This Fall In… Visual Art

I sometimes feel for visual artists in Central Pennsylvania. It must be very difficult to pour your heart into work that so rarely gets public attention. I feel too for the people that organize exhibitions for local museums and galleries. There's certainly a community that's hungry to see great visual art here, but it's a small one, and getting new people through the doors must be tough.

This isn't a knock on this area. Lancaster has a thriving arts community and has done an awesome job organizing it and publicizing it. Realistically, it's one of the few places outside of a major metro that has been able to do so. I remember how nervous I was before my senior exhibition even in high school. Seeing fellow classmates dig my work was incredibly rewarding. Even though art is incredibly personal, it's nice to be able to share your work. This fall, there are a number of interesting exhibitions in the area. The calendar lacks the cache it had say, last spring, but there's still plenty of things worth checking out. Here are a few:

This Fall In… Popular Music

It's become a trope so tired that I can barely bring myself to write about it; live music in Central Pennsylvania. It's been hashed and rehashed and sliced and diced in this space. People complain about it all the time, and joke about some of the positively ludicrous ticket prices for absolutely wretched concerts at local venues. As we've said before, music around here comes in waves. There have been stretches over the last five years where we've consistently had good shows and stretches where it's been pretty bleak.

Well, right now, things are beyond bleak. When venues like The Hershey Theatre, Pullo Center, Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center, Carlisle Theatre, Chameleon Club, H. Ric Luhrs Center, Whitaker Center, Abbey Bar and others have at least one decent show a season, you get a pretty full calendar. This fall, it hasn't happened. Nevertheless, I've called out a few concerts that might be worth seeing this fall after the jump.

This Fall In… Comedy

Kipona is behind us, the foliage is beginning to change and Pitt football has already fallen short of expectations—it's September!. That means that we've begun transitioning from summer activities to stuff that happens indoors. In the next week or so, we're going to break the long slog between Labor Day 2010 and May 2011 into two halves and start previewing everything happening between now and Christmas Eve. We'll be breaking down the fall/early winter entertainment scene into a number of different genres and assigning a grade to the overall picture. Confusing? Maybe a little, but let's try it anyway.

We're not in any way claiming that these lists are comprehensive, but hopefully they highlight something you're into. Up first? Stand-up comedy.

Review: Spoon at The Forum

I know it's been covered on this blog many, many times, but it’s too rare that good bands visit Central Pennsylvania. Despite the relatively short distance between us and major metros like New York City, Baltimore and Philadelphia, good shows are hard to come by. Part of it is a lack of venues. That's a legitimate issue, and some of the venues that are equipped to do it bring in good bands from time to time.

You don't usually think of The Forum as one of those venues, and there's a reason why. Still, last Saturday I went to there to check out "indie" rock band Spoon.

It’s Restaurant Week(s)

A few years ago, Central Pennsylvania had zero restaurant weeks. Oddly enough, this week, we have two. There are a few different ways of looking at this phenomenon. First of all, when it comes to something like restaurant weeks, two is definitely better than one, to say nothing of zero. You might wonder though, why Restaurant Week in Hershey and Pamper Your Palate on Restaurant Row have to be separate events. You also have to wonder whether we would have been better served to not have them at, y'know, the exact same time? I can only go out to each so much people. We should either pull in the West Shore, York and Lancaster and make this one really kick-ass event, or we should space them out a little bit.

You know the deal with restaurant week; $30 gets you three courses. Details on both events after the jump.

Who Doesn’t Love (to) Spoon?

I'm no music junkie. But I can tell there is something very cool about Spoon coming to Harrisburg. The "XPN presents" tipped me off. (In case you haven't caught on, Spoon is a band.) Good seats are still available and, admit it, you don't have anything nearly as exciting to do this Saturday night. Plus, the Forum is a truly amazing venue. All the details you need to swoon over Spoon after the jump.

Playoffs!?! Playoffs!?!

It's been quite a year for the Harrisburg Senators. To start, the club opened a brand new stadium that rivals any in minor league baseball and hosted the Eastern League All-Star Game. Months before Washington DC first celebrated Stras-mas, the holiday spirit swept through Harrisburg. Drew Storen, another huge prospect who ended up in Washington, also started the season on City Island. Modern legend and World Series hero Orlando Hernandez made a brief cameo too.

Now, after another wretched start to the season—mirabile dictu—the Senators started selling playoff tickets yesterday morning. That's right, playoff tickets.

Now let's not get ahead of ourselves—the Senators haven't clinched a postseason berth. They are currently a half game ahead of Bowie and one game up in the loss column for the Western Division's Wild Card playoff spot with seven games to play. All of those games are on the road, but five are against Binghamton, which is currently seven games under .500. Two of Bowie's six remaining games are at home, and four are against Richmond, who is also seven games under .500. It's really too close to call.

Harrisburg’s Best Guilty Pleasures (Radio Edit)

I don't deal with stress well. Don't get me wrong, I love being busy, but when I'm legitimately stressed, I'm a textbook case of what not to do. Basically, I push myself to the limit and then turn to some comfort object to blow off steam. Usually that means ingesting substances that aren't good for the body. Calm down. Not those kind of substances. If you'd get arrested or fired for doing it, it's not on the list.

Things have been pretty crazy lately, so I've been leaning on my typical crutches, and since I work in downtown Harrisburg and park on City Island, I usually have to make due with things that are close at hand. If you're having a bad day, bad week or bad month and need to indulge yourself with a pick-me-up, here are five of my favorites in Harrisburg.

Spotobe Top 10: August 26

The Spotobe Top 10 are the 10 events viewed most by Spotobe readers in the last seven days. Enjoy:

1. Dauphin County Jazz Festival: September 11 & 12 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
2. Yorkfest Arts Festival: August 28 & 29 in downtown York
3. Williams Grove Steam Show: August 29–September 6 at Williams Grove, Mechanicsburg
4. Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge Bust: Saturday, October 2 at the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, Columbia
5. Annual Shippensburg Corn Festival: Saturday, August 28 in downtown Shippensburg
6. New Cumberland Apple Festival: Saturday, September 28 in Borough Park, New Cumberland
7. Fort Hunter Day: Sunday, September 19 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
8. Long's Park Art & Craft Festival: September 3–6 at Long's Park, Lancaster
9.15th Annual Hanover Chili Cook Off: Sunday, September 5 at the Good Field Complex, Hanover
10. Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire: Through October 31 at Mount Hope Estate & Winery, Manheim

Dancing Like the Stars

I have a confession to make. For the past three consecutive seasons, I’ve been obsessed with Dancing with the Stars. Not so much the glitz and glam of the show itself, but the underlying notion that with the right amount of guidance, anyone can learn to ballroom dance. Like many DWTS fans, I’d watch the show every week, my toes tapping along to the poor rendition of the latest Katie Perry song wondering if I could learn to Rumba like Erin Andrews.

Picking up on my sudden fascination, my boyfriend decided to surprise me with dance lessons for our two-year anniversary. He’d packaged the gift certificate and circa 1985 marketing pamphlet atop a dozen long-stem roses and sent them over to my office. The flowers were quite beautiful, but the outdated brochure made me wonder if ballroom dancing wasn’t as cool as it looked on TV.