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George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm.
This idea popped up on Carol Dugan’s East Waco community blog: an East Waco blues or jazz festival named after longtime Waco R&B guitarist George Spratt, who died last September. There’s also a related idea about establishing a dinner theater named for - and presumably using - Classie Ballou, one of Waco’s best-known and beloved band leaders/guitarists.
We’ve had blues and jazz fests before in downtown Waco, with varying degrees of success, but it seems that this could work if moderately scaled, organized and properly promoted. As a newsroom colleague noted, if Marlin and Wortham can pull off blues music festivals, surely Waco could. Given George was a fixture of the Waco live music scene for decades, it’d be nice to see his name as a permanent headliner.
The city’s presently renovating Cameron Park East with an eye to improving its ability to host and hold festivals, by the way, which should mean more music/entertainment events there in the years ahead.
A dinner theater, on the other hand, might present a challenge: I can name probably a half dozen music nightclubs that have opened in or near downtown and failed because their customers didn’t sustain them for whatever reasons. That’s not to say it won’t work, ever, but will take some ground work to pull off.
Mikey, one of Carol’s posters, asked me to raise the question here as well: Would a George Spratt Blues Festival in East Waco work? What would it take to do so? Could Waco support music festivals in other genres? Jump in.
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Harry Potter off the charts, for once
This snuck in under the radar late last week, but the New York Times Book Review this weekend didn’t have a Harry Potter title in its top 10 for the first time in a decade.
It’s been about a year since the last Harry Potter title - the series’ closing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - and during the period between that and the first Harry Potter book, author J.K. Rowling has sold some 375 million copies of her books. They sold so well that the Times spun off a children’s best-seller chart to open the adult list to new titles (at one time, three of the Times’ Top 10 best-sellers were Harry Potter books). They sold so well that Rowling became richer than the Queen of England.
It’s the end of an era to some extent, but not necessarily for long: the next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, arrives in movie theaters in November. Want to bet that the upcoming movie will boost book sales again?
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Iambic verse from Monday morn - what fun
I stumbled across this Pulp Shakespeare wiki this morning and found it a supreme timewaster for a rainy Monday. It started out as conversion of scenes from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction into iambic pentameter and quickly spiraled into scenes/dialogue from other movies.
I found scenes from The Godfather, Star Wars, A League of Their Own, Dirty Harry (“Is Fortune kind, that god of chance?/ Is the will of luck with thee, o punk?)”, an Abbott and Costello scene, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, The Big Lebowski, Glengarry Glen Ross, MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” done as a sonnet, an episode of “Friends,” Blade Runner, Jaws, “The Simpsons,” Clerks, “Star Trek,” “Law and Order,” Alien, Robocop, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” Spaceballs, There Will Be Blood (“My fellow abbot whom I’m soon to break / My drainage hath consumed your whole milkshake”), The Blues Brothers and more.
Language is a bit raw at times - with Tarantino and Mamet parodied, how could it be otherwise? - but it’s an impressive bit of collective comedy that shows maybe illiteracy won’t be our future … It’s also the daily piece of evidence that shows the Internet may be a wash when it comes to worker productivity …
Me, I’m doing good to put a blog header into meter.
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Wacoans of note in opera and letters
I’m a little late sharing these items, but they’re still noteworthy.
Soprano Amber Wellborn, a former Waco resident and Midway High School grad, recently won the top $8,000 prize at the Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition April 19 in Dallas. Wellborn, a voice student at the University of North Texas, sang “Vilja’s Lied” from Lehar’s “The Merry Widow” and “Come scoglio” from Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” in the final round to take top honors.
Some may remember Amber when she sang on the national youth classical music radio program “From the Top” when it taped a broadcast from Baylor University’s Jones Concert Hall in 2002.
On the literary front, William V. Davis, Baylor writer-in-residence and English professor, is the new president of the Texas Institute of Letters. The 72-year-old organization rewards good writing and encourages Texas literature.
The institute’s annual meeting was held in Dallas and Davis tells me that next year’s meeting will take place in Waco.
