Cooking out on the Skids

‘Tis the weekend to be…golly! What shall I be this weekend? Horticultural (getting in the summer vegetable garden)? Lazy (lolling around on Bradford Beach before the scent of summer sets in)? Or perhaps culinary (trying out that Bratwurst with Prune Salsa recipe that’s been languishing in the recipe box)?  Whatever you will be this Memorial Day, don’t forget to take a break and grab some o’ that great weekend entertainment. Such as….

Speaking of cookouts, why not take a lesson from those who know it well – our friends to the south. Southern Culture on the Skids celebrates both Beehives (the kind you get in a salon, beautifully worn here by Mary Huff) and barbecue, not to mention twangy guitar riffs and rollicking ballads of downward mobility. SCOTS plays with Los Straightjackets, those masked avengers of surf-ish rock. And while the Turner Hall folks are billing this as a Memorial Day barbecue, we’re sure the folks on the skids will have their communal fried chicken on hand as well.

Luckystar Studio will hit the road this summer, and they’re selling some art to support their “It Came From Milwaukee” tour that will criss-cross the Midwest. Grava Gallery hosts a silent auction at the Marshall Building Friday night.


For a different kind of musical journey, the Skylight Opera lands in Gilbert & Sullivan-ville once again for the annual tribute to the Brit-kings of comic opera. This year, it’s Pirates of Penzance, one of the most jubilant of all G&S’s concoctions. Bill Theisen directs with a free hand, letting great comic singer/actors like Gary Briggle and Niffer Clarke have their way with the material.

For a wider world operatic tour, the Florentine celebrates its 75th anniversary Saturday with a gala that promised stops in all those great opera destinations – Spain, France, Italy and Bayreuth. Four soloists from the Florentine’s recent storied past will perform in a concert setting along with


Movies for Grown-Ups:
Early on in Tyson, director James Toback breaks up a seemingly endless talking-head interview with his subject by fracturing the screen into boxes with different views of Tyson’s face. The setting is a bright and airy house in the Hollywood Hills, and the shots are close and radiant. And thoroughly fascinating. Toback will eventually show us the other, more familiar faces of Mike Tyson: photos from his street-punk Brooklyn childhood, clips from his media-invaded life, and, of course, footage from his amazing and brutal performances in the ring. 

But for the most part, this movie belongs to Tyson, who seems to be trying to find a throughline of his life – a lessons-learned way for it to make noble sense, a way to bring all those fractured planes into one unified portrait. Toback has been criticized for giving Tyson too much control, allowing him to reinvent himself by spinning a rags-to-riches story that fits perfectly with the American boxing mythology.

But Toback humanizes this warrior icon in both senses of the word. There’s a softness here that goes beyond his much-mimicked moppet voice, and also a keen intelligence and self-awareness. But Tyson is anything but a calculated performance ready for Larry King. Iron Mike’s cracks and contradictions show. His friendship with trainer Cus D’Amato is a touchingly mismatched father-son archetype. But its design is turning Tyson into an engine of destruction. And Toback, who has known and followed Tyson since the mid-‘80s, has enough of Tyson’s trust to let his words flow like free-associative punches. Ultimately, what emerges is a fascinating portrait of a man who contains both greatness and torment, insight and befuddlement, a sense of self that it both honest and brawlingly contradictory. Tyson’s boxing days are behind him, but his interior battles continue.
   Tyson opens at the Downer Theater this Friday.

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