EVAN BOURNE IS one of the newest members of WWE's "Monday Night Raw" roster, and one of the most exciting. At 5 feet, 9 inches, he is diminutive compared with many of the dominant Raw superstars, but his high-flying aerial style enables him to compete with behemoths like current WWE champion Randy Orton and the 7-foot-tall Big Show. His version of the shooting star press, appropriately renamed the Air Bourne, deservedly won the WWE's "Slammy Award" for best finishing move of 2008.
Bourne competed in the WWE's ECW division for a year before being traded to Raw at the end of June. His wrestling career, however, began long before his ECW stint. After competing on his high school's wrestling team, Bourne, whose real name is Matthew Korklan, began his professional career while still a teenager. He hit the independent circuit for several years, then did stints with the TNA and Ring of Honor promotions before spending two years wrestling in Japan. In 2007, Bourne signed a WWE developmental deal; a year later he was promoted to ECW, and now he's a featured star on the WWE's flagship show.
Bourne acknowledges current SmackDown champion CM Punk as being particularly influential on his career. Both men grew up in the Midwest, and Punk followed a similar path through the independent promotions, developmental territories and ECW Whether Bourne can go on to win the top titles in the company, as Punk has managed to do since ascending from ECW, remains to be seen.
Continue Reading "Flying Into the Ring: WWE's Evan Bourne" »
MAY 23 WILL BE 75th anniversary of the death of Bonnie and Clyde, the most bloodthirsty romantic outlaws in America's history. To mark the event, the National Museum of Crime and Punishment is mounting a temporary exhibition that presents a more fully realized vision of the much-romanticized pair. Elizabeth Maurer, the show's curator, talked to Express about the myths and realities of their lives.
» EXPRESS: Is this show part of a series?
» MAURER: We're gonna follow Bonnie and Clyde with John Dillinger, so it is sort of the summer of Depression-era notorious criminals, if you will.
» EXPRESS: What's in the exhibit?
» MAURER: We're going to be focusing on Bonnie and Clyde and their families, rather than just Bonnie and Clyde the romantic outlaws. ... So we're going to focus on things that belonged to Clyde before he became a criminal. We have his recreation cards, the equivalent of what you would take to get into the gym. And we have some payroll envelopes from when he worked at Procter & Gamble. ... So he goes from being this working-class guy who commits petty crimes on the weekends to this murderer.
MONDAY: Miss the Grateful Dead? Of course you do. Well, they're not exactly back, but the touring band The Dead is comprised of several members of well, the Grateful Dead, who are keeping your love from fading away by playing their old songs.
So, pile into your bemuraled minivan with the teddy bear stickers on the back and make a good old-fashioned Deadhead night of it.
» Verizon Center, 601 F St. NW; Tue., April 14, 7 p.m., $68-$98; 202-397-7328. (Gallery Place)
Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
"ANTEBELLUM," RECEIVING ITS world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, is a gripping, even shocking drama. Robert O'Hara's play challenges audience expectations and received notions — about love, theater, America, race, etc. — as well as obscenity codes.
O'Hara weaves together two detailed plots. One thread concerns the imprisonment of a gay African-American nightclub singer (the wonderful Carlton Byrd) held as a sex slave by a Nazi commandant (Andrew Price) during Hitler's ascendancy. Snatches of dialogue (including an important "I love you") are in German, making a date who can sprechen useful. The playwright winks at his own last name by setting the rest of the story around the 1939 premiere of "Gone With the Wind" in Atlanta.
As "Wind"-mania and its attendant nostalgia for the supposed good old days sweeps the city, Sarah (Jenna Sokolowski), the "simple" wife of a prominent Jewish industrialist (Nick Vienna as Ariel Roca) is called upon by a beguiling stranger, Edna Black Rock (Jessica Dukes). The painful history of Roca and Black Rock is gradually revealed, and scabs on the American psyche are eloquently picked at as the tale winds to a climax.
HERE ARE THE facts: Malvolio, former steward to Countess Olivia of Illyria, was tricked into making a fool of himself and was subsequently imprisoned. Now he's out for justice — or is it revenge?
Every spring, the Shakespeare Theater Company hosts a mock trial — the case of a fictional character who has been accused of some wrongdoing. Real lawyers argue the cases before a panel of high-profile judges. This year, Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito will head the committee. If you're upset by the ubiquity of government in D.C., this might not be your event.
In honor of this season's production of "Twelfth Night," the trial is entitled "Malvolio's Revenge." The hapless villain of the play, Malvolio, has successfully sued his former employer, Olivia, for punitive damages. Now, she's appealing the previous verdict, which would force her to pay up to the tune of $10 million for offenses for which she claims she isn't responsible.
Continue Reading "Seeking Poetic Justice: The Shakespearean Supreme Court" »
WEDNESDAY: Our economic downturn isn't quite a depression, but it sure is depressing. If you need a little proof that things could be worse and will likely get better, check out "Berlin Kreuzberg SO36," a display of photographs of the Kreuzberg district of Germany's capital.
Some of the photos date from 1982, when the area was scrunched up against the Berlin Wall, and some from 2006, after the wall came down. Photographer Peter Frischmuth visited the same spots to document the passage of time and the effects of a new political era on an area that seemed irredeemably depressed.
Photo by Peter Frischmuth
ORCHESTRAL WIZ JOHN Vanderslice ditches his band — and the overdub — on a stripped-down acoustic tour.
You can never tell what divergent audio elements San Francisco singer/songwriter orch-folkie John Vanderslice might smush together in the studio. His emotional ballads and arty rockers buzz with eclectic-yet-elegant marriages — thumping synthesizers and neoclassical cello trills ("Pixel Revolt's" "Dear Sarah Shu"), distorted feedback and crisp drum licks (Emerald City's powerful "White Dove").
Vanderslice lays down these densely textured, complex tracks at Tiny Telephone, the all-analog studio he has run in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood since 1997. Other bands — Okkervil River, Spoon — come here to make albums that take advantage of Vanderslice's old-equipment-meets-new sounds approach.
WHEN SHE HIT the ice, America held its breath. It's been only a couple of years since Sasha Cohen recovered from a demoralizing early fall in the free skate to win the silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Turino in 2006, and while the petite 24-year-old beauty is still dodging questions about whenther she'll be back for Vancouver's 2010 Olympic Games ("I'll make my decision in June," she says), she's been keeping busy with excursions into the worlds of television, fashion and as a member of Smucker's Stars on Ice tour, which appears at the Verizon Center on Friday.
» EXPRESS: So what's been happening in your life, post-Olympics?
» COHEN: I've taken this time to explore new things, pursue different interests, like acting. I've enjoyed just having a chance to have a life, be more social and spend more time with my family and traveling. It's been really nice to do something different, like with Stars on Ice for the last two years, and right now I'm reevaluating where I am to see if I can come back for a third Olympics.
Fashion has always been part of your time skating, whether taking an active role in costume redesigns, showing up in Vogue or appearing on an episode of "Project Runway" [in which the contestants designed a skating costume] for Cohen).
Continue Reading "Fashionable Skating: Figure Skater Sasha Cohen" »
BACKLIT BY A gorgeous, pinkish sunset, a diving platform beckons you into rippling waters in one of Christopher Sims' new photographs on display at Civilian Art Projects. The photo's affecting tranquility is diminished, however, by the image's locale: the U.S. naval base and joint detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Sims' latest exhibition takes us to a place that most think of as an iron purgatory lined with gun towers and barbed wire, said to play host to unspeakable horrors.
But Sims, who was allowed access to the prison complex after years of wrangling with military authorities, keeps captor and captive out of the picture — partially out of necessity (handlers insisted most subjects and areas were off-limits), but mostly because other things caught his eye that he didn't expect.
BEHIND THE SPY museum sits a secret that deserves to be spilled: Zola Wine & Kitchen, a bottle shop-cum-cooking school.
This sleek hybrid opened its double doors in December. Inside, guests are presented with an "Eat me! Drink me!"conundrum worthy of Wonderland: To the left is a wine shop curated by sommeliers; to the right, a test kitchen - with a spacious dining table and a flat-screen TV for broadcasting live demos from the adjacent work space - offering classes led by award-winning chefs. It's all about access to experts.
Here, as at the eatery, the wine list has been crafted by award-winning sommelier, Eli Benchimol. The wine shop is connected to its foodie twin by a short hallway and a large oval window inviting oenophiles to peep inside the kitchen that elevates the concept of a chef's table.
Continue Reading "Glass Is So In Session: Zola Wine & Kitchen" »
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