Tuesday Morning Roundup

SELLING GUTENBERG: If there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s that Amphibian Stage Productions can bring the funny. We laughed out loud at its series of videos calling for increased support of the arts. And now a new video has emerged, this time promoting its upcoming show, Gutenberg the Musical! The two-man show spoofs the sometimes degrading process of securing a producer for your play. The above video should whet your appetite.

SING, SING, SING: The folks at American Idol must think North Texas is a fertile breeding ground for pop-music hopefuls. The show auditioned here before Season 1 and bagged eventual chamption Kelly Clarkson from Burleson. The producers came back in the summer of 2007 and listened to more than 12,000 singers at Texas Stadium. And now they’ll be back again on Friday at the new Cowboys Stadium listening to the good, the bad and the ugly. If you’re thinking about auditioning, the queen of all things Idol, Darla Atlas, has a handy guide over on dallasnews.com.

ART IN THE O.C.: If you haven’t been to Oak Cliff in a while, you’re missing out on an explosion of visual art. JR Compton and Anna Palmer took the temperature of the art scene in the Cliff during their SpeedBump 2009 tour for dallasartsrevue.com and found a selection that ranged, “from strange to wonderful and back, and back again.” For a taste of what they saw, head to the site for dozens of photos from the galleries.

Tom Hendricks

American Idol shows how generic rock has become. Once rebellious rock and roll with its intense honesty is now winding down to insignificance. Singer contestants strive to fit in and play it safe with their karaoke emotional deliveries.
Time fore a media that understands this.
- Tom Hendricks
  
  Art in the OC. Sadly this is the modern art or ‘salon art’ that other Dallas artists are against, with their historical protest videos and manfestos.
  Time for the media to cover all arts fairly.
mediawonk

Tom, that’s the beauty of art. It can be anything you want it to be, and the A&S folks do a good job of trying to cover a vast variety of different kinds of art – different media, different artists, different scenes, etc. What you call “modern art” has just as much of a right to coverage as anything else.

American Idol, whether you like it or not, it draws attention and interest from many, many people, and as such is going to be written about. You may not find it interesting, but others do, particularly when it has a local connection.
- Sarah
  
  All very well said, Mediawonk!
- Tom Hendricks
  
  Weren’t the Impressionists against modern art?
Jennifer

Wasn’t Hitler also “against” modern art? Hmmmm.