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5/7: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Trailer
May 7, 2012
John Paul Tremblay (“Julian”), Mike Smith (“Bubbles”) and Robb Wells (“Ricky”) are The Trailer Park Boys, the Canadian cult cable sensations performing a bit of “community service” this Friday night at the Count Basie Theatre.
The last time the world heard from the Trailer Park Boys, the trio of petty criminals, backsliding lowlifes and substance abusers was more or less secured within their natural habitat — behind bars, and lashing out against the media attention that helped make their mugshots a household brand in dozens of countries.
It was a fitting valedictory for “Julian” (John Paul Tremblay), “Ricky” (Robb Wells) and “Bubbles” (Mike Smith), the characters who evolved (so to speak) from several low-budget film projects by Canadian writer and director Mike Clattenburg.
Dedicated to the mantra “get rich, get high, and stay out of jail;” navigating life at Nova Scotia’s Sunnyvale Trailer Park with a work ethic, a moral code and an F-bombed vocabulary that made our own Jay and Silent Bob look like Frasier and Niles, the Boys spent seven seasons as the stars of their own “mockumentary” TV series — an international cult hit seen Stateside by DirecTV subscribers.
The series that ended in 2008 — think COPS times Sunny divided by The Office — gave noisy birth to two theatrically released feature films, an all new TV vehicle for the three actors (The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Hour), and several live appearance tours, the latest of which rolls into Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre this Friday night, May 11.
Subtitled The Ricky, Julian and Bubbles’ Community Service Variety Show, the stage presentation ostensibly springs the three recidivist jailbirds for an evening of court-ordered lecturing on the evils of drinking and drug abuse — an edu-taining interlude in which Bubbles gets to perform his ventriloquism act (and sing his signature anthem “Liquor and Whores”) while the other guys do their best to involve the audience and send the whole thing careening off the rails.
UpperWETside spoke to Julian and Ricky — yes, in character, and while riding in a luxuriously appointed tour bus that’s a far cry from the various trailers, sheds, beater Chryslers and jail cells they’ve inhabited over the years.
5/3: Blunt Force Troma; Gruen & Unusual
May 3, 2012
Hello, Lloyd: One of the biggest events of the Whole Kid Year returns to Asbury town this weekend, when madcap mogul Lloyd Kaufman brings the TROMADANCE Festival back to the center Lanes for TWO big nights, May 4 and 5!
The MayDay claxon’s already sounded; things are getting tensely tight around Asbury Parque (and by extension, the Upper Wet Side) in anticipation of the blizzardlike blitzkrieg that is the Bamboozle Fest — a wristband Woodstock that not only corrals “the kids” for three days and nights within a space where people actually sorta/kinda live, but THIS year invites their fiftysomething parents to stay and do something other than idle in queue at the designated pickup/dropoff areas. More on THAT as it happens midmonth — for now the pace picks up considerably in and around the place Where Music Lollygags, and if you dare to stray from the clearly demarcated Festival Area you’re SURE to find something weirdly wonderful…
FRIDAY and SATURDAY! 13th Annual TromaDance Festival at Asbury Lanes. You don’t have to be a conventioneering connoisseur of the Troma Films brand to have a blast at this yearly freewheeling filmfest, but it helps to enter into the bargain with some working knowledge of the MegaLoBudget sleaze cinema “studio” that gave the world The Toxic Avenger (plus associated kid cartoons, sequels and Off Broadway musicals) — a brand that continues to survive, maybe thrive, in a climate where the Drive Ins, the home video market, and even FILM as we know it have effectively joined the body count of motion picture arts and sciences.
Originally kickstarted in Park City, Utah as a freebie flip-off to the corporate-indie Sundance suckfest, TromaDance returns in its 13th annual edition to the atom-age Asbury Lanes this Friday and Saturday (May 4-5), with that most Fellini-esque of neighborhood rockbars playing host for the fourth(?) time to a no-charge, “No VIP” event in which “celebrities and fans are treated equally.” Lording over the affair once more is that Disney of Disturbia, that David O. Sleazenik, that Louis B. Mayhem mogul of madness — Troma chief, producer, director and sometime actor Lloyd Kaufman.
