06/07/04 - 06/11/04

From: Michael Barnes e-mail me

Continuing an arts trek

PITTSBURGH — Another week, another conference.

The last of the year, I promise. This one takes the form of the National Performing Arts Convention, the first bringing together the service associations for opera, symphony, dance, choral, chamber and theater companies, plus at least one critics group — the Music Critics Association of North America.

Why attend? And why report on it to Austin readers?

From a purely reportorial standpoint, it's vital to gather information on other arts and entertainment markets, such as this one, almost the polar opposite of Austin. Here, the population is aging and municipal morale is low, but the array of existing building stock is amazing, the traditional arts groups are thriving and institutional philanthropy is through the roof (thanks to groups such as the Heinz Foundation and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust). Austin could only pray for such enlightened leadership, though we wouldn't want to trade away our youthful vitality. (Austin Ventures partner John Thornton says the flip side of "Austin cool" is "Austin cheap.")

But it's also crucial that Austin reporters and editors are plugged into a national network of professionals, the better to benefit from familiarity with the standards and practices, education and contacts available to journalists from media markets large and small.

Last week, I filed an incomplete report from the American Theatre Critics Association conference in the Bay Area. After that blogging, we subsequently heard a long, complex explanation of musical theater development with representatives from TheaterWorks, American Musical Theatre and San Jose Rep. Later, we saw a deceptively entertaining comedy, Theresa Rebeck's "Bad Dates," at the Rep. This one-woman show consists of a 100-minute monologue from a mom in Manhattan preparing for a series of flubbed outings. But it's not just "Sex and the City" for the stage (although the array of $400 shoes on stage harked back to the recently completed TV series). It actually developed the protagonist's character in unexpected ways and should be seen in Austin. (Rebeck's "Ominium Gatherum" is slated for Zachary Scott Theatre next season.)

Here in Pittsburgh, the emphasis is on music, since the primary groups meeting here represent opera, symphony, choral and, to a lesser extent, dance companies. We have heard a great deal about the struggles of various newspapers to sustain their arts coverage, especially in classical music and dance. Some papers are thriving. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for instance, boasts an entertainment staff of 17 full-time writers. Compare that to the Statesman's six (plus editors who contribute regular stories and freelancers who do some of the heavy lifting). But that's in part due to the fact that Pittsburgh is a competitive market, and the Tribune-Review is nipping at the lead paper's heels.

We also heard from the team that put together "Dead Man Walking," which is undergoing its Pittsburgh premiere. This is old hat for Austin — we've extensively interviewed composer Jake Heggie, librettist Terrence McNally and original inspiration Sister Helen Prejean — but it's still powerful stuff and I found myself choking up just listening to Heggie and Prejean again. (Tonight we see the opera, produced two seasons ago in Austin.)

Last night, we attended the Pittsburgh Symphony, which plays in the acoustically sensitive, if overly garish Heinz Hall. This orchestra remains in the country's Top 10, with an extraordinarily full sound and standout principals. The program we heard was a part of a John Galway Festival and the stellar flutist performed with vigor if not the purest sound. (I actually preferred the rigorous richness of the ensemble's principal flute in a rather rushed version of Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun.")

Saturday night, we see Pittsburgh Public's "Mary Stuart," a rare production of Schiller's Romantic costumer. We hope to catch up with former and current Austin arts leaders such as Cookie Ruiz, Ann Daly and Neil Barclay at the cross-disciplinary panel sessions earlier on Saturday.

If this doesn't read like your usual XL blog, so be it. Formerly, I would have reported this fact-finding mission in my column. As XL editor, I don't have the luxury of writing as often as in the past, but I could spare a few minutes between talks on the state of the American symphony and criticism in the perceived twilight of print journalism.

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From: Sarah Lindner e-mail me

Let's rock some blog

You know, Yo La Tengo ROCKED on Saturday.

Well, that's what I hear. Me? I was too busy sitting home with my food poisoning. Fever-crazed, my mind kept whirring through my to-do list for my friend's wedding. Which was in February. That's the kind of maid-of-honor spirit you get with me.

