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TELEVISION
After 'Raymond,' What? The Hazy Future of Sitcoms
By Tom Shales,
Page N01
My, what a great big tear will come rolling out of the CBS Eye on May 16. That's the night the network says goodbye to "Everybody Loves Raymond" after nine years of rollick, frolic and astronomical profit. "Raymond" will remain a nearly bottomless oil well in syndication for years to come, of course, continuing to make Worldwide Pants chief David Letterman, star Ray Romano and "Raymond's" other producers obscenely rich.
THEATER
Broadway, Just Loony About Musical Comedies
By Peter Marks,
Page N01
The Broadway musical has moved. To the sunny side of the street.
STAND-UP
Shtick Shift: Stand-Up's Edge No Longer Cuts
By William Booth,
Page N01
LOS ANGELES -- Like jazz, stand-up comedy is both an American invention and harder than it looks: A lone entertainer with nothing but a microphone stands before an audience and tries to make it laugh.
HERE & NOW
Page N02
ART
DAN STEINHILBER IS ONE of Washington's most successful and talented young artists. Only 32, he's already shown work at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, which has now acquired one of his largest pieces. Next year he'll be getting a solo show at a museum in Houston, as well as an artist's residency at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, a pioneering center for installation art. It's hard to resist the whimsy of Steinhilber's work, in which he assembles dozens or even hundreds of banal objects -- pop bottles, wire hangers -- into appealing sculptures and installations. But some of us have been determined to resist it and ask Steinhilber to throw a bit more conceptual heft into his art. In his latest show at Numark Gallery, there are hints he may be moving in that direction. The best piece is nothing more than a restaurant warming lamp that hangs from the ceiling to just above head height. A plain white plinth, of the kind you'd plunk a small bronze on, rises four feet from the floor to meet it. And Steinhilber's work of art seems to hover in the empty space between them, as a disembodied red glow and a waft of heat. A plinth sets the stage for art; a light points at the spot where it's supposed to sit. The art itself becomes whatever fills the place that plinth and light pick out. An artist whose work has always been about attractive heaps of matter now seems headed for the immaterial.
Laughs That Track Across the Color Line
By Ann Hornaday,
Page N03
If standup comedy has gone from crossover country to a sadly Balkanized federation of demographic niches, a funny -- and encouraging -- thing is happening with comedy at the movies.
Recordings
Maria McKee's Bleak 'Dreams'
By Allison Stewart,
Page N05
Lately, alt-country upstart Tift Merritt has been making better Maria McKee albums than McKee herself has. Merritt excels at the sort of rollicking, classic, soul-influenced albums McKee made briefly in the '90s and should be making still. But McKee, who has country rock's best voice and its most unfairly lackluster career -- next to Kelly Willis, anyway -- never settled on a style that fit. Since her days fronting cowpunk pioneers Lone Justice in the early '80s, she's been a country folkie, an acolyte of Bowie in his Ziggy phase and a neo-baroque Edith Piaf, and that's just lately.
A Quick Spin
Page N05
BEAUTY AND THE BEAT
Edan
Like most good indie hip-hop acts, Edan has a seemingly bottomless musical curiosity, but the Boston DJ/MC also has an edge over the competition: He's willing to dive headlong into musty '60s and '70s psychedelia for...
Raconteur Stop
For Those With a Story to Tell, the Moth Is the Place to Be
By Teresa Wiltz,
Page N06
NEW YORK
Here, tucked away in the bowels of a Lower East Side bar among the denizens of the Moth, the literary crowd's answer to stand-up, the vibe is very not-for-profit: granny glasses, funky hats, comfortable shoes. Geek chic.
Museum Art: It's No Laughing Matter
By Paul Richard,
Page N10
This story is about the humor in art museums.
It'll be short.
