The old Victorian homes that dot Providence and other New England communities convey the beauty and worksmanship of a bygone age. (As James Howard Kunstler has observed, there's no small irony in how when this country was less prosperous before WWII, the homes and public buildings were far more durable and aesthetically pleasing than those made following the boom years.)

Anyway, the emerging subculture of Steampunk weds Victorian ingenuity with contemporary uses while rebelling against streamlined design and the Wal-Martification of American culture. Sharon Steel writes all about it in this week's Phoenix:

The All-in-One Victorian PC is the perfect little black dress of computer modifications. It’s classic and timeless, but has a modern edge that makes it impossible to escape wolf whistles and elevator eyes. Like any good designer, Jake von Slatt knew he had to start with strong raw material. He purchased a 24-inch flat-panel Soyo monitor from OfficeMax for $299, and fabricated a shell to hide the rest of the computer — including a Pentium IV motherboard, disk drives, and a 350-watt PSU — behind and inside of it. Most DIY-ers, even some hardcore tech-geeks, would have stopped there, but von Slatt had barely begun.

He poked around his town dump until he found a knick-knack rack that reminded him of a Victorian-era stage set. Framing the monitor with the rack lent it the air of an antique pixel picture frame. Then, he added aluminum and pop rivets, followed by two long pieces of angle iron as “curtains,” to give the monitor-stage a trump l’oeil effect. Gold-painted flower scrollwork arches across the top like a crown, and tiny brass feet — miniaturized versions of the ones you’d see on a vintage bathtub — prop the utilitarian objet d’art a few centimeters off the table. A tightly coiled wire leads to an elegant, fully functional keyboard, the keys of which have been taken from a 1955 Royal Portable typewriter. The completed PC is a sexy, ebony-lacquered beauty trimmed in high-polished brass accents. Von Slatt, who is wearing a bowling shirt and a formal top hat, watches me admire his work with an affable smile. He looks, for all the world, like a man caught between two centuries. For that matter, so does his computer.

Up close, the PC is a tactile wonder, far more extravagant than the pictures I and thousands of others — it had been featured on Boing Boing, Engadget, and digg.com — had gawked at online. I’m itching to press the typewriter keys and, when von Slatt unleashes the DVD drive with a ping and a flourish, I’m tormented that I don’t have the luxury of loading in a movie, say, The Wizard of Oz, so that I can steer this gothic tech-fantasy to a whole other place. But there’s so much else to stare at in von Slatt’s Littleton, Massachusetts, Steampunk Workshop — itself a big, pleasant jumble of anachronisms — that it becomes difficult to focus on any one thing.

Von Slatt (a pseudonym) recently blogged about his PC on the Web version of his Workshop (steampunkworkshop.com), detailing the process of its construction and the unique modifications he’d included. Given all of this, it’s hardly surprising that he has been lauded as a kind of tinkerer visionary, a man with the mechanical prowess (he’s an IT professional by day) and artistic skills to solder technology with craftsmanship and form a new artisanal DIY movement.

Matt has the details:

Attention political junkies!

There will be a screening of THE WAR ROOM, the 1992 Clinton campaign documentary on Wednesday, May 7th at 700pm at Local 121's speakeasy (downstairs).  Marti Rosenberg Yours truly will be moderating the post discussion with Scott MacKay, Ian Donnis, and Kate Coyne-McCoy. 

This event is free and open to the public.

-- to Brown grad and former Prov Phoenix intern Jessica Grose, now with Gawker's Jezebel, who got some section-front love in the NYT Styles section yesterday.

-- to my Newsmakers colleague, Arlene Violet, whose forthcoming musical was channeled yesterday by Channing Gray in the ProJo.

In a story about how one person can make a big difference, the Phoenix reported last year on how Caitie Whelan, a senior at Brown, has been aiding the Merasi, a community of lower-caste musicians in India.

Under the Hindu caste system, the 15,000 Merasi in Jaisalmer District, Rajasthan, are members of the lowest strata within the untouchable caste, “the lowest of the low,” according to Whelan. In Rajasthan, one of India’s most conservative states, this means that they have little access to education, political representation, and steady employment.
 
These problems are compounded by India’s rapid modernization, which is stripping the Merasi of their sole means of income and social value: music. “They are the gatekeepers of a 37-generation musical legacy,” says Whelan, with traditions that describe “local folk history and the genealogy of the region.” As modern capitalism replaces traditional forms of exchange, the Merasi can no longer support themselves through their music. Children go to work instead of learning the musical traditions of their elders, Whelan says; as a result, those traditions are “on the brink of eradication.”
 
