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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Loudon Wainwright III / Wesley Stace (Sellersville Theatre, Sellersville, PA, October 1, 2026) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Loudon Wainwright III, Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA, Wesley Stace on October 1, 2026| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: October 1, 2026] Loudon Wainwright III / Wesley Stace

Loudon Wainwright III has been playing pretty and also pretty funny music for decades.  I discovered him about twenty years ago and quickly became a fan of his work.

His newer material deals more with old age than his earlier stuff but it’s still enjoyable.  I’m sure he would play songs from throughout his career.  Recent setlists show he plays stuff from all over his catalog.

He plays Sellersville every year or so and I never seem to be able to catch him.  This poster on the right is for a different show, but it’s the same billing with Wesley Stace.

Tonight’s show was up against Ted Leo who I really wanted to see with my wife.

Wesley Stace once recorded under the pseudonym John Wesley Harding and released some 20 albums.  These albums bear a resemblance to Elvis Costello because he shared some of the members of The Attractions and also because his singing voice has the same arch tone and timbre as Costello’s.  I saw him open for Steven Page back in 2018 and loved his set so much I bought a novel of his as well.

This is a great double bill and I’m bummed I couldn’t make it.

UPDATE: I received an email today that Loudon Wainwright had to reschedule this show.  But Wesley Stace was still performing.

$15 POP UP SHOW TONIGHT WITH WESLEY STACE!

What else do you have going on? Come on out!

There is a great new show this evening! Singer songwriter Wesley Stace (aka famously as John Wesley Harding) will perform a full concert. Wesley Stace has performed at Sellersville Theater before and is loved by the staff. Tickets are available now for $15 and the show is general admission. Come by, bring friends, and enjoy a night out!

I would have loved to support him.  But, hey, he announced a free at noon for next week so…

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Aldous Harding / Sam Burton (Underground Arts Philadelphia, PA, September 9, 2026) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Aldous Huxley, Philadelphia, PA, Sam Burton, Underground Arts on September 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: September 9, 2026] Aldous Harding / Sam Burton

I saw Aldous Harding at Underground Arts in 2019.  The show was very weird and pretty cool, with Harding being a presence I could not remove my eyes from.  When this show was announced (in January), I grabbed a ticket.  I didn’t actually enjoy her new album as much as her previous ones and when this show came up, I basically just stayed home.  So I’ve made a note to myself to not get a ticket next time (even though this show sold out).

Sam Burton is an American singer songwriter.   He plays a country type of music that I don’t care for.  His voice is “a high-lonesome wail that recalls Roy Orbison” playing “an old, weird Americana sound filled with echo and longing.”   Totally not my thing.

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Sarah McLachlan: Better Broken Tour / Allison Russell (TD Pavilion at The Mann Center, Philadelphia, PA, July 7, 2026) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Allison Russell, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Sarah McLachlan on July 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: July 7, 2026] Sarah McLachlan / Allison Russell

Back in 2024, Sarah McLachlan did a tour for the anniversary of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.  Back in the 90s I loved Sarah so much.  I loved her music.  I oved Lilith Fair, I though she was the bomb.

I feel like she got crazy overplayed (especially the sad dog commercial) and she became something of a punchline, which is a shame.   A friend saw her last time and said the show was amazing.  I thought about gong to this one, but the timing and the venue did not inspire me, so I didn’t bother getting a ticket.

It turns out this tour was for a new album, which I didn’t know anything about.  Although she did play a lot of great older songs too, the previous tour would have been the better choice.

I think I would like to see her again–her voice is supposed to be strong and wonderful still.  Maybe if she played the Met, instead of the Mann.

Allison Russell opened for Hozier in 2024 on the tour I could not get tickets to.  She is a Canadian singer who is placed in the Americana genre, which is kind of funny.  WXPN plays some of her songs, and “Stay Right Here” is super duper catchy and will sound AMAZING in the Pavilion with its big chorus, disco beats and R&B/choir components (I wonder if she’ll have a band live).  Her song “Nightflyer” is more mellow but quite lovely.

I think I might actually be quite the fan of her without realizing it was her.

 

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Loudon Wainwright III / Wesley Stace (Bryn Mawr Twilight Series, Bryn Mawr, PA, June 6, 2026) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Bryn Mawr PA, Bryn Mawr Twilight Series, Loudon Wainwright III, Wesley Stace on June 6, 2026| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: June 6, 2026] Loudon Wainwright III / Wesley Stace

I only found out about this show when looking up information about his October show.  In fact, I guess I’ve never heard anything about the Bryn Mawr Twilight Series.  It might be too far to go to (although it’s not much further way than Ardmore).  I wonder who else has played it over the years?

