Booksmart – Reviews
A Better Angel (By Chris Adrian. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 230 pgs., $23.) Adrian is clearly no MFA mill product. He’s a pediatrician and a divinity student, and he throws these two fields of human endeavor at the walls with a good bit of fearlessness. Not like the “fearlessness” that’s become its own prose genre,…
Carmichael’s top 5 staffpicks
1) Nobody’s Home by Dubravka Ugresic (nonfiction) — Essays on multi-culturalism? No! Essays on one’s place in an increasingly plural, multi-“cultural” world, dominated by American mass consumerism. Read the last paragraph of page 208 or pages 173-174. Hers really is a strangely rational, compassionate and fresh voice. —Jason Brown 2) The Little Girl Who was…
Book honors KY’s reproductive freedom fighters
Standing Up For Reproductive Rights: The Struggle for Legal Abortion in Kentucky (By Fran Ellers. Chicago Spectrum Press; 219 pp., $25.) If you were fortunate enough (or brave enough) to see Mike Leigh’s film “Vera Drake,” then you have a graphic sense of what life was like before legalized abortion — not only for desperate…
Forgotten Classics
After Leaving Mr. McKenzie (By Jean Rhys. First published in 1931.) Though Jean Rhys is best known for “The Wide Sargasso Sea” (her retelling of the “Jane Eyre” story from the point of view of the madwoman in the attic), this earlier novel is every bit as intense and perceptive. It’s the story of Julia…
‘Durang/Durang’ an uneven experience
(The Necessary Theatre presents Christopher Durang’s “Durang/Durang,” directed by Alec Volz. Continues through Oct. 18 in the MeX Theater. For tickets, call 584-7777 or visit www.kentuckycenter.org.) Watching a Christopher Durang play is like visiting a funhouse with three anarchists, your ex-girlfriend, her mother and a monkey — rules don’t apply and you’re always five seconds…
Staffpicks
Oct. 15-19 Comedian Josh Sneed Josh Sneed, featured on Sirius and XM comedy channels, has won top awards at festivals throughout the United States and the prestigious Montreal Comedy Festival. A hard-working road comic who travels 250 days a year, he admits, “The lifestyle has its ups and downs … seeing the country, playing a…
Write-off
A vote for Scott Ritcher in the Nov. 4 election won’t count. That’s the message Jefferson Circuit Court Judge A.C. McKay Chauvin delivered late Friday afternoon, ruling on a lawsuit filed by incumbent Democrat Denise Harper Angel against Ritcher, an independent candidate running in the 35th state Senate district. Angel’s lawsuit challenged Ritcher’s nominating petition,…
Learning experience
In the hallway, the laughter all sounds the same. But listen closely and there’s a swirl of different languages — Vietnamese, Arabic, Swahili, just to name a few. Inside the classroom, rows of students are dressed in the standard khaki pants and pressed white shirts, but the occasional brightly colored hijab or ornate belt buckle…
Third Street jive
Crammed into the minority caucus room inside City Hall last Thursday, Metro Council Republicans vented frustrations about Mayor Jerry Abramson’s handling of plans to expand Fourth Street Live. A few hours later, the council stalled the proposed sweetheart deal to lease 3 acres of downtown real estate to a developer at the bargain price of…
WHAT A WEEK
+4 Sucks to be MSD: The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous lower court ruling last week saying the Metropolitan Sewer District owes damages ($35,000) and attorneys fees to Ronald Barber, a former MSD contractor who — along with former MSD engineer Sarah Lynn Cunningham — sued the agency in 2005. The…
Cold call
On the Kentucky side of Cincinnati, heading southwest, is a little town called Cold Springs. Blink and you’ll miss it. But slow down and listen to the wind, and you just might hear the quiet strumming and soft voice of Daniel Martin Moore, a 20-something troubadour with a soul much, much older. To some, the…
‘Creature Features’; So on and So forth
Thursday, Oct. 16 Donavon Frankenreiter is coming back to town, appearing at Headliners (1386 Lexington Road, 584-8088) on Thursday ($15, 9 p.m., with Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek opening). His third album, Pass It Around, has just come out and shows the former Jack Johnson protégé is stepping forward as a pop-leaning singer-songwriter. As always,…
B–Sides
Rise of the Republic Louisville native Chris Miller and his band, The Young Republic, have opened for The Mountain Goats and Bon Iver in England, but the group hasn’t had as much luck stateside. They’re hoping to change that when they play an all-ages show Friday at The Brick House (1101 S. Second St., 213-0428).…
Fuck All Y’all Motherfuckers
