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(10/16/00 4:00am)
The classical French playwright Moliere wrote formulaic moral satires.\nIn "The Misanthrope," he heaped scorn on self-imposed alienation.\nWith "Tartuffe," he set his crosshairs on hypocrisy.\nIn the waning years of his life, he decided to take on the pitfalls of hypochondria.\nAnd so, he penned "The Imaginary Invalid," just staged by the Monroe County Civic Theater. It ran through Sunday at the Bloomington Playwrights Project, 308 S. Washington Ave.\nAlso known as "The Hypochondriac" and "The Perpetual Patient," the play largely hinges on the translation.\nWorking with the original text and many scholarly English translations, director Janice Clevenger readapted the work just for the production. In the hope of making it more accessible to audiences, she cleaned out all of the outdated idioms.\nThe adaptation worked, particularly with the slapstick tone she decided to take.\nSet in Paris in a home's sitting-room, the play concerns the follies of Argan, who is obsessed with the idea that he is plagued by an unspecified sickness. For the duration of the play, he coughs as loudly and obtrusively as he can, hoping to garner the sympathy of his family.\nThe bumbling physicians he keeps about tell him that it's either his spleen or his liver, recommending absurd remedies like enemas or an exclusive diet of boiled beef. They throw about abstruse Latin terms, convincing him of their knowledge. \nArgan is so certain of his illness that he wants his daughter, Angelique, to marry the stilted and foolish medical student Diaforius. He selfishly entertains the hope that he'll get free access to medical council.\nBut Angelique finds her approved suitor to be an unattractive dolt. His unsavoriness is drawn out a bit too much with his garish costume, but Brent Owens nails down the blustering of a gauche imbecile well. He hams up the role as much as possible, capturing the rollicking spirit of the original work. \nAngelique's passion lies with Cleate, who poses as a music instructor to gain access to his love. To complicate matters further, Argan's gold-digging wife Beline threatens to expose the young lovers.\nWade Carney, who played Cleante, often faltered in the delivery of his lines, weakening his effectiveness as a stock Romeo. He seemed almost nervous, which certainly didn't suit the part well. \nSo Angelique turns to her uncle Beralde and the wily maid Toinette. Although certain disaster seems to loom, a plan is hatched and a frustrated Argan ends up becoming his own doctor. \nMoliere died while playing the role of Argan, which he wrote for himself.\nBut MCCT newcomer Timothy Francis Herron fared much better. His frequent facial expressions of weariness and incredulity well suited the buffoonery he was supposed to project. Taking the tack of thick-headed stubbornness, Herron lent the part much-needed pathos.\nOverall, it was a solid production.\nThe only low point of the evening was a operatic duet between Angelique and Cleate. Watchful over his betrothed daughter, Argon insisted that music lessons be held in his presence. So the couple schemes to hint at their predicament in the hope of softening his heart.\nWith intended comic effect, it turns out Cleate can't sing worth a tinker's damn. But Angelique was supposed to deliver an impassioned avowal of love. Freshman actress Amalia Shifriss, who was otherwise outstanding, simply couldn't pull it off. It would have been more prudent to cast someone with vocal training.
(10/13/00 3:30am)
Licking edible body paint from a random stranger is generally frowned upon in civilized society.\nBut at the fifth annual Eroticon, attendees will be asked to leave their inhibitions at the door.\nAxis Nightclub, 419 N. Walnut St., will be awash with throngs of revelers in liquid latex and leather Friday from 9:30 p.m. to the wee hours of the morning.\nWith attendees are encouraged to wear "erotic attire," people have taken the liberty over the years to don costumes ranging from Elvis impersonator get-ups to only pasties and G-strings.\n"We've had a guy decked out in duct tape. We've had the Saran Wrap girl -- wearing only Saran Wrap," said Kelly McBride, director of the sex-ed group Lascivious Exhibitions, which stages the event. "But it's not about fetishes. It's about sexual creativity."\nBesides flesh on parade, Eroticon also features sex-ed workshops and theatrical acts. \nMcBride declined to reveal what's planned for this year, only hinting that it'll involve "fear ... fear and a human pincushion, the joys of water and the temptations of the tastebuds."\nUnlike in past years, Eroticon will be without commercial vendors.\n"There are enough sexuality vendors," McBride said. "We're not trying to sell sexuality. That's not our end. We're going to focus more on eduction this year."\nBrian Dodge, a graduate student and the event's education coordinator, admits that he's very excited.\n"We're going to have a sexual game show," said Dodge, whose fiance will attend the event for the first time. "We'll answer people's individual questions, as we want to make sure sex is safer and more fun. It's a great way to bring out more sexual openness in the community."\nLascivious Exhibitions has always used proceeds from the event to promote safe sex, distributing free condoms and dental dams to fraternities and residence halls.\nStill, when it comes right down to it, Eroticon is just about having a good time.\n"We try to educate people," McBride said. "But frankly, it's just a big-ass party. Let's be realistic here."\nAs Lascivious Exhibitions has recently decided to disband, this year's Eroticon will also be the second to last.\n"We don't want to become the Rolling Stones," said McBride, who estimates she put about 600 hours of work into preparing the event. "We feel we've accomplished everything we set out to do. And we all have full-time jobs and other things to do. It's just too much work."\nWhile an unanimity has been reached, members of the group still share a twinge of melancholy.\n"Yeah, it's sad that this had to happen," said Tony Brewer, the music director. "It seems that every year it gets a little more polished, a little more cohesive. Just when we had softened it down to a science, we're going to pull the plug." \nSpinning the tracks, Brewer pains himself in setting the atmosphere.\n"When the doors first open, I go with ambient music, very mellow," he said. "And as the evening goes on, it gets progressively more intense. I go hardcore, with Marilyn Manson and such."\nInvolved from the start, Brewer has seen many people come in with misconceptions.\n"People who see it tend to enjoy it in spite of themselves," he said. "They always think it's just going to be some heightened sexual experience. It is that, but it's not really a matter of being turned on or off."\nBut even virgin attendees understand the spirit of it, McBride said.\n"People dress up and actively participate," she said. "It doesn't draw as many gawkers as you might think. It's a setting that allows people to be satisfied with their sexuality, which is what it's all about."\nTickets are $10 for those in erotic attire and $20 for those in street clothes. Photography of any sort is prohibited.