In 2006, Whelan traveled to Jaisalmer with Folk Arts Rajasthan to record Merasi music and create an archive of their folk legacy. But the community indicated that it needs more to preserve their singular cultural identity — its members need the opportunity to improve their lot through education.

Now, as Whelan writes to tell N4N, a group of the Merasi are set to perform tomorrow at Brown:

The Merasi, a community of marginalized Untouchable musicians from the deserts of northwestern India, will be performing an explosive medley of haunting music and intoxicating dance from their 800 year old artistic legacy right here at Brown University!

 

The Finer Points:

When: Friday, May 2nd, 6-8pm

Where: Salomon 101, Brown University

Tickets: Free! Reservations highly recommended; RSVP to this email or pamela@brown.edu

Suggested Donation: $5, all proceeds benefit Folk Arts Rajasthan (www.folkartsrajasthan.org, FAR) and FAR's educational programming, The Merasi School (http://merasischool.org), launched by Brown Grad Caitie Whelan.

 

Hear the songs, see the dances, and contribute to the creation of a more equitable Merasi future!

 

. . .  Also, feel free to check us out on Facebook and invite ALL your friends!

The movie: Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

First up: Michael Janusonis in the ProJo:

Billed as “the world’s first romantic disaster comedy,” Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortably icky movie about a schlub who thinks his life is ruined when he’s dumped by his TV star girlfriend.

Batting cleanup: A.O. Scott in the NYT:

One way to enjoy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" - at least vicariously - is to think of the movie as the Judd Apatow Stock Company's Hawaiian vacation. Those pasty-faced funny guys have been working awfully hard over the past few years, so who can begrudge them a few weeks of surf, sun, babes and fun? I don't know if Apatow himself, a producer of this movie (the director is the first-timer Nicholas Stoller), went along for the trip. The members of his troupe managed to squeeze in enough work to placate the IRS, and also that segment of the audience, myself included, whose appetite for naturally sweetened raunch has not yet abated.

Here's an upcoming event worth putting on your calendar:

Malian guitarist Habib Koité and his band Bamada return to North America this spring with an 11-city tour, marking the first opportunity for this legendary African music figure to perform songs from his most recent and critically acclaimed album Afriki. On Wednesday, May 7th Habib Koité and Bamada perform in Providence, RI in a special concert to benefit the GAIA Vaccine Foundation at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel.  GAIA Vaccine Foundation is a Providence-based 501c3 that is promoting the development of a globally relevant HIV vaccine and global access to HIV care. GAIA supports a state-of the art HIV care program in Bamako, Mali, Habib Koite's home town. All proceeds from this concert will go to stopping AIDS in Africa. See http://www.GAIAVaccine.org

for more information.

 

Afriki was released by Cumbancha last fall and features an alluring set of songs that reflect Habib’s unique and innovative approach to the diverse styles of Malian music. Years in the making and recorded on three continents, Afriki finds Habib exploring some new musical directions. The overarching theme of Afriki, which means “Africa” in the Malian Bambara language, is about the strengths and challenges of the African continent. For example, James Brown veteran Pee Wee Ellis arranged horns on the song “Africa,” which calls upon Africans to take responsibility for their own future and not depend on the outside world.

 

Habib’s artistry draws on styles from the different regions of Mali, rather than solely on the music of his particular area as most Malian musicians do. He has gained a strong fan base by integrating the rock and folk sounds of the Western world, without watering down his cherished Malian roots. Habib descends from a line of griots, traditional troubadors who provide wit, wisdom and entertainment to the pubic. Taking this role to the world at large, his charisma and magnetism translates easily across cultural divides.

Lots of stuff going on tonight, including a Neal Walsh/Will Schaff opening at 5 Traverse, Music Fridays at the RISD Museum, and Providence Roller Derby's 3rd annual Derbytaunt Ball, at Firehouse 13.

I still dig Public Enemy's Fight the Power video for Lee's Do the Right Thing.

The award-winning film producer and director, known for films that tackle prickly issues of relevance to the African-American community, will address the Brown community, 7 p.m. in Salomon 101. Tickets (already distributed to Brown ID holders) will be accepted until 6:45 p.m. The event will then be open to the public, space permitting.

Leave it to the creator of such startling works as Eraserhead and Blue Velvet to put the concept of viewing movies on a telephone in its proper place.

