It is highly possible that there are numerous reasons why my friends and acquaintances are glad that they are not me. So it goes. But I remember one time, in high school, when a good buddy of mine came right out and said it: “Dude, I’m so glad I am not you.”

It seems he had heard me discussing a piece of music with another musician friend. We had been tearing a song into pieces, trying to figure out what was going on with the time-signatures.

“I think I am insulted,” I responded to my candid pal.  “Why, besides the obvious stuff, do you not want to be me?” [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, religion & philosophy by Chris Matarazzo
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Drawings from the Gulag begins unexpectedly, with a headshot of a proud homo-sovieticus from one of the USSR’s eastern minorities. Wearing thick soviet spectacles and a soviet suit, and with impeccable posture, this man gazes at you, the reader, with firm resolve. Here is a stalwart Comrade-of-the-Month, whose portrait would be placed at the entrance to a massive factory complex in some industrial soviet city. Forget bonuses and a salary raise — true glory was to be found in constructing the socialist future.

The man is Danzig Baldaev, and to his colleagues he really did appear to be a loyal soviet citizen. Born in 1925, he worked for decades in the soviet prison service- no place for the squeamish, that’s for certain. And yet flip to the first illustration in the book, a drawing of a crowd of proud revolutionaries titled ‘Inception of the Gulag’ and in the top right hand corner there is an inscription that reads: ‘Dedicated to the 70^th anniversary of the giant of Russian literature, A.I. Solzhenitsyn.  11^th November 1988’. A strange thing for a career penal officer to write, no? [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Daniel Kalder
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Ladies and gentlemen, this week we are going to take a ride in the O’Connor DeLorean, which is a 1999 Nissan Altima that has 168,762  miles, and embarrsingly enough, a Dave Matthews Band bumper sticker. I have been digging through my old writings, notes, and illegible ramblings and came across a piece I wrote about my first day of work in the “real world.” I got a good laugh from reading it, so I decided to revamp it a bit and share it with you all. So take my hand, and let’s get jiggy with it back to 1998, when boy bands ruled the charts, the Internet was still a baby, and cell phones were only for rich people and drug dealers. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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Tags: art & entertainment, politics & government by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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Dear Mom and Dad:

I’m trying to figure something out. See, I think I am an artist. I draw pictures in notebooks and people say I am talented. “So talented,” they say. I have this feeling they think I’m great, but I’m pretty sure I’m not that good. I’m just better than most of them, which doesn’t mean I am really talented, I don’t think. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, family & parenting by Chris Matarazzo
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As the proud and loving father of a three year old boy, it has become apparent to me that parenthood is a continuous learning experience. Every morning when I wake Jack up, I’m never sure what his disposition will be, but one thing is constant – trying to dress him is like wrestling a greased crocodile. But I have concluded one cold hard fact – children love to be entertained by a giant rodent, eat sub-par pizza, and play games of chance that are a total ripoff. And that’s exactly why we took Jack to Chuck E. Cheese last week. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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In Charles Willeford’s great novel The Burnt Orange Heresy, the indifferent, arrogant art critic James Figueras, musing on his own success, observes,

Only twenty-five full-time art critics in America, out of a population of more than two hundred million! This is a small number, indeed, of men who are able to look at art and understand it, and then interpret it in writing in such a way that those who care can share the aesthetic experience.

Clive Bell claimed that art was “significant form.” I have no quarrel with that, but he never carried his thesis out to its obvious conclusion. It is the critic who makes the form(s) significant to the viewer!

The critic occupies a rarefied place. At least, the paid critic does. The man or woman who commands pages in publications such as, oh, let’s say The LA Weekly, or, to choose another publication totally at random The Washington Post, is automatically looked at with unique authority because those particular publications have history, prestige, and money behind them. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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Hey, we all have busy weeks. Here’s a meditation on parenthood and artistic identity that originally appeared on my blog:

Quite often, we’ll be listening to my iPod or the radio in the car and one of my young sons will ask me: “Is that you dad?” In my entire life, nothing has been as satisfying as that question. It means my boys see me as a composer and as a singer.

The audience that really counts gets it. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, family & parenting by Chris Matarazzo
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Some things are meant to be. On the one hand, you have a long-running show that’s losing its star. While the program is still profitable, the most die-hard fans would concede it has become predictable even by sitcom standards. (Dwight did something most people would find socially inappropriate again?) On the other, you have a man who is full of surprises for all, whether you’re his girlfriend or a segment producer on Good Morning America. Steve Carrell’s replacement is clear: the new boss on The Office should be Chris Brown. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Sean Cunningham
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The early 20^th century was a golden age of American horror and fantasy fiction. Inspired by the works of such great gothic writers as Bram Stoker, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Matthew Lewis, and Edgar Allan Poe, a new breed of writer was crafting tales of fancy, suspense, and supernatural horror. In publications like Weird Tales and FantastiFiction, heroic, larger-than-life heroes strode across harsh landscapes to do battle with incredible creatures, witches fought for the souls of the innocent, and a house itself might come to life and attack its tormented inhabitants.

The literature of fantasy, heroism, and horror is one of pure entertainment. The crafters of these stories were interested primarily in offering to readers a diversion from the trials of their everyday lives. In many cases, their literary skills were unequal to their visionary imaginations, and the entertainments they created were considered disposable. It is only a select few of the pulp authors of this era whose names are remembered today, and continue to charm a new generation of fans with a taste for exotic storytelling.

