Recent Stories in A&E

It's Bumbershoot this Labor Day weekend, and before we get to the acts, let's recap on strategy.

• Daily tickets are $22 (no mainstage) or $40 (mainstage). Buy in advance, 'cause at the gate it'll go up to $30 and $50, respectively. All adult-accompanied kids 10 and under get free festival admission (doesn't include mainstage).
• Driving anywhere near the Seattle Center will be a pain, slightly less if you get there very early. Any number of buses will drop you there, including special festival shuttles. From Capitol Hill, it's the mighty #8. From downtown, you take the Monorail and arrive in style.
• You can meticulously plan an electronic schedule ahead of time using this online whirlygig or keep your options open by stocking your pocket with a printed PDF version
• Check the weather before you go and dress appropriately (or not, what the hell, it's your life). For the pack: water bottle, something blanket-y to sit on, sunscreen, sweater. Maybe an umbrella? The forecast looks like the festival might (again) live up to its namesake climate protection device.

More than the other two festival days, Sunday is the one with a mainstage lineup as likely to draw former fans looking for a trainwreck as current fans in seeking magical musical moments. In their heyday (aka "the nineties") the headliners released near-flawless and now-iconic albums and then became different kinds of unglued. As far as I'm concerned, Hole's Live Through This is an unassailable classic. Despite all of the tabloid drama, ditching the rest of the band, and the absurdly ungrammatical twitter breakdowns, that record and her rogue 1995 post-VMA appearance will have me on Team Courtney and hoping that her performance falls into the category of "unexpected brilliance" instead of unmitigated disaster.

courtney love (photo by & courtesy of whitney pastorek)

Then there's Weezer. Weezer of that self-titled (aka "Blue") album that wore out many an early model Discman. Weezer that took seemingly forever to come back with still-beloved masterpiece (Pinkerton, aka "the misogynistic one," or in more charitable moments, the self-lambasting one) because their frontman was hiding out in a tinfoiled room at Harvard while suffering to stretch a malformed leg. Weezer that decided that if playing a song with the Muppets was cool (it kind of was!), then why not release a single about being the worst human in California, or make an album of internet memes, or do something called "Raditude," or put the dude from LOST on the cover in ultra close-up. They're headlining.

The last time I saw them was when they were touring behind their second self-titled ("Green") album. It was fun. There was a lot of confetti. I have no idea what to expect because I haven't been able to bring myself to listen to a whole Weezer song since "Beverly Hills." Their mainstage show will break that drought and may extinguish any lingering warm sentiments toward the band. All the joys and sorrows of being old enough to have important bands from your childhood stick around long enough to throw gasoline on your memories.  Or it could be amazing! That's why I'll be there, instead of bolting across town to the Paramount for Pavement, a band whose window of opportunity opened and closed before I was paying attention, I guess. ... (more)

There are one hundred or so lucky people in this city wandering around right now smiling. They are thinking back to their Saturday night and recalling things like s'mores, hot dogs, PBR, a bonfire, music, and a fantastic show. These smiling people were part of the first annual Jansport Bonfire Session.

The line began on the south side of Pike between 10th and 11th early in the morning. I spoke with the group that was first in line and they told me they had been waiting since 9:15 a.m. for their chance to get on a bus and ride to a secret location to enjoy more free stuff than you can shake a sharpened marshmallow roasting stick at. When they arrived, they told me that it was completely worth it.

The buses pulled in to Bear Creek Studio out in Woodinville at about 7:00 p.m. and offloaded the lucky hundred into the woods behind the studio. Bear Creek is a special place for me, since it's where my band put down our only studio recording. More generally, you might recognize former visitors like Soundgarden, Built to Spill, Lionel Richie, Foo Fighters, Harvey Danger and a ridiculous list of amazing bands who all recorded there. Visiting the studio before the crowd got there was an awesome treat.

It wouldn't be the only treat of the evening, as Jansport provided a wide array of food and drink for the lucky showgoers. I had a wonderful falafel sandwich from Hallava Falafel and cooked myself a S'more for dessert. Others washed down free hot dogs with free PBR and followed it up with watermelon slices. The crowd wandered between the two bonfires eating, drinking, and playing beanbag horseshoes to DJ Case0ne performing impeccable mashups of '80s and '90s hits. My guide for the evening remarked that each song was "exactly what I want to hear at that moment."... (more)

+Russ is documenting how much weirder Seattle's gotten since the Lusty Lady closed in our Flickr pool. Methinks this bodes ill.

