CULTURAL PROVOCATEUR

posted by James Reel

    Oops! I forgot to post a link yesterday to my contribution to the latest Tucson Weekly:

    Performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña has been billed as a cultural provocateur and as a radical.
    Gómez-Peña is in Tucson right now, stirring up artistic trouble courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art. He and members of his troupe, La Pocha Nostra, are conducting workshops for 15 like-minded artists, the results of which will be displayed and performed on Saturday, Aug. 11, at MOCA.
    Gómez-Peña is a smart guy (in the early 1990s, he received a MacArthur "genius" grant) and a quick thinker, so he didn't seem taken aback when I called last week with a rude question: What good is a radical artist in contemporary America, where even the supposedly liberal media are pretty conservative, and ideas that are even remotely progressive aren't taken seriously or given any real coverage in the mainstream culture?

WHAT'S COOKING?

posted by James Reel

    Courtesy of Sound and Fury’s AC Douglas, here’s a recipe I’m sure many of my musician friends would love to try, although they might choke on the result: How to Cook a Conductor.

HEAL THE PLANET

posted by James Reel

    Classical music may be better for the environment than rock’n’roll. So posits Greg Sandow. I’m willing to believe it, whether it’s true or not.

GONE FISHIN'

posted by James Reel

    Well, not exactly fishing. I’m scrambling to finish up several writing assignments before departing Friday morning for a weekend of snorkeling, sea kayaking and cycling in La Jolla. Fine dining, too … mustn’t forget that. No doubt I’ll be writing some stray article in the car on the way to California (yes, during the shift my wife will be driving) and e-mailing it to the editor from the hotel. Free wi-fi is a wonderful thing. Back on duty Monday.

ITCHY AND SCRATCHY

posted by James Reel

    My contribution to the latest Tucson Weekly:

    Live Theatre Workshop has mounted a funny, well-acted and well-directed production of a play that really should be kept in mothballs for another 25 years.
    George Axelrod's The Seven Year Itch is not only missing a hyphen; it's lost any relevance to the way real men and women relate to each other. The 1950s play--about a man, married for seven years, contemplating a dalliance with a sexy young neighbor--trades on antiquated gender stereotypes. Give it another quarter-century, and The Seven Year Itch could be enjoyed as an amusing period piece, as English Restoration comedies are today. But right now, we lack that distance. We're in an in-between period, when the play has lost its currency but isn't quite a classic. For now, it just seems old-fashioned.