinking while working, but I remind myself that David Sedaris always used to drink when he wrote. He would incentivize his writing by drinking – but that was years ago, when he still drank. He doesn’t drink anymore. Despite this, he will be visiting the Triple Cities. Since moving to Binghamton, I have fantasized about interviewing David Sedaris. When I finally understood that that simply was not happening, I attempted to write this piece in the style of Mr. Sedaris, but let’s face it: if I were able to do that, I would be Sedaris, and you would be laughing hysterically right now. This is why he will be speaking at the Anderson Center, in the Osterhout Theatre on April 13th, and I will be sitting in my hardearned free seat. Because, while I may be funny, David Sedaris is better than this. For tickets to the reading and book signing, call the Anderson Center box office at (607) 777-2787 or visit andersoncenter.showare. com.
April 2016 triple cities carousel 33
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STEAK & CHEESE OMELETTE- served with peppers, onions, homefries & toast. ROOT BEER FLOAT PANCAKE- 1 giant pancake topped w/ vanilla ice cream & homemade root beer syrup. CHILI & CHEESE OMELETTE- w/ homemade chili, melted cheddar, homefries & toast. GRILLED BREAKFAST BURRITO- scrambled eggs, cheese, salsa, hot sauce & choice of meat w/ homefries. BANANAS FOSTER OVER FRENCH TOAST, PANCAKE, OR BELGIUM WAFFLE- homemade caramel sauce infused w/ sliced bananas, topped w/ ice cream & whipped cream. FRENCH TOAST BREAKFAST SANDWICH- two eggs, cheese, & choice of meat on French Toast w/ syrup to dip. HOMEMADE PUMPKIN PANCAKES OR WAFFLEthey literally melt in your mouth! LOADED BREAKFAST PIZZA- eggs, peppers, onions, bacon, sausage & cheese on a crispy tortilla. CHEDDAR GRITS HOMEMADE CORNED BEEF HASH 34 carouselrag.com
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GRILLED MAC & CHEESE SANDWICHw/ tomato, bacon & homemade cheese sauce on grilled sourdough. STROKA GENIUS SANDWICH- grilled ham, melted swiss & apples on grilled marble rye w/ mayo & mustard. CHIPOTLE CHICKEN SANDWICH- w/ melted cheese, bacon & homemade chipotle ranch on a Kaiser roll. HAND CRAFTED STUFFED BURGERS- choose from bacon cheddar, jalapeno pepperjack, mushroom swiss & bacon bleu. CAROLINA BBQ TURKEY MELT- house roasted turkey, bbq sauce, cheese & coleslaw on grilled sourdough. “THAT” FRIED CHICKEN SANDWICH- marinated chicken breast, deep fried & served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion & mayo on a grilled Kaiser roll. Also available buffalo bleu style. GRILLED CUBANO- sliced pork loin, ham, dill pickles, swiss & mustard on grilled ciabatta w/ chips & a pickle. FISH TACOS- (3x) beer battered cod, chipotle/jalapeno slaw, salsa, cilantro, chipotle sour cream & chips.
food and drink.
Photo by Phil Westcott.
Gettin’ down in the farmhouse Enjoying every last brew at Owego’s Farmhouse Brewery by Phil Westcott
I
F YOU’RE LOOKING TO TRY some of the most distinctive and interesting beers in the area, grab a friend or two and head on up to the Farmhouse Brewery. Located at 14 George St in Owego, the building is easy to spot from Route 96, with its distinctive signage and red painted farm exterior. The Farmhouse Brewery is dedicated to staying as local as possible; no beer on tap is produced with less than 80% New York State ingredients, and most are 90-100%. This leads to an ever-changing lineup of beer, with varied ingredients from gourds to coffee and more. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I grabbed a good friend of mine, hit the road, and tried all 14 brews on tap. Arriving at the brewery, we sauntered in to the cozy tap room. Modest yet welcoming, local products line the walls, including Fingerlakes soap and lip balm, and Farmhouse’s own brand of dog treats and beer soap. The hardwood floors and rustic decorations enhance the relaxed, down-home feeling of the place. Behind the bar, the wall of beers on tap
is impressive. Artisanal soda is also on tap for the child dragged in with their parents, or for a thoroughly responsible designated driver. There are also little trays of pretzels on the bar to cleanse your palate between beers. I used them for general munching. If you plan on trying all of their beers, I suggest starting with the light beer flight. This will keep your palate from getting too confused. ‘Don’t Miss a Beet’ is, as the title implies, a Saison made with beets. Smooth, yet earthy, with a deep pink color, the beer was delicious. It made a swell first impression on my tongue. ‘The Crazy Daisy,’ a Belgian Triple, was round and delectable, with a light fruity flavor. It clocks in at over 8% ABV, so by the end of the first flight I was laughing a little too hard at my friend’s jokes. While considering that she may indeed be the funniest person in the world, I decided to move from four-ounce to two-ounce pours. It is really amazing that they offer unlimited two-ounce pours, because it makes trying and truly enjoying each brew possible. We finished off our glasses, and moved on to the dark beers. Oh, the dark beers. They must be involved
with black magic to be as delicious as they are. Up first was a delightful Scottish ale, called the ‘Peat and Repeat.’ This is, by almost 10%, the least local beer, but as a Scottish ale, it needs Scottish peat, which (you guessed it) is from Scotland. Ah well. Smokey and flavorful, it is definitely a beer to savor. ‘Con/fla/ gra/tion’ is a Coconut Coffee stout, and tastes just as scrumptious as it sounds. The coconut is light and airy, but wonderfully fills in the cracks between coffee and beer. The ‘Barn Burner’ is an oaked Dubbel ale, and with a steeply sweet and rugged flavor; like a lover showing up at your door with flowers after an argument. After a few more pours, we moved on to the sours and the ciders. Sour beers are for the more adventurous beer drinker, certainly not the faint of heart. They often contain lactic acid, and the ‘Sour Evangelist,’ a gose brewed with tomatillos, is one of them. The extreme sourness sometimes found in goses is balanced by the addition of tomatillos, making the ‘Sour Evangelist’ a good starting point for anyone diving into the world of sour beers. The ‘Smokey MacDaddy’ cider was one of the most interesting brews on tap - you can smell the fireplace coming
off the glass, and the usually crisp taste of ciders is coupled with the camaraderie of a roaring campfire. The ‘Trellis’ cider is a perfect mixture of sweet and dry, leaving you aching for more. One of the coolest things about the brewery is its laid back vibe. As soon as you walk in, you feel like you’re part of a family. The business itself is a family operation, and you can taste the time and effort they put into their craft. They also host a variety of different events, and are extremely dog friendly. On the day of my visit, they had just finished wrapping up a bacon cook-off, with everything from bacon tacos to maple-bacon cupcakes, which I could not resist. Later, a patron showed up with a homemade birthday cake, and made sure everyone in the taproom got a slice. So mosey on down the Farmhouse Brewery, try everything, and learn a little more about beer and company. The Farmhouse Brewery is located at 14 George St. in Owego. There is some food available on weekends. More info available online at thefarmhousebrewery.com.