Friday will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. On that sad April day, numerous American cities erupted into riots, but not Boston -- where James Brown, the legendary soul performer, helped to calm the frayed emotions of an entire city.

A new documentary on the subject, The Night James Brown Saved Boston, is due to be broadcast this Saturday, at 9 pm, by VH1:

April 5, 1968 -- the morning after one of the most catastrophic moments in American history: the assassination of Martin Luther King. The night before, America's inner cities began going up in flames. The night before, there was trouble in Roxbury, Boston's ghetto. Word on the street is that it's about to get worse. A lot worse.

At Boston's City Hall, Mayor Kevin White is trying to figure out what he can do to keep the fragile peace. Reportedly, he's about to cancel that day's biggest gathering -- a long-scheduled James Brown concert at the Boston Garden. Then, a call from one of Boston's most influential R&B DJs to the lone black city councilman points out the danger of that decision. Simply, he says, if the concert is cancelled, Boston might have the biggest uprising since the Boston Tea Party. And so, faced with the grim reality of making the wrong decision, the mayor and his team turn it around. Rather than cancel the show, they ask "Is there something James Brown can do to help?"

Up until this moment, James Brown has been an unsung civil rights hero. Being black in the music business, especially in the mid-1950s when James first hit his stride, made him a pioneering artist in a still-segregated business. "Crossing-over" wasn't easy, and he knew all too well what it meant to be "colored.". But James Brown doesn't just "feel the pain" of being black in America. Despite all of his success, he's still living it. And in songs like 1967's "Don't Be A Dropout," he's begun to speak out, saying what he believes down to his bones is true. In 1968, he will sing about America as his home, and he's also on the verge of his seminal social statement, "Say It Loud-I'm black and I'm proud."

To the surprise of no one, some of the angry white men of Rhode Island are using the ongoing immigration debate to drop more of the insightful bon mots for which they have become known.

Fellows with a bit more panache know that the velvet glove is stronger than the rhetorical hammer.

Yesterday's New York Times profiled one such individual, illustrator Al Jaffee, who, at 87, continues to draw Mad magazine's signature back inside cover fold-ins -- a role he has performed since 1964.

[T]he second thing that strikes you upon meeting Mr. Jaffee is that the Mad wiseguy one expects is nowhere to be found. Mr. Jaffee is a genteel, unassuming fellow whose demeanor instantly suggests “gentleman.”

That is especially surprising because in addition to the fold-in, he is well known for Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, another longstanding Mad feature that is basically a running clinic on how to insult someone. No insults here. But plenty of quick wit. When he was told that this article was intended for the Arts & Leisure section, where high culture is often documented, he tossed this off: “It’ll be Arts & Seizure when people see Mad in there.”

Mad is, incongruously, a publication that seems to cultivate longevity, as evident from artists like Mort Drucker (first appearance, 1957) and Sergio Aragonés (1963). No current contributor, though, goes back further than Mr. Jaffee. And while other Mad features, like Spy vs. Spy, have changed artists over the years, only Mr. Jaffee has drawn the fold-in. Since the first appeared in April 1964 all but a handful of specialty issues of the magazine have had one.

“A number of months ago I counted, and I came up with something like 396,” Mr. Jaffee said. “I must have done No. 400 by now.”

You've got to love how Chafee's new book, Against the Tide, is being released tomorrow -- on April Fool's Day.

Darrell West had a review in yesterday's Sunday ProJo:

In meetings with the administration, Chafee describes Bush as being “ruled by emotion” and having a “juvenile streak” that he found unpresidential. When Chafee in an Oval Office meeting questioned Bush’s abortion policies by interjecting, “even Laura is pro-choice,” Bush snapped back, “Don’t you bring my wife into this.” Cheney fares no better. He is prone to long monologues that betray little interest in listening to anyone else’s points of view. These were personal traits at the very top of the administration, Chafee says, that led the country into a disastrous foreign policy.

With little respect for the national Republican or Democratic parties, Chafee now concludes that the nation needs a “third way.” In his final chapter, he expresses hope for a centrist third party that will resurrect moderation in American politics and end the polarizing excesses of the past decade. Practicing what he preaches, Chafee has left the Republican Party, but leaves us wondering about his next step in public service.

Early on during the war in Iraq, there was talk of how Americans officers were checking out The Battle of Algiers, a movie about the Algerian insurgency against the French in the 1950s, for clues about the politics of insurgency and counter-insurgency. Not that it seems to have helped much. Anyway, the Watson Institute at Brown is screening the movie tomorrow.

