Kevin Marshall's America » Arts

The Nitty Gritty Slam returns tonight at Valentine’s with special guest judge…ME

kevinmarshall — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:30:18 +0000

WHAT: Nitty Gritty Slam
…WAIT, WHAT?: It’s a Slam Poetry event that started two weeks ago.
OH COOL. WHEN IS IT?: Sign up begins at 7:00pm. There’s a brief Open Mic at 7:30pm and the event proper starts at 8:00pm.
WHERE IS IT?: Valentine’s in Albany on New Scotland Ave.
IS THERE A COVER?: 5 smackers, only 3 with a Student ID. It’s more than worth it.
IS THIS A REGULAR THING?: Yep, first and third Tuesdays of every month.
WHAT’S THE TURNOUT LIKE?: For the last event it was fantastic. I didn’t think we’d get that sort of reaction and enthusiasm for a slam poetry event in Albany, and was especially surprised at the quality of the participants. I guarantee you it’s going to be a great time.
WAIT, WAS THAT YOU THAT WAS A JUDGE AT THE FIRST ONE TWO WEEKS AGO?: Yep.
OH MAN. NOT COOL. YOU WERE WAY HARSH.: Look, think of me like a quality teacher. If I give you a poor grade, it’s because you phoned it in and it shows and I know you can do better. Besides, there’s too much positive reinforcement and glad-handing in various communities around here. If you don’t want to be graded, go slam your Momma.
IF I GO THERE AND COMPETE, CAN I ASK YOU ABOUT MY SCORE AFTERWARDS?: Sure. But it’ll be like asking how you performed after you had sex with someone and failed to bring them to orgasm. It’s super off-putting and kinda sad.
WHATEVER, JERK. IS THERE A WEBSITE?: Yes! NittyGrittySlam.com.

All Over Albany has a good little piece on the first round. For a taste, here’s video of the last Slam’s winner, Tammy Poe, who was just fantastic.

The Nitty Gritty Slam is brought to you by Albany Poets, Urban Guerrila Theater, and the Frequency North Reading Series.

Go get some culture in you.

Steven Spielberg: the anti-Lucas

kevinmarshall — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 11:00:40 +0000

"Stop or I'll communicate wirelessly with my contemporaries!" After nine years of complaints and controversy, the walkie talkies are being taken out and government agents re-armed in the classic film "ET"

While George Lucas was busy fiddling with the Blu-Ray “Star Wars” compilation and inserting more garbage that ruins childhood memories, director Steven Spielberg was undoing a similarly infamous edit of “E.T.” for its Blu-Ray release.

From BlackBook.com:

For the 2002 re-release of E.T., Steven Spielberg digitally replaced all the FBI agents’ guns with walkie-talkies. He never really explained why, but many assumed he was bowing to political correctness and concerned parents’ groups. Fortunately, as Yahoo! reports, he announced he will reverse the change for the upcoming Blu-Ray release of E.T.

What was a silly change done for even sillier reasons has finally been righted.

Now if we can only get Darth Vader to stop whining post-mortem…

Nitty Gritty Slam TONIGHT at Valentine’s

kevinmarshall — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:51:08 +0000

Starting tonight, the Nitty Gritty Slam goes down the first and third Tuesdays of every month. Click the image to visit the official site, NittyGrittySlam.com

Slam Poetry has finally returned to the Capital Region.

Tonight (Tuesday 9/6/11) marks the debut of Nitty Gritty Slam at Valentine’s, hosted by slam poets Dain Brammage and Mojavi. The cover is $5 and only $3 if you’re a student with college/University ID.

Doors open at 7:00pm and the event kicks off a half-hour later with a brief open mic followed by the Slam itself starting at 8:00pm. The event is open to anyone and everyone both on and off the stage.

Being a bit of an ignoramous when it comes to this sort of thing, I’ve asked around and been told that the seminal book on slam poetry is Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. So that’s on my (ever-growing) reading queue in addition to attending this event.

More info vis a vis the press release-ish thing (cuz this s***’s too REAL for straight up marketing!) is below.

nittygrittyslam.com

POETRY SLAM RETURNS TO ALBANY

WITH NITTY GRITTY SLAM

Poetry slam is coming back to the Capital Region.

For the first time in more over 10 years, the Albany region will have its own poetry slam venue. Called the NITTY GRITTY SLAM and hosted by poets Dain Brammage and Mojavi, the first slam will take place on Tuesday, September 6, at 8pm at Valentines (17 New Scotland Ave.). Slams will be held the first and third Tuesdays of the month after that.

