All posts by James Callan

Content strategist. Seattleite. Trivia aficionado. Family man. Hard cider enthusiast. I'm a rebel. I am! I just channeled my rebellion into the mainstream.
Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre

The Not-Its are the Hot It Kindiependent Band

James Callan has written with The SunBreak crew for approximately a billion years. We proudly present his latest dispatch from the parental front.

Before I actually had a kid, “kids’ music” to me meant Raffi. And I didn’t really know what Raffi sounded like, but I knew what I thought he sounded like: a slightly hipper Barney.

The thing about Raffi: So ’90s! Kids’ music has come a long way, baby. It’s not necessarily better (please Raffi don’t hurt me), but now, kids in tow, I’ve figured out that there’s a big, vibrant kids’ music scene out there. My choices go beyond Raffi, vintage Sesame Street albums, or the growing list in my own iTunes collection of vetted non-potty-mouth songs. In short: There’s good music out there for kids.

Seattle’s a vital center–which makes sense once you figure out that all those young people who were making music here in the ’90s are still here and still making music and have very possibly had kids themselves. We’re home to the Kindiependent scene, independent bands who play kids’ music, and a focused collective that’s been
generous with local concerts.

Their latest toddlapalooza is Big Top Rock, a genius collaboration with Teatro Zinzanni that combines ever-hip circus fun with kick-bottom kids’ bands. This weekend marks the third and final concert, featuring The Board of Education opening for The Not-Its.

Kindiependent bills The Not-Its* as “your child’s first rock band,” and it’s a great description. They’re the loudest, hardest rocking band in the Kindiependent collective. If their pink and black and white color scheme didn’t call the White Stripes to mind, their really noisy sound might do it anyway. They’re the Rolling Stones compared to the Beatles that are Recess Monkey or Caspar Babypants. (I’d pander to my generation and make a Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam comparison, but that has overtones of authenticity vs. sellout that don’t belong in the Kindiependent sandbox.)

The Not-Its are so noisy, in fact, that I wondered if my delicate flower of a daughter would enjoy them. Would they be, heaven forbid, too darn loud for kids today?

Turns out that, as usual, I’m useless at predicting my daughter’s tastes. She loved them. (Turns out kids like noise.) We’ve seen them in concert twice, and she’s super excited about going again on Saturday.

The rock attitude, in fact, dovetails nicely for kids’ music. Rock ‘n’ roll long ago shed most of its rebel cachet–5-year-olds sing along with Ramones songs. But the Not-Its reframe that attitude to capture very youthful aggression. Case in point: Their song “Time Out to Rock” is from the defiant perspective of a kid who’s fed up with being told to “use your words” or that “it’s bedtime, honey.” She puts all of us who won’t play with her into time out–time out to rock.

Time in for the Not-Its, though. Grab a kid (get parental approval) and head down to Teatro Zinzanni this Saturday to catch the full show, circus, and bands. Maybe you want to buy tickets ahead of time, though.

*I wondered why they used the hyphen until I tried to parse their URL without it, then realized it was a great call.

Drinks

Interview with Lars Ringsrud, Cidermaker

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A cider is born in East Wenatchee. (Photo courtesy of Snowdrift Cider Co.)

I’ve never liked beer. 

And if I hadn’t spent time in London during college, that fact might’ve left me a lifelong teetotaler. But during that trip I discovered hard cider. Every pub had it on tap, and damn, was it good. 

Back in the U.S., of course, cider was thin on the ground, especially twenty years ago. That kind of made sense in Milwaukee, where I grew up, which is devoted to beer. But Washington is known for apples. When I moved here, I wondered: Where’s the thriving cider scene?

In progress, it turns out. In the last few years especially a number of small cideries have sprung up throughout the northwest. (There’s even a Northwest Cider Association.) And a few months ago I stumbled across what I believe is the best cider produced in Washington: Snowdrift, based in East Wenatchee. It’s outstanding. I’ve been drinking it ever since, and it’s a tough call to decide between their Cliffbreaks Blend and Wandering Aengus’s Bloom as my favorite variety overall.