(10/13/00 3:26am)
The noted French playwright Moliere had a macabre sense of humor.\nWhen he started work on "The Imaginary Invalid" in the winter of 1672, he had been struggling with a chronic, hacking cough for years. He knew he was dying.\nSo Moliere created for himself the part of Argan in the "Imaginary Invalid," a hypochondriac who puts on quite a show for friends and physicians for the length of the play. \nThe irony of a dying actor playing a perfectly healthy hypochondriac proved too rich to resist.\nPerformed at at the Palais Royal Theatre in Paris in 1673 on the commission of Louis XIV, "The Imaginary Invalid" proved to be one of his most well-received works.\nBut Moliere suffered a hemorrhage on stage during the fourth production. He died shortly afterward.\nThe Monroe Country Civic Theater will be staging his swan song through the weekend. The curtain opens at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Bloomington Playwright's Project Theater, 308 S. Washington St. The matinee is 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets run $6 for general admission and $5 for students and senior citizens.\nFor director Janice Clezinger, the production is a labor of love.\nShe re-translated the entire play for it, updating all of the outdated idioms.\n"I revised it as closely as I could to the original," she said. "I saw it when I was in Paris many years ago, and it's enchanted me ever since. I've always wanted to direct it, but I only got the chance now."\nA critique of social customs and superstitions, the rollicking comedy centers on Argan, a stock Moliere character. As Tartuffe embodies hypocrisy and Alceste misanthropy, he serves as a moral archetype of hypochondria. Like any satirist, Moliere slung arrows at the defects of man.\nArgan is so convinced of his illness that he wants his daughter, Angelique, to marry the stilted medical student Diaforius. He selfishly entertains the hope that he'll get free advice to medical council.\nBut Angelique finds her approved suitor to be an unattractive dolt. Her passion lies with Cleate, who poses as a music instructor to gain access to his love. To complicate matters further, Argan's gold-digging wife Beline threatens to expose the young lovers.\nSo Angelique turns to her uncle Beralde and his wiley maid Toinette. Although certain disaster seems to loom, a plan is hatched and a frustrated Argan ends up becoming his own doctor.\nThe plot reads like a grand opera. When Moliere penned the classic, quacks tried to treat every last malady either with bleedings or enemas. But Rachael McGinnis, who plays Toinette, said the work still holds true.\n"It's a timeless play," she said. "It questions who you can trust -- who you should put your faith in. Argan just gives money and commitment to these doctors who take him for a ride."\nIn spite of the play's vintage, McGinnis said she had no trouble getting her part down pat.\n"After memorizing them, the lines make sense," she said. "It flows very well. After Moliere says something in one sentence, he explains it in the next sentence."\nAlthough the University Theatre will be putting on Moliere's "The Misanthrope" later this fall, most local theater troupes shy away from 17th century works, opting for more contemporary fare.\n"It's something you're not likely to see in town," said Frank Buczolich, who plays the uncle Beralde. "And it's very well-written and very, very witty"
(10/11/00 4:39am)
It's not common for a bassist to serve as frontman in a jazz group.\nBut Christian McBride breaks that mold.\nThe accomplished jazz artist will play with his namesake band 7:30 tonight at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, 114 E. Kirkwood Ave. Tickets are $14 for general admission and $12 for students and seniors.\n"Usually, they're fronted by a horn man," said Louis Roncayolo, the Bloomington Area Arts Council associate director of performance programs. "But McBride has exceptional talent. He's always thinking beyond the bass, about the textures and rhythms of the ensemble. He's a very well-developed artist." \nSince he started his own band, the 28-year-old McBride has garnered an avalanche of acclaim. Time magazine declared him "the most promising and versatile bassist since Charles Mingus," who also fronted his own group. \n"He already sounds like no other bassist of his generation," wrote Howard Reich in a Chicago Tribune review. "His seemingly nonchalant virtuosity is counterbalanced by the deep maturity and self-assuredness of his playing."\nMcBride, who hails from Philadelphia, comes from a strong jazz background. His father, Lee Smith, played bass for Philly Soul legends the Delfonics, Blue Magic and Billy Paul. And his great uncle, Howard Cooper, also plucked away with many forerunners in the jazz avant garde, such as Khan Jamal and Byard Lancaster. \nMcBride studied classical bass at Philadelphia's famed High School for Creative and Performing Arts. At age 15, he met Wynton Marsalis at a workshop. The trumpeter was so impressed by the young talent that he asked him to play a gig a week later. \nMcBride ended up being accepted to the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan on full scholarship.\nBut he found college too taxing, and quit after a year to pursue a career as a jazz musician. \nWith a solid reputation, his stock as a sideman quickly rose. He's been an accompanist on more than a 150 recordings in the past eight years.\nNot content with just setting the beat, McBride launched a solo career. To much critical acclaim, he's recorded four albums, the latest being this year's Sci-fi. Featuring reworkings of songs by Sting and Steely Dan as well as original cuts, McBride has taken more creative liberty with the last album, getting away from his classical training. "For lack of a better description, Sci-fi is my 'acoustic fusion' record -- certainly more acoustic than anything I've recorded as a leader in a while," he said. "After I wrote the song 'Science Fiction,' the performance turned out to be so great that I decided to revolve an album around it."\nBut McBride said it developed into a full-fledged concept album.\n"Sci-fi isn't so much about the title as it is about the record's sound concept," he said. "We played most of it on the road before we recorded it. I tweaked the arrangements several times in the process"
(10/09/00 4:40am)
Most people have no trouble fitting in with the crowd, wearing all the right clothes, using the accepted lingo and marching forward in lockstep to the golden hills of suburbia.\nAnd most people just march on, without passion, without any sense of the divine.\nPeter Schaffer's 1973 landmark drama "Equus" takes a critical look at this trade-off.\nStaged by the University Theatre, "Equus" concerns the 17-year-old Alan Strang, who inexplicably blinded five horses with a metal spike. It runs through Saturday.\nStubborn and uncommunicative with the authorities, Alan is charged to psychiatrist Martin Dysart, who is going through a crisis of professional faith. \nAt first, Alan only dementedly sings television jingles. But Dysart eventually gets him to open up and slowly uncovers the truth behind the act of brutal violence. An erotic encounter on a beach cut short by his overbearing father inspired Alan's fascination with horses, which later took on a religious tone. He went so far as to replace a Caravaggio reproduction of Jesus Christ on his drawer with a page from a horse calender. And he partook of self-flagellation before the image in an elaborate ritual of his own design.\nJill, a stable girl, allowed him to come close to his object of worship, arranging a weekend job for him. A failed attempt to make love to her in the stable drove him over the edge and gave him an irrepressible urge to prevent his pagan gods from witnessing his shame.\nAs Dysart peels back layer after layer, he becomes more doubtful about the good of his work. \nRealizing that he'll leave Alan an empty shell, he wonders if the so-called cure wouldn't be worse than the disease. And, despairing over his anemic marriage, he even begins to cultivate envy for Alan.\nOpening Friday, the production did justice to the towering classic of contemporary theater. Director Murray McGibbon stayed faithful to the text, even staging the play in a proscenium-like setting with audience members sitting up on stage along with the cast. \nThe action takes place in a boxing-ring like area, meant to resemble a stable. The actors playing the horses don wooden hooves and highly stylized horse masks, intended by the playwright to increase their abstract quality as object of Alan's worship.\nThe acting was phenomenal, particularly that of junior Bradley Fletcher, who plays Alan. He beautifully conveyed the rage and confusion of the young boy. But he didn't rely on a crutch of petulance for the character, which would have been the lazy way to go. Fletcher flexed like a gymnast, alternating from anger to innocent vulnerability without a stitch.\nGraduate student Erik Anderson, who plays Dysart, likewise gave a bravura performance. But, like Richard Burton in the film version, he seemed miscast for the role. With a physical presence and husky baritone, it didn't seem altogether credible when he spoke of spending his evenings hunching over a coffee table book of ancient Grecian art. The character is supposed to be a timid introvert, whose domestic life has been rotting away for years. He's best compared to a priest who has lost his belief in the existence of God.\nBut Fletcher and Anderson have great chemistry on stage, playing well off of each other. And the rest of the cast hit all the right notes, fleshing out their respective characters.\nBeyond the obviously well-rehearsed acting, the production fares extremely well with its minimalism. The lighting and musical backdrop enhance the play's chilling subject matter without distracting from it.\nIf one decides to see only a single play this year, "Equus" would be the best bet. It's a provocative and technically superb evening of theater. Psychologically riveting, it's an intense play that gets one to thinking about the passion in one's own life. \n"Equus" plays daily through Saturday at the University Theatre. Curtain time for all shows is 8 p.m. Tickets for all performances are $11.50 and $10.50 for students and seniors. For ticket information, call 855-1103.\n"Equus" contains adult language, adult situations and nudity. It also has smoking on stage.
