21st-century sublime
American Sublime, a recent exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, surveyed the paintings of 19th-century landscape masters Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, and others. The show explored the traditional view of the sublime landscape in all its transcendent glory. That was then; this is now. Scott Laird, gallery director…
Nine days of cinema, ten years in the making
ImageOut, Rochester’s Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, celebrates ten years of grassroots success this week with nine days of action-packed cinema unspooling at three theaters in the downtown area. What follows is our take on some of this year’s features and shorts programs. Be sure to consult the full ImageOut schedule, and check…
Another degree of Kevin Bacon
As so often happens in the American cinema, the new movie Trapped, no doubt purely accidentally, strikes a chord that chimes with current events and contemporary media hysteria. In a time when so-called journalists, especially on the 24-hour news channels, positively drool, in their usual manner, over sensational reports of the disappearance, abduction, sexual assault,…
Dumb and Dumber for the art-house crowd
Dumb and Dumber for the art-house crowd Imagine Of Mice and Men if George and Lenny were both boobs, The Odd Couple if Felix and Oscar were Norwegian, or Dumb and Dumber without the scatological humor, and you’ll most likely conjure up Elling, one of the overlooked nominees for Best Foreign Language Film in the…
Polish boy, monkey man
Anyone who remembers The Resisters (“Slut Rock,” “I Like Her Ass”) or Dog’s Life (“Dog’s Life,” “Queenie Gots a Pinworm”) will remember the odd-ball, sea-foamed Strato-twang of one Lee Chabowski, a nice Polish boy from Dansville. Both aforementioned groups proved to be tragically ahead of their time and comfortably out of place in a past…
Hitler’s Mustache
You know, sometimes you’re lucky enough to find a disc that perfectly suits where you’re headed: the dry cleaners, the clinic, Wegmans, hell, etc. With my evening errands complete, I recently found myself driving ’round and ’round the inner loop, circling our modest skyline to the sounds of the King of Soul, Solomon Burke’s, new…
In one pocket, out the other
New York State Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian is stumped. I’ve called him to get his take on the legality of over $1 million in loans Tom Golisano’s campaign committee gave to the committees of his two candidates for lieutenant governor, Dan Mahony and William Neild, and Daghlian is just as clueless as…
News briefs 10.02.02
The early worm and his Bird During the week, Tom Pethic is a substance abuse counselor on the adolescent team at the Brighton outpatient branch of Park Ridge Chemical Dependency Services. But every Sunday, from 6 to 11 a.m., you’ll find him behind the microphone as host of Artistry in Jazz, one of the finest…
Look homeward: the finances of long-term care
As US battleships prepare to set sail again, another iceberg floats into harbor with hardly a PT boat deployed against it. This ‘berg is a troubling financial downturn among nursing homes, mostly connected to Medicaid reimbursements. (Medicaid, created in 1965 to provide health care for the poor, wasn’t designed to pay for long-term care.…
21st-century sublime
American Sublime, a recent exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, surveyed the paintings of 19th-century landscape masters Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, and others. The show explored the traditional view of the sublime landscape in all its transcendent glory. That was then; this is now. Scott Laird, gallery director…
The US as uni-bomber
“I am scared,” said a friend, discussing Iraq. So am I. And sick at heart. Under the cloak of fighting terrorism and Saddam Hussein, George Bush is making a catastrophic — perhaps irreversible — change in US foreign policy. That change will affect not only the United States but also countries and innocent people…
Reader Feedback 10.2.02
The real pain Listening to President Bush’s bellicose speeches against Saddam, I am reminded of the old surgical practice performed in classical Greece. As an anesthetic, the surgeon would induce a new pain more severe than the pain the surgery would cause in order to divert “pain attention.” There is no question that Saddam is…