This is all that Marymoor saw of Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend were scheduled to play a show on Sunday night at Marymoor Park. Then a trip to the ER for severely inflammed vocal cords kept lead singer Ezra Koenig from the stage and resulted in a last-minute cancellation, wails of dispair, conspiracy theories, and a water bottle or two flung in the general direction of the poor guy who brought the bad news.

They've since found time in their merciless tour schedule to return to the area to make up for their unfortunate (and poorly handled) cancellation. This time they'll be within Seattle city limits for two nights at the Paramount on the 22nd and 23rd of September with the Head and the Heart. Ticketholders from the weekend will be able to trade their tickets for their choice of make up shows at no charge; those who opted to skip the outdoor non-performance will have two new chances to see the band. Tickets will cost $48 after all of the fees and handling and can be purchased online now.

If a weekday show doesn't work for your schedule or if the disappointment of waiting around for an hour after Beach House finished soured you on the Vampire Weekend Experience, refunds are available. The details for getting your money back, a regular choose-your-own-adventure based on the how and where of initial purchases, are included after the jump.... (more)

It's Bumbershoot this Labor Day weekend, and before we get to the acts, let's recap on strategy.

• Daily tickets are $22 (no mainstage) or $40 (mainstage). Buy in advance, 'cause at the gate it'll go up to $30 and $50, respectively. All adult-accompanied kids 10 and under get free festival admission (doesn't include mainstage).
• Driving anywhere near the Seattle Center will be a pain, slightly less if you get there very early. Any number of buses will drop you there, including special festival shuttles. From Capitol Hill, it's the mighty #8. From downtown, you take the Monorail and arrive in style.
• Check the weather before you go and dress appropriately (or not, what the hell, it's your life). For the pack: water bottle, something blanket-y to sit on, sunscreen, sweater.

Saturday Picks!

You can meticulously plan an electronic schedule ahead of time using this online whirlygig or keep your options open by stocking your pocket with a printed PDF version. But no matter what, there is a knife hidden in every Bumbershoot--an inevitable knife--that stabs the moment you realize two of your favorite things are playing at the exact same time. What to do? Me, I say roll with it and wait until you are there and need to make the call. Often you're in the mood for one or the other by the time the moment of decision rolls around.

That said, for a themed day, there's a couple of tracks you could run. Here's an all alt.folk.country day in music with Star Anna & the Laughing Dogs (1:15 p.m.), Zoe Muth & the Lost High Rollers (2:45) or The Maldives (3), Justin Townes Earle (4:45), The Decemberists (5:30), Pete Molinari (6:45), Neko Case (7:15), and Bobby D (9, mainstage), if you're into older dudes.... (more)

I have a bone to pick with Forbes about their "Top 10 Coolest Cities" list. (I also have a bone to pick with the 2,000 Americans polled who thought Las Vegas was cooler than San Francisco.) There's not much to the poll--people were literally just ask to rank cities by how cool they were--so Forbes decided to crank up the page view count by making it a "slideshow"--that you have to refresh the page to advance.

New York's photo is an interracial couple in a park. Las Vegas has an Elvis in front of a Las Vegas sign. San Francisco has the Golden Gate. San Diego, a beach. Seattle gets...shopping bags. How cool is that?

From the Great Beyond, in our Flickr pool.

The Columbia City Theater (Facebook) is a music club to fall in love with. It re-re-re-re-opened (the old vaudeville hall has been around since 1917, in various guises) in June of this year, and vaulted into the Seattle Weekly's "Best of Seattle" list less than two months later.

Before we go behind-the-scenes, here's the lowdown. You'll find the Theater at 4916 Rainier Avenue South, which is just beyond the Columbia City Cinema. (Take the #7 or #8 bus or light rail--the last light rail train leaves SeaTac for downtown at 12:10 a.m., Monday through Saturday.) It's adjacent to the award-winning pizzeria Tutta Bella, who serve up the eats in The Bourbon, Columbia City Theater's bar. The bar is open seven days a week, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.