So I emailed Snowdrift’s Lars Ringsrud to ask for an interview and find out more. 

You’ve grown apples for a long time, but you started making hard cider recently. How did you decide to enter that market?

Well our history in cidermaking goes back a couple decades, about as long as we’ve been growing apples. Peter would occasionally make homemade wines and ciders from the fruit here on the orchard. The wines would generally turn out pretty good, but the cider was never anything you’d actually want to drink–or even cook with for that matter.

Somewhere around 1998-2000 the apple market took a nose dive. We saw orchardists tearing out their orchards left and right because they couldn’t get operating loans, and others would replant with Galas, Fujis, Pink Ladies, whatever the newest hot variety was, to try to stay in business, just to have to wait 3-7 years before they even got a crop. We were in the same boat where something had to change, but we went in a different direction.

Finally in 2004, WSU Mt. Vernon offered a “Principles & Practices of Cidermaking” class, and my dad saw it as a great opportunity to learn how to make cider the right way. Peter Mitchell, a cider expert from the UK taught the course, enlightened the class with a wealth of knowledge, and most importantly made us realize that all apples are not created equally.

What was involved in the process of going from “let’s make hard cider” to having bottles show up at Whole Foods, Full Throttle, and other markets?

A lot of it was actually some version of, “this hobby’s getting pretty expensive, we better see if we can sell a bit to pay for the tanks and the farming and all that.” We’re all perfectionists–so it would have been easy for us to just keep developing, perfecting, waiting, until we went broke. In 2006 we decided that we would go for it commercially, so we started grafting some of our trees over to cider varieties. In 2008 we started the state and federal application process, and in April of 2009 finally received our approval to begin.

Cider, at least cider from whole fruit, is a very specialty drink, with next to no representation out there. So we and other artisan cidermakers in the northwest are beginning to carve out a niche in the already-saturated alcoholic beverage world. We want to set northwest ciders up in a solid specialty position and build up some recognition around their quality. Since we had such small production this year, we took a look at those places that had the best alignment with such a niche–quality food, local focus, distinct flavors, etc. So we just connected with our ideal locations, let them sample our blends, and let the cider do the talking.

Take us through the process of making hard cider. How do you get from apples to the bottle?

The apples ripen anywhere between mid-August and mid-November, depending on the variety, and we try to leave them on the tree as long as they’ll hang to make sure they’re packing every bit of flavor and sugar in that they can before we pick them. Then we crush the apples when they’re fully ripe. Some of the varieties benefit from macerating the pulp, which can enhance the flavor and give us richer color. The tannins go through a slight oxidation process which changes the aromatics that come through in the final, aged cider.

After crush, we press the pulp, or pomace, and get rich, sweet juice. We do some pre-fermentation varietal blending to get the right amount of acid, tannin and natural sugar in the mix for a healthy fermentation process. Just like with wine, we add sulfites to knock out any wild microbes that have come in on the apples, then after a day’s rest we pitch it with champagne yeast and the magic starts.

After that it’s a matter of waiting for the yeast to consume as much sugar as it can before the alcohol knocks it out, racking occasionally, and finally monitoring the maturation over the course of the next year or so to see when the flavors have developed into their full glory.

When the ciders are fully matured we blend again to create our main blends (Dry, Semidry, Orchard Select, and Cliffbreaks Blend), carbonate, bottle, pasteurize, label, and deliver the final cider to its excited recipients. We are also working on some in-bottle-conditioning for later release.

How do you decide which apples will make good cider?

We do a lot of single-varietal test batches. There are literally thousands of apple varieties out there, hundreds of which would make great components to a cider blend. We’ve tested maybe 20 or so, some of them are absolute rock stars of flavor. Cider apples generally fall into three categories: bittersweets, sharps, and bittersharps. In this case “bitter” really is used to describe the tannins that give you an astringent mouthfeel. Even then the bitter apples can have strong tannin or soft tannin. Strong tannin gives you that clean astringent feeling and sometimes a bitter taste in the back of your mouth, and soft tannin usually develops into incredible aromatics after some careful maturation. We blend between the styles to get a balance between flavor, aroma, sweetness and mouthfeel.