(10/06/00 4:53am)
During its initial wave of productions in the early 1970s, many theaters banned Peter Schaffer's "Equus." With full frontal nudity, implied bestiality and an act of ghastly mutilation, the Tony award-winning play ruffled more than a few feathers.\n"It's a brutal work, shockingly violent, very disturbing," said professor Murray McGibbon, who directs the University Theatre production opening Friday. "It's a raw piece of total theater. Schaffer stripped away all of the theatrical artifice, leaving a work that haunts and resonates."\nSet in a mental hospital ward, "Equus" concerns the efforts of psychiatrist Martin Dysart to pry into the mind of the 17-year-old Alan Strang, who inexplicably blinded six horses with a metal spike. At first, the boy refuses to speak to Dysart, who holds reservations about his own psychological well-being. Instead, Alan just sings television jingles to himself like a lunatic.\nAs Dysart gradually gets the boy to open up, he learns of an intense relationship Alan had with a horse named Nugget, a relationship part sexual and part spiritual. The son of a Marxist father and Christian mother, Alan transferred his belief in God into a kind of equine paganism.\nAfter secretively riding Nugget every night after he got done with his work at the stable, Alan suffered a nervous breakdown that led to the act of horrible violence. In their conversations, Dysart comes to respect Alan's spirituality and primitivism. He becomes almost afraid to treat the boy, fearing he may "destroy his passion." \n"I have certainly found the role of Alan Strang a difficult one," said junior Bradley Fletcher. "Trying to understand and show such drastic changes in passion and pain all inside one boy is a fight. I've never run across a role in performance or reading that is similar. Coming from a background of mostly comic roles, this is especially difficult."\nBut Fletcher said he spared no pains in his preparation.\n"To understand Alan, I had to do everything from thinking about what he eats for breakfast, to creating in my mind an elaborate image and vision of one of his nights out riding the horse," he said. \n"When you have to account for all the factors that add up to make Alan go through with this terrible act, it demands knowing everything you can. I had been thinking about about all these factors from the moment I first saw the notice for auditions."\nSenior Erik Anderson, who play Dysart, came in well prepared.\nHe's sunk his teeth into weighty roles before, such as that of Eddie in a production of "Hurlyburly" in New York City. But he said he still found "Equus" challenging.\n"From a technical standpoint, there's not a lot of action," he said. "As a character, you never leave the stage. And then, I'm 23 and I have to explore the psyche of a middle-aged man. So yeah, it's a demanding role."\nFrom the springboard of its jarring subject matter, "Equus" launches into a critique of the conventions of society and psychiatry. It calls into question how deviation from the norms is handled.\nAnd that's why McGibbon said he decided to stage it. \n"It's a very powerful dramatic experience," he said. "People now associate theater with comedy and fancy trappings like moving scenery. This play gets back to the roots of theater, why it existed in the first place -- man's need to express himself. It gives the audience something more to think about than what they'll have to drink afterward." \nMcGibbon, who hails from South Africa, flat-out said he thinks modern theater has lost its way.\n"The American economic outlook is good, but the artistic indicators have all gone south," he said. "In South Africa, there's widespread poverty and enormous political hardship that makes the artist hungry. It gives meat for him to wrestle for."\nAnd the cast has confidence in McGibbon's vision of the play as an eye-opener, a means to shake the audience from its complacency. \n"Murray has shaped this play into a form that will make it more real than any theater that most audience members have ever seen," he said. "I think the casual theatergoer will be shocked by much of the play. This production doesn't stay within safe boundaries, because life doesn't stay within safe boundaries.\n"It dares to be real. I think any mature audience member who gives this show a chance will be rewarded by it's power and ability to strike your mind and emotions."\n"Equus" plays Oct. 6, and 9-14 at the University Theatre. Curtain time for all shows is 8 p.m. Tickets for all performances are $11.50 and $10.50 for students and seniors. For ticket information, call (812) 855-1103.\n"Equus" contains adult language, adult situations and nudity.
(10/05/00 4:04am)
It's that time of the year.\nAs the leaves turn vibrant hues of red and brown, it's to be expected.\nSomeone's going to stage a Gilbert and Sullivan production.\nThe Bloomington Music Works has kicked off its season this year with the classic, "The Pirates of Penzance." It runs at 8 p.m. today through Saturday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, 114 E. Kirkwood Ave.\nLight-hearted fare typical of the duo, it concerns the travails of Frederick, the son of a nobleman who's supposed to be apprenticed to a pilot. But his hard-of-hearing nurserymaid instead apprentices him to a band of pirates, the none-too-intimidating "Pirates of Pezances."\nWith a soft spot for orphans, they have failed to build up much of a reputation. When they cross paths with a major general after Fredrick elopes with his daughter, comic hijinks ensue. A self-declared "slave of duty," Fredrick sides with the pirates against his would-be father-in-law. Almost needless to say with a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, there's a happy ending in store for the audience.\n"(Gilbert and Sullivan) have a great flair for the English language," said Chuck Macklin, who plays the major general. "I really like the twists and turns through which the author and the composer take us."\nPreviously staging "H.M.S. Pinafore" and "The Mikado," the Music Work opens every season with Gilbert and Sullivan.\n"They always get a great response from audiences," said Abigail Paul, manager of the Sunrise Box Office. "People find them fun, and ticket sales always go up."\nBrian Samarzea, artistic director of the Music Works, said the tradition just makes sense from a business perspective.\n"This is only our third season," he said. "And it really cuts down on our overhead, since we don't have to pay royalties as we would with all the Broadway musicals."\nGeared toward musicals and light operettas, the Music Works rose like a phoenix three years ago from the ashes of the ashes of Bloomington Town Theater.\n"It was really disorganized," Samarzea said. "And when it went under, the University Theatre was the only game in town. There was no production company for townies or recent graduates. And there was nothing at all in this town big on musicals."\nMacklin, who graduated from the School of Music in 1990 and now works at a coffee shop, said he's certainly grateful.\n"The Music Works is something new and dynamic," he said. "It's always exciting when they present something."\nHe's performed in a number of productions since he got out of school and has been in "three or four" BMW shows, including last fall's "The Mikado."\n"I got stuck in the geezer role again this time," he said. "I'm just disappointed I get to marry the battleaxe this time." \nThe Music Works season includes the children's musical "Toy Shop" in December, a dinner theater production of "The Fantastics" in March and "Once Upon a Mattress" again at the Buskirk in May.\nSamarzea said the Music Works intends to use the Buskirk more next season.\n"It's an excellent venue, with great production values," he said. "We have a pit orchestra with 25 people for this production, and that just wouldn't be possible at the (John) Waldron (Arts Center). It's basically … a large space that's been converted into a theater. The Buskirk allows us more complicated lighting, more elaborate productions." \nTickets for "Pirates of Penzance" are $13 and available through the Sunrise Box Office at 323-3020.