The bourbon-heavy cocktail list ($8-$10) features pre-Prohibition favorites (Mint Julep, Derby, Commodore), as well as some rye (Red Hook; Fratelli Cocktail, with Fernet Branca; Diamondback). Bar entertainment ranges from djs to karaoke to live music, and on nights when there's a show in the theatre, you can watch the show projected live on a screen. Happy Hour most of the week is 4-7 p.m., and all day Monday, and brings you such wonders as $5 pitchers of High Life and $3 wells.

Past the bar, on your left, is the entrance to the theater, which has a bar of its own. It's an intimate shoebox space, though it holds over 200, and the acoustics require no over-amplification. The ambiance--the curtained stage and brass lighting fixtures and brick walls--makes this unlike any other music club you're likely to step into in town.... (more)

Wednesday, September 1

• Turtle Island Quartet performs a suite of four Jimi Hendrix pieces (taken from Electric Ladyland) @ the Triple Door
• FREE: It's TV Dinner night, with four episodes of The Golden Girls @ Central Cinema
• Just two more nights of the un-pc animation extravaganza @ Grand Illusion

Thursday, September 2

• It's first Thursday, and among other showings, Joe Vollan has an exhibition of his "surreal, steam-punk landscapes inhabited by skeletal figures, animals and robots" @ Flatcolor Gallery
• Cyndi Lauper thinks you're beautiful, like a rainbow, so go see her on her Memphis Blues tour @ Zoo Tunes
• The not-for-children puppet show Frankenocchio ends its run on Saturday @ Seattle University's Lee Center for the Arts
• Hopefully it won't be during The Kora Band's lunchtime afro-jazz concert @ City Hall

The running of the nerds at PAX past, care of Penny Arcade

Friday, September 3

• "Your arm's off!" Be warned, it's a Monty Python & the Holy Grail quote-along @ Central Cinema
• You also have your choice of Pasolini's Mamma Roma (with Anna Magnani) or Wheedle's Groove (chronicling "Seattle's oft-overlooked history as a hotbed of soul music") @ the Northwest Film Forum
• The Bumbershoot visual arts free preview allows you to check out the art before the crowds descend. It follows the afternoon Mayor's Arts Awards ceremony, and the exhibits feature an improvisational jamming robot! @ Seattle Center
• Roll the twelve-sided die to get a +3 on agility at PAX through Sunday @ Convention Center
• The Tango Lesson doesn't sound like a very good movie, but we'll take any excuse to hit up the new free Friday night dance film series @ Century Ballroom

Saturday, September 4

• Bumbershoot tips off with Bob Dylan, Neko Case, The Decemberists, Ozomatli, Solomon Burke, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Jamie Lidell, The Raveonettes, Civil Twilight, Atlas Sound, and more @ Seattle Center
• A mystery Warp Recording Artist (there's only one booked for the fest and his name kind of rhymes with riddle) is headlining a Bumbershoot afterparty @ the Crocodile
• It's the best of the worst videos with Everything is Terrible live and in-person @ Central Cinema...

From gabemeier in our Flickr pool.

It's a relatively quiet week for the Seattle literary scene, due to the closure of all Seattle Public Library branches, and the hoopla of Bumbershoot. On the bright side, this means that no Library materials are due and no late fines are accrued, for a week. On the less bright side, the Library is closed! Oh, the horror. And there is horror aplenty on this week's calendar, with genocide, environmental destruction, and yet more evidence that U.S. immigration policy and procedure has been less than stellar for many, many shameful decades.

Next week there will be a happy, fluffy bunny reading if I have to make it up.

08/30/10 12 a.m. The Seattle Public Library
The Seattle Public Library system is closed Aug. 30 through Sept. 6
In order to help meet $3M in budget cuts, the entire system is shutting down for a week, saving about $655K. This year, as opposed to last, some online Library services will be available. To leave a comment for the city librarian or the Library Board, call 206-684-0471. Be polite.

08/31/10 12 p.m. Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Jayne Castle (Jayne Ann Krentz)
Midnight Crystal
The (not very) pseudonymous author will sign book three in her Dreamlight Trilogy.

09/01/10 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Judith Armatta
Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic
I have to admit, the whole genocide thing really freaks me out. The last time I tried to read one of these sorts of books, I had screaming nightmares for weeks, after getting through only a few dozen pages. I can't imagine what the journalist who reported on Milosevic's trial could talk about that wouldn't send me back into therapy. I'm not proud.

