Columns
O, Cannabis! The State of Pot in the State
With an estimated 800,000 weed smokers living and toking in Massachusetts and a likely heading for the November ballot question that could bring recreational marijuana to the state, we figured there’s a demand for some pot talk in the Valley. Enter “O, Cannabis,” a...
The V-Spot: I Want a (Not Too) Open Relationship
Hi Yana!I’m a lady in a happy, healthy, committed relationship with a man. We have a good sex life but my sex drive is much higher than his. I’m also really into girls and have wanted to ask him for a long time how he would feel if I was Friends With Benefits with...
Nightcrawler: Miracle Men, Legion reunites; Valley Talent Showcase in full swing
By all accounts, regional college rockers Miracle Legion had a miraculous 13-year run, scoring rave reviews and even regular rotation flirtations with MTV back in the heyday. In 1996, however, they released a disc the band now affectionately refers to as their “swan...
Pour Man: A White Wine for Late Winter
My mother raised me right, schooled in the proper Southern custom of not wearing white from after Labor Day ’til the dogwoods bloomed in March.Until a couple of years ago, I held to the standard and applied its rigorous dictum to wine: white would not cross my lips...
The V-Spot: Fretting Over My First Vibrator
Hey Yana,I would like to buy either a dildo or vibrator for me but I have no experience on what to buy in terms of brand or what type for my first sex toy. What would you suggest to be the best sex toy to purchase to start with?— Fretting Over My First Vibrator Dear...
Nightcrawler: Home Bodies
Eclectic sextet Bella’s Bartok reports that they drastically changed up their recording style for the new full-length Change Yer Life, the completion of which they will celebrate this Saturday, March 26 at Pearl Street.They’ve cut out the middle men and,...
Beerhunter: Franken-Steins (Have wacky beer ingredients gone too far?)
The dumbest thing I ever did on a date was to invite my lucky lady off-campus for an Indian dinner of vindaloo. The dish was so spicy that I spent half an hour struggling to force small talk out through my seized-up throat (luckily, the chili peppers hit her just as...
Nightcrawler: Storm Front, New England notables converge on Max Cap; is Tony Sitler about to rock with AC/DC?
A “Perfect Storm” is slated to touch down at Chicopee’s Maximum Capacity this Saturday, March 19. Sorry, Walmart, but there will be no need for folks to stock up on water, batteries, flashlights,Vaseline or whatever else all those alarmist types go scurrying around...
StageStruck: Bullies
There’s a lot of testosterone flowing in this week’s two picks: Butler, an all-male dramedy set during the Civil War, at the Theater Project, and Hangmen, a black comedy-cum-tantalizing whodunit from Britain’s National Theatre. In both of them, men use rank,...
The V-Spot: Who Do I Choose?
Dear Yana, I’m a 61-year-old woman dating two men. One of them is a retired, 75-year-old secure man who knows who he is. The other is in his 50s and is still trying to figure it all out. Neither of them knows about the other one and live at a distance from each...
Stagestruck: Stan and Ollie, Meet Punch and Judy — Serious Play’s “Endgame”
The story goes that Samuel Beckett was walking through a London park with a friend on a glorious spring morning when his companion exclaimed, “Isn’t this just the kind of day that makes you glad to be alive?” To which Beckett replied, “Oh, I don’t think I’d go that...
Nightcrawler: Leppard Spotting
The Hysteria On The High Seas luxury liner had already left port when Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott came up mute — a case of laryngitis leaving him unable to take the mic for his boatload of fans. Luckily, crewmate Andrew Freeman was equal to the task. The Valley...
Down to Earth: The Meadows as Alien Territory
By Naila Moreira The Meadows are one of my favorite places to walk, daydream, write, and watch nature change in its numberless daily ways. A swath of agricultural land between Northampton’s downtown and the Connecticut River, they’re within easy walking distance of my...
The V-Spot: Straight Talk About the Butt
Hello Yana, I’ve been curious for a while about anal play while I’m pleasuring myself. I’ve heard it generates a more intense orgasm. I can take fingers, but I’d like to try something more (on the smaller side of course). Being a guy, is there a position or toy that...
StageStruck: High Concept Shakespeare
These days it’s almost impossible to do Shakespeare in Elizabethan costumes. Every new production on a professional stage seems obliged to locate the play in some historical or metaphorical setting which – it is hoped – casts a new and relevant light on the...
