tuesday, august 3, 2010


Style ABCDE C S


RECORDINGS Los Lobos captures its roots on “Tin Can Trust”; plus, Ola Belle Reed’s “Rising Sun Melodies,” Freddie Gibbs’s “Str8 Killa No Filla” and Singles File. C3


BOOK WORLD


Severed from reality Rick Moody again goes his own way with “The Four Fingers of Death.” C2


CAROLYN HAX Look out below!


Her sister is a social-climber and could be headed for a fall. C5


MUSIC REVIEW


Going gracefully Brooks and Dunn roll out their signature big-hearted mix of heroes and honky-tonk during a rousing farewell tour stop Sunday night at Jiffy Lube Live. C8


3LIVE TODAY @ washingtonpost.com/discussions Janet Bennett Kelly and Holly Thomas on fashion Noon • Tom Shales on TV Noon • Paul Farhi on pop culture 1 p.m.


THE TV COLUMN Lisa de Moraes


After a half-dozen ‘D.C. Cupcakes,’ TLC craves more


T beverly hills, calif.


LC has picked up a second season of “D.C. Cupcakes,” the network confirmed Monday, though it’s unclear how many


episodes that involves. The show stars 30-something sisters Sophie


LaMontagne and Katherine Kallinis, owners of Georgetown Cupcake at 33rd and M streets NW. The first season spanned just six episodes over three weeks — two each on Friday nights. About 1.1 million people watched the debut at 10 p.m. on July 16; the second week the audience grew a tick, and by last Friday, 1.5 million were watching the first-season finale in which a local fireman asked for baking lessons — really? — which somehow led to a sister vs. sister bake-off at the firehouse.


And, of course, there was the “picky” customer who sent back cupcakes she’d purchased for her daughter’s 16th birthday party, leaving the sisters scrambling to redo them — though, if we’d been the show’s plot-summary writer, we would gone with: “Sisters shove picky customer into their industrial oven, turn the heat to 200 degrees, lock the front door and head over to the Ritz-Carlton for a drink.”


Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler may tell you


he’s joining “American Idol” as a judge, but Fox suits Monday told grief-stricken TV critics that


fidelity High


Are kids catching a buzz just by listening to music? I-Doser says fer sure, man.


by Monica Hesse


Music that gets inside your head


I-Doser’s five best-selling sounds and what they promise:


Orgasm: “A world of pleasures and vibrations envelope your entire body and soul.”


Peyote: “Causes a mystical loss of oneself, disorientation of the senses, distortions in body image, distortions in perception.”


Marijuana: “All the effects of that sticky-icky leaf, without the smoke!”


Ecstasy: “This is not for cuddle. This was designed to make you explode in pure ecstasy, tingle your body, and melt your soul.”


Trip: “Feeling of awakening for the first time ever from a previous state of sleep, of liberation from what is now seen as a life-long state of bondage.”


now trying to get high off of MP3s. Put that in your PC and smoke it. But first, give it a trendy name. Call it “i-dosing.” The adolescents can be seen on YouTube, wearing head- phones, listening to pulsing soundtracks that supposedly sim- ulate the effects of recreational drugs. They giggle. They gy- rate. They flutter their hands in front of their faces. “Should I try this?” writes one commenter, “Sasha,” in re- sponse to a video of a boy i-dosing on a soundtrack called “Gates of Hades.” So far she’s only tried softer i-dosing options, such as digital “marijuana,” and she wants to know if she can handle the more intense “Hades” experience. Parents, in pursuit of their inalienable right to wonder what is happening to kids today, are concerned. Though i-dosing has been around for several years — known by various terms, such as “digital drugs” — a March incident in Oklahoma prompted a new wave of concern. The Mustang public school district learned that kids were i-dosing and sent a letter home warning parents to be on the alert. Since then, tech blogs and media outlets have debated the riskiness of the practice, and the software used for playing one company’s i-doses was downloaded nearly 29,000 times last week — more than quad- ruple what it was a few weeks ago. What does the National Institute on Drug Abuse have to say? “At this time, we are aware of no scientific data on this phe- nomenon,” reads a statement, “so NIDA cannot establish the validity of the claim that you can get high listening to these sounds.” Hmmm.


D


The center of this discussion is I-Doser.com, a Web site that touts itself as “The industry leader in . . . audio doses to pow- erfully alter your mood.” There are other sites like it, though none quite so provoc- ative.


music continued on C3 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SUSANA SANCHEZ-YOUNG/THE WASHINGTON POST


angerous gateway drug that will lead your chil- dren to a sordid life of addiction? Or . . . New Age Enya soundtrack?! Teens, in pursuit of their inalienable right to


try to get high off of anything that can be in- gested, digested or harvested, are apparently


DAYNA SMITH/TLC VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS


TAKE 2: Sisters Sophie LaMontagne, left, and Katherine Kallinis will return for another season of reality show “D.C. Cupcakes.”


THEATER REVIEW


‘Disputation’: A sister act that’s sinfully sublime


by Nelson Pressley Special to The Washington Post


The subject is damnation, yet “The Savannah Disputation” is as light as the iced tea served by the comedy’s odd-couple sisters in their staid Southern home. A minor-sect evangelical Chris- tian — a perky blonde, no less — has come a- knocking to save the souls of these two aging gals, Catholic heathens that they are. Mary, the tart-tongued sister, wants the mis-


sionary out. Margaret, the kind but dimmer sib- ling, is just addled enough that she wants to hear more about the alleged fallacies lurking within Catholic doctrine. (Melissa, who in another sce- nario might make a plausible cable-news host, has shocking “facts” up her sleeve and colorful pamphlets to back her up.) Before you know it, Mary has roped the handsome, vaguely lonesome Father Murphy into the picture, and everyone’s flipping through various editions of the Bible to nail down arguments with chapter and verse. A few minor miracles occur as “The Savannah Disputation” unfolds on the Olney Theatre Cen- ter’smain stage. The first is that playwright Evan Smith keeps this high-concept comedy spinning lightly and engagingly for most of its 95 minutes. The screws tighten on cue: Is that voice-mail message to Mary from the doctor’s office as dire as it sounds? (The red light on the machine keeps blinking; when will Mary listen to it?) Father Murphy — why doesn’t he just swat down Melis-


theater review continued on C2 tv column continued on C5


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