(10/05/00 4:00am)
Though it just rolls off the lips, the phrase "virtual reality" is an oxymoron. \nIt's something Margaret Dolinsky never hesitates to point out. \nBut it's not just some random crack from her conversational repertoire. It's a subject Dolinsky is constantly mulling over -- she's spent most of her adult life working with virtual reality as an art form. \nA pioneer of virtual art and life-long academic, Dolinsky has found her home on the Bloomington campus. She's currently a visiting professor of the fine arts and an information technology research assistant. \n"At each step of the road," she jokes, "my art education has been partially financed by a computer scientist somewhere." \nDolinsky came to this neck of the woods for the opportunity to work with CAVE technology, or the Cave Automatic Visualization Environment. It's the canvas with which she plies her craft. \nA VR display theater, the CAVE is an eight-foot cube with three walls and a floor that fits up to nine people. It looks unassuming enough before one dons the requisite stereoscopic shutter glasses and a tracking wand. \nOne is then plunged into a surreal netherworld, an entirely immersive experience as trippy as it is indescribable. Objects -- generally faces, masks and squat, troll-like figures -- leap out at the viewer while the boundaries in the background all bleed into one another. \nVisual art is traditionally static, a flash of inspiration transcribed and hung up on the wall. \nBut Dolinsky defies artistic convention with her atmospheric dreamscapes, fluid and ever shifting. Being in the CAVE is nothing like milling about a museum or gallery on a languid Sunday afternoon. \n"I try to present images that are inviting and confrontational at the same time," she says. "I want to create an experience that is dream-like, whimsical and subversively confrontational." \nA tracking system enables the participant to interact with Dolinsky's otherworldly environments, whether the baroque interior of a castle or a lunar vista. Triggered by the user's motions, the tracking system creates live feed based on the program output. \nQuite literally, no two people experience a Dolinsky piece in the same way. \nAnd while words might not do justice to Dolinsky's work, she wants you to talk about the experience. \n"I want to emulate the real world but I want to excavate the world of the unconscious by creating worlds that must be initially accepted for later processing," she says. "It's much like recounting a dream. You learn more when you retell the experience out loud later." \nWith regard to her muses, Dolinsky rattles off a varied list: "James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Salmon Rushdie, Buddha, politics, the rubric cube, the TV Guide crossword puzzles, Rob Brezny's astrology, full moons and chocolate." \nIt's probably for the best that her inspiration cuts such a wide swath. Putting together a VR piece is no light task, taking months and sometimes even years. \n"I tend to work and rework the experience until it exhausts me," she says. "There are technical considerations and creative development stages. And I have to make considerations for others who will actually be within the environment." \nCalling for specialized training, it's a complicated affair. Picasso never had to trouble himself with computer programming. \n"Creating these environments is a multi-faceted expedition," she says. "First I must establish a system with the computer and then a framework for coding the environment, then there are the design aspects. \n"How will the interface work? How will the content be reflected through the imagery and the choices a person can make? How will the environment indicate passages and choices for navigation?" \nDolinsky has to grapple with dozens of such questions whenever she starts work on another piece. But she presses on, convinced as she is that virtual reality is the artistic medium of the future. As incredible as it might sound, Atari and Nintendo led her to this conclusion. \n"I watched with interest as video games became popular," she says. "And as I watched the computer saturate every dimension of our lives, I recognized the potential. When I heard about virtual reality, that sounded very new and interesting. I liked the experiential nature of the medium and the fact that it was a largely unexplored territory. I wanted to be involved in something that was yet to be defined." \nDolinsky brought a solid background in the fine arts to her expedition. A painter first and foremost, she also studied and practiced pottery and intaglio printmaking. \n"With clay I realized the dimensionality to seeing all sides of an object and how to shape an idea into tangible existence," she says. "With intaglio, I realized by etching multiple layers that there is a multifaceted dynamic to the development of idea and form. \n"Painting taught my eyes to sing." \nAnd she found the creative liberty in virtual reality that had only been a distant dream. \n"The most exciting aspects of VR include the unique ability to generate imagery, view it in three dimensions and manipulate it in real time," she says. "Due to its visual and experimental nature, the CAVE theater display system lends itself well to dynamic art applications." \nDolinsky's art starts with applications, strings of binary code entered into a computer. But it ends in a vibrant dreamscape, extracted from the depths of a dream.
(10/05/00 4:00am)
Some artists are just lucky: in the right place at the right time with an opportunity to thrive. Others have no choice. For them, the arts become an obsession dictated by a will greater than their own. It appears to be a damning incident until you stop to think about it. Remember Luke Skywalker: no choice, just forced to go on. Gotta go with the force.\n-- Margaret Dolinsky\nLike any avant-garde artist, virtual reality pioneer Margaret Dolinsky has become a prophet of the new gospel.\n"I want the virtual environment to appear as one thing and simultaneously mean a separate other," she said. "I want the world to be presented as some sort of camouflage where we see it or maybe we do not or maybe we mistake it for something else.\n"Virtual reality offers a new paradigm for representing our three dimensions."\nVR as an artform has deep roots that stretch beyond the technological breakthrough. After George Eastman invented the camera in 1888, the face of visual art was forever changed.\nFor centuries, painting had been economically rooted in portraiture. Artists were charged with the task of representing reality -- no frills, no imagination. But Eastman changed all that in one fell swoop.\nWith painting's purpose rendered redundant, artists branched out into experimental genres like cubism and abstract impression. A floodgate had been torn open, unleashing a deluge of creativity. Jackson Pollack was at liberty to splatter paint haphazardly on canvasses, while Mark Rothko could stack rectangular splotches.\nBut with the technological innovation of virtual reality, things have almost seemed to swing full-circle. A few years into the future, frighteningly detailed realist paintings would pale in comparison to the verisimilitude that the three-dimensional format could allow.\nStill, first-generation VR artists like Dolinsky have altogether eschewed the genre of realism.\n"Realism does not help in VR," she says. "There is no established scheme for VR. Think of the Atari Pong game..."\nAnarchic as it is, Dolinsky thinks the advent of VR will have a profoundly shaping effect on visual art.\n"I think VR is the first redefinition of perspective since the Renaissance," she says. "It's possibilities are endless for art, education, science, information visualization..."\nBut Dolinsky concedes the medium is still fledgling.\n"The concept of combining art and VR has always been very clear," she says. "Although I imagine that it will take time to comprehend the strength of their gestalt."\nIt's an art form she's proud to have a shaping hand in.\n"For me as an artist, it is imperative to shape and discover mediums," she says. "The process facilitates the redefinition of space, time, perspective and reality. Artistic representation is always fascinating to me and so much so in VR. The representations I create are more about how the appearance facilitates experience and visa versa."\nOne of its more radical departures from traditional art is its participatory nature, she said.\n"Each day brings about new small epiphanies about choices that we make and reactions that we have," she says. "This dynamic also occurs in VR. Content and meaning are created as the viewers interact and negotiate with the virtual environment.\n"For instance, by approaching a mask -- in my VR worlds they represent the psyche -- I consider it as 'facing' a confrontation. One is willing to look into the eyes of an 'other.' This signals a moment of transition to a new place and time in the world."\nIn a way, despite the surrealist quality of her work, Dolinsky has something in common with Gustave Courbet and others who sought to perfectly replicate vistas. Except that Dolinsky isn't concerned with surfaces -- she wants to cut to the marrow.\n"Art is constantly shifting, changing, in flux," she says. "Like life, it is an experience of emergence, uncertainty, transformation"