Admission is $5.00 ($3.00 with student ID).

Who can attend or perform? Anyone and everyone. The doors open at 7pm, and that’s when the sign-up sheet to slam is put out on the bar. There will be a short open mic at 7:30pm, the slammer line-up is announced and the slam begins at 8pm.

What’s a poetry slam, you ask? It’s been awhile around these parts, so here goes.

Each slam, judges are randomly selected from the audience who score poets who perform for up to three minutes and use nothing but words, their body and a microphone. The judges give each poet a score on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0. The scores are added up, and the poets with the higher numbers advance until two poets are left in the final round. At the end of the three rounds, the highest-scoring poet is awarded a prize—bragging rights to start, on up to a chance to join the slam team we’re sending to the National Poetry Slam!

NITTY GRITTY SLAM is presented by Albany Poets, Urban Guerilla Theatre, Frequency North Reading Series, and others in the Albany literary communities. We have begin the process with PSI (Poetry Slam Inc.) .

For more information, contact NITTYGRITTYSLAM@gmail.com.

More information about poetry slam:

Started in Chicago in the 1980s at the Green Mill Jazz Club, the poetry slam was invented by Marc Smith, a construction worker and poet who wanted to liven up poetry readings. Poetry slams spread rapidly around the country: from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village to MTV and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam to The White House to venues around the world. Each year, the five-day National Poetry Slam is held in a different city, packing 3,000-seat venues and 80 certified teams each year.
A poetry slam is all about the audience. Audience members are encouraged to cheer and jeer both the poets and judges. The audience’s job at the Nitty Gritty Slam, as in every slam, is to try to influence the judges, and express their approval or disapproval for the poets or scores they love or hate.

A poetry slam is rock and roll, a Broadway show, hip-hop, dance, stand-up comedy, and poetry wrapped into a tight, three-minute set.

Listen live: Alternative 2 Sleep tonight on WCDB with very special guest….ME!

kevinmarshall — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:18:17 +0000

Tonight, the comedy radio program Alternative 2 Sleep on WCDB has a very special guest.

ME!

Tune in tonight as I join host Ethan Ullman to discuss a multitude of topics including but not limited to comedy in the Capital Region, childhood memories, the August 23rd Earthquake (hit the streets and never forget), and a pending career move for yours truly. What is it? You’ll have to tune in to find out!

Listen LIVE tonight and every Thursday, 10pm to midnight.
terrestrial airwaves: 90.9FM in Albany, NY

Or listen online:

Hello Pretty City, Goodbye Summer: come see Olivia Quillio and Viking Moses live TONIGHT at Valentine’s!

kevinmarshall — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:00:36 +0000

Hello, Kevin Marshall’s Americans! What’re you doing after work?

Why don’t you shut your mouth and let me tell you what you’re doing.

You’re going to leave work, maybe get dinner. Hopefully you’ll get it with the special someone in your life, but if you’re like me you’ll eat a can of hot chili alone. Well dump that bowl in the sink and wipe those tears away, because you need to be ready to go at 8:00pm LIVE at Valentine’s.

Only five bucks? Sweet sassy molassy, that’s some cheap entertainment.

Both acts have a lot of buzz around them, and it’s being put on by my favorite over-the-air radio program and my favorite local station.

Come listen to beautiful music with us and bid the summer a fond farewell.

See Hair of the Dog for free at the 10th Annual Concert Under the Stars this Saturday 8/13/11 @ 3pm

kevinmarshall — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:35:03 +0000

Tomorrow (Saturday, August 13th) is the 10th Annual Concert Under the Stars and Irish Festival at the Waterford waterfront from 3:0opm until 9:00pm.

The event is free and includes an Irish themed canal tour, food vendors, Irish merchants, family events, and performances by the Scotia Glenville Pipe Band, The Boys of Wexford, and Capital Region stalwarts Hair of the Dog.

More information is at the Waterford Museum’s website.

Head on down!

Seth MacFarlane to host “Roast” of Charlie Sheen

kevinmarshall — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:25:31 +0000

"Oh man. This is worse than that time I had to host a roast for Charlie Sheen." *cut to animated re-enactment of Stewie telling Seth MacFarlane's jokes* (Photo by Peter Kramer/Associated Press)

Never one to pass up an opportunity to make an easy joke that requires little to no effort, Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth MacFarlane has agreed to host the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen, which is set to air in September against the season premiere of CBS’s “Two and a Half Ashtons Men.”