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On “Nunsense” (and “Tartuffe,” too)
The Waco Civic Theatre production of “Nunsense,” which heads into its second weekend tonight, carries a great gospel punch at the end. It comes in the powerhouse, gospel-belting voice of Regan Haddock in the rafter-ringing, audience-clapping “Holier Than Thou.” Haddock, as Sister Mary Hubert, a jealous No. 2 to Mother Superior Sister Mary Regina (Donna Makowski), nails her part throughout the musical with the right amount of mugging, but when she unleashes her voice toward the end, it’s a revelation.
Haddock’s colleagues also turn in good performances in the Dan Goggin musical, which lovingly spoofs Catholic sisters with song, dance and warm satire. The premise: the surviving members of the Little Sisters of Hoboken need to raise money to bury four colleagues poisoned by bad vichyssoise, hence a talent show. (Though, as Sister Mary Hubert reminds the audience several times, they wouldn’t have to if the Mother Superior hadn’t used convent funds to buy a VCR).
The sisters show their varied talents in a show set in the Mt. St. Helen’s School gym, still decorated with handmade team banners and paraphernalia from a recent production of “Grease.” Joining sisters Mary Hubert and Mary Regina are the street-wise Sister Robert Anne (Karen Savage), aspiring ballerina Sister Mary Leo (Midway high school student Grace Riehl, who remarkably fixed an errant scapular while performing en pointe), ventriloquist Sister Mary Amnesia (Beth Richards).
Interspersed with the songs are a cooking demonstration (“Baking with the Blessed Virgin Mary”) a home movie with the nuns starring in a western and a quiz played with audience members (which kept participating nuns on their toes: When one nun asked an older woman in the audience if she were a Catholic, the woman replied, “No, I’m a Christian” … )
Directed by Susan Voss, the nuns are entertaining as they sing, act, crack jokes and dance a little, though Makowski’s problem with lines in a recent Sunday matinee slowed the musical’s opening pace. Her husband Mike Makowski leads an off-stage combo that provides instrumental backing.
The cast is miked, which is a little unusual given the theater’s small size, and it proved a problem several times in Sunday’s performance, with amplification causing vocal shrillness at times or ringing feedback. Haddock’s gospel turn toward the end set the place ringing, too — but in a good way.
“Nunsense” continues with performances at 7:30 tonight, Saturday, May 9 and 10, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday and May 11. Call 776-1591 for ticket information.
As for McLennan Theatre’s production of Moliere’s religious satire “Tartuffe,” my apologies for taking so long to post this, though I saw the next-to-last performance on Saturday night.
Whitney Coulter, as the spirited servant Dorine, and Casey Pierce, as the grasping, lustful religious hypocrite Tartuffe, turned in notable performances, the former for her energy and dash, the latter for a measured, calculated sleaziness. Also good was Sara Rodriquez as Elmire, the wife who lures Tartuffe perilously close to raping her in order to show her deluded husband Orgon (a noisy Cruz Thomas) Tartuffe’s true nature.
Director Kelly Parker’s decision to use Ranjit Bolt’s translation, which employs rhyming couplets as does the French original, had mixed results. It’s an excellent script, but several cast members showed there’s a difference between learning one’s lines and learning them well enough to let verse flow naturally as conversation. Occasionally compounding that problem was Nick Catoire’s over-the-top mugging as Tartuffe’s toady Laurent; funny stuff visually, but it upstaged whatever lines were being said. Also, gentlemen flourishing and flouncing handerchiefs as they spoke may be stylistically accurate for that period, but it came across as stilted and artificial.
The heart of Moliere’s comedy came through in the MCC production, but left one wishing for a tad more polish. Still, kudos for attempting material that made the cast stretch beyond themselves.
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Shannon Elizabeth dances off “Dancing”
Actress Shannon Elizabeth (Fadal), a former Waco resident and Waco High grad, and her partner Derek Hough didn’t make this week’s cut on the national television series “Dancing With the Stars,” ending their run with the tango and mambo.
Judges liked the tango, the mambo not so much, but apparently it was lackluster viewer voting that did Elizabeth in after six weeks of competition.
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Grand Theft Auto IV - a side overlooked
The reviews for Grand Theft Auto IV are coming in and they’re gushing. Not about the content, storyline or level of violence - the usual stuff that tends to get hashed and rehashed and rehashed some more in the media, I’m afraid - but the technical end of things: the attention to detail in constructing a virtual world of Liberty City, complete with radio stations, operable cell phones, television shows, Internet Web sites and a wickedly satirical look at American culture.