April 2016 triple cities carousel 35
food briefs
BING. RESTAURANT WEEK
Yes, six months have passed, and it’s that time again: Binghamton Restaurant Week (aka Binghamton Restaurant Ten Days aka Food Service Worker Appreciation Week) is back, April 5th-14th! And with 35 restaurants participating, ten days is not enough! The list is bigger than ever, including newcomers like Strange Brew and Muffer’s Kitchen. Prices range from a $10 prix fix lunch to $30 dinner, if you’re into fine dining (don’t fear: there are a whole range of eateries in between those two price points). Restaurant Week is a tradition that just won’t quit, giving that extra nudge to those of us who wouldn’t otherwise go out to eat on the regular (I lie – my fridge almost exclusively consists of leftovers from restaurants). But we know that some of you actually take time to engage in the healthy practice of cooking for yourself and your loved ones. And to those of you, we say: give yourself a break! Visit a new eatery or an old favorite, now that their menu features a little something different. Just remember: your servers work extra hard this time of year; please show your appreciation, and exercise patience when waiting for your table. It is a virtue! Visit eatbing.com for the full list of participating restaurants and prices.
THE SHOP’S 1ST B-DAY BASH
Our favorite ultra-chic café/bar/creperie is celebrating its very first birthday this month! Leave it to Le Shop (if you’re fancy) to have only the hippest of events for its beloved patrons. They’re closing down the street on April 8th for a good old-fashioned block party! At 8pm there will be a break dance-off with breakers from Cornell, Binghamton University, and Ithaca College, and some local professional b-boys, including Mike Rez. Triple Cities Vintage will be setting up a pop-up shop to vend during the contest, and Muckles Ink will be live event T-shirt printing ($15 a shirt, and a free PBR with every purchase)! The dance contest will be followed promptly by a beat box-off by Binghamton University students. The party moves indoors at 9pm, when Girot Rumber o, a Latin Roots Fusion band from Ithaca (featuring The Shop’s own Keaton Rood) will be providing music for the evening. There will be drink specials, but the kitchen will be closed (though they will be participating in Restaurant Week until 7:30pm if you want to grab a bite prior to the festivities). The Shop is located at 219 Washington Street in Binghamton.
WINE & FOOD FEST AT ROBERSON
As if April in Binghamton didn’t give foodies enough reason to start drooling, here comes what just may be the biggest epicurean event of the year. The Roberson’s 16th Annual Wine & Food Fest will take place on Thursday, April 21st from 5:30-8:30pm. While partaking in food from more than 40 local eateries and sipping wine from over 30 NY State wineries, guests will be free to wander the grounds of the museum and take in its galleries or relax in the courtyard. And there will be raffles! Tickets are $45 for members, $50 for non-members of the Roberson. The Roberson Museum & Science Center is locat-
ed at 30 Front St. in Binghamton. Visit roberson.org for tickets and more details.
BINGHAMTON VEGAN DRINKS AT WATER STREET
Since they renovated their space, WSBC has stepped up their game. Be a brewery as they may, they are catering to the mindful masses. Their next Binghamton Vegan DrinksMeet the Chef event will be held on Sunday, April 24th from 3-6pm. Binghamton Vegan Drinks is a group for vegans, vegetarians, and those who are veg-curious and want to make friends and have some fun. This month, Water Street’s Chef Philip is creating a special menu and will speak about vegan cooking. Feel free to ask questions! Admission is free; the only cost is for food and drink. Water Street has also added Pretzel Yoga to their calendar, on one Sunday each month. In partnership with Binghamton Zen Den, they will offer an hour of yoga on premises prior to opening. After feeding the body and mind with yoga, participants get to enjoy homemade pretzels and beer. April’s Pretzel Yoga is already sold out, but the next one will be held on Sunday, May 22nd at 10:45am. Signup is available at the pub, and tickets must be purchased in advance. For $13, you get an hour of yoga, a beer, and an order of Water Street’s famous homemade pretzels. Water Street Brewing Co. is located at 168 Water St. in Binghamton.