(10/05/00 3:09am)
Some artists are just lucky: in the right place at the right time with an opportunity to thrive. Others have no choice. For them, the arts become an obsession dictated by a will greater than their own. It appears to be a damning incident until you stop to think about it. Remember Luke Skywalker: no choice, just forced to go on. Gotta go with the force.\n-- Margaret Dolinsky\nLike any avant-garde artist, virtual reality pioneer Margaret Dolinsky has become a prophet of the new gospel.\n"I want the virtual environment to appear as one thing and simultaneously mean a separate other," she said. "I want the world to be presented as some sort of camouflage where we see it or maybe we do not or maybe we mistake it for something else.\n"Virtual reality offers a new paradigm for representing our three dimensions."\nVR as an artform has deep roots that stretch beyond the technological breakthrough. After George Eastman invented the camera in 1888, the face of visual art was forever changed.\nFor centuries, painting had been economically rooted in portraiture. Artists were charged with the task of representing reality -- no frills, no imagination. But Eastman changed all that in one fell swoop.\nWith painting's purpose rendered redundant, artists branched out into experimental genres like cubism and abstract impression. A floodgate had been torn open, unleashing a deluge of creativity. Jackson Pollack was at liberty to splatter paint haphazardly on canvasses, while Mark Rothko could stack rectangular splotches.\nBut with the technological innovation of virtual reality, things have almost seemed to swing full-circle. A few years into the future, frighteningly detailed realist paintings would pale in comparison to the verisimilitude that the three-dimensional format could allow.\nStill, first-generation VR artists like Dolinsky have altogether eschewed the genre of realism.\n"Realism does not help in VR," she says. "There is no established scheme for VR. Think of the Atari Pong game..."\nAnarchic as it is, Dolinsky thinks the advent of VR will have a profoundly shaping effect on visual art.\n"I think VR is the first redefinition of perspective since the Renaissance," she says. "It's possibilities are endless for art, education, science, information visualization..."\nBut Dolinsky concedes the medium is still fledgling.\n"The concept of combining art and VR has always been very clear," she says. "Although I imagine that it will take time to comprehend the strength of their gestalt."\nIt's an art form she's proud to have a shaping hand in.\n"For me as an artist, it is imperative to shape and discover mediums," she says. "The process facilitates the redefinition of space, time, perspective and reality. Artistic representation is always fascinating to me and so much so in VR. The representations I create are more about how the appearance facilitates experience and visa versa."\nOne of its more radical departures from traditional art is its participatory nature, she said.\n"Each day brings about new small epiphanies about choices that we make and reactions that we have," she says. "This dynamic also occurs in VR. Content and meaning are created as the viewers interact and negotiate with the virtual environment.\n"For instance, by approaching a mask -- in my VR worlds they represent the psyche -- I consider it as 'facing' a confrontation. One is willing to look into the eyes of an 'other.' This signals a moment of transition to a new place and time in the world."\nIn a way, despite the surrealist quality of her work, Dolinsky has something in common with Gustave Courbet and others who sought to perfectly replicate vistas. Except that Dolinsky isn't concerned with surfaces -- she wants to cut to the marrow.\n"Art is constantly shifting, changing, in flux," she says. "Like life, it is an experience of emergence, uncertainty, transformation"
(10/05/00 3:08am)
Though it just rolls off the lips, the phrase "virtual reality" is an oxymoron. \nIt's something Margaret Dolinsky never hesitates to point out. \nBut it's not just some random crack from her conversational repertoire. It's a subject Dolinsky is constantly mulling over -- she's spent most of her adult life working with virtual reality as an art form. \nA pioneer of virtual art and life-long academic, Dolinsky has found her home on the Bloomington campus. She's currently a visiting professor of the fine arts and an information technology research assistant. \n"At each step of the road," she jokes, "my art education has been partially financed by a computer scientist somewhere." \nDolinsky came to this neck of the woods for the opportunity to work with CAVE technology, or the Cave Automatic Visualization Environment. It's the canvas with which she plies her craft. \nA VR display theater, the CAVE is an eight-foot cube with three walls and a floor that fits up to nine people. It looks unassuming enough before one dons the requisite stereoscopic shutter glasses and a tracking wand. \nOne is then plunged into a surreal netherworld, an entirely immersive experience as trippy as it is indescribable. Objects -- generally faces, masks and squat, troll-like figures -- leap out at the viewer while the boundaries in the background all bleed into one another. \nVisual art is traditionally static, a flash of inspiration transcribed and hung up on the wall. \nBut Dolinsky defies artistic convention with her atmospheric dreamscapes, fluid and ever shifting. Being in the CAVE is nothing like milling about a museum or gallery on a languid Sunday afternoon. \n"I try to present images that are inviting and confrontational at the same time," she says. "I want to create an experience that is dream-like, whimsical and subversively confrontational." \nA tracking system enables the participant to interact with Dolinsky's otherworldly environments, whether the baroque interior of a castle or a lunar vista. Triggered by the user's motions, the tracking system creates live feed based on the program output. \nQuite literally, no two people experience a Dolinsky piece in the same way. \nAnd while words might not do justice to Dolinsky's work, she wants you to talk about the experience. \n"I want to emulate the real world but I want to excavate the world of the unconscious by creating worlds that must be initially accepted for later processing," she says. "It's much like recounting a dream. You learn more when you retell the experience out loud later." \nWith regard to her muses, Dolinsky rattles off a varied list: "James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Salmon Rushdie, Buddha, politics, the rubric cube, the TV Guide crossword puzzles, Rob Brezny's astrology, full moons and chocolate." \nIt's probably for the best that her inspiration cuts such a wide swath. Putting together a VR piece is no light task, taking months and sometimes even years. \n"I tend to work and rework the experience until it exhausts me," she says. "There are technical considerations and creative development stages. And I have to make considerations for others who will actually be within the environment." \nCalling for specialized training, it's a complicated affair. Picasso never had to trouble himself with computer programming. \n"Creating these environments is a multi-faceted expedition," she says. "First I must establish a system with the computer and then a framework for coding the environment, then there are the design aspects. \n"How will the interface work? How will the content be reflected through the imagery and the choices a person can make? How will the environment indicate passages and choices for navigation?" \nDolinsky has to grapple with dozens of such questions whenever she starts work on another piece. But she presses on, convinced as she is that virtual reality is the artistic medium of the future. As incredible as it might sound, Atari and Nintendo led her to this conclusion. \n"I watched with interest as video games became popular," she says. "And as I watched the computer saturate every dimension of our lives, I recognized the potential. When I heard about virtual reality, that sounded very new and interesting. I liked the experiential nature of the medium and the fact that it was a largely unexplored territory. I wanted to be involved in something that was yet to be defined." \nDolinsky brought a solid background in the fine arts to her expedition. A painter first and foremost, she also studied and practiced pottery and intaglio printmaking. \n"With clay I realized the dimensionality to seeing all sides of an object and how to shape an idea into tangible existence," she says. "With intaglio, I realized by etching multiple layers that there is a multifaceted dynamic to the development of idea and form. \n"Painting taught my eyes to sing." \nAnd she found the creative liberty in virtual reality that had only been a distant dream. \n"The most exciting aspects of VR include the unique ability to generate imagery, view it in three dimensions and manipulate it in real time," she says. "Due to its visual and experimental nature, the CAVE theater display system lends itself well to dynamic art applications." \nDolinsky's art starts with applications, strings of binary code entered into a computer. But it ends in a vibrant dreamscape, extracted from the depths of a dream.
