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Cover Story

Some Say in Fire, Some Say in Ice

As has become a custom, we asked a handful of our readers and regular correspondents to answer two questions about the year looming before us: First, what do you see coming in the next 12 months; and second, if, as pseudoscientific interpretations of the Mayan calendar suggest, the world will come to an end in 2012, how do you imagine that will happen?

Week in Review

How'd That Work Out For You

by Geoff Kelly

Scorecard: The Week's Winners and Losers

by Zachary Burns

Getting a Grip

Going Postal

by Michael I. Niman

There was a time not too long ago when mantles lined with Christmas cards were as ubiquitous as Christmas trees, when birthdays bestowed us with similar arrays, when the US Postal Service would regularly visit our homes and drop off tangible graphic reminders that people loved us—that we were part of a community. Now our hundreds or thousands of Facebook “friends” hit a key and post to our pages.

Music Feature

Best Albums of 2011

by Donny Kutzbach and Cory Perla

When the end of the year rolls around AV’s music department make like accountants do at tax time. Things get intense! After going through the numbers, here’s what we’ve come up with:

Film Feature

Best Films of 2011

by M. Faust

Ralph Fiennes directorial debut is the most in-your-face adaptation of Shakespeare since Julie Taymor’s Titus. Fiennes also stars as a general whose successes in war don’t translate into the political arena when he returns home.

Sports Feature

2011: The Year in Sports

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

2011 was another interesting year around these parts: the Sabres changed ownership, and the goal of winning multiple Stanley Cups became the new focus. The Bills? Well, how about a terrific 5-2 start that had everyone in the city “shouting,” followed by a depressing slide that is still unfolding as the season winds down.

Events

Holiday Party Guide

At Artvoice, we know a thing or two about the swift onset of an overwhelming holi-daze. You can’t seem to shake visions of sugarplums, all you can hear are jingle bells, and your fascination with ribbons has distracted you from gift shopping and party planning. We feel your pain. In order to improve your barren social calendar we have compiled a list of lighthearted festivities that are sure to inject some fun into a busy season.

Art Scene

The Learning Curve

by Eric Jackson-Forsberg

The names of some museum benefactors are writ large on the museums themselves: Barnes, Guggenheim, Getty, Albright-Knox. Behind these familiar examples of the “edifice complex,” the individuals who built these collections, piece by piece, are sometimes lesser known.

Theater Week

Loraine O'Donnell Becomes Hedwig

by Anthony Chase

Loraine O’Donnell has long been a fan of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the story of an East German “girly boy” named Hansel, who falls in love with an American soldier. Marriage to an American would mean escape from the communist bloc, but freedom comes at a price.

Theater News

Stagefright

by Javier

Now you see her, now you don’t! Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall returned to Broadway last November to star in the revival of Noël Coward’s Private Lives.

Artvoice B.O.O.M!

Round 2, Week 4: Stonehed vs. Third Realm

Congratulations to Contagious Woo for winning last week’s online showdown. With that win, they secure a spot in the next BOOM live show, coming up on January 14 at Nietzsche’s

Film Reviews

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

by George Sax

Footprints

by M. Faust

War Horse

by M. Faust

Listings

On The Boards Theater Listings

Movie Times (Friday, December 23 - Thursday, December 29)

Film Now Playing

Featured Events

See You There!

Artvoice's weekly round-up of featured events, including our editor's picks for the week: THE Christmas Party, at Pearl Street Grill & Brewery on December 25th.

You Auto Know

Releaf From Gas Pains

My brother Dennis lives in San Diego and has owned a Leaf since this past spring. I asked him to write about his experiences with it:

Letters to Artvoice

Occupiers: Here's a Cause for You

by Aaron Sigel

Pepper-Sprayed Protester in Court Next Month

by Leslie James Pickering

Offbeat News

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

In some primitive cultures, beauty and status are displayed via large holes in the earlobe from which to hang heavy ornaments or to insert jewels or tokens, and BBC News reported in November that an “increasing” number of counterculture Westerners are getting their lobes opened far beyond routine piercing, usually by gradually stretching but sometimes with a hole-punch tool for immediate results.

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Suzan-Lori Parks is a celebrated American playwright who has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. During the time between November 2002 and November 2003, she wrote a new short play every day—a total of 365 plays in 365 days.

Advice

Ask Anyone

Well, I’ve done it again. A mere few days before Christmas and I haven’t bought a single present. This year I was especially attentive to what the special people in my life might like to receive as gifts. I even wrote a list. But then, shortly after Thanksgiving, I learned (through dropping hints) that each and every one of them had either already obtained the items on my list, or somehow no longer needed the items I’d chosen to buy for them. Now, I’m at a total loss.