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Getting ready to pack your life into boxes ... again? Moving is never easy on your back, but there is a way to make it easier on the environment. Here’s how to go green and save some.
Put a cork in it
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Bloomington music lurks in basements. Red Solo cups waving through the air, it’s not just jungle juice that drives scene – it’s the bands that emerge from the underground.Prizzy Prizzy Please and Push-Pull are two of the B-town bands that went from the Statehouse (a popular basement venue) to the Bluebird and then throughout the Midwest, spreading this college town’s nerd-electro-dance-rock gospel.Together, the bands have dropped a split EP with two songs apiece. Instead of a CD, the bands released a 7-inch vinyl record along with the password for a digital download of it.The throwback format celebrates physical media and demands interaction: You have to flip it to hear more.Push-Pull starts side A with “Hatchet,” a minute-and-a-half of winding guitar riffs and break-the-skin drum slamming.This dives into “687,” a longer piece that captures the band’s playful sound. The band warn anyone walking near the A-frame where they practice to wear ear protection, then define their music as “direct and spastic; a bit cryptic, while simultaneously genuine like pay day,” and this song exemplifies that perfectly.Side B takes off with “Melt Melt Down,” Prizzy’s tribute to a video-game level the band members couldn’t escape. It sounds like electronic syrup of Mega Man X tripping on Pixie Stix. It’s fast, furious and classic Prizzy.“Ride the Love Bullet,” finishes off the too-short album. Rising saxophone blasts layer into crashing rock, a song about the band’s need to drive Mitsubishi cars. Anything that sounds like a guitar is actually a keyboard, and this four-piece band plays like they are little boys describing a dream: “Go down the strip and we’ll move real fast until the engine blows!”Even though they have been gigging throughout the Midwest, Prizzy and Push are still rootsy enough to thrive in the basement scene. Push-Pull will release their first full-length album Friday on Chicago’s Sick Room Records, and both bands will play a Bloomington release show for the coming LP on Nov. 19 at Jake’s. Prizzy, in true basement-life fashion, can’t release a full-length album until they raise funds from EPs and touring. In its place, this album teases of bigger things to come.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A new Bloomington-based literary magazine, fiore, aims to fill in the gaps left by other local art magazines and newspapers.The magazine, started by two former Cultureweek managing editors, is currently accepting submissions of art, prose, poetry and photography for its first issue, due out after winter break.“It can be that little publication at Soma that people pick up and think, ‘Wow, I live in a town with so much creative energy, and fiore has it all down on paper,’” Dawn Shanks, fiore editor and publisher, said.The new magazine encourages submissions from IU students and Bloomington residents alike, a wider scope than other magazines, Shanks said.The first issue will be distributed mid-January and the submission deadline is midnight Oct. 31.Shanks drew a comparison between fiore and Canvas, a Union Board publication that only accepts submissions from IU students.“We cater specifically to students because they pay us with their student fees,” said Allison Parks, Union Board Canvas director.By serving a broader audience, Shanks said she wanted to mold an art forum that covers more than students and reaches beyond the places and events of Bloomington.“I really see the arts community being represented well and thoroughly by The Herald-Times and IDS,” she said. “But how much is really dedicated to how Bloomington community members find themselves creatively through poetry and photography? I don’t see that quite as much.”Bright red flyers tacked up around campus call for poetry, prose, photography, art, short stories and satire, but fiore is open to reviewing any submitted piece, Shanks said.“If you have something that isn’t on the flyer that you think is really great, like a song, submit it,” Shanks said. “I want to read it, I want to consider it. If that’s how you express yourself artistically, then why not?”Some students who have submitted work to other publications plan to use fiore as another medium to showcase their work.Logan Sibrel, a senior BFA student in School of Fine Arts who published his paintings in Canvas last year, said he already submitted art to the Union Board publication, but plans on submitting to fiore as well.