(10/04/00 3:45am)
Jerry Garcia might have died in 1995, but one couldn't discern that from watching a Dark Star Orchestra show.\nThe look-and-sound-alike Grateful Dead tribute band will play at 9 p.m. Wednesday at Axis Nightclub, 419 N. Walnut St. Tickets at the door cost $12.\nThe Dark Star Orchestra isn't an orchestra, nor is it a commonplace cover band.\nConceived of in Chicago in 1997, Dark Star Orchestra has built up a national following with its dead-on covers. \n"There's a legion of us out here who have searched for vehicle to carry the spirit onward since Jerry's passing," said Steve Flores, one of Dark Star Orchestra's estimated 6,000 followers and a former Deadhead. "When given the opportunity, I'm letting everyone know that the vehicle we've been searching for is the Dark Star Orchestra."\nWith a sprawling catalog of set list, reviews and bootlegs, Dark Star Orchestra has sought to reproduce individual Dead concerts -- note for note.\nPerfectionistic, they even strive to recreate onstage banter.\nIt's not an easy task, given the Grateful Dead's notorious free-styling, improvisational style. Sets would often be punctuated with guitar or drum solos, which often stretched on for half an hour. Some critics have even gone so far as to remark that the Dead played one extended song of its three decades of "truckin'."\nBut the Dark Star Orchestra draws from the Dead's repertoire of more than 1,000 concerts without perceptibly slipping up. Minute detail is emphasized, with a particular concert's lineup matched by musicians in character. Wardrobes and instruments always perfectly dovetail the period.\nThe Dark Star Orchestra never announces ahead of time what concert it intends to recreate, but instead throws the audience subtle hints. An extra drumset or the positioning of a keyboard is supposed to give it away. Occasionally, it puts on thematic shows, lining a cover up with a particular date, for instance.\nSuch accuracy has a good many former Deadheads hooked.\n"The most telling indication of Dark Star Orchestra's hitting the aesthetic bull's-eye may be that upon exiting the show, the concertgoer is occupied with memories of his own Dead experiences," said Patrick Foster in a Washington Post review. "And that is a far more fitting tribute than any number of endless and mediocre 'jam band' compositions that have ever been mustered." \nDave Kubiak, owner of Axis, booked them to play last spring and was so impressed he asked them to return.\n"It's just phenomenal how they recreate the Grateful Dead," he said. "It's the only tribute band that I'd ever bring into a nightclub like Axis"
(10/03/00 6:29am)
Mayor John Fernandez announced Monday the initial findings and recommendations of the Bloomington Area Arts Council independent study commission. \nFernandez appointed the commission last month to investigate the financial difficulties of the BAAC, which is nearly $1 million in debt after the $3.2 million renovation of the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre last year. It consists of city council members and others with backgrounds in the arts and business.\nThe commission encourages the BAAC to transfer management of the Buskirk, which it owns.\n"The central recommendation is to separate the organization and management of the Waldron Arts Center from the Buskirk-Chumley," said Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Ted Najam, chair of the commission. "These two facilities serve different functions and should operate separately."\nBut Najam said paying down the BAAC's debt to the Monroe County Bank takes precedence.\nHe suggested its financial woes might lead to eventual problems with the John Waldron Arts Center, which the BAAC also runs.\n"We must first address the financial emergency that threatens both the theatre and viability of the arts center," he said. "The commission believes that prompt action is required to save and sustain both facilities as a community resource."\nNajam said the commission also recommends that it is accepted by the BAAC as a formal adviser to help develop a long-term financial strategy. The Indianapolis-based judge has previously chaired a 1990 commission that gave input on the revitalization of the downtown strip.\nThe mayor said he stood firmly behind the commission's recommendation.\n"I want to thank the study commission for taking decisive action to aid the BAAC," he said. "I strongly believe their recommendations must be implemented." \nFernandez also spoke of the importance of the BAAC remaining solvent.\n"I also want to express my gratitude to the BAAC board for bringing these resources -- the John Waldron Arts Center, the Buskirk-Chumley and all of the arts programming -- to our community," he said. "Thanks to their efforts, the arts are a part of our everyday lives in Bloomington."\nMaureen Friel, president of the BAAC's board, has said the council is open to the commission's advice.\n"We're in a tight spot," she said. "And getting out of debt is the first priority. So we plan on listening to the city with open ears."\nFriel could not be reached for comment after the mayor's announcement.\nThe BAAC relied on charitable contributions to pay off the cost of the renovations of the old Indiana Theatre, which Kerasotes donated to it on the condition that films not be shown. But Friel said the larger donations have trickled off, forcing the BAAC to take out a mortgage and a loan. \nWith scaled-down programming and less revenue, the not-for-profit council had to cut operating expenses at the Buskirk this summer. It reduced the theater's paid staff by more than half and missed payrolls.\nCiting the mounting debt, the state arts commission has also refused the council $70,000 in grant money that it receives every fall to pay operating expenses. But Friel said things should pick up somewhat with a full slate of fall programming, including a number of benefit concerts. \n"We just need more financial discipline," she said.
(10/03/00 5:48am)
Marty McSorley loves collecting glass unicorns and colorful friendship bracelets. He enjoys reading the Saturday Evening Post and Reader's Digest. McSorley religiously watches "Friends" because he thinks it's a hoot.\nMcSorley likes a good, hearty laugh and never forgets to take his medication.\nWell actually, now that you've mentioned it, the former Boston Bruin is currently on trial for criminal assault. A 17-year NHL veteran, McSorley is a roughneck enforcer. He's charged with the task of preventing teammates like center Joe Thornton and left wing Sergei Samsonov from being intimidated, so they can do their jobs.\nExacting and taking physical punishment in a game as fast-paced as hockey isn't a walk in the park. And yes, occasionally tempers will flare and fists will fly. \nMcSorley's downfall got rolling when he tried to pick a fight. Live by the bloodied knuckles, die by the bloodied knuckles.\nThe Vancouver Canuck's Donald Brashear is a tough cookie and muscleman himself, a bloke who had pounded McSorley to a bloody pulp in January. So, McSorley had more than a little animosity when he went to strike him on the shoulder with the intent of provoking a fight. Yeah, that's fair to say. Only three seconds were left in the game. \nAt any rate, what occurred on that fateful Feb. 21 is now well-known, played again and again from several different angles on the nightly news. McSorley landed his stick squarely across Brashear's skull, knocking him out. Brashear suffered a concussion, but in a few weeks, he was back on the rink again to dish it out.\nBut McSorley wasn't so lucky. Like the hand of God, the NHL handed down a 23-game suspension, the longest in NHL history, for inappropriate physical contact. McSorley is 37, and given the severity of the violence, he probably should have been suspended for the upcoming regular season as well -- it would have been the kiss of death for his career.\nNo general manager, looking to put "a little punch back to the roster," would pick up this aging public relations nightmare among public relations nightmares as a free agent. \nBut Vancouver authorities have pressed criminal charges, which makes little sense. McSorley -- clearly a threat to the good people of British Columbia -- could face up to a year and half in prison for what he did on the ice.\nWhat happens on a playing field cannot be held to society's standards for acceptable behavior. Plain and simple, it's a matter of internal discipline. Dallas authorities can't charge New Jersey Devils center Patrik Elias with assault for sending off a slapshot at Stars goalie Ed Belfour. \nUnder any other circumstances, launching a high-speed rubber projectile at another person would be highly illegal, but we're talking about an athletic event. When maneuvering to get into the men's room, I'm sure McSorley doesn't check and elbow. The general populace does not need protection from a high stick.\nAnyway, this whole affair has me perplexed. It's the "National" Hockey League, yet it's played in both Canada and the United States?
(10/02/00 5:29am)
It is with reservation that a music critic uses the word "fun."\nAssociated with the commercial vapidity of dance club pop and teenie bopper R&B, the term carries a certain shame.\nBut San Fransisco-based pop-polka act Those Darn Accordions! certainly fits the bill.\nA National Lampoon among so many Men's Healths and Home and Gardenings, TDA! put on a foot-stomping good show at Rhino's Friday, a show infused with its characteristic juvenile wit.\nSetting the tone for the evening, the accordion quartet started out with a cover of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy." When performed on accordions, the lounge classic sounds campier than the banter at a drag queen convention. But that's not the kicker. Octogenarian Clyde Forsman, a co-founder of the band, is brought out to croon the piece. As one would imagine, great comic results are delivered.\nAnd that's the mentality of Those Darn Accordions! in a nutshell -- a mentality of arrested adolescence.\nThey are skilled musicians weaving highly catchy melodies. With songs ranging from lively polka to ironic covers like War's "Low Rider," they displayed their musical virtuosity song after song. And while the accordion isn't quite as sexy as the guitar or the piano, it can't be easy to constantly use all of your fingers while hefting something that bulky.\nBut TDA! is one of those concept bands less concerned with the music than with seeing to it that the audience has a good time. It plays a small venue like … oh, an accordion.\nTDA! ploughed through all of its standard crowd-pleasing numbers like "Hamsterman," which is an off-kilter ode to futility. Its lyrics are outright goofy, with the subject matter coming from topics like Japanese sci-fi and 1960s counterculture. \nThough mere farce, TDA! turns out some pure gems, like "Deathbed Confession." A jaunty barroom piece concerning the life story of a free-lance tabloid photographer, its refrain consists of his dying admission that he "put the monster in the Loch Ness." \nForsman was trotted out again for a traditional Irish ditty, which he sung solo, and a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire."\nIn a fitting stroke, the group ended its set by playing the German folk song, "Ententanz." It's better known as the musical accompaniment to the the chicken dance.\nThose Darn Accordions! is a sort of low-key phenomenon on the West Coast, and it's really not hard to see why.
