Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com

Photos: March on the RNC

CATHY CHAPMAN — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:15:48 GMT

Protesters rallied in St. Paul

Thousands of antiwar protesters gathered at the Minnesota State Capital building for a rally before heading out on a march to the Xcel Energy Center site of the 2008 Republican National Convention. Over 10,000 people marched largely peacefully in the "March on the RNC" which wound its way through downtown St. Paul and past the barricaded Xcel Center.

“March on the RNC,” St. Paul, Minnesota
September 1, 2008
Photo credit: Cathy Chapman

A Girl Cut in Two

PETER KEOUGH — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:56:38 GMT

High-quality perversity
The title of Claude Chabrol’s 2007 black comic morality tale — La fille coupée en deux — serves as a playful reminder of the role women usually play on the screen.

Pretty & Nice: A Tour Diary

JEREMY MENDICINO — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:47:55 GMT

On the road from Oregon to Boston with New England's newest Sub Pop signees

DOWNLOAD: Pretty & Nice, "Grab Your Nets" [mp3]

In February, 2008, Will Spitz profiled Boston's Pretty & Nice as the band was recording its debut for Sub Pop's new Hardly Art imprint. This week, music editor Michael Brodeur breaks down how rising gas prices, a shrinking music industry, and the ubiquity of digital distribution have dramatically altered the landscape of touring. To get an up-close-and-anecdotal perspective, ThePhoenix.com asked P&N's Jeremy Mendicino (with help from the rest of the band) to keep a running tour diary as they gigged cross-country from Portland, Oregon back to Boston in time to play a record-release party on September 7. This is their story, in reverse chronological order. Check back for updates and track their progress as they make their way home.

SUNDAY 8.31.2008
Activities for passing time in the van: read (books, signs, maps, other, books, text messages), iPod (too many notes), sleep (stiff neckening), watch movies, flux capacitor (currently broken), pick fights, drive.

Drive tends to be the best option. I do this a lot. It can be a game. Points are awarded for optimizing gas mileage, in-center-of-lane consistency, smoothness of lane changes, "jumping" the windshield wipers between the telephone poles (don't ask), comfortable braking, minimizing collisions, timely arrivals etc.

Note to Self: Consider pitching these ideas to video game manufacturers for inclusion in future Grand Theft Auto installments.

SATURDAY, 8.30.2008
So there was this hurricane in Louisiana. And Baton Rouge is in Louisiana. Shows + hurricanes aren't a happy marriage, yada yada yada. We had to cancel Baton Rouge. BUMMER. I hate canceling shows. BUT. Our wonderful friend Tania in Dallas helped us out with not one, but TWO last minute shows in town, so we skipped up to Dallas, played a quick set and hustled down the street to play an "acoustic" set at an art opening. It was . . . an experience. Not bad. Strange. A horse is a horse of course of course.

P.S.: We're still poor.

FRIDAY, 8.29.2008
Travel Anxiety #327: Maintaining healthy battery life in all onboard electronic devices. Macintosh computers (two), ipods (three), cellular phones (was four, now three), GPS (one). Have blown one inverter in this pursuit. Inverter two is still holding strong. Austin has always treated us well and tonight is no exception. Biggest crowd, best reception. Best show yet? Austin + Pretty & Nice = Best Friends Forever.

A Bathroom Tour of Boston

K BONAMI AND GUSTAVO TURNER — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:05:50 GMT

Stall-by-stall through 33 of the city's most distinctive restrooms

Face it -- there is someting about living in Boston that drives people to drink. A lot. And while old demon alcohol is doing unspeakable things to your brain cells, liver, and dignity, the water it uses as its host makes its way through your addled body in search of a porcelain conduit to the sea, to the sea, to the open arms of the sea.

But bar bathrooms are much more than mere chambers of bolidy relief. They also provide a welcome haven for an array of private activities that, for whatever reason, must be conducted away from the bustle of curious patrons, bartenders, and waiters, and the distracting din of TV sports, bands, DJs, and jukeboxes.