We can usually tell when we eat one which of these categories an apple falls into, but we always do a test fermentation to really get to know the apple. Some will produce incredible fruity, floral, or spiritous aromas, others can give you essences of bacon or barnyard. You definitely want to know what you’re working with ahead of time.

Dry and semi-dry are standard hard cider varieties, but Orchard Select and Cliffbreaks are unique to you. What inspired each of the four varieties you have?

As you said, Dry and Semidry are kind of standard categories that people look for and we wanted them to be easy to identify. Our Dry is rich and complex though, a lot bolder than the baseline dry ciders out there. Semidry is slightly sweeter with great green apple, rhubarb and rich darker flavors.

Orchard Select is a profile that, as cidermakers, we really love. It’s not quite dry, but not really sweet either. It’s really apple-y with delicious summer fruit flavors as well, with a champagne-like pizazz.

Cliffbreaks Blend is this delicious cider that didn’t really fit into any standard category. It’s bold, moderately sweet, intensely fruity (melon, tropical fruits) and has a rich cider-apple tannin structure in the background that carries it a long way. Since it’s something different, we gave it our own name. Our orchard is surrounded by bands of basalt cliffs with the Columbia River snaking between them. They make a stunning backdrop to the trees and we wanted to highlight our locale so we named this one “Cliffbreaks.”

In the UK a lot of cidermakers are pushing single varietals, and we may release some in the future. There are one or two apple varieties that work well solo, but for the most part you can get a more complex cider by blending.

Are you planning to keep producing all four varieties, or will you be changing what’s available over time and as you come up with new blends?

We’ve had incredible response to the four we have out right now, so we’ll definitely be keeping them around as much as we can, but at the end of the day (or year) we’re dealing with nature and she’s always giving us different flavors to work with. Thankfully it doesn’t matter as much if a June hailstorm marks up our fruit since we just crush it anyways, but one frosty night could freeze blossoms or the young fruit and knock out several varieties for the year. Cider trees are also notorious for being alternate-bearing, meaning you’ll get a bumper crop one year and absolutely nothing the next year as the buds rest.

But it’s also just a start. This year we’re releasing a limited-quantity “Cidermaker’s Reserve,” a fantastic blend that we discovered as we were blending for the other four. And we are working on a burly, rich, dark cider blend to show off the depth of flavors that cider apples can produce. It’ll be bottle-conditioned and available for sale at the cidery. We’re also doing our first batch of perry this fall (just picked some of the pears today actually).

You grow pears, grapes, and cherries as well as apples. Are you going to be expanding to producing cider blends, or perry?

Well we’ll always be geeks and be tinkering with things here and there, but our main focus is to let the character of the apples shine through in the finished cider. We still have a long way to go in understanding apples and perfecting how we blend them to maximize the intricacies of their flavor, so we’ve got our work cut out for us there. We didn’t even want to “mess up” our Semidry blend by adding molasses and honey like we did, we just thought it might fit the judging criteria for a New England style cider, but then it won a Gold Medal at the Great Lakes Cider & Perry competition last December–and people love it!

Like I mentioned, we’re going to do some perry. Just this spring we got a handful of perry pear trees and they’re in the ground now, but it’ll be a few years before they have a decent crop. And perry is a whole other animal as well–the pear flavors are so delicate, so revealing, and the chemistry is so particular, that there’s no chance of hiding off flavors like you can with wines, and even ciders for that matter. So you have to be incredibly meticulous with your process.

I have had some good ciders with cherry blended in, and I’m sure there are some fruits that would make for some great combinations, but I think for us we’ll be sticking to just apples. There’s a world of flavor within this one fruit and that’s where our passion lies so that’s going to be our focus for now.

Was it more difficult to come up with the varieties you decided to sell, or to cut through the red tape involved in becoming an alcohol producer?

