If you're sending a guy (or gal) 10,000 miles away from home to fight a war most of America has unfortunately stopped paying attention to, the least you can do is get him (or her) into a couple museums for free, right? That's the thought behind the National Endowment for the Arts' "Blue Star Museums" program, which will give active duty service members and their families free admission to some 700 museums the entire summer. The initiative kicks off this weekend, so if you're checking out your local art museum, expect to see a lot of camo.
The
Blue Star Museums program starts Sunday, May 30.
Jack Johnson has long been a surf dude without attitude and his fifth studio album
To the Sea brings the same environmentally-friendly lyrics, acoustic guitar tunes, and ukulele-strumming fans have come to expect from the Hawaiian singer-songwriter. His latest effort though is more than just beach bumming music about crashing waves—it pays tribute to his father Jeff, a longtime surfer who introduced the musician to the joys of the ocean and who passed away nearly a year ago. While there’s a tinge of sadness in “Only the Ocean” and “When I Look Up,” there are plenty of toe-tapping tracks like “From the Clouds” and a surprisingly soulful “Red Wine, Mistakes, Mythology.” It’s a refreshing mantra from a man who seemed to know nothing more than maritime life and T-shirt and jeans attire.
Jack Johnson’s
To the Sea hits stores on Tuesday, June 1
You wouldn't think it, given that the only related topic anyone wants to talk about is free agent LeBron James and where he's going next year, but: Basketball is still happening! The finals are this week, and it's the L.A. Lakers versus the Boston Celtics, again, just like in 2008. Possible storylines: Will Kobe pull it out for his fifth championship ring? Can the Celtics repeat their 2008 upset? Is this the series where Rajon Rondo becomes a star?
The NBA Finals start Tuesday, June 3 at 9 p.m.
Writing a fiction book about bond traders and securities salesmen is not automatically a fascinating enterprise. In fact, it seems pretty boring at first. You know what would make it a lot more interesting? If the entire global economy collapsed while you were researching your novel. That's what happened to Martha McPhee, whose
Dear Money concerns a middle-aged woman who, Pygmalion-like, turns from novel-writing to bond-trading, becoming a "master of the universe" of the kind that contributed to the 2008 economic meltdown. McPhee's "luck" at finding the most important story in the world just at the right time unfortunately coincided with pretty severe tragedy. But if
Dear Money is half as good as her other books, at least
something good will have come out of the worst recession in almost a century.
Dear Money will be available in bookstores on Tuesday, June 1.
American Idol may have crowned their latest winner in Lee DeWyze, but
according to a recent Billboard.com poll, 9-year-old David Archuleta remains the best
Idol ever in fans’ eyes, despite the fact that he was actually the runner-up during the 2008 season. Still, two years after his near-win, one of
Idol’s youngest contestants ever is still capturing hearts. With his upcoming autobiography,
Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song and the Power of Perseverance, Archuleta sheds some light on the vocal paralysis that nearly ruined his career and may even write about his “stage dad” Jeff, who garnered some negative attention while young Archie was competing on the series’ seventh season. “People do memoirs later in life, but
I’ve had experiences. I wasn’t born yesterday,” the singer (who was born in 1990) told The Salt Lake Tribune. “The reason that I wrote it was to hopefully help someone in some way. I want to be useful in life.”
David Archuleta’s
Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song and the Power of Perseverance will be released on Tuesday, June 1
Do you remember grunge? It was a "thing" in the ‘90s. People wore a lot of flannel. Well: These guys invented it. Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover started a hardcore band in the early ‘80s, but found that they smoked too much pot and made too many jokes to fit in with that crowd. So they moved on to something new: Heavy, sludgy stoner rock—think Black Sabbath—with a weird experimental edge. Three decades later, they're releasing their 18th album, and even if it's not quite as insane and revelatory as it sounded in high school, it's still worth hearing.
The Melvins' The Bride Screamed Murder will be available Tuesday, June 1.
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is, yes, another edition in Stephenie Meyer's literally unbelievably popular
Twilight saga. You know: The vampire books.
Bree Tanner is sort of a
Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead But Are Also Vampires: It takes place concurrently with the major books in the "saga" but focuses on a minor character—the newly-turned vampire Bree Turner. You may ask yourself, "Does the world need another novel in the
Twilight saga?" But the real question is: "Does the world need another novel that isn't in the
Twilight saga?"
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner will be released Tuesday, June 1.
In 2007, the old people who run the Library of Congress decided that there are just too few situations where aging boomer musicians receive various honors and awards. So, in their infinite bibliocentric wisdom, they nominated themselves to select one great song-and-dance man per year, and force the president to give that person a "Gershwin Prize.” Paul Simon got one, and then Stevie Wonder got one, and now Wings frontman Paul McCartney will get one. He might even keep it! If he can find room on his shelf near the gold records and the Grammys and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame paperweight and whatever it is they give you when you become a knight (a sword?).
McCartney will receive his prize from President Obama at the White House on Wednesday, June 2.
Artist Justin Lowe has been given free reign to recreate the bathroom from the fabled defunct punk club CBGB inside the Connecticut fine art venue Wadsworth Atheneum. Leaving aside the fact that the reification of CBGB—and the outcry over its demise—was even less punk than the space's resurrection as a John Varvatos store, this is a pretty funny and awesome project, partly because the CBGB bathroom was probably as legendary as the club itself. Lowe, whose projects tend to revolve around transforming spaces with wall collages, will make the Wadsworth a commode for three months, at which point the bathroom will disappear into punk legend.
Lowe's installation, "
Black Acid Co-op," opens Thursday, June 3.
Though you may not be bikini—or Speedo—ready just yet, designers are bringing their resort collections to New York this week. Although Chanel showed off its resort collection in Saint-Tropez last week and Christian Dior did the same in Shanghai, Yves Saint Laurent is bringing its cruise collection to New York’s Consulate General of France and a bevy of designers will follow. Michael Kors also shows off his resort gear on Thursday when YSL shows off theirs and the following day Jason Wu and Donna Karan show their lines for the in-between season as well. As we enter the first full week of summer and white is officially once again allowed, it’s the perfect time to see what you should be bringing on your warm weather getaway this year—that is, besides sunscreen and that swimwear you’re not too eager to wiggle into again.
YSL and Michael Kors kick off the resort collection season with their presentations on Thursday, June 3, followed by Jason Wu and Donna Karan on Friday, June 4.
After a highly lauded 16-week engagement, the play that brought Christopher Walken a Best Actor Tony nomination is ending its run this week.
A Behanding in Spokane, Academy Award-winner Martin McDonagh’s first American-based play, opened to rave reviews in March and Walken and the rest of the star-studded cast continued to fill seats. The actor plays Carmichael, a family man who has been searching for his missing left hand for nearly 50 years. With
The Hurt Locker’s Anthony Mackie and
Revolutionary Road’s Zoe Kazan as a con-artist couple with a hand to sell and Sam Rockwell as an incredibly curious hotel manager where the swindlers meet Carmichael, the dark comedy isn’t lacking A-list performances. Nevertheless, it’s Walken who garners the audience’s attention most as “a scrofulous wonder to behold,” wrote
The New York Times. And he was happy to be back on the stage. “I've been around Broadway my whole life,” Walken recently told CBS’
The Early Show. “For this to happen at this time in my career is
wonderful.”
A Behanding in Spokane ends its run on Sunday, June 6 at New York’s Schoenfeld Theater on Broadway