This, then, is our visual survey of some of the most transited Bar Bathrooms of Boston. We hope you'll have a good time reminiscing over it, mounting it over your own toilet, or even playing some kind of perverted game of drunken Bingo ("You did what in there?!?"). Download a copy of the poster, suitable for framing, at the end of this slideshow.

Click here to download a .pdf of our Bathroom Tour of Boston in poster form

SEND US YOURS: Did we miss a good one? Send photos from your phone or email to yourpics@phx.com. We'll publish the best in a future issue.

Bathrooms of Boston: The Beehive
Photo credit: k bonami

I'm sending you to a ufologist

DAVID SIPRESS — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:06:50 GMT

Reality check

Black Republican Jam

BRIAN MCFADDEN — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:01:03 GMT

Big Fat Whale

Call me Chuckie

KARL STEVENS AND GUSTAVO TURNER — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:55:17 GMT

Succe$$

The Hen House Wings ’n Waffles

MC SLIM JB — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:32:19 GMT

A soul-food novelty finds a home in Boston
The Hen House recently arrived near Newmarket Square to perplex neophytes like me with myriad variations on this sweet/savory platter of comfort.

Gran Gusto

ROBERT NADEAU — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:30:51 GMT

A well-kept secret . . . But not for long
Gran Gusto is an Italian delight located as close to the middle of nowhere as it gets in North Cambridge.

YOU’RE FIRED: Gran Gusto’s grilled squid has the right balance of flame and seafood tastes.

Gran Gusto is an Italian delight located as close to the middle of nowhere as it gets in North Cambridge, in the Brickyard office building opposite the former city dump (now a park). As such, it’s a sleeper, and it needed a sleeper strategy to replace the previous occupant of the space, Tartufo at the Brickyard. (Tartufo was a branch of a successful Newton red-sauce palace; it went into a death spiral of sporadic crowds and kitchen and service gaps.)

Gran Gusto, shifting the emphasis west from Abruzzo to Naples and the province of Campania, established itself with notable thin-crust pizza. That’s great, but Gran Gusto has a real chef who also has a real talent for seafood, house-made pasta, and even desserts. You can have a luxury dinner here for moderate money, and increasing numbers of diners in-the-know have done so, despite a lack of full-length reviews of the place.

Unfortunately for those patrons, my job is to spoil their private paradise and let readers in on the secret. Bearing that in mind, my first tip is: order the grilled squid ($11). Most of the grilled squid in Boston is deliberately undercooked to keep it tender. Gran Gusto grills the squid a little past that point, so the wonderful taste of fire complements the mild seafood. The chef also scores the bodies in rings and arranges the tentacles very prettily on the plate.

If you still want your calamari tender, have the deep-fried baby octopus and calamari ($11.50). (Octopus is popping up all over in Boston restaurants, which probably says something about the price of local squid.) Both are nicely fried, with a tasty salad underneath. Other options include a frutti di mare appetizer ($11.50), which mixes mussels with littleneck clams in a garlicky sauce without — for once — too much salt, and salmon carpaccio ($11.50), which is cured, I think. It holds together better than raw carpaccio of salmon, and works well with an arugula salad with bits of oranges and sweet dressing.

The good soldier

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:45:20 GMT

In Minnesota, Mitt keeps the faith
It can’t be easy being Mitt Romney nowadays.

It's all okay with Mitt, even though he’s been upstaged by a sportscaster turned one-term governor.

BLOOMINGTON, MN — It can’t be easy being Mitt Romney nowadays. Imagine: you find your place in the Republican firmament, make a serious run at the GOP’s presidential nomination, earn frequent mention as a possible running mate for John McCain — and then watch as McCain picks an obscure, untested, deeply flawed hockey-mom-cum-Alaska-secessionist for the job.

Maybe, deep down inside, our former Massachusetts governor rages at the injustice of it all. But rather than retreating to Belmont to lick his wounds, Romney is here in Minnesota for the Republican National Convention, doing his darndest to get McCain and Sarah Palin elected in November. Speaking to the Massachusetts GOP delegation over brunch on Tuesday, Romney offered some insight into how he does it.

