HubArts.com

Chocolate Cake City, video

The folks at Emerson's Chocolate Cake City comedy troupe messaged me with a link to their new video, "Darth Vader Barbershop Quartet." Due to very dubious production values, it failed to move me. (Are those Darth Vader masks? It's kind of hard to see...) But once I got to their You Tube page, I found some that did amuse, including "Universal Twoness":

Really bad Obama headline in Globe

I'm hardly a slave to political correctness, especially in speech; I worked at the Herald. Still, my eyes 'bout popped out of my head this morning when I saw the headline on Jeff Jacoby's Globe op-ed column about Obama and gun control. I presume the figure of speech was his choice, rather than an editor's. Even given the provocateur's  role that comes with being  a conservative columnist for the Globe, this seems a poor choice of metaphor:

He doesn't even mean it the way it sounds; if I read the column correctly, Jacoby is suggesting that the Supreme Court decision on Second Amendment rights will be the silver bullet that Obama can use to eliminate an issue that normally handicaps Democratic candidates. But, uh...

Irish GLBT chorus to sing in Boston

I never really thought of Ireland as being gay friendly. Maybe I'm just extrapolating from the repeated squabbles over gay participation in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Southie. On July 11 Boston will host a performance by Gloria, right, which is billed as "Ireland's only GLBT chorus." The concert at the Arlington Street Church will feature Gloria along with the Boston Gay Men's Chorus and Voices Rising, Boston's Women's Chorus. Tickets are $25-$35 and you can order them online here. After the concert, all three groups will be jetting off to the international gay and lesbian chorus festival in Miami.

First look at the MFA's new entrance, inside and out

Specifically, that would be the north entrance, which faces the Fenway and has been shuttered since before the Celtics won their last championship. This morning I joined a few hundred other journalists, museum employees, rich people museum patrons and assorted hangers-on at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for the opening of the State Street Corporation Fenway Entrance and the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Visitor Center, emceed by Malcolm Rogers, the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum. It's a naming-rights mouthful, true. But the big-bucks donors are doing something good here.

The facilities are part of the ongoing $500 million Building the New MFA project, which was going on in a serious way just around the corner, on the east side of the museum, where the I-beams for the new American Wing are in place. A couple of cranes from that part of the project symbolically towered over the scene as State Street President Jay Hooley, Rogers and Mayor Tom Menino took to the mic to laud the redesigned and expanded Fenway entrance, complete with reflecting pools, fountains and tons of new Deer Isle granite. Naming rights came with a cool $10 million gift from State Street.

Important note: Sunday June 22 is a State Street-sponsored free Community Day at the MFA, giving you a chance to check out the new entrance and the exhibits inside from 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. without spending a dime. Did I mention that it's free? After the ribbon-cutting, I strolled around the new "Winslow Homer: American Scenes" collection, checked in with "Great Company: Portraits By European Masters," and then begged a press pass to "El Greco To Velazquez" in the West Wing. It's all worth seeing - the El Greco is free on Sunday, too - and if I get some time before then I'll post a few tips here.

My favorite part of the Fenway project is "Day and Night," a two-part sculpture by Antonio Lopez Garcia, which has been outside the Huntington doors for a few months and now flanks the re-opened Fenway entrance. Even Rogers refers to the sculpture as "the giant baby heads," which sounds hilarious when he says it in that plummy accent of his. The sculpture adds an odd, arty, irreverent tone to the scene, which helps set off the forbidding monumentality of that face of the museum, with its 22 Ionic columns, each 36 feet tall. The baby heads are only 8 feet tall, and weigh about a ton and a half each, but they make a dramatically wacky statement in their present position. Kudos to Gail and Ernest von Metzsch for the gift.

There's still some shoehorning here, a shotgun marriage of old and new, in the Fenway Entrance. To reach the actual doors, one slides between the columns feeling a bit like a coin in a slot, and once inside there's a sharp right and a left to negotiate. Architects in the early 20th century were more beholden to grand forms and less concerned with flow than their counterparts today. When the American Wing and other parts of the big project are finished - allegedly in late 2010 - it will be interesting to see if it all fits together as smoothly as it does in the artist renderings and 3-D videos.