Some three dozen shorts from filmmakers all over the world (none of whom need to pay an entry fee) will be screening over the course of the weekend, with each night also spotlighting a new feature-length fracas. Friday’s full-lengther will be Manborg, a “cult-tastic throwback to 80s sci-fi action films like ROBOCOP and THE TERMINATOR” from Steven Kostanski and the Astron-6 Video collective — in which “a soldier, brought back to life as a cyborg, fights alongside a band of adventurers against demon hordes in a dystopian future.”
That latest from the director of Father’s Day will show at 8pm on May 4 (program starts at 7pm) — and at that same hour on Saturday, it’s a free screening of The FP, a grindhouse gangbang co-directed by the sibling tagteam of Jason and Brandon Trost, the amped-up cinematographers behind the likes of Crank: High Voltage and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Brother Jason stars in this story of “two gangs locked in a turf war in rural wasteland Frasier Park, in the deadly arena of competitive dance-fight video game” — a “fury of fierce footwork, triumphant montages and neon street wear” that features as narrator none other than James Remar of The Warriors (and, lately, Dexter). Take it here for Dorothy Creamer’s interview with Yale alumnus (and former GWB classmate) Kaufman, conducted for our old Red Bank oRBit site and archived for your enlightenment here on the upperWETside. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 7pm/ FREE!
That ain’t even the one-sixth of it; flip the record over for more…
4/28: “It’s All Within Reach”
April 28, 2012
Laying down some tracks: to state THE OBVIOUS, one of the better bands on the fractured and fragmented Wetside scene is having a Record Release Party tonight; just one of many goings-on we can pretty much experience from our front porch this weekend.
3pm Wednesday April 25, and we’re getting a whiff of nostalgia in and around Asbury’s Convention Hall — if you call circa 1990 your idea of nostalgia. Not a blamed or blessed soul in sight within the Grand Arcade; no shops open; a clear cannonball shot both north AND south of here on the boards. Even the gulls and pigeons have gone off to scout other fastfood pastures.
This momentary snapshot was well out of date by the weekend, of course, and we offer it up only as a final echo of the Off Season That Wuz (within the Winter That Wun’t) here on the cuspidor of the summer-season corridor. It’s a season that was more or less heralded by the beauty-sleep-disturbing blare of a marching band on the morning of April 27; a neighborhood drumline blast that assembled to welcome the flyby of the retired Space Shuttle with a somehow appropriate quote from Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2.”
From here on in around these blocks by the beach and boards, it’s time to batten down the hatches for Bamboozle’s burb-oid blizzard; to convert front lawns into parking lots and psych ourselves into a sleepless, senses-working-overtime parsing of the passing parade. It all starts NOW, with…
SATURDAY! Record release party for THE OBVIOUS at Asbury Lanes. Only those who are downright oblivious could develop an immunity to the charms of The Obvious, the greater Asbury punkpop combo that’s been helping to keep the electric garage door open in a landscape of acoustica Americana “authentica” and songer/singwriter narcissimo. Fronted by the ravishing Surojanie “Angie” Sugrim, the four-piece 2012 edition of the band that was last seen backing original Sugar Hill Gang old-schooler Wonder Mike at last month’s Garden State Film Festival has a new EP to peddle (Maybe She’s Bored With It) and a place to peddle it, tonight at the everlovin’ Asbury Lanes.
Produced by Bouncing Souls guitarist Pete “The Pete” Steinkopf at the Bouncing boys’ secret clubhouse recording studio in Asbury Park (on the same street as the groovy grotto where we peck out this blogfest), the record will be the centerpiece of an evening in which Angie and company are joined by a most solid lineup that further boasts Chemtrail, Lost in Society and Give Me Static — with admission a measly five bucks, there in the retro rec room and alterna-arts odditorium that hosted another high-artistic-value session by Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School on that selfsame afternoon. Asbury Lanes, Fourth Ave., Asbury Park • 8pm/ $5
There’s more in store within upperWETside’s home neighborhood this weekend, and “It’s All Within Reach” (one of many failed promo campaigns from the much-maligned Gannett media octopus) with the flip of a pixelated page…
4/1: Maureen McGovern Carries the Show
April 2, 2012
Chart-topping vocalist, stage actress, “Disaster Theme Queen” and “Stradivarius Voice” Maureen McGovern begins a three week stand in Red Bank, as her show CARRY IT ON takes the stage at Two River Theater. (Photo by Deborah Feingold)
Any performer who’s been in (and sometimes out of) the game for more than 40 years could be forgiven for treating some of those years like baggage best left at the dock. In the case of Maureen McGovern, however, not only does she bring it with her when she travels — she prefers to Carry It On.