April 1, TUESDAY  6:30pm

 

FILM: The Battle of Algiers. This film reenacts the story of the urban insurgency against French rule in Algeria in the 1950s. Released in 1967, it attracted student audiences who, in a time of leftist activism, shared the director’s sympathies with the Algerian guerrillas. In 2003, the film was screened at the Pentagon, and advertised with the following: “How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.” What was all the fuss about? See the film and hear from Brown faculty. Presented by the Occupation/Liberation/Collaboration Film Series and the Global Media Project. Location: Joukowsky Forum.

While Rhode Island sometimes seems like a horror show -- what with the budget meltdown, high property taxes, big hair, and any number of other problems -- the Ocean State has a historic link to two great horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. "I am Providence" Lovecraft.

Lovecraft will be celebrated this weekend, and Bill Rodriguez offers a preview in this week's Phoenix:

[T]he annual H. P. Lovecraft Tribute Service is being held for the 10th consecutive year, on Sunday, March 30 at 3 pm, on the front grounds of the Ladd Observatory, 210 Doyle Avenue, Providence Afterward, the group will reconvene to pay respects at the author’s Swan Point Cemetery grave. As a boy, Lovecraft enjoyed gazing up at the stars through the Ladd telescope, and his ghost has reportedly been sighted there.
 
Born in 1890 in the house now at 454 Angell Street, Lovecraft died in Providence 46 years later, eventually admired as the pioneering writer of the fantasy-horror genre.
 
If some of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, who died four decades before Lovecraft’s birth, were dark and macabre, most of Lovecraft’s were pitch-black and filled with what he called “cosmic horror.” His characters typically ended up facing not only unearthly frights, from such things as evil, ancient creatures among us, but they also feared a nihilistic universe of ultimate despair.
 
Like a couple clinging to each other during a slasher film, shrieking in guilty relief because their troubles are nothing compared to those depicted on-screen, modern-day escapist readers of Lovecraft can smile as their ordinary travails are put in perspective.

I appreciate blogging, keeping up with friends on Facebook, being able to watch a Linkin Park video by typing a few words into Google, and many of the other benefits that come with contemporary technology. Still, as Bill Reynolds frequently notes in his Saturday column, we are seeing the steady fade of old Rhode Island. Some of the departures represent institutions, some of them represent broader cultural shifts, and some -- as with the closing in May of Luke's Record Exchange in Pawtucket -- combine both.

I write about Luke's and its proprietor in this week's Phoenix:

Luke T. Renchan was in his element last Saturday, chatting with browsers and nimbly navigating among the vast quantities of vinyl LPs and 45s, compact discs, eight-track recordings, posters, T-shirts, and other musical bric-a-brac filling seemingly every crevice of his store, Luke’s Record Exchange, in Pawtucket. While the scene might seem a bit disheveled to the untrained eye, Renchan says he knows exactly where to find what he’s looking for.
 
For almost 30 years — since 1979 — Luke’s is the place where scores of music enthusiasts have turned to satisfy their longings, particularly for vinyl, which remains his top-seller.
 
But business has steadily dropped since Napster marked the advent of the digital age in music, so Renchan plans to close his store — which he calls the oldest mom and pop record shop in southern New England — on May 5.
 
“I think the big thing the people are going to miss is the personalization,” says Renchan, 54, a talkative and amiable Pawtucket native who plans to continue selling music through eBay and flea markets, and to maintain his active DJ business. The record shop has been in its present location, at 393 Broadway in Pawtucket’s gritty Pleasant View neighborhood, since 1983.
 
During the height of the punk-new wave era (and a year after the NewPaper, precursor to this newspaper, was established), Renchan launched Luke’s with a wing and a prayer — $2000 and his extensive record collection.
 
Things started slowly, but the merchant, a passionate Beatles’ fan, experienced a surge in business after Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon dead in December 1980. A subsequent theft of a rare Beatles’ record — the “butcher” version of Yesterday and Today — brought a wave of helpful publicity. “People said, ‘You staged that,’ ” Renchan recalls. “I’m not smart enough.”
 
A passionate music enthusiast who prefers the music of the ’60s, Renchan seems to have made up in homespun service and personality what he might have lacked in ambition. He opened a second store, briefly, in North Providence and maxed out with eight employees, but never pursued the more ambitious expansion of a venture like Newbury Comics. Even a Web site has been slow in coming, although he’s up with lukesmusic.com.
 
