Posted By Margot Harrison on Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 3:07 PM

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Frank Gonzales in 2009, with puppet.

Born in Burlington on October 20, 1859, John Dewey went on to become a major figure in education reform, psychology, philosophy and political liberalism. When conservatives trumpet getting "back to basics" in education and away from techniques that privilege children's creative exploration, they're fighting Dewey's influential legacy.

Tomorrow, locals will have a chance to celebrate Dewey's anniversary in a way he might have enjoyed — with colorful masks made by local kids under the direction of artist and Dewey super-fan Frank Gonzales.

Tags: john dewey , frank gonzalez , words , books , archer mayor , castle freeman , stephen kiernan , howard frank kosher , phoenix books , julia shipley , christine hadsel , Image , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 6:26 PM

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Rachel Elizabeth Jones

Vandalized sculpture

This past June, Winooski artist Leslie Fry invited the public to to see the largest sculpture she's every made. Forget white walls or blue-chip chatter — Fry's masterpiece was mostly in gray, white and a lot of green. And instead of one work, it was a whole garden of them. Fry, who has lived in her Winooski home for more than two decades, started work on the current iteration of her sculpture garden in the summer and fall of 2014 while she remodeled her studio space, taking advantage of having excavators on hand. Seven Days' Ken Picard profiled Fry back in 2006. 

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Rachel Elizabeth Jones

Vandalized sculptures

Today, though, the occasion is sordid. Someone has dislodged the two sphinxes that mark the entrance to her sculpture garden. Many area residents are familiar with these sphinxes — they are the siblings of the gargoyle-like figures installed in Shelburne Road's Pomerleau Park, a city commission that Fry completed in 1999. 

Tags: Leslie Fry , Winooski , Image , Web Only

Posted By Dan Bolles on Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 2:12 PM

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Bernie's Desire by I.I. Dene

This just in: Bernie Sanders gets people hot. And not just in that feverish "We are the 99 percent!" kind of way. As reported by Jezebel's Ellie Shechet, the excitement over Sanders' presidential run has reached a climax in the form of a 67-page work of erotic fan fiction titled Bernie's Desire.

The eBook, penned by I.I. Dene, is the first in the Presidential Passion Series and follows in a longstanding historical tradition of erotic fan fiction dating back to the 1788 hit Washington's Cherry — though the phenomenon truly peaked in 1865 with the S&M novel Honest Abe's Chains of Bondage. A posthumous Lincoln sequel, POTUS Interruptus, was not as well received, for obvious reasons. 

Dene's outlandishly porneriffic novella features the distinguished gentleman from Vermont — and his wife, Jane Sanders — in all manner of compromising situations, including, but not limited to, orgies, drug parties and, in one particularly imaginative passage, shapeshifting sex. But it's meant to be as educational as it is titillating, using salacious scenes as a means of kinda-sorta explaining Bernie's socialist, ahem, positions. 

(Rumors of a follow-up erotic novel, Feel the Bern, about a perhaps inevitable trip to the VD clinic, are, as of press time, completely made up by me. We suspect its publication will depend on Sanders' ability to achieve and sustain his election.)

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"Politcal Power: Bernie Sanders"

For a different kind of Sanders porn, we turn to the comic book world, where this week graphic novel publishing company StormFront Entertainment released "Political Power: Bernie Sanders." The comic is the latest in a series of biographical comics about presidential hopefuls, following books about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. Yes, it seems even in the funny pages, as in the national media, Bernie gets, well, trumped for coverage.

Judging by sample pages sent to Seven Days, the comic applies the superhero narrative arc to politicking, zealously painting Bernie as a righteous, non-caped crusader for the common man. Writer and illustrator Joe Paradise, who also drew the Clinton, Bush and Paul comics, offers Sanders' humble origin story, his unlikely rise to power and highlights epic battles he's fought against supervillains such as evil-doing Republicans and the NRA — all in the name of truth, justice and the American way, of course. Here's hoping that if he's elected, Bernie remembers that most important of lessons from another comic, "Spiderman": With great power, comes great responsibility. 

 

Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , comic books , erotic fiction , Presidential Campaign , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 9:01 AM

Dairy Council of California

Joe Hursley, as White Gold, sings "Almost as Beautiful as Me" in "Battle for Milkquarious."