So, Loudon Wainwright III has been playing pretty and also pretty funny music for decades.  I discovered him about twenty years ago and quickly became a fan of his work.  But I’ve never seen him live.  Here’s another show I missed.

Wesley Stace once recorded under the pseudonym John Wesley Harding and released some 20 albums.  These albums bear a resemblance to Elvis Costello because he shared some of the members of The Attractions and also because his singing voice has the same arch tone and timbre as Costello’s.  I saw him open for Steven Page back in 2018 and loved his set so much I bought a novel of his as well.

And here’s a short review of the show, which makes me especially glad I didn’t go.

The show was outdoors and there was a thunderstorm during the second song by Wesley Stace (the opening act).  After a 90 minute rain delay Loudon started his set and performed some songs with Wesley.  It was a wonderful show. Loudon enjoyed his interactions with the audience.

 

 

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Kim’s Convenience (Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ, February 12, 2026)

Posted in Berlind Theatre, Canadian Content, Funny (ha ha), Ins Choi, Kim's Convenience, Princeton, NJ on February 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: February 12, 2026] Kim’s Convenience

My wife and I really enjoyed Kim’s Convenience when it aired.  My mother-in-law enjoyed it and then recently, my son watched it on his own.

When this performance–the play that started it all, performed by the writer–was announced at McCarter, I grabbed my wife and I tickets ASAP.  Then when my son found out about it he wanted to go as well.  He couldn’t go the night we had tickets, but I was able to exchange our tickets for another night and get an extra one for my son.  I haven’t been to the Berlind Theater for a long time and I forgot how tiny it is.  So even though our seats were near the back, they were still really close.

McCarter had a lot of fun with this production, setting up a Canadian/Korean market in the lobby with Canadian flags and sweaters and lots of posters. They sold Korean goods (from the local Woori Mart) and may have even brought it some Canadian favorites (some drinks and ketchup flavored potato chips). (more…)

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Christian Bök, “The Extremophile” (published 2025) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Christian Bok, Hingston & Olsen, Huh?, Patton Oswalt, Poetry, The Ghost Box on October 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 31, 2025] “The Extremophile”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

I don’t know very much about Christian Bök except that he wrote the poetry series Eunoia which is a remarkable piece of art and poetry:

 Each poem uses only one vowel, creating sentences like: “Hassan can, at a handclap, call a vassal at hand and ask that all staff plan a bacchanal”

It’s worth checking out.

I didn’t know if he did anything since, but apparently he has been working on something called The Xenotext which Wikipedia says

Xenotext consists of a single sonnet (called “Orpheus”), which gets translated into a gene and then integrated into a cell, causing the cell to “read” this poem, and in reply, the cell builds a protein — one whose sequence of amino acids encodes yet another sonnet (called “Eurydice”). The cell becomes not only a durable archive for storing a poem, but also an operant machine for writing a poem. The gene has so far worked properly in cultures of E. coli, but the intended symbiote is D. radiodurans (“the dire seed, immune to radiation”) — an extremophile, able to thrive in very inhospitable environments, deadly to most life on Earth.

I quoted that because it uses the word extremophile, which is the name of this story.

This story is quite short and it is, simply, a list of conditions that this entity can survive in.  It’s fascinating but not terribly interesting and, indeed, not very scary.  Especially since nothing happens in the story.  I mean, the ending is “It awaits your experiments,” which I guess is an interesting setup and given some of that background above it does make it slightly more compelling, but as a story, well, meh.

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Francis Stevens, “Unseen—Unfeared” (published 1919) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Francis Stevens, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 30, 2025] “Unseen—Unfeared”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

Francis Stevens is the pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett who I know nothing about.  I assume this story is set in Philadelphia (South Street and Franklin Hall), but that’s not really important.

The story opens with the narrator talking to a detective over dinner.  The detective mentions a case in which a doctor is accused of murdering someone.  The detective doesn’t believe the doctor did it, but he doesn’t want to reveal too many details.

As the detective leaves, he gives the narrator a very fine cigar and heads out.  The narrator waits a few minutes and then heads out as well.  It’s here that I had to wonder about the intolerance of the author.  Because the narrator is walking down the street casting aspersions on everyone he sees–all races and colors are scrutinized harshly–especially a group of young Italian men who give the narrator the stink eye like he’d never seen.

He’s freaking out about how much he hates everyone and everything and decides he needs to rest for a minute.  Then he sees a sign over a shop that says See The Great Unseen!