The pop singer and stage actress, who hit the ground running in 1973 with the Number One hit “The Morning After,” will be unpacking her bags for an extended stay in Red Bank, where she brings her solo show to the stage of Two River Theater beginning with a first preview on Tuesday, April 3.
If you remember the “disaster film” craze of the 1970s, you’ll know McGovern as the crisp and clear voice of the aforementioned theme song from The Poseidon Adventure — a record that went gold, topped the Billboards, won an Academy Award and garnered a Best New Artist Grammy nomination for the hitherto unknown singer.
It’s an opening act that she followed up with “We May Never Love Like This Again” from 1974′s The Towering Inferno — and thus was branded the Disaster Theme Queen, a status she spoofed with her memorable role in 1980′s genre-killer Airplane!
There’ve been many more acts to Maureen McGovern’s career, of course — including a Broadway career that began when she was picked to succeed Linda Ronstadt in the smash 1980 production of The Pirates of Penzance. The neophyte actress would go on to co-star with Raul Julia (Nine) and Sting (in The Threepenny Opera) in addition to originating the role of Marmee in the musical adaptation of Little Women.
A run of acclaimed albums interpreting signature tunes from the likes of George Gershwin and Harold Arlen gained Maureen McGovern a couple more Grammy nods, and a landmark salute to Gershwin at Carnegie Hall gained her a whole new career as a sought-after concert performer. It was her most recent release, the 2008 Sixties songbook A Long and Winding Road, that led to the development of Carry It On — a musical exploration (co-authored with director Philip Himberg) that “brings her story to life with extraordinary interpretations of the songs of her generation.” That means everything from a very singerly take on Bob Dylan, to Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Lennon-McCartney, Stephen Sondheim and the title tune, a Civil Rights anthem from folk artist Gil Turner.
Of course, you can’t have multiple acts without a few intermissions — including, in McGovern’s case, a curious stretch in which the financially strapped headliner took a secretarial job under the name Glenda Schwartz. The whole story of Maureen McGovern and her times is all in a night’s work for the singer that composer David Shire dubbed “The Stradivarius Voice” — a story told through words, music and vivd images in Carry It On.
UpperWETside spoke to this representative of the Top 100 Irish Americans back in March, as the green cardboard shamrocks of the Muscular Dystrophy Association‘s Shamrocks Against Dystrophy (a campaign that McGovern chaired for many years) bloomed at supermarkets and convenience stores coast to coast.
3/21: It’s Where Movies Live Too, Y’know
March 21, 2012 — 1 Comment
Rapper’s Delight — the new group featuring original Sugar Hill Gang oldschool professors Wonder Mike and Master Gee — performs its first full concert at Asbury Park’s Paramount Theatre on Saturday night as part of the tenth annual Garden State Film Festival; an event (with special guest rappers) tied in to a screening of the documentary I WANT MY NAME BACK.
We’ve hinted at it before, but in between all the welcome hoopla to the effect that Asbury Park is Where Music Lives, we’d make the case that the city that once served as home base for legendary theatre mogul Walter Reade; the historic home of movie palaces like the late lamented Mayfair, the still-standing Paramount and the back-soon Savoy is furthermore a place Where Movies Live.
Not bad for a town that doesn’t have a multiplex within city limits — although the coming months promise the appearance of not one but two multi-screen arthouses (including the newly expanded downtown landmark The ShowRoom). Still, even as old-neighborhood nickelodeons like The Baronet have bitten the briny dust in recent years, the town that gave us Bud Abbott, Danny DeVito and, uh, Rick Salomon has found a way — whether it’s a free beach movie on an inflatable screen, or a cinematic singalong session at the Supper Club. A music/film series at a downtown coffeehouse, or a backdrop of vintage stags at the Lanes. Any of the screenings that accompany major events like ZombieFest and All Tomorrow’s Parties, or the intimate movie-club house parties that happen right here at the historic Stephen Crane House.