I pulled myself back to health and sanity with saltines and magazines. The recommended reading:

* Janet Jackson doesn't seem all that weird in Blender. Also interesting was the whisper of politics in the unlikeliest of magazines. Chingy, we learn, would like to punch President Bush in the jaw. I think he's the next Bono.

* Editor in Chief Kim France manages to out-crazy my beloved Andrea Linett (who just wants to be shimmery this month, not a glamorous ipotane or something ) in the new Lucky. Says Kim: "Right now, I only want to purchase metallic and sparkly things . . . It's an irrational and intense feeling — almost like love." That makes me kind of sad, but yet I keep coming back.

* Serious stuff in fashion magazines is iffy business, but Glamour has two unglamorous stories that work surprisingly well. Megan Daum (who was just in town at Book People) reports on spring break in Cancun and finds it just as sad as you'd imagine. And Sheila Weller's look at two women who live with the legacy of racism in Mississippi is ugly and unflinching.

I made it about 15 minutes into "Blowout," Bravo's new reality show about a salon opening in Beverly Hills before that Jonathan guy started scaring me. You'd think that I would be all over any show where someone actually says "Let's rock some hair!" but the whole thing feels stale, like Jonathan and his stylists were forced into it by some new California law mandating a reality-show tour of duty.

And we're supposed to believe that a Beverly Hills salon would use Revlon products? Do you think Jonathan's celebrity clients let drugstore makeup anywhere near them? I know Revlon's a sponsor and all, but way to kill the glam factor.

I wish Jonathan the best — because the salon's been his dream since he was a little kid with bad hair (really) — but I don't think I missed anything. Unless he really did have "chicks just bouncing off the walls" of the salon.

Then again, hand me my saltines.

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From: Omar Gallaga e-mail me

Adventures in modern urban entertainment

Absolutely true conversation that occurred at a Best Buy last Saturday:

Nice Young Clerk: (Ringing up Kanye West's superlative "The College Dropout" and a gift for the wife, "Motown's #1s") Did you find everything you were looking for?

Omar: (Against better judgment) Weeeell . . . not really. I was looking for the new PJ Harvey CD.

Nice Young Clerk: Oh, well I can help you find that. Lemme see here. (Clicks, clacks on keyboard.) Actually, I haven't learned how to search our inventory yet. (To another clerk) Can you look something up for us?

Soon-to-be Extremely Unhelpful Clerk: What are you looking for?

Omar: The new PJ Harvey CD.

Extremely Unhelpful Clerk: Who?

Omar: PJ Harvey.

Extremely Unhelpful Clerk: How do you spell that?

Omar: H-A-R-V-E-Y. First name just "PJ" without the periods.

Extremely Unhelpful Clerk: (Clicks and clacks on the keyboard.) I've never even heard of him.

Omar: She has a new CD coming out. I'm not sure if it's already been released.

Extremely Unhelpful Clerk: Well, I'm not finding that person. We don't have any of their stuff.

Omar: I just saw one of her CDs over there in the Rock and R&B section.

Extremely Unhelpful Clerk: Why didn't you grab that one?

Omar: (Momentarily nonplussed) I . . . it's one I already have. I'm looking for her new CD.

Extremely Unhelpful Clerk: It's not in our system. Is there anything else I can help you find?

Omar: (Interior monologue: "I'm just going to go home now and try to never, ever, ever see this person again. If I'm lucky.") (Actual words said:) No. That's all. Thanks . . .

My entire iTunes collection at work was wiped out by a computer printing problem.

Scratch that: a printing problem caused my OS to be rebuilt and nobody told me that meant I should be writing a Dear John letter to 1.2 gigabytes of music carefully constructed over the past five or six months.

Then this morning I remembered something even more frustrating: Some of that music was legally purchased from the iTunes music store.

Bye-bye, rare White Stripes online exclusive tracks. See ya, "Darling Nikki." Toodle-oo, Bebel Gilberto.

I probably won't buy those songs again. If there's one thing worse than paying for music online, it's paying for it twice — with no guarantee that it won't get wiped out again. . .

On the suggestion of a close friend and our movie critic, I went to see Akira Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" last night, a film that was much more fun than I expected. We sat up in the balcony. Behind us, some teenagers who must have had enough Mountain Dew to convince themselves that they were in one of their own living rooms, couldn't shut up or keep from stomping like elephants as they took frequent bathroom breaks, clomping up and down the steps to the upper level.