(09/29/00 4:25pm)
In Bean Blossom this weekend, the thick scent of barbeque will waft through the air.\nCampers will enjoy heaping servings of spare ribs and kettle corn, with harmonicas and slide guitars wailing away all the while.\nFor the second year, the Bean Blossom Blues Festival will be held Friday through Sunday at the Bill Monroe Music Park, five miles north of Nashville, Ind. on Highway 135. The festival is headlined by legenday bluegrass figures including Snooky Pryor and Willie J. Foster.\nThe seed for the festival was sewn with a simple idea. \n"A lot of prominent names in bluegrass have always come into my shop," said festival founder John Hall, owner of the Harp Depot in New Palestine. "And I got to know a good many of them very well. So I had the idea to ask them to play together."\nBut upon reflection, Hall decided to be more ambitious.\n"We decided there was no reason we shouldn't make it public," he said. "So we've been trying to create a world-class music event -- a bluegrass festival like Woodstock." \nSo Hall decided to take it down to Bean Blossom.\n"We figured it would be out-of-place in the Indianapolis area," he said. "We wanted to make it more real and genuine."\nIt would have been hard to find a more appropriate place than Bean Blossom, which is host to many annual blues festivals. Kentucky-native Bill Monroe, widely regarded as the father of bluegrass, called the town home for four decades before his death in 1996. Monroe developed the genre by performing country songs with unamplified string instruments such as the fiddle, mandolin and banjo.\n"Yeah, Bean Blossom's got a rich history," Hall said. "And it's just got a great name. It just sounds folksy."\nHall said the festival should be three whole days of pure bliss for music lovers.\n"We've got a lot of legendary performers booked," he said. "And they're not just big figures in blues. A lot of people in rock and roll think of Snooky (Pryor) as an influence."\nPlugging away with his harmonica for more than 60 years, Pryor has been a highly influential figure in bluegrass. He picked up the instrument at age eight, in spite of the admonitions of his father.\n"My daddy'd hang me if he ever heard me singing the blues," he said.\nBy age 16, wanderlust had filled his soul. He hit the road, traveling throughout the middle Mississippi Valley region. After moving to Chicago, Pryor joined the Army. Stationed in the South Pacific, he entertained his fellow troops with his free-styling improvisation.\nHaving sharpened his skills, Pryor returned to Chicago, where he started a band and recorded his first album, Telephone Blues. He rose to the forefront of the Chicago blues scene, largely because of his unique style.\n"There's a right way and a wrong way," said Mel Brown, who will play with Pryor this weekend. "And then there's Snooky's way."\nHe took a hiatus from the Maxwell Street club scene for eight years to take up carpentry.\nHaving grown disillusioned with the music business, he said, "I wanted to live a different life."\nBut Pryor's back in full force, having released two albums in 1999. He also made two visits to southwest Indiana, playing the the Bill Monroe Bluegrass festival, the longest-running in the world, and the inaugural Bean Blossum festival.\nAdmission is $20 for Friday, $25 for Saturday and $10 Sunday. Camping on location costs $11 each night. For more information, call (800) 783-7996 or visit www.harpdepot.com/blues.html.
(09/28/00 4:17am)
Peter Pertis, a former soloist with the Hungarian philharmonic, will give a guest recital at 8:30 p.m. Thursday at Recital Hall. \nA graduate of the Bela Batok Conservatory of Music, Pertis has toured Eastern and Western Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia. Now giving master's degree classes, he has served as artist in residence at the Musashino Music Academy in Tokyo and the University of Hartford.\n"I've listened to many of his recordings," said Professor Emeritus of Music Henry Upper, chair of the piano department. "And I had the chance to meet him in Budapest, but I've never heard him play. So I'm really looking forward to this."\nPertis will perform a diverse program Thursday, including Debussy, Mozart, Chopin and Liszt.\nImre Pallo, a conductor and music school professor, attested to Pertis' versatility.\n"He's universal in his literature," he said. "And if you look at the evening's program, you'll see a fine selection of different composers. Obviously, he thinks of Hungary as his mother milk and prefers Hungarian composers. But he has a very wide range.\n"We've staid friends for 45 years," Pallo said. "And we've performed piano concertos together in Budapest and upstate New York. He's a good friend and a wonderful musician."\nPertis' background brought about his now renowned virtuosity, Pallo said. \n"He grew up in a very musical Hungarian family," he said. "So it's always been in his blood. You can expect a very beautiful, poetic and musically satisfactory evening."\nPertis came to Bloomington to visit his childhood friend.\n"He had been talking about visiting for a long while, and his schedule was finally freed up," he said. "So this wonderful opportunity (for a recital) presented itself." \nThe recital is free and open to the public.\n"(Pertis's) biography speaks for itself," said Maria Talbert, assistant director of communications for the School of Music. "Considering all the places he's been, you'd be paying a pretty penny if you were seeing him in New York City"
(09/28/00 4:00am)
Cast of Characters:\nBoy, a boy.\nGirl, a girl.\nThe child, a grievous mistake.\nRobert Gabriel Mugabe, Zimbabwe's President\nSetting: A bar, a social gathering, etcetera. Dimly lit, yet festive in mood.\nAct I: Scene: Boy, either of college age or a 20-something professional, is in a social setting of some sort. See above. Likewise with the girl. Alcohol is involved. At some point, their vacuous gazes, further deadened by the ravages of the bottle, meet.\nBoy: I was wondering if there's a mirror in your pants...\nGirl: Would you like to dance?\nThey dance. Girl takes boy home. They screw. Hot monkey passion. Etcetera.\nBoy and girl repeat the process. Time passes. Boy and girl, woefully ill-prepared for parenting, learn that screwing makes babies.\nSo they decide to raise the child, a child they theoretically have a responsibility to care for. They purchase a brand spanking new minivan, thinking that's all it takes. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men...\nResponsibility for the child is handed over to an English teacher at a public school, a 50ish spinster named Edna. A surrogate parental figure among surrogate parental figures, Edna enjoys the work of Emily Bronte, good spelling and proper grammar, not to mention the cough drops she keeps in her desk. Edna hates people. In fact, she really hates people, especially children. And she hates the lousy $27,000 she makes a year and the damned 1991 Ford Taurus she has to drive about. Edna is really sick and tired of having to do all of her shopping at Walgreen's. And we will not even speak of Mr. Fuller, the obese chemistry teacher who always makes suggestive remarks to her in the lounge.\nAlternately, responsibility for the child is handed over to a religious figure, probably Christian. If Catholic, the child is taught to hate Protestants and that they'll go to hell. If Protestant, the child is taught to hate Catholics and that they'll go to hell. Regardless of theology, the child is told not to masturbate.\nThe child is shunned and mocked by peers. While confused by "vague feelings," the child is also shunned and mocked by members of the opposite sex. The child learns all about self-loathing, rage and frustration.\nBoy and girl continue to screw and worry about their careers, keeping up with the Joneses, the NL East pennant race, etcetera.\nMeanwhile, the child starts to abuse illicit drugs and mutilate himself. One day, the child snaps and brings a gun to school. Boy and girl read all about it in the newspaper the next day.\nThe child spilled a lot of blood. A lot of blood. And he was only nine. People start talking about the decay of family values. People on TV, people on the street. A Congressional hearing is called for. Fingers are immediately pointed at the true culprits -- Hollywood and the music industry.\nSen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, makes a dramatic display of how Dr. Dre single-handedly corrupted the child. In outraged tones, he reads some of Dr. Dre's lyrics on the Senate floor.\nSen. Brownback: I know yo type, so much b**ch in you/ If it was slightly darker, lights was little dimmer/ my d**k be stuck up in yo windpipe/ Hmm, you'd rather blow me than fight/ I'm from the old school, you owe me the right to slap you/ like the b**ch that you are/ Youse a b**ch n**ga, motherf****n b**ch n**ga.\nSen. Brownback is funny.\nAnyway, Sen. Brownback then urinates on the First Amendment. A true American hero, the distinguished gentleman from Kansas is carried away by sweeping throngs of supporters.\nRealizing at long last that Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" is the sole cause of all societal dysfunction, the mob heads out to Hollywood, where they lynch everyone in sight.\nSean Penn escapes to his fortress on the moon.\nBoy and girl continue to screw.\nFIN
