PopSmart

1) Young Americans is on display at the High Museum.

2) Kenny Chesney and LeAnn Rimes perform at Turner Field.

3) The Five Spot hosts Just Think!, a night of political exploration.

4) Unplugged in the Park continues at Piedmont Park.

5) Atkins Park Tavern hosts the Dave FM Sunset Live Concert Series.

(Photo © Sheila Pree Bright)

1) Civil Rights activist Dick Gregory speaks on Sen. Barack Obama, health and more at Shrine of the Black Madonna.

2) Soul Asylum and Gin Blossoms perform at Chastain Park Amphitheater.

3) CL hosts a raging party for Best of Atlanta 2008 at Star Bar.

4) Vans Warped Tour comes to Lakewood Amphitheatre.

5) Callanwolde Fine Arts Center hosts Summer Coffeehouse Series Open-Mic Poetry Reading with Kodac Harrison.

(Photo courtesy Dick Gregory)

Atlanta folk music duo Rising Appalachia has cheerfully woven topics of cultural evolution and fusion into its music, bringing the message around the world with its aural globe trotting. Siblings Leah and Chloe Smith take a more direct approach to encouraging themes of social evolution and responsibility when they host the third annual CONCRETE PANDEMONIUM Sun., JUNE 29. Billed as an “urban throwdown,” the topsy-turvy evening features a genre-bucking combination of local art and activism in an earnest attempt to bring the two together in a happy, and hopefully not short-lived, marriage. Scheduled appearances include spoken-word artists Theresa Davis and Stefen Miko of Art Amuk, the Atlanta Circus Art Community, Feminist Outlawz, Alternate Roots, a recycled-fabric fashion show and more. 9 p.m. $5-$25. Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Suite 8. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.

(Photo by Chad Hess)

We all love Film Love, the ongoing cinematic series from Andy Ditzler’s Frequent Small Meals that looks into the nooks and crannies of more independently minded movie-making in a way that’s both entertaining and informative.

The Film Love blisses out on July 25 at Eyedrum with a twofer titled “The Trick of Disaster,” which looks at the domino effect of destruction. Showtime is 8 p.m.

First up is Buster Keaton’s 1920 short film “One Week,” in which his lead character tries to build a house (using a makeshift kit) for his new bride. Here’s a great clip from the short (and don’t be fooled by the racy bath shots; it was pre-Hays Code, after all).

Next up is the ingenious 30-minute short by artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, “The Way Things Go,” which was a lab experiment of chain-reaction delights as objects constantly have a surprising impact on one another. “The entire structure slowly destroys itself before our eyes, and never once do we see a human onscreen,” Ditzler writes. “With its hilarious (and oddly suspenseful) encounters between objects, “The Way Things Go” has amazed and delighted audiences for twenty years, and has been compared to everyone from Rube Goldberg to Alfred Hitchcock.

I reviewed the Actor’s Express production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in this week’s issue, and while I believe there’s room for improvement, it remains an impressive production. And as I stated in my review, one of the reasons why watching Hedwig is such a compelling experience is because John Cameron Mitchell’s collaboration with Stephen Trask is the most authentic stage rendering of rock music you’ll ever witness. (And before we continue, I don’t count Tommy in this mix; the Who’s rock opera started out as an album.)

There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which speak to how audiences — both gay and straight — related to both traditional musical theater and rock ’n’ roll. The best thing about Hedwig and the Angry Inch is how it can unite all theater-going (and some non-theater-going) audiences. (more…)

1) Your last chance to check out Athfest: The festival wraps up its final day with a performance by Dubconscious.

2) Lakewood 400 Antiques Market celebrates its fifth anniversary this month with a third-weekend-of-the-month extravaganza.

3) Angels & Insects: Things Seen, Known & Felt by Terrence E. Jackson continues at U*Space Gallery.

4) Blake’s on the Park hosts a cookout with raffle and T-shirt sales benefiting CHRIS Kids Rainbow Program.

5) Rooney performs at Variety Playhouse with the Bridges and Locksley.

(Photo courtesy Dubconscious)

In the world according to Jay Louis, there’s no such thing as too many douchebags. No, not the countless politicos that Jon Stewart likes to skewer on “The Daily Show,” but the tatted-up, hair-spiked, shiny-foreheaded, six-pack-packed, hand-symbol-thrusting, shades-sporting, wife-beater-wearing, tongue-thrusting, hand-gesturing and pec-bearing American men who somehow wind up with really attractive women in living color.

