Cover Story
Sprout
Half an hour early for the meeting, seven people sit and chat politely in a long, rectangular room with electric purple walls and window treatments, modern decor, and a flat-screen television showing a news program. It seems like any other meeting place, except for a few things: Instead of incandescent light bulbs, some fixtures hold…
WEB EXCLUSIVE: U of L students do a bang-up job on ‘The Vagina Monologues’
‘The Vagina Monologues’Feb. 20-21The Playhouse1911 S. Third St.852-2663$8 ($5 students); 8 p.m. A cast of more than 20 University of Louisville students performed an excellent production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” Thursday night at The Playhouse. The play is part of V-Day 2009, a global movement dedicated to ending violence against women and…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS BLOOD, BOOBS & BEAST 2007; $19.95, UR For those of us who obsess over no-budget indie horror/sci-fi/schlock films, the name Don Dohler is legendary. This is a tribute to Don, who left this world in 2006, leaving behind a legacy of 10 simply awful movies, beginning with 1978’s “The Alien Factor”…
Barry the Bicycle rides again
With Louisville’s stunted urban renaissance awaiting the green light from the credit market gods, the timing for the region’s second Bike Summit couldn’t have been more appropriate. Held in the gymnasium of the old Male High School, the speaker/discussion-driven symposium gathered some 270 cycling activists, addicts and enthusiasts, as well as city officials and transportation…
Picotero
Some say drum machines have no soul. On most days, I am one of those people. With Monareta’s new album, there is something hauntingly authentic in its Latin, quasi-fusion jazz with a synthetic rhythm section. The duo of Andres Martinez and Camilo Sanabria has compiled fascinating, exuberant songs that pick up from opener “La Batalla…
JazzFest 2009
Davide Logiri’s first taste of jazz came while listening to records where Ramsey Lewis interpreted the Beatles. Even as a young child, Logiri found himself “stimulated by the possibility to change a song, ad lib based on your inner feelings.”But the Italian pianist, featured on International Night at the University of Louisville’s JazzFest, vividly recalls…
Fairness, phase one
I have relatively few pet peeves. I’m just that great. However, a few minor annoyances really, really peeve me. The first one that comes to mind: a monkey dressed in people clothing. I hate that. I also generally dislike most postcards from Florida. A close second are those “One man, One woman” bumper stickers left…
The brink of freedom
In 1841, Abraham Lincoln spent three weeks in Louisville visiting his friend Joshua Speed. The men first met about four years earlier in Springfield, Ill. — Speed was operating a general store, and Lincoln, at the time a burgeoning, penniless lawyer, came in to inquire about buying a mattress on credit. The two became friends…
Film: Do the Oscars matter?
The Oscars are worse than predictable. They’re self-parody. Example? Look at Kate Winslet. Nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role back in 2005, she parodied the entire process in an episode of the HBO show “Extras.” Winslet, playing herself on the set of a Holocaust movie, explains why she took the role: “I don’t…
Staffpicks
Thursday, Feb. 19 ‘Where Am I Wearing?’ Carmichael’s Bookstore 2720 Frankfort Ave. 896-6950 Free; 7 p.m. Ever wonder where your clothes were made? Me neither. That’s kinda the point here. Kelsey Timmerman, a journalist living in Indianapolis, got this wild idea to track down the origins of his clothing. Among tons of other stuff you…
Inbox — Feb. 18, 2009
Hot Stuff LEO, LEO, LEO, thank you for the new layout! Keep up the good job and being a voice in the Louisville community! The changes are wonderful, and obviously you are moving in the direction the print industry is going. How about getting some of the former writers at The C-J to write an…
If you build it, no big deal
Less than a mile off Blankenbaker Parkway — a vast thoroughfare littered with business parks, gas stations and chain restaurants — there’s a neighborhood clinging to its rural roots. This narrow stretch of Rehl Road comprises mostly modest, well-maintained houses, with a handful of condos and brick McMansions sprinkled in the mix. Despite the encroaching…
B-Sides
Animal lovers, listen up. Stevie Ray’s Blues Bar’s Annual Hall of Fame concert on Sunday, Feb. 22 benefits the Animal Care Society, Louisville’s only no-kill shelter. On deck to perform are Travel’n Mojos, Susan O’Neil & Blues Seville, King Bees, Da Mudcats and Hellfish. Da Mudcats’s Mike Lynch and Hellfish’s Jimmy Gardner will be inducted.…
Artificial Fire
Unsigned singer/songwriter Eleni Mandell has crafted a surprisingly large body of work, an achievement notable enough in itself without discussing the merits of her latest, Artificial Fire. The album works best when Mandell plays it straight, whether it’s up-tempo fare (“Bigger Burn” or the Elvis Costello-channeling “Little Foot”) or languid ballads (“In the Doorway,” the…
Rock ’n’ roll Michael Jordan
It wasn’t Eric Sean Nally’s fault — the cymbal stand didn’t look both ways before it poked a hole in his head. Nally wound up in the hospital, bleeding profusely and leaving a crowd of Greenville, Ohio, teens dumbstruck. “It was fun, though,” says Nally, frontman for Foxy Shazam, who play Bulldog Café this weekend.…
