Meredith Munoz of Pash
@ Fort Reno
Q:What's your song for summer?
A:"'Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before' by the Smiths, hands down."
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORERS-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert have spent nearly three decades researching and documenting the lives of lions and leopards in Africa, and their colorful photographs and videos are on display at the National Geographic Museum in "Lions and Leopards: The Work of Dereck & Beverly Joubert." The couple were in D.C. recently, and chatted about their work and passion for conservation in Africa.
» EXPRESS: What drew you to working in Botswana?
» BEVERLY: We're from South Africa, and 28 years ago we left and went to Botswana for an adventure. We fell in love with the wilderness of Botswana and decided that was where we wanted to live and work.
» DERECK: I think we both had the desire to leave the city and go out and do something extraordinary. We had a passion not only for each other, but for life, for nature, to do things outdoors.
» EXPRESS: What about working with wildlife and the environment is so fulfilling?
» DERECK: We use our work as conversation, as a way to talk to people about the things we care deeply about. Right now, we're giving the majority of stress to big cats, and the books, films, everything we do at the moment is about getting the message out that big cats are endangered.
» BEVERLY: Our workplace changes, so we never get bored like in an office. We move from one area to the next, and each area is different — one is a desert, one a semi-desert, one a delta. So we are constantly stimulated by landscape changes, and the animals interact in a different way in each area. And the more we have climactic change, the more we are going to see the animals forced into situations that perhaps no one has seen before.
Continue Reading "Where the Wild Things Are: Dereck and Beverly Joubert" »
'Monsieur Verdoux'
Charlie Chaplin stepped away from his silent comic persona and into controversy with 1947's dark comedy "Monsieur Verdoux." Part Bluebeard tale, part modern serial-killer story, this feature comes to the National Gallery of Art on Saturday.
» National Gallery of Art, 600 constitution Ave. NW; Sat., May 23, 2:30 p.m., free; 202-842-6799. (Archives-Navy Memorial)
Boyle Before the Oscar
Danny Boyle is known for splashy films with a big heart, like a little thing called "Slumdog Millionaire." But the British director's lower-budget days produced small gems such as 1994's "Shallow Grave," showing on Friday and Sunday (through May 28) as part of AFI Silver's Films of Danny Boyle showcase.
» AFI Silver, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring; through July 1; 301-495-6700. (Silver Spring)
"EVERYBODY IN NEW JERSEY thinks they're an insult comedian," remarks Jeffrey Ross, 43. "If there was an academy of roasting, it would be in Jersey. I never realized I was funny until I went away to college. Back home in Jersey, I was just another guy."
Ross was a little-known stand-up comic before his work as a producer of and participant in the Friars Club roasts put him on the map. Now people come to his stand-up gigs expecting to see a roast — so Ross puts a podium onstage, invites fans to stand behind it and goes to town, Jersey style.
» EXPRESS: What kind of relationship did you have with [early television comedian] Milton Berle?
» ROSS: Milton taught me a lot. He must have hosted hundreds of roasts. After my first roast, he gave me a kiss on the cheek in front of a thousand people and invited me back to the Club to have a drink and a cigar. We'd have lunch all the time. He taught me to smoke cigars. He literally stuck one up his nose and explained that if it smelled like crap, it was genuine Cubano.
Continue Reading "Friars Club Roastmaster: Comedian Jeffrey Ross" »
"I WANT A paternity test," declares the father of the graphic novel, Art Spiegelman. It turns out that the artist, writer and editor — world famous for (take your pick) creating the Garbage Pail Kids, drawing a series of arresting New Yorker covers, writing the Holocaust allegory "Maus," etc. — is highly critical of the form he is said to have created.
"When I come to the Corcoran [on May 4], I don't know what the lecture's being called, but in my head, it's called, "What the %@&*! Happened to Comic Books?"
"And what happened to them," Spiegelman continued, "was an escalating set of ambitions on the part of comix artists — and that I very much identify with — and some very good marketing. That baffles me, because merely by changing the name, one was able to get a situation where I can sit on an airplane, read a comic book and somebody will come over and say, 'Is that graphic novel any good?' And I'll say, 'Who's the dope in aisle C?'"
Spiegelman, editor of a long series of magazines and children's anthologies, is an unabashed advocate for the comic book form, whether in its most traditional sense or in its most fiendishly bizarre extremes. Characteristically outspoken, witty and insightful, Spiegelman is — with wife Francoise Mouly, the New Yorker's longtime art editor — part of one of America's great power couples. They have shared credit on many of Spiegelman's most prominent projects and are currently putting the finishing touches on another edition of "The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics."
FORMER DEL FUEGOS singer Dan Zanes isn't the only rocker who now plays for the elementary school set. The Sippy Cups are also made up of rock musicians-turned-kid rockers. The Bay Area group, which plays D.C. this weekend, contains past members of indie acts such as the Squids, the Loud Family and Thin White Rope.
The transition to parenthood is why the Sippy Cups decided to make a youthful noise, says keyboardist Alison Faith Levy. The group fills a niche for Generation X, which is now hitting middle age.
