Monsters

Any families out there who don't have a game plan for surviving the holidays together can head over to the Wachovia Center for "Disney on Ice presents Monsters, Inc. " The big-furry-creatures-on-ice show will open Christmas Day. Allentown native Beth Luciano, a member of the Monsters, Inc. ensemble, has skated in the Disney on Ice shows for six years and she still loves it. Luciano, who was inspired to take up skating after watching Brian...

Add the Icelandic sextet Of Monsters and Men to that list of rock acts with a "Philadelphia story. " Joined by seventh musician Ragnhildur Gunnarsdóttir on trumpet, accordion, and keyboards, the cheerful Icelanders delivered an exultant 90-minute set at the Theatre of Living Arts on Tuesday. It was the first of two sold-out nights and their purposefully chosen live Philadelphia debut, coming on the release date of their keenly anticipated debut album, My Head Is an Animal. The Philly honor roll that Of Monsters and Men has now joined includes old regional faves such as Yes and Peter Frampton (both playing before 130,000 at a gate-crashed JFK Stadium gig in June '76)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott is no stranger to whirlwind tours. Back in 1975, he was along on the Rolling Thunder Revue with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and a horde of others. "Thirty-two shows in 35 days," he said a couple of weeks ago from his home outside San Francisco. "I was worried about how many clothes to bring in my bag. 'Are we going to have a chance to do laundry?' I asked Bob. . . . 'How many pairs of jeans are you taking along?' He said, 'Just one pair of Lees,' " Elliott recalled, imitating Dylan's nasal drawl.

THEIR FACES. The mix of confusion, self-torture, unfettered agony. It's a memory I'll take to my grave, that warm, summer twilight several years ago, when a cluster of baseball parents tried to wrap their heads around the unconscionable, that one of their own was one of those child-preying monsters they read about from time to time, in towns they often had to look up on maps. This was their town, though. This was the president of the organization, for God's sake, a guy everyone knew, a guy with a son of his own, a guy whose house they had all been invited to, a house some of their kids had spent sleepovers in. Now here he was on the front page of the local newspaper, his past chasing him down finally, more than 10 years after his conviction for child sexual assault, and only two towns over from where it occurred.

Monster Hunter Tri For: Wii From: Capcom ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, use of alcohol, violence) Capcom has tried and failed to persuade America to love Monster Hunter the way Japan does, but Monster Hunter Tri - imperfect and saturated with old trappings though it still is - might be where that persistence finally pays off. Should Tri's breakthrough happen, credit likely will go to the surprising support for four-player online co-op...

Finally out of the shadow of that big green ogre Shrek, "Monsters, Inc. " (VHS: $24.99; DVD: $29.99) gets the spotlight all to itself this week. Disney's delightful computer-animated comedy from Pixar follows one-eyed Mike (voiced by Billy Crystal) and furry Sully (John Goodman) as they do their duties scaring kids in their closets and under their beds. While not as ambitious as "Toy Story," there is an incredible joy in the colorful animation, and Goodman and Crystal have such a natural rapport you'd think they've been a team since vaudeville.

The Mist, a flawed, sometimes goofy, but exciting and surprisingly clever adaptation of Stephen King's horror yarn, is about a small Maine town that is suddenly enveloped by a creepy, milky fog full of unearthly, grisly creatures straight out of H.G. Wells (Food of the Gods) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (The Land That Time Forgot). It's probably the worst of the three King stories so far adapted by three-time Oscar-nominated director Frank Darabont. But this is no diss, considering that the French-born American director's previous King flicks are the critically acclaimed The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption.

What do you get when three former school teachers turn to acting, directing and playwriting and create their own children's theater? Homework. The producers of the Stages of the Imagination theater group - who staged their original musical, Monster in the Woods, at the Montgomery County Community College this week - mail educational pre-packets to schools planning to attend their play. The lessons contain vocabulary words, a reading list and a synopsis of their production and are for teachers as well as students.

Touring with Jim James, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis in the indie super group Monsters of Folk has been like "a fantasy, an erotic dream" for Conor Oberst. The acclaimed songwriter doesn't mean that in a kinky way, though these Monsters - who will don shiny suits to play the Academy of Music Monday in support of their self-titled debut album - showed a talent for role playing by dressing up as Kiss in Louisville on Halloween. The Omaha singer/guitarist is simply saying the spotlight-sharing shows have been thoroughly gratifying for all. This week, Oberst and James - the singer for the Louisville rock band My Morning Jacket with the celestial sans vibrato voice - sat together for a speakerphone chat backstage from Toronto's Massey Hall.

What Jim Henson did for puppets, Stan Dzedzy does for clay. No Kermit the Frog statues here, but Dzedzy does breathe life into his stoneware sculpture, creating a world of dragons, fanged monsters and castles in his Chalfont home. Step into his basement studio and you're in Dzedzy's world of mythical monsters. The artist, wearing a T-shirt, shorts and an apron covered with clay dust, stands among his creatures like a proud father, as hundreds of eyes peer around him. The dragons and Creaturz, as he calls many of his goblinlike monsters, are animation in 3-D - minus the cartoon voices.

