Paula Poundstone

The perennially popular Paula Poundstone, who overcame well-publisized adversity and put her life and career back together, will serve as a lot of couples’ pre-Valentine’s Day date this Saturday night at the Palace. And you can bet that the quick-witted comedienne will parlay plenty of Cupid-related punch lines into big laughs, too.

Poundstone has been very busy over the last year, with numerous public appearances, and guest shots on A Prairie Home Companion, The Late Show With David Letterman and the NPR quiz show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. (The latter is not heard locally, but you can check it out on the Web.) She’s even written a tongue-in-cheek history book (title as yet unknown) for Random House, to be released in time for Christmas this year.

Paula Poundstone will bring the yuks to the Palace Theatre (19 Clinton Ave., Albany) on Saturday (Feb. 11) at 8 PM. Tickets are $32.50 and $27.50. For reservations and information, call 465-4663.

 

The Songwriters Tour

For those who made a last-moment pass on Lyle Lovett’s Egg performance last spring, here’s a chance to atone for your misjudgment. (That show was widely regarded as one of the year’s best.) And what a way to atone—for the Songwriters Tour, Lovett has teamed up with fellow Texans Joe Ely and Guy Clark, plus the legendary John Hiatt (whose voice, as revealed in this week’s issue, makes our own Jo Page melt), for a show that’s been compared to a “back-porch hootenanny” and called “a welcome change from the usual concert pyrotechnics.” Indeed the show is, as advertised, a songwriter’s event, in which the four men will play and sing together with no backing band. (Hiatt reportedly takes the majority of the guitar leads in this combo.) For country and Americana buffs, this is an obvious must-see; the rest of you would do right to drop in on this one as well.

The Songwriters Tour, featuring Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Joe Ely, and Guy Clark, will take the stage at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall (30 2nd St., Troy) Wednesday (Feb. 15). Tickets for the 8 PM show are $57 and $65. For tickets or more information, call 273-0038 or visit www.troymusichall.org.

And Therefore I Am

You know where this is going: straight up René Descartes’ alley. And Therefore I Am is the second half of the French philosopher’s famous “I Think,” line, and the name of the multifaceted exhibit opening this Saturday at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery.

The exhibit will “present contemporary artworks by nine artists whose paintings, drawings, sculptural and video installations and other works are rooted in conveying—and sometimes questioning—the nature of human consciousness.”

The Tang folks are highlighting Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s audio-video installation The Paradise Institute (pictured). This is a free-standing theater-lounge, with room for 20 seats, in which the audience will have the “illusion of sitting in the balcony of an old-fashioned theater, watching an eerie, dreamlike movie.” You will listen to the soundtrack on high-tech headphones, which is intended to create the experience of “being inside the narrator’s head—or having her inside yours.”

Freaky.

Also included will be works by painter Sean Landers, sound-and-sculpture artist Beth Campbell, video artist Peter Campus, and Shana Lutker, Matt Mullican and Jochem Hendricks. There will also be a film series; details about that later.

And Therefore I Am opens Saturday (Feb. 11) at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Skidmore College, 815 N. Broadway, Saratoga Springs) and continue through Sept. 10. There will be a spring reception from 6 to 7:30 PM on April 8. For more information and gallery hours, call 580-5740.