Punk metal billy goats return with a new album full of sunshine and lollipops. Boasting a subtle, enigmatic title and cover art that has to be seen to be believed — check out the massive schlong Our Lord and Savior is packing, for starters, and then dig the mountain of bloody baby heads and one…
My Darling Asleep
The average person’s knowledge of traditional Celtic and Irish music doesn’t extend too far beyond Riverdance and The Pogues. This vibrant, wildly influential folk tradition has become a parody of its former self and has been relegated to those little stations at department stores where you press buttons to hear samples of nature sounds and…
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Byrne and Eno describe the (so far) online-only Everything That Happens Will Happen Today as “electronic gospel.” It couldn’t sound more different than My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Byrne sings throughout, Eno provides pop wallpaper with ambient guitarist Leo Abrahams, and you begin to hear a connection between Remain in Light, the chopped-up…
The Inevitable Continuing
To hear Louisville trio Broadfield Marchers’ (Dustin Zdobylak, Mark Zdobylak, and Justin Carter) latest album is to hear the echoes of other great lo-fi acts Guided by Voices, The Who’s early years and Big Star. The Inevitable Continuing showcases Broadfield Marcher’s pop sensibility. The drums are low in the mix while Zdobylak and Zdobylak (Dustin…
Inbox — Oct. 15, 2008
A FITTING HOME Dear Mayor Abramson, Councilman Tandy, Councilman Owen and Mr. Fischer: I just wanted to take a moment to voice my support for the acquisition of the former Mercy Academy campus by Wayside Christian Mission. Unfortunately, I no longer live in the Highlands, so I can’t express my support through my signature on…
Releases on Tuesday, Oct. 21
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS BRIDE OF THE MONSTER 1955; $14.95 each, UR Without peer in the world of bad movies, its stench rises to the rafters and stretches till daybreak. See Giant Tor Johnson shamble about menacingly, looking for a plot! See a limp-assed stuffed octopus eat ham! See Bela Lugosi emote from beneath a…
High on the Old Country
Two weeks ago, I returned from another visit to the Old Country: Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. Six of us rented sturdy Dutch 4-speed bicycles and roamed the landscape in search of good times and better beer. There was liquid tradition on tap or in bottles at each stop, with Belgian brewery visits to Het…
RECENTLY REVIEWED IN LEO
BUENOS DIAS CAFÉ, 1703 Charlestown-N.A. Pike, (812) 282-2233. A simple, modern strip-mall exterior conceals one of the region’s most interesting small Latino eateries. The menu includes affordable, delicious dishes such as a Honduran Breakfast, Mexican stewed beef and fiery shrimp. (Reviewed 8/6/08; Rating: 88) CARLY RAE’S, 103 W. Oak St., 365-1003. With the arrival of…
New York pizza: You got a problem wid dat?
Pizza was born in Italy — Naples, to be precise — but like a lot of immigrants and their descendants, it started to change as soon as it landed in the United States. Sure, the constants remain: Pizza is (almost) always built on a base of flat Italian bread, topped with tomato sauce and melted…
Count your blessings
Mammaw always said that in tough times, it’s important to count your blessings. Well, somebody’s mammaw probably said that. My mammaw, who lived through the Great Depression (and that was pre-Zoloft), said that in tough economic times, it’s a good idea to grab your nuts before some other woodland creature runs off with them. One…
Mommy in the middle
I’m standing in a buffet line, staring at the back of Greta Van Susteren’s head. It’s a surprisingly small head, and it looks much like it did during my days as an intern at CNN’s Washington Bureau. Back then, a perpetually perplexed-looking Greta and her bevy of assistants would brush past me in the hallway,…
Where are all the gay people?
Is Louisville really the gayest city in Kentucky? I can understand why Somerset isn’t, but why not Lexington? And where was the competition held? Were the same judges used for both the swimsuit and interview portions? These are questions I found myself asking one morning during Blackout 2008, as I watched a member of the…
You’re ridiculous
If you’re voting for Barack Obama in a couple weeks, you’re ridiculous. Don’t you know anything? He’s a Muslim. And he’s an Arab. He has a crazy Christian pastor. But remember, he’s a Muslim. He’s friends with terrorists. And he was a community organizer. He wants to kill your unborn baby. And he’ll raise your…
A portrait of the downtown as a young man
Won’t it, like, be noisy up here?” I stand before the large, modestly dilapidated window, pointing to the street three stories below — pointing, specifically, to the roaring orgy of bulldozers feasting upon the carcass of the old LG&E substation, a chaotic mess of crushed brick and twisted metal that will be, in just two…