Nightcrawler: Bluesman Group Therapy, musicians reflect on the passing of Ed Vadas, Shea’s back
Tom Mahnken never performed with noted bluesman Ed Vadas & his Fabulous Heavyweights. And, truth be told, he ended up doing just fine with his own Trailer Park band. But on the eve of Vadas’ passing Feb. 18, the Trailer Park frontman fondly recalls his brief...
Third-Eye Roaming: Some Like it Hot — And Cheap, yoga on a budget takes strategy
Ahh, yoga, you’re so good for us but you can be so downward-dog-darned expensive. If I had a ten-class card for every time someone’s asked me for tips on how to do yoga on the cheap, I’d be yoga-rich! Let’s face it, yoga classes at $15-$20 a pop can really add up,...
The V-Spot: Hide My Hickies!
Hey Yana, Tis I, LL [from previous column “‘Butch’ Lost in Labialand”]. I’m back with another problem. The advice you gave me last time worked out great. Opening the lines of communication between my partner and I really helped. However, my girlfriend and I have run...
Cinemadope: Piano Man, Marvin Hamlisch’s musical legacy
You don’t have to be a music nerd to know Marvin Hamlisch. Or a theater nerd. Or a film nerd. Or a television nerd. Because even if you don’t know him by name, Hamlisch’s work will have seeped into the soul of anyone who was alive in the latter half of the 20th...
Stagestruck: Vanya in Vermont
The irony of Anton Chekhov referring to his plays as “comedies” is often remarked. Most of his characters are bored to death and/or deeply unhappy, frustrated by love or circumstance or both, and his plays generally end with a bleak sense of hopelessness. But Linda...
V-Spot: A Dildo Built For Two
Hi Yana! My fiancée and I just realized that we have sex, sure, but we’ve never talked about what we really wanted in sex. Toys came up and we tried my Mini Rabbit vibrator and we love it. We’ve both tried strap-ons before and neither she nor I really like them, but...
Nightcrawler: Holyoke’s Waterfront set for a rebirth?, Sage King’s debut album
The future of Holyoke’s Waterfront Tavern seemed murky at best a few months ago. Just when it appeared the historic venue would be pulling the plug altogether, rumors of a strategic alliance began to swirl. Last week, however, Donald Robert of Maximum Capacity...
StageStruck: Love Bytes — Looking at relationships through a fractured lens
Caryl Churchill’s plays have always toyed with the form and tested its limits. Her two most celebrated early works, Cloud Nine and Top Girls, folded historical fantasias into modern explorations of gender, sexuality and power. More recently, A Number imagined a...
The V-Spot: Is It Okay to Quit Sex?
Hi Yana, I’m a relatively young woman who enjoyed an active, above-average sex life for my entire adult life, even after the birth of my first two children. However, I found that after my last son was born, my desire for sex suddenly vanished to the degree that I can...
The Beerhunter: Q&A with Brewer Mike Yates
Beer has been good to Mike Yates, the head brewer at Building 8 in Florence and at White Lion Brewing in Springfield. His 16 years of experience in Western Mass and Connecticut have made him a trusted and well-respected name in the local craft beer scene. Since he...
Stage Struck: Games, Courtly and Pastoral
Two classics come to the Amherst Cinema this month via the National Theatre’s NT Live series. One is a courtly game of wicked wagers and voluptuous pleasures, the other a comically romantic repudiation of courtly artifice. Les Liaisons Dangereuses, playing this...
StageStruck: Class Act — A drawing-room whodunit indicts the social order
An Inspector Calls starts off like a good old-fashioned drawing-room whodunit, proceeds through a roller-coaster of revelations that incriminate just about everyone, and ends with a Twilight Zone-worthy surprise. J.B. Priestley’s play, written during the Second World...
The V-Spot: The Rules of Attraction
Yana, I’m a single hetero guy in my 60s. Since my divorce some years ago, I haven’t dated much. What I truly want is a loving, long-term relationship with a partner and to be a loving, giving partner in return. Here’s my problem: I’m short and not terribly...
The Pour Man: Bogle Old Vine Zin’
During a recent visit to the North Carolina mountains, my wife and I were lucky enough to be part of a small dinner party with friends who make their living in the food and wine industry. It was one of those evenings, full of laughter and great stories, with a...
