The Real Thing News

"Parallel Lives" is coming to Evergreen starting Jan. 15. Photo by Ellen Nelson.

Caitlin Jones is the Executive Director of the Western Front Society in Vancouver, BC.

About once a month, we'll ask two booksellers - one independent and one chain - for current best-sellers. The specific booksellers will change every month.

"I don't think writers are sacred, but words are," observes the playwright protagonist of Tom Stoppard 's 1982 play The Real Thing .

THE REAL THING: A Kansas man is being praised as 'Superman' after lifting a car off a young girl.

The actress Cynthia Nixon made history in 1984 by being one of the few known people to be in two Broadway shows at the same time.

TAJ MAHAL / "Taj Mahal Mixtape" Source: Breath of Life - " 01 Taj Mahal Mixtape.mp3 A good while back we promised to present a Taj Mahal retrospective .

Fall guy: Olivia Darnley and Max Irons in 'Artist Descending a Staircase' enlarge Why were we told that Tom Stoppard first wrote with emotion, rather than just cleverness, in The Real Thing? At least, that was how the play was promoted in New York when I, then living there, interviewed its dashing young star, Jeremy Irons, in 1984.

Mariah Carey takes a page from the Janet Jackson playbook on her latest, meekly cooing her way through the disc's 17 tracks.

Dr. Phil Leveque Salem-News.com PTSD victims have unfortunately discovered the standard meds and treatments by the VA don't work but bad as it may be in the long run alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other illegal drugs will help even if for a short time.

Birmingham's Bo Bice has the honor of making the Top Ten of Billboard's Decade End One-Hit Wonders Chart.

Two of the top 10 one-hit wonders of the past decade come to you courtesy of "American Idol." Only one of the two -- fourth-season runner-up Bo Bice -- was actually a contestant on "Idol." But the show was responsible for fueling the rise up the charts of the decade's biggest one-hit wonder -- "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter.

The final event of The Rendezvous live music series for 2009 will take place on December 14th and feature critically acclaimed Soul artist ChinahBlac .

Bebel Gilberto is the daughter of bossa nova pioneer Joao Gilberto and Brazilian singer Miucha, but the 43-year-old New Yorker has slowly come into her own over the years, recording albums that fuse classic Brazilian pop styles with thoroughly modern, electronic instrumentation.

Digital, flash-based pocket video cameras - the ones with those clever flip-out USB plugs - have come a long way since their debut just three short years ago.

It fits that Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country on a Spanish-inflected continent, because its music - even when written in protest - seems to dismiss traditional, Latin fire as a waste of energy.

Whenever she could, Bebel Gilberto happily left words behind as she performed at Hiro Ballroom on Wednesday night.

On Radio 2, the Boyzone frontman Ronan Keating was sitting in for Steve Wright, playing a set of "the greatest love songs that didn't make it" to number one .

How do the first-week sales of Adam Lambert's "For Your Entertainment" stack up against past "American Idol" runners-up? Very well.

Boogie Night will star The Real Thing, Ultimate Earth Wind and Fire, George McCrae and Odyssey on stage and the disco will continue after the live show is over.