Luke’s was nonetheless successful on its own terms. Snapshots in the store show people lining up outside his store for sales in the heyday of the LP. “You see the Spandex hanging?” asks Renchan. “We had everything.” Not a fan initially of disco or hip-hop, he came to appreciate — and to stock — a wide variety of musical genres.
 
A self-described workaholic, Renchan says part of the reason for closing his shop is to spend more time with his family, including his wife and his five-year-old granddaughter.
 
“Everyone has kept me in business for many years, and I didn’t have the heart to just pull the plug on it,” he says. “I finally put a date on it. I’ve been thinking about closing for three years.” Because of his single-minded devotion to the business, “[For] my family, there was a price.”
 
At one point, the Renchans lived in an apartment over the store — a practice that changed when customers began besieging the accommodating merchant with record requests in the middle of the night. The luminaries who have shopped at Luke’s, he says, include the Ramones and Eminem.

Kudos and congrats to Brown alum Laura Linney for her winning representation of proto-feminist Abigail Adams in HBO's new drama based on David McCullough's John Adams' bio.

Music Friday
5:30-8:30pm
Join us for the hip-shaking sounds of Santa Mamba, a mix of salsa, merengue, and funk. Attendees must be 21 years or older. Members: $5, nonmembers: $8. Music Fridays are supported by the Providence Tourism Council. Media sponsor: The Providence Phoenix

The hype about Living on the Wedge is that it does for artisan cheesemakers what Sideways did for wine. It's screening tomorrow, fittingly, at Local 121.

Join Louella Hill from Narraganset Creamery for a screening and discussion of Marianna Coyne’s documentary, “Living on the Wedge:  Wisconsin’s Artisan Cheesemakers” on Wednesday, March 12th at 7:00 p.m. in the Speakeasy at Local 121.  "Living on the Wedge" is a one-hour documentary about the passion and personalities behind the artisan cheesemaking movement. Produced by Chicago-area filmmaker Gaylon Emerzia, it's a finalist for a James Beard Award. The film is structured as an "insider's tour" of "the state that cheese made." The engaging on-screen host, Mariana Coyne, invites us along as she drives through southwestern Wisconsin, from cheesemaker to cheesemaker, with additional stops at Larry's Brown Deer Market in Brown Deer, the annual Cheese Days in Monroe, the U.S. Cheese Championship in Milwaukee, and the Dane County Farmers Market in Madison. Odessa Piper of L'Etoile restaurant fame makes a cameo appearance.

I recently had the pleasure of reading A.J. Langguth's Union 1812: The Americans who Fought the Second War of Independence. It's a well-told history, chock full of fascinating stuff, helping to put the lie to the common misconception, for example, that politics was a more polite affair in those earlier days of the republic.

Here's one colorful bit:

By the time [Andrew] Jackson was sworn in on March 4, 1829, his followers . . . staged the most notorious inaugural party in American history . . .

Refreshments had been arranged at the mansion, but no one expected the crush of uninvited guests, and the police had not been alerted. The vast crowd was so cheerfully uncontrollable that Jackson's friends had to lock arms around him and physically push away the hands extended for him to shake . . . The hordes gradually thinned out, but by late afternoon, mobs of boys were still fighting and leaping with muddy boots on the damask chairs . . . The party might have gone on until dawn if servants had not lured the stragglers outside by carrying tubs of punch to the lawn.

It was a a gaudy kickoff for the Jacksonian era. The Jeffersonian Democrats were renaming themselves Democrats, while the last Federalists and other ant-Jackson factions were being called Whigs. Mocking the new president's intellectual limitations, those Whigs portrayed him as a donkey, but to Jacksonians that trusty and hardworking animal represented no slur, and they adopted it as their party symbol.

Tonight, at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, there's an opening for an art show related to the Iraq war. Here's Jim Macnie's writeup from this week's Phoenix:

WALLS OF PROTEST
The fugazi that is the war in Iraq shows no sign of ending, even though a sizable chunk of American voters now want our troops to be hauled home. It’s a key subject of the current presidential campaign, and artists across the nation have put it front and center, too. Did I say nation? I meant globe. “EXPERIENCING THE WAR IN IRAQ,” a 70-piece show, had hundreds of submissions from around the world. From contact sheets of lost soldiers to sculptures made from grenades and ammo to inkjet prints of explosions and firestorms to ghostly drapings of frayed fatigues, the work is provocative. Pieces were submitted by civilians and soldiers alike. Machines With Magnets, 400 Main Street, Pawtucket, gives it a home for a while; pieces are also hanging at the adjacent Pawtucket Armory, 172 Exchange Street. The opening reception at Machines is from 6 to 8 pm, followed by live music by Black Pus, Baba Yaba, and Riders Against the Storm beginning at 9 pm | 401.475.2655 | reconnectus.org.