MAC & CHEESE FEST
Now, here’s something that makes sense. For all of its tapas and martinis, Binghamton is – let’s be real – a gritty American town. We make a damn good burger. We have spiedies. And every restaurant in town claims that their best mac and cheese is the best. But what’s remarkable is that, no matter where you’re eating in Binghamton, you may well be convinced that you are having the best mac and cheese in town. And it’s with good reason: the region’s rich Italian heritage melded with the college scene and bar culture: what more appropriate food could arise from this perfect storm? Now, finally, we may learn whose mac and cheese reigns supreme. The first ever Mac & Cheese Fest will take place on April 28th at the Holiday Inn, 2-8 Hawley Street in Binghamton. In addition to beer being offered by six regional breweries, 35 restaurants will be competing for five crowning titles, including Kid’s Choice and Out of the Blue Box. And several of these restaurants don’t even normally make mac & cheese (like Kampai Japanese Steak House), though there will be the classics (Galaxy and Lost Dog, to name a couple favorites), and some unexpected participants (Down to Earth Whole Foods). This event is a fundraiser for the Binghamton Philharmonic, and we would give you ticketing info, except… it’s sold out (not surprisingly; it sounds amazing). So let the above be a primer for those who were savvy enough to snag tickets, and for the rest of us poor saps, now we know what we’re missing. To learn more, visit macfest2016.com. I’ll see you at the second annual!
Food briefs compiled by Heather Merlis: food@carouselrag.com
36 carouselrag.com
THYME & SPACE A featured monthly recipe from the kitchen of Galaxy Brewing Company’s Chef Brian Lovesky
Photo by Ty Whitbeck.
GERMAN STYLE SOFT PRETZELS WITH ALE MUSTARD SAUCE Time: 1.5 hours. Yield: 12 pretzels.
FRI-SAT TAKEOUT & DELIVERY TIL 3:30AM
Ingredients: -2 tablespoons barley malt syrup or brown sugar -2 tablespoons instant yeast -2 tablespoons lard or softened unsalted butter -6 cups bread flour or AP Flour -1.5 tablespoon kosher salt -food-grade lye, for dipping (see note*) -coarse sea salt, for topping -Ale Mustard Sauce, recipe follows Directions: 1. In a mixing bowl, combine barley malt syrup, yeast, and 2 cups warm water. Stir and let proof till foamy, continue mixing while adding lard and half the flour. Then add kosher salt, and slowly add the remaining flour. Stir until mixture comes together in a shaggy mass. 2. Remove dough form mixing bowl and knead the dough by hand for 5-8 minutes, until smooth and supple. Shape into a large rectangle and cut into 12 pieces. Let rest for 5 minutes. 3. Roll out each piece into a rope about 20-30 inches long (starting from the center and working toward the ends, the ends should be thin and the center fat). Shape into rolls or pretzels. Transfer pretzels to a baking sheet and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes, then place in refrigerator for at least one hour to overnight. 4. Heat oven to 425 degrees. In a deep container, make a solution of 1/2 cup lye and 10 cups water; pour lye carefully into water to avoid splashing. Wearing rubber gloves, dip each pretzel in solution, turning it over for 15 seconds, and place back on baking sheet. * In place of Food Grade Lye: In a large pot, over medium high heat, combine 8 cups of water and ½ Cup baking soda. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Boil the pretzels, one at a time, for about 30 seconds or until they float. Transfer the boiled pretzels to the prepared baking sheet using a perforated spatula.
5. Sprinkle pretzels with coarse salt. Bake about 15 minutes or until deep brown. While baking, mix all ingredients of Ale Mustard Sauce. Remove pretzels from oven, serve warm and enjoy!! ALE MUSTARD SAUCE Combine: -1 tablespoon dry mustard -¼ Cup Dijon mustard -1 tablespoon whole grain Dijon -2 tablespoon Beer of your choice -salt and pepper to taste Born and raised in Broome County, Chef Brian grew up surrounded by the many flavors of the different ethnic cultures of our area. He is the Executive Chef at Galaxy Brewing Company in Downtown Binghamton (and former Executive Chef at Tranquil Bar & Bistro). A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America with 20 years of restaurant experience in Upstate NY, New Orleans, and Nashville, Chef Brian currently resides in Vestal with his wife, two sons, and a daughter.
April 2016 triple cities carousel 37
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film. -A Day’s Work (April 29) A smartly composed 2012 documentary, A Day’s Work examines the nature of the growing trend of temp work and the dangers that face some temporary workers. At the center of the documentary is the story of one individual temp worker, Lawrence Daquan Davis. Nicknamed Day, he was killed on his first day on the job at a Bacardi bottling plant in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was put to work with only a 15 minute training session, amidst a host of safety violations. Because he was hired by a staffing agency, the company took the stance that his death was not its responsibility, as he was not one of their employees. Much of what we learn about Day comes from his family members, counterbalancing a cold legal issue with the emotional reality of the loss of a man.
The Bundy Museum is screening a series of Twilight Zone episiodes this month, including “Walking Distance” (pictured), which was greatly inspired by Serling’s childhood in Binghamton. Used with permission.
SCREENING AT YOUR HOME PUBLIC LIBRARY IN JC
-The Theory of Everything (April 19) This 2014 biopic on Stephen Hawking is named after his 2004 memoir. The film is interested less in Hawking’s life as a scientist and focuses more on his relationship with his first wife, Jane- from the time they met through the progression of his ALS, which drove him into a wheelchair and diminished his use of his muscles. Today, he is the fascinating human whose brain holds an astounding level of knowledge, but who can only communicate that knowledge using a muscle is his left cheek that he uses to type into the keyboard screen attached to his computer. Even without delving far into his research on cosmology and black holes, the evolution from an able-bodied person to the iconic figure we know today makes for a compelling story. The viewing begins at 6pm. Your Home Public Library, located at 107 Main St. in Johnson City, hosts regular movie nights and film screenings throughout the year. More info is available at yhpl.org.
HARPUR CINEMA AT BU
-The Wedding Doll (April 8 & 10) This 2015 Israeli film tells the story of a young woman named Hagit who has a mild mental disability and a romantic vision of the world outside of her protective mother’s protective hold. She works in a toilet paper factory and makes tiny figurines of girls with dresses made using toilet paper. Hagit is also in love with her manager’s son Omri, although she does not fully perceive the reality of her situation and the limitations placed on her by social stigma. Set in a small town in the Negev desert, the film is laid against the vast desert landscape, flattened into shallow focus for a clean cinematic effect.
