Flying Femmes

Hanging from an aerial hoop performing slow feats of strength and flexibility wasn't enough for Contraband Velour. Doing it in three-inch heels (though most hoop artists won't wear shoes) wasn't enough either. Velour, aka Connie Wind, will perform blindfolded Friday, Aug. 24, during the Femme-O-Lition Derby at the KiMo Theatre.

Ossy Werner

King Lear at the Adobe Theater

After having his eyeballs gouged out by the Earl of Cornwall, the Earl of Gloucester utters one of the most memorable lines in King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.” Given the compounded misery stuffed into this gruesome play, you might think that's the lesson here. You'd be wrong.

Identity theft is no joke, but Citibank has some pretty funny commercials for it. Maybe they inspired T.C. Boyle to write his 19th book of fiction, Talk Talk, which was released last month in paperback.

For more than 50 years now, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky has been a skeptic of states—in particular, the United States—and how they use power. Why should a language guy care about such matters? "Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments,” he explained in his 1969 essay collection American Power and the New Mandarins. And as residents of a free country, he concluded, American intellectuals have even more responsibility to wisely use their freedom to expose the abuse of official power.