Heh. Well it’s definitely no small feat to get through the stacks of paperwork that the TTB and WSLCB have for you. Thankfully Peter was comfortable with government applications from his 25 years as a civil engineer for the government and was able to navigate through with no problems. But on the other hand we did spend 5-6 years learning how to make cider, doing tiny batches, taking classes, etc. We still are nervous every time we release a batch, wondering if people are going to like it or not, and are just now starting to become familiar with what each variety of apple can contribute to a cider.

How did you decide on the name Snowdrift?

The tip of the iceberg for us was when we were still just pressing juice for friends & family to drink fresh. One day on a whim, we pressed some of the tiny Snowdrift Crabapples we use as a pollinator in our orchard. We got this incredibly sour, high-tannin juice that was very apple-y, but you almost had to just drink it out of a shot glass. Even though it was so sour, we measured the sugar and it was at 24 brix – almost double what we would get from Golden Delicious! A couple years later we fermented some and it was interesting, with intense, bold tannin and acidity.

Another point of inspiration is that all the magic of cider happens slowly and quietly through the winter as the snow drifts around the resting trees out in the orchard. The cider is silent but it’s hard at work on its own chemistry, maturing the aromatics and tannins into the complexities that we enjoy at the end of the process. It rounds out the year by making use of what was previously a dormant season, just like the cider operation fills out what our orchard has to offer.

You’ve obviously focused a great deal of care and attention on design, from your labels to your logo to your website. How did you decide on your look and feel?

In real life I’m a product and graphic designer, so I was really excited to pour on the love for a full branding project from name and logo to packaging and website. Like I touched on earlier, we’re trying to carve out a niche and establish a name for cider–both for Snowdrift Cider Co. and for the cider industry as a whole. It was important for us to present an identity that was relevant for today without being too modern or trendy, and pay respect to the history of cider without being cheesy and dated. With cider already being overshadowed by the rest of the alcohol industry, we wanted to help it stand out from the crowd. We really love what we do and we want that to come through visually as well. Being your own client definitely has its pros and cons. You can pay that extra attention to detail when you have time, but on the flip side when you have actual paying projects you have to set your own projects aside. So while the packaging and visuals have been very well-received so far, we’ve got a ways to go still.

Your bottles are 750ml and cost between $12 and $17 (at least at Whole Foods), which puts you almost on par with a bottle of wine. I think they’re delicious, but why should someone new to cider go for a bottle of Snowdrift rather than beer or wine?

Well, they’re in for a treat if they do. And don’t get me wrong, I love great beers and wines. But I really dig the complexity cider has. With our ciders, each sip gives you a taste of the very orchard that it came from. We grow our own cider apples and make our cider right here on the orchard. We definitely approach it with the same degree of care as many winemakers.

A lot of people are starting to look for something new, something different, and cider delivers that. In the events we’ve done this year, it’s been fun to watch as wine-lovers and beer-lovers alike come up to our table, often completely unfamiliar with cider, taste ours and walk away loving it. We’ve got the flavor spectrum that can deliver something from very light for the lager- or white wine-lover to bold and rich for the double IPA- and red-wine lovers.

Full-flavored ciders bring a new aspect to food pairings–try it with cheese and you’re in for a real treat. And while I’d rather just drink the cider and enjoy the flavor on its own, it does impart incredible complexity if cooked in a variety of dishes, from veggie stews and seafood to a whole host of desserts.

Music

Recess Monkey Bring Kindie Rock to Town Hall

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Take a thriving musical scene, add twenty years, and you get a city full of young kids with parents who don’t want Raffi cluttering their playlists.

Cue kindie rock: Kids’ music that isn’t just for kids. They Might Be Giants are the poster band, having shifted from indie rock darlings to kiddie rock darlings, but plenty of other artists are thriving too. A friend of mine has seen local band Caspar Babypants (Chris Ballew, of the Presidents of the United States of America) five or six times—his daughter’s nine months old and she’s already a groupie-by-proxy.

Recess Monkey is another local fixture, three guys who work with kids and make music that appeals to parents who love the Apples in Stereo and LCD Soundsystem (or who might’ve at least heard of them) and kids happy with the idea that school’s in forever. They’ve released six albums, and I’m required by law to describe them as “Beatlesque.”

They sing about stuff kids think about, from sack lunches to moon boots to lice to not wanting to go to bed. And they’re all intensely catchy, lodging in a five-year-old girl’s head after half a listen, yet impressively not annoying despite that.

You can catch Recess Monkey twice this Saturday at Town Hall: 11am and 1pm, $5 for adults, free for kids. If you miss that, don’t fret. They’re local, and have several upcoming concerts in the next few months.

Literature

The Mind Behind Galzilla: Kevin Malcolm of Backroom Comics Podcast

Last March, Kevin Malcolm and Spencer Fornaciari recorded the first episode of the Backroom Comics Podcast. Since then, they’ve recorded 71 episodes, covered the Emerald City Comicon twice, road-tripped to cover the Spokane Comicon, and expanded the show to include five more hosts. 

Kevin himself has gone from comics commentator to comic creator, scripting a story for ONI Press’s compilation JAM! Tales from the World of Roller Derby. Kevin interviewed me about raising a kid on comics for the Father’s Day episode of the podcast (forward to 16:50 above if you just want my smilin’ face); I figured turnabout was fair play.

What are the secret origins of the Backroom Comics podcast? 

While listening to a podcast during a stormy Seattle day I was struck by lightning, and instead of injuring me it gave me the super power to ramble on and on about Metamorpho, Jimmy Olsen and Archie Andrews for hours on end. 

What makes your show different from other comics podcasts?

That’s something we’ve been struggling with a bit because there are quite a few very good comic related podcasts out there that cover anywhere from comics in general to ones that just focus on reading Silver Age Flash stories. But I think we differ in a few areas from a lot of the other ‘casts out there. We’ve made a concerted effort to not do fan-boy-message-board ranting and instead replace it with thoughtful, fun discussions on the comics we dig. We’ll still talk about problems we have with individual issues or writers but it’ll never just be, “Frank Miller is sUX0R!!!!” Also, the interests and knowledge of everyone that we’ve added to the show is quite diverse…oooh wait, you’re asking about this in the next question…

How did you assemble your collection of hosts, and what perspective does each of them bring to the table?

Would you believe Quiz Night at the Old Pequliar? Spencer (BRCP’s producer, camera-person, editor extrordinaire) and I quickly realized that just having me blather on about comics with no one to bounce off of would get boring very quickly, so we asked Greg (who I had met at OP trivia and befriended a year earlier) to come on board and then Pete and Jason (who I met at trivia as well) followed about 6 months after that. Ahe was a friend of Greg’s, and Chris (our newest addition) was an old friend of Pete’s. Each of the crew certainly does have their own “super power” and if I were to assemble an super-team based on their attributes I think it’d be:

  • Pete is just getting back into comics so his enthusiasm for seeing where the industry has gone since his absence is quite refreshing. 
  • Greg is our tech guy, a big proponent of digital comics and online comic retailing. He also knows more about comic toy history than 99% of the people out there.
  • Ahe is primarily a blogger for us who feels strongly about her capes. She will pretty much kick anyone’s ass at DC trivia, especially Bat-universe related. Dan DiDio (DC Editor in Chief), unless you want to feel Ahe’s wrath, don’t mess with Tim Drake anymore. 
  • Chris, like me is a longtime reader so he brings a deep knowledge of the highs and lows of the last 20 years of comics. He’s also our resident sci-fi and is a zombie enthusiast.
  • Jason is also a longtime comic reader who loves the capes as much as the indies but also steadfastly refuses to buy anything crossover related. So its always interesting to talk to him and inform him of the latest frustration in crossover land and just watch him put his face in his palm. 
  • Spencer hadn’t read any comics up to about a year ago but the show couldn’t run without him. Pretty much every little behind the scene activity that we take for granted is handled by Spencer. He’s like the Oracle of our little Justice League. 

What inspired you to start doing a podcast in the first place?

It was Spencer’s idea. He wanted to get into doing some podcasts and at the time I thought it would be easy to just sit and talk comics for an hour. And I was right, it is easy to talk comics for a long time. The problem comes in when you try and do it entertainingly, which is why soon after our premier we had to bring other folks in for me to talk to.