-8 1/2 (April 15 & 17) 8 1/2 is the renowned Italian director and screenwriter Federico Fellini’s most influential film, consistently hailed one of the greatest films of all time. Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido, a stumped film director thought to represent Fellini’s filmmaker alter ego. The film weaves between reality and his fantasy, as he falters before a fumbling production and an equally perturbing personal life, giving off the rambling feeling of Guido’s confusion in spite of its extremely tightly structured form. Fellini displays keen understanding of his medium, prioritizing the image over ideas and story. Harpur Cinema screenings take place at 7:30 on Friday and Sunday in Lecture Hall 6 at Binghamton University. Admission costs $4.
VISITING FILM & VIDEO ARTISTS & SPEAKERS AT BU
-The Lanthanide Series (April 19) Erin Espelie’s The Lanthanide Series has been called experimental documentary and non-fiction narrative video essay. Each of its 15 chapters is based on one of the 15 Lanthanide elements on the periodic table- those which are essential to black mirrors, which make up the centerpiece of the film. It was mostly shot in the reflections of these socalled black mirrors: Aztec obsidian discs and the screen of a defunct iPad- what she calls the “modern-day black mirror.” She writes, “The novelty in image-capture aside, the piece is a meditation on how technology has been shaping the way we see the world, how we record the present and replay the past. It is also a consideration of the unusual visual and aural properties of rare earth elements (or the Lanthanides of the Periodic Table) and the political and environmental costs of their mining.”
Film briefs compiled by Ilana Lipowicz: film@carouselrag.com
-Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus (April 26) Ken Jacobs, former professor and co-founder of BU’s cinema department, will be returning to present his new 3D video, Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus. Wrote Jim Hoberman for the New York Times, the video “is a perceptual ruckus created from time-exposed, digitally-enhanced 3-D slides. The nighttime street is transformed into a dynamic tapestry of light streaks and reflections that, floating in space, are at once transparent and eerily solid. Reproaching the visual paucity of Hollywood 3-D while reworking the compositional notions of his erstwhile teacher, the Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann, Joys is as experimental and energetic as anything in Mr. Jacobs’s long career.” The showings and following discussions are free and take place at 7:30pm in Lecture Hall 6 at Binghamton University.
BUNDY SOCIAL JUSTICE & LABOR FILM SERIES
The Bundy “Seeds Beneath The Snow” series continues. Each showing will start at 6:30pm and will take place in the Bundy Annex Theatre behind the museum. Free Admission and refreshments. -Irwin and Fran (April 14) The 2014 documentary is a portrait of “Professor” Irwin Corey, a stand-up comedian now in his 90s who was blacklisted for his political leanings and more or less faded into obscurity. Title withstanding, his wife Fran is a sideline character. Susan Sarandon, a longtime friend of Irwin’s, narrates the film. The documentary’s home-movie style of filming didn’t lend itself much to commercial success, but it provides insight into a lost link in the history of standup, as well as on the effects of being politically opinionated and in the public eye in one’s career.
-In the Zone: Rod Serling’s Time Travel Revisited (April 16) The Rod Serling Archive at the Bundy will deliver a night of Twilight Zone episodes about time travel. Rod Serling dove into time travel from the get-go. The first episode screened will be the one-hour pilot, “The Time Element,” about a man named Peter Jenson who goes to a psychoanalyst to explain a recurring dream in which he wakes up in Honolulu, Hawaii, just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, he believes that it is not a dream, but that he is actually time travelling. Following the one-hour pilot is the episode “Walking Distance,” thing Binghamton favorite in which a man, finding that his car has broken down just miles away from his childhood neighborhood, decides to take a walk down memory lane, only to find his old town exactly as he remembered it (Binghamton’s Rec Park carousel, where Serling played as a kid, has a major role, too!) Doors open at 6pm, with the show starting at 6:30pm. The Bundy Museum is located at 127-129 Main St. in Binghamton. More info at bundymuseum.org. SHOWING THIS MONTH AT THE ART MISSION -I Saw the Light (April 1) After 50 years of sitting on the rights to Hank Williams’ music, Troy Tomlinson decided that the time is right for a biopic on the country music legend. The life of a country music star was not always easy, as we’ve seen in similar movies such as the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line- and Williams was no exception. He was an alcoholic and struggled to stay faithful in his marriage while touring for many months out of the year. Hank is played by the English actor Tom Hiddleston, who sings all of the music himself and even closely mimics Williams’ yodel-inflected style. While Hiddleston’s performance has been praised, many critics are saying the film, overall, doesn’t go quite in-depth enough with its subject, nor does it always succeed as a compelling narrativeglossing over important life events in favor of showing cantankerous outbursts. The Art Mission & Theater is an art cinema and located at 61 Prospect Ave. in Binghamton. More info and full screening schedule at artmission.org.
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books.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
exp. 5/31 10% with this coupon 10 off % Off With This Ad, Exp. 5/31/16 (Redeemable for in store stock only)
Originally published as The Taliban Shuffle, Kim Barker’s memoir provides black comedy for a forgotten war.
