Kaleidoscope

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Published: Jun 9, 2009

My love affair with the Black Spot Books developed slowly, like any good romance does. I first spotted the Fishtown-based jewelers on Etsy (theblackspotbooks.etsy.com), then at the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival and finally at the Art Star Craft Bazaar, where I caved. For $30, I bought a necklace with a teeny tiny miniature book charm, which is bound with rugged, antique leather. Note to boys with girlfriends whose birthdays are coming up: Buy this, and write something cute in the pages.

- Holly Otterbein

Fierce, catchy and chaotic, Ida Maria's Fortress Round My Heart mighta been your favorite album last year if you had one ear to the ground in Norway. Now it's out of the import bin so you have no excuse for sleeping on it. Maria's got an amazingly emotive voice — husky one second, screaming raw the next — a hyper guitar and the best damn choruses. She plays the North Star on Monday.

- Patrick Rapa

Completely improvised and utterly shtickless, You Look Nice Today is one of the funniest podcasts going. A recent episode of this so-called "journal of emotional hygiene" had the three easy-going hosts (San Francisco comedians Adam Lisagor, Scott Simpson and Merlin Mann) pondering ribbed wedding rings, the correlation of yoga and farts, and what Ted Turner would do if he were Kim Jong Il.

- Patrick Rapa

Doughy, curmudgeonly Walter Matthau is an unlikely hero for a thriller, but he's perfect as transit detective Lt. Garber in the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (see my review of the remake). He looks and acts like a real cop, treating gentleman villain Robert Shaw as more a nuisance than a threat, always staying on an even keel and never letting Shaw get the best of him. But Matthau isn't the star of Joseph Sargent's original. That would be New York City, its geographic, political, sociological and economic makeup giving rise to a living, breathing character.

- Molly Eichel

The Truth Fairy
Joseph O'Neill
Caricature Assassination
Head over Heels
Some Enchanted Evening
The Lepage Project
Free Association
Art + Soul Food
Slightly Irregular
Urban Convergence
Merge: Recent Works