Music fans from throughout the state recently turned on their cars to find Christian rock exuding from their speakers unexpectedly. Even for the conscientious listeners of WBRU, who’d known for weeks that a seismic shift in local broadcast was coming, having your tuned radio suddenly spit out the Christian rock reality when you turn the […]
RIP, BRU There is sadness at Casa Diablo over the demise of the legendary WBRU. And it is indeed the end of the line for one of Little Rhody’s signature stations, which from the late 1960s through the 1980s was the hippest station in the state, featuring an array of music that was not pre-programmed […]
(Originally published December 23, 2008; this is re-published here as a sidebar to my review of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht performed by Burbage Theatre: motifri.com/galileo-burbage-2017 ) Pope Benedict XVI in a speech Sunday praised Galileo as a man of faith whose legacy could help bridge the gap between religion and science. Pope John Paul II […]
At 11:59pm on August 31, 2017, Providence’s media landscape will change forever: 95.5 WBRU, Brown University’s radio station that was for over 40 years a haven for alternative rock and local music, sold their FM signal to the Educational Media Foundation’s Christian music radio service K-Love. When the news of the impending sale got out […]
Is RI Senator Jack Reed working with Kim Jong-un of North Korea? “The only thing Senator Reed and His Sublime Supremacy of Divine Divinity have in common is that they both think President Trump is crazy. This does not imply an alliance,” is what an attractive spokesperson for Jong-un might have said, if he let […]
It has been exactly one year since I wrote my piece “Walking While Black.” Yesterday I watched the Unite the Alt-Right rally on a live Facebook feed and saw a car plow through a crowd of anti-protestors. America is at odds with herself over Colin Kaepernick not being signed to an NFL team over his silent […]
Fools Rush In “Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.” – Mark Twain Samuel Clemens’ wise observation seems applicable to both our President Macho Man and North Korean dictator or Supreme Being of the Gods and Marvel Comics or whatever he calls himself, Kim Jong-un, as they puff […]
At this point in your life (ie, sentient enough to pick up a Motif) you’ve heard a joke about hipster kids and their expensive coffee, artsy style and love of underground music. A common part of that joke is the young, white rich kids moving into neighborhoods whose culture tends to lean more toward black […]
Clown Car The shower of assholes that President Pussy-Grabber has brought into the White House is frightening and disturbing. It makes 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a place where you would go if you wanted to take your skin for a crawl. But for columnists everywhere, it is a godsend, as the clown car rolls through the […]
If, like the AltFacts team, you’ve been thinking the current national administration resembles Lord of the Flies, nature may agree. If you missed that William Golding novel in high school, it’s about an island where pre-adolescents have been left to fend for themselves. They start out resourceful, but quickly disintegrate into pig-worship and all sorts of […]