Oh, man. I'm suddenly somebody's parents. "Quit stomping your feet on the stairs, young man! Take your shoes off in the house!"

Our film critic Chris Garcia had an even worse movie-going time. Due to a theater-caused error, he and several other local critics were shut out of a "Stepford Wives" screening. Most people don't realize this, but most movies we review are screened a few days before the film opens, which means critics have to turn around a review immediately afterward. When the screening is so close to deadline, the occasional mishap (a faulty print, a critic's personal emergency, tornado) can wreck the whole process. Hollywood, please: Screen earlier or don't screen at all. . .

Have you seen Apple's new streaming music/wireless Internet device? It looks like a Glade Plug-In air freshener, but it's actually a portable wireless router that can stream music from iTunes to your home stereo!

I knew, knew, knew that Apple was going to introduce some kind of home music device given its success with the iPod and iTunes, but didn't know it was going to be this dinky-looking piece of plastic that plugs directly into an AC outlet. Who wants to plug something from Apple into a wall outlet and hide it behind all your home theater equipment? I wanted something sleek and pretty that would sit on top of the stereo, letting visitors and houseguests know: "This is a cool Internet music zone." You could use an extension cord, sure, but then you've got an ugly plugged-in air-freshener-looking piece of white plastic attached to an even uglier batch-'o-plugs.

The $129 price isn't too bad; although most non-Apple routers of its speed are well below the $99 mark, most streaming music devices are about that price or higher, making this combo unit a bit of a bargain.

Given that my long-time (unfulfilled) wish to buy an iPod was partly fueled by the desire to plug the thing into the stereo, this may be a cheaper option: I can get the Airport Express and ditch the iPod idea, using iTunes to listen to my music on the home stereo.

Or maybe I'll go for the iPod anyway. I hate you, Apple! Why must you tempt my disposable income?

I do love the idea of having a hand-sized wireless router you can take anywhere. The wireless router in my house looks like an angry squashed bug with thick, tenacious antenna.

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From: Michael Corcoran e-mail me

Flay's barbecue shows? Well done

Emeril Lagasse is so 15 minutes (in a 375 degree oven) ago. Wolfgang Puck is toast. Hey, Iron Chef, make room for the Irish Chef. I've seen the future of the Food Network and his name is Bobby Flay. Now, this native New Yorker has hosted cooking shows on the grub tube for years and he's even made a couple of controversial appearances on "Iron Chef" (Flay claimed he was robbed when he lost the first time).

There was his "Hot Off the Grill" in the beginning and a show, the name of which I can't recall, that paired city boy Bobby with a gimme-cap-wearing redneck chef. But his newest cooking shows, "Boy Meets Grill" and "BBQ Nation," are the best things he's ever done.

"Boy Meets" finds Flay in his element: shopping at tony specialty food stores, then grilling from the spacious rooftop deck of his Manhattan townhouse. The brand new "BBQ Nation," meanwhile, chronicles Bobby's search for the best barbecue across the country.

These are not especially inspired concepts, but Flay, possessing that rare talent to be simultaneously glib (some would say arrogant) and authoritative (some would say cocky), makes it work. He's a bit of a dandy, yes, but he's also a cat you can watch a ball game with. One of the things I like best about Flay is that he doesn't fawn over dishes à la Jill Cordes of "The Best Of," who rolls her eyes in a heavenly glaze whenever she tastes food that's been prepared for her.

I did find the timing on the recent "Boy Meets Grill" marathon to be a little weird. While the rest of the country was out grilling their little hearts out on Memorial Day, I was sitting at home, eating a fried shrimp dinner from T.J.'s Seafood on East Seventh, watching Bobby make tunaburgers, Cuban sandwiches and German potato salad. I watched for hours and hours, wondering if it would've made more sense to air the marathon the day before. That way viewers such as myself could've had some good 'cueing ideas for the mandatory grill holiday.

But, you know, I would've blown the recipe anyway. Nothing I've ever cooked off a TV show has turned out right. I could drop a couple twenties at Central Market, spend a couple hours getting all the ingredients just right and, guarantee, I'd end up with a plate of expensive slop and a bunch of dishes to wash. Bobby Flay cooks so I don't have to. . . .