I'm more partial to his son, Christopher, but it's hard to deny Buckley's influence. From the NYT:

William Buckley, with his winningly capricious personality, his use of ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare to an anteater’s, was the popular host of one of television’s longest-running programs, “Firing Line,” and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine National Review.

He also found time to write more than 50 books, varying from sailing odysseys to spy novels to dissertations on harpsichord fingering to celebrations of his own dashing daily life. He edited at least five more.

In 2007, he published a history of the magazine called “Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription” and a political novel, “The Rake.” His personal memoir of Senator Barry M. Goldwater is scheduled to be published this spring, and he was working on a similar volume on President Ronald Reagan at his death.

The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 newspaper columns, titled “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-size books. His collected papers, which were donated to Yale, weigh seven tons.

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal postwar America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Mr. Goldwater in 1964 and saw his dreams fulfilled when Mr. Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.

President Bush said Wednesday that Mr. Buckley “brought conservative thought into the political mainstream, and helped lay the intellectual foundation for America’s victory in the Cold War.”

To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”

Novelist and West Warwick native Ann Hood, who made a splash with her recent New York Times' essay, about being married to a Republican, made an appearance yesterday morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough.

There was much good-natured amusement among Scarborough and his colleagues as Hood told her tale, closing with the story of how her husband, Lorne, has planted a "Vote Obama" sign in the backyard of their East Side home.

This isn't up there with Bruce Springsteen's pique with Ronald Reagan, but . . .

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The chief songwriter and founder of the band Boston has more than a feeling that he's being ripped off by Mike Huckabee. In a letter to the Republican presidential hopeful, Tom Scholz complains that Huckabee is using his 1970s smash hit song "More Than a Feeling" without his permission.

A former member of the band, Barry Goudreau, has appeared with Huckabee at campaign events, and they have played the song with Huckabee's band, Capitol Offense.

Scholz, who said Goudreau left the band more than 25 years ago after a three-year stint, objects to the implication that the band and one of its members has endorsed Huckabee's candidacy.

"Boston has never endorsed a political candidate, and with all due respect, would not start by endorsing a candidate who is the polar opposite of most everything Boston stands for," wrote Scholz, adding that he is supporting Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. "By using my song, and my band's name Boston, you have taken something of mine and used it to promote ideas to which I am opposed. In other words, I think I've been ripped off, dude!"

Fred Bramante, who was chairman of Huckabee's New Hampshire campaign, called the allegations ridiculous. He said he attended dozens of Huckabee rallies in New Hampshire and other states and never heard Huckabee play "More Than a Feeling," other than when Goudreau campaigned with him in Iowa in October.

Amid Rhode Island's continued economic woes, the industrial design sector is an asset that offers the potential for future growth.

PR maven Andy Cutler sends along this related news:

The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the nation’s leading industrial design organization today announced the launch of its Rhode Island chapter affiliate, IDSA Rhode Island.

 

“Clearly, the launch of the Rhode Island Chapter is exciting news for IDSA,” said Frank Tyneski, IDSA’s executive director. “But even more exciting is that industrial design in Providence-and throughout Rhode Island-has long been widely respected for the contributions it has made within many sectors. An active IDSA chapter in Rhode Island will serve as a catalyst for continued growth of industrial design throughout the state. Our national office looks forward to working with the Rhode Island chapter, and assists in further developing a robust design community with an eye towards innovation and economic growth.”

 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Rhode Island ranked second in the nation for its concentration of industrial designers.

 

IDSA’s mission is to lead the profession by expanding our horizons, connectivity and influence, and our service to members; inspire design quality and responsibility through professional development and education; and elevate the business of design and improve our industry's value.

 

“The formation of this newest chapter of the IDSA represents an opportunity to promote and showcase Rhode Island’s industrial design community while strengthening our state’s network of industrial designers,” stated Matt Grigsby, incoming IDSA-Rhode Island chairman and co-founder of Providence-based Ecolect. “Rhode Island is home to a host of assets such as the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and our other institutions of higher education, a renowned industrial design community and an active entrepreneurial community—all crucial ingredients in driving innovation, growing our community and impacting our state’s economy.”

There have been some recent reminiscences about that big snowstorm 30 years ago, and those with snowy memories of February 1978 are asked to turn out for these events this weekend.

