Passing Strange

Mark Stewart, aka Stew is the Tony award winning author of the Broadway musical Passing Strange. Among other things, he's also the center of a band he dubbed The Negro Problem. Dig this problematic Negro on this groovy refrigerator magnet

Following in the footsteps of Duncan Sheik and Spring Awakening, L.A.’s Stew (who’s released albums both solo and with his band, The Negro Problem) made the transition from the pop-rock scene to Broadway in 2008. The show for which he wrote the book and score, Passing Strange, was not as commercially successful as Spring Awakening, but from a musical point of view, it’s an even better, very funny, wildly inventive gem about shaping your identity. Backed by a rocking quartet that includes co-composer Heidi Rodewald on bass, Stew himself acts/sings the narrator, leading us through the coming of age of his hero, Youth (Daniel Breaker), from Southern California to Amsterdam to Berlin and back. Recorded live, this album captures the score’s energy and depth. The songs can be hard-hitting ("Merci Beaucoup, M. Godard," "Berlin: A Black Hole with Taxis"), but Stew writes particularly lovely ballads, like the heartbreaking "Arlington Hill," "Keys," "Come Down Now" and "Work the Wound," which gains power as it builds up to an angry climax. This is a great score that deserves to be heard. -- Elisabeth Vincentelli

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The latest installment in the Road Trips series, now entering its third big year (and ninth release overall) is bound to become a favorite. Road Trips Vol. 3, No. 1 is the complete show from December 28, 1979, part of the sparkling run that has already given us the excellent Dick's Picks: Vol. 5 (from 12/26/79). You'll recall that these year-end concerts, held at the Oakland Auditorium because Winterland had closed down for good the previous New Year's Eve, were the first holiday shows featuring new keyboardist Brent Mydland, who joined the band in April 1979. The new lineup had been gaining momentum with each passing tour since that spring, and by December was truly hitting its stride. It helped, too, that the band was in the midst of recording their Go To Heaven album, so they were really playing together a lot during this period. This 12/28/79 concert is a blast: a super high-energy rock and roll show that also has its share of spacey jams and exploratory passages. Track listing: Oakland Auditorium Arena, December 28, 1979 Disc 1 1. Sugaree 2. Mama Tried > 3. Mexicali Blues 4. Row Jimmy 5. It's All Over Now 6. High Time 7. The Music Never Stopped Set 2: 8. Alabama Getaway > 9. Greatest Story Ever Told Disc 2 1. Terrapin Station > 2. Playing In The Band > 3. Rhythm Devils > 4. Space > 5. Uncle John's Band > 6. I Need A Miracle > 7. Bertha > 8. Good Lovin' 9. Casey Jones 10. One More Saturday Limited Edition Bonus Disc Oakland Auditorium Arena, December 30, 1979 1. New Minglewood Blues 2. Candyman 3. Ramble On Rose 4. Lazy Lightning > 5. Supplication 6. Scarlet Begonias > 7. Fire On The Mountain > 8. Let It Grow 9. Truckin' > 10. Wharf Rat

The Tony Award-winning stage musical by singer/songwriter/playwright Stew becomes an exhilarating "joint" by Spike Lee. The play tells the tale of a young African-American man (Daniel Breaker) who chooses to pursue his own artistic visions, no matter how they clash with the values of his religiously conservative middle-class family. The journey takes the musician on a colorful odyssey from Los Angeles to Europe. Songs include "Prologue (We Might Play All Night)," "Mom Song," "Amsterdam," and "Work the Wound." With De'Adre Aziza, Eisa Davis. 135 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital 5.1; Subtitles: English (SDH), Spanish; interviews; behind-the-scenes footage; more.

Stew leads a band he calls The Negro Problem when he's not busy writing a Tony winning Broadway musical or such.

Read Martha A. Sandweiss's posts on the Penguin Blog The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West, and the woman he loved Clarence King was a late nineteenth-century celebrity, a brilliant scientist and explorer once described by Secretary of State John Hay as "the best and brightest of his generation." But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life-the first as the prominent white geologist and writer Clarence King, and a second as the black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd. The fair, blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common-law wife, Ada Copeland, only on his deathbed. In Passing Strange, noted historian Martha A. Sandweiss tells the dramatic, distinctively American tale of a family built along the fault lines of celebrity, class, and race- a story that spans the long century from Civil War to civil rights.