It seems to me the sheer gee-whizzery of GTA’s world, humor and game construction is what draws in fans rather than the violence, language and sex.
Adult gamers, not just parents, do need to be aware that exposure to violent content, be it videogames, television or film, can rub off the more you watch it, particularly when there’s no counterbalancing influences of people or real-world interactions. Still, I wonder if GTA’s critics would reshape their criticism after a (non-violent) test drive through Liberty City’s environments …
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Whew, what a weekend - Feedback on Rodney, 3DD/Flyleaf?
In the ebb and flow that’s weekend entertainment in the Waco area, this past weekend was a torrent:
- 3 Doors Down, Flyleaf and 12 Stones in a national rock tour, Friday in Belton
- Comic Rodney Carrington, Saturday at Zack & Jim’s Hog Creek Icehouse
- Drag boat races on Lake Brazos
- The national tour of “Chicago” Wednesday and Thursday (OK, a bit of a stretch from here to the weekend) at Waco Hippodrome
- Jedidiah designers Kelli Murray and Austin Blasingame painting a mural, Austin photographer Esther Havens and live music at Common Grounds coffeehouse
- Cotton Palace Festival Friday at Waco Hall
- “Nunsense” at Waco Civic Theatre
- “Tartuffe” at McLennan Community College
- “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” at Baylor’s Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center
Whew.
I caught “Tartuffe” and “Nunsense” over the weekend (healthy attendance at both, considering the busy weekend) and hope to post my reviews later today, but I’m interested in how the Flyleaf and Rodney Carrington shows went. Anyone who was at either show - or any other weekend event - want to share how they were?
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Art for a good cause at Common Grounds
Art in various forms helps a good cause today and Saturday (April 25-26) at Baylor-area coffeehouse Common Grounds, which will host a mural painting, photography show and live music in support of Love, Light & Melody, a ministry helping impoverished children in Nicaragua.
Painting the mural facing Common Grounds’ side patio (and what a great idea) are Kelli Murray and Austin Blasingame, designers with Surf-brand clothing company and design house Jedidiah. They’ll be working today and Saturday.
The photography comes courtesy of Esther Havens, an Austin photographer who’s worked with Love, Light & Melody and its work with the children in Managua City, Nicaragua, who stay alive through what they can find in La Chureca, the city’s trash heap. Havens’ photographs from her trips, plus shots by other artists, will go on display at noon Saturday. Photos from that show will be sold with proceeds benefiting LL&M.
Live music begins at 8 p.m. Saturday with Seth Philpott and Whitney White performing for a $5 cover.
Props to Common Grounds owner Jill Mashburn for her embrace of the arts and how that can be integrated, imaginatively, into helping others.
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Rare public address by Waco artist Kermit Oliver
One of Waco’s best-kept secrets - artist Kermit Oliver - will make a rare public appearance Tuesday night to talk about his latest work. Oliver will speak at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Room 149 of Baylor University’s Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center.
Though Oliver, his wife Katie (also an artist) and their family have lived in Waco for more than 20 years, he doesn’t have the name recognition here that he does in Houston art circles, where his nearly photo-realistic paintings and their often-allegorical composition are prized by private collectors.
The Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston represents him and is usually the best place to see new work by the Waco painter. Oliver also designs exquisitely detailed silk scarves for Paris fashion house Hermes.
For most of his time in Waco, the publicity-shy Oliver has worked nights at the main Waco Post Office, doing his painting, sketching and study in mornings and afternoons. He had a local exhibit at Baylor’s Martin Museum of Art in 2000 and a lifetime retrospective exhibition at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2005.
Tuesday offers the opportunity to see his latest paintings and hear their creator’s comments on them.
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Baylor’s ‘Picasso’ clever, smart in its time and space
Baylor Theatre’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” shows a smart use of time and space - appropriate, since the Steve Martin comedy imagines what would happen if two of the great minds of the 20th century, physicist Albert Einstein and artist Pablo Picasso, had met in a Parisian bar (the Lapin Agile) on the brink of their discoveries that transformed how we look at the universe and art.