Chad Perrone Plays Paradise

Hometown fave Chad Perrone brings his yearning voice and new solo album, "Wake," to the Paradise Rock Club stage tonight ($15, doors 8 p.m., 18+). The Haverhill native first played there in 2003 as lead singer of Averi, the popular Boston band that won a lot of acclaim around the country but never managed to get that major label deal before Perrone left the band in late 2005. (He was replaced but it appears Averi shut down shortly thereafter. Insert random "Behind the Music" drama here.) Perrone's 2006 solo debut "Used to Dream" got a lot of buzz and three Boston Music Award nominations, but like so many artists in these days of record-industry doom, he's running his own show with "Wake," right down to the myspace page. He produced "Wake"  at 6 Media AV in Haverhill with best friends Dennis Carroll (co-producer and piano player) and Steve Belleville (co-producer, bass and back-up vocals). Others on the record included back-up vocals from former Red Sox resident rocker Bronson Arroyo on "Since You." Although Perrone's list of influences on myspace includes everyone from the Afghan Whigs to Lionel Richie - yikes - the salient ones are pop rockers like Guster and meditative singers like Ray LaMontagne.

Start your summer with Revels-ry

How long has it been since we could say this: Summer in the city starts today with the Celtics championship parade. But the previously planned kickoff to the season is the Summersday Revels happening Friday through Sunday in the Fort Point Channel hood. And like the Celtics parade, it's all free.

The festivities begin Friday at 6 p.m.  with the Summer Street Solstice Art Celebration at the Boston Convention & Exposition Center, featuring artwork by Massachusetts artists: XL paintings commissioned by the MCCA and silkscreen banners by Cloud Place, as well as additional works by Massachusetts’ Visual Artists and Sculptors. Bonus: music by Tuffus Zimbabwe’s Funk Jazz Group and Sweetwater Trio.

Saturday and Sunday's events are:
4:00pm: Family Activity Tent opens for children and families to create a Sun or Moon memento to take home and carry in the Grand Processional at 5:00pm
5:00pm: Grand Sun and Moon Processional along Fort Point Channel (this is generally the wacky highlight of Revels events)
5:15 - 7:15pm: Cultural Performances and Participatory Demonstrations by artists (dancers, musicians) on stages along the HarborWalk on both sides of Fort Point Channel
7:30 - 9:00pm: Giant SummersDay Revels Main Stage performance.

The event is a production of the Friends of Fort Point Channel and the Revels, along with area groups like the Children's Museum and the ICA. More information here and here.

WCVB gets interactive with more than Dickie's Doppler

Turns out that WCVB has more online than just "our web site, thebostonchannel.com," as touted so relentlessly by cheery anchor Ed Harding and the rest of the news team. A big story in the N.Y. Times business section highlights Channel 5 as the first test station for an interactive-TV advertising and shopping service created by Boston-based Backchannel Media, which uses special set-top boxes in viewers' homes.

"The test offers viewers programs — and ads — they can respond to by using remote controls to click on icons they see on their screens," the Times says. "Each click sends a signal to the viewer’s personal portal — basically, a site where everything the person has expressed interest in is aggregated. Then, the viewer can look up more information there the next time he or she goes online."

The test began in May, and it's not clear from the story if it has expanded beyond staff, family and friends at WCVB. But Channel 5's Hearst-Argyle sister station, WMUR in Manchester, N.H., and WJAR in Providence are going to start similar tests.

Oh boy, more icons cluttering up the screen. More set-top boxes to compete with the cable and the DVR and the DVD. And oh, oh boy, more marketing between the overt commercials, where once there was just news and entertainment.

