Sex at the X

Erotic art on display at Gallery X

“Sex at the X” offers dozens of creative interpretations of the erotic. You can view the exhibition at Gallery X in downtown New Bedford and decide for yourself if it’s “art” or “smut.” The gallery is open Wednesdays through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and “Sex at the X” will run through March 1.

By Melanie Correia

The newest exhibition featured over at Gallery X in New Bedford, entitled “Sex at the X,” doesn’t leave much to the imagination. It does, however, raise a couple of questions. What classifies something as “erotic art” (such as those works featured at the X)? And what qualifies certain eroticisms as “art” at all? It is said that art is what the artist wants it to be. Would, then, any photo found on a soft-core porn site technically be art?

The $600 “art” piece “Brazilian in Worcester” by Matthew Tardif rests in the grey area between art and smut. Not to demean the work of the artist, but the angles and lighting used in this photo are very clever, but the focus is clearly on the young, barely clothed, squatting model whose pose and facial expression can be found on any postcard in Vegas.

In other paintings being exhibited, the use of the nude model is blatant. Linda Nochlin says in her 1971 article, “Why have there been no great women artists? ...Careful and prolonged study of the nude model was essential to the training of every young artist... Indeed, it was argued by defenders of traditional painting in the nineteenth century that there could be no great painting with clothed figures.” So while in today’s society the nude is considered erotic, it doesn’t necessarily take away from the meaning of the work.

Whether the model is completely naked or, in some cases, artfully covered, the “eros” behind the art is there. In an acrylic painting “Aphrodisiac,” the viewer is presented with a beautiful womanly body from the neck down, with a present in front of her genitalia. In another sculpture entitled “Chair” the viewer is presented with a small wooden chair on a pedestal with ropes tied around the legs. The chair’s seat is glass and underneath the glass, on the “floor” of the sculpture is a mirror.

Gallery X is a non-profit organization. It is located on William Street in downtown New Bedford and open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. “Sex at the X” will be exhibited until March 1. For further information about Gallery X, their services and events you can check out their website at www.galleryx.org.

Creative ways to show you care

By Megan Gauthier

It’s hard to say “I love you” on Valentine’s Day and prove that you are not just saying it because you feel obligated to in the spirit of the romantic muse St. Valentine. What made him so romantic? And can you live up to his name? (Unfortunately for you, you can’t.)

Legend has it that St. Valentine was a third century priest in Rome (during the reign of Emperor Claudius II). The emperor, interested in military endeavors, decided to outlaw marriage for young men, whom he believed were better fit to be soldiers than husbands. Priest Valentine thought this decision was unjust and secretly continued to perform wedding ceremonies for the young lovers of Rome.

It gets better.

Valentine was caught and Claudius sentenced him to death. While he was in prison, awaiting his death sentence, Claudius fell in love with his jailer’s daughter and began to send her love letters. The last letter he sent her before his execution was signed “From Your Valentine,” and the rest is history.

So, while you may not have the means to send your lover letters from a dank jail cell, there are a few other creative suggestions on ways to spend your Valentine’s Day outside of the jail cell of your dorm room.

Lazer Gate (Fall River): Nothing says “I love you” like a beam in the face! The very popular family entertainment center offers 8,500 square feet mazes through which to run, duck, jump and shoot. There are five different kinds of laser games, including “solo,” “team,” “soccer” and “base defense.” Games cost a measly $6 a person per game, or $11 a person for two games, which is certainly cheaper than taking your lover out for dinner and a movie…and certainly more fun! Lazer Gate is open from 3 to 10 p.m. on V-Day, and is about a 15 minute drive from campus. For more information and/or directions, visit www.lazergate.com.

Salem: If you didn’t make it to the spooky city for Halloween, why not give it a go on Valentine’s Day? Surprisingly enough, they have some pretty cool events going on, the first one being “18th and 19th Century Love Poems” at the Salem Regional Visitor’s Center. According to the website, on February 14, interpreters in period clothing will be “reading letters from and to men and women of all walks of life.” This event is free and open to the public from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Also in Salem on February 14, “Camera: Art & Craft: The 2008 Salem Arts Association Photography Show” runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. After dropping by both of these artistic venues, you’ll still have the whole evening to engage in the standard dinner date in downtown Salem! For more information on Salem events, visit http://www.salem.com/Pages/SalemMA_EventsCal.

Carabiner’s (New Bedford): Show your lover you would climb mountains for them (or at least fake ones) at this state of the art climbing gym! Why not sign up for the beginner package together? The package costs $34 per person and includes infromation courses like “intro to climbing,” “climbing technique,” “rules of the road,” and a day pass with equipment and belay. Signing up for this package also gives you a complimentary belay (probably both within AND outside of Carabiner’s, if your lover is pleased enough!). Carabiner’s will be open from 12 to 11 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, so put on your sweat pants and head to the gym, which is about 10 minutes from campus. For more information and/or directions, visit http://www.carabiners.com.