"People our age have been through the college-rock scene and the indie-rock scene, and we're having kids now," she said. "A lot of our audience is people like us, who are cool, savvy parents with young children that want their kids to have the experience of seeing a real rock band … parents who don't just want to listen to what Disney is putting out."
DAVID BALDACCI THINKS there are two ways a best-selling author can write books.
"When you've written as many novels as I've written, you can say to yourself, 'Gee, how did I do it last time that sold lots of books?' Or you can say, 'I don't want to do it like I did it last time. How can I challenge myself and make myself stretch as a writer?' That's the tack I like to take."
Since publishing his first book, 1996's "Absolute Power," Baldacci has become a master at the Washington-based thriller. Murder, espionage, government cover-ups, extramarital affairs and kidnapping have become Baldacci's modus operandi. His latest book, "First Family," is filled the same sort of white-knuckle intrigue, but the setting's been tweaked.
"Usually I've written about Washington, D.C, and stayed in that domain," Baldacci said. "In this one, I veered away. You get a healthy dose of political Washington, D.C., and also a healthy dose of rural America, particularly the rural Deep South. I took characters that usually don't combine in a novel like this: the president of the United States, the first family and its accoutrement — the FBI and the Secret Service — and this guy who lives on an old plantation in the Deep South who obviously has an agenda."
Continue Reading "The Thrilling Craft: David Baldacci, 'First Family'" »
LIKE MANY YOUNG women, Kristen Schaal moved to New York with dreams of becoming an actress. Thank goodness that didn't work out. Otherwise, the world might have missed out on one of the funniest and most distinctive voices to emerge from the morass of improv classes and open-mic nights in quite a while.
"When acting proved to be almost impossible," she recalls, "I was like, 'OK, let me figure out other ways to perform.' Stand up and improv became routes that I could take to forge something for myself."
Schaal delivers her jokes with a wide grin, impish eyes and a giggle of a voice, all of which betray a quick mind and a strong grasp of the absurd. She might not look like a troublemaker, but she seems to get into a lot of trouble.
Those two pursuits — improv and stand-up — have landed her a few acting parts, most notably on HBO's "Flight of the Conchords," which stars the New Zealand novelty-folk act with whom she is currently touring. She plays super-obsessed stalker-fan Mel, who regularly takes her devotion to the duo to uncomfortable extremes. And Schaal, her hyperactive glee offsetting the other actors' straight faces, threatens to steal every scene.
With her cult fanbase growing, Schaal is taking more acting roles — including a small part in the upcoming Salma Hayek movie "Cirque du Freak" — but she's also staying active in her other pursuits, including a regular stint on "The Daily Show," a British TV pilot for her Web series "Penelope Princess of Pets" and a book that she describes as "a collection of short stories that are incredibly erotic and funny. From sex experts, which we are." Expect Schaal's singular brand of inspired insanity. "It's going to save lives," she predicts. "Already now I'm just imaging the world in the fall of 2010 as being completely different after this book comes out."
More than a year before Schaal becomes a sexual Messiah to the world, we got her on the phone for a brief chat about improv vs. stand-up, getting confused with her characters, and what it's like being a horse with a silly head.
» EXPRESS: You do so much different work. Was that a calculated effort, or do these projects just fall into your lap?
» SCHAAL: I think it definitely just sort of happens. I'm grateful that I can have so many opportunities. I hope it never ends. I hope I'm really spread thin my whole life!
SUNDAY: If you sobbed when Jennifer Hudson was voted off of American Idol and then again when she zoomed to fame and Oscar-winning glory, we wouldn't be surprised if you avidly listen to her self-titled album, "Jennifer Hudson," and can hit all of the notes in her single, "Spotlight."
Obssessed yet? Combine Hudson with soul singer/heartthrob Robin Thicke, and get ready for a sultry, unforgettable concert featuring a blend of soul and R&B.
So pull out your American Idol gear and maybe even a custom-made "Mrs. Thicke" t-shirt — it's okay to dream! — as Thicke and Hudson make their way to the district.
» Constitution Hall, 1776 D St. NW, Sun., April 5, 7:30 p.m., $64-$74; 202-397-7328. (Farragut West/Farragut North)
Written by Express' Tahirah Hairston
Photo courtesy Getty Images for the NAACP
THERE'S SOMETHING ALTOGETHER charming about watching Maya Lin climb to the top of an 18-foot hill like a little girl. She stands at the highest peak and reaches for the ceiling.
"All my work has a level of scale to it. It's to be experienced, not just looked at."
"Systematic Landscapes," Lin's latest installation exhibition, is eight years in the making. The Corcoran has been converted into a veritable environment, contained and calibrated with algebraic precision. It also marks a new direction for the artist, who became an international phenom as a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale when she won a design competition to erect Washington's Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Just don't use the world monument when describing her latest work.
SUNDAY: Comedian-hypnotist Flip Orley has to manipulate his audience members while allowing them to maintain a modicum of dignity. Witness this feat at the Improv through Sunday.
» The Improv, 1140 Connecticut Ave. NW; through Sun., March 21, $15-$17; 202-296-7008. (Farragut North)
Written by Express' Eric Anderson
Addison Road