by Natassia Enright
(on loan from Your Home Public Library)
“I had always wanted to meet a warlord.” Thus opens Kim Barker’s darkly comedic memoir, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, originally published as The Taliban Shuffle in 2010, in which she records her experiences starting out as a journalist in Afghanistan in scathingly funny prose. The warlord in question here is Pacha Khan Zadran, a sometime U.S. ally whose relationship with the Americans has gone sour, resulting in the death of his only son. He resembles, Barker writes, “a chubby Saddam Hussein,” and is surrounded by a phalanx of skinny young men with Kalashnikov rifles, eyeliner, and flowers tucked behind their ears. It’s an absurd image that Barker captures with gleeful precision, but the grim reality is never far beneath: her long-suffering translator, Farouq, offers the warlord a translation of her words so tactful that it repeatedly crosses the line into outright falsehood, and they later learn that two other American journalists were held captive and threatened with death by the same man that Barker describes as “more bluster than bullet”. It’s a fitting introduction to both post-9/11 Afghanistan and Barker herself, self-described as a person who had been a “neurotic, everything-o-phobic child, always convinced that every health problem was the dreaded cancer, always worried about stranger-danger.” On the surface, she seems an unlikely character to dive headfirst into the adrenaline-junkie lifestyle of a war correspondent; however, she writes, “Afghanistan seemed familiar. It had jagged blue-and-purple mountains, big skies, and bearded men in pickup trucks stocked with guns and hate for the government. It was like Montana—just on different drugs.” As a young, unmarried woman with no dependents, Barker gets picked to be a foreign correspondent, and in short order she has broken up with her mildly neurotic longterm, long-distance boyfriend, befriended a number of questionable political figures, and thrown herself into the social scene of wartime Kabul, which she describes as resembling “a cross between a fraternity party and the Hotel California”, certainly not an image of foreigners to inspire trust from the locals. As a slightly-belated coming-of-age story (Barker is 32 at the outset), Whiskey Tango/Taliban Shuffle is entertaining, but as an analysis of America’s involvement in the Middle East over the past decade and a
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half—and everything that went wrong with it, both inevitably and not—it’s outstanding. Barker deftly outlines the complexities of the sociopolitical climate: the crumbling infrastructure; the violent, unstable, and corrupt government; the Afghan penchant for bloody vengeance and the utter cluelessness of the Americans involved, herself included. She writes of the way Americans repeatedly mistake the socially required Afghan hospitality for genuine goodwill; she writes of the soldiers she shadowed as an embedded reporter in Paktika as “…men in Army uniforms, flak vests, and helmets, twenty-first century soldiers carrying guns, looking like unbeatable futuristic fighting machines, establishing a perimeter, looking, checking, in the middle of a fifteenth-century dusty souk,” an image of the gulf between American assumptions and worldviews and Afghan ones. Barker is not exempt from those assumptions, nor from causing unintentional harm; when she publishes a story about the boredom of the soldiers she shadowed, several of them are sent into combat zones and the guilt of that is something that haunts her. She is also capable of sketching memorable portraits of the political figured involved, from Abdul Jabar Sabit, an ally of President Hamid Karzai who “kept guns the way other people keep potted plants,” to Karzai himself, who “proved to be whiny and conflicted, a combination of Woody Allen, Chicken Little, and Jimmy Carter.” Barker also writes of the growing compartmentalization she experiences as she becomes more entrenched in her job. In the aftermath of a bombing, she puts her hand on a railing and it comes away sticky with blood. She scribbles down ‘pieces of people on railing of truck’ in her notebook and goes back to her hotel room to wash off. Later, she writes that “…looking back, if my adrenaline addiction had a rock bottom, that was it—wiping my bloody hands on my pants, scrubbing the blood of strangers off my shoes, pushing away the tears so I could write a story.” Eventually, she gets out, goes home, and detoxes from the adrenaline addiction—but, she writes, “At some point I realized the horrible truth—the United States and its allies could win every single battle in Afghanistan […] but still lose the war.” It is, in short, a sobering truth wrapped up in a riotously funny story. Kim Barker served as the South Asia bureau chief with the Chicago Tribune from 2004 – 2009. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot has just been released as a major motion picture starring Tina Fey.
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HELP IS AVAILABLE AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) in the Triple Cities Region Hotline: (607) 722-5983 For a list of meetings: aabinghamton.org Al Anon/Alateen in Broome Co. and surrounding areas For info: (607) 772-0889 or (607) 387-5701 For a list of meetings: nynafg.com/district_10.html NA (Narcotics Anonymous) in the Triple Cities Region For info: (607) 762-9116 For a list of meetings: tcana.net
OFF THE BEAT:
travel. A monthly look at quirky nearby places, people, and things MUFFLER MAN FACTS - There are over 150 of them in the United States. - They are no longer manufactured, but most were made by International Fiberglass of Venice, CA. - Uniroyal Gals, sporting brunette bobs, are the female version of Muffler Men. - A great website- usagiants. com- presents lots of up-todate-info on MMs. - They rarely come up for sale, but if you would like to have one for your own, they usually go for about $5000 in good condition. Check the usagiants.com website for listings.
The Hippie Muffler Man in Bethel, NY by Felicia Waynesboro
T
HEY’RE ALL ACROSS the country. You’ve probably seen a few- those towering Paul Bunyan-like guys made of fiberglass (or, at any rate, I’ve never heard of one being made of anything else) usually stationed near the road outside of some business establishment. They are 20’ tall icons of advertising nostalgia affectionately known as Muffler Men. And where else would this have gotten started other than on the legendary Route 66? The first of such sculptures was unmolded in 1962 to herald the presence of the Paul Bunyan Café in Flagstaff, Arizona. His popularity rapidly led to the spawning of duplicates, always in the right-palm-up/left-palmdown pose in which the original held his Paul Bunyan axe. Restaurants and auto parts shops mostly used the promotional devise so the fiberglass giants started holding other things, like giant hot dogs and…full-sized car mufflers.
