When The Dissolve invited me to review a film outside of my wheelhouse, I Winged it.

No one asked the chicken how he feels about all this.

With this review of The Great Chicken Wing Hunt, I am honored to begin contributing to The Dissolve, the best movie site on the Internet. I'm not even that much of a bar-food type or any kind of a foodie. My wheelhouse is broader than a dame, a moll, and a skirt all standing three abreast, is all. Seriously. It costs a fortune to heat this place.

Documentaries Documented

View fullsize

Jessica Oreck's Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys is beautifully photographed and almost wordless.

In this week's Village Voice, I review the documentaries Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America, Life Is Strange, and Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys. That last one, which is about reindeer herders in Finnish Lapland, probably sounds like the hardest sell subject-wise but it's the best of the trio by a good margin.

Diamond Dawgs: Bang the Drum Slowly, reviewed.

Evan Crump as Author  Richie Montgomery as Bruce in Bang the Drum Slowly. (Johannes Markus) 

I've never been a big sports fan, but I'm weirdly susceptible to baseball stories. I found American Century Theatre's stage adaptation of Mark Harris' 1956 baseball novel Bang the Drum Slowly to be an anachronistic pleasure. My review is in today's Washington City Paper.

Quiet Act: Synetic's Twelfth Night and Forum's Meena's Dream, reviewed

"I have been and always shall be your... twin sibling." Alex Mills as Sebastian and Irina Tsikurishvili as Viola in Twelfth Night. (Koko Lanham)

My reviews of Synetic Theatre's silent, early-cinema-and-Jazz Age-inflected Twelfth Night and Anu Yadav's solo show Meena's Dream are in today's Washington City Paper.

Painted by Association: The Old Masters, reviewed.

The Adoration of the Shepherds, now attributed to the Renaissance master Giorgione, hangs in the National Gallery of Art.

The authorship of this painting is the ostensible subject of The Old Masters, one of Simon Gray's final plays. My review of Washington Stage Guild's production is in today's Washington City Paper.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Silly Questions Live, For Special Guests

Three weeks later, my souvenir pint glasses remain fully intact.

I have a little unplanned cameo at the end of the episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour that posted today, the second of a two-parter recorded at the PCHH live show at NPR HQ on Dec. 10, 2013. That was the day my Slate story about the paucity of new songs in the yuletide canon posted, and the show was only a few hours after I'd been down the street at CNN taping a segment about that piece for The Lead with Jake Tapper. Someone in the audience asked for recommendations of new Christmas songs, and host Linda Holmes was kind enough to invite me up to suggest a few.

As I had been at the first PCHH live show a year earlier, at the old NPR bulding that's since been torn down, I was fighting a cold on this evening. I hope I didn't pass it on to you if we happened to shake hands. I did warn everyone who so much as made eye contact with me to wash their hands immediately. It's how I convey warmth and sincerity, you guys.

You can hear the episode here. Happy New Year.

I loves you, Porgy & Bess. Or The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess. Whatever.

Bess, Porgy. Porgy, Bess. Alicia Hall Moran and Nathaniel Stampley.

Yes, it's clearly an insult to DuBose Heyward, who wrote the novel Porgy, and to his wife Dorothy Heyward, with whom he collaborated on the script for a play derived from the novel, that the latest (2011) Broadway version is called The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess, as if the Heywards had nothing to do with the creation of an American classic. But I was still moved past the point of articulate expression by the show when its touring version stopped in Washington Christmas week, as my tongue-tied Washington City Paper review demonstrates.

Because I decided the most honest way to approach the piece -- which was assigned late, for a short run of a show opening on Christmas night, leaving me no time to prepare -- was to cop to the fact I'd never seen Porgy & Bess before, I left myself vulnerable to the accusation I lack the appropriate credentials to review it. That's a question I'll be addressing at length later this month.