Thinking this is a museum of some sort, a place where he can sit and relax, he goes inside.

The owner of the place is a strange man with dark eyes and white hair.  He starts talking about photography and the process of generating color prints.  It’s either very technical or complete nonsense, but it hardly matters because the man is about to show the narrator a new technique he has achieved through the use of a membrane that he said is from South America.

When the man places the membrane over his equipment, the narrator suddenly sees…. what the host describes as all of the evils in the world that have been unleashed by humanity–included the narrator himself.

Given how disgusted he was by everyone outside, he starts to realize that he is the reason for all of the evil around him.

This story was really creepy and I really enjoyed the way it was told.  With the final chapter bringing at leas two wholly unexpected conclusions.  And I’m thinking maybe the author wasn’t such a curmudgeon after all.

 

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Edith Wharton, “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” (published 1902) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Edith Wharton, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 28, 2025] “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

I admit that I have never read Edith Wharton (not even The Age of Innocence).  But I read an essay by Jonathan Franzen which made me think I really should:

readers tend to read writers we finding sympathetic in some way–whatever appeals to us about their humanity.  But Wharton really has nothing appealing about her.  She was utterly privileged: touring Europe in private yacht with chauffeurs, and she was deeply conservative: opposed to unions, socialism and women’s suffrage.  She even left America in 1914 because it was too vulgar. My favorite example of her unsympathetic nature:  she was often “writing in bed after breakfast and tossing the completed pages on the floor, to be sorted and typed up by her secretary.”

But despite all that, her novels are engaging and hard to put down … compelling reasons for reading them include the wonderful character names she creates:  Undine Spragg, Lily Bart, Ethan Frome.  And, you root for the protagonists despite themselves.  Lily Bart is profoundly self-involved and incapable of true charity; Undine Spragg is spoiled, ignorant, shallow and amoral.  Wharton even sets The Age of Innocence at a time when divorce was unthinkable–even though she herself had just had one.

But I had no idea that Wharton wrote scary stories (there is a book called The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, so…).

This story is about a young woman who accepts a job as a lady’s maid.  The main character, Hartley, has just gotten over the typhoid and looks weak and tottery.  She had been denied jobs because of this.  But a friend suggests she apply for a job with Mrs Brympton.  She was something of an invalid and lived all year round at her country place.  The last thing she was told was that the gentleman of the house was almost always away and when he was at house, she would just need to stay out of his way. (more…)

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Gabino Iglesias, “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone” (published 2023) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Gabino Iglesias, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 27, 2025] “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This story opens with the title “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone” which is something that the Marta’s grandmother used to say.  She had a lot of pithy sayings like that.  It was part of her Caribbean upbringing.  She was born in the mountains of Puerto Rico and had no birth certificate–she was anywhere from 85 to 120 depending on who you talked to.

She also said things like Don’t put your purse on the floor, Pray whenever you go past a cemetery and Stop and smell the flowers.  But it’s the woods that are on Marta’s mind as she walks through the woods by herself.

She can’t quite understand why her grandmother was so insistent upon this.  it’s daylight and the woods are great–she is even stopping to smell flowers.  But then she looks up and sees a cabin.  A cabin that she didn’t know was there.  And then there’s a woman waving to her from the cabin.

Marta is drawn to the cabin and the old woman invites her in and gives her tea.  After talking for sometime (and neither one of them offering up her name), the old woman says “the reason Sonia never left her house is because that was the only place she felt safe.”

Marta realizes she never said her grandmother’s name.  And this woman knows about something that Sonia did a long time ago.  And what Sonia did to make amends.  And the woman is ready for her reward.

This was a spooky story with a really creepy ending.

 

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Michael Shea–“Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity” (published 2024) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Huh?, Michael Shea, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 26, 2025] “Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

It’s unusual that I simply do not get a story.  And I absolutely did not get this one.  Or maybe I don’t get why it was written.  It’s very short (3 pages in this tiny format) and it shows two scenes.

In the first scene, a rock hits a hill.  Something cracks open and a little molecular net–an elaborate hydrocarbon making its first appearance in nature–floated out.  She floated through the rock to the water and was swallowed by a fish.

In the second scene a backhoe hits a bluff–maybe the same hill?–and another microsomething escapes.

On a second reading I get that I think this microscopic invader is potentially going to destroy the world.  But it was so oddly written that I ‘m not really sure.  Ah, I see that this is excerpted from a larger work.  So that makes sense because this felt like the set up to something.  Although I won’t be seeking out the novel.

Interestingly, Shea wrote a story in Ghost Box II that I loved.  Every story is different.

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