the 941

Please allow myself to introduce … myself. Amanda Schurr here, taking over where Cooper left off in Eventland. I’ll be stopping by this here blogosphere in the coming days, but in the meantime, a parting recommendation for something to do this weekend from the dearly departed:

KNOW YOUR RYE-TS
My belt’s feeling a little tight these days, what with the cookies, the candy canes, the eggnog … oh, the eggnog. In an attempt to fit back into my pants, I’m seriously considering the Manatee County’s Conservation Lands Management Rye Ramble and Hike. The moderate-to-strenuous walk snakes through Parrish’s Rye Preserve, with views of that spot’s old and rare sandy scrub habitat. 9-11 a.m., Rye Preserve, 700 Rye Wilderness Trail, Parrish, free, 748-4501, ext. 4615. –CLB, posthumously

I’ll be back, with my own picks, next week.

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CL editor Max Linsky has the scoop:

We got word late last week that Bodies — yeah, that exhibit with all preserved human specimens — will be landing at Sarasota’s G.WIZ just in time for Christmas. If you haven’t heard of it, the picture above should give you a pretty good idea of why Bodies has been generating so many local headlines since it opened in Tampa in 2004. As the name implies, these are real human bodies on display, preserved through a process that involves liquid silicone rubber.

The exhibit has a health-awareness aspect: One body contains the lung of a long-time smoker, another the organs of an over-eater. Bodies…The Exhibition drew huge crowds at Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry, and while this show is slightly different (it’s called Bodies Revealed, and will be making its second US appearance after three years in Europe), G.WIZ is expecting an average of 1,500 people per day during the limited engagement. No specific end date has been established yet, so don’t dilly-dally. Get there early.

Opens Dec. 21. 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Thurs., 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Fri. and Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun., holiday hours: 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 24, closed Dec. 25, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 31, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Jan. 1, G.WIZ, 1000 Boulevard of the Arts, Sarasota, $22, $20 for seniors and $17 for kids 3-18, 877-627-3271 or bodiesrevealed.com.

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Creative Loafing mentions Atomic Holiday Bazaar at every available opportunity, and today — the day after version 2.0 hit the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium — is no different. I just got word from Cemantha Crain, one of the event organizers, that her official count of patrons is 1,150. That number may only represent a small jump from last year’s attendence, but that’s nothing to frown about.

Crain writes in an email:

Everywhere I’ve been today (alright, I’ve only been to work and News and Books, but those count) everyone I’ve seen who went (prolly 10 people so far) all commented how many young people we had.  My favorite New College barista said it was the most young people she’s ever seen in one place in Sarasota. That’s rewarding, considering our primary objective was to create a young-person’s event.

I was most delighted to see old friends who I’d thought had moved away.  I didn’t even think to invite them because I’d thought they had abandoned Sarasota long ago.  But they were back, and truly brought a tear to my eye that they’d found out about Atomic on their own and showed up without realizing Adrien and I were behind it.  That, and, I saw a few sets of punk rock teenagers skulking around sans adults.  They actually chose to attend of their own volition.  Very cool, indeed.

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The wife and I took a journey south on Saturday to catch an afternoon’s worth of Art Basel Miami Beach, the four-day international art extravaganza that commandeers large chunks of Miami Beach real estate every December. The city’s convention center was the epicenter, with hundreds of galleries from around the world displaying work by thousands of visual artists. The focus is supposedly contemporary, but famous names from decades gone by kept cropping up (Basquiat, Warhol, Rauschenberg), the pieces crammed into tight, cluttered booths. The huge numbers this festival does ensured that walking and viewing room was tough to come by, which made it awfully difficult to have any kind of meaningful experience with individual pieces. The effect was like trying to sift through a giant pile of art, with no ability to be drawn in by anything but the most immediately eye-catching.

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The inspiration for this week’s underappreciated video comes directly from Supreme Lord Linsky’s coiffure, which I remarked resembled that of Link’s from the classic caveman/stoner comedy Encino Man. (Helpful factoid: In Europe, the film (I’m using the term lightly) was known as California Man.) While I initially steered toward a clip displaying Brendan Fraser’s obssession with “gonzagas,” how could those moments top Pauly Shore’s helpful guide to the SoCal life in the selection below?

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The hip-hop world is abuzz with conflicting versions of what’s going on inside the Wu-Tang empire, as both Ghostface Killah and the Clan as a whole have new albums. (Pretty Toney’s The Big Doe Rehab dropped on Tuesday; Shaolin’s finest release 8 Diagrams next week.) A blog dedicated to 8 Diagrams has a helpful recap of all the beef surrounding the two discs, and The Village Voice carries a particularly distressing story on Ghostface this week, with the MC admitting he has no clue what could bring the Clan back together again after the current debacle. All arguments aside, we’ve still got two new, exciting, Wu-related CDs to examine, and examine I do, in a review coming out in next week’s Creative Loafing, but posted here right now, right after the jump.

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Ringling College of Art and Design senior Nick Pitera (whose computer animation work is pictured above) is trying to earn a trip to the big-time, by entering the “Give Us Your Voice Contest!” sponsored by the Broadway production of The Little Mermaid. If Pitera’s gentle-voiced YouTube clip of himself singing “Part of Your World” gets the most votes, he’s off to the Big Apple for the chance to sit in on a recording session with the Mermaid cast. Check out the clip, then vote for Pitera here.

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For the second installment of my now-two-part series, Road Trip Concerts Featuring Bands Signed to Merge Records (catch episode one here), I visited Orlando with my wife, Rachel, to catch Spoon this past Friday. The concert, held at Club Firestone, was part of the Orlando Weekly’s Anti-Pop Music Festival 2007 and surely served as the event’s climax, even though the party continued all through Saturday night.

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We draw this week’s Underappreciated Video from the classic 2000 horror (kind of) flick, Leprechaun in the Hood. If you’ve never encountered the Leprechaun series before (and if you haven’t, you missed a stellar early-career turn from Jennifer Aniston), the movies revolve around a homicidal leprechaun, played by Willow (aka Warwick Davis), who uses all kinds of gory mischief in an effort to get back some inevitably stolen gold. In Leprechaun number five, the unfortunate victims of happen to be a struggling rap group who steal some bling from a local pimp named (creatively enough) Mack Daddy. The Leprechaun goes on his usual killing spree, and even takes some time off for an impromptu hip-hop performance, which brings us to our clip. “From the Emerald Isles to your place in the ‘hood / I’m the man of green come to do no good.” So true. You’ll be trying to get the hook (”Lep in the ‘hood / Come to do no good”) out of your head all weekend:

Note: Thanks to The A.V. Club for the inspiration.

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It’s true: DIRT, the weekly indie dance party held down at Pastimes Pub (and at the Tavern before that) is over after tomorrow night, its demise coming less than a week after we declared it Best Rump Shaking on the Suncoast. Maynard Del Mar, who cofounded the night with Becca Nelson under the banner of BeccaMay Events, clued me in to the decision to disband the Tuesday night parties last week, saying DIRT’s demise comes because he wants to concentrate more on special shows. He hints at big plans in the works, although nothing has yet been confirmed.

In any event, tomorrow night’s DIRT is the last, and Del Mar promises “general craziness” for the farewell. Don’t miss one last chance to bounce ‘dat ass.

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