Rosey and I have been friends since we met at UMO in the late seventies. Last weekend, her sisters and I met in South Thomaston, as Lynda’s husband Joe had flown to Florida to play some baseball. Lynda and Joe live in a house on Patten Point that is warm with pine, rich with art, and has generous windows that frame the sea and islands.
Category: Arts & Culture
Brew Review
Stouts are one of craft brewing’s biggest mysteries. For those who don’t frequent the aisles of specialty shops, stouts often become synonymous with Guinness. But beyond the macro-brewed, oily-black goodness of a Guinness Draught, there’s a whole new world of stouts waiting to test your palate.
The notorious gentlemen of Mint Films
It was approaching midnight on Ferry Point Beach as the Mint Films team pushed to finish filming their 2008 short film, a scene in “This We Have Now” called “Jess & Andy.” After several hours of shooting, the tide came in and stranded Jeff Griecci’s Jeep on an island of sand in the distance.
Into the great wide open: part II
11/15 – Ottawa, ON – Café Dekcuf
Ah, waking up with your drummer’s arms wrapped around you.how comforting. Well, we were at a Comfort Inn after all; Adam must have been having quite the dream. North Bay looked different in the morning light, or maybe I should say in the sunlight, because it wasn’t exactly morning anymore.
Epicurean Epics
Maine’s hardworking fishermen began netting and trapping in the North Atlantic’s icy waters for sweet and succulent shrimp last week. This years season, the longest season since 1991, has been extended by 28 days. ending May 29, thanks to a projected abundance of the tasty shellfish, a taste of the sea in every one.
Jake Cowan on:
I will never be able to suck the milk out of a cow’s udder. I will never be able to share the same ice cream cone with my significant other. I will never be able to eat string cheese; I will only be able to mercilessly whip someone in the face with it. Why am I destined to suffer this fate? Because I am lactarded.
Winter Movie Preview
Australia
Currently in theaters
Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman
A mash up on multiple genres, “Australia” is a throwback to the era of classic epic romance films. Nicole Kidman plays an uptight English aristocrat who travels to the outback only to fall for a ruggedly handsome cattle driver played by Hugh Jackman.
Brew review
While most people think of robust beers during the winter, there is a wonderfully spicy alternative: Belgian witbiers (White Ales). And even though witbiers are often characterized as a spring/summer offering, their complex flavorings and spiciness make them the ideal counterpart to winter warmers.
Life after USM
For many students, the looming transition from college to real world is daunting: the need to support oneself, establish a career, pay back student loans and simply stay afloat without the raft that is college frightens. Upon receiving a degree, the excuse of being in college will no longer validate excessive and random drinking, sleeping, eating, or movie-watching.
Into the great wide open
We had been in my 2001 Ford Focus since 9am. It was now 6pm. Usually our 1996 GMC Savanna chauffeurs us to our next destination but without the burden of equipment, the much more economical car let us keep some money in our pockets. After crossing through Buffalo and the great Niagara Falls, the border came quickly, but not without our plan of attack.
Epicurean Epics
Pork tenderloin en croute is an impressive entrée to adorn a holiday table as well as an overall excellent meal to savor in the fall when mushrooms are in abundance. Simply, this recipe consists of pork tenderloin that has been seared, cooled, and wrapped in puff pastry that has been covered in duxelles.
Bigger than the Beatles
The Monks documentary will show for first time in America beyond New York City or Chicago this Friday at USM. For more than thirty years this band of American GI’s were not able to talk about their strange experience as a rock band in cold war Germany. In the film they recount their story for the first time.
Finding the perfect niche: Ferdinand
The interior of the blue trimmed shop features oddly precious prints, vintage shoes for a few dollars, and a bowl of ceramic peach pits. The wallpapered dressing room is lit as friendly as the little studio that is visible in the back of the shop. This shop, Ferdinand, is the quirky child of Diane Toepfer, who made her home in Portland as she shaped the shop-that-could.
Winter brew showdown
With Thanksgiving gone and the commercial blitz in full force, it’s a good time to grab some good beers and get away from it all. Unless, of course, you are Sebago Brewing Company by the mall, in which case, well, drink more.
Craft breweries around the country are introducing their winter selections, which come from two basic schools: the malty and the hoppy.
The Man Who Came to Dinner
A large cast. A highly referential, period-specific text. A cavalcade of outsized, eccentric characters. A run time of nearly three hours, with two intermissions.
Moss Hart and George S Kaufman’s 1939 play, “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” is a dramaturgical minefield.
Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece Rashomon, released on DVD as part of the esteemed Criterion Collection, remains one of Japan’s most influential and visually stimulating films. Kurosawa worked closely with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa in creating a stunning display of light, shadows and virtuoso camerawork.
Quantum of Solace
James Bond is number three on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest movie heroes of all time. For many filmgoers he is the epitome of sleek, badass, male, danger on a path to destroy evil and willing to take out time to bed the ladies. After Sean Connery’s iconic portrayal as author Ian Flemming’s fictional MI-6 spy character, audience enthusiasm dropped.
Eccentricity, laughter and song in
When I arrived in Robie-Andrews and scurried into Burnham Lounge for the monthly coffee house, a crowd of 40 or so were gathered around Kurt Perry, singing “If I Didn’t Believe in You” from the musical The Last Five Years. It was a solo act; he was focusing on the vocals.
“Raven” about corn: everything to crow about
The open field across the street from our farm invites the northwest winds to invigorate the yard, sometimes saving us hours of raking or shoveling. Such was the wind that howled during the full moon last week. Its invisible force blew the tied cornstalks away from the craggy granite signpost on the front lawn.
Clash of the Titans
For lovers of local music in Southern Maine, the phrase ‘Clash of the Titans’ no longer refers to a film pairing super hero against super hero, rather, it means a competition of super-bands, by local band members.
Beginning in 2006, local musicians began collaborating to perform evenings of cover songs by super-bands, pitting The Red Hot Chilli Peppers v.
The vinyl experience
Cassette tape sightings are at an all-time low, Laserdiscs are just technological folklore, and unless you’re rooting around in your grandparent’s basement, you might never lay eyes on an 8-track tape. These obsolete recording technologies have graciously made way for a new frontier of digital music, but there is still one medium that refuses to accept its analog mortality.
Trent Austin:
With a list of prestigious awards and a performance resume with people such as Natalie Cole, Joe Williams, and Tony Bennett, USM is hosting a very special faculty recital. The very talented trumpeter, Trent Austin, will be performing in Gorham’s Corthell Hall on Friday, November 14th at 8:00.
Into the great wide open
It seems like almost a yearly tradition now.
Tour the States in the spring and summer, and once it starts to get cold.go where it could only be colder: Canada.
This year, I will make that annual trip with the band I call my own, The Leftovers, on the weekend of November 13th-16th and it promises to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
“Last Light” captures ‘while you were dying’
Jocelyn Lee’s photography exhibit, “Last Light,” documents the death of her mother, whom she calls a collaborator in the work. The Italian-born photographer also holds a degree in philosophy from Yale, a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, has taught at MECA, and now teaches at Princeton.