Eat: If you’re going to be traditional and boring about it, at least take your lover somewhere good! How about the Cheesecake Factory in Providence, RI? Or maybe Opus in Dartmouth? Candleworks in New Bedford is sure to set a romantic mood, as well. If you REALLY want to get your lover going, treat them to a night out at a strip club — the notorious King’s Inn is located right near campus. Classy? Not at all. Fun? You betcha!

Come on, people! We’re young and spirited, I’m sure you can think of SOMETHING cool to do. The moral of the story is that Valentine’s Day isn’t really about spending lots of money and smothering your significant other with affection.

St. Valentine himself wasn’t concerned with wining, dining and getting laid (after all, he was about to die!). If the holiday’s patron saint didn’t give a hoot about dinner, a movie and roses, why should you? Get out there and celebrate being alive with people you love!

This Valentine’s Day, throw out the lame card, ditch the chocolates and show your friends, family or lover that you love them by showing them a fun time.

THE BEER BARON

Harpoon Munich: A dark, dry and daring sort of drink

By Gary Albert

As the winter winds down, I’m going to be going over a few “non-standard” type beers, stuff that is a little different in taste than most people are used to but less in the typical flavor of the season.

My first selection of the next few weeks is Harpoon Munich Type Dark. It is the darkest of Boston’s Harpoon Brewery’s year-round brews and is in the style of a German Dunkel beer.

It pours with a thick brown head that settles to a nice thin one and in a very dark brown-red color. It smells of raisins and caramel malts and it also smells extremely smoky.

The taste accentuates the smoky smell very nicely. It has a sweet taste upfront, but a bitter earthy hop taste afterward that controls the taste and aftertaste, giving it a very dry aftertaste.

The toasted smokiness is pretty intense; this is a very hoppy beer. The mouthfeel is also thin and watery, completely contrary to what I would expect given the appearance. It has very strong carbonation, stronger than I would personally like in this style, but this also may have been brought on by the strong carbonation.

The dry taste gives a coffee like feel to it, even if it is just an undertone. Unfortunately, I would expect a sweeter, maltier taste from a beer trying to emulate a dunkel, and from Harpoon’s website, I should have anticipated this.

The smokiness of the malts is probably also attributing to my oversensitivity to the hops, because the hop taste is way too strong for a beer like this.

On the positive side, it is a very flavorful beer with a rather easy drinkability level. It is excellent for people who like dark beer, but don’t want the usual heaviness that comes with drinking it all night.

Harpoon Munich Type Dark has a 5.5% alcohol by volume, supporting the easy drinkability. I would personally like to try this directly from the brewery to see if it gives me a better opinion of it.

Appearance: 4.25/5

Smell: 4.25/5

Mouthfeel: 3/5

Drinkability: 4.25/5

Taste: 3.5/5

Overall 3.75/5

The appearance and smell are definite positives on this beer, but the weaker mouthfeel and taste detract from making this beer one of my favorites. I would still recommend it in place of your usual ale, but be warned on the intensity of the taste.

If you have a recommendation for a beer for me to review (anything goes), want to comment on or criticize my review, or just have questions regarding beer, send me an e-mail at UMDBeerBaron@gmail.com.

Oliver and Albanese entertain UMD

By Megan Gauthier

“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” Correspondent John Oliver brought a distinguished sense of humor to UMass Dartmouh on Saturday, February 9.
Co-Executive Producer for “The Daily Show,” Rory Albanese, leaves the audience in the throes of laughter with his UMD-inspired insults and four part plan to end the war in Iraq.

As the nearly 350 audience members flooded out from the auditorium after the John Oliver/Rory Albanese comedy performance “The British Are Coming...Again” on Saturday, February 9, the general consensus seemed to be that the two were hysterical. Recently, the duo, both spawning from the popular Comedy Central program “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” have been touring college campuses together.

Albanese, the opener for the show (which was sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs, comprised of the Frederick Douglass Unity House, the Women’s Resource Center and the Students, Activities, Involvements and Leadership office) is currently the co-executive producer for “The Daily Show.” Albanese has been involved with its production for over eight years. Before teaming up with Oliver, he went on Lewis Black’s (also hailing from Comedy Central) “Red White and Screwed” stand-up comedy tour.

Albanese was pure energy as he captured the audience with jokes about Dartmouth and the campus. He poked fun at Dartmouth Wasabi, Ring Road, The Torch and, of course, our concrete haven, quipping “I like your style, Joseph Stalin!”

His comedy was easy and fun without being aggressive. He engaged the audience through casual conversation, delivering lines such as “I learned why a lot of people in America are overweight. Yeah… turns out it’s the food they eat.”

