HBO Nixes Discussed SB Comedy Festival
The resignation of supporter and former CEO Chris Albrecht factored into the decision.
Charles Donelan
Recent Stories
The Dangerous Book for Boys
Conn and Hal Iggulden have come up with an idea so great and obvious it’s hard to imagine why no one thought of it before. The Dangerous Book for Boys is a big red hardback full of information about the sorts of things 10-year-old boys obsess over, from building a tree house, a really good paper airplane, and a homemade bow with arrows, to reading a compass, identifying constellations in the night sky, and even knowing basic English grammar.
Pump Boys and Dinettes.
Set on Highway 57 between Frogs Level and Smyrna, North Carolina, Pump Boys and Dinettes celebrates the sassy self-possession of rural service station employees and diner waitresses everywhere. The show was written by a working band and is performed concert-style, with all the pump boys playing instruments and both dinettes singing.
Bobby Caldwell Sings at the Lobero
One of the brightest aspects of 21st-century pop culture is the ongoing dissolution of genre boundaries. Crossovers are so common, and the demand for strong material is so insistent, that the old questions about where to file something-as in “Is this pop, soul, or R&B?”-just don’t get asked very often anymore. Bobby Caldwell, who will play the Lobero next Thursday, August 9, ought to be the subject of a dissertation on category blending.
Sonotube Forms: Contemporary Art and Transport
For this summer group show, Contemporary Arts Forum has commissioned 35 works based on the Sonotube, the cardboard cylinder used for the transport of art. Each participating artist was sent an empty Sonotube with the request that something related to “nomadism, interconnectedness, networks, and globalization” be returned, along with instructions for gallery installation.
The Tak¡cs Quartet.
In one of the Music Academy’s highest profile concerts of the season, the Tak¡cs Quartet played three of the most popular string quartets in the classical repertoire on Thursday to a large and enthusiastic audience at the Lobero.
Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills, who gave a great performance on Sunday night, knew it was funny to be playing a junior high school auditorium, and he didn’t let the audience forget it. Yet even when joking around, Stills revealed traces of the passionate seriousness of his generation. “Chemistry class is cancelled today,” he told us. “They blew up the lab.”
Rough Crossing
The song that ends the first act of a Broadway musical is traditionally a key moment in the development of the show’s story. In Rough Crossing, Tom Stoppard’s antic meditation on musicals, the first act ends with this type of big number, and the question it asks is one an audience is likely to be asking as well: “Where do we go from here?”
Concert Review: Tuesdays at 8
July 10’s Tuesdays at 8 concert offered four pieces, three of them well-known compositions presented in unusual arrangements, the fourth a short “Hika” (elegy) for violin and piano by the 20th-century Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu.
Warhol About to Pop
There’s something wonderful about the last few moments before a raucous house party, when there are only a few people there and the hostess is still rushing around, putting things away and pushing aside the tables and chairs to make room for the crowds and the dancing.