“In addition to his sharp wit, Seth is way more suave and sophisticated than we are,” said Kent Alterman, head of original programming and production at Comedy Central. “We continue to try and soil him.”

They’re joking, of course, because there’s nothing suave or sophisticated about Comedy Central’s Roasts, which choose easy targets – often those that are drug-addled and/or mentally ill but sometimes legit comedic legends – and pepper them with B-grade jokes about their most obvious and public failings.

It’s almost worse when they do it to someone legit, like Joan Rivers, who was actually legitimately hurt by the fact that the Roast reduced her and her long, storied career to a punchline. But there’s still something wrong with doing it to someone like Sheen, who is only getting it because of all the terrible things he’s done and the bad behavior he’s exhibited over the course of the past year.

Roasts aren’t supposed to be an opportunity to tear down a legend or pick apart an easy target. There’s supposed to be an art to it. The New York Friar’s Club exemplifies this with their roasts. The motto, “we only roast the ones we love,” isn’t an excuse, it’s an explanation. The jokes are biting, but not cruel. They zing, but don’t sting. They’re blue, not black.

I wouldn’t necessarily say I hold anything against Comedy Central or anyone that is willing to stand up and laugh about Charlie’s coke habit or call Joan Rivers old for the umpteenth time, because I get it. Money is money. I just wish they could find a way to earn it by doing a Roast that is more keeping in the tradition and that especially puts more deserving “targets” up for public display.

New York in August, Part 1: newspaper deputies, hipsters, and hardcore bands

kevinmarshall — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:24:10 +0000

So Hideous, My Love... live at The Acheron 8/4/2011

Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a portrait drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, you’re automatically entered to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.

—————–

It used to be that weird things would happen when I visit New York City, but as I get older, that’s not the case. On the other hand, I do make some adjustments that are out of character for me. I become much more confident, adventurous, awake, and far less self-conscious.

Being in a city where everyone’s as hot, cramped, and sweaty as you are will do that to you.

The ride to New York gave me a headache that didn’t go away until two hours after I’d arrived in Manhattan. The bus was scheduled to depart at 10:30am. I knew I was in for a long three hours from the onset, when the two women sitting directly across from me started loudly complaining about the fact that the bus was a mere five minutes late in leaving. From 10:31am onwards, they announced the time every minute on the minute until the bus departed. Thirty minutes later, they consumed the smelliest sandwiches known to man in spite of the sign that explicitly stated there was no eating allowed on the bus. This sign was also ignored by another man who, just when the smell started to dissipate, unleashed his own smelly sandwich. From the smell and what little I could see, I’m guessing it was an onion and baby food wrap that he made from ingredients found in a dumpster. After stuffing his face and fouling up our bus with an atrocious scent, he gave loud and detailed investing advice to an elderly woman sitting next to him. Because when you need sound financial strategies, forget Charles Schwab: take it from the guy riding the Megabus on a Thursday morning.

The bus ride was three hours of obnoxious voices, smelly sandwiches, and a child that cried and screamed for the duration while the mother sat next to her tuning her out (because holding or consoling a child is just too much intimacy for some people). It was still early on Thursday afternoon and everyone I knew was still at work. I passed the time at a cafe that was also a small software company that also lent out space and time to people to produce multimedia. It was a strange space, cold and not all that alluring, but I had my bags with me and no shortage of time to kill. For the hour I was there, a flat screen television on the far wall was frozen on an image of Will Smith looking down with his eyes closed and a smirk on his face. I imagine he was thinking about how wonderful his life was, even if the scene the still was taken from called for acting of some kind. After an hour of Smith’s imagined self-aware smugness, I got a phone call from Bobby.

I knew Bobby from college, where he was both a confidante and a partner in crime. I met him through our college’s pathetic excuse for a student newspaper, The Promethean, which was staffed with very good people that were terrible writers. The articles were fluff, authored by individuals who weren’t shameless per se in their friendly associations with their subjects, because that would imply some awareness that expressing it in a newspaper article itself was a mis-step. You couldn’t fault them too much for it. They were students at a small liberal arts college nestled in a high-end residential area of Loudonville, NY, where most of the student body was studying business, specifically Marketing Management. of studies was on business. To expect the staff to exhibit constructive or thought-provoking material was a fool’s errand.