09/01/10 7 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Matthew Kahn
Climatopolis
The author will talk about "Urban Life in a Hotter World." Soylent Green is PEEEEEEOPLE! You heard it here, first.... (more)

Heh. "Annie Wall." It's like a pun or something. (Thanks to the indelible lwestcoat, one of our Flickr pool superstars.)

You know it's a week full of quality movies on DVD when the biggest release is a television show. Yes, the biggest DVD for the week was the sixth and final season of Lost, which includes (zomg) another eleven minutes of never-before-seen bonus scenes of Ben and Hurley on The Island. There's also a new crazy-ass box set of the whole series.

Besides that, the next biggest release is The Back-up Plan, Jennifer Lopez's getting knocked up and then meeting the man of your dreams rom-com. There's also City Island, a family-with-secrets comedy that's actually one of the top box office earners amongst indie films this year. There's a mediocre movie version of Dorian Gray and the latest zombie installment from George A. Romero, Survival of the Dead.

Ajami is well-reviewed, but to me the intersecting storylines just sound like Crash in the Middle East. Shirin is an experimental film with Juliette Binoche, in which a theater audience watches a film based on a poem, while The Square is a noir thriller from Australia. Nightfur is a sci-fi romance with a soundtrack by Band of Horses, and Abandoned looks to be the final (direct-to-DVD) release with Brittany Murphy.

In terms of special editions, there's the 30th anniversary release of Shogun Assassin, the Bluray of cult British comedy Withnail and I, and 1969 gangster flick Machine Gun McCain, starring John Cassavetes, Peter Falk, Britt Ekland, and Gena Rowlands. This week also marks the release of three silent films by Josef Von Sternberg from Criterion: Docks of New York, The Last Command, and Underworld.... (more)

The path of Rusty Willoughby's musical career has run parallel to the history of Northwest rock for the last 25 years. And often, that path's been a circuitous one.

In the mid-1980s he founded Pure Joy, a great (and criminally unsung) pop band whose British-informed atmospherics offered a sharp contrast to the Sabbath/Stooges/Sex Pistols trinity that seeped into the Seattle soil at the time. Then when Pure Joy folded, he bounced back as the principal singer/songwriter for Flop, one of the Northwest's greatest power-pop outfits.

Flop seemed poised to join Nirvana and Soundgarden at the vanguard of the Northwest music explosion of the '90s when Epic Records signed the band. The label allowed Flop's excellent sophomore platter Whenever You're Ready to die on the promotional vine, though, and Willoughby and bandmates were unceremoniously dropped.

Such a setback would have flat-out killed most mortals dead, but at his own easygoing pace Rusty Willoughby has continued to put out some of the Northwest's best rock music since Flop's 1995 dissolution. Throughout all of his ensemble and solo work, Willoughby's calling cards—a knack for melody easily the equal of any pop classicist, a smart and sometimes self-lacerating lyrical sense, and one of the most distinctive schoolboy tenor rock voices this side of Robin Zander—have remained constant, and his versatility as a songwriter continues to flower.... (more)

Submitted to our Flickr pool by Slightlynorth.

Kazuki Tomokawa - A Take Away Show #98 - Part 1

Today brings a close to the (almost) daily postings of Vincent Moon short films on the SunBreak, only because tonight is the last night of the Vincent Moon Retrospective at the Northwest Film Forum. The series closes with La Faute des Fleurs, a documentary about Kazuki Tomokawa, Japanese folk singer, gambler, heavy drinker, and philosopher.

According to his twitter postings, Moon will also be showing a selection of Take Away Shows in Olympia at the Loft on Cherry. If you've missed these presentations (despite our regular reminders), tonight's the last chance to see these exceptional little films on a big screen while the globe-trotting director is in town.

• On Thursday, September 9, Rufus Wainwright joins the Portland Symphony for an evening that includes excerpts from his opera Prima Donna, works by Berlioz, and song selections from his own albums.

"A heart of stone never goes anywhere," concludes Rufus Wainwright, in black, in feathers, in a 15-foot train. On a giant screen behind him, an airbrushed black eye slowly opens and closes and cries, reappearing in various sizes.

He repeats the line, alive to both the self-criticism and self-preservation in it. He explores the idea elsewhere, singing, "the earth just spins in place / throwing things away."

