You might recall that awhile back a famed street artist drew Hillary Clinton's face on the sidewalk in front of Citibank. She looked stupendous, and our artist left in his wake promises of two additional portraits to come, namely those of Barack Obama and John McCain. Well Columbia, we are thrilled to report that for Mr. Obama, that time has come. Well, nearly -- the forehead might need some shading in. But oh, he is a masterpiece and a fine addition to sidewalk in front of the Citibank.

Bwog noticed the following masterpiece chalked into the sidewalk in front of the Citibank on Broadway. (It reminds us of the chilling day that Ron Paul supporters had somehow obtained and mastered chalk.) To ward off any devastating criticism of a possible political bias, the artist has assured us in a note written next to HRC's cheek, "McCain and Obama to follow." Check back later in the week for photographs of said Portraits of Straight Talk and Change/Hope, respectively.

(Hello, Politico!)

Michael Snyder, Bwog's resident off-campus theatre critic, serves up his thoughts on the Broadway rendition of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming.

Now that Harold Pinter has been awarded the Nobel prize, his plays have officially entered the canon, and yet a play like The Homecoming, now in a wonderful revival at the Cort Theatre on 48th Street, in many ways feels far more modern than most new plays you're likely to see on Broadway.

The story of The Homecoming is simple: the curtain opens on an ordinarily unpleasant day in the blue-collar, north London home of Max, his two sons Lenny and Joey, and his brother Sam. The drama really begins when Max's oldest son Teddy returns for a surprise visit from America where has been a philosophy professor for nine years. He brings with him his wife Ruth, about whom he has told his family nothing.

Needless to say, Pinter did not become famous as a master storyteller. Eschewing exposition, Pinter allows us only the most vital details of his characters lives, presented intermittently throughout the play's spare two hours. Thanks to Pinter's brilliant and meticulous craftsmanship, it is in piecing things together after the play ends that you realize just how much information he has given you and in so few words.

In which Bwog theater correspondent Michael Snyder ruminates on Broadway's take on familial destruction:

In our post-post-modern world of narrative tricks and linguistic games, it is easy to forget that a meticulously constructed, intelligently written, and vigorously performed family drama can still pack a powerful emotional and intellectual punch. If you need proof, look no further than Tracey Letts' spectacular new play August: Osage County. Not since my first encounters with Williams and Albee have I been so wildly entertained by viciousness, and not since Long Day's Journey Into Night have I been so completely invested in the lives of a family on stage. At this point, August has been so showered with praise that to write another rave review seems redundant, and yet it is difficult not to get excited over a play so clearly poised to become a classic for our generation of theatergoers.

Halley Bondy, BC '06, already has a one-woman show running Off-Off Broadway—Sleep Tight Mick— that explores the idiosyncrasies of modern pop culture from the eyes of a polygamist cult escapee. FlavorPill loved it. The Anthro/Women's Studies writes to Bwog about playing eight characters, living in a temp/intern/freelance vortex, and on-stage orgasms.

How does a Barnard grad like yourself get a play up Off-Off Broadway within a year of graduating?

I've always gravitated toward theater but I wanted to avoid the demoralizing audition circuit. Compared to a lot of New York actors, my resume is really bleak, but I've been building my writing creds...and you don't have to audition for that.

As a journalist I learned New York theater isn't some inaccessible entity in the sky. I befriended Robert Dominguez, an editor at the Daily News where I worked [as an intern after I graduated]. He had somehow managed to maintain a stressful journalism job while producing plays in the Fringe Festival. I shyly presented my writing to him, and a creative collaboration began. We researched different play competitions around the city and came across the ONE festival at Teatro la Tea. I wrote Sleep Tight Mick, I entered it, performed it, and won. It has since gotten another festival at the Manhattan Repertory Theater, and I plan on entering it to many more.

How did the idea for this play come about?

Sleep Tight Mick is about a young woman who grew up in a polygamist cult and has to adapt to life in New York after she escapes. (If it's autobiographical at all, it's only through metaphors). I was interested in a lovable character who is completely ignorant of our day-to-day experience, who lives outside of society as we know it, and who is purely a victim of her circumstances. I wanted to create an icon who forces us to laugh at our culture. One of my greatest inspirations for the show actually took place in an American history class I took at Barnard under Professor Thaddeus Russell. In short, after the slaves were emancipated, the government sent a legion of semi-evangelists to go down south and teach the newly freed slaves how to behave like they're "free" ("Desire work" "Love work" "No booze" "no dancing," etc). The speeches must have sounded completely absurd to them, and not to mention, almost as binding as slavery.

And polygamist cults are just too cool to resist.

In which Bwog contributor Michael Snyder regains faith in Broadway. Go see Spring Awakening--$25 for Columbia students!

About two months ago I discovered that I don't actually like musical theater. I found this out in a conversation with several dear friends who do, in fact, like musical theater. We were comparing favorite shows and my end of the conversation went something like this: "Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park, Company, Cabaret, Chicago, West Side Story." My friend asked me if I liked anything that hadn't been written by Sondhiem, Kander and Ebb, or Bernstein. I said that I have a soft spot for Rent. It occurred to me then that for every musical that I love (and the ones I love I really do love) there are at least four that make me want to vomit all over myself. This is not an exaggeration.

So, for me at least, there's very little new musical theater to get excited about. These days, there seems to be very little in musical theater that can be called new at all. There are the revivals, some of which are truly brilliant (John Doyle cannot be praised enough), there are the 'new' shows that emulate musicals of the 1940s, there are the bubonic plague-like Disney blockbusters (I include Wicked in this category), and there are the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals that refuse to go away (I am convinced that, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, The Phantom of the Opera would continue to play for packed houses of cockroaches.) But new musicals—new in the way that Hair was new, new in the way that Sondheim's musicals have always been new, new in way that Rent was at its premiere—don't show up very often. The American musical as a genre seems to be going from terminal to vegetative.

Several times a year, Broadway turns into an Upper West Side-style bazaar, hawking everthing from fur coats to cheap socks. Today, Bwog bypassed the material goods, turning instead to late summer nirvana: the food.

Street fair culinary options tend to tread the extremes of nutrition: smoothies and falafel nestle in between cholesterol dispensaries, exemplified by fried oreoes. Bwog, which would like to keep its arteries clear at least until its forties, could not bring itself to try them. But we can't imagine they'd be anything other than orgasmic.

More food photography after the jump!

Bwog was utterly charmed this afternoon by the sight of a little girl taking on the best of Broadway on the chess board. What a worldbeater.