Pre-dating ALL of the above is an event that’s existed on the leading edge of the city’s slow reclamation of the region’s cultural spotlight — the Garden State Film Festival, the 10th annual edition of which takes place in and around Asbury town this weekend, March 23-25. A filmfreak fiesta of short subjects and features; comedies, dramas, documentaries and otherwise unclassifiable endeavor; the GSFF employs the town as its canvas, offering dozens of events at venues that range from iconic landmarks like the Paramount and the Berkeley Hotel, to some new fave restaurants and even the surprisingly comfy screening space of the City Council chambers. It’s all the brainchild of founder Diane Raver, herself the first female president of a commercial production company and an industry veteran whose many contacts include TV star daughter Kim Raver (Grey’s Anatomy, 24). As legend has it, it was a supermarket encounter between Diane and the late actor Robert Pastorelli, (best recalled as Eldin the painter on Murphy Brown) that led to the establishment of the GSFF in 2003 — and the legacy of Pastorelli, who died of an apparent heroin overdose in 2004, lives on in the festival’s annual Robert Pastorelli Rising Star Award, presented to NJ residents who “have made inroads to the industry through hard work and determination.”
There’s also a Lifetime Achievement Award to be presented to a very special guest — and this year’s recipient is a performer, activist and Screen Actors Guild president who’s lived a lifetime and then some on the big and small screen — Ed Asner, the TV powerhouse (Mary Tyler Moore, Lou Grant, Roots and tons of memorable movies) whose natural versatility and big-hearted-tough-guy persona continue to gain him new fans through recent projects like Up, Elf and Too Big to Fail. Also coming to town for the festival will be a couple of genuine founding fathers of OldSchoolHipHop — Wonder Mike and Master Gee, the MCs who summoned it all into being with Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” and whose rise, fall and rise again will be celebrated on screen and in live concert. There’s even a bit of tangential involvement by the UpperWETside (for which we are happy to accept a VIP badge and conduct an audence Q&A with an official questionnaire) — and while we urge you to design your own GSFF experience by consulting the festival website and schedule, we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer up our own select picks from the coming days and nights, all of which unspool on the next reel…
3/16: Decisions, Decisions…
March 16, 2012
Polly, Unsaturated: Poet, painter, priestess of (re)purpose Kathy “Polly” Polenberg — taking a brief breather from creating the scenery and the awesome “Audrey II” for the Forrestdale School production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS — is among the artists represented in AWAKENINGS, the new installation at Gallery U in Red Bank.
“Freedom of Choice is what you got/ Freedom FROM Choice is what you want” sang the sage men in the flowerpot hats back around 1980-’bouts. It’s a bluesy lament we can simp-athize with, if for no other reason than the fact that our nights generally present such a senses-shattering range of options, invites and tentative commitments. The situation practically guarantees that somebody, somewhere who was kind enough to invite us to their event will be stood up in favor of some equally nice person (or, as happened all too many times this winter, a “Dirty Stay-at-Home” night of cartoon reruns).
Beggars, they say, can’t be choosers — but for experienced freeloaders, the world’s an erster. See if you can help us choose between competing options over the next seven days, March 16 through March 22..
