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Writers strike comes to Cambridge - with Joss Whedon!

The site fans4writers.com is planning a Dec. 14 rally in Harvard Square to support the striking TV and movie writers. The big excitement for a lot of a folks will be the special guest striker: "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" creator Joss Whedon (right). Also set to attend are writers Jamie Paglia ("Eureka") and Rob Cutner ("The Daily Show"), with more expected to sign on. The agenda calls for a Cambridge Forum program at the First Parish Church, followed by a march over to the Harvard Lampoon building for an outdoor rally. Celebrity guests are a possibility. "In the event that an agreement between the Guild and the AMPTP is reached prior to the rally, we’ll simply change the focus to a celebration of the resolution," Paglia writes.

UPDATE: Here's Whedon on the rally.

BMAs Take It In The Shorts (Again)

Bashing the Boston Music Awards is as traditional a pastime around here as bemoaning the Red Sox late-season collapse used to be. At least we have something to cling to, eh? One day ahead of Saturday's festivities at the Orpheum (tickets here), both papers have a go at it. The Herald offers a timeline and predictions of the winners, then pretty much renders them pointless with Jed Gottlieb's piece on how the nominees' connections to Boston can be tenuous at best. And in the Globe, Joan Anderman goes even deeper, with a pretty damning analysis of how pointless and grasping the whole thing seems. Ouch. I'm not sure even the promised Extreme reunion - Woo! And, uh, hoo! - is enough to overcome this sort of press.

Why No 'He Shoots, He Scores!' Jokes?

No doubt there were multiple spit takes in coffee shops all over town this morning when folks saw Geoff's front page Globe story on artist Kurt Kauper's naked paintings of Bruins legends Bobby Orr and Derek Sanderson. Even though I write for the Globe now after getting downsized by the Herald in '05, I've got to say that this is one I wish the Herald's page-one headline writers had a crack at. (High Sticking!) And this is a strange intersection of artistic freedom and privacy rights. I'm all about the freedom, but, uh, how would you feel if somebody was painting photorealistic portraits of your junk - and without having ever seen it? Orr seems like a decent and surprisingly private guy, popping up for mostly brief appearances in TV commercials occasionally. But as former Bruin Brad Park observed to Geoff, "Derek, in his heyday, would have posed for it." (I thought there was a Playgirl spread, involving a big fur coat, but can't find any evidence of such online - probably that was Sanderson's nightclub partner Joe Namath.) ... A word to the curious. Despite appearances, the truncated picture on page 1 today (above) is actually rather demure thanks to a well-placed hand. If you want the full monty, try the other "installation pictures" here.

Boston Sports Fans Truly Thankful?

You would think we'd all be getting down on our hands and knees and offering up our heartfelt gratitude to the sports gods for the bounty that is the Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics at the moment, not to mention BC, the Revs, even the Bruins. And, well, I am. But if you haven't read Steve Almond's piece about us in Salon, you should, because it will fuel your thinking on the topic. Almond is a pretty cool guy to judge by his writing - see "Candy Freak" and the op-ed "Condoleezza Rice at Boston College? I quit." In Salon, he says that Boston fans are "suffering a profound crisis of identity" amid our winning ways. It's a funny summing up of one school of thought on our current situation, although it also marks him forever as not one of us.

Almond's rhetorical excess and outsider's presumption are grievously annoying at times - "The fans here are more passionate and knowledgeable than fans in most other cities. By their own reckoning, this intense devotion grants them the right to whine."  And he spreads his brush too broadly  over all of Boston sports. As a 10-year resident he hasn't quite absorbed the long-term weighting of the teams in our history; Celtics' fans suffering is recent and minor after decades of hegemony that overshadow even the current Patriots. But we must acknowledge that the greatest baseball triumph ever in 2004 also marked the end of a shared burden that made Red Sox fandom special. For so long we were a Homer Simpson quote - "We're suffered more than the Jews and Charlie Brown combined." Released from our bonds, we relish the new world order. But we must also accept that life is different now - at least for those of us who've been fans long enough to understand that a lime-green baseball cap with a gothic B on the front does not a Sox cap make. The question that Almond's piece forces us to consider is ... are we truly grateful for that?

General Director Leaving Lyric

It's tempting to make a politically incorrect joke. Answer: A bunch of fat people standing around in funny hats. Question: What's an opera without a general director or a music director? Yeah, yeah, I know all opera singers aren't fat, and they only wear the helmets when they sing Wagner. But, as the Globe reported this morning, longtime executive director Janice Mancini Del Sesto (right) is leaving the Boston Lyric Opera in 2009 when her contract expires. Searching for her replacement means delaying the search for a new music director, replacing Stephen Lord, who'll be leaving in 2008. Planning the next couple of seasons is going to be interesting to say the least.