He's playing his album All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu right through, from "Who Are You, New York?" to "Zebulon," and aside from a few scattered, apparently irrepressible whoops at his entrance, the Paramount Theatre audience is obliging him in not clapping until the song cycle is through.

It's a Rufus Wainwright album with a mourning veil--familiar themes transposed to the register of loss--but it's also an artistic elevation. Written during his mother Kate McGarrigle's final illness, the music is rarely at rest. The piano's bass end is often emphasized, but the music flows out in charged, turbulent torrents of notes. Occasional high notes drop on top like petals, and are carried away.

It's art because it's not really for you, or me. The Shakespeare sonnets, the thorn-hooked "What Would I Do With a Rose?," the intimacy of "Martha," the sheer work of pitching your musical voice to these heights, and lows--it's a rush to say something before the loved one leaves. Well, a "rush" of sorts. Wainwright actually retards his already taffy-like vocal delivery that much more, in a superhuman effort to make more time appear. Yet, a chord repeats like the chime of a clock.

Though it's just him and his piano up there (sister Martha, who opened, joins him for a few songs), the stage becomes crowded with his family in the second part. It's the end of the tour, and he's feeling a little jaunty, initially, with the end in sight. Someone shouts, "We love you!" and he responds with a showman's "A-thank-yew."... (more)

The Swan (at Artattack Theater most Thurs-Sun through September 25th) is one of those plays where the central conflict is introduced from the get-go, and then you sit back and watch as the cast of characters have to deal with it.

In this case, the conflict surrounds the title bird (played by Martyn G. Krouse) who crashes into Dora's (Tracy Leigh) living room window. The thrice-divorced/widowed nurse plans on caring for the wounded creature, who she dubs Bill, only until he's healed, much to the disapproval of her married milkman boyfriend Kevin (Daniel Wood). But eventually the animal won't leave—and then he starts to turn into a man. 

So it's your standard love triangle; it just so happens that one of the parties is an animal. And in a way, Elizabeth Egloff's play is a lonely woman's wish fulfillment. I mean, what girl wouldn't take the needy, shirtless hunk programmed to mate for life over the dopey guy who's already cheating on his wife?

Depending on your frame of reference, The Swan is either a fairy tale or magical realism, and the script (along with Selby's direction) allows each of the three actors a chance to shine. Leigh's Dora is homespun without being hackneyed and neurotic while still having genuine underlying emotion. Even Wood, whose kind and persistent yet frustrated and befuddled Kevin is the most one-note, is able to stretch his acting legs in the second act.

But it's Krouse who really has to hustle as an actor, playing both animal and man without it coming off as a joke. Throughout the swan's metamorphosis, Krouse squawks, preens, hisses, and then gets dressed, learns to speak English, to play checkers, and to fall in desperate love. His swan, after he learns to talk, speaks in poetry, and the word pictures he conjures are downright dreamy. And Krouse does it all so convincingly tenderly that he makes the absurdist conceit feel real. Same goes for the simple, practical set by Selby and Justin Lockwood, as well as Lockwood's sound design.... (more)

Next time you're at the Croc or Neumo's or wherever and the tallest dude in the place is—if you share the phenomenon that plagues my 5'3" plus-one—standing right in front of you, it might be a Hall of Fame-bound pitcher. Because retired Mariners ace Randy Johnson, all 6'10" of him, is now dabbling as a rock photographer. And he has some local Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-bound friends: Soundgarden.

Turns out the Big Unit forged ties with guitarist Kim Thayil back when both the lefty's career and Thayil's band were just taking off. In 1989, Johnson spotted the bearded axeman on the big screen during a game at the Kingdome; he extended a batting practice invite to Thayil through the band's manager, and the rest is record book-rewriting history, now recounted by Johnson at Spin.com.

"We became friends," says Johnson, "and he'd take me to a lot of clubs, introduce me to a lot of different bands, and we'd drink and shoot pool and have a good time."

"It [sic] just enjoyed hanging out with them, drinking a beer, and watching them do their thing, much like I've had Kim and a couple of the other guys come to watch me pitch. Two entirely different venues and different fans. Just a whole different setting. But I can appreciate what they do—they're really good at what they do—and I think that I've been okay myself at what I do. I think it's just a great trade off."

The pitcher and the guitarist stayed close throughout Soundgarden's 13-year absence, too, talking baseball, music, and early-age retirement. And when the band was planning its return earlier this year, Johnson, freshly cleatless, was right there.