FRIDAY 3/16: AWAKENINGS in Red Bank… Since they hit the Red Bank ground running with the opening of their second gallery space (a hiptown homestead of the original Montclair location), the folks at GALLERY U have brought a “freath o’ bresh air” back to the borough’s largely dormant artscape — and beginning this evening, the busy Broad Street hive hosts a new “mixed medium group show;” an assembly of more than 20 “established and emerging artists” spearheaded by Laura Brunetti (of Caring Canvas Project fame). There’s live music by The Aster Pheonyx Project — and among the many other creative folk represented will be one of our fave locals, Kathy Polenberg, a seemingly tireless creator of indoor/outdoor art, poetry, prose, theatrical scenery (including an awesome made-from-scratch killer plant for a school staging of Little Shop) and home accents that’ll make YOUR expensive decorator take a long walk off a very short Pier One. Gallery U and Boutique, 80 Broad St., Red Bank • 6-9pm/ FREE
…or Colin & Brad at the Basie? In an interview we did several years back with rubberfaced improv action figure Colin Mochrie, the star of TV’s long-(re)running Whose Line Is It Anyway? opined that “We have more of a communal, collaborative relationship with the audience than an adversarial one…you’re laughing from a different part of your brain.” For the better part of the past decade, Mochrie and his fellow Whose Line veteran Brad Sherwood have made an entirely planned and non-spontaneous point of performing an annual show at the Count Basie Theatre — and on March 16, The Two Man Group returns to Red Bank for another evening of impishly improv’d interactions including, but not limited to, “Standing, Sitting, Bending,” “Helping Hands” and the dreaded Blindfold Mousetrap Alphabet Game. Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank • 8pm/ $19.50 – $49.50
…but that ain’t the 1/7 of it; flip the pixelated page for enough pulse-pounding choices to knock you clear into next Thursday…
2/20: It’s the Crane House Movie Club!
February 20, 2012
Acclaimed mystery novelist, suspense genre authority, former newspaperguy (and O.G. original gangsta) WALLACE STROBY is the guest programmer for the first in a new series of Crane House Movie Club events, happening on Sunday, March 11 right here at the Stephen Crane House! (Photo by Patti Sapone)
Over here at the Stephen Crane House — the historic and literarily legendary Asbury Park landmark that also serves as the home office of this bloviatin’ blog — the sluggish segue from mild winter into mucky Wet Side spring is charged with a certain Spring Cleaning energy that can’t wait for that narrow window between Too Cold to Work Around This Un-insulated House and Too Hot to Work Around this Un-insulated House.
We’ve been getting back into gear in recent days, scraping some of the accrued barnacles off this 19th century “cottage” that’s served as everything from a proper Christian lady’s parlour to a post-nuke Asbury flophouse (and almost-scuttled squat) and reorganizing some of those out-of-control rooms back into some semblance of a reclaimed public space — about which more in a moment.
We’ve also got some thoughts and plans regarding the Crane House theater and screening room, the downstairs in-house venue that’s hosted all manner of quirky stage plays, readings, house-party concerts and a monthly words-and-movie series programmed by Crane House owner Frank D’Alessandro. It’s there that “Mr. D” presented a birthday salute to Charles Dickens this past Sunday (with featured film George Cukor’s sparkling MGM take on David Copperfield) — and it’s there that we’ll be introducing a new film-buff’s series that could ONLY be called The Crane House Movie Club.
Offered up free of charge and open to the public, The Crane House Movie Club is a not-so-secret society dedicated to the viewing, digestion, discussion (and, sometimes dissing) of Film — conceivably any kind of film, from Janus-collection French Nouvelle Vague and wartime Euro-exile Hollywood, to stuff that wouldn’t have been out of place at old-school Asbury grindhouses like the Park and Baronet. It’s a real-world place to gather, enjoy some refreshments and argue balls ‘n strikes with your fellow cinema enthusiasts — as well as meet and participate in a Q&A with a special invited guest programmer, and take in a roomful-of-people screening of a feature presentation that’s been personally selected by our guest.
We’re pleased and proud to announce the early evening of Sunday, March 11 as the first call-to-meetin’ of the Crane House Movie Club — and we’re just as pleased to announce that our guest programmer for that inaugural event will be the award-winning mystery novelist (and eminent authority on all things crimey and suspensey) Wallace Stroby.
Now open to public perusal for the first time in a dog’s age, the upstairs library at the Crane House is a work in progress that boasts one of the area’s most extensive collections of works by and about Stephen Crane — as well as works by his friends and contemporaries and a number of historically fascinating antique volumes.