The Lyric's email announcement, which I didn't get around to reading yesterday for holiday reasons, had this to say: During the search for new artistic leadership to replace Music Director Stephen Lord, Jan concluded that Boston Lyric Opera would be better served by putting a new administrative and artistic team in place going forward.  She wanted to give notice of her decision in order to provide ample time for the search and an adequate transition period. It also notes that the Lyric has grown from 64th to 26th in the country during her 17-season tenure.

Photo courtesy BLO. © Eric Antoniou

Boston "the new Toronto" for movies?

I knew there had been a rush of productions to town since the state ended its film commission gang wars and passed the tax incentives. Hard to miss that the star quotient in Names & Faces has been going up, even if all they ever do is go to the same six restaurants and get their hair done on Newbury Street. But today's New York Times article on Steve Martin - he was here filming a Pink Panther remake - refers to us as "the new Toronto of the film industry." What, exactly, is that supposed to mean? It sounds to me like a backhanded compliment - that we're cheap and hip but, you know, not exactly New York or L.A. Thoughts?

Assigned Reading: Music

Two stories of note in the Globe. The other day Geoff had an excellent piece on BSO French horn player Jamie Sommerville, one of the orchestra's MVPs. And today in the North section you'll find my profile of Newburyport folk singer Susan Levine, who has a new album out and will be celebrating it at Passim on Sunday night. I think I could make an entire career just writing about my neighbors. If you want to hear Susan's music, it's here.

Singing For Peace On Earth

And here it is, the first Yule post of the season...
"Peace On Earth - Holidays Around The World" is the title of this year's holiday concert program by the 150-voice Boston Gay Men's Chorus. “The world situation called out for a program that reaffirmed our shared values for peace during this season of light," said Music Director Reuben Reynolds. "So we’ve designed a program that celebrates many holiday traditions and takes us from France to Spain, Finland, Bosnia, Israel, Nigeria and back to the U.S. Through our singing, we hope to inspire the true values of the holiday season.”

Traditional Christmas music on the concert includes Holst’s “Christmas Day,” Hymn to the Nativity,” “Twelve Days of Christmas” “Silent Night,” and the Catalonian carol “Fum, Fum, Fum.” World music traditions include a Finnish folk song  and Babatunde Olatunji’s “Betelehemu,” sung in the West African Yoruba dialect. Kurt Bestor’s “Prayer of the Children” is a song of peace from Bosnia, written during that country’s civil war. The finale features Christmas songs written for Broadway, like “Hard Candy Christmas” from Best Little Whorehouse.

Performances are set for Friday, December 7 at 8 pm, Saturday, December 8 at 3 pm and again on Saturday, December 8 at 8 pm., all at Jordan Hall. A one-hour family matinee concert featuring highlights of the program will be held on Saturday, December 15 at 2pm at Arlington Street Church. Tickets for Peace On Earth are $45, $35, $25, and $15 and are now on sale by phone by calling 617-542-SING. All tickets can also be purchased securely on the web at www.bgmc.org. Tickets are also available in person at the Jordan Hall Box Office. The family matinee performance is $10 for children under 18 and $25 for adults.

Coltrane, runnin' around my brain

I don't do much radio promo on this blog, but I just happened to be reading Ben Ratliff's "Coltrane: The Story of a Sound" when the email came in from WGBH touting Ratliff's appearance tonight.

The book is one of the best I've read on Coltrane. The text is split roughly in half, focusing first on Coltrane's development of his sound and then on his effect on jazz and the wider musical world. (Modal jazz hovers over "Eight Miles High" as an influence? Never thought of that - but yeah.) While there are some technical passages that will challenge the non-musician reader at times, there's also much greater analysis of where Coltrane fit in his tumultuous times, especially in the second half of the book.

N.Y. Times jazz critic Ratliff will talk Coltrane with Eric Jackson on a special edition of "Jazz With Eric in The Evening" on WGBH FM 89.7, tonight at 8.

Whoa! Bobby Brown Exercises Prerogative To Perform At Boston Music Awards

Batten down the hatches at the Orpheum. Former New Edition member, R&B solo superstar, all-around tabloid bad boy and reality TV juggernaut Bobby Brown has been added to the list of performers for the Boston Music Awards on Dec. 1. Soon to be seen in CMT's new "Gone Country" reality show, Brown will also be inducted into the BMA Hall of Fame. He pronounces himself "honored and thrilled" to be part of the event.

"Bobby Brown was such an important part of the late '80s and early '90s national pop scene and a big part part of Boston music history," said BMAs executive director Chip Rives. "Bobby had five No. 1 hit singles while with New Edition and during his solo career...It's an amazing body of work."

Other BMA performers include Augustana, the Click Five and Lori McKenna, so it's going to be a diverse evening of music for sure. Tix are $35 at Ticketmaster. More info here.