“Any time you can say you’ve been published is a good thing, and people all around the campus get to see your work,” Sibrel said. “I think that fiore probably would introduce you to a new crowd. You can change who sees your work.”A straightforward black-and-white design will allow readers to focus on each piece, said fiore art director Sarah Kaiser.“The idea is a minimalist design to feature the work that people are submitting,” Kaiser said. “We want the work to stand out on the page and be the center of attention. We want to keep distractions away and make people focus on what they’re reading.”Volunteers run the publication and will distribute fiore bi-monthly for free, according to a fiore press release.“Right now, what I really want are creative people that want to submit their work,” Shanks said. “This publication is only going to be as good as its submissions. Bloomington people are so creative, and if we can get as many people to submit as possible, it’s going to be a really banging first issue.”fiore, a new literary magazineWhen: Submit by midnight Oct. 31 for the first issue and Dec. 31 for the second issueMore info: Send submissions to fioremag@gmail.com
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Emmylou Harris is a musical grandmother to folk greats like Lucinda Williams and John Prine, and on her latest release, All I Intended to Be, she sits proudly atop her throne as Nashville royalty.Harris calls herself an occasional writer of songs, but more importantly, someone who sings what she loves.With her soulful voice and confident interpretation of other artists’ lyrics, Harris delivers an album that is sorrowful at moments but never hopeless. Her characters tell of pain and loss without wallowing in their suffering.On her 21st studio album, Harris collaborates with famed artists of bluegrass, country and folk. The song “Gold” features Dolly Parton, and two songs, “How She Could Sing The Wildwood Flower” and “Sailing Round the Room” were written and performed with Canadian folk artists Anna and Kate McGarrigle. Harris has said “Sailing” is a tribute to life and death as inspired by the case of Terri Schiavo.Though the album is full of beautiful ballads, Harris twangs it up with Billy Joe Shaver’s “Old Five and Dimers,” a duet with John Starling that provided the album’s title line.Her crisp soprano pays tribute to Merle Haggard on the cover of “Kern River,” and in her rendition of Tracy Chapman’s “All That You Have is Your Soul,” Harris repeats the gorgeously simple chorus until you believe it.The album’s final song, “Beyond the Great Divide” showcases a catchy riff behind the poetry of an idyllic country landscape.Though the music isn’t innovative, Harris sticks to what she knows best: steel-pedal guitar, twangy riffs and lilting harmonies. As a recent Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, she has clearly figured out her formula for success. The album is both a solid introduction to folk for new listeners (even those who would rather swallow a banjo than listen to “country” music) and a satisfying staple for Harris fans.It’s a folk album that tries – and succeeds – to be everything the genre was intended to be: a storytelling medium that can both break your heart and pick up the pieces.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After more than 40 years and nearly 40 studio and live albums, Van Morrison has chosen his best assets: a straightforward use of instruments – especially the sax and steel guitar – and the power of his gruff voice. Shrugging off the more ornate pop sentiment of his earlier work, he has stripped his sound to its essentials.Perhaps he’s tired of the fluff. The title of his album tells it like it is – simple words and pared-away sounds team up for 11 tracks of an aging star’s reflections. Old fans will love references to past songs like “Wavelength,” but new listeners might need to hit repeat and let the music grow on them.Van treats the listener to one pop song nearly as hooky as his classic “Sweet Thing.” On “That’s Entrainment,” he plays the ukulele backed by giddy hand clapping in a song mom and dad might dance to. He then muses over mysticism and aging, and the title track, “Keep it Simple” is pure and beautiful.On the next track “Don’t Go to Nightclubs Anymore,” Van doesn’t try to be mysterious: “I’m not a legend in my own mind, don’t need juice to unwind.” Sex and drugs don’t please him anymore – just rock n’ roll.The most memorable songs feature the ukulele, accordion and saxophone. Though each song is a well-planned use of voice and instrumentation, no common thread pulls them all together.Yes, he stays true to the theme of simplicity, but the guy has the ability to rock a little harder. And with 11 musicians to back him, he should. Finally, after keeping things uncomplicated for 10 tracks, Van busts out every instrument on the seven-minute finale “Behind the Ritual.” His words flow between saxophone and uke riffs as soulful voices croon in the background.While longtime fans will appreciate the lyrical throwbacks to older work and the clean style that highlights Van’s voice, the album doesn’t stand alone as a masterpiece.