Most of his commentary revolved around our culture and how ridiculous it is. He also offered a solution for the War in Iraq, which he had broken down into four phases. The first phase was to fly over them and drop Nintendos. His next phase was to drop fast food, so the children would be “lazy and fat, just like our kids!” After they became lazy and fat, he proposed that we should drop weed down for them so they would be even more lethargic. The end result, he said, was to convert Iraq into another USA.

One of the funniest bits of Albanese’s comedy was how he interacted with audience members, responding to their outbursts. In particular, he bonded with a male audience member who kept shouting about smoking weed. Albanese took the comments in stride, discussing anti-drug commercials which feature a little girl drowning in a swimming pool, followed by the seemingly unrelated message “Don’t do drugs.” He observed that those commercials are highly ineffective and decided that showing a clip of his comedy act with the audience member yelling out would be a better anti-drug commercial. “Don’t do drugs...or you’ll be THAT kid.”

By the time Albanese’s set was over, the audience was more than warmed up for John Oliver, correspondent and writer for “The Daily Show,” who entered the stage joking, “Please be prepared to hear things with a little more authority [because of his British accent]. This could have been your accent! If only you didn’t throw our tea into the ocean!” He went on to compare British people to Americans, noting “We are more elegantly destructive than you...we’re like Godzilla in a necktie.”

Next, he launched into a political discussion, asking who had voted in the Massachusetts primaries. Only a handful of students raised their hands. However, when he asked who had NOT voted in the primaries, even fewer students raised their hands. He laughed “See! This is the problem! You couldn’t even be bothered to vote on whether or not you had voted!”

Like Albanese, he also criticized our culture, high-lighting the Domino’s creation of an “Oreo pizza” as a patriotic symbol for our country. “Hoist that up a flagpole!” he suggested. “That is the biggest F.U. to terrorists because there is nothing they could do to us that we aren’t already doing to ourselves.”

His funniest segment of the night revolved around the pathetic state of Fox News. He argued that the news is so bad it’s hard to feel anything anymore because we are desensitized. He continued the mockery with a Bush speech set to Bette Midler’s tune “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings.”

He talked about the differences between Britain and America (they can’t own guns), the start of his career in comedy (which came about after a humiliating track meet in which he fell out of his shorts and realized his hopes of being an athlete had just been dashed) and the wonders of Wikipedia.

The most engaging part of the night came at the end, when Oliver and Albanese teamed up to do a Q&A session with the audience. Their responses were witty and hilarious. One audience member asserted that Oliver was his favorite correspondent on “The Daily Show” and Oliver went so far as to call one of the other correspondents from the show and leave him a voicemail of the audience member saying exactly that.

Questions ranged from “What is it like working with Jon Stewart?” to “Are you the voice of the Geico gecko?” to which Oliver replied “That is sonically racist! We all sound the same to you.”

The show ended on a perfect note after one audience member asked “What would be your ideal interview?” and another chimed in “…or woman?” and Albanese smartly replied “In both cases — it’s Barbara Walters!”

Afterwards, the duo had a meet and greet with the students, faculty and community members who attended the side-splitting event. “The British Are Coming…Again” is sure to go down as one of the best comedic performances UMass Dartmouth has ever hosted, and students will certainly be buzzing about it for weeks to come.

For more information on Rory Albanese, John Oliver or “The Daily Show” from which they hail, visit www.thedailyshow.com.

Enter the fantastical world around you

By Shara Sarnelli

Imagine both beautiful and hideous faeries, giant trolls, fantastical elves and angry goblins. Now, envision all of that and more in a whole other world located in the backyard.

“The Spiderwick Chronicles” by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi consists of five books with more on the way. The motion picture for Black and DiTerlizzi’s beloved fantasy adventure books will be released today, February 14. Before going to see this exciting film, learn about the books themselves and where the chronicles derived from.

This children’s book series uses a large font size that spans across no more than 200 pages, which are filled with intriguing illustrations that will trigger the imaginations of readers. Both the illustrations and the words will capture readers.

In the front of each book, there are two interesting letters. The first letter is written by author Holly Black who tells the tale of how her and Tony DiTerlizzi have been friends over the years, but never realized the importance of their bond, or perhaps how it would be tested, until they received a letter addressed to the both of them.

The letter they received was signed by the three Grace children, Mallory, Jared and Simon, who are the main characters of “The Spiderwick Chronicles.” In the letter, the siblings mention “real faeries” and a vague explanation that implies an encounter with such fantastical creatures.

Book I, “The Field Guide” is complete with 107 pages and was published in 2003. The chronicles begin with three children and their mother, recently divorced, moving into a new, yet literally old, house. The Spiderwick Estate, which belongs to their Great-Aunt Lucinda who has not been around for some time, is a mysteriously creepy house.