Soul locksmith
“Let’s stay with idea of, ‘Don’t lock it down to one style,’” Wil Key says of his latest record, Satisfy My Soul. The University of Louisville grad’s record mixes spoken word, hip-hop, soul and R&B. Produced by Ryan West (Jay-Z, Beyoncé, T.I.), a five-time Grammy-nominated engineer, Satisfy’s grab bag of styles was the ethic from…
Book: What We’re Reading
1) Rabbit Run by John Updike (novel) — Everyone wonders when the economy will hit bottom. Here’s when: when you read “Rabbit Run,” the delicious 1960 novel of utter despair by the late, great John Updike. And when you cry so much your nose gets sore from blowing it into violent, jagged squares of toilet…
The Complicated Futility/A Quick Fix for A Horrible Dilemma
Digby has largely and unfairly gone unnoticed outside the region. The band’s evocative sound recalls ’90s alt-rock with a concise, brooding precision I often long for. These EPs are two sides of the same coin. Complicated shows off the playful side of the band as it swirls and shifts effortlessly between mid-tempo ballads and upbeat…
Book: Forgotten Classics
The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story(By Glenway Wescott, First Published 1940.) “The Pilgrim Hawk” may be the greatest overlooked American masterpiece of the 20th century. A novella with the narrative power of Faulkner’s “The Bear” or Mann’s “Death in Venice,” Wescott’s story takes place within the confines of a single afternoon in a French village,…
Book: Reports
Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry(By Leanne Shapton. Sarah Crichton Books; 129 pgs., $18.) This is not your typical romance novel. Although it relays an everyday tale about the rise and fall of a relationship, the method used to tell this…
Dining: Mug Shots
Hidden inside a manila folder, somewhere beneath the dusty substrata of the office file cabinets that contain the contents of my pre-digital working life, there is a photograph of me beaming proudly alongside a case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale bottles, circa 1993. It was the first legal case of Sierra Nevada that my pub…
Going post-postal
Now that America’s appliances are out on the front porch and the car is up on cinderblocks, it’s becoming routine for our most cherished institutions to call in sick and spend the day on the couch, huffing inhalants and scratching their lottery tickets and nether regions. So it was no surprise when Postmaster General John…
Book: Groff succeeds in voice, narrative power
Delicate, Edible Birds(By Lauren Groff. Hyperion/Voice; 306 pgs., $23.95.) No, this is not the latest memoir by one of those wacky food adventurers from the Travel Channel. It’s the selected short stories of Lauren Groff, whose name you may recognize from last year’s Orange Prize-nominated “The Monsters of Templeton.” Often it takes a whoop-de-do…
Dining: Recently Reviewed
Our Best Restaurant, 2835 Holmans Ln., Jeffersonville, (812) 288-8133, www.ourbestrestaurant.com. This family-owned business started as a single eatery in Smithfield, Ky., and has grown to a mini-chain of three. American, homestyle cooking in big portions for reasonable prices. (Reviewed 1/21/09; Rating: N/R) Perkfection Café & Bar, 359 Spring St., Jeffersonville, (812) 218-0600. Downtown Jeffersonville’s…
Livin’ In The Past
Relic fast-forward that quintessential, old-time high lonesome sound into the present. Their greatest strength is in the alchemy between crisp, striking instrumentation and the harmonic marriage of lead, baritone and tenor vocals. This album includes originals primarily written by Aaron Bibelhauser, and a rendition of John Fogerty’s “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” At their best,…
The Story girl
When music is near, Brandi Carlile hears a symphony. On her bedroom wall when she was 11, she recalls, was a poster of composer Paul Buckmaster. So it’s only natural that this folk singer-songwriter from Washington state is now playing gigs around the country with various orchestras. Carlile plays here Saturday with the Louisville Orchestra.…
Dining: Review
In the Old West, a throwdown was an invitation to come out and fight. In modern culinary times, resurrected by Food Network’s popular Chef Bobby Flay, a throwdown has become something decidedly more civilized, but still with plenty of posturing and inflated claims. Cooking throwdowns are a frequent occurrence among the foodies, chefs and restaurateurs…
Broken home
When Kimberly Bunton resigned her post as head of Metro government’s housing department last August, workers were finally allowed to speak publicly about what they’d said privately for months: mismanagement, possible corruption and a general indifference to major problems had put both grant money and services in jeopardy, and left workers listless, uninspired and confused.…
Representin’: Stuffing the piehole
Humans have recently been forced to take trans fats seriously for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that scientists are now certain the Frankenstein-ish veg-oil convert is also a prep course for Heart Attack 101, an unlikely foreshadowing of the heinous prospect of death-by-fat. Here in Possibility City, we’ve endured 10…
