CULTURE TO CONSUME
Listen to this: Samantha Ronson, “Pull My Hair Out”
The venerable clique flick “Mean Girls” is hitting Vh1 at 7:30 p.m Saturday at. So that’s one reason to stay in. Why would you want to go out anyway? To have an awesome time and drink awesome shooters, listen to awesome music and then just sit around and soak up each others’ awesomeness? Forget it. Youtube exists, and we want you to find Sammy Ronson’s music on it.
That’s right — A&E isn’t just suggesting that you tune into “Mean Girls.” We’re suggesting that you devote the whole day to American hero Lindsay Lohan. Watch “The Parent Trap” and “I Know Who Killed Me.” And shoot, we’d be straight-up remiss to skip over this sexalicious confidence-boosting jam by LiLo’s ex-girlfriend Samantha Ronson. (She just has a lot of feelings.) While you’re at it, cruise through her brother Mark Ronson’s tunes.
Watch this: Jon Stewart’s post-9/11 speech
Most of us were quite young back in 2001, but we still have vivid memories of 9/11. Many entertainers made forlorn, dry-mouthed comments in that solemn and scary aftermath, but Jon Stewart’s speech when “The Daily Show” got back on the air is the one we keep coming back to.
The view from Stewart’s apartment in 2001 was the World Trade Center. “They attacked it,” he said. “This symbol of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce, and it’s gone.”
Stewart cuts his grief with astounding optimism throughout the nine-minute talk, which you can find on the Comedy Central website. “But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty,” he said. “The view from the south of Manhattan is the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that.”
Read this: “A Fashion Week Miscellany” by Ben Schott
If “Project Runway“ taught us one thing, it’s that the fashion world is fickle — you’re either in or you’re out. Or, you live in Minnesota, and your city’s fashion week, while quietly blossoming, still has model-slim chances of making it into the big four: New York, London, Paris and Milan.
For those of us who aren’t in with the in-crowd (and who don’t spend a full eight days glued to our computer screens, flipping through runway slideshows), Ben Schott wrote a graceful primer for the New York Times on the basics of Fashion Week, from its particular vocabularies and etiquette to the practical challenge of setting up 300 shows in a major metropolis.
TONIGHT
The Expletive Poster Show: Ugly Words to Admire
7-10 p.m.
Light Grey Art Lab
118 E. 26th St., Suite 101., Minneapolis
Graphic design is a tough field, and sometimes typographists and illustrators just have to let it all out. Tonight, they’ll be turning the air blue at the Light Grey Art Lab. The designers behind the show were commanded to pick their favorite nasty word or phrase and riff on it artistically. Their four-letter word posters will be on display at “The Expletive Poster Show: Ugly Words to Admire.”
If you show up in an article of clothing that matches the theme of the show, you’ll win a custom print. Start sketching out plans now. And start blushing too — curse word on the street is that this show is R-rated.
FRIDAY
Uptown Theatre reopens
2906 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis
It’s with a dull, aching pain that we eulogize AMC Block E 15. Yup, the downtown movie theater is shutting off its projectors for good. Say goodbye to the sticky floors, the escalators and the feeling of being one of only four people in attendance for a screening of “The Vow.”
But you know what they say: When God closes a door, another movie theater reopens with a full bar. This weekend, the Uptown Theatre will open with the proud swagger that can only come from shellin’ out a big two mill and hooking up with bigger screens and balcony seating. Will the new theater be able to fill the Block E-sized holes in our hearts? Probably.
SATURDAY
David Byrne and St. Vincent
State Theatre
$39-79
8 p.m.
Culture vultures’ eyes lit up when they heard that David Byrne’s staccato energy would collide with St. Vincent’s mystical modernism for a new collab. The Minneapolitans among the starry-eyed really tweaked when it was announced that the “Love This Giant” tour would kick off in Minneapolis.
In a Pitchfork interview, St. Vincent, real name Annie Clark, described her chemistry with the Talking Heads legend thusly: “We both sometimes think of music in terms of riddle and form, like a puzzle to be figured out in terms of construction.”
They’re both alien-like in their creativity, musicians who seem to think on a different plane from their counterparts. And Byrne’s been blogging about movement rehearsals, so we’re dying to find out how weird they’re going to get.
