COVER STORY
NEWS & VIEWS
— .Com-ments: Fallout from Creative Loafing’s Noise Issue.
— Don’t panic! Your war questions answered: Is the U.S. really going to withdraw from Iraq in August?
FOOD & DRINK
— Alternatives to dinner out on Valentine’s Day.
Sun Layover & Jake” by Craig Rubadoux is on display at Dabbert Gallery
Ed. note: This piece was compiled by Danielle Favreau.
VISUAL ARTS: OPENING
ALLYN GALLUP CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY 1419 5TH St., Sarasota (366-2093 or allyngallup.com). Photographs by Tom Carabasi and collages and monotypes by Gustavo Ramos Rivera will be displayed through Feb. 27. Regular hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Free.
ART CENTER SARASOTA 707 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota (365-2032 or artsarasota.org). F.A.B. (Fabulous Arts Boutique) Sale and Exhibit will be held Feb. 11-14 with an opening reception 6-8:30 p.m. Feb. 11 and closing 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Feb. 14. Contact Kathie Hayes at 923-8554 or visit fabsarasota.com for more information. Red Hot! Love, Romance and Humor will be displayed through March 6. Regular hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tues.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun. Free.
Mike Doughty performs at The Orpheum Thurs, Feb. 11
Ed. note: This piece was compiled by Jennifer Almond.
THURSDAY, Feb. 11
ACE’S Swamp Donkie (Early)/DJ Cliff (Late)
AMERICAN LEGION POST 312 Wings & Strings w/Smokey & Duane
THE BOX SOCIAL Dean Johnson
THE IRISH ROVER Paul Duffy
LEBARGE Dan Crawford
NEW WORLD BREWERY Matt Butcher/Rebekah Pulley/Red Shepherd Americana musician Matt Butcher has only been living in Florida since 1999, but within those 11 years he’s had some success as part of The Heathens — an Orlando-based band that made waves in 2006 when the music video for their song “Stickin’ Around” was featured at the Los Angeles Film Festival — and earned a two-night solo gig opening for The Avett Brothers in Tennessee. His 2008 album, Me and My Friends, received stellar reviews and is available on Butcher’s website for a “pay what you can” price. Butcher is joined multi-Best of the Bay award-winning songstress Rebekah Pulley, and sunny folk-pop quartet Red Shepherd. —Matthew Spencer
— Rep. Vern Buchanan shows Panama’s ambassador to the United States around Port Manatee, in an effort to help solidify stronger trade between the Central American nation and the Suncoast.
— In a Sarasota speech, Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice talks about failed states, the recession and how history will judge that President Bush made us a “safer” nation. One word is missing from Jeremy Wallace’s story, though: Iraq.
— The Sarasota Film Festival: officially set to go down April 9-18.
— Hannah Wallace discusses downtown business affairs with Karen Magee, one half of the ownership team behind the now-defunct Jake’s Downtown. Best quote: “It’s not the customer’s job to support your business. It’s your job to provide them with something they want at a price they want to pay.”
The painting at the center of the controversy, Pablo Rodriguez’s “Modern Venus”
I’ll Be Seeing You
Runs through Feb. 11, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Fri., Sarasota Orchestra’s Harmony Gallery, Beatrice Friedman Symphony Center, 709 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, 953-4252 or sarasotaorchestra.org; Pablo Rodriguez’s next exhibit, featuring “Modern Venus” and works from recycled materials, runs Feb. 20-26 at Art Uptown, 1367 Main St., Sarasota, 955-5409 or artuptown.com, pablorodriguezmedina.com.
“It was like an invitation to a date,” says Sarasota artist Pablo Rodriguez of his painting, “Modern Venus,” which he installed in early January in the Sarasota Orchestra’s Harmony Gallery as part of his exhibit, I’ll Be Seeing You. “This piece was supposed to be the centerpiece of the whole thing. It was a pretty big piece and in the Harmony Gallery that was the thing that was drawing your eye.” The piece hung uninterrupted for over two weeks after the exhibit opened on Jan. 12, but three mothers with children in the Sarasota youth orchestra deemed “Venus” too racy for their children’s innocent eyes and filed one formal and two informal complaints.
“They gave me two options,” Rodriguez says. “It was drape it or take it down. I chose to take it down.” Rodriguez removed the painting — a mild, not-nude ode to his wife — on Jan. 29.
Circus Sarasota performer Nik Wallenda dazzled crowds yesterday morning when he walked 600 feet across a cable the width of a nickel from the One Watergate Condominium building to the Ritz Carlton Hotel. We just happened to have a friend with a room on the 16th floor in the corner of the Ritz building where he ended his journey. When he got within about 30 feet of our location he kneeled down on the wire, resting the balance bar on his thigh, looked over at our balcony with a big smile and said “I bet it was worth the room rate.” We agreed completely. Here are some of CL’s exclusive shots from the best view in town, courtesy of Staff Writer Tim Sukits:
Let the games begin
Ed. note: This piece was written by Dennis Maley.
It is often said that good literary fiction is character-driven, the plot functioning as a platform to showcase the various personas and their unique outlooks and perspectives. Some of the best fiction goes one step further, espousing a philosophy so coherent and universally appealing that both characters and plot are incidental to the message they carry, a theme that ultimately overwhelms the delivery system. Such is the case with Don Dellilo’s writing.
Driven by philosophy above all else, his novels make the kind of points that linger long after you would have forgotten the clever plot twist in a summer beach read. Delillio’s masterful literary cadence is almost hypnotic: Whether you’re reading an 800-page tome like Underworld or a short novella like The Body Artist, it is easy to lose yourself in the pages.
— Nik Wallenda’s high wire act: Clearly a big deal.
— The group that sued Sarasota County over the Ed Smith deal has now targeted County Commissioner Joe Barbetta, alleging “that during a public-records request, Barbetta did not fully disclose all e-mails from his personal e-mail address.” Too many joke “FW:” messages perhaps?
— “It’s official: The Ringling International Arts Festival will return this year. Mark your calendars for Oct. 13-17.” Hope Florida’s next U.S. Senator is there! Whoever that is!
— Walt Augustinowicz, our most vocal anti-school surtax activist, has launched a new website, Better Sarasota Schools for Less, which features the slideshow presentation I’ve already mentioned and linked to. Augustinowicz has also filed a formal elections fraud complaint, arguing that schools should not have sent students home with fliers encouraging parents to vote to extend the surtax. More on this, undoubtedly, at a future date.
HE BLINDED US WITH SCIENCE: Paul Whitworth as Galileo
The Life of Galileo
4 stars
Runs through Feb. 17, peformance times and dates vary, FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, 351-8000 or asolo.org, $13-$60.
If you sense a certain ambiguity in the character of Galileo as presented by Bertolt Brecht in his celebrated bio-drama, it’s an ambiguity that Brecht himself never escaped. In fact, there are three versions of The Life of Galileo: one written in 1938, in which the title character is treated as a hero, another finished in 1945 or ’46, in which Brecht casts Galileo as self-serving and a coward, and then a final revision of 1955, in explanation of which Brecht told his actors that Galileo “must be shown as a social criminal, a complete rogue.”
The current Asolo Rep production, austerely but potently directed by Michael Donald Edwards, seems based (in David Edgar’s fine translation) on Brecht’s earliest script, before the playwright’s horror at Hiroshima made him rethink his affection for a man who, in his own way, put politics before conscience. But even while presenting the Italian scientist as a freethinker who cleverly outwitted the Inquisition, the Brecht of this early version shows some ambivalence about his hero.