I hate advertisements. I use browser plug-ins to remove them from all the webpages I visit, and they’re one of the main reasons I no longer watch traditional broadcast television. While I acknowledge that their visual style can surpass those of current TV and film, I just can’t bear to be harangued into buying something; the capitalist impulse is so naked and brazen that it makes me shiver a bit. It still boggles my mind that so many people look forward to watching the ads that air during the Super Bowl, for instance. They might sometimes be clever, but that cleverness is all in the name of getting you to part with your money. And don’t even get me started on the ads that play in movie theaters.

So I must report with some regret that I really enjoyed watching “The Battle for Milkquarious,” a 22-minute-long rock-opera advertisement … for milk.

Tags: what i'm watching , battle for milkquarious , advertisement , ad , electric six , milk , dairy council of california , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Margot Harrison on Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 2:59 PM

A24 Films

Jake Gyllenhaal stalks the other Jake Gyllenhaal's love interest.

This week in movies you missed: Last weekend, I shuddered my way through the tense thriller Sicario (review here). Two years ago, I was a fan of Prisoners, by the same director from Québec — Denis Villeneuve.

Between those two movies, Villeneuve made a very Canadian art film called Enemy, shot in Toronto and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. I watched it for free via Amazon Prime (where it's also available for rental), wondering how different it would be from The Double, another art film on a similar theme that hit the U.S. around the same time. (It was the subject of a previous Movies You Missed.) For extra confusion, Enemy is loosely based on José Saramago's novel The Double, the other movie on Dostoyevsky's classic of the same name.

And, of course, Enemy poses the question: Are two Jakes better than one?

Tags: movie , film , denis villeneuve , enemy , jake gyllenhaal , sicario , jose saramago , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Pamela Polston on Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 9:13 PM

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Courtesy of Fleming Museum

"Wedding Cake House, Iron Furnace Road, Pittsford, Vermont," by James Hope, c. early 1850s

It's not the Fleming Museum's birthday, but it received a pretty nice gift anyway: nearly 200 European and American paintings, prints, drawings and photographs. The largesse was courtesy of J. Brooks Buxton, University of Vermont Class of ’56 and a longtime board member of the museum.

For even longer, Buxton has collected art, artifacts and furniture and has been a generous contributor of his time, and his taste, to his alma mater and other institutions (he recently loaned pieces to the Shelburne Museum's "Rich and Tasty" exhibit of pre-1850 Vermont-made furniture).

Though he now resides in Jericho, Buxton, 80, lived abroad for many years, particularly in the Middle East. What he called "my corporate career" in a 2010 profile in Seven Days began with Citibank and concluded with ConocoPhillips, in 2003. His numerous travels netted a treasure of artworks, some of which now belong to the Fleming. Among them are 19th-century photographs; works on paper by the likes of Manet, Dufy and Delacroix; early Vermont portrait painting and landscapes, prints, photos and watercolors.

Tags: Fleming Museum of Art , UVM , J. Brooks Buxton , museum donations , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Sat, Oct 3, 2015 at 9:04 AM

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Bryanston Pictures / Jack H. Harris Enterprises / University of Southern California

Lt. Doolittle doing a little cosmic surfing in Dark Star

Were I writing for a publication based in any state other than Vermont, I wouldn’t find it necessary to include the following disclaimer about John Carpenter’s film Dark Star:

This film has nothing whatsoever to do with Dark Star Orchestra, the jam band that operates under the credo “continuing the Grateful Dead concert experience.”

To my knowledge, the existence and the music of this band were entirely uninfluenced by this parodic 1974 film, and indeed the two entities have little in common other than that the band sings in English, which is also the chief language of the film.

Glad we got that out of the way.

I dislike jam band music, but I’m a longtime fan of Dark Star, and of John Carpenter in general. I hadn’t seen this particular movie in 15 years or so, and was delighted to find it as clever and enjoyable as I remembered it.

Tags: movie , film , what i'm watching , dark star , john carpenter , dan o'bannon , science fiction , sci-fi , comedy , low budget , DVD , laserdisc , Image , Web Only