This, of course, is the umpteenth attempt to turn the technological potential of interactive TV into a revenue stream. The Times fondly refers to it as the "Rachel's sweater" syndrome, in which network execs thought they'd be able to get "Friends" fans shopping during their show. There's also a huge potential here for loss of privacy of course, as the stations or Backchannel - or whoever ends up making a go of this technology - could record your every click and sell the data to other marketers eager to know what you like and what you buy.

Personally, I just wish WCVB's Harding and his many colleagues would drop their redundant mantra, "our web site, thebostonchannel.com," like we think a .com is maybe a print magazine or something. And if Dickie and his weather pals stopped saying "Storm Team 5 HD Doppler Net" every time they could just say "radar," there might be more time for actual news. I'm just sayin'.

"Weeds" returns to Showtime tonight

Over at the day job, I penned a review of the season premiere of the fourth-season premiere of "Weeds," on Showtime tonight, and the British series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," which will debut right after it. "Weeds," starring Mary-Louise Parker (right), is one of the best shows going. Not so much "Call Girl."

1980s Vintage "F*ck The Lakers" t-shirt

Had to share this. My friend showed up at the coffee shop this morning in this t-shirt from the '84 (or maybe '85) NBA Finals. He dug it out of his collection this morning after last night's awesome comeback win. He also kept a little piece of duct tape handy that was big enough to cover the "fuck" so he could apply it "if the priest shows up for breakfast."

I figure, hey, making awesome bootleg t-shirts to sell on Causeway Street counts as a HubArt, right?

Bright lights, big city: A new essential Boston reference book...

My former Herald colleague Paul Sherman has written one in "Big Screen Boston," which tracks movies filmed here, from "Mystery Street" to "Gone Baby Gone." This is a must-have for Boston film fans and anyone interested in the intersection of Dot Ave. and Hollywood Blvd.

Sherman offers individual profiles of 80 movies set here and at least in part shot here, from a few flimsy post-World War II thrillers through the gritty indie films of the 1970s and '80s to the Hollywood glitz of the post-"Good Will Hunting" era that continues today. Each piece lists topline credits, offers a 1-to-3-page review/background feature, and then assesses locations, accents and local color.

Critically he's right-on, from praising "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" as the best movie ever made here to mocking the ironic dud-ness of the bomb-squad thriller "Blown Away." Everything from a film's artistic influences to the random exigencies of the movie business factors in as Sherman delivers a verdict on whether it's a good movie, and whether it's a good Boston movie.

"...Even though they're supposed to be vacationing somewhere along Route 128, scenes were shot at a palm-tree-filled San Diego resort," he notes in the entry on Otto Preminger's "Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon."

"...Time has only added resonance to 'The Verdict's' presentation of the Church as a power structure that, like most any other, will go to great lengths to defend itself," he writes of the 1982 Paul Newman film, without having to remind us why that would be.

"It's worth noting that the movie includes one of those lazy, New York-derived movie business cliches, when John Leguizamo's character mentions someone going away 'upstate' to prison. Sing Sing is upstate. Walpole is just...Walpole. There is no upstate in Massachusetts, unless you mean New Hampshire," he points out in the entry on the "lousy" 2001 comedy "What's The Worst That Could Happen."

Besides features, Sherman also includes key Massachusetts documentaries, notably "Titticut Follies" and "When Standup Stood Out." His introductory essay ties many of the better films made here in recent years to those documentaries and the grit of "Billy In The Lowlands" and other early indies.

The book also includes an appendix with brief assessments of dozens more films that for one reason or another didn't make the cut, and a trivia quiz: Name at least four movies that filmed inside Fenway Park. (As with all movie-trivia quizzes, the answer to one of the questions is 'Philip Seymour Hoffman,' but I'm not going to tell you which one.)

Given the recent surge in filming thanks to production incentives voted by legislators, a second edition better be soon in coming. Somewhere at least there should be a piece on TV shows filmed or at least set here - tourists and local history buffs picking up the book will want to know all the background on "Cheers" and maybe a list of some of the scenic sites where "Spenser: For Hire" punched out bad guys. Who knows, maybe some day we'll even get another series to film here beyond the occasional "Boston Legal" insert shot.