(09/28/00 1:52am)
Cast of Characters:\nBoy, a boy.\nGirl, a girl.\nThe child, a grievous mistake.\nRobert Gabriel Mugabe, Zimbabwe's President\nSetting: A bar, a social gathering, etcetera. Dimly lit, yet festive in mood.\nAct I: Scene: Boy, either of college age or a 20-something professional, is in a social setting of some sort. See above. Likewise with the girl. Alcohol is involved. At some point, their vacuous gazes, further deadened by the ravages of the bottle, meet.\nBoy: I was wondering if there's a mirror in your pants...\nGirl: Would you like to dance?\nThey dance. Girl takes boy home. They screw. Hot monkey passion. Etcetera.\nBoy and girl repeat the process. Time passes. Boy and girl, woefully ill-prepared for parenting, learn that screwing makes babies.\nSo they decide to raise the child, a child they theoretically have a responsibility to care for. They purchase a brand spanking new minivan, thinking that's all it takes. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men...\nResponsibility for the child is handed over to an English teacher at a public school, a 50ish spinster named Edna. A surrogate parental figure among surrogate parental figures, Edna enjoys the work of Emily Bronte, good spelling and proper grammar, not to mention the cough drops she keeps in her desk. Edna hates people. In fact, she really hates people, especially children. And she hates the lousy $27,000 she makes a year and the damned 1991 Ford Taurus she has to drive about. Edna is really sick and tired of having to do all of her shopping at Walgreen's. And we will not even speak of Mr. Fuller, the obese chemistry teacher who always makes suggestive remarks to her in the lounge.\nAlternately, responsibility for the child is handed over to a religious figure, probably Christian. If Catholic, the child is taught to hate Protestants and that they'll go to hell. If Protestant, the child is taught to hate Catholics and that they'll go to hell. Regardless of theology, the child is told not to masturbate.\nThe child is shunned and mocked by peers. While confused by "vague feelings," the child is also shunned and mocked by members of the opposite sex. The child learns all about self-loathing, rage and frustration.\nBoy and girl continue to screw and worry about their careers, keeping up with the Joneses, the NL East pennant race, etcetera.\nMeanwhile, the child starts to abuse illicit drugs and mutilate himself. One day, the child snaps and brings a gun to school. Boy and girl read all about it in the newspaper the next day.\nThe child spilled a lot of blood. A lot of blood. And he was only nine. People start talking about the decay of family values. People on TV, people on the street. A Congressional hearing is called for. Fingers are immediately pointed at the true culprits -- Hollywood and the music industry.\nSen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, makes a dramatic display of how Dr. Dre single-handedly corrupted the child. In outraged tones, he reads some of Dr. Dre's lyrics on the Senate floor.\nSen. Brownback: I know yo type, so much b**ch in you/ If it was slightly darker, lights was little dimmer/ my d**k be stuck up in yo windpipe/ Hmm, you'd rather blow me than fight/ I'm from the old school, you owe me the right to slap you/ like the b**ch that you are/ Youse a b**ch n**ga, motherf****n b**ch n**ga.\nSen. Brownback is funny.\nAnyway, Sen. Brownback then urinates on the First Amendment. A true American hero, the distinguished gentleman from Kansas is carried away by sweeping throngs of supporters.\nRealizing at long last that Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" is the sole cause of all societal dysfunction, the mob heads out to Hollywood, where they lynch everyone in sight.\nSean Penn escapes to his fortress on the moon.\nBoy and girl continue to screw.\nFIN
(09/26/00 7:26pm)
Ah Sydney, the stuff of dreams.\nNo, it's not just a place where you can say "fair dinkum" without worrying that nobody will understand what the hell you mean. Well, I don't actually know what "fair dinkum" means myself, but it just rolls off the tongue.\nBut Sydney is the culmination of so much sweat and grit, so much strain and commitment.\nOnce upon a time, a little boy set his sights on the Olympic dream.\n(Cut to fuzzy shot of a little boy on a dew-soaked field kicking around a ball at the break of dawn.)\nEvery day after practice, he would stick around the soccer field, long after all the other kids left. He would skip classes and lunch periods, put off friends and worry his poor mother to no end -- all for his dedication and passion.\nThat starry-eyed little boy was me. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that the short-sighted Olympic Committee did not schedule an event in my specialty -- freestyle chain smoking. Nor was there any sport in the field that involved seeing how many issues of the Atlantic Monthly you can get before paying for the subscription.\nAnd so all my hard work and dedication went to seed. \nImagine my disappointment. Imagine how embittered I've become with the Olympics, the great height of amateur athleticism as brought to you by Mastercard, Nike, FedEx, GE, Panasonic and, of course, NBC. \nAs I mull over my sad fate, I frequently head outside the confines of my room to smoke a Camel cigarette, the official Turkish blend cigarette of the summer Olympic games. Well, maybe the tobacco industry hasn't actually bought up official sponsorship of the Olympics yet, but it really wouldn't be a stretch.\nMichael Johnson, a gazelle if there ever was one, just won yet another gold medal in the 400-meter dash Monday. For the love of all that is good and holy, the guy probably has more of that precious medal than the federal reserve. If the currency suddenly crashes, we'll know who to turn to.\nBut I honestly just don't see him training on a diet of Snickers or McDonald's. Nor can I really see him laying about on the couch watching a procession of ads on NBC.\nIt's little wonder that the ratings have been at a historic low. When you cut to a commercial break every two minutes, people are bound to lose interest. That, and pole vaulting isn't really that enthralling in and of itself, particularly when you've only seen today's "ESPN's Baseball Tonight" twice.\nSure, the Orioles don't have a hope in Hades of making it to the playoffs, but that Mike Mussina's got a wicked slider. Plus, Major League Baseball has no pretensions.\nWidespread apathy aside, I don't even know why there are still appeals to patriotism in the Olympics. Vince Carter didn't prove the supremacy of our country over France with that phenomenal dunk -- he proved the supremacy of Nike. That is, if anything was proven. It's surprising that France even managed to round up enough guys to fill out a starting lineup.\nTruth be told, the Olympics has just degenerated into a meaningless commercial spectacle, with the once dignified opening ceremonies now rivaling the inanity of the bloated Super Bowl halftime shows.\nWhen I light up my next Camel, I won't need a flaming arrow. The sky won't be suffused with streaking pyrotechnics. All I need is my handy Zippo, the official refillable lighter of the Olympic games.