Top talents across the musical spectrum will heat up concert halls across the country this weekend. For some, a New Year’s gig will be a homecoming, a chance to reconnect with fans who were present at the creation. Some will parlay a good time with a good cause. But they’ll all be out in force in the service of Auld Lang Syne. MSN surveys the field
The comedy writer who wrote for NBC’s Saturday Night Live in its infancy, and who was a producer of the successful Canadian comedy series The Kids in the Hall, was found dead on Monday in a hotel room, an apparent suicide. CBC News reports Globe and Mail: “Helped by the wide circulation of the remarkable last post Bodolai left on his blog, his death has emerged as an object lesson about life in an impossible profession.” Read the appreciation
Used to be presidential hopefuls made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Sunday-morning politics talk shows to get their points across. Used to be. Now, candidates are heading for the younger audiences (and generally friendlier confines) of the late-night talk shows. Scott Collins of the Los Angeles Times reports. In Television Short Sharp Shock: Jon Huntsman, still rockin’ after all these years
In post-9/11 America, “Muslim” is too often perceived as a dirty word, with Islam’s adherents often subject to slurs, discrimination, or worse in the wake of that terrorist attack and the two wars that followed. But four Muslim comedians touring the Deep South are working to promote cultural understanding with open minds, courage and the ultimate weapon: self-deprecating and enlightening comedy from the standup stage. NBC’s Harry Smith reports:
726 St. Peter Street: It’s survived the turbulence of two centuries, the musical tastes of a fickle and indifferent public, and even Hurricane Katrina. And Preservation Hall, now celebrating its golden anniversary year, persists in keeping traditional jazz — Dixieland, ragtime and the blues — very much alive. Tom Sancton reports for Vanity Fair. See Music
Reuters: The live-in physician for the three-time Grammy-winning R&B singer said in a California newspaper interview this week that James, 73, is terminally ill with leukemia, dementia and kidney disease, among other illnesses. Her most recent album, The Dreamer, was released in November. More from Reuters here
The rapier literary and conversational wit, masterful political critic, relentless all-night party animal and perhaps the greatest essayist of our time, died on Thursday in Houston, Texas, of complications of esophageal cancer. He was 62. In a career of sterling essays, books, editorials and TV appearances, Hitchens called a multitude of emperors on the absence of their clothes, from British monarchs to Henry Kissinger, from Bill Clinton to God.
To Wiliam Grimes of The New York Times, Hitchens was “a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell” and “a master of the extended peroration, peppered with literary allusions, and of the bright, off-the-cuff remark.” More in Word
The Daily Beast: Andrew Sullivan recalls his best memory of Hitchens
From a Manhattanized version of a downhome general store to a computer kiosk at a major airport, from express versions of high-volume retailers like Toys R Us and Target to quirky craftsman boutiques, holiday-only “pop-up” stores are becoming a big part of the retail landscape. At MSN, Maureen Sullivan offers a national survey of the ultimate holiday limited edition -- the temporary store.
The bold, visionary artist Romare Bearden was born 100 years ago, and the U.S. art world is marking the occasion. But institutions in the city, from the Schomburg to the Met, are celebrating the collagist’s centenary with vibrant retrospectives. “In Bearden’s embracing art all borders are down — between personal and universal, town and country, history and myth,” writes Holland Cotter in The New York Times. “Africa, Europe and the Americas too are borderless. Bearden is artist in chief of the modern cosmopolis, griot in residence of the global village. All hail.” More in Art
Writer Alan Moore and artist David Lloyd, creators of the anti-totalitarian comic classic V for Vendetta, are backing the global Occupy movement, the mass phenomenon that’s drawn spiritual and iconographic inspiration from the comic they first published in 1982. For Moore, the Occupiers represent a chance to refresh last century’s spirit of activism — a spirit he’s happy to help revive. Scott Thill of Wired reports. See Word
Three wise men, babe in a manger, blah blah blah. The holiday season always unleashes the usual tales of the Nativity. The creators of Wisemen would beg to differ. The musical, staged at ACT Theatre, puts a wild contemporary comic gloss on the story we know. “The tone ranges from witty to substantive to crass, always with the intent to skewer the commercialization of Christmas,” says Margaret Friedman in Seattle Weekly. More in Stage
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Top talents across the musical spectrum will heat up concert halls across the country this weekend. For some, a New Year’s gig will be a homecoming, a chance to reconnect with fans who were present at the creation. Some will parlay a good time with a good cause. But they’ll all be out in force in the service of Auld Lang Syne. MSN surveys the field