But our closest Muffler Man wouldn’t support “the establishment” by advertising. He’s the giant hippie still hanging out on the Yasgur Farm: home of the incomparable, back in the mists of time, 1969 Woodstock Festival. He just stands out in an open field near the road, as if he’s digging the starshine. Well, truth be told, the Hippie Muffler Man did once support the establishment: the story goes that he used to hold a very large fish outside the Eden Brook Fish Market. But that was about the time he tuned-in and dropped-out (and possibly turned-on, too). He was re-fashioned in tie-dye duds and soon drifted over to the Yasgur Farm. A true day trip from Binghamton, it’s about an hour and a half drive over rolling roads, through fallen rock zones, and dotted with the kind of eateries in which you can learn how to “Be a Responsible Angler” by reading your paper placemat while enjoying your meal. When you find the big Hippie (just west of Bethel, NY, on Highway 17B), you won’t be able to get close to him without trespassing
over the fence onto the farm (which would be rude and illegal, and the Yasgur family already had enough hassle over hosting that infamous Woodstock Festival to last them a lifetime). But you do get a good, clear view of him. The collection of cigarette butts in the grass by the fence proves that a number of curious visitors have been cooperative enough not to invade the private property. Other than a few in Canada, I have never heard of a Muffler Man outside the USA. If anyone knows of a Muffler Man abroad, I’d love to hear about it. There are a number of them within a three hour or less drive from the Binghamton area, including: an unfortunately armless Paul Bunyan Muffler Man in Elmsford, NY; a Happy Halfwit Muffler Man in Oaks, PA; and a whopping 5 Muffler Men in the Magic Forest of Lake George, NY.
- In 2012, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger granted the Governor’s Historic Preservation Award to Chicken Boy, a chicken-headed MM on Route 66 in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles. - A good book about MMs: Right Palm Up Left Palm Down: The Log of a Cross-Country Scavenger Hunt (2010) by Gabriel Aldaz
The Hippie Muffler Man isn’t holding anything now, and I’m not certain whether those are love beads dangling from his upturned right wrist. Peace!
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fun stuff. “Amendments I–X of the Constitution” by Paul O’Heron
B.C.
DOGS OF C-KENNEL
ACROSS 12. Most successful American politicians look well-_____ _____ endorsements, campaign contributions and chicken dinners. - Simon Hoggart 15. The number of amendments in this puzzle’s theme. 16. “I would not _____ _____ _____ one-issue candidate. Anybody who does that is declaring himself to be marginal.” - John Bolton 26. One way an amendment may be proposed is by a twothirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the _____. 28. “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time _____.” - Warren Buffett
by MASTROIANNI & HART
by MICK & MASON MASTROIANNI
34. Part of civics is _____ _____ of the duties of citizens to each other as members of a political body and to the government. DOWN 1. A central management agency that sets Federal policy for Federal procurement. 7. James _____ authored this puzzle’s theme. 15. The number of times the word “life” appears in Amendment V. 32. “Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t _____ off.” Barbara Kingsolver 33. “For every good reason there is to _____, there is a better reason to tell the truth.” - Bo Bennett
WIZARD OF ID
<3-D> BILL OF <1-A> AMENDMENT I - FREEDOMS, PETITIONS, ASSEMBLY Congress shall make no law <1-D> an <24-D>ablishment of religion, or prohibiting <22-D> exercise thereof; or abridging <22-D>dom of spe<13-A>, or of <3-D> press, or <3-D> right of <3-D> people peaceably to assemble, and to petition <3-D> Government for a redress of grievances. AMENDMENT II - RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS A well regulated Militia, being necessary to <3-D> security of a free <10-A>, <3-D> right of <3-D> people to keep and bear Arms, shall <21-A> be infringed. AMENDMENT III - QUARTERING OF SOLDIERS No Soldier shall, in <18-A> be quartered in any house, without <3-D> consent of <3-D> Owner, <30-A> time of war, <27-A> in a manner to be prescribed by law. <23-A> - SEARCH AND ARR<24-D> <3-D> right of <3-D> people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, <23D> unreasonable searches and seizures, shall <21-A> be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, <27-A> <9-D> probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing <3-D> place to be searched, and <3-D> persons or things to be seized. AMENDMENT V - <1-A> IN CRIMINAL CASES No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in <3-D> land or naval forces, or in <3-D> Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; <20-A> shall any person be subject for <3-D> same <6-D> to be twice <11-A> in jeopardy of life or limb, <20-A> shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness <23-D> himself, <20-A> be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; <20-A> shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
by JONNY HART & BRANT PARKER
AMENDMENT VI - RIGHT <25-D> FAIR TRIAL In all criminal prosecutions, <3-D> accused shall enjoy <3-D> right <25-D> <35-A> and public trial, by an impartial jury of <3-D> <10-A> and district wherein <3-D> crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been <17-D> ascertained by law, and to be <4-A> of <3-D> <5-D> cause of <3-D> accusation; to be confronted with <3-D> witnesses <23-D> <14-D>; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have <3-D> assistance of counsel for his defense. AMENDMENT <31-A> - <1-A> IN CIVIL CASES In Suits at common law, where <3-D> value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, <3D> right of trial by jury shall be <19-D>, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of <3-D> <29-D>ed States, than according to <3-D> <32-A> of <3-D> common law. AMENDMENT VIII - <27-D>, FINES, PUNISHMENT Excessive <27-D> shall <21-A> be required, <20-A> excessive fines imposed, <20-A> cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. AMENDMENT IX - <1-A> RETAINED BY <3-D> PEOPLE <3-D> enumeration in <3-D> Constitution of certain <1-A> shall <21-A> be construed to <8-D> or disparage others retained by <3-D> people. AMENDMENT X – STATES’ <1-A> <3-D> powers <21-A> delegated to <3-D> <29-D>ed States by <3-D> Constitution, <20A> prohibited by it to <3-D> States, are reserved to <3-D> States respectively, or to <3-D> people.
