Leisure

Reviews and think pieces on music, movies, art, and theater.

Leisure

Deadbeats: a bi-weekly column about music

Music can be a promiscuous art form, and a good musician will exploit all of its whorish tendencies. As genres evolve, they sleep around with different musical styles, take what they want and leave without calling the next morning.

By May 3, 2007

Leisure

Artomatic: where bizarre meets genius

When I first walked into the Artomatic, I was greeted by a large shoebox of a movie still from Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. The characters, donning barbie-sized silk fabric and tiny pearls, were marshmallow peeps. I obeyed the sign, “Do Not Eat,” and wandered into the exhibit, only to encounter a collection of equally eye-popping and unpredictable art.

By April 26, 2007

Leisure

Lezhur Ledger: Relay for Life a fun-raiser

I could smell the GUGS burgers all the way from the Leavey Center—the scent of a barbeque spread through the clear spring air faster than the keenest relayers. As I got closer to the source of the delicious aroma, the music got louder, the crowd got rowdier and, turning into Harbin Field, I stumbled into the biggest party of Saturday night. The field looked like a combination of a Bedouin settlement, an Oriental bazaar and a children’s fair. There were tents as far as the eye could see. All the summer trends were here: floral Hawaiian, fluorescent brights and the nautical color scheme of the Hoya Blue tent. If it weren’t for the numerous white and purple Relay For Life balloons, this tent city could have been easily mistaken for a mass, al fresco slumber party.

By April 26, 2007

Leisure

Critical Voices: Frog Eyes

The return of Frog Eyes, the most difficult—though occasionally thrilling—Canadian indie rock band of the last decade, is cause for some celebration. As with most things Frog Eyes, it’s also cause for some head scratching. Tears of the Valedictorian, the band’s first album since 2004 and fourth overall, is an amplification of the band’s best traits, and an unexpected leap forward.

By April 26, 2007

Leisure

Critical Voices: Feist

Known for her sultry, lounge-style music and soft vocals, Leslie Feist has successfully expanded her palate beyond the Starbucks-friendly Let it Die in her latest album, The Reminder. It still contains many of the slow jam, coffee-guzzling tracks that worked well in the previous album, but with a few welcome surprises.

By April 26, 2007

Leisure

You Taste Like a Burger

“Eating is cheating.” Studying abroad in Australia, I heard that a lot. “We drink beer here,” Sayd, my stereotypically Aussie friend, explained. “That takes up a lot of room in your belly. If you start the night with a stomach full of food, there’s no room for what matters–more beer.”

By April 26, 2007

Leisure

Fashion Props

By April 26, 2007

Leisure

Translations gives off good vibrations

“Translations,” written by Brian Fiel and directed by JoJo Ruf (Col ‘08), is a solid tale of Irish identity with a little bit of fun and a great deal of soliloquy. It is the first student production to be staged in the Davis Center since it was built last year.

By April 19, 2007

Leisure

Critical Voices: The Field

Axel Willner, Stockholm native and sole member of electronic outfit The Field, has a gift for making the most out of the least. His recently released debut, From Here We Go Sublime, deftly exploits the hypnotic potential of musical repetition with little more than a few looping samples and austere techno beats. Though the album’s lack of variation is an acquired taste, each track is pure bliss for the patient of ear.

By April 19, 2007

Leisure

Critical Voices: Arctic Monkeys

Who the fuck are Arctic Monkeys was hardly an appropriate name for the Arctic Monkeys’ 2006 EP. Soon after the Monkeys gatecrashed the British and world charts with their first album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, they become an overnight success.

By April 19, 2007

Leisure

GU Music Program takes off

On March 22, 2002, several members of the GU Orchestra gathered together in the main hall of the Leavey Center to protest the inadequacies of Georgetown’s music program. As part of a larger effort to garner support for GU music, the sit-in functioned as a way for students to cite the space problems of the department and obtain signatures for a petition to President DeGoia. Instead of wielding picket-signs and yelping raucous chants, however, the quartet opted to perform selected pieces of Mozart for students and faculty passing through the building.

By April 19, 2007

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GEMA opens doors

As the Music Department increases its offerings within the classroom, the program continues to find outside support from the Georgetown Entertainment Media Alliance (GEMA). Founded by Gemstar-TV Guide CEO Rich Battista, GEMA acts as a network for GU alums involved in the entertainment industry, sporting contacts from ABC, AOL, DreamWorks and other mainstream conglomerates.

By April 19, 2007

Leisure

Goes down easy: a rotating biweekly column about drinking

Living in Washington, D.C. for four years and never sampling its Ethiopian food and drink is like living in New York and never having a knish, or calling yourself a native of Kansas City without ever tasting the barbecue. It stinks of laziness, timidity orshy;—worse—plain naiveté.

By April 19, 2007

Leisure

From Australia with Love of Diagrams

Antonia Sellbach pulls her bleached bangs behind her ear and leans out past the edge of the sofa. It’s a Thursday night at the 9:30 Club, and her Melbourne, Australia-based band Love of Diagrams has just wrapped up a 45 minute opening set for Ted Leo, punk rock local hero and elder statesman. His set is being recorded for NPR’s All Songs Considered live series, but she’s upstairs in the dressing room, doing something relatively new for the band—talking to the press.

By April 12, 2007

Leisure

Grindhouse: yummy, bloody, puss-filled fun

Sporting tight leather booty shorts, soaked in blood and roaring at 9,000 RPM, ‘70s exploitation films appeal to humanity’s basest of desires and all the better for it. With Grindhouse, a double feature ode to trash cinema complete with fake (and hilarious) movie trailers, directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez try to rekindle America’s passion for the drive-in experience, missing reels and all.

By April 12, 2007

Leisure

Singing in the Brain

A New Brain, despite what the title may suggest, is not about zombies, Frankenstein-style experiments or metaphysical conversions. It’s about the trials and tribulations of being a young, gay, Jewish composer living in Manhattan in modern time…

By April 12, 2007

Leisure

Get your local on

March for D.C. Voting Rights If last month’s March Madness-filled march to the White House left you hungry for more, D.C. Emancipation Day offers the opportunity to relive the magic of Pennsylvania Avenue all over again—this time for a real cause. If you’ve been crushing on Mayor Fenty or you’re looking to meet guys in converse sneakers or disenfranchised, angry locals, this is the place to be.

By April 12, 2007

Leisure

You Taste Like a Burger

While growing up in Saudi Arabia, I would watch our cook as he prepared complex, gourmet meals. It was not only a distraction in a place without neighborhood parks or television, but also a cultural adventure into his native Filipino culture, as well as romps to Italy, France and home to the U.S. I’d watch, fascinated, as he would remove the meat and bones from a whole chicken’s skin, mixing the meat with vegetables and seasoning, and then somehow get it all back into the skin before stitching the floppy bird back together and roasting it.

By April 12, 2007

Leisure

I wanna be a cowboy, baby

An average, white-bread upbringing wouldn’t be complete without the cowboy dream. It may be as simple as that pair of boots with the spurs you saw at K-Mart, or those horseback riding lessons you took after you watched an old John Wayne film. Or maybe it is, as the exhibit “Jolly Cowboy” suggests, a complex mix of intangible fantasy and commercial delusion that has attracted hearts of all ages across the globe.

By March 29, 2007

Leisure

Etiquette lessons: the road to the final fork

Our soup spoons were poised delicately in the air. The smell of the tomato bisque wafted to our noses as we restrained ourselves from slurping away. Surely we could manage this with grace; we certainly looked like confident young professionals.

By March 29, 2007