Twins Jared and Simon along with their older Sister Mallory Grace begin investigating the house because strange things begin to happen almost immediately. Jared Grace hears something scratching and scurrying along the insides of the walls. Simon, who is intrigued by animals, wants to find out if the odd noises are coming from a squirrel.

During their search for the source of the noise, the siblings find a dumbwaiter inside the wall. Jared rides the dumbwaiter up the wall, as they all are curious as to where it leads, to find himself in a secret room with no doors. Books align the walls of the antique-looking room. But the strangest part about this room is not the nonexistent doors, it is the book which Jared discovers.

“Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You” is full of information on faeries. Jared studies the book thoroughly and takes it with him around the decrepit, old mansion.

As the nights go on in the Spiderwick Estate, a series of odd events take place. Even though he is not responsible for any of it, Jared gets blamed for everything, as he has been fighting in school due to his inability to cope with his father leaving.

In the beginning of “The Seeing Stone,” Book II, Simon’s cat is missing, but Simon’s fate seems to be even more mysterious and dangerous at the moment. Jared sees Simon in the backyard wrestlng against the air and then being helplessly dragged away into the woods. Soon, a brownie named Thimbletack tells Jared about the Seeing Stone, which he needs to wear in order to see the goblins who captured his twin brother.

After joining forces with Mallory, the two search for their missing brother by exploring the woods that encircle the entire Spiderwick Estate. Because Jared is wearing the Seeing Stone, Mallory cannot see the fantastical creatures they encounter, but they are there. And they like to cause trouble.

Book III, “Lucinda’s Secret,” starts with the children visiting their Great-Aunt Lucinda who is currently in a mental asylum. She reveals important information about Arthur Spiderwick, whose fate is uncovered after the children run into a forest of elves.

Jared is held captive by the elves, but tricks them into agreeing to capture his brother Simon instead. Jared is freed, but now there is more work on their hands.

Mallory disappears close to the start of Book IV, “The Ironwood Tree.” The children run into a pack of dwarves and their mechanical dog along with Mulgarath. Mulgarath is a repulsive ogre who desires to obtain the “Field Guide” from Jared Grace. Because the dwarves do not get the book for Mulgarath, he kills them one by one.

“The Wrath of Mulgarath” is the fifth book of “The Spiderwick Chronicles.”

Jared, Simon and Mallory must defeat Mulgarath and his army of goblns. Find out the fate of the Grace children by reading the books and seeing the motion picture.

Love is on display on Valentine’s Day

AHA Night Photography Exhibit

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The Equality Coaltion of the South Coast invites area residents for an evening of love on display through the photography exhibit, “Families of the South Coast: Portraits of Diversity,” which will be open to the public during the February 14 AHA! Night.

The exhibit will be on display in New Bedford’s Bristol Building, next to the Green Bean Café at the corner of Union and Purchase streets, from 5 to 9 p.m. on Valentine’s Day. The event is free of charge and all are welcome, including children. Nonalcoholic refreshments and desserts will be provided.

“Families of the South Coast: Portraits of Diversity” includes 8” x 10” color photographs of area gay and non-gay families of different racial, cultural and generational backgrounds, which are simply matted. Groups of four matted photographs are mounted on display boards and exhibited on five-foot tall easels. Each photograph has a statement by the family, including the number of years couples have been together and their definition of “family.”

“I am offended by the way that the word ‘family’ has been hijacked and perverted by the ‘family values’ crowd as a codeword for a hate and intolerance message, so it’s wonderful to have a corrective,” said New Bedford resident Ruth Smiler after seeing the exhibit. “Your gentle, non-confrontational, visual way to counter this was perfect!”

The Equality Coalition believes that this exhibit visually demonstrates the similarities of all families, regardless of sexual orientation. The exhibit has been on display at different venues over the past nine months, and has been widely admired by all who have seen it. The exhibit is a tool to begin discussions about the negative effects of bigotry, as exemplified by homophobia, on all families. The Coalition believes that these discussions will help lead to attitudinal and behavioral changes that will benefit the entire South Coast area.

Developed by the Marriage Equality of the South Coast, the premiere showing was at an April event honoring our State Legislators. “Families of the South Coast” was also selected to be part of an exhibit at Gallery X and was used by the New Bedford Public Schools during faculty education days and Open Houses. Events at area churches and local agencies are displaying the exhibit to reach more and more people. Most recently, it was an official venue at First Night New Bedford.

The Coalition appreciates the community’s support for the exhibit. Volunteer contributions have come from local photographers Ron Barboza, Jack Iddon, and Frank Pina as well as expertise from Barbara and Ed Bushell of Crowell’s Custom Framery. Funding support is from the Greater New Bedford United Way’s Community Building Mini-Grant Program.

The Equality Coalition is a project of the Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts.