Category: Arts & Culture

As the New Years festivities subsided, and the long, cold month set in, a gallant plan was formulating. And although it seems as if winter has already slapped us by declaring our semester start with a blizzard, we can still win. Behold, a brief guide to pleasures that will keep you going through the rest of this cruel month.

The very first thing Judith Ellis Glickman suggests during our interview is that if USM students would like, she’d be happy to do some guided-walk-throughs of her upcoming exhibit.

This is something that would be impossible from the current exhibitor, the late Frank Llyod Wright to consider.

You’ve probably noticed a new shop above Strange Maine at the end of Forest Avenue. Time-Lag Records, run by Nemo Bidstrup and some friends of his, is an extension of his record label of the same name, which has been operating out of Portland for years.

Time-Lag releases records from Maine’s best, along with reissues of music from around the world.

Jeff Beam

Staff writer

The Big Easy should be jamming this Tuesday. Dominic & The Lucid take the stage with Blind Melon, and have created quite a buzz for themselves. The band is a powerful rock trio from northern Maine, who have now claimed Portland as their humble home.

Music columnist

If you want to know where popular music will be in five years, just pay attention what Radiohead is doing right now.

The quintet of trailblazers from Oxford, England have done it again. The band that signaled the blend of electronic music with alternative rock has now made the first move towards an entirely new system of marketing music.

I first met Gary Thayer last year-as the robot Bender from Futurama, dressed in an elaborate homemade Halloween costume that included silver dryer pipes, a huge cardboard suit, and silver gloves bigger than his head. Something told me that he had a creative streak that surpassed all the ghosts and French maids at the party.

Monday, Oct 22

It’s Game Night at Styxx, so I don’t really know what you’re waiting for. Go play.

Free/ 21+/ Styxx/ 3 Spring Street/ Portland/ 828-0822

Tuesday, Oct 23

Get naked. The Naked Truth Project will be at Flatbread tonight to answer all your questions about consumer products, toxins, and “green” alternatives.

The Main stage at Russell Hall was sweltering Wednesday night, a product of the day’s heat and blazing stage lights. Student Kristen Peters, assistant stage manager, pointed out between scenes, “We need to light this differently, he couldn’t be reading by that light if it were 1:00 in the morning.

It is both exciting and enlightening to find that social media sites like MySpace and Facebook aren’t being exclusively used to show off personal preferences, arrange booty calls, and form nonsensical groups like “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head.

USM senior Bethany Tremblay has organized a rally and protest against Columbus Day. She is the social-work intern for the Multicultural Student Affairs office and works with the organization to get the protest off the ground. She’s making moves, and we wanted to talk to her about them.

Released Sept. 25 2007

Echoes, Silence, Patience, & Grace marks the Foo Fighters’ sixth studio release. After 2005’s In Your Honor double-album, Dave Grohl and the gang take a different approach, only releasing 12 tracks. In Your Honor split the Foo Fighters’ normally melodic driving alternative rock sound and spread it across the two CD’s: Disc One boasted the hardest rocking, guitar-crunching scream-fests the band has ever mustered, while Disc Two was an all-acoustic affair featuring the likes of Norah Jones.

Monday, Oct 1

Show some love to our campus’ contribution to culture in the area. WMPG hosts its annual Fall Begathon starting today and lasting the entire week. Listener support pays for 1/3 of all that you hear and all that they do so very well. A few dollars is much nicer than blowing them kisses from afar.

Will Ferrell proves his worth as a real actor in Stranger than Fiction (on DVD since Feb. 27) in which he plays Harold Crick, a boring IRS agent whose life becomes meaningful when he realizes that he is the main character is somebody’s book.

Crick hears a narrator in his head who is narrating his own actions and thoughts, and at first thinks he’s crazy.

“I looked at my hands, they were free,

I looked at my feet, they were too. ”

This poem sits at the feet of the Freedom! Statue on display this month as part of the Black Portland Exhibition on the sixth floor of the Glickman Library, now open to the public.

We are all guilty of numerous little impasses against the law. Maybe it’s driving to class five minutes late ten mph over the speed limit. Many of us take advantage of websites such as Lime Wire and Bear Share that enable the free downloading of music. Sounds harmless enough but it’s actually a crime; to record companies and artists, it’s the equivalent of walking into a store and pocketing a CD.

NNNN? out of NNNNN stars

Rarely do I ever go see a band without listening to them first. But the buzz around The Slip was so positive that I decided to take the chance. The Bonnaroo-bound Boston trio barged into Portland riding the success of their most recent album, Eisenhower.

“Humor is essential to life,” said Valentino Achak Deng before a sold-out audience Sunday night during his discussion with Dave Eggers last Sunday. Finding humor has not come easily for Valentino; his biography, What is The What, written by author Dave Eggers, tells turbulent life tale of the Sudanese man .

Imagine a room full writers talking, criticizing and comparing story ideas, subject matter and style. Enter: The Wordsmith Syndicate.

There are over 50 students groups at the University of Southern Maine as part of the BSO (Board of Student Organizations).

This column is a musical soapbox. It’s about passion. It’s about a band or musician that everyone should check out.

Most Americans learn more about the political process from political advertising than they do anywhere else. Being so informed by political media, we better comprehend rhetoric like “cutting and running”, “congressional rubber-stamping” and “staying the course” than we understand the basics of our own government.

Things to do instead of getting drunk with your boring roommate.

A new art display on the Glickman Library’s 7th floor features the 12 students of Rebecca Goodale’s Special Topic Book Arts class. Their assignment was to make a pop-up book of any topic of interest.

A reception was held this past Wednesday night opening the student’s art and a few of the pop-up books they used as inspiration.

A cozy cottage near Pine Tree Shopping Plaza houses two remarkable restaurants-The Blue House Caf? open for breakfast and lunch, and Francisco’s, open for dinner. The tight two-room dining space was nearly full at about 11:00 a.m., but we managed to get the last table.

Theatre, says Autumn Rose, a student and featured player in the theatre department’s season opener, Equus, is “a nice escape from reality and it gives you a new perspective on life and other people’s lives.”

The Tony award-winning play, an emotionally charged show that deals with issues of spirituality, passion, and obsession, opens Friday in Gorham and runs until October 15.