Critic's Corner
Illinoise
Sufjan Stevens is an indie musician best known for his low-key song “Mystery of Love,” which was featured in the film Call Me by Your Name — a gay romance set in Italy, based on a novel by André Aciman. This is why it was so strange to hear that Stevens’s album Illinois had become the basis for a Broadway musical titled Illinoise (with an “e” at the end). “A Sufjan Stevens Broadway musical” hardly seemed like a natural fit for Stevens’s understated style or likely to attract the kinds of people who typically enjoy musicals.
Illinois, the record, was part of a project that Sufjan did where he set out to write an album about all 50 states. He only ended up doing two: one for his home state of Michigan and one for neighboring Illinois. After seeing Illinoise, the musical, twice, I can confidently say that it is the best …
Crime Blotter
The Florida legislature is taking action against the threat of “crack bears,” which are apparently menacing rural homeowners. Under the terms of HB 87, Floridians will be allowed to shoot and kill bears that trespass on their property, as long as they notify the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission within 24 hours of the kill. Shooters will be prohibited from possessing or selling the carcasses of the animals. Current Florida law restricts homeowners to non-lethal means to scare bears away from their property.
The new law, sponsored by Rep. Jason Shoaf and Sen. Corey Simon, gained traction last September after Franklin County Sheriff A.J. Smith said his community was “being inundated and overrun by the bear population.” The bill was dubbed “the cocaine bear bill” on social media, after Shoaf said Floridians have the right to protect themselves against “the ones that are on crack.”
Rep. …
The Desert is an Ocean
Keeler, California, is a town of six residents, two of whom are brothers
‘A car lay on its back outside, tires upward like the arms and legs of a helpless baby or a flipped-over armadillo’
Crazy Jay is a sweetheart, but don’t let him lock you up in that jail
It was a cold day, but heat never really leaves the desert. The sun is always there to lick you, to make you sweat. Even in the desert night you feel it, the urge to sweat. The brothers were beet-red and angry. “I liked it because it was quiet down here,” one brother told me. “I’ll tell you something, though. The arsenic will eat your silverware, turns metal into white dust.” The windchimes were screaming. The second brother turned to the first, away from me, and added, “Tell that girl she’s got a Borg implant.”
The ride home I felt feverish, worried I’d swallowed remnants of arsenic while sipping from their coffee cans. A part of me worried that there really was an implant in my head — that the second brother was some kind of a desert oracle. That he had seen a falsity, a deficiency in me. That it took living in the middle of nowhere and drinking arsenic to see the inside of a city slicker’s skull. I …
