Seriously, Orange County Performing Arts Center? Are you trying to piss off every conservative blue-hair donor who’s ever seen her name listed in the back of a playbill? First Spring Awakening—spoiler: naked butts and simulated sex—and now Xanadu? Like, the roller-skating stage spoof of the roller-skating motion-picture bomb starring Olivia Newton-John? That Xanadu? Did you [...]

Actress Katey Sagal takes times off for her real job: songbird

Millions of people around the world know Katey Sagal—or rather, they know one of her incarnations: to most people, she is the strangely sexy, spandex-clad, chain-smoking, red-bouffanted Peg Bundy, who helped propel Fox’s first sitcom, Married with Children, to the top of the Nielsen ratings. [...]

‘Spring Awakening’ is just too much

PHOTO by PAUL KOLNIK
Sitting among the region’s more well-off blue-hairs in attendance at the opening performance of Spring Awakening felt a little bit like the first time I watched Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis sweatily swap spit in Top Gun as an eight-year-old perched beside my mother. It was at [...]

Nothing makes us long for springtime more than the knowledge that the birds and the bees aren’t the only ones frolicking about in nature’s glory—so are our teenaged children. Featuring music by Duncan Sheik, highlights of this Tony Award-winner include “My Junk,” sung by a boy as he masturbates over a picture of his piano [...]

Esperanza Spalding
At just 25 years old, bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding has a rich history of performing with jazzbo legends Donald Harrison, Joe Lovano and Stanley Clarke. Few people even attempt to front a band and hold down the bass simultaneously, but Spalding has an effortless poise to her bossa beats, her sweetly-tinged vocals hanging above churning [...]

Steve Martin with the Steep Canyon Rangers
I know, I’m thinking it, too: “Steve—Pink Panther 3? Seriously?” But it’s all for good reason. Delivering crap bits in crap movies affords Steve Martin the opportunity to do Crap We Actually Like, like writing books, being at Tina Fey’s beck and call and performing with his wee banjo [...]

Anything you can do, Alan Cumming can probably do better

PHOTO by ADRIAN BUCKMASTER
Scottish actor Alan Cumming first burst onto the American scene in the sleeper indie classic Circle of Friends. Since then, he’s morphed into rock legend Mick Jagged (Viva Rock Vegas), a goat-man (Refer Madness: The Musical), a brainless inventor (Tin Man), Hitler (Jackboots [...]

Kathy Griffin reigns supreme, uniting gays and straights under a big, pinkish tent

Kathy Griffin loves the gays. In fact, she claims she’s a gay man—at least that’s her explanation for her obsession with kitschy, campy, pop culture, and her ability to verbally bitch slap just about anyone, including the almighty Oprah. (Of course, Griffin’s also [...]

The legacy of Sonny Rollins’ ‘Way out West’

PHOTO by JOHN ABBOTT
By the end of the 1950s, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins had recorded enough quality wax to fill a jukebox. Rollins released nearly one record per month in 1957 for a handful of different record companies, and on March 7 of that year, Rollins, passing through [...]

Now orbiting Lily Tomlin

PHOTO by BRETT PATTERSON
Lily Tomlin is one of those people you can listen to for hours. Really. Even on the phone—which is how I got to listen to her the other day. And while some comedians might be cold and guarded off stage, when you talk to Tomlin, you get exactly what [...]