As you’d expect from a comedy of ideas written by a stand-up comedian, Picasso’s humor lies in its verbal wit, character interplay and periodic surrealism. Timing is crucial for that to work and director Beki Baker’s cast operates like clockwork in a Newtonian universe.
The play’s set among the Lapin Agile’s bar and several tables, but the action is smartly spread throughout so a largely talky comedy doesn’t seem static - a good use of space.
Martin’s characters are largely painted in broad strokes - no cubist interpretations here - and the Baylor cast does well with what they’re given: a sometimes fussy, always thinking Einstein (Joey Melcher); a macho, self-centered Picasso (Jeff Wisnoski); grounded, clear-eyed bar owner’s wife Germaine (nicely played by Louise McCartney); her matter-of-fact husband Freddy (Michael Summers); a manic, fast-talking inventor Schmendiman (a scene-stealing Zach Krohn); gently crabby, elderly and small-bladdered bar fixture Gaston (Clay Wheeler); passionate, yet shrewd art buyer Sagot (Sam Hough); hopeful Picasso lover Suzanne (Lindsey Christian); and a charismatic surprise “visitor” (Justin Locklear).
‘Picasso’ shows Martin’s cerebral and racy sides. You don’t have to hold a graduate degree to appreciate fully his jokes, but being well-read and -rounded doesn’t hurt with quips about Matisse, Picasso’s blue period, Einstein’s disregard with time and space in setting up dates and the occasional surreal insertion of American rhythm-and-blues and pop culture. Martin’s characters’ commentary on sexual encounters, relationship between the sexes and the occasional ribald joke makes this more of a play for young and old adults as well.
Smart, funny and nicely-executed, Baylor’s “Picasso” offers comedy for the mind in an age dominated by comedy about the body. There are three performances left: 7:30 tonight and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Baylor’s Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center; call 710-1865 about tickets.
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David Crowder Band - Three, maybe four more Doves
Waco’s David Crowder Band will have to build a dovecote on the roof of their University Baptist Church home to handle the awards they’re bringing home for their distinctive brand of Christian alt-rock.
The latest additions came last night with the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards, where the band brought home the Rock/Contemporary Song of the Year for “Everything Glorious” on the album Remedy; Worship Album of the Year, for Remedy; and Recorded Music Packaging of the Year, also for Remedy.
Crowder also participated (I’m guessing his band, too) on the compilation Glory Revealed, which won a Dove for Special Event Album of the Year, which means Dove Award No. 4 this year - or three and an engraving on someone else’s …
Congrats to the band and the additions to their flock.
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Waco and the movies - on “Tree” and Tribeca
Writing on the Internet gives you a strange time dissonance. On one hand, there’s a heightened sense of immediacy, where you feel a compelling need to write or post quickly after a bit of news happens or the item’s timeliness vanishes. On the other, stuff you wrote months, even years earlier, resurfaces as if it never died.
Anyway, I’m feeling pressure from the first hand with two items that should be separate, but which I’m combining under a general “Waco and movies” umbrella to post them before they fade.
The first, and timeliest, is this week’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in which a Waco native is participating. Actor/director Robert De Niro is the driving force behind the Tribeca, named after a Manhattan neighborhood, and the Wacoan in question is 1997 China High School grad Nicholas Yedinak, son of Eugene and Ginger Yedinak.
Yedinak, 29, is an actor in the short film The Aviatrix, which was screened three times at this spring’s South By Southwest Film Festival and which will have five showings in New York. He’s living in Austin now, but is in NYC this week for the fest.
The second Waco film connection is one presumed earlier in this blog, but somewhat confirmed by Austin American-Statesman music critic Michael Corcoran in a blog posting a couple of weeks ago: The feature film Tree of Life, directed by Waco native Terrence Malick, is set in Waco, TX, and stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. And Yedinak, too, incidentally: He told me he was a day player during the shoot.
Here’s another Central Texas connection to the movie: Central Texas musician and classic car buff Mike Jones and friend David Ray drove some of the 1950s period cars that will be seen in the film. The antique cars that Jones and his wife Rita own also were used in the Truman Capote film Infamous, with Texas farmland standing in for Kansas.
For you Brangelina watchers out there, by the way, Statesman film critic Chris Garcia says Brad, Angelina and their family have left the building and are no longer in Smithville, where they lived during the first few weeks of shooting.