Read Martha A. Sandweiss's posts on the Penguin Blog The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West, and the woman he loved Clarence King was a late nineteenth-century celebrity, a brilliant scientist and explorer once described by Secretary of State John Hay as "the best and brightest of his generation." But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life-the first as the prominent white geologist and writer Clarence King, and a second as the black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd. The fair, blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common-law wife, Ada Copeland, only on his deathbed. In Passing Strange, noted historian Martha A. Sandweiss tells the dramatic, distinctively American tale of a family built along the fault lines of celebrity, class, and race- a story that spans the long century from Civil War to civil rights.

Phoebe Kendall is just your typical Goth girl with a crush. He's strong and silent...and dead. All over the country, a strange phenomenon is occurring. Some teenagers who die aren't staying dead. But when they come back to life, they are no longer the same. Feared and misunderstood, they are doing their best to blend into a society that doesn't want them. The administration at Oakvale High attempts to be more welcoming of the "differently biotic." But the students don't want to take classes or eat in the cafeteria next to someone who isn't breathing. And there are no laws that exist to protect the "living impaired" from the people who want them to disappear-for good. When Phoebe falls for Tommy Williams, the leader of the dead kids, no one can believe it; not her best friend, Margi, and especially not her neighbor, Adam, the star of the football team. Adam has feelings for Phoebe that run much deeper than just friendship; he would do anything for her. But what if protecting Tommy is the one thing that would make her happy?

Phoebe Kendall is just your typical Goth girl with a crush. He's strong and silent...and dead. All over the country, a strange phenomenon is occurring. Some teenagers who die aren't staying dead. But when they come back to life, they are no longer the same. Feared and misunderstood, they are doing their best to blend into a society that doesn't want them. The administration at Oakvale High attempts to be more welcoming of the "differently biotic." But the students don't want to take classes or eat in the cafeteria next to someone who isn't breathing. And there are no laws that exist to protect the "living impaired" from the people who want them to disappear-for good. When Phoebe falls for Tommy Williams, the leader of the dead kids, no one can believe it; not her best friend, Margi, and especially not her neighbor, Adam, the star of the football team. Adam has feelings for Phoebe that run much deeper than just friendship; he would do anything for her. But what if protecting Tommy is the one thing that would make her happy?

Conventional wisdom suggests that aesthetic experiences - those moments when the senses come to life - are important only after more basic needs have been met. In this inspiring wealth of provocative ideas, Yi-Fu Tuan demonstrates that feeling and beauty are essential parts of life and society. The aesthetic is shown to be not merely one aspect of culture but its central core - both its driving force and its ultimate goal. Beginning with the individual and the physical world, the author's exploration progresses from the simple to the complex. Tuan starts by examining the building blocks of aesthetic experience - sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste - and gradually expands his analysis to include the most elaborate of human constructs, including art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, and landscape. This leads him to the realm of politics, where he grapples with the fundamental question of the relationship between goodness and beauty, and of how the aesthetic can become a moral force within society. To guide the reader along this journey, the author describes how the aesthetic operates in four widely disparate cultures: Australian aboriginal, Chinese, medieval European, and modern American. Yi-Fu Tuan, one of our most influential and original thinkers, brilliantly conveys the profound fascination of multisensory reality, and in so doing enables us to make connections among even the most diffuse elements of our lives. While Tuan does not ignore human folly, Passing Strange and Wonderful is a celebration of the world around us, our experiences, and our creations.