Something a bit different for you crossword fiends this month: Fill in the blanks in the Amendments in their corresponding spaces in the puzzle. Answers on Page 44. Good luck! Know your rights! April 2016 triple cities carousel 43
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how sweet and adorable and good my dog is, I want to give credit where credit is due, and that’s to the people who make rescue and adoption possible for dogs like her, and countless others. When I met my dog, she had worms, and the tip of her tail had to be cut off, as the tissue had just died. From what? Frostbite? Caught under a giant anvil amid some Wile E. Coyote-type antics? Who knows! She was underweight, a victim of neglect and abuse, and didn’t even know how to play with toys! I KNOW! Devastating! The squeakers confused her simple brain! The rescue group that took her in gave her shelter and food and medical attention and as much love as a group of volunteers is able to give in their spare time, keeping her alive and well for over six months, until we would eventually cross paths and begin living out our days as best friends forever. They saved her life, and she improves the quality of mine, and without her I probably wouldn’t have the discipline necessary to pursue life as a working writer. So if you aren’t a fan of my work, you can blame my dog. I’m gonna have to warn you, however, that if I find out anyone has spoken ill of my precious angel baby, I will find you and kill you, or, more realistically, break into your house and pee in your ice cube trays while you sleep. LOCK YOUR DOORS, HATERS. So I’m gonna use this tiny soapbox I have to stand on and yell my message LOUD AND CLEAR! Not in a way that’s crazy and annoying, like those Jesus people you see on the street sometimes, but more like in a really inspiring way, like when you see a photo of Angela Bassett’s arms and are like, “I’m gonna Google ‘pilates’ RIGHT NOW!”
Illustration by Ronnie Vuolo.
If you’ve got nothing nice to say... ...just talk about your dog some more! by Krissy Howard
I
WAS REALLY STRUGGLING to come up with something to write this month. I was going to come up with something about how no one even remembers to celebrate Easter unless their Grandma is around to remind them, but that happened in March this year so it wouldn’t make much sense. Of course there is Passover, but as I’m not a Jewish person, or even a non-Jewish person who knows anything about Jewish holidays, I thought I would spare you a 900-word piece comprised of Passover facts sourced exclusively from Wikipedia. So I was looking at my calendar wondering, ‘what do I celebrate in April?’ when I saw it, plain as day, written in Sharpie and adorned
with ten thousand exclamation points: the three-year anniversary of my dog and I. Hot damn, I will use this as an opportunity to make everyone listen to me talk about my fuckin’ dog! Anyone who knows me personally is well aware that I love my dog, and that my love may possibly cross the line into full-blown obsession. Not like Single White Female obsession - I’m not about to steal her haircut and then trick her boyfriend into sleeping with me. Just your average, totally reasonable, “Yes, I bought my dog a $30 cake for her birthday, and yeah, I guess your dog can have A SMALL PIECE” obsessive tendencies. I just love her so much. If she had a phone I would send her the funniest emoji art, like the one where it looks like the guy is peeing on the text below it. Even if she still had a Blackberry, for whatever reason, I would adapt and just send her regular texts, because everyone knows those things just show up as some in-
decipherable jumble of symbols. I would also buy her an iPhone 6 already because damn girl, it’s 2016! To put it simply: having a dog has improved my life tremendously. When you get a dog, the photo opportunities you’ll find yourself with will increase by, I’m guessing, 96%. You might have less space to work with in your bed, but once you’ve found a tiny sliver in which to cram your entire adult body, you’ll be free to enjoy a much warmer night’s sleep. You will also find yourself outside more, as the world is essentially a giant dog toilet, and your new buddy will need to visit those facilities at least three times a day. You will have a constant companion to help get you through tough things like breakups and job losses, and to make already good things even better, like long walks in the sun, and re-watching The Jinx. For the third time. As easy as it would be to go on and on about
My plea to you is this: if you have the time and space and capability to get a dog, and are thinking of adding one to your life and your family, PLEASE ADOPT. If you absolutely need a purebred dog, look into rescues. I am almost certain you can find one that works with West Highland White Terriers specifically, or whatever shit you might be into. If you’re worried about a shelter dog being “damaged goods,” I encourage you to visit one, ask to join a volunteer on a walk, and see for yourself what they may or may not have to offer. I’m not saying they will all be a perfect fit, but you’ll probably be surprised to see what’s been sleeping inside those chain-link kennels. If you find yourself saying things like, “Pit bulls should be banned because they are all inherently vicious,” then please sterilize yourself immediately. You are terrible and don’t deserve to experience love. Seriously. DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ICE CUBES. I know there are a million other issues I could be using my voice to bring to your attention, readers of this fine publication, but this is what I’m passionate about. I encourage you to use your voice to share your message too. And also to maybe scream at that crazy Jesus guy on the street; that dude is out of control. Over 7 million pets enter the U.S. shelter system each year, and almost 3 million of them never make it out. To find an adoptable pet near you, visit petfinder.com.
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star stuff.
ASTRO LOVE Cosmic guidance from Uranus. A monthly column by Binghamtons favorite astrologer, Emily Jablon.