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“Expelled” muddled mish-mash
The first screening of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed at Starplex Galaxy 16 on Friday misaligned the on-screen image, lopping off the top part of the head for many of the film’s personalities.
Turns out that was a fitting metaphor, as trying to follow Stein’s logical threads through a labyrinth of straw men, red herrings, guilt by association, quote harvesting, gotcha interviews and post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) associations may cause your head to explode. It’s a propaganda form highly polished by director/activist Michael Moore on the other end of the political spectrum.
Ostensibly a look at academic freedom, or the alleged lack thereof, at schools and universities (including Baylor University) on the issue of intelligent design, Expelled shows its true hand midway through the film when it zeros in on militant atheist evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Meyers who actively and publically attack any belief in God.
That’s the real issue of Expelled - atheist scientists vs. God - even though it wholly undercuts statements by intelligent design researchers early in the film that ID has nothing to do with religion. Intelligent design, by proponents’ definition, is the study of patterns in nature that indicate an intent or purpose that’s not mere randomness.
Stein, a conservative spokesman and actor best known for his Ferris Bueller’s Day Off role as a droning teacher and as the smart host of the game show “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” frames Expelled as an exploration of academic freedom.
Given that debate and free exploration of ideas is a linchpin of American identity, Stein goes to the cases of such scientists and researchers as Richard Sternberg, Guillermo Gonzalez, Caroline Crocker and Baylor’s engineering professor Robert Marks, who claimed their institutions and professional colleagues punished them or ruined their careers once they dared to suggest ID’s validity.
It’s telling, however, that any opposing explanations of the circumstances in question come toward the film’s end and either are dismissed or used as a “gotcha” moment, as in the case of Baylor engineering dean Ben Kelley. Kelley denies that Marks’ work in ID-friendly studies led to Baylor’s demand that he move his Web page off the university server, only to have an image of a memo sent to Marks that cites “intelligent design” as a concern pop up on screen.
Although William Demski, a former Baylor professor, and Baylor engineering professor Walter Bradley are among the ID advocates interviewed in Expelled, there’s no mention of their Baylor connections - or controversies - in the film.
Stein interviews more than a score of scientists, administrators and journalists on the evolution-ID debate. Unfortunately, most are reduced to a series of pullout quotes.
Those coming to Expelled hoping to learn something about any research behind ID, a fair appraisal of weaknesses in evolutionary theories or - perhaps the film’s most glaring and telling omission - how Christian evolutionists reconcile faith and science will leave sorely disappointed. The latter is quickly dismissed by a chain of quotes that brand them as liberal Christians and duped by militant atheists in their efforts to get religion out of the classroom.
Even though interviewees on opposite sides of the discussion qualify their statements with “it depends on how you define evolution,” Expelled conveniently blurs the definitions of evolution, biological evolution, Darwinism, neo-Darwinism and origin of life.
Stein also frames and underlines certain comments with visual clips from such movies as Inherit the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Planet of the Apes , black-and-white 1950s educational movies and Cold War propaganda films with marching Communist armies.
Viewers also are treated to Stein’s argument that evolution leads to disbelief in God, the loss of ethical and moral standards, eugenics, Nazism and the Holocaust, Planned Parenthood and abortion, before returning to the issue of academic freedom and equating science’s resistance to ID as a Berlin Wall that needs tearing down.
I kid you not. Then again, I’m part of the Academy-Organizations-Media-Courts cabal that works to enforce evolution as accepted belief. Stein says that, too.
It’s clear Expelled will reinforce strongly held opinions on extreme sides of the religion-science question rather than explore the considerable middle ground - nay, the continent - that’s there.
It’s smoke, mirrors, a lot of heat and little light - although the hand of a creator is clearly in its design.
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Russian pianist brilliant in WSO performance
Russian pianist Alexander Kobrin showed how command and control can trump flash and power in a masterful performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Waco Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night.
Kobrin, gold medalist at the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, played with an exquisite sense of dynamics, each note’s volume perfectly calibrated for its location in a swelling or diminishing phrase or its importance in theme and melody.
His fluid articulation, avelvet touch and visually appealing choreographed handwork shone at each challenge of the popular Rachmaninoff concerto: the intricate interplay of piano and orchestra in the first and third movements, the finale’s explosive dynamism and the aching lyricism of the slower second movement, which closed on a note that dissolved in the air as listeners held their breath.
No surprise, then, that the Waco Hall audience gave Kobrin and the orchestra a standing ovation and three curtain calls.
The WSO, under the baton of Music Director Stephen Heyde, demonstrated its own sense of control in a work known for its passion and emotion. Rarely did the orchestra threaten to drown Kobrin’s precise dynamics, yet it didn’t miss providing rhythmic heft and sweet woodwind and string lines where demanded.
The concert’s impressive second half picked up where the first had left off: a rousing finale to Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in which all sections fully meshed in sharp, muscular play that showed the WSO in top form.
Rich play from the cellos and basses highlighted the Brahms work, whose tightly written internal interplay and shifting meters seemed to cause an occasional rhythmic hiccup between sections.
A brisk rendition of Beethoven’s Overture to “Creatures of Prometheus,” enlivened by crisp playing from the string section, started the evening.
Five WSO veterans were recognized after intermission for their years with the orchestra: violist Kathryn Steely, 10 years; bassist Kyp Green, 20 years; oboist Doris DeLoach, 35 years; bass trombonist William Haskett, 40 years; and violinist June Shipper, 45 years. Shipper was absent from Thursday’s concert due to a family illness.
Heyde told the audience that Thursday’s concert was Haskett’s last as he would be retiring. The conductor praised Haskett’s musicianship as well as his years of work as the WSO’s personnel manager and the audience responded by giving Haskett a standing ovation.
Thursday’s concert also saw the debut of two large video screens flanking the stage. Live concert video shot by two videocameras in the auditorium’s rear was projected on the screens.
The camera locations limited the on-screen images to shots of the string sections nearest stage edge, the conductor and the guest pianist — a higher angle might have allowed close-ups of woodwind, brass and percussion players farther back on the stage — but at least provided those in the balcony a closer view of the orchestra while those seated in the hall’s right -hand side finally got to see a guest pianist’s hands at work.
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“Expelled” comes to Waco
The Ben Stein-hosted intelligent design documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed opens in Waco tomorrow at both the Hollywood Jewel 16 and Starplex Galaxy 16 multiplexes. The movie will be released on about 900 screens nationwide, which is fairly good for a documentary or an indie film, but far from the 3,000+ screens on which major studio releases are launched.
Among the film’s scientists and academics fired, demoted, denied tenure or otherwise hassled allegedly for their work in intelligent design is Baylor University engineering professor Robert Marks, whose Web page touching on his ID-friendly studies ran afoul of university administrators. Here’s his current personal, non-Baylor-blessed Web site.
I’ve already fielded several queries on whether the film’s coming to town and if we’d review it. It wasn’t screened in advance for most film critics (though, conveniently, hundreds of church leaders, members and ID advocates have seen it at preview screenings), so my review will come after the film opens here.
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Date set, entertainers for opening of Willie’s Place
The entertainment lineup for the July 3 grand opening of The Earth Bio-Willie Theater at Willie’s Place at Carl’s Corner is taking shape, according to a press release from Shock Ink, which handles Nelson’s publicity.
Scheduled to perform at Willie’s Place, described as an “alternative fuel truck stop and entertainment hub,” are Willie, Ray Price, Merle Haggard, Ray Wylie Hubbard and David Allan Coe, with others named later. Hubbard and Coe will start the entertainment early with performances on July 1 and 2.
Proceeds from the July 3 gig will benefit the Freddy Powers Parkinson’s Foundation, named for the Texas singer-songwriter-producer suffering from the disease.
Willie’s Place will offer, among other things, two restaurants, a poker room, large screen televisions and “full trucker amenities” (showers, laundry, etc.) as well as the theater and bio-diesel pumps.
I’ll post ticket information when I get it.
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KWBU heads into pledge home stretch
Today’s the last day for Waco public radio station KWBU-FM in its shorter, but hopefully-equally-profitable spring pledge drive. Station officials opted to cut the length of last year’s 16-day pledge drive in half, but not the amount raised. It’s quite a challenge, but doable - early this morning they were about $11,000 shy of their $42,000 goal.
