HOW TO LOOK AT ART |
"The Bird Concert" (c. 1630-40), which dominates a wall of Rubens and His Age at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, confirms Frans Snyders as the preeminent animal painter of the Flemish Renaissance. Alight and in-flight, a diversity of birds gathers around two lifeless branches. These stumps are the only clues to ground or height—you're up in the air in several ways. The conceit, of course, is that you "hear" them, but not the mellifluous recital suggested by the score beneath the owl. Snyders' skillful depictions of the agitated fowl divert the eye from the center of the painting, and the source of their cacophony, a trespassing bat. The exhibit will be at the Guggenheim Hermitage through July 31.
Funny Old Jewish Guys |
It's Borscht Belt Central—Desert Edition—all over again as Jewish Music Group Traditions digs into the vaults for CDs by two Vegas vets: Don Rickles SPEAKS! and Jackie Mason: The World According to Me.
On his 35-year-old, long-out-of-print insult-fest, Rickles, the famed Master of Venom, skewers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Richard Nixon and the Notre Dame football squad, not to mention audience members brave enough to pose questions. (Sample: Q: "We understand that Sammy Davis Jr. is a close friend of yours." A: "Well, yeah, it's hard to get help like that. To be able to sing and dance and dust?")
Mason's CD revives his acclaimed one-man Broadway show—the ex-rabbinical student-turned-comic combines the greatest material of his career on this disc, with bits titled "Sex," "Hookers," "Psychiatry," "Jews and Gentiles" and "Reagan and Other Great Men." (Sample: "There's no bigger schmuck in this world than a Jew with a boat. Any Jew with a boat—the boat never moves. They bought it to show it to you: 'You saw my boat? Good, now let's get the hell outta here!'")
A regular cornucopia of kosher comedy. For more information, call the Jewish Music Group at 818-508-2500.
Magazine Rack |
GQ, April: A piece in this issue debunks common sense: "Ten (and a half) reasons why Republicans—yes, Republicans—are the best party in bed." Forget the alleged debauchery of Democrats: "They're so em-oh-tional and sen-sitive and they genuinely care about your day," says the anonymous female author, who's spent years in D.C. researching the topic. GOP'ers, conversely, excel in key areas. No. 1: No conscience—"A Republican man will never whine ... about the girlfriend/wife/whatever he is "devastating" by sleeping with you. He just does it." Republican men also don't cry (No. 2), have a better sense of humor (No. 4), are more efficient (No. 7) and are generally more brutish—and therefore manly—in their rutting (Nos. 5, 9, 10). The author also makes the risible statement that, in matters of, ahem, size, "It is absolutely, positively, 100 percent true that Republican men have bigger ..." Time to switch parties?
DVDs |
Mel Brooks Box Set Collection (NR) (4 stars)
$99.98
Investing 777 minutes and nearly $100 (MSRP) in the comedies of Mel Brooks may first appear to be a dubious proposition to those who weren't even born when the zany auteur introduced the fart joke to the cinematic vernacular in 1974's Blazing Saddles. The genres satirized in Brooks' films have little currency today—except on cable's classic movie channels—while the taboos he shattered now feel rather insignificant compared to the ones obliterated each week on South Park. (It should be noted, however, that his gay cowboys predated the ones in Brokeback Mountain by 30 years.) This set from Fox would be valuable, though, if only for finally making High Anxiety, To Be or Not to Be, The Twelve Chairs, History of the World: Part 1, Silent Movie and Robin Hood: Men In Tights available in DVD, in addition to more familiar Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (Spaceballs and The Producers were MGM titles). Brooks' earliest and least known film, The Twelve Chairs, may be the best of bunch. Set in 1927, just after the Soviet Revolution, the atypically low-key comedy follows an aristocrat-turned-clerk and a trio of opportunists as they search for jewels sewn into one of 12 dining room chairs appropriated by the state and scattered around Russia. The boxed set has gone out unrated, but the individual grades range from G to R.