I just have a fascination with seeing how things are made by the experts. That's the only way I can explain the appeal of "American Chopper," the Discovery Channel show where Daddy Biker and his sons build custom motorcycles between wrench-tossing arguments. Now, I'm not kidding when I tell you that I can't change a tire (or hook up a VCR or do anything on my cell phone besides talk on it). I sweat grenades whenever I have to assemble anything. I'm the most mechanically challenged person on the planet and I've only ridden on a motorcycle once. But I just can't stop watching the battlin' Bikersons.

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From: Chris Garcia e-mail me

Speed, 'Solaris' and a billion motorcycles

Motorcycles have their place — soaring over rows of parked trucks; inside the Globe of Death; on stage at Judas Priest concerts — but they really stank up the city over the weekend, when nearly a billion rumbled in with their owners and the chicks who ride on the back for the annual hog-athon.

The bikes were gorgeous, exotic creatures: fetishistically sculpted chrome and steel sparkling in the sun, low-slung and high-maintenance. Many appeared like they just vrooomed out of TV's "American Choppers". And they were everywhere downtown, rolling in parade formations and shredding the muggy air with hot chainsaw screams and crackling flatulence.

In other words, they were noisy and they took every single parking space. (One bike per meter? Please. You can stuff four of those things between the painted lines.) Still, I'm glad these hairy, leather-laden compatriots, who seem to believe a well-tied head scarf serves the same protective function as a helmet, enjoyed the weekend fellowship and Austin's renowned ethos of tolerance. It gives us that rowdy edge.

I didn't even mind that the bikes' symphonic violence (thousands of tubas played in a rain of napalm) sporadically drowned out my conversation with Speed Levitch at Casino El Camino on Saturday night. Through the bar's ambient chatter, through the jukebox punk and metal the choppers chopped.

Speed's the star of the garrulous documentaries "The Cruise" and "Live From Shiva's Dance Floor". The movies reveal a young eccentric whorling through far-out reveries, spinning streamers of soliloquy around the neon rave of his own mind. He's a performance artist, a living one-man show, radiating an internal spotlight. He's pretty charismatic, if kind of freaky.

Part poet, part gypsy-hippy, Speed has lots of friends in Austin and performs here often. He came from New York to do his show over Memorial Day weekend. Saturday night he was merely hanging at one of his favorite local bars to get one of his favorite local dishes, Casino's eggplant sandwich. It was pure coincidence that we were both on our way to The Transgressors' CD release party at Club Deville.

As we wove through flotillas of idling two-wheelers, Speed told how he's reinvented his famed New York tour-guide shtick into ambulatory sidewalk theater. (Watch the above movies and you'll understand.) He was inspired by a friend who coached the late Spaulding Gray, Speed said. "He told me, 'Do what you feel and keep a clear communication with your soul, amplify it, and then call it theater.' "

We ambled past Spiro's — "It's a convention of bubbles," mused my companion — and then Stubb's, where the Yo La Tengo show could dimly be heard through the weekend's metallic thunder. . . .

Two hundred people came to Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 sci-fi fugue "Solaris" Tuesday at the Paramount. One guy drove in from Dallas to see the rare theatrical screening, says film programmer Paul Beutel, who got his hands on an excellent new print.

The turnout surprised me. "Solaris" isn't action-packed summer adventure. It has more in common with Ingmar Bergman, fog and glaciers than George Lucas, androids and lasers. It's a challenging, deeply spiritual and very long trip. It's been called the Soviet answer to "2001: A Space Odyssey." But Kubrick's film is "Spaceballs" compared to the abstruse (though wise and fascinating) "Solaris."

Nearly everyone endured all three hours, despite an intermission — an invitation to flee. As the red velvet curtains closed over an elegant "The End" tag, the audience sat in dumbfounded silence. Eventually, murmurs were heard. Blood returned to vital organs.

I'm picturing some of these brave souls walking to their cars in a stun-gun stupor. They drive silently through the dark, the radio off. At home, they strip, lie on their bed in the dark, and softly weep.

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