Manipulate flow of time as you help Tim journey to different worlds on a puzzle-solving expedition to save the princess! In each world, you'll discover new powers that allow you to impact the passing of time in different ways. In this beautifully rendered platofrm game, you must observe time's passage and use its strange characteristics to master each level.Features include: •It?s a game so intellectually engaging that it actually makes you a better, more versatile t

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force is as close as we've come so far to actually being able to participate in an away team mission. The plot of this first-person shooter is pure Star Trek: during a battle with an alien ship, the badly damaged USS Voyager is transported by mysterious means to a strange spaceship graveyard. It isn't long before the Voyager crew members discover they aren't the only abductees trying to patch their vessel together and escape, and the adventure begins. As a member of Voyager's newly formed hazard team, it's your job to secure required repair materials, gather information about the other survivors, and ultimately enable Voyager to resume its long journey home. Frequently there are two or more team members with you (including familiar faces like Seven of Nine), which lets missions play out more like episodes from the series than a solo firefight that just happens to take place in a Star Trek setting. Other team members will disable security fields, analyze data, converse with you as the mission progresses, and add some much-needed firepower in the tough battle sequences. Elite Force uses the Quake III engine to good effect, serving up some beautiful environments, colorful special effects, and smooth frame rates. Our only gripe is that all the missions take place inside various spacecraft, but the architecture used by each race is unique so that it isn't too repetitive. Elite Force stays very true to the source material, as we discovered the first time we beamed into a Borg cube and watched the inhabitants march by as if we weren't there. We shot a passing Borg to see what would happen, and the massive environment sprung to life as the threat was detected and dozens of angry Borg converged on our position. The cast of the TV series provided the voices for their characters in the game, and the artists painstakingly modeled the interior of Voyager. It all lends an authentic flair to this fun game that belongs in the collection of any Star Trek fan. --T. Byrl Baker Pros: Almost like participating in an episode of the show Better than average voice acting Authentic environments, visuals, and sounds add to the experience Cons: Somewhat boring weapons Plot-driven story line forces linear mission design

Elite Force is the ultimate in sci-fi first-person shooter action, using the Quake III Arena engine--the best 3-D shooter engine in existence. The first game based on the Star Trek Voyager universe, Elite Force pits players against a multitude of Star Trek enemies, including the relentless Borg and never-before-seen aliens in intense single-player and multiplayer combat missions. Elite Force has eight missions, plus between-missions game play on the Voyager ship. Each mission consists of multiple levels, ranging from 2 to 5. All away missions take place on other alien space ships or space stations.

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Bungie Software shattered real-time strategy norms with its 1997 release, Myth: The Fallen Lords. Eschewing the tried-and-true formula pioneered by such classics as Command & Conquer and WarCraft, Myth broke through the shackles of resource management and unit creation and put strategy and combat at the forefront. In fact, perhaps Myth erected its own genre--the real-time tactical game. Myth: The Total Codex combines the original Myth: The Fallen Lords with its sequel, Myth II: Soulblighter, and the expansion pack Myth II: Chimera. Equipped with over 50 single-player levels, dozens of multiplayer maps, and nearly a CD full of user-created levels, maps, and modifications, Myth: The Total Codex is a package that no strategy gamer should pass up. The beauty of Myth lies in the interaction between its well-balanced, fantasy-based units. For example, archers (bowmen in Myth II) can shoot arrows with frightening speed and accuracy, but get pummeled by melee units unless they're protected; dwarves toss devastating bombs, but poor rate of fire and unpredictability sometimes make them a liability; and the powerful Trow Giant can eliminate nearly every unit in a single blow, but is too slow to overcome a force of greater numbers. Myth's intuitive interface, featuring a rotating camera system, the ability to zoom in and out of battle, plus unit formation and waypoints, allows for precise control of your army. Though its single-player game never ceases to entertain, it's Myth: The Total Codex's multiplayer game that shines. Players trade for available units (the more powerful the unit, the more expensive it is) and compete on vibrant, varied terrain in games like Last Man on the Hill, King of the Hill, Territories, and Capture the Flag. If you've never experienced Bungie Software's brilliant real-time tactical game, Myth: The Fallen Lords or Myth II: Soulblighter, do yourself a favor and plunge into its fantasy world of strategic combat with the complete compilation, Myth: The Total Codex. --Doug Radcliffe Pros: Three full-length single-player campaigns Excellent multiplayer support on Bungie's free online service Intuitive and highly customizable interface Windows and Macintosh versions are included on the same CD Cons: If you already have Myth and Myth II, the expansion pack might not justify the price