A resident of Ocean Grove, Stroby used his background as a classic old-school newspaperman (breaking-news reporter for the Asbury Park Press; arts editor at the Star Ledger) — to say nothing of his life experience on the mean streets of O.G. and its “evil twin” A.P. — to craft his debut novel, The Barbed Wire Kiss, a thriller of misplaced loyalties and overdue paybacks that starred a former state trooper, and used the tired, peeling Tillie-face of our local seaside haunts as an effective backdrop. Asbury Park (and that same ex-cop) figured heavily in his followup effort The Heartbreak Lounge — and since taking the plunge into a full-time career as a working fiction master, Stroby’s traveled the country making personal appearances, and picked up massive raves for such recent-vintage hardboilers as Gone Til November (a book that The Huffington Post said “puts author Wallace Stroby in the company of noir masters like Dashiell Hammett and Elmore Leonard”) and Cold Shot to the Heart. With his latest novel Kings of Midnight (in which a female thief who’s trying to go straight and a “retired” mobster cross paths with five million bucks in “buried” heist money at stake), Stroby has truly arrived: as witness his book’s recent plug in New York Magazine’s The Approval Matrix; an appearance that positions Kings at pretty close to BRILLIANT (if just this side of LOWBROW).
Stroby, a genuine movie fan with whom we’ve had the pleasure of co-hosting a showing of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing at The Showroom a few years back, will be introducing a screening of one of his favorite suspensers on March 11 — and while we’re unable to announce the title right at this moment, chances are excellent that it’ll stand as a Stroby-stamped example of effective book-into-film translation (unless of course he opts for a newish find like The Man From Nowhere). We’ll have a pre-film talk with the author, with signing copies of his books available for purchase and complimentary ‘freshments + face time before and after the screening (feel free to contribute to the snackpile).
Again, that’s Sunday, March 11, with the Crane House door creaking open at 4:30pm; pre-show starts at 5, the film screens at 5:30 and it’s open-ended from there. Admission’s free as we mentioned, although it’s not a bad idea to give us a RSVP via the Facebook link at top of the page. Stay tuned for more details on this and future assemblies of The Crane House Movie Club, right here on the upperWETside!
In other Crane House news: the upstairs library “red room” is, as referenced in the photo caption above, once more open to the public after a fairly extensive tearing up/ hosing down/ putting back together again that involved what amounted to an archaeological dig through the boxes, grottoes and crannies of this circa 1878 structure. While it’s still a bit rough around the edges — books are not arranged to any approved librarian standard, and we promise to gradually replace all the Post-Its and Ziploc bags with classier versions of same — the room has an appropriately muted and musty vibe that frames one of the area’s finer collections of novels, stories, poems and nonfiction pieces by Stephen Crane, the American novelist and journalist best known for the Civil War tale The Red Badge of Courage. We’ve got first and early editions of his books, vintage magazines with his stories, a host of bios and critical studies, along with selected volumes by his major influences, friends and contemporaries (including Dickens, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde and Henry James) as well as those who were influenced in turn by Crane (Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather and more). Lots more where that came from, including some other vintage literary volumes and other fascinating printed artifacts of period life (some of them as old as 1818).
It’s on view in what’s officially branded “The Chris Hayes Room” (various rooms in the Crane House are named for members of the Hayes Family who purchased the home at 508 Fourth Avenue and rescued it from wrecking-ball oblivion) — and our plans for the coming months involve a freshening up of many of the other rooms at the Crane, with progress reports right here as things, uh, progress…
2/9: Your Weekend Forecast on the 7′s
February 9, 2012
The Glamour Girls canvases of Holly Suzanne Rader — exemplified here by a detail from DICK & CANDY — are on display during a reception for GLAMit, this Saturday evening at Glen Goldbaum’s two neighboring Bridge Avenue salons.
His parties, alive with art and music and anybody-who’s-anybody people, are precisely the sort of under-the-radar events that you’d spend all night seeking out if you were looking for that elusive “something completely different” — the kind of happenings that should by all rights be too-cool and impossibly exclusive, were it not for the fact that they’re fully free of charge and open to friends old and new.
Last we looked in on Glen Goldbaum, the superstar Manhattan stylist turned catalyst for a creative new vision on Red Bank’s west side was hosting an event branded as Bewitched, a “magical evening of fantasy, hair, art and more” that transformed his two neighboring Bridge Avenue hair/ eye/ makeups (Glen Goldbaum 72 and Lambs & Wolves Den of Beauty) into an environment populated by winged fantasy characters, live mannequins and guest conceptualizers from Asbury Park’s Cookman Avenue “Arts Bloc.”