From P+J:

Ocean’s Light Productions, operated by Brian Winnicki, Justin White, and Laura Chauvin, is developing a similar documentary. They are conducting two casting calls: Saturday, February 9 from 9 am-2 pm at the South Attleboro Cardi’s Furniture Store, and the second on Sunday, February 10 from 11 am-3 pm at the West Warwick store. They seek anyone willing to share personal stories, memories, home movies, and still photos.

Word to the wordsmiths and Scrabble-lovers out there:

For Scrabble fans, there are few bigger dilemmas than how to play a Q without a U. But what about users of Scrabulous, the Scrabble-like Facebook application that has become one of the social networking site’s most popular activities since it was launched this past July? A cease-and-desist order could soon block their triple-word scores indefinitely.

On January 15, players learned that Hasbro — the Pawtucket, Rhode Island, company that owns the US and Canadian rights to Scrabble — had thrown down the legal gauntlet against the application’s creators, Indian brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, claiming copyright infringement.

This has provoked fear among the more than half a million active users of Scrabulous. In Facebook groups with names such as “Please, God, I Have So Little, Don’t Take Scrabulous, Too,” thousands of users post petitions and lament the possibility of losing their favorite time waster. An anonymous artist even penned an R&B ode called “Scrabulous,” which begins with the rap: “Damn thing won’t reload/I can’t tell if I can go.” ....

Hasbro didn’t respond to a request for comment, but has stated publicly that they “hope to find an amicable solution.” The Agarwalla brothers — who also run a non-Facebook version of the game at scrabulous.com — thanked fans in a statement noting, “It is amazing to see that a small application has touched so many people across the world.”

In other news, N4N hears word of the Blackstone Chess Academy, a new chess club at the intriguing To Kalon Club in Pawtucket.

Writing in the Phoenix, Sharon Steel describes how, in a time of global upheaval, many Americans are turning to Hello Kitty, Lolcats, and Juno, among other elements of what she dubs the cuteness surge. 

“We’ve had manifestations of this cute business, through good times and bad, militaristically,” says Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop-culture at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. “We’re living in dangerous times. There’s a fear of terrorism and a war we have no idea how to manage. That’s going to bleed over into lots of different things.” These “cycles of cute,” as Thompson calls them, might transcend the news, though they tend to hint at the gloominess that’s ever-present, regardless of what’s on Page One. 

If there is anything cuter than a photo of a snuggly kitten, it is a photo of a snuggly kitten festooned with intentionally misspelled cutesy text. After sparking an Interweb sensation in early 2007, icanhascheezburger.com has continued to prove its lasting value in Internet meme paydirt. The site began with the posting of a photo, a single pudgy, glassy-eyed, smirking gray feline with the words “I Can Has Cheezburger?” written above the kitty. It may have been accidental, it may have been part of a grand scheme, but either way it was the loudest salvo yet in the recent cuteness surge.

It also birthed the term “lolcat,” a coinage referring specifically to the combination of kitty photos and the intentionally misspelled baby-talk captions that accompanied them. It hasn’t hit Webster’s yet, but urbandictionary.com has five different entries for “lolcat.” (And 37 entries for “lolz.”) No matter which one you trust most, the “lol” root, clearly, comes from Internet abbreviation-speak for “LOL,” meaning “Laugh Out Loud.” OMG!!! Teh kitteh fren-zee iz makin us lolz!

As professor Thompson indicates, there's nothing new about elements of mass distraction. The late Neil Postman described this, pre-Internet era, in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Now, even sober news organizations like the Associated Press are prioritizing Britney.

And while I enjoy a good goof as much as the next person, when it comes to time-wasting, feline-related stuff on the Internet, give me some micro-kitties, set up on a pool table, playing the Vines.

Operating on the premise "We love making beer; We stink making ties," Providence-based Narragansett Beer is seeking designers to create the company's 2008 Father's Day necktie.

In recent years, Narragansett has offered a handsome rep pattern neck tie with the company logo as a promotion and with a certain amount of purchases over the Father's Day weekend.

Now it's your turn. Narragansett asks would-be designers to e-mail a low-resolution jpeg to brewmaster@NarragansettBeer.com by February 15. Winners will be announced at AS220, 115 Empire St., Providence, on Friday, February 22.

Good luck, neighbor!

If you missed Sicko, the latest offering from Michael Moore, the Providence Public Library has a screening and discussion planned for Sunday:

Providence Public Library is pleased to present a free screening of Michael Moore’s award-winning documentary SICKO at 1:30 pm on Sunday, January 27 at Central Library (Barnard Room, 3rd Floor), 150 Empire Street, Providence. Filmgoers are invited to stay for a discussion of the health care issues facing Rhode Islanders following the film: 3:30 – 4:30 pm. 