“When you lose an election, lose the nomination, if you think the election is just about the person — one person — then of course you have sour grapes,” Romney said. “You don’t get involved with the new person. But if you believe, as I do, that the election is about a series of beliefs and values you think are important — for your constituency, for your state, and for your nation — then when one person loses and the other person wins, who shares those values and those views, then you jump on that team and work just as hard as you did the first time.”

Bless his heart, Romney seems to be doing just that. There was no sense at Tuesday’s exhortatory breakfast that Mitt was going through the motions. He was earnest, animated, alternately humorous and heartfelt. Take, for example, this little joke, which was delivered with characteristic Romney aplomb.

“The story is, John McCain and Barack Obama, the race’ll be so close that neither the voters nor the Electoral College will be able to decide it. So it’ll be determined — the next president — based upon an ice-fishing contest in Minnesota, right here! And the person that catches the most fish over four days wins.

“They separate them on different lakes. On day one, John McCain comes in; he’s got 10 fish, Barack Obama’s got none. Day two, John McCain has 20 fish, Barack Obama has none. Day three, [Senate majority leader] Harry Reid goes to Barack Obama and says, ‘It’s clear John McCain is cheating; go spy on him and find out how he’s winning!’ So Barack Obama goes and watches John McCain, and he comes back to Harry Reid and says, ‘You won’t believe what John McCain is doing. He’s cutting a hole in the ice!’ ”

Yes, but why?

IAN SANDS — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:07:16 GMT

Bumpkin Island puzzler
Isolation was part of the challenge.

DOWN TO EARTHY: The Camofleurs combined natural disguises with, they claimed, bird nesting practices.

“I am curating for the event! Would anyone switch with me?”

That was the plea from a woman who, for safety reasons this past Sunday, was asked to give up her space on the boat taking us to the Art Encampment on Bumpkin Island. We were aboard an inter-island shuttle, commissioned to relay mainland passengers from George’s Island to Bumpkin. It was not the most convenient of locations for an art event.

Then again, isolation was part of the challenge. Ten teams of artists effectively marooned themselves on the Boston Harbor island from Thursday, August 28, through Monday, September 1, with only whatever art and survival supplies they could carry with them. Their mission in exile was to create “site-specific” performances or installations.

In Erik Conrad’s case, the remote site forced him to mine unexplored artistic territory. Conrad, wearing a suit as he manned his Tactilist Theater booth, explained that on the mainland he works with computers. But inside his tent he’d assembled a vast collection of local flora, fauna, and natural artifacts, scattered purposefully around the interior. He escorted me through his installation with my eyes closed, running my hands over the stuff. It was the sort of thing you’d find at any number of children’s museums, but way cooler, I decided, because he had put it all together from scratch.

Not long after, I ran into the Camoufleurs, a troop of artists wandering around the island in “earth outfits” made from scavenged local materials, including feathers and berries. According to a guide pamphlet I’d received, their work combined “military concealment strategies” used during World War II with “bird nesting practices.” To what end, I wasn’t sure, so I ventured to talk to these strange folks. “Why are you dressed that way?” I asked. “Why are you dressed that way?” came the rejoinder from a man with stalks of sweet grass rising from his shoulders. Fair enough, I resigned myself to concede, and didn’t push the issue.

Next I ducked into an installation called the Honorable Bumpkin Island Company, which was closed for lunch. I snooped around the makeshift structure and found an assortment of goods to be bartered: Hershey bars, canned soups, Ramen noodles. On the wall I spied a copy of the Saturday edition of the handwritten island newspaper, the Bum-kin Islander. Stories included a weather report, an alert to a bike heist, and a news item concerning a fruit-cocktail shortage.

They do like Mondays

JASON O'BRYAN — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:57:49 GMT

ESPN defends its AstroTurf
Monday is a hard sell.

