This Can't Be Broccoli

I'm pretty sure I know what Entertainment Weekly's album of the year is going to be. (This is a little game I play with myself--see if I can peg what pop culture items are going to wind up on year-end lists now that 2012 is already more than half over.) Unless something unbelievably brilliant comes out between now and December, it would seem that Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel ... will take the top spot. Do I agree that it should?  Yes. Did I listen to it?  Yes. Did I listen to it more than once?  No. When I tell people that I think the best album of the year is one I only listened to once, they shake their heads at me. "It can't be that good if you only listened to it once." It occurred to me after I heard this that music is the only art form in which we demand that something have substance AND make us want to experience it over and over again. I've only seen Gone with the Wind once. I've only read The Grapes of Wrath once. I've...

I think I've discovered the secret to working with the general public in Rhode Island. Be rude. Sound crazy? Trust me, it might not be. When you do theater (and work a day job in addition to that), you end up interacting with a diverse group of strangers on a regular basis. You start to develop theories--some crazy (Why does everybody in the market decide to check out at the same time?  It's a conspiracy!)--and some not so crazy. Here's my this-might-not-be-so-crazy theory: I think people respect you a little bit more when you're rude to them. Or at least, rude people seem to respect you more when you're rude to them.  Maybe it's like anything else--maybe they just like having someone speak their language to them. It seems a little absurd, but I've seen too many examples to make me think it's a fluke, and I'm starting to wonder if it's a Rhode Island thing. When I was a teenager, I worked a few retail jobs, and I always saw th...

This is one of those trending news topics that seems to have ten conflicting accounts, so bear with me for a paragraph.  Daniel Tosh, comedian and host of Comedy Central's "Tosh.0" (a show where Internet videos are played and mocked by Tosh) is taking a lot of heat because, allegedly, he made a rape joke at a comedy club, a woman got offended and as she was leaving, Tosh asked the crowd if it would be funny for everyone to rape her. Or something like that.  I couldn't be bothered to look up all the different articles to achieve some sort of "accuracy."  I'm a blogger, not a journalist.  Regardless of what Tosh said, I still think he should lose his job, and it hasn't nothing to do with the fact that he may or may not have told a rape joke. I think he should lose his job because he's just not funny. First off, let's address the elephant.  You can't say anything is never funny in any context in any way.  That's ridiculous.  I'...

In terms of pet peeves, the biggest one I have is going to see a show that calls for minority actors only to find myself watching a bunch of Caucasians shamelessly hop around onstage singing "Run and Tell That" from Hairspray or "America" from West Side Story . I don't know when every community theater got together and decided that when the creators of a show ask for minority actors, they're really just suggesting it, but the trend needs to stop. If a show calls for an African-American, Asian, or Hispanic actor, there's usually a reason for it.  Maybe the author(s) felt it was important to the character's background.  Maybe they wanted to ensure that their show would always have a diverse look to it.  Maybe it's their show and not yours and you should honor their decision regardless of how much you want to do In the Heights but can't find the actors you need. Ultimately, it is unfortunate that sometimes minority actors can be hard to...