How did you get hooked up with Arcane? What’s their role in the podcast?

Arcane’s role is informal but pretty damn important. Arcane became my comic shop of choice 6 years ago when I moved to Ballard and since then Scott Stafford (Arcane’s owner) has become a good friend. When I told him we were going to do a podcast he generously offered the use of his shop to film at, originally suggesting we film in the back room of the shop, hence the name of the podcast. Since then he’s been nothing but supportive in letting us shack up with his booth at comicon, coming in early to accomodate our filming schedule and generally talking us up to his customers.

What are your favorite current comics? What about least favorites?

I am and always will be a superhero fan, but if you watch the show I’ve been pretty frustrated with the direction both Marvel and DC have been going for the past few years now. To me its all Event(!) no substance, which means the comics I truly enjoy, the “top of the pile” comics, are not event related. Jonathon Hickman’s run on Fantastic Four is, well, fantastic so far, Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth’s detective comic set in Portland Stumptown is spectacular, and Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford’s R-13, about an ancient Greek robot fighting monsters in 1939 Spain, is just flat out a well written/drawn and amazingly fun comic.

My least favorites right now are the Marvel/DC comics that promise a new “brighter,” more “heroic” era that still think that using murder, rape and child kidnapping will give their characters depth. Sadly that’s most of the comics being put out by the big two right now. (Wow, I am coming off as a bit of a grumpy old man right now, aren’t I?)

When did you decide to make the leap from comics fan to comics creator, and how did you go about it?

All circumstance. A good friend who skates for the Rat City Rollergirls said they wanted a comic for their programs and would I like to write it. It sounded fun so along with artist Brian Beardsley I came up with the first Galzilla story where she has to battle skaters who are robots and plant/human hybrids, as well as an evil scientist who just wants his own reality show. It was a lot of fun and gave me a taste for the pure freedom of imagination writing a comic story can give you.

From there, at Derby Nationals I saw an ad asking for stories for the JAM anthology that ONI was doing so I put together another Galzilla story and sent it in with fingers crossed. Thankfully they liked the story enough to accept it and gave the art chores to an amazing artist named Ahmed Doucet who totally got what I was going for in the story.

Is your story in Jam your first professionally published comics story?

Yup, it’s the first and I am pretty durn lucky to have my first story published by a big publisher like ONI.  
What was the collaboration with Ahmed like?
There wasn’t much collaboration, actually. They accepted my script, made a few necessary editorial changes (I was trying to squeeze too many panels onto each page) and sent it off to him. But I have zero complaints about the final result. It’s great!
Why roller derby?
Aforementioned friend got me into derby and now I’m a giant fan. And in a way, comics and derby have a lot in common. The protagonists in both are dressed garishly, and they have fun, whimsical names but when it’s time for action there’s no giggling, it’s all business.
Do you have other books planned?
I have some really fun ideas but I’m still only in the writing phase with all of them.  
And finally, who wins in a fight: Captain “Shazam” Marvel, or Superman?
I have to defer to the great comic writer/encyclopedia, Mark Waid and his resolution in the comic Kingdom Come on this one. Superman all the way.
To get your copy of JAM!, check your local comic shop–most of them in Seattle seem to be carrying it, though Kevin recommends calling beforehand since it’s put out in limited numbers by an indie publisher. He also recommends calling Arcane first. And there are many ways to subscribe to the podcast, all of them detailed on their site.
Visual Arts

Andy Warhol Has a Checklist: "love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death" at SAM

It’s just as well that I can’t afford to collect Andy Warhol. One piece just doesn’t do it. You can fill half of Paris’s Grand Palais with portraits and a museum in Pittsburgh with assorted pieces and still not see the same piece twice.

Or you can stay closer to home: love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death opened yesterday at SAM. It’s a smart, focused selection of Warhol pieces curated by Marisa Sánchez.

She steers away from the overly familiar and focuses on Warhol’s non-paintings—photobooth strips, Polaroids, sewn portraits, screen tests—and non-iconic subjects. No Marilyns, no soup cans, no neon-cow wallpaper.

