tuesday, july 13, 2010


ROMAN POLANSKI


Cleared to go The French director was freed after Swiss authorities rejected a U.S. request to have him extradited. C2


Style ABCDE C S 4 THEATER REVIEW


Loopy ‘Rings’ Charles Ross sees something funny in Tolkien’s Middle-earth epic. C10


CAPITAL FRINGE FESTIVAL


Ringing a bell “The Hunchback Variations” is a weird and witty contribution. C10


YOUR LAST CHANCE TO VOTE! Voting for America’s Next Great Cartoonist contest closes Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET. See finalists and vote at washingtonpost.com/ greatcartoonist.


3LIVE @ washingtonpost.com/discussions Tom Shales on TV Noon • Fashion Fix with Janet Bennett Kelly and Holly Thomas Noon Night riders, on a roll


PHOTOS BY MICHAEL TEMCHINE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST GARAGE BAND: Skateboarders, some in their 30s and 40s, descend into a Towson, Md., garage after business hours. The group uses the more stable longboard to reduce the chance of injury.


For this band of longboarders, age is no impediment to ramped-up fun


by Lonnae O’Neal Parker in towson, md.


L


CHRIS PIZZELLO/ ASSOCIATED PRESS


ate at night, adrenaline fills the empty spaces and some of the guys like to get real low. They ride their boards squat, butts


parallel to the concrete, gloves on so they can touch hands to the ground if they do an ex- treme lean on the turn or get ambitious on a slide. Some prefer to ride high, constantly shifting their weight so they can carve the ramps in wide, graceful arcs, like a giant ski slalom, weaving be- tween the painted yellow lines. It would be im- pressive enough if these guys were teens. That


they’re not makes it something else entirely. When everyone reaches bottom, they head sev- en floors up, back to the roof, a half-dozen riders and their boards, crowding into the elevator, their ski lift.


On a humid night, with a poetically crescent moon and industrial fluorescent bulbs for light, they make five or six runs, until they get antsy or until the security guards come for them. Then they hop their longboards and hit the streets, off to the next winding slopes, the next set of waves, the next looming tower of asphalt waiting to have the sweetness of its lines extracted. Daytime people know them as the municipal parking garages of Baltimore and its northern suburb of Towson. While the rest of the city is sleeping, there are guys — mostly guys — out there, reveling in an ur-


GOING UP: On one of their weekly outings, members of the group take an elevator to the top of a garage for their next ride.


longboarders continued on C9


RECORDINGS


M.I.A.’s ‘Maya’: Missing in action


by Chris Richards M.I.A.’s new album opens with the familiar clickity-clickity


of fingertips keystroking a laptop. Then come much scarier monsters: noxious sirens, nail-gun percussion and chain- saw synthesizers intent on cutting your eardrums out of your skull. The British rapper, tastemaker and provocateur is peddling pop miasma on her third album, “Maya” — a disorienting mix of industrial clatter and digital slush that makes Public Enemy’s revolutionary bombast feel


worthy of “Glee.” She brings the noise, but only to find her- self buried in it. And it’s hard to imagine anything burying Maya Arul-


pragasam. Since making her debut in 2004 as M.I.A., she’s posited herself as the most innovative and dynamic pop star


m.i.a. continued on C3


 Reviews of the Wavves’ ‘King of the Beach,’ Hellyeah’s ‘Stampede’ and School of Seven Bells’ ‘Disconnect From Desire,’ C3.


TV PREVIEW


Kathy Griffin’s D.C. ‘D-List’: Don’t ask, tell — or laugh


by Hank Stuever Kathy Griffin, a relentless publicity


seeker who has built her comic persona around seeming less famous than she’s actually become, brought her “My Life on the D-List” camera crew to Washing- ton in March to show her support for overturning the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays. “I’m bringing Chanel and [penis]


jokes to Washington,” she says in Tues- day night’s episode, which airs on Bra- vo. “It’s like a Frank Capra movie.” While here, she meets with congress- men — Dems Barney Frank, James E. Clyburn, Jared Polis — and media types, such as married CNN-ers John King and


Dana Bash. (There’s also a cocktail party with a group that includes a reporter and editor from the Style section.) Tuesday’s episode is worth watching more as an exercise in the meta-rituals of the typical Washington celebrity- advocate visit, and how such photo ops fail to accomplish much. While Griffin’s trip feels “behind the scenes,” it is in fact just another manufactured scene. She revels in playing the faux-naif,


unaware of the basic branches of gov- ernment. Thus, King and Bash come by Griffin’s room at the Mayflower Hotel, to school her on the concept of a major- ity whip. (S&M jokes ensue, and fizzle.) She leads a noontime rally on Free-


tv preview continued on C6

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