BlackBook

Meteoric rises to fame are Broadway’s bread and butter, so much so that, well, innumerable plays have been penned about meteoric rises to fame on Broadway. The breakout star of 2010 was Nina Arianda, a 26-year-old actor from Clifton, New Jersey, whose twisty, hilarious, hot-and-cold performance as Vanda in David Ives’ Venus in Fur earned her a mantel’s worth of awards. After wrapping a Tony-nominated turn in Born Yesterday over the summer, Arianda, who has an endearing Betty Boop voice and a heart-shaped face, will reprise her role in Venus, this time on the Great White Way.

"I've been a drama queen since the moment I popped out."

When Das Racist performed at BlackBook’s 15th anniversary party last week – a labor of love they totally took seriously – Victor Vazquez’s beard appeared a fluffy chin-nimbus, while Heems’ ‘hawk flopped to and fro with each pull off his joint. Not that the hip-hop trio’s hair should particularly interest you (leave that to their scintillating live performances), but if you’re fans of Das Racist – and we are – then you notice everything. Like this new video on Details’ website. Is that a Hitler moustache, Kool A.D.? Watch as Das Racist has a completely sober conversation about Fader, the “singles game,” and Kantian metaphysics.

Drive Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s bugaboo is blunt violence, from medieval drubbings (Valhalla Rising) to institutional trauma (Bronson). His latest film, the Los Angeles–set Drive, has a lot to offer: Refn’s masterful pacing, a spooky electro score, Albert Brooks as a convincingly craven gangster. Wearing a silvery jacket embroidered with a scorpion, Ryan Gosling plays a stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver (named Driver) with a blend of high-octane efficiency and psychotic rage.

"Your penis shines pretty bright."

"I wouldn’t call the Stones genius"

Of the unofficial but widely-accepted perks that come with an editing job, plugging friends’ work is the most gratifying. (Not so the grade-school chum who resurfaces as a really successful shell collagist in the Outer Banks, and won’t you write something nice about his gallery show?) Doubly gratifying – and bordering on humbling – is championing an artist-friend who blows your socks off, and leads you to occasionally fantasize about quitting said editing job to join her band as a berserk hype-man/kazoo player. So: this Friday at Pianos, Austin-based Celeste Griffin and Monarchs.

"It was just, like, the biggest thing ever."

"When we get too serious about playing in a hotel lobby, we're fucked."

"Nightlife is the soul of the city."