Cinemadope: A Bird in Hand, Sesame Street comes to Northampton
As I sit here in my shirtsleeves, typing away near a slightly open window, I really must insist that readers of this column remember this minor detail: it is February. This is the time when we’re all supposed to be calling all the hardware stores, asking about roof...
Lazer-like Focus: 99.3 FM’s Leslie speaks Stern, sweets, and cheap cologne
Between corporate takeovers, format changes and, quite literally, the omnipresent threat of satellites looming overhead, the average life expectancy of local radio stations these days seems to only slightly exceed that of say, a Betta fish. Set that gloomy backdrop to...Grounded: Plastic Bag Ban in Northampton ‘Necessary, But Not Sufficient’
A friend of mine recently forgot his reusable bags when he dropped in at Stop & Shop. To make matters worse, he’d also forgotten about Northampton’s new plastic bag ban, which started Jan. 1. Then the person in line behind him lectured him on the merits of the...
The V-Spot: Bugged About Body Hair
Dear Yana, As of last year, I love my body hair. I especially like my pubic hair because I can style it, usually depending on my mood: totally unshaven, as a strip, but rarely fully shaven. However, I’ve noticed that when I have the chance to get intimate with...
Madame Barfly: Mixing Beer? Have Fear
Naturally, I was really excited about the whole beer cocktail thing. Beer is good, and cocktails are good, so how can we go wrong, right? As it turns out, some beer cocktails are good and others are downright disgusting. The Beerhunter and I put our booze brains...
Stage Struck: Ice and Anarchy
Mark Rylance has been widely hailed as “the greatest stage actor of his generation,” but he’s only recently become familiar to screen audiences – first as the quietly devious Thomas Cromwell in the BBC miniseries Wolf Hall, based on Hilary Mantel’s two-volume...
StageStruck: Monstrous Love — Two Valley companies share the wealth, artistic and financial
In a Valley theater scene that’s rich in talent and energy but less fortunate in more tangible resources like performance spaces and money, it’s good to see asset-sharing examples of collaboration among folks with complementary goals. Two companies are sharing the...
Nightcrawler: Ashes To Ashes, Dust to (Ziggy Star) dust
As evidenced by the recent, massive outpouring by fans and contemporaries alike, David Robert Jones — better known as David Bowie — touched generations the world over. In fact, some would go so far to say that the Starman may have even possessed intergalactic...
Bosom Buddies
“You know the story,” says Laurel Turk at the beginning of her fearless new play Breastless. “A woman is living her life, finds the lump, and suddenly she is riding a bullet train of doctor visits, treatments and fear. But the story I want to tell you is the story of...
The V-Spot: I Love Anal, But It Hurts
Hi Yana, My boyfriend and I have recently started exploring anal play. We’re starting small with just his finger. We use plenty of lube and it goes in pretty easily and isn’t painful at all, but almost every time we’ve done anal play, I’ve bled the next day and been...
San Fran Caravan
On a recent trip to the Bay Area to visit family and friends, I also (of course) saw three shows – a smart new comedy, a hit Broadway musical, and a big-tent extravaganza in which circus meets horse whisperer. When this area’s summer-season lineups are...
The V-Spot: My BF is Pushing for Polyamory
Hi Yana, My partner and I have been together for five months. He wants to be polyamorous, specifically to have sex and be in relationships with other women. He recently got out of a long term relationship so he doesn’t really want to be in a serious relationship now,...
Between the Lines: If This Is Reform, You Can Keep It
Massachusetts has some of the most ineffective and restrictive public information laws in the country. Data that is published online in most U.S. states is difficult to access in Massachusetts. For example, Massachusetts is one of a handful of states in the nation...
The Pour Man: Wine that Celebrates ‘Crime’ and Springfield’s John Boyle O’Reilly
A wine with a good back story is one thing, but when you find a good wine with a great back story, it makes the drinking all the better. The South Eastern Australian line of wines 19 Crimes — a red blend and a Cabernet Sauvignon — are well crafted and honor the...
Cinemadope: Turkish delight, the unstoppable spirit of youth
Twice in the 1990s, a striking debut made a splash in creative circles. There were, of course, other debuts that have left their marks — Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, for instance, hit screens in 1992, cutting the channel for the coming river of pop...
Cinemadope: Shifting Gears, bikes, cars, and the future
Here in the Pioneer Valley, bikes and biking are part of the fabric of daily life. People come from miles away to roll along the long bike path. Built on an old rail line that stretches across the Connecticut river and connects far-flung towns, the bike path has grown...
The V-Spot: Hooking Up Online
Dear Yana, I’m seeking out dating websites that have individuals who are thoughtful and open to trying or having more casual sex, but also respect boundaries in sexual exploration. I don’t trust Craigslist, and I’m not really into OKCupid or Tinder. I would love some...
Nightcrawler: Troubled Water(front)?
With some 30 heavy bands hailing from the world over, Hothfest 2016 organizers decided to jump ship on their originally scheduled venue. At the time, the future of Holyoke’s Waterfront Tavern was just too uncertain. “It’s Jamie Cross’ show, and with the future of the...
Stagestruck: In Lively Color — An underrepresented group represents on area stages
At the end of my 2014 summer-season review, which tallied the gender imbalance in the area’s professional theaters, I wrote, “I could also do a column about playwrights, directors and actors of color on the region’s stages. But it would be awfully short.” By which I...
The V-Spot: Dry-humping Better Than Sex
Hi Yana, I’m an 18-year-old girl with a sex question. I don’t orgasm during sex with a guy, but I usually do orgasm when we’re dry-humping. Do you have any advice about how sex could be made better for me? I still want to have sex to pleasure my partner, but it’s...
The Pour Man: Good Bubbly for $12?!
Finding a well-crafted, dry sparkling wine in the $10 range can be difficult. There are plenty of good Italian Prosecco and Lambrusco wines in the range, and I tried a number of them this year in an effort to discover an inexpensive sparkler for the holidays, one that...
The V-Spot: Vaginally High and Dry
Dear Yana, At my last vaginal exam, the doctor could barely get her fingers inside and absolutely couldn’t insert the speculum. She said that I had vaginal atrophy. I’m in my late 50s and my doctor suggested hormone replacement therapy. I am interested in...
Brew Years Resolutions: 16 tips for a fun year of beer
Happy almost New Years, beer fans! Let’s draw 2015 to a close in style, drink responsibly, and make some plans for the year to come. Hint: there will be craft ales aplenty. Here are 16 items on my personal checklist that I hope you’ll take to heart when you do your...
A Red Wine From a Noble Spanish Grape
In recent weeks, I’ve tried a couple of excellent Spanish wines made from 100 percent Garnacha, a grape with a long, colorful history. The wines are full- bodied, inky red and have a lot of fruit flavor, and they’re affordable. Each comes from a different region of...
Nightcrawler: Crushing It
Lori McKenna hit the musical trifecta earlier this month with a song she penned for the group Little Big Town. “Girl Crush” premiered at number one on Billboard’s Hot Country 100 back in December of 2014. Last month, it won “Song of the Year” at the 49th annual...
Cinemadope: Nerd Christmas
When I do the dishes in our house, I often like to plug in some headphones and catch up on a favorite podcast. One of those podcasts is a new discovery for me, so I’ve been catching up on old episodes during my nightly scrubbing. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter...
The V-Spot: Help! My Orgasms Went on Holiday
Hey Yana, I’m a 28-year-old female with a high sex drive. I’ve always found it easy to come with clitoral stimulation. When my partner and I have sex it’s not unusual for it to last over an hour. My guy loves cunnilingus almost as much as I love getting it. I often...
StageStruck: Lost and Found
A dozen years ago, Allyn Burrows co-founded the Actors’ Shakespeare Project in Boston, following several memorable seasons performing with Shakespeare & Company. Like Shakespeare’s own London troupe during its years between permanent playhouses, ASP is an...
“The StageStruckies” — Advocate theater critic’s annual review
Winter is drawing in and I’m looking back on the many shows I’ve seen this year. Some have been naughty, most have been nice, and a few are getting lumps of coal from this reviewer. So here are my virtual awards — let’s call them “The StageStruckies”...
Tips for Getting Tipsy
Some of us don’t get out much. I’m lookin’ at you, worshiper of the porcelain goddess. You look like you could use some help. Most adults have learned how to hold their liquor, while others of all ages are still learning. Plus, braving the crowds isn’t always easy....E-Edition
Best Of 2024
Readers Choice 2024