Warhol’s genius—or was it just a knack?—was taking a simple set of rules and milking them for all they were worth. He repeated ideas the way Letterman repeates punchlines, and was just as successful at making lightning strike the same place twice, three times, four times, or more, long after you’d think that spot had no spark left in it.

A case in point is the highlight of the show: twenty of Warhol’s Screen Tests. The idea behind the Screen Tests was simple: Sit someone in front of a nondescript background and film them for three minutes. Just sitting there. Doing not much. Project the films at 16 frames per second so they last four and a half minutes.

The first time I saw any Screen Tests was last year at SAM, when Dean & Britta played their collection of songs composed for 13 Most Beautiful. “Most beautiful” was an apt title, and not just because Jane Holzer brings the hubba hubba. The Screen Tests are some of the loveliest films I’ve seen, but it’s maddeningly hard trying to pin down why, because for the most part nothing happens. But nothing makes me feel more like L.B. Jeffries, James Stewart’s character in Rear Window, and at their best they give Warhol’s subjects a moment where they’re as lovely as Grace Kelly’s entrance in that film.

(When Ann Buchanan cries in hers, it’s a major event. SAM’s publicity materials for the show claim that Buchanan was so “emotionally invested in the process that she begins to cry,” but in person Sánchez promoted the more common theory: Buchanan didn’t blink, so her eyes watered.)

For this show, the Screen Tests fill two rooms, each with five running at a time. Edie Sedgwick and Dennis Hopper. Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison. Holly Solomon and Ethel Scull. They’re projected at giant size, but it suits them; the film grain and stark lighting add to the allure. It’s the best way to see Screen Tests this side of YouTube. SAM turns them into the church of staring at beautiful people trying to act naturally. Linger. Watch.

Other highlights include some of the photobooth photos of Ethel Scull that Warhol used in his first commissioned portrait, Ethel Scull 36 Times; Polaroid “self portraits” (no one knows who actually pushed the button on the camera) of Andy in drag; another Polaroid of Keith Haring embracing his partner Juan Dubose; and a sewn portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat, with the same photo printed at six different light levels.

The show also resists the urge to overread Warhol, whose best work seemed to spring from the thought that “gee, that’s pretty,” and ask the question “Will it sell?” Sánchez said she selected pieces that reflected Warhol’s love of ephemerality, and the show doesn’t promote him as a deep thinker.

(There are exceptions: The placard next to a Polaroid of Howdy Doody, one of his American Heroes series, mentions that photographing a marionette suggests “Warhol’s belief that things are not always as they appear.” Incisive analysis. Wouldn’t it be more noteworthy if Warhol believed things were always as they appear?)

The final room of love fear pleasure blood sugar sex magick contains a photo booth and a chance for you to get interactive: Get your picture taken ($4, credit cards only) and leave one on the Warhol quote wall. You can visit Facebook and tag yourself so that we can make the obligatory comment about Warhol’s influence on social networking.

Which works out—it’s Andy’s world, and (apologies to Sinatra) we just live in it.

(Note: To get to the Warhol exhibit you’ve got to go through Kurt. If you, like everyone who contributed to the exhibit, really like Kurt Cobain, you should go. If you, like me, don’t find that particular rock tragedy inherently more compelling than Lennon or Tupac or Buddy Holly, you’ll probably like a few of the pieces but find the exhibition unilluminating, a highbrow spin on the Cobain T-shirts you can buy in a gazillion places online or in malls. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s mostly art for the converted.)

(And on a final note: Chelsea Girls is coming to town! Friday, May 21 at 7:30pm in the Plestcheeff Auditorium. As with the rest of the best of Warhol, Chelsea Girls was notorious, motivated by his urge not to waste anything, and hugely profitable. I can’t wait.)

News

Andy Warhol Has a Checklist: “love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death” at SAM

It’s just as well that I can’t afford to collect Andy Warhol. One piece just doesn’t do it. You can fill half of Paris’s Grand Palais with portraits and a museum in Pittsburgh with assorted pieces and still not see the same piece twice.