Road worriers

MICHAEL BRODEUR — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:44:57 GMT

Obscene gas prices, stolen equipment, broken vans, no sleep -- so why do bands still go on tour?
Right around this time 10 years ago, our van died in the desert plains of Arizona on some godless stretch of I-8.

Pretty & Nice: a tour diary: On the road from Oregon to Boston with New England's newest Sub Pop signees.

Tour story
Right around this time 10 years ago, our van died in the desert plains of Arizona on some godless stretch of I-8. After a long wait and a longer tow (during which I rode shotgun while the rest of the band hunkered down in the van, tilted at a 45-degree angle), we finally reached a lonely garage. There, we were given a list of our beloved Big Blue’s extensive transmission problems. In her stead, while mechanics tried to save her, we were offered a smallish egg-shaped minivan rental with which to complete the West Coast leg of our month-long tour. Desperate, late for San Diego, long since broke, and teetering on the edge of multiple forms of meltdown, we took it.

We discovered that three of us could squeeze into the front (with one straddling the gearshift), and that, with the rear seats popped out, all of our equipment could be Tetris-ed into a seamless black mass of amps and cases. In the very rear corner was a tiny cubby of empty space, where the remaining two band members could hug their knees, make like luggage, think of England, and enjoy whatever was piping through the back left speaker — of course, no one up front would hear their protests if they didn’t.

Clinton women for Palin? No way

MARY ANN SORRENTINO — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:23:04 GMT

Gender politics
Memo to John McCain: We may be angry, but we haven’t gone completely mad.

Heightened anxiety

MATT TAIBBI — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:56:46 GMT

Sports blotter: "Attack of the seven-foot tall driver" edition
Look, it’s not easy being seven feet tall.

TALL TALE: Seven-foot high-school hoops star Anthony DiLoreto was the alleged getaway driver in a hare-brained bank robbery.

Short on brains
Look, it’s not easy being seven feet tall. If you are seven feet tall, there’s only one socially acceptable thing you can do with your life: play basketball. Creative thinkers might scheme their way into careers in pro wrestling, action movies about Vikings, or porn, but basically it’s basketball or nothing.

One career the seven footer should absolutely not consider, however, is bank robbery. The thing about bank robbery is that it’s usually done under the cover of darkness, or via a tunnel, or in daylight while masked (the mask being worn to protect one’s identity).

And here’s the thing about identity: ordinary-size people can protect theirs just by wearing masks, since there are a great many ordinary-size people (hence the term “ordinary”). But if you’re seven feet tall, a mask doesn’t help you that much. Because the police already have a lot of information when the witness begins his statement by saying, “Well, he was seven feet tall. . .”

That brings us to the story of Anthony DiLoreto, a seven-foot-tall high-school basketball star from Minnetonka, Minnesota, who was due to play for Cal Poly next year. On August 16, he and a 16-year-old accomplice allegedly attempted to rob the Bremer Bank in Danbury, Wisconsin. Police say DiLoreto was driving the getaway car, but got confused when he didn’t see his buddy come out. So he went into the bank and spoke with an employee about opening a student account. He took off after this, stopping for gas — for which he didn’t pay — before returning to the scene of the crime. When he heard sirens nearby, police say, DiLoreto got cold feet and headed home for good.

His partner, meanwhile, had allegedly done the deed, getting away with about $1000. Not seeing his ride, he fled the robbery on foot, and was eventually apprehended by police, apparently trying to walk the 100 or so miles back to the Twin Cities. The kid admitted to the crime, and told authorities he had been with DiLoreto. Police found our hero at home a few hours later.

DiLoreto was charged with being a party to an armed robbery and being in possession of a short-barreled shotgun. Cal Poly seemed willing to let him enroll as planned, but for now the youngster has put off his college career to focus on his legal troubles.

Dawg days

STEVEN STARK — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:58:44 GMT

The 2008 campaign is turning out to be our first-ever American Idol election
Despite gains by blogs, podcasts, and social-networking Web sites, television is still our dominant mass medium.

Despite gains by blogs, podcasts, and social-networking Web sites, television is still our dominant mass medium — the entertainment source that most often sets the trends for everything else in our culture. What proves popular on its airwaves more than likely will play in Peoria — and everywhere else.