This Saturday, Feb the 11, the “Left Bank” block opposite the NJ Transit station stop will be the scene for GLAMit, a solo art installation (keyed to New York Fashion Week 2012) that celebrates “old Hollywood glam with a modern feminine edge” through the paintings and three-dimensional work of Holly Suzanne Rader. The Tennessee-bred artist will be on hand for a reception that spotlights her unique miniature paper dresses (composed of paper mache, vintage book pages, clip art and assorted items) as well as her Glamour Girls paintings — a series of homages to “retro bombshells, lusty pin-ups and the timeless Hollywood divine” that are “candy coated” with the artist’s engagingly repurposed found objects.
“I feel that the dress is more than a garment…it tells a story,” says Rader of her magnificent minis. “This collection is inspired by nature, poetry, fairytales, historical heroines, daydreams and other romantic notions.”
The Saturday reception, too groovy to be contained within a single storefront space, runs from 7 to 10 pm — with Rader’s art remaining on display through February and March — and we get off on telling you where else to go this weekend, beginning with a Friday fricasee that lies right around the clickable corner.
12/29: Bouncing Bundles of Joy in AP
December 29, 2011
Bouncing Souls drummer/ punk rock father Mike McDermott is joined by rocker daddy-o (and child development specialist) Jon Caspi for a discussion on the doc feature THE OTHER F WORD, screening tonight at The Showroom.
When the stalwart skwadron that is The Bouncing Souls continues its annual Home for the Holidays stand in the numbing no-man’s-land between Christmas and New Year’s, pretty much all manner of punkrock pedigree will be amply represented on the stage and the Stoney floor.
Everybody who is anybody, in other words, with the exception of two distinct type of somebodies: freeloading freelance journalists who acted too late to score press comps — and those willing but woefully left-behind souls who couldn’t score a babysitter.
Like Restless Leg Syndrome and Static Cling, the notion of Punk Rock Parenthood didn’t used to be an issue. In fact, it was more like an oxymoron or a brain-scrambling paradox; a theoretical improbability suggesting that the adherents of a resolutely anti-authoritarian lifestyle would themselves morph inexorably into authority figures.
Charging into the arena of public discourse (and glomming onto the residual glow from this week’s HFTH excitement), the folks at Asbury Park’s artsbloc screenspace The ShowRoom are taking this pulse-pounding problem head-on, with several screenings of the buzzed-about doc feature The Other F Word — including a special event this afternoon that pairs an internationally respected authority on family dynamics (who also happens to be a punk-powered singer and songwriter) with a charter member of the Bouncing Souls (who also happens to be the father of a bouncing bundle o’ joy).
Baldwin, Cumpsty Take It Back to Bridge
October 26, 2011 — 1 Comment
Michael “Hamlet” Cumpsty and Alec “Macbeth” Baldwin return to the stage of Two River Theater — together for the first time — for “An Intimate Evening of Scenes and Stories” on November 21.
One’s a celebrated British-born expert on all things Shakespeare; a veteran of Broadway and the West End who won an Obie for playing no less melancholy a Dane than Hamlet.
The other’s a native son of Lawn Guyland who’s “known as much for polarizing politics, paternal peccadillos and personal-life pugnacity as for his powerhouse performances.” An actor whose adventures on the Great White Way have run more toward the Stanley Kowalski end of things — and whose Oscar nommed, Emmy winning forays as various smartguys, mademen, bigshots and slick anti-heroes are crowned by this, his most eloquent soliloquy.
Sounds like a surefire pitch for a network sitcom, you bet — but if Alec Baldwin and Michael Cumpsty haven’t quite hashed out the contracts for a new revival of The Odd Couple or even The Sunshine Boys, they’ve nonetheless apparently got much to talk about.
One of those bits of common ground revolves around Red Bank’s Two River Theater, the Bridge Avenue performing artspace upon whose boards both gents have trod — although not at the same time. On the night of Monday, November 21, however, they’ll be working to rectify that, as Cumpsty joins Baldwin for an intimate evening of scenes and stories that could ONLY be subtitled An Intimate Evening of Scenes and Stories.
