Michael van Baker

Our Flickr pool's Chris Blakeley came across this SUV "abandoned maybe fifteen feet away from the top of Queen Anne." Other drivers weren't so lucky.

Looking west on E. John St.

Here's the latest street closures from SDOT:

• Northbound and southbound Alaskan Way Viaduct
• West Dravus Street between 20 and 27 Avenues
• Battery St. Tunnel
• NE 5100 block of Latona Ave. N
• Denny Way between Melrose and Stewart Sts.

I would just add that the streets are sheets of ice, and an hour ago I watched two cars do full 360s down Denny over I-5. They were creeping along, not speeding--it's just extremely slippery out there. SDOT will be out salting roads, but they warn that bridges and elevated structures require an abundance of caution. The storm is supposed to finish its snow-dumping work by 10 p.m., but the morning commute will still be ice-tastic. Less stressful photos after the jump:

---

---

Every snow day in Seattle comes with a checklist: Shot of snowy "Black Sun" in Volunteer Park? Done.

Pine cones? Check!

Bright red berries? Mmm. Probably poisonous though.

And finally, a whimsical juxtaposition.

Photo: Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo

(My apologies if you were in the mood for some brawny men building a snow fort.) The Woodland Park Zoo closed to the public at 3 p.m. today because of the snowy conditions, but that doesn't mean zoo residents had to huddle inside, too. The bears were putting those fur coats to good use.

---

Our Flickr pool's shawnmebo is already back with snow day shots! That's fast!

UW meteorologist Cliff Mass has been putting out updates fast and furiously regarding the snow forecast for today, which is changing hourly as snow accumulates. Now he's concerned about "serious snow."

His latest post (titled "Humility") says we're pretty much guaranteed "2-4 inches south of the city, with roughly 1-2 inches on the north side. More as you head towards the Cascades and south." (Let's go to the radar!)

But looking at the way things are setting up, that might not be the worst in store:

The 11 AM surface map...just available shows a 1002-mb low over the NW tip of the Olympic Peninsula and the latest visible image show VERY unstable air offshore. If the low goes south of us and draws some of that cold, unstable air in...and it meets the cold stream from the north, we are talking about serious snow (6-12 inches).

Mass was earlier led astray by models which had the low farther south of Seattle, bringing us a blast of cold air but not much in the way of snow. ("Clearly, this was not a great success for the models--clearly more is getting farther north than forecast this morning.")

Might as well head home and fire up the hot chocolate, and wait to see what transpires. 

---

We're going another way with Glimpses this morning. No snOMG pictures. Pure Kodachrome summer, courtesy of our Flickr pool's Great_Beyond, who writes:

---

"While summer '10 is all but dead and buried around town, thanks to the lag between me taking Kodachrome pictures and actually developing/posting them, we can still enjoy fragments of it.

Ah, summer...."

Michael Patten as Martin Luther, Connor Toms as Hamlet, and Chad Kelderman as Faustus in "Wittenberg" (Photo: John Ulman)

Playwright David Davalos may be responsible for the existence of the play Wittenberg (at Seattle Shakespeare Co. through December 5) but the set-up was just a matter of connecting the dots. As Davalos explains: "I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that Shakespeare identifies Hamlet as a student at Wittenberg, Marlowe cites Faustus as part of the faculty there, and history puts Luther there, teaching, preaching and launching the Protestant Reformation."

Thus, Wittenberg's biblio-porn slash-fic in which genial philosophy professor John Faustus (Chad Kelderman) and volatile theology instructor Martin Luther (Michael Patten) spar about the merits of faith and reason while "guiding" their undeclared-major head-case, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Connor Toms)--before he is called home for a family emergency. Like most prequels, it struggles to get to its dramatic feet, and in fact it works best when Hamlet is a bit part. (Hamlet gets enough attention as it is--on a multipurpose note, Wittenberg's set is Jennifer Zeyl's Hamlet set, gussied up with collegiate warmth.)

---

It's the argument between colleagues Faustus and Luther that animates the play, but Davalos has also overstuffed the proceedings with historical and literary in-jokes. Imagine if Airplane! was written by a post-doc, or better yet, imagine The Simpsons Harvard writers taking a crack at "theatre." From the opening scene of Dr. Faustus nailing papers to a bulletin board, to Hamlet's strange dream of a black obelisk on the moon, the play is a cyclonic mingling of esoteric and happily random references. 

---

Kelderman's Faustus more or less steals the show--but if you're a 16th-century Timothy-Leary-alike who dispenses the new discovery coffee and hash, plays open mics at the local tavern*, and is the standard-bearer for rationalism on campus, stealing the show is really the least you could do. Kelderman shades his likably damaged character, and persuades you of his inspirational capacity. Patten's grumpy Luther may be his antagonist, but Michelle Chiachiere, as the Eternal Feminine (an adventuresome Helen, the barmaid Marguerite), is his nemesis. 

In all, it's as if Davalos sat down to write a comedy specifically for the audiences of the Seattle Shakespeare Co. You get to see Connor Toms off-handedly blank-versifying for his Hamlet-yet-to-come, and topping off his performance with a heated tennis match with one Laertes. There's the Fibber McGee's closet of historical and literary references. And there's faculty humor. Not for everyone, no. But director Rita Giomi mostly smooths over the play's baggy pacing, and finds the quiet humanity in questions that tie together people centuries apart, in the perennial indecision of student life, in the ferocious defense of what we've invested too much in not to believe.