Thus, given the popularity of reality shows, it is no surprise that, in 2008, the nation is being treated to an American Idol election. The search for undiscovered electoral talent has led the Democratic Party to nominate Barack Obama, its least-experienced candidate in memory. And this past week, the Republicans trumped that exponentially by elevating Sarah Palin from the relative depths of political obscurity to the nation’s center stage.

Though the show has well-known British origins, there’s something very American about the Idol concept, as anyone who has ever come across a Horatio Alger story or watched one of the 35 Rocky movies can tell you. But until now, the Idol blueprint had extended only to other TV programs — it hadn’t entered our more hallowed political realm. (Frankly, I’m amazed it’s taken this long. Our politicians have always pretended to be more humble than they are, as anyone familiar with the career of corporate lawyer, a/k/a rail-splitter, Abe Lincoln knows.)

Today, politics are deemed above the pop-culture fray by the Sunday-morning talk-show set, but, for the rest of the country, they’ve been a branch of entertainment for years. Remember that, going back to the 1800s, politics was our national sport, with large cheering rallies, parades, and voting taking place in saloons.

Having television dictate our political trends is only an extension of that tradition, and it, too, is actually nothing new. The 1960 debates, right down to their format, were a direct rip-off of the quiz shows that had mesmerized the nation in the 1950s. It’s an odd concept that we should select a president based on an evaluation of who can stand behind a podium, in front of the cameras, and best answer questions. (That is, unless you’re so addicted to game shows that you can’t conceive of a better format.)

The only deviation we’ve really had in the configuration of those debates came courtesy of Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey, who popularized the idea in the ’80s that those in the studio audience, not the guests, were the real stars. So now in each election cycle we get one debate in which the audience gets to ask the questions and get some face time of their own.

Ask me anything

CAITLIN E. CURRAN — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:50:30 GMT

A free instant answer to any question is just a text away. But what do ChaCha’s guides have that , say, librarians don’t?
It used to be that, if you had a burning question, you had to a) ask your mom; b) consult a Magic 8 Ball; or c) trek to the top of a mountain to seek out a sagacious, all-knowing guru.

It used to be that, if you had a burning question (depending on the degree of difficulty), you had to a) ask your mom; b) consult a Magic 8 Ball; or c) trek to the top of a mountain to seek out a sagacious, all-knowing guru. Now all you have to do is search the Interwebs.

But while most knowledge seekers turn to Google and other search engines, newer sites like Yahoo Answers utilize an approach that’s so archaic, it’s practically Luddite: they employ actual people to answer your questions, via wiki-style community contribution. ChaCha, a new company that launched this past January, is taking that idea one step further, by having employees (ChaCha calls them “guides”) personally research your questions online, and text message you an answer. It’s like having a smart cabana boy. And it’s free.

Here’s how it works: anyone in the US with a cell phone can send a text message to 242-242 (“ChaCha,” get it?), asking any question: will it rain today? What’s in hummus? When will Guns N’ Roses release Chinese Democracy? Within about 10 minutes, a guide should text back the answer. (Probably. Mainly chickpeas, tahini, and olive oil. Maybe never.)

“Most services out there just take what’s on the Web and refit it for a text message,” says Susan Marshall, vice-president of marketing for ChaCha, on the phone from their Indiana headquarters, in reference to similar, but automated, question-answering services, such as Google SMS. Hence the often frustrating and irrelevant answers Google SMS can return — like wrong places or “no results” — when all you want is the name of that damn pizza place on Brighton Avenue. “People want simple answers to questions, and with the guides, we’re able to give them that.”

Marshall says ChaCha currently employs approximately 15,000 guides, who field millions of calls each month — about 500 answer questions each hour. Typically, a guide earns 20 cents per text-message answer, though ChaCha seems to be in a constant state of re-valuating its payment system and its guide-training process, and restructuring its Web site. The whole operation is funded by advertising sponsors (whose one-line ads appear at the bottom of some of Cha Cha’s texts) covetous of an aggressive text-messaging demo.

I texted ChaCha on a Thursday afternoon. “What’s the best strategy for kickball?” I queried, smart-assedly. Moments later, my phone buzzed to life with a text reply: “Surprisingly, it’s best to kick low toward third base, as outfielders will catch most harder kicks.” It was almost like texting with a very wise friend — except that my friends don’t usually send advertisements for Coke Zero with their messages.

The enthusiasm gap

DAVID S. BERNSTEIN — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:53:53 GMT

This election, with Obama having stoked pennant fever in Denver, it is the Dems who have cornered the excitement market
The selection of gun-shooting, anti-abortion, creationist, doctrinaire conservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee has finally got the GOP’s conservative base excited.

The selection of gun-shooting, anti-abortion, creationist, doctrinaire conservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee has finally got the GOP’s conservative base excited. The right-wing talk-show hosts and religious leaders who had been lukewarm over McCain — and fearful that he really might put Senator Joe Lieberman on the ticket — are beside themselves with glee.

Once again, as in 2000 and 2004, the Republican base will get fired up for November. Conservative religious groups will distribute fliers about abortion, homosexuals, and atheism. Evangelical churches will run busses to the polling places. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will warn, hour after hour, of the impending socialistic state of Barack Obama, and the inevitable nuclear attack on American soil.

Palin is part of McCain’s attempt to reclaim the Republican advantage in party-base enthusiasm, an edge which arguably won the past two presidential elections for the GOP. This year, that advantage was seen as heavily favoring the Democrats.

But not only has McCain started to energize his conservatives, fervor was also waning in recent weeks among Democrats, due to in-fighting, uncertainty, and tightening poll numbers — to the point that Democrats arriving in Denver this past week for their national convention seemed surprisingly nervous about the election, and noticeably cautious in their enthusiasm.

Like Red Sox fans in the 86 years of darkness, Democratic insiders bear the scars of past broken hearts, from times when they previously let themselves believe that their time had come — only to see victory elude them like a ground ball between the legs of Al Gore and John Kerry.

To mix Red Sox metaphors, it is as though they have come to expect that Karl Rove lurks in the batter’s box like Bucky Dent, always ready to drive one over the Green Monster and beat them in the end.

Obama needs his base — the delegates and party activists in Denver — to believe again that this is, really, the year his party’s dreams will come to fruition. He needs them to believe, so that they will be passionate speakers on his behalf back in their home states; so that they will fill his coffers with money; so that they will spend endless hours registering voters, making phone calls, and doing all the grunt work of the national campaign — in short, so that the enthusiasm gap this time works in the Democrats’ favor.

Palin: The plain truth

EDITORIAL — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:37:36 GMT

Don’t be fooled by the Tina Fey styling, McCain’s vice-presidential pick is a menace
In selecting Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate, Republican nominee John McCain pulled a Clarence Thomas.

More coverage from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions

In selecting Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate, Republican nominee John McCain pulled a Clarence Thomas.

Today, Thomas is a headline name, a 17-year veteran of the US Supreme Court. But when he was nominated, Thomas was a relatively unknown, relatively inexperienced Republican legal bureaucrat.

Thomas had two things going for him: he was a hard-core right-winger, and he was African-American.

For the president — then George H.W. Bush — to name an African-American to the nation’s highest court required a certain sort of brass.

During the four years Bush held that office, and the eight preceding years when Ronald Reagan reigned, the well-being of black America was a low political priority, to the extent that it was at all a concern.

Thomas’s racial heritage provided a perverse sugarcoating for the bitter pill of his radical right-wing views. And it worked.

Now comes Sarah Palin, an articulate, untested radical right-winger. (The Phoenix went to press before Palin’s Wednesday-night convention address. For coverage of that and the rest of Republican National Convention, go to thePhoenix.com/election2008.)

Until 72-year-old McCain plucked 44-year-old Palin from the comfort of her frontier obscurity, she had served six years as the mayor of Wasilla, a town of about 6715.

Palin followed that star turn by winning the governorship of Alaska, the nation’s largest, least-densely-populated state, which is more of a wilderness preserve controlled by the energy industry than it is a functioning polity.

When she wasn’t busy wrestling bears or catching salmon with her bare teeth, Palin coached high-school basketball and ran the family taxi service to hockey practice. Along the way, she battled political cronyism and government corruption.

Clearly, Palin is the stuff of legend. It is a wonder that the Republicans are waiting for the election. Why not bundle her off to Russia today to set straight that nasty, trigger-happy strongman Vladimir Putin?

Palin has clearly stirred the passions of Republican conventioneers. Their enthusiasm is unrestrained. Anyone watching the St. Paul convention on television might think it was an over-caffeinated meeting of the American Association of Retired People. By the time McCain takes the podium, the frenzy will be stronger than Hurricane Gustav. B-12 shots all around!

I am I said

RANDI HOPKINS — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:33:01 GMT

‘Empire and Its Discontents’ and more at Tufts; ‘Re-View’ and visiting faculty at Harvard; GASP’s Fourth Anniversary
Tufts University Art Gallery presents “Empire And Its Discontents,” which opens September 15 with work by 11 artists tied to previously colonized regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

Saira Wasim, Demockery

“Empire and Its Discontents,” "Do-Ho Suh: Paratrooper Ii,” and “Contrapuntal Lines” at Tufts University Art Gallery, 40R Talbot Ave, Medford | September 11–November 23 | 617.627.3518

“Re-View” at Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 485 Broadway, Cambridge | Opens September 13 | 617.495.9400

“Visiting Faculty Show” at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge | September 15–October 23 | 617.495.3251

“The Tongue Of Shadows” at GASP, 362 Boylston St, Brookline | September 12–October 18 | 617.418.4308

This is the 30th anniversary of Edward Said’s influential book Orientalism, in which the post-colonial theorist, literary scholar, and political activist described and criticized persistent Eurocentric prejudice underlying Western attitudes toward the Arab-Islamic world. In commemoration of Said’s work, Tufts University Art Gallery presents “EMPIRE AND ITS DISCONTENTS,” which opens September 15 with work by 11 artists tied to previously colonized regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s “pop-up” sculptures of the current political landscape offer a satirical look at globalization, capitalism, and democracy; Saira Wasim uses techniques of Mughal miniature painting to depict contemporary world politics, bringing in such recognizable figures as Condoleezza Rice and Ronald McDonald. Also opening September 15 at Tufts: Korean-born Do-Ho Suh explores individual identity in an increasingly global society in the looming installation “DO-HO SUH: PARATROOPER II,” and “CONTRAPUNTAL LINES: RANIA MATAR AND BUTHINA ABU MILHELM” brings together work by a Boston-based Lebanese photographer and an Arab-Israeli sculptor, both looking at ordinary life as lived under extraordinary circumstances.

With Harvard’s Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museums closed for major renovation (until 2013!), the nearby Arthur M. Sackler Museum steps in to host “RE-VIEW,” which, opening September 13, features works from all three museums shown together for the first time. Aiming to display major and familiar works as well as some surprises, “Re-View” includes European and American art since 1900, Asian and Islamic art from 5000 BC to the present, and work in all media, mainly in the Western tradition, from antiquity to the late 19th century.

Meanwhile, Harvard’s Carpenter Center continues to present changing contemporary exhibitions. Opening September 15, the “VISITING FACULTY SHOW” boasts work by an impressive new crew: Sanford Biggers, Taylor Davis, Greg Halpern, David Lobser, and Catherine Lord.

GASP, the experimental venue on Route 9 that is slowly but surely taking up more and more of its block, celebrates its fourth anniversary with “THE TONGUE OF SHADOWS,” which opens September 12. Curated by Gilles Daigneault, the show includes installation-based work by Quebec artists Catherine Bolduc, Danielle Sauve, and Louise Viger that’s described as sharing an interest in “those strange doubles of life that are shadows.”