Or you can stay closer to home: love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death opened yesterday at SAM. It’s a smart, focused selection of Warhol pieces curated by Marisa Sánchez.

She steers away from the overly familiar and focuses on Warhol’s non-paintings—photobooth strips, Polaroids, sewn portraits, screen tests—and non-iconic subjects. No Marilyns, no soup cans, no neon-cow wallpaper.

Warhol’s genius—or was it just a knack?—was taking a simple set of rules and milking them for all they were worth. He repeated ideas the way Letterman repeates punchlines, and was just as successful at making lightning strike the same place twice, three times, four times, or more, long after you’d think that spot had no spark left in it.

A case in point is the highlight of the show: twenty of Warhol’s Screen Tests. The idea behind the Screen Tests was simple: Sit someone in front of a nondescript background and film them for three minutes. Just sitting there. Doing not much. Project the films at 16 frames per second so they last four and a half minutes.

The first time I saw any Screen Tests was last year at SAM, when Dean & Britta played their collection of songs composed for 13 Most Beautiful. “Most beautiful” was an apt title, and not just because Jane Holzer brings the hubba hubba. The Screen Tests are some of the loveliest films I’ve seen, but it’s maddeningly hard trying to pin down why, because for the most part nothing happens. But nothing makes me feel more like L.B. Jeffries, James Stewart’s character in Rear Window, and at their best they give Warhol’s subjects a moment where they’re as lovely as Grace Kelly’s entrance in that film.

(When Ann Buchanan cries in hers, it’s a major event. SAM’s publicity materials for the show claim that Buchanan was so “emotionally invested in the process that she begins to cry,” but in person Sánchez promoted the more common theory: Buchanan didn’t blink, so her eyes watered.)

For this show, the Screen Tests fill two rooms, each with five running at a time. Edie Sedgwick and Dennis Hopper. Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison. Holly Solomon and Ethel Scull. They’re projected at giant size, but it suits them; the film grain and stark lighting add to the allure. It’s the best way to see Screen Tests this side of YouTube. SAM turns them into the church of staring at beautiful people trying to act naturally. Linger. Watch.

Other highlights include some of the photobooth photos of Ethel Scull that Warhol used in his first commissioned portrait, Ethel Scull 36 Times; Polaroid “self portraits” (no one knows who actually pushed the button on the camera) of Andy in drag; another Polaroid of Keith Haring embracing his partner Juan Dubose; and a sewn portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat, with the same photo printed at six different light levels.

The show also resists the urge to overread Warhol, whose best work seemed to spring from the thought that “gee, that’s pretty,” and ask the question “Will it sell?” Sánchez said she selected pieces that reflected Warhol’s love of ephemerality, and the show doesn’t promote him as a deep thinker.

(There are exceptions: The placard next to a Polaroid of Howdy Doody, one of his American Heroes series, mentions that photographing a marionette suggests “Warhol’s belief that things are not always as they appear.” Incisive analysis. Wouldn’t it be more noteworthy if Warhol believed things were always as they appear?)

The final room of love fear pleasure blood sugar sex magick contains a photo booth and a chance for you to get interactive: Get your picture taken ($4, credit cards only) and leave one on the Warhol quote wall. You can visit Facebook and tag yourself so that we can make the obligatory comment about Warhol’s influence on social networking.

Which works out—it’s Andy’s world, and (apologies to Sinatra) we just live in it.

(Note: To get to the Warhol exhibit you’ve got to go through Kurt. If you, like everyone who contributed to the exhibit, really like Kurt Cobain, you should go. If you, like me, don’t find that particular rock tragedy inherently more compelling than Lennon or Tupac or Buddy Holly, you’ll probably like a few of the pieces but find the exhibition unilluminating, a highbrow spin on the Cobain T-shirts you can buy in a gazillion places online or in malls. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s mostly art for the converted.)

(And on a final note: Chelsea Girls is coming to town! Friday, May 21 at 7:30pm in the Plestcheeff Auditorium. As with the rest of the best of Warhol, Chelsea Girls was notorious, motivated by his urge not to waste anything, and hugely profitable. I can’t wait.)