SOUNDS: Jim White @ Joe's Pub tonight (1/6)

Tonight @ 7PM @ Joe's Pub:

Happy Ending Music and Reading Series:

America Night featuring Jonathan Dee ("The Privileges"), Rich Benjamin (Whitopia), Colum McCann and musical guest Jim White

Jim White is a prophet of human loss who sings about Southern misfits in a sly, haunted tenor. Saved as a Pentecostal at fifteen and lost again shortly thereafter, White did stints as a professional surfer, fashion model, taxi driver, and filmmaker before his music was discovered by David Byrne...

The consistently sold out, Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, chosen by New York Magazine and NY Press as the best reading series in NYC, and singled out by the New York Times Magazine for helping to "Keep downtown alive," features the most interesting storytellers, writers, musicians, raconteurs and personalities, and requires the readers to take one public risk, while the musicians, who perform two short sets with their original, lyric-driven music, are required to play one cover song and try to get the audience to sing along. Called the “most vital authors’ series in the city,” by Time Out NY, and known for its consistently good taste, Happy Ending has launched careers and proudly, ended none

SCREEN: Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus

I was driving thru Alabama a few Octobers back and a roadside church sign asked "Would Jesus Go Trick Or Treating?" My gut response was "Hell yeah! Why not?" Afterall, I come from NYC where all entities tend to co-exist rather peaceably. Just last Sunday, as a matter of fact, I went to 11am services at an Episcopal church that lives right next door to year-round Halloween shop.

Religion takes many forms in the South - from blues to BBQ, from snake handling to SEC football. The editor of one of my favorite Southern-based magazines soberingly brushed my photos off once as "quaint." I guess I tend to "search for the wrong eyed jesus." Maybe it's trite to be in the South and take photos of a rusty car, a weathered shack, a little white church, a field of cotton, a juke joint, a bluesman. If I can't do it up better than the Wms Christenberry or Eggleston why bother?

Maybe because even 50 years later there is a way of life that still exists despite everything else changing so rapidly that we barely have time to make sense of it all. On my next drive, I just might still find a woman in Hale or Perry county sitting on her porch making egg carton flowers. Maybe we could all use a little quaint right now. Can I get an "Amen?"