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Pull the door handle to make the bells clang at Turkuaz Café on East Third Street. Scents of basil and sour cherry juice rush past while Turkish music thumps in time with clinking dishes. Peek in and a short, strong-shouldered but spry man bounces over because everyone looks “gorgeous.” Everything is “gorgeous.” Food is gorgeous, life is gorgeous, and most of all, humans are gorgeous.Metin Ayvazoglu, whose childlike brown eyes complement a smile that nearly stretches beyond his round face, moved to Bloomington in September, 2002. He found a small restaurant space, laid wood flooring, painted the walls with little yellow flowers, fluffed up pillows, and unrolled ornate rugs that reminded him of his life-long home in Kelkit, Turkey.“Normally, when someone opens a restaurant, they visit other restaurants,” Metin says. “When I decided to open, I didn’t go to any restaurants. I didn’t look at any prices. I just did it my way. I was homesick—therefore I designed it like Turkey.”Now, Metin spends every day meeting people and sharing stories over tabouli salad, strong Turkish coffee and nutty baklava, a famous sweet and light pastry with a sugary syrup. Turkuaz dishes range in price from $3 to $5.50, but additional plates of appetizers and traditional deserts are worth the extra cash. “Life is gorgeous with [people],” Metin says. “Like my food. People say it is so nice, so good. But if you are not here, it is nothing.”Metin teases a customer not to pay then lets her slip a five on the front counter for a bottomless cup of tea and coffee cake. He squeezes his eyebrows then looks up with dark, earnest eyes. No wonder so many customers come back to support the tiny-statured man with the big spirit. “When you are opening your first job in America and humans can’t understand you, you are getting ready to lose,” Metin says. “But they help you. They support you. I don’t know the language. I am from a different ethnic group, but if you are human, everybody is human with you. Is there a jump in your heart? Other people are jumping too. They are breathing the same.”Once customers have relaxed and ordered off the extensive menu, a waitress dressed in jeans and a bandana rushes by with a plate full of kebabs. A burst of fresh oregano hits the air. Sprawled out on soft pillows or sitting with tea by the window, everyone breathes the same.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When a child’s paintings move from the refrigerator door to gallery walls, the art world takes notice. In his documentary “My Kid Could Paint That,” director Amir Bar-Lev follows the rising celebrity of 4-year-old painting sensation Marla Olmstead and the fall of her reputation once the media cried fraud.Shots of Marla painting in her underwear on the dining room table look like any proud parent’s home videos. But Marla’s messes sell for as much as $300,000 at dimly-lit, posh galleries where the little girl totters around in her denim overalls. Interviews with Marla’s parents illuminate the thin line between hype and childhood exploitation.Bar-Lev can’t make up his own mind about the direction of this film and straddles the line between support and doubt of Marla’s talent. He presents evidence that she works alone, as well as the argument that her father polishes the pieces – an argument he resists after spending intimate time with the family and child. This film, like a piece of artwork, is open to interpretation. There are no answers to the questions raised, which is both frustrating and fitting for a film that deals with abstract art.“My Child Could Paint That” requires undivided attention and conversation afterward. It is a story about stories — about critics, the art world, pressure and parenting all swirled by one child’s brush strokes.The DVD extras include deleted interviews with locals in the town of Binghamton, N.Y., the small town shocked by its own little celebrity. These colloquial interviews balance out the haughty art jargon found throughout the film. An example of this jargon is the extra interview of Michael Kimmelman, an art critic who captures the problem of Marla by explaining that everyone interprets truth differently, but that the importance of art is how it lingers in the mind. Images of Marla’s paint-splattered little fingers and sun-shiny murals linger, but her story could be just another fairy tale in a grown-up world.