Louis, aka douchebag1, hosts the phenomenally popular website Hot Chicks with Douchebags, in which he and alert readers hip the rest of us “normal” folk to the cheesily over-packaged American men hanging out with women who would seem way out of their league. As popular as the site is, the next logical step would seem to be a book, Hot Chicks with Douchebags (Simon Spotlight Entertainment), which fell into our reluctant hands this week and will hit bookstores July 8. The book’s thesis seems simple enough:

In this book, we will identify every type of ’bag within the douche spectrum, from the youthful stage-1 Fratbags to the polluted, noxious stage-4 DJ Club Douche. We will tap directly into the core of not only how douchebaggery manifests, but also how it corrupts the hottie within its wily, greased-up charms. These unnatural cohabitations must be exposed to the disinfecting light of detailed scrutiny if we have any hope of societal redress.

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Emmy-winning actor and favorite Atlantan Leslie Jordan is going to be all over Atlanta this weekend and beyond, all in honor of the recent release of his memoir, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet. The former “Will and Grace” guest performer is one of those guys who’s just funny once he opens his mouth; I firmly believe that he could read the mayor’s budget-cut proposals and get a laugh. (His 2006 interview with Curt Holman proves as much.)

Jordan will be plenty busy over the next few days, starting Saturday with a book-release appearance at Outwrite Books. The reading/signing starts at 7:30 p.m.; admission is free. He follows that up with a two-night stand at the 14th Street Playhouse with his one-man show of the same name, Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m.

Unfortunately, the status of the sitcom “12 Miles of Bad Road” (in which he co-stars) seems hopelessly up in the air, according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Anyone know anything different? Perhaps Leslie will enlighten us, in a way only he can, as he shows in this clip taken during his recent Stonewall Columbus fundraiser.

I was unable to screen The Love Guru for this week’s paper. Apparently I’m not alone; looking for an alternative newsweekly review of the horrifically reviewed comedy from the former clown prince of Hollywood is an exercise in futility. (Maybe that’s because studios are making it more and more difficult for alt-weeklies to screen movies in time for their weekly deadlines, but then, they’re making it difficult for everyone to screen indie films for review because they keep changing the release dates, but whatever. More on that later.) I’m struggling to think of a more poorly reviewed film this year by someone held in such high esteem.

But as chronicled in Entertainment Weekly’s recent profile of Myers, there’s no love lost for him in Hollywood. In a city filled with egomaniacs, Myers seems to be a particular target of scorn. Some think he’s singled out unfairly; others wish he’d just go away. The man who once supposedly had the Midas touch with the Wayne’s World, Austin Powers and Shrek franchises seems to have, ahem, lost his mojo on this one.

I know it’s a predictable bit of pile on, but while I’ve always found Myers amusing, I’ve never really gotten the depths of praise heaped on him over the years. I’ve often thought of him as the right comic talent at the right time, a “Saturday Night Live” sketch genius who had been able to stretch sometimes brilliant gags, sound bites and wordplay into movie-length hits. But, really, how hard did you laugh at any of the Wayne’s World or Austin Powers sequels? (I completely avoided the last AP installment, Goldmember, as well as the third Shrek cuz just I figured it would be more of the same.) Frankly, I think the most daring movie work Myers did was portraying Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell in 1998’s 54. Besides delivering a spot-on mimic job, Myers captured the tragedy of Rubell.

A lot of Myers’ critics believe his style of comedy is already played out. I’m inclined to agree. The thing is, Myers’ style is so facile, it doesn’t warrant much examination. To borrow the current phrase du jour, it is what it is. And that’s just not that much to get excited about. I have a bad feeling that, come Monday, the box-office receipts will bear that out.

(Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures)

Here’s a fond PopSmart wish of good luck to the folks at PBA30’s “This Is Atlanta,” which is up for a Southeast Emmy this Saturday for Best Magazine Program under the umbrella category Outstanding Achievement: Television Programming Excellence for its segment, “The Atlanta Downhill Challenge,” about the city’s popular soapbox derby race. (Oddly enough, the program is up against two episodes of “TBS Storyline,” which was canned when Turner changed TBS to last year Peachtree TV. Unfortunate, considering Peachtree TV’s “hyper-local” mission statement.)

We mentioned the Telly Award-winning program in one of our first PopSmart blog posts back in November, so we’re excited to see what happens on Saturday. Jack Walsh and Gordon Ray are the nominated producers of the show, and do an impressive job of providing witty polish to a type of community program that, when not in the right hands, can run on the dull side. This stuff is compelling work, though, reminding Atlantans just how diverse its city really is. (more…)