What many broadcast listeners may not realize is that there’s no such thing as free radio or free television. You may not pay a subscription, but when you realize a percentage of nearly every product you buy goes to pay for radio/TV advertising, you’ll see you’re paying for it just the same. With public radio and TV, at least they’re up front about it. There’s also something to be said about committing yourself to the community of listeners that a station’s programming creates. Wacoans love to complain how we’re stereotyped by outsiders, yet when it comes to financial support of something whose listeners tend to be more educated, cultured and curious than that stereotype, we sit on our wallets.
Sorry for the non-profit commercial, but I love words and radio ranks right behind newspapering in my favorite media. Even my dog Hank likes NPR. I usually listen to a small radio with earbuds when I walk him in the mornings. He’s now so conditioned to connecting that with a walk that his ears perk up whenever I listen to my iPod or anything else with earbuds …
Here’s a link to KWBU’s pledge drive. I almost said, “do your part,” but that’s their line, isn’t it? Hank’s not the only one conditioned …
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Art movie alert - “Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day”
Heads up on a not-quite-mainstream comedy opening at Waco’s Starplex Galaxy 16 tomorrow, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.
It stars Frances McDormand (the small-town Minnesota sheriff of Fargo) as a somewhat stiff, unemployed governess who gets a job as social secretary for a free-wheeling American actress (Amy Adams) in 1939 London.
It’s not quite an art/indie film - its producer Focus Features is a specialty division of Universal Pictures - but one I know some of you are interested in and usually the type of film that disappears locally after a weekend or two when no one’s aware it’s playing.
Others of you may like to know that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein’s documentary on the cold shoulder treatment (and worse) of intelligent design advocates and researchers by American universities, is scheduled to open April 18 at Starplex. Supposedly there’s some footage pertaining to Baylor University.
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Shannon Elizabeth - a possible winner?
You regular fans of ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” will have a better sense of this, but after Waco High grad Shannon Elizabeth (Fadal) and her partner Derek Hough survived this week’s round of dancing, scoring a perfect 10 from one of the judges, you have to wonder if they have what it takes to go all the way?
With four couples already gone, what’s going to separate the remaining seven in the judges’ - and the national audience’s - minds? The rumba and samba await. Thoughts, “Dancing” fans?
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On Charlton Heston
Actor Charlton Heston died of Alzheimer’s on Saturday - the day after that American Movie Classics was playing one of his most famous films, Planet of the Apes - and I found myself tallying the films in which he starred that I had seen and liked.
I remember him favorably, but, surprisingly, it wasn’t a long list of favorite performances/films: Ben-Hur, Khartoum, Planet of the Apes (bad film, but he was fun to watch), Touch of Evil (even if he’s miscast as a Mexican investigator with a pencil-thin moustache). Some of the films I thought he had been in were ones starring Burt Lancaster, another from that Hollywood school of ’50s-’60s machismo (though Burt was the better actor).
Despite his lengthy film career and stardom, pop culture will likely shorten his legacy to The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, his advocacy for the National Rifle Association and that memorable Planet of the Apes line, “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape.”
What’s your favorite Heston movie/role?
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I saw where Mikey mentioned a SoulFood cookoff. Chicken tails, chicken feet, southern fried chicken, gizzards/livers, oxtail soup, neckbones, tounge, kidneys, hog maws, chittlins, summer sausage, pig feet, pig ears, pig tails, greens, poke salad, ribs,
... read the full comment by hoot | Comment on George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm. Read George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm.
You serious?
hmm…interesting. Can’t say that is the first person that would come to mind but Waco is so funny.
... read the full comment by allen | Comment on George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm. Read George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm.
Has a date been set for this yet? I mentioned this to my brother in law who is in a band from Mentarie Louisiana he said they would be interested in playing in Waco. Who do we contact?
... read the full comment by heyhey | Comment on George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm. Read George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm.
Great ideas, long overdue.
Publius, I had the same thought when I attended the Waco school jazz show on Tuesday, featuring saxophone phenom and Waco native Mace Hibbard. Waco High has three jazz bands now, and they keep getting better and better.
... read the full comment by j.b. smith | Comment on George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm. Read George Spratt Blues Fest? Hmmm.