*Kudos to lighting designer Tim Wratten and sound designer Kevin Heard for so deftly transporting everyone to a dimly lit bar, buzzing with beery conversation.

In fact, Capitol Hill superheroes really drive a Kia. See CHS story below.

• 'Only in Ballard' campaign launches (My Ballard)
• North Beacon Hill Council protests closure of Neighborhood Service Center (Beacon Hill Blog)
• U-Needa Burger! (Belltown Messenger)
• BelltownPeople.com Holiday Special/ Entrepreneur Highlight! (belltownpeople)
• With police violence as backdrop, cops say superheroes at work in Seattle, patrolling Hill by Kia (Capitol Hill Seattle)
• Big rock stalls Madison Valley Stormwater project (Central District News)
• Eastlake weekly police reports: Burglars hit commercial building (Eastlake Ave)
• The New Guy In The Universe (Fremont Universe)
• City presents overview of Nickelsville in SoDo, addresses concerns (Blogging Georgetown)
• Councilmember Conlin: City Council is still working to prevent offices from moving into Green Lake Community Center (My Green Lake)
• Big crowd at meeting with FAA but few answers (Magnolia Voice)
• MORE Maple Leaf burglaries this month (cars, too) (Maple Leaf Life)
• Man confronts woman about pushing child in stroller (PhinneyWood)
• Uptown Theatre closing November 28 (Queen Anne View)
• South Seattle Cop on “Are Seattle Police Out of Control? Community Reacts to Recent Incident Caught on Tape” (Rainier Valley Post)

• 15th Avenue NE Reconstruction Open House Scheduled (Ravenna Blog)
• Neighbors get a few answers at crime prevention meeting (Roosiehood)
• Rainy Gardening (Southend Seattle)
• Local artist 'without a medium' finds calling in graphic novels (South Seattle Beacon)
• (The Southlake)
• Husky Stadium renovation plan gets green light (U District Daily)
• Help Seattle Public Schools plan 2011-2012 budget (My Wallingford)
• 7th grader at Eckstein attacked, robbed on his way to school (Wedgwood View)
• ‘The Hole’ followups: Read the ruling; see who’s tracking its safety (West Seattle Blog)

• ---

[UPDATE: Giveaway is over.] "Due to the large volume of visitors we are experiencing--since our "World's Best" Mac & Cheese became a favorite of a certain TV talkshow diva--we are currently offering a limited version of our website," explains Beechershandmadecheese.com. 

Turns out the "World's Best" Mac & Cheese from Beecher's is a claim Oprah might stand behind. To celebrate the sudden fame, Beecher's is giving away--that's free, folks!--hot dishes of mac & cheese until close of business (6 p.m.) today, November 19. You have three locations to choose from: their Pike Place store, Pasta & Co. at University Village, and Bennett's Pure Food Bistro on Mercer Island.

'Scuse us. Gotta run.

---

---

Regina Spektor's Live in London concert movie gets screened in just 15 U.S. cities this weekend, and the Northwest Film Forum is the Seattle venue, with just one showing on Sunday at 8 p.m. It's just $5, so if you missed her Paramount show--All night, between songs, it had been "Regina, I love you!", "Regina, I love you more than that first girl!", and a baritone howl of "Regina, I want to have your babies!" Spektor, in contrast, traveled imperturbably from song to song, though the "babies" brought her up short. "All tour," she said, "it's been babies. I guess...thanks?"--you can make up for lost time. The live album hits on November 22. Consequence of Sound has the track lists.

Regina Spektor's "Dance Anthem of the '80s" from "Live in London" from Consequence of Sound on Vimeo.

---

The buzz (Oh, hell yes! We will go there!) is also good for a documentary called Colony, which opens tonight at NWFF and runs through next Thursday. It's a Colony Collapse Disorder film, but there's more to it than that:

---

Colony documents a time of unprecedented crisis in the world of the honeybee through the eyes of both veteran beekeeper, David Mendes, and Lance and Victor Seppi, two young brothers getting into beekeeping when most are getting out. As Mendes tries to save the nation's collapsing hives, the Seppi's try to keep their business alive amidst a collapsing economy.

Seattle PostGlobe says, "The film makes a  recurring analogy between  the colony mentality of the bee world versus the chaotic self-interest of  human society," while the Seattle Times says the film finds "beauty in every frame: a close-up of a bee, scratching its face as if pondering; a hive caught in sunlight, each bee seemingly lit from within; a white-blossomed grove of almond trees under a vibrant sky."

COLONY TEASER 2 from Colony Movie on Vimeo.

Wang Huaiqing (left) and SAM's associate curator of Asian Art, Josh Yiu (Photo: SAM)

You could call him an éminence grise if his hair wasn't so white, but he's not that well known in the U.S., as evidenced by this inaugural-yet-retrospective exhibition. Wang Huaiqing was born in Beijing in 1944, and thanks to his artistic talent was enjoying government-sponsored art education by the age of 12. Later, he studied folk art, architecture, and Western painting, and earned his Master's Degree with his painting "Wind with Aroma."

Now in his mid-60s, Huaiqing is an established master. In the 1990s, if you were in the right place at the right time, you could pick up a Huaiqing for between $3,000 and $10,000. Today, his paