My Farewell Column

It is time once again for me to bid you, my fair reader, adieu.

I am moving back to Oklahoma, a state apparently bent on my destruction. I had some great tornado jokes lined up for this column—real grade-A material.

Alas, I woke up the other morning and the damn things had laid waste to most of Alabama. Severe weather humor is horribly inappropriate at this particular juncture.

So we’ll skip the tornado jokes.

David Sinkus

An exceptional pair of plays

Take two of the city’s finest actors, shake them together with an inspired and masterful theater company, slather on a large dollop of Academy Award-winning talent, and the chances you’ll end up with something satisfying and delectable are all but guaranteed. Such is the case with Mother Road Theatre Company’s newest offering, Virtual Reality.

• entertainment
• performance review
• alfred hitchcock
• alan arkin
• mother road theatre company
• the filling station
• arts
• review

An inconclusive report on the lifestyles of the rich and famous

It is peculiar that Jessica Hagedorn's fourth novel, Toxicology, is preceded by epigraphs about Lorca's idea of the duende—an enigmatic Spanish term "about the struggle and state of possession that go into making great art," as one of her characters puts it. "Duende's hard to explain. Sorta like when black singers are said to have soul." It’s peculiar because as the story unfolds, we are introduced to artists who have lost their passion—base creatures posing under the guise of genius whose real struggle seems to be between hedonism and self-pity.