... (more)

Kodachrome to be no more? Say it ain't so! (Via Great Beyond, in our Flickr pool, who also took this photo.)

It was Tuesday night and time for a Duck Dodge on Lake Union. And while the usual flotilla of sailboats heeled and tacked and bounced gently off buoys, it seemed like everyone who could found a way to get on or, failing that, near the water.

Melissa D Brown and Shelley Virginia in "deCOMPOSITION" at the Erickson Theatre. Photo by Reed Nakayama.

deCOMPOSITION, (previewed here last Friday and running this Friday through Sunday at the Erickson Theatre; tickets $12-$20) is an original play framed by, and tangentially about, the scientific process of decomposition. At the outset, and for anybody who's seen a fair amount of experimental theatre, this might sound like a risky proposition, sort of a theatrical bridge to nowhere. What emerges instead is intelligent, intimate, and fresh.

deCOMPOSITION unfolds as three separate threads that entwine but rarely intersect: a childhood friendship gradually unravels as two women's adult lives begin to diverge; another woman whose grandfather has died struggles to understand loss; and a biology professor delivers a lecture on the life cycle of the king salmon.

At its best, deCOMPOSITION examines loss and decay as ever-present forces of entropy that we experience in our relationships and everyday lives. Dissecting the word into its linguistic roots for the audience, the professor (Alaska native Ty Hewitt in a nearly pitch-perfect performance) explains that salmon begin to decompose even before their deaths.

This plays out metaphorically in the other two stories. Insecurities and resentment gradually create a rift between the two friends, while the grandfatherless young woman tries to make the absence in her life amount to something emotionally palpable by compiling memories, enumerating facts, and, unexpectedly, baking. All of this hints at the many ways that even as we live our lives things are crumbling down around us, often just as we begin to make sense of them.... (more)

A Jazzman's Jazzman: The Gerry Carruthers Story from Paul Maupoux on Vimeo.

CRO-MAGNON PICTURES has written in to let everyone know about the premiere of their feature film, A Jazzman's Jazzman: The Gerry Carruthers Story. Look for it at The Fremont Abbey (4272 Fremont Ave N) on Friday, September 10, 2010. Screenings are at 7 and 9:30 p.m., with live music in between.

About the film...

A Jazzman's Jazzman is a hilarious and unique blend of mockumentary and stop-motion animation. Equal parts Spinal Tap and Ken Burns' Jazz, it follows the life and times of fictional pianist Gerry Carruthers as he struggles for fame and recognition against all odds.

The stories of Carruthers, his friends and enemies, and the club where he became infamous are brought to vivid life by a cast of skilled Seattle actors and musicians in improvised interviews, and "dramatized" in gorgeous stop-motion animation of characters created by Eric "Two Scoops" Moore.

The film also features a fantastic original score by local musicians Birch Pereira and Tim Kennedy.... (more)

From left, Dr. Horrible (Eric Ankrim), Captain Hammer (Jake Groshong), and Penny (Annie Jantzer) in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog at Balagan Theatre (Photo: M. Elizabeth Eller)

There's a lot of backstory to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but I am going to dispense with it on the assumption that if you haven't heard about it by now, it can't possibly be your thing. (That doesn't mean you won't enjoy seeing the show--just go in blindly and let it wash over you.)

A "musical tragicomedy" web series created by the Whedon boys and Maurissa Tancharoen during the writers' strike of 2007-08, it starred Neil "How I Met Your Mother" Patrick Harris and Nathan "Castle" Fillion, as Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer, respectively. (Oh look! A fansite.)

It also clocked in at just 42 minutes, so the Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog that Balagan Theatre is presenting (through September 4) has material that will be new to Dr. Horrible fans, but is delightfully faithful in tone and spirit. My only reservation was that Balagan isn't by trade a musical theatre, so could they come up with the goods? Hell yes. It's wonderfully sung, and leads Eric Ankrim (Dr. Horrible) and Jake Groshong (Captain Hammer) do much more than sub in for NPH and NF.... (more)

As the daily "Glimpses" editor, it's my job to go through the submissions to our Flickr pool and select a shot that our contributors have willingly submitted, and over time you start noticing things. One of them is the near endless fascination photographers find in capturing a sense of dislocation in the urban environment. This is a really lovely example from Zenobia Joy.