Remembering Lenny Bruce and what he gave, fifty years after his death. Fifty years ago today, Lenny Bruce, born in Long Island as Alfred Leonard Schneider, died in his home overlooking Los Angeles, California, at the age of forty. He didn’t have a quarter. Over the course of five years he blew through a fortune […]
Category: Arts Review
Only one music festival turns off the loudness button for a weekend. Stephanie Leet and I split coverage of the QMF, she attended on Friday and I went on Saturday. It was Steph’s first time and reading through her notes on the evening, it was an imaginative experience for me — she was in The Jungle Book […]
Worst Monday Ever
Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble pushes the manila envelope in Procedures for Saying No. While the Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble (PETE) brings a good amount of anarchy to any topic, it’s clearly carried out with an extra degree of relish here, as they set their sights on workplace manners. Smart-casual clothing is abandoned along with all […]
Hannah Arendt and the cold behavior of ideology. Today opens the Portland Jewish Film Festival, presented by Northwest Film Center. Over the next two weeks, 15 films will screen from directors across the globe, strung together in the telling of Jewish history and culture. I first watched Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, which screens on […]
Stressings by Jordan Dykstra: How to make the viola cry. Sometimes we need to question the difference between beautiful and pretty. I’m not about to tackle such a lofty rhetorical exercise, but it should be safe to say that your concept of pretty, beautiful, is not mine, and not least Jordan Dykstra’s. He is a […]