Julia Sweeney’s new one-woman show, “In The Family
Way,” is the most remarkable unremarkable show you’ll
probably see all year.
You know Sweeney from her years on “Saturday Night
Live” and characters like Pat or her previous one-woman show,
“God Said, “˜Ha!’” You know she has a loud,
but sweet, sense of humor and the ability to masterfully embody her
characters.

The band’s name is an oxymoron: Idlewild. As hackneyed and
inexpressive as most band names are, this one seems to mean
something.
Idlewild has punk roots and a lead singer who is heavily into
literature.

Crumbtown is populated by ex-cops who now play cops on
television, half-twins who have the same father and birthday but
different mothers and a former child TV star who’s now
coke-addled and method acting.

So, I feel like we haven’t talked much lately.
How’re things going with you? Things are kind of busy around
here.
We’re making a major change pretty soon.

It’s got to be hard being one of the most beloved authors
in the United States. And by hard I mean pretty easy.
Take Michael Chabon, he’s recently been the first guest
editor of the hip literary quarterly McSweeney’s, seen one of
his books get turned into a hit movie (“Wonder Boys”)
and another win the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 (“The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”).

So you thought you’d left that teen angst behind when you
came to UCLA. There wasn’t going to be any more weeping in
the bathroom over boys.

Pain is only bad when it doesn’t lead to something
beautiful. And when that beauty is manifested in tortured,
cathartic music it becomes really hard to talk about.

Folk music was born out of the strife of the working man.
The spare, socially-conscious songs, played mostly on acoustic
guitar, grew up in the Dust Bowl.

Usually when a student tells a professor that he’s
skipping class to watch some movies and go to a party, you
don’t expect the professor to be very impressed.