HubArts.com

Workin' For The Weekend

The Globe has some fun stuff online for Arts & Entertainment Weekend, including one with a friend of mine on the mic, so a little friendly pimping seems in order. (Full disclosure: I write for the Globe a bit. But you knew that, right?)

Saturday - A Conversation with Playwright Douglas Carter  Beane
12:30 p.m. Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527
Tremont St. Boston
From the book for the Broadway musical Xanadu to the scripts for the  Off-Broadway smash As Bees in Honey Drown and the movie To Wong Foo,  Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, Douglas Carter Beane is one of  the foremost American comic playwrights. Participate in a discussion  of his work on the set of the Speakeasy Theater Company's production  of The Little Dog Laughed at the Calderwood Pavilion.

This one is moderated by the excellent arts writer and my pal Sarah Rodman, so you all better go and clap respectfully:
Sunday, January 27. Inside Broadway-Avenue Q
3:30 p.m. The Institute for Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston
Join producer Jeffrey Seller and puppet designer Rick Lyon for a  behind-the-curtains look at Avenue Q, the hilarious Tony Award-winning musical about a bright-eyed college grad with big city dreams and a  tiny bank account. Avenue Q premieres in Boston in March, 2008.

(Update: I'm told the Avenue Q event is filled up.)

 Sunday, January 27 - Making Movies in Massachusetts
1:30 p.m. The Institute for Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston
Boston has become the latest hot spot for making movies. From The  Women to The Great Debaters, Bachelor #2 and The Box, Hollywood is  turning to Boston as one of the most desired locations. Join Nick  Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office and  producer Sam Weisman for an inside view on what has changed and what  can be expected in the upcoming year.

To sign up,  visit www.boston.com/aeweekend

Eric Clapton's Story Skips The Music

I first saw Eric Clapton play guitar at the old Boston Garden on the distant evening of July 12, 1974, or so the internets inform me. I was 15, and he was 29, touring behind the "461 Ocean Boulevard" album and his ubiquitous hit cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff." I still love the album, but even then suspected it marked a turning point in his career, and in a not-necessarily-welcome direction. His drug addiction was doused (to be replaced by alcoholism, as it turned out), but so was the flame that burned behind Cream and Derek and the Dominoes. The solo album sounded practically middle of the road by comparison to those bands, and I remember being relieved that night when he did indeed play "Layla." The godawful "Unplugged" version of "Layla" was still almost 20 years away, but if you put your ear to the rails even then you could hear it coming...

We've rightly abandoned the canard that drugs or alcohol often aid creativity. But recovery culture has obscured the fact that the best art is often made amid the kind of turmoil that also inspires substance abuse. Cleaning up doesn't end an artist's greatness, but it can be coincidental. As I was lucky enough to hear in the 1990s, when he brought his all-blues tour into Buddy Guy's Legends club in Chicago, Clapton can still be a devastating guitarist on stage when he's in the mood, but his artistic goals have downshifted. Call it sobriety or maturity, but you can also call it sucking. If Jimi Hendrix had lived and stopped taking pills, would he now be recording a slowed-down acoustic version of "Purple Haze" soporific enough for Starbuck's?

All this is by way of saying that "Clapton: The Autobiography," which I read over the holidays, is much like the second half of his career, an Armani-clad, 12-step tale that scants his greatest music. This is probably only of interest to other baby boomer rock fans, but...

Globe TV critic foresees Britney-pocalypse

I like Matthew Gilbert's writing, especially as he's gotten more, um, populist in his taste, and as someone who wrote a TV highlights column for years, I appreciate the effort required for him to deliver a joke or two day after day in his "Critics Corner" column in Sidekick. But in today's paper he's just spooky right.

One of his picks for tonight is "Zoey 101," starring Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney's little sister, who recently became a tabloid queen overnight by announcing that she is pregnant at 16. Gilbert's line: "Britney would probably kill to get the limelight back. Literally."

Well, she might not have murdered anyone, but she was taken away from her mansion in an ambulance overnight, acting oddly after ingesting what the celeb press calls "an unknown substance" amid a child-custody dispute. She got the limelight back, all right, just about the time Gilbert's gag was hitting newsstands around town.