S
PEND THE MONTH OF APRIL FLIRTING, falling in love at first sight, and enjoying someone whose phone you have not yet gone through. Let this be the official month of “no strings attached.” This is the month to spend the extra minute to look good for your day-to-day, and also a good month to go at it alone. Going outside to let out the dog? Dress to impress. Don’t text this month; just do. From the middle of the month to June, Mars will be retrograde. You might feel like you are going backwards, or stuck, but remember it’s energy management and not time management that matters during this transit. On the 22nd watch out for the Scorpio full moon. Everyone’s going to have extra-important feelings that day, so pretend you’re sick and your phone is broken. On the 28th watch out for Mercury retrograde. Might as well get a beeper, because communications ruin things and travelling won’t work as planned. Things from the past will pop up. Kill them. Aries (Mar 21- Apr 19) Ariens are due for a comeback. Aries you are indeed special, and this is the month to tell everyone about it, even more than the obnoxious usual. Not a good month to start a riot, but to be social, meet new people, and get in a new, head-bashing groove we rams love so much. Enjoy your birthday, ram. God is probably an Aries. Taurus (Apr 20- May 20) You don’t need a gun to explain how you feel this month so chill the F out. If your partner asks you to help out around the house, just do it; you don’t have to form a union. Take your frustrations out during spring cleaning. Hitler was a Taurus. Watch the full moon. Gemini (May 21-June 21) Not much going on for our favorite schizo this month, so Gems, just keep doing what you do: picking fights with children and mooning people. Cancer (June 22-July 22) Good news for you, crab: your home is like a personal biodome this month and you should stay inside for weeks at a time. You can conduct your business from the comfort of your own bed and not plan any social interactions. You can think of your own reason to tell people. They will buy it because no one cares. Leo (July 23-Aug 22) People will need to watch out for you this month, Leo. You will want to fight with an Aries and try to open doors by screaming at them. What the lions should do instead this month: work on a new form of “shock value.” Virgo (Aug 23-Sept 22) You are a pain in the ass this month. Stop regulating everyone’s breathing and play hooky from work. Be impulsive; it won’t kill you. But some annoyed Scorpio might. Libra (Sept 23-Oct 22) This is the month you have been waiting for to make that decision you have been flip-flopping over for a year now. Make it. You’re making people around you nauseous. Scorpio (Oct 23-Nov 21) You take your paranoid beatnik approach to life very seriously, Scorpio, and this month is no different. Don’t get arrested and you should be able to hack into something new. Sagittarius (Nov 23-Dec 21) You know how you would rather sustain a crippling injury than do something the easy way? Well this month is a good month to give it up already, Sag. People are sick of your crap. The Geo Metro was a Sagittarius. Capricorn (Dec 22-Jan 19) Before you name your price this month, double-check your numbers against your self-valued rate and make sure your price won’t make others laugh. Ask a Cancer for a fair price opinion before you shoot. Aquarius (Jan 29-Feb 18) Good month to come out of hibernation, Aquarius; the space ship has landed. The more uncomfortable you feel, the better off you are. Go with it. Pisces (Feb 19-Mar 20) Get over yourself, Pisces. It’s getting too nice out to play “Call of Duty” this month, anyway. You should find a new form of escaping (all day long) before people think you have a problem. Emily Jablon, “Binghamton’s Astrologer to the Stars,” is a certified astrologer and public mosaic artist. Jablon has been studying astrology since college and specializes in relationship and personal astrology. She offers classes, private and group readings, and parties for a donation. Go to jablonstudios.com for more information or email emily@jablonstudios.com.
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breweries GALAXY BREWING CO. Craft beers & great food in downtown Bing 41 Court St. Binghamton, NY (607) 217-7074 galaxybrewingco.com
dining CHROMA CAFÉ & BAKERY Artisan breads & pastries. breakfast/lunch. 97 Court St. Binghamton, NY (607) 595-7612 chromacafeandbakery.com
CITREA RESTAURANT & BAR Woodfire Pizza & Tapas 7 Court St. Suite 3, Binghamton, NY (607) 722-0039 citreapizza.com GROTTA AZZURA Late Night Pizza Delivery Fri.-Sat. 52 Main St. Binghamton, NY 13905 (607) 722-2003 grottaazzurraitalianrestaurant.com LOST DOG CAFÉ Global fare, specialty cocktails, music 222 Water St. Binghamton, NY (607) 771-6063 lostdogcafe.net MI CASA Authentic Latin Cuisine 58 Henry St. Binghamton, NY (607) 237-0227 Find us on Facebook! VILLAGE DINER Check out our menu on Page 34 255 Floral Ave, Johnson City, NY (607) 217-4134 JCvillagediner.com
hair salons ORION BEAUTY & BALANCE, INC. Hair, nails, body waxing, hair color. Aveda! 118 Washington St. Binghamton, NY (607) 724-0080 orionbeautyandbalance.com
home improvement BUTCH’S PAINTING Residental, Commercial, Interior, Exterior Binghamton, NY (607) 222-9225
jewelers CAMELOT JEWELERS Coins/repairs/custom designs. We buy gold and silver! 48 Clinton St. Binghamton, NY (607) 722-0574
medical practices NY SKIN AND VEIN CENTER Natural good looks & healthy legs! 75 Pennsylvania Ave. Binghamton, NY (607) 417-0040 info@NYSVC.com
museums BUNDY MUSEUM Explore local Binghamton history! 127-129 Main St. Binghamton, NY (607) 772-9179 bundymuseum.org ROBERSON MUSEUM Exhibits, Events, The Mansion, & More 30 Front Street, Binghamton, NY (607) 772-0660 www.roberson.org
music instruction BANJO AND FIDDLE LESSONS with Brian Vollmer Binghamton, NY (301)385-4027 banjoandfiddle.com brian@banjoandfiddle.com
music venues CYBER CAFÉ WEST Binghamton’s home for live music. 176 Main St. Binghamton, NY (607) 723-2456 cybercafewest.com MAGIC CITY MUSIC HALL Back in action, bigger & better than before! 1040 Upper Front St. Binghamton, NY (607) 296-3269 themagiccitymusichall.com RANSOM STEELE TAVERN Do some dancin’ with Ransom 552 Main St. Apalachin, NY (607) 258-0165 ransomsteeletavern.com
specialty GARLAND GALLERY Custom framing, cool gifts, zany cards 116 Washington St. Binghamton, NY (607) 723-5172 garlandgallery.com
video production STEPHEN SCHWEITZER Video production and editing (607) 222-9281 vimeo.com/stephenschweitzer stephen.schweitzer@gmail.com
wineries BLACK BEAR WINERY NYS fruit wine. Stop by our tasting room! 248 County Rd. 1, Chenango Forks, NY (607) 656-9868 blackbearwinery.com
Directory Listings! Advertising with the Greater Binghamton region’s only free arts and culture publication just got a whole lot easier. Get your business listed today: 12 months of advertising for just $200! Get in touch today! (607) 422-2043
advertising@carouselrag.com April 2016 triple cities carousel 47