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Ricky Sprague
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A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about the idea of purpose behind the artistic experience. I sat at a concert given by the great guitarist John Williams and the question occurred to me: Should I be learning or enjoying, right now? And, as is frequent on my blog, I related this question to the philosophy of living, in general.  “To chill, or not to chill?” was the basic question — with a little Taoism thrown in. But writing this led me to think about artistic purpose further; specifically, in terms of the standards we set for ourselves. 

A few years ago, a former student of mine asked if I would play guitar at her wedding ceremony. Having only been a student of the guitar for a few years, I said that I wasn’t quite ready for that kind of thing. Her reaction, light-hearted and not unkind, was to imply that I was holding standards for myself that are too high. Was I? [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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“We slept in a bungalow! On the floor!”

“After waiting in line for 3 hours, we were lucky enough to see a 30 minute comedy show…for free!”

“As far as the eye could see, there were free energy drinks…and boy did we drink them.  We drank them all.  We were sick as dogs.” [Read more →]

Tags: creative writing, mostly kidding by Matt Scottoline, music by Matt Scottoline
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One of my former students, an aspiring and rather talented artist, just posted this on Facebook: “ugh, taking art history next semester, someone kill me.” This sort of hit me sideways. It is the kind of thing that drives home the idea that one’s own set of parameters simply does not apply to everyone; the lens each of us sees through is different. What was a given to me as a young musician and writer — that the history of my arts was both essential and fascinating — simply does not fall into everyone’s conceptual parameters. Do we need, as artists, to study (and respect) the history of our respective arts in order to be our best? [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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Entertainment Weekly has a photo of the costume to be featured in the new Wonder Woman television pilot, written by David E. Kelley.

For a tightly-controlled character with a lot of licensing on the line, it actually doesn’t look that bad — although, it doesn’t top this fan designed outfit:

Tags: books & writing, television by Ricky Sprague
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The Monday morning after opening weekend of March Madness is never a pleasant one. And the Monday morning after opening weekend of March Madness, my birthday, and St. Patrick’s Day is a completely unpleasant one. Throw in the birthday night appearance of the “supermoon”, and I am totally shocked that I didn’t turn into Teen Wolf and terrorize all the bars in my town, dunk basketballs, and surf on top of my 1999 Nissan Altima. (Actually, I might have done two of those things over the weekend) I spent Sunday night laying on the couch watching basketball and cursing Arthur Guinness, simultaneously dreading and looking forward to a week back to normalcy. My March Madness pool is in a crumpled ball in my pocket, covered in blood, sweat, and tears….and hot sauce. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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In the episode of “The Simpsons” entitled “Bart’s Comet,” Bart Simpson discovers a comet is heading straight toward Springfield. All the town’s inhabitants cram themselves into Ned Flanders’ bomb shelter; however, there isn’t room for everyone. As the citizens try to decide which of them will leave the shelter to die in the catastrophe, Krusty the Clown pleads his own case, and says,

“OK, OK, let’s figure out who should stay. The world of the future will need laughter, so I’m in.”

Or, put another way,

“That’s what comedians do!!! We react to tragedy by making jokes to help people in tough times feel better through laughter.”

That is a tweet from comedian Joan Rivers, in defense of another comedian, Gilbert Gottfried. Comedians are humor specialists who could be doing other more lucrative work, such as plumbing, but have instead decided to sacrifice themselves for the good of us all– to make us laugh in difficult times. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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Five years ago I flew into Texas, not knowing how long I would be here. Although I am generally bad with dates, I remember my arrival in the Lone Star state because it coincided with Austin’s South by South West music/media/film festival, which is running this week. And I recall that on that fateful plane journey I met a woman who was chaperoning a teenage rock band from Wales. They hoped to be “discovered” at the festival; their parents were concerned that their ambitious offspring would self destruct in a maelstrom of coke-snorting and whoring. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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I remember a deucedly long van ride to Binghamton, New York. The various discussions among the band blur together now, but I distinctly recall sharply differing opinions as to whether one needs to actively wash one’s feet in the shower or whether the time said feet spend sloshing in the soapy water at the bottom of the tub does the hygienic trick. I also remember our soft-spoken and usually ironic lead guitarist, Jimmy, weighing-in on the debate, during a lull: [long silence] “Questions . . .” he said, languidly.

We were to play an open-air show to several thousand people, right next to the Susquehanna river, outside of a big hotel.  As we came into radio range of Binghamton, we began hearing advertisements: [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, music by Chris Matarazzo
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There have been a lot of “life-as-illusion” themed movies coming out lately. We’ve had Avatar, Inception, and TRON: Legacy, and this month alone there’s The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Sucker Punch and Source Code. All these films share themes of alternate realities, questions about what is reality, and insight into powers that might be manipulating the reality we live in. While I hope to discuss the most recent batch of these films in an upcoming column, for now I’d like to bring up one that slipped past the radar of many moviegoers. This film actually gave me goose bumps when it revealed an angle that I’ve only recently adopted, and have never before seen in any other movie. That film is Disney’s Tangled. [Read more →]

Tags: movies, religion & philosophy by Marc Oromaner
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I’ve always thought that King of the Hill – an animated television series that followed the lives of a family, their neighbors, friends and co-workers in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas – should be required viewing for people, such as myself, coming from ‘someplace else’ to make their home in the Lone Star State.  And there’s nothing like Texas Independence Day to stress that point … and to strengthen my bond with family man, propane man and quintessential Texan, Hank Hill.
[Read more →]

Tags: television by Jeff McDonald
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