 

Discussion will be lead by Providence resident Lisa Grant and will specifically address H.R. 676: U.S. National Health Insurance Act introduced by John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) on January 24, 2007.

Healthcare will be a top issue in the 2008 national election. Debate is heating up in Rhode Island, where legislation is under way similar to Massachusetts’ recent law mandating health care insurance for all residents. 

 

Seating is limited. To reserve a place or for more details, call: 537-9175.

From the state Film & TV office:

The Rhode Island Film & Television Office is very proud to announce that BROTHERHOOD, the critically acclaimed winner of a 2007 Peabody award, has been picked up for a third season and will continue to be shot on location in Rhode Island.   The drama stars Jason Isaacs, Jason Clarke, Annabeth Gish and Fionnula Flanagan and was created by Blake Masters. It is Executive Produced by Blake Masters, Henry Bromell and Elizabeth Guber Stephen.

 

BROTHERHOOD marked the first Showtime series to receive exposure on a broadcast network when its' corporate sibling CBS aired the pilot in primetime, and is the first television series to be filmed entirely in the State of Rhode Island. The premium cable network has ordered eight more episodes to be shot on location in Providence and East Providence, as well as other towns and cities within the Ocean State. 

 

" 'BROTHERHOOD' is one of our shining hours at Showtime - a drama series that is among the highest-quality shows offered anywhere on television," stated Showtime's Entertainment President Robert Greenblatt.

 

Steven Feinberg, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office, welcomes the groundbreaking series BROTHERHOOD back to the Ocean State, adding, "Historically, this is the first television series to be filmed entirely in Rhode Island. It highlights what a remarkable success can occur when city and state officials work in conjunction with the private sector to foster a healthy environment for creative talents to shine. The return of BROTHERHOOD will provide additional opportunities for our talented and dedicated local workforce. In the previous two seasons, BROTHERHOOD has employed over 300 local full-time crew members and produced more than 225 speaking roles for local actors, along with approximately 3,000 extra and walk-on roles. I would like to extend my gratitude to the Showtime executives, producers, cast and crew for making our beautiful state their location of choice."

Like David Carr, I'm among those who find the most egregious newsroom characters in the current season of The Wire thinly drawn. Yes, I still love the show.

Yet it's more than sad when the Los Angeles Times, once a beacon of a great newspaper empire, has fired yet another editor since he won't make cuts in the newsroom.

The Los Angeles Times Editor James O'Shea was fired by publisher David D. Hiller for refusing to impose four million U.S. dollars in budget cuts ordered by the publisher, the newspaper confirmed Sunday.

It's the second time in 15 months that a Times editor has been fired for refusing to make budget cuts ordered by the publisher, and comes a month after the closing of an 8.2-billion-dollar buyout of Tribune Co., The Times' parent company, by an employee stock plan and Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell.

O'Shea came from the Chicago Tribune in November 2006, a week after Hiller fired Editor Dean Baquet in another dispute over budget cuts, The Times reported.

Hiller, who had been the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, took over as Times publisher in October 2006, succeeding Jeffrey M. Johnson, who had also been fired by executives at Tribune's Chicago headquarters over the same issue of budget cuts, The Times reported.

Today's New York Times details the rise in Japan of the cell phone novel.

TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.

“Will cellphone novels kill ‘the author’?” a famous literary journal, Bungaku-kai, asked on the cover of its January issue. Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books. Critics said the dominance of cellphone novels, with their poor literary quality, would hasten the decline of Japanese literature.

Whatever their literary talents, cellphone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of.

The Oscars aren't really about the best American films -- they're about what Hollywood does best, as Phoenix film critic Peter Keough writes this week, and they also offer a scan of the American psyche of the current moment.

And what’s showing up in the crystal ball this year isn’t pretty. Damnation. The Devil. Joyful indulgence in the worst excesses that demented male behavior can contrive. And, on the distaff side, fragility, dependence, incapacity, and defeat. Every year, the Oscars seem to present a dichotomy between the roles of men and women, and this year — reflecting, perhaps, the presidential ballot-box victories of a man who is looking forward to 100 more years in Iraq and a woman who cried — the contrasts couldn’t be starker between demonic men and defeated women.

Take, for example, one of the leading Oscar contenders, Paul Thomas Anderson’s