Add the Icelandic sextet Of Monsters and Men to that list of rock acts with a "Philadelphia story. " Joined by seventh musician Ragnhildur Gunnarsdóttir on trumpet, accordion, and keyboards, the cheerful Icelanders delivered an exultant 90-minute set at the Theatre of Living Arts on Tuesday. It was the first of two sold-out nights and their purposefully chosen live Philadelphia debut, coming on the release date of their keenly anticipated debut album, My Head Is an Animal. The Philly honor roll that Of Monsters and Men has now joined includes old regional faves such as Yes and Peter Frampton (both playing before 130,000 at a gate-crashed JFK Stadium gig in June '76)

Chances are somebody is going to get very rich this week. Tuesday's Mega Millions jackpot is an all-time U.S. record of $255 million for the cash, and $356 million for the annuity, the fourth highest ever. No jackpot this big has ever rolled over. If it does, expect the first annuity ever of more than $400 million. The record is $390 million, set by Mega Millions in March 2007. If sales are frenzied enough, the jackpot could get revised upward before the drawing.

"THAT IS the last goddamn straw!" roared Dr. Albert C. Barnes.The long-dead Dr. Barnes was complaining about the stark, stainless-steel sculpture commissioned to "grace" the exterior of the new Barnes Foundation Museum that is racing toward a May 19 opening (in time for the tourist season). The sculpture, by Ellsworth Kelly, is a 40-foot Popsicle stick with a zigzag center. "It looks like a giant middle finger held up to torment me," growled the ghost of the cremated Dr. Barnes.

A new Christmas spectacle starring Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Santa is giving a late boost to Bucks County tourism in what has been a turnaround year. And 2012 "looks like a great year," with three historic events and a renowned exhibit of European art promising to draw visitors, says Jerry Lepping, executive director of VisitBucks, the county's tourism agency. "The problems are starting to recede," Lepping said last week about tourism, second only to agriculture as a revenue producer for the county.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Green Bay Packers' perfect season came to a crashing halt against the struggling Kansas City Chiefs, who had just fired their coach and were starting a new quarterback. Kyle Orton threw for 299 yards to outduel Aaron Rodgers, and the Chiefs rallied behind interim coach Romeo Crennel for a shocking, 19-14 victory on Sunday that ended the Packers' 19-game winning streak. It was their first loss since Dec. 19, 2010, at New England. Their 19-game streak was second only to a 21-game run by New England in 2003-04.

First you see terrified eyes peering from inside a shipping crate. Then the camera zooms in on the half-dozen people trapped inside it. A forklift is carrying this human six-pack toward a truck, which is likely headed for a factory, a farm, or a brothel. The new MTV public-service ad dramatizes a hidden horror: slavery in the 21st century. Millions of women, men, and children - including many thousands in the United States - are slaves. Their forced labor includes picking crops, weaving carpets, cleaning buildings, and being raped.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A rover of "monster truck" proportions zoomed toward Mars on an 81/2-month, 354 million-mile journey Saturday, the biggest, best-equipped robot ever sent to explore another planet. NASA's six-wheel, one-arm wonder, Curiosity, will reach Mars next summer and use its jackhammer drill, rock-zapping laser machine, and other devices to search for evidence that the planet might once have been home to the smallest forms of life. More than 13,000 invited guests jammed the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday morning to witness NASA's first launch to Mars in four years, and the first flight of a Martian rover in eight years.

Zombies can eat you alive. Vampires can drink your blood. Werewolves can tear you to shreds. Witches can turn you into a frog, or anything else for that matter. Despite the horrible fates that these monsters and others can force upon a human, the fear people once had of such mythical figures has gone way down even though Hollywood has made them more real than ever before, with movies and TV shows that depict vampires and company walking among us. Burt Raifsnider is essentially an expert on making monsters come alive.

THEIR FACES. The mix of confusion, self-torture, unfettered agony. It's a memory I'll take to my grave, that warm, summer twilight several years ago, when a cluster of baseball parents tried to wrap their heads around the unconscionable, that one of their own was one of those child-preying monsters they read about from time to time, in towns they often had to look up on maps. This was their town, though. This was the president of the organization, for God's sake, a guy everyone knew, a guy with a son of his own, a guy whose house they had all been invited to, a house some of their kids had spent sleepovers in. Now here he was on the front page of the local newspaper, his past chasing him down finally, more than 10 years after his conviction for child sexual assault, and only two towns over from where it occurred.

AMARILLO, Texas - The last of the nation's biggest nuclear bombs, a Cold War relic 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was dismantled Tuesday in what one energy official called a milestone in President Obama's mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Workers in Texas separated the roughly 300 pounds of high explosives inside from the special nuclear material - uranium - known as the pit. The work was done outside of public view for security reasons, but explosives from a bomb taken apart earlier were detonated as officials and reporters watched from less than a mile away.