I had written a couple articles for the previous editor when Bobby took over. We immediately connected and took a liking to each other. I think it was for the same reasons that I connect so well with babies, which is that we have eyes that are too big for our heads, both figuratively and literally. Like me, he’s perpetually wide-eyed and intense in an endearing manner. Were were also both, at that time in our lives, self-obsessed hedonists in search of anarchy under the guise of reform. On page two of our second edition, he ran a barely literate, profane e-mail sent by a female student in response to a recent editorial written by our sarcastic Portugese friend Andy. To say it caused an uproar would be an understatement. There was posturing, finger-pointing, and outrage expressed from students and administrators alike. The girl who wrote the e-mail, to her credit, bathed in the attention with smiles and a sense of humor about the whole thing.

We were called before the Student Senate to answer for our misdeeds. We brought with us signs and supporters, claiming to have published it to force conversation on certain issues. In reality, we had reached the conclusion that if we were going to publish awful material, we may as well publish something that will amuse us and incite something – anything – in the people reading it. In that meeting I was introduced by Bobby as a new member of editorial with a new title. I was now the Newspaper Deputy, responsible for whipping the staff into shape and making sure they stayed in line.

A few nights before, when we came up with the concept, we laughed for what must have been five minutes. We meant it as a joke, but it was too funny to restrict to that meeting. So it continued for the rest of the year.

Eight years later I was on the phone with him and making arrangements to meet him at an Uptown Starbucks. He looks exactly the same now as he did then. We caught each other up on our various projects and endeavors. Bobby had been freelancing on the side as a writer when he was approached for help on a book. Writing under a pseudonym, he and a friend of his made enough money from it for him to quit his day job. He’s currently working on a memoir that I’d describe as sort of like Tucker Max if that guy had empathy or anything resembling talent.

It was great seeing and talking to him again. Bobby is one of those people that make me yearn to be down here, because no matter how much time passes between our meetings, we immediately pick up a conversation seemingly where we had left off with the same beat and cadence as before. It was like a trumpet player jumping into an impromptu jazz set and hitting the right notes without a thought of where they were in the song or where it was heading.

As I left, we made arrangements to possibly meet up the next day for breakfast. It didn’t happen because we both (most likely) slept in, but it’s no matter. Whether it’s next month or next year, we’ll have that breakfast and nothing will have changed except for the circumstances surrounding us.

—–

After unpacking and showering at my best friends’* apartment, I took the 6 and the L to The Acheron in Williamsburgh. The Acheron is a small metal club on Waterbury Street, one of a myriad of places with what my friends Rick and Jessica refer to as manufactured neglect. The style is in keeping with the inhabitants of the neighborhood: children of rich, white parents who feign poverty for the sake of fashion and pretense. To call this deception would be giving much more credit than it deserves. Anyone who grew up in real poverty or has ever been in a truly dire, dirty place will immediately recognize the fraud. The streets and building “dirty” through carefully placed industrial sculptures, color schemes, and the careful splattering of paint. Next door to the club there was an event styled after an art opening. About a hundred hipsters in their early twenties smiled and congratulated each other on all being in the same place at the same time. In the venue itself, inside jokes adorned with antlers masqueraded as art. It made me wish I didn’t have to stick around for my brother’s show, only because I felt an obligation to modern art, culture, and society to douse the gallery in gasoline and burn it to the ground.

After milling about for a half-hour, my brother’s band played and they were wonderful. Truly wonderful. My brother was in other bands in the 90s, yet something was missing. It’s probably that they just weren’t quite as ambitious in their sound. But he really and truly has something here. Unfortunately, So Hideous, My Love… is in a tough spot in terms of bookings. There are other bands that work along their lines and sensibilities, but they’re scattered throughout the globe, so they are stuck playing what I can only describe as sweepingly ambitious progressive ambient hardcore music with other metal and hardcore bands that don’t quite fit the same mold. Case in point: one of the band members for a later act showed up wearing a top hat, an open leather vest with no shirt underneath that revealed an atrophied torso, and corpse paint.

After the show I got to talk to my brother Jack and Brandon, the dual creative force behind the group. We discussed the scene (or lack thereof) and what had been accomplished with their latest EP. I complimented them on their improved live performance and presence with their new lead singer, who was also Brandon’s brother. Brandon described their latest effort as almost arrogant, but I corrected him and just said that it was progressive. He talked about how he wanted to push it further in terms of the orchestration, which appears now in their music with greater frequency than anytime before.

“You already have your d*** out,” I assured him. “So you might as well go ahead and shake it.”

I was glad to talk to Brandon. I wanted to convey to him how much I appreciated not only what they were doing but that I was also, legitimately a fan. I was too self-conscious to do so at the time, however, and so I’ll just do it here in the hopes that he reads it.

I left my brother and sister-in-law with a hug and a promise to see them again as soon as I could. I went back to Manhattan and was in bed before 11:30pm. Marla had a day at work and Brian was suffering from a head cold. Me, I fell asleep without any regrets. I’m not exactly ancient by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I’m not even middle aged. But I’m still too old to sacrifice my days for my nights.

*This not a typographical error. Brian had become my best friend when he started seeing Marla, and we all immediately took a great liking to each other. I consider them a packaged deal.

Find me at Troy Night Out and I will dance for you

kevinmarshall — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:00:58 +0000

If you give, that is.

Tonight is the last Friday of the month, which means it’s time for Troy Night Out, the Collar City’s monthly celebration of art, culture, and night life in our city. Visit TroyNightOut.org for a full list of the festivities, and ride the trolley through the city!

I’ll be out and about from 5:00pm onwards. If you find me before 8:30pm and make a donation of $10 in cash to the Special Olympics of NY, I will perform one of the following dances for you, your choice:

A jig
The running man
That MC Hammer dance where he puts his hands on his hips and just goes back and forth all crazy-like

Please note that I don’t say I’ll do these well, just that I’ll do them.

This is another installment of my ongoing effort to raise money for Special Olympics of NY through the Over the Edge fundraiser. So far you people have given generously, but there’s still much more that’s needed! Special Olympics of NY provides services to more than 47,000 differently abled kids and their families throughout the State. It’s a worthy cause, so why not humiliate me?

For information on how you can donate online (as well as other incentives for giving including baked goods from one of my teammates), visit the sub-site at KevinMarshallOnline.com.

Captain America: surprisingly good

kevinmarshall — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:45:50 +0000

Thanks to everyone who has donated so far to New York Special Olympics! To get me and my teammates to rappel off the Crown Plaza and have a little fun yourselves while giving to charity, CLICK HERE.

=====

Like almost everybody else this weekend, I felt an obligation to go see the film adaptation of “Captain America.”

Growing up I was a big fan of the book. What intrigued me about the character wasn’t that he was a man out of time or that he was a symbol of perseverance and American pride. Rather, it was the stories that were written portraying him as a man conflicted, often finding himself at odds with what his government wanted him to do in the name of his country. Most Captain America stories, particularly those written in the 1970s and 1980s, were a far cry from the jingoistic image of Cap slugging Adolf Hitler smack dab in the jaw. In more complicated times with menacing but not unequivocally evil challenges to our nation’s position in the world, the genetically enhanced kid from Brooklyn often put honor before policy. On more than one occasion when faced with the choice of falling in line or continuing as Captain America he gave up the mantle entirely and “retired.”

The trap for comic writers is that in writing these stories they can potentially isolate part of their audience. More importantly, unless it’s done carefully, what’s intended as a creative statement on what it means to be an American can come across as goofy and contrived. They are, after all, comic books.

Which is why this film focuses on Captain America in simpler times with an evil enemy. And it works. The action scenes are intense, the CGI is very impressive (particularly the seamless trick of creating the illusion of a ninety-pound pre-serum Chris Evans), and as Roger Ebert noted in his review, it includes a love story that you actually want to see and enhances rather than detracts from the narrative. The film also makes an effort to remind us that what makes Steve Rogers as Captain America an effective hero is the former part – Steve Rogers – rather than the latter. That ninety-pound kid has an organically heroic nature even before he meets the man that changes him forever, and while admittedly cheesy at times (a conceit one must make when going into any summer blockbuster let alone a comic book flick), it surprisingly doesn’t come across as melodramatic.

The film does much to set up the story and anticipation for next Summer’s long-awaited “The Avengers,” which will team the revived Captain America with the other franchises established by Marvel: Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk, among others. What will be missing, though, is what makes this the hands down best superhero film since “The Dark Knight” and arguably the equal of Marvel’s other great offering “Iron Man”: a focus on one man, one protagonist, with one journey. The greatest challenge “The Avengers” will face won’t be Loki or Hydra, it’ll be measuring up to the surprisingly high measuring stick of The First Avenger, as the title calls him, “Captain America.”

BONUS: The trailer for the 1990 “Captain America” film, which featured Cap jumping onto the back of many a van.

Kevin Marshall's America » Arts

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