News Spot
- Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00 EST
A Bal Harbour outpost for Jean-Georges
• <span class="bold">The goods</span>: Jean-Georges Vongerichten brings another celeb-chef restaurant to Miami with the opening of J + G Grill in the opulent St. Regis Bal Harbour.
- Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00 EST
Celebrity birthdays on Feb. 23
• Actor-director <span class="bold">Peter Fonda</span> is 72. Musician <span class="bold"> Johnny Winter</span> is 68. Actress <span class="bold">Patricia Richardson</span> (“Home Improvement”
is 61. Guitarist <span class="bold">Brad Whitford</span> of Aerosmith is 60. Singer <span class="bold">Howard Jones</span> is 57. Actress <span class="bold">Kristin Davis</span> is 47. Actor <span class="bold">Marc Price</span> (“Family Ties” is 44. Actress <span class="bold">Niecy Nash</span> (“Reno 911!” is 42. Actress <span class="bold">Kelly Macdonald</span> (“Boardwalk Empire” is 36. Actor <span class="bold">Aziz Ansari</span> (“Parks and Recreation” is 29. Actress <span class="bold">Emily Blunt</span> is 29. Actress <span class="bold">Dakota Fanning </span>is 18.
- Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00 EST
Halle Berry and other Oscar curse victims
• If <span class="italic">The Help</span> star Viola Davis is named best actress at next Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, let’s hope she has a more successful post-Oscar career than Halle Berry, the previous (and to date, only) African-American to win that prize. After winning the golden guy in 2002, Berry saw her reputation tarnish in turkeys like <span class="italic">Gothika</span> and <span class="italic">X-Men: The Last Stand.</span> And let’s not forget the purr-fectly awful 2004 comic book yarn <span class="italic">Catwoman</span>.
- Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:16 EST
Whitney Houston’s death raises issues of mixing meds with alcohol
• Drinking and medications don’t mix, especially when taking meds like Xanax. Whitney Houston’s death has raised issues about combining prescription drugs with alcohol.
They are an odd pair: A geeky-cool 30-something music dude and a solidly boomer science guy. And they are purveyors of an even more unlikely phenomenon: The re-invention of radio, that hoariest of mass media, with a strange and original show that has a fanatical following of close to three million, many of them 20- and 30-somethings.
Meet Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the inventor-hosts of Radiolab, who combine obscure scientific phenomena (the infinitude of chess moves, the inexplicable nature of chance) and odd stories (two identical girls who meet via an errant balloon) into a kind of philosophical vaudeville show. Which somehow, through probing questions, gradual revelations, startling conclusions and means the hosts don’t entirely understand themselves, almost always leads to a mind-bending sense of disorientation and wonder.
Ponder the nature of chance all you want. It still doesn’t explain why a young girl named Laura Buxton can let go of a balloon with her name on it on one side of England, and have it catch on the backyard fence of another girl named Laura Buxton (same looks, same pet, almost the same age) on the opposite side of the country.
“If it were something you could answer, we wouldn’t go near it,” says Abumrad, 38, from New York public radio station WNYC, where he and Krulwich, 64, produce Radiolab. “We’re both prone to magical thinking and mistrustful of that, and we’re also people who just want to believe in mystery. So the show is an ultimate fighting death match between those things.
“If you get to an answer, what’s more deflating than that? You want to get to this real profound mystery.”
Krulwich chimes in: “The trick of the show is to have a magically adhesive set of incompletions.”
“A magically – what did you say?” Abumrad asks.
“A magically adhesive set of incompletions,” Krulwich repeats.
Abumrad mumbles to himself, then marvels: “Nicely done Krulwich! I’m gonna repeat that, and you’ll say how smart I am.”
That mix of painstaking seriousness and spontaneous silliness is key to Radiolab’s appeal. Since its launch at WNYC in 2005, the hour-long show has become a staple at 300 public radio stations around the country, including South Florida’s WLRN-FM (91.3), where it airs Saturdays at noon. While its estimated listenership of one million is large by public radio standards, another 1.8 million listen via podcast. The show got a boost in visibility last summer after Abumrad was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant.
The duo have added a live show, which they bring to the Fillmore Miami Beach on Wednesday, accompanied by comedian Demetri Martin, musician Thao Nguyen and dancers who recreate, among other things, a jellyfish and an octopus’ eye.
They’ve ventured away from the studio, not from any ambition to be the hipster Prairie Home Companion, but to find a playful, alternative outlet from the painstaking radio show, whose spontaneous-sounding episodes take weeks to produce.
“We just began to play — it was never planned,” says Abumrad. “It came from a sense of wanting to do something new. … The invention for us now is to be onstage.”
Their embrace of exploration and the unexpected are at the heart of Radiolab. Abumrad, the son of a doctor and a scientist who had studied music at Oberlin College, was hosting a late-night show on WNYC’s AM station when he met Krulwich, a veteran science reporter for NPR and ABC. They hit it off, and breakfasts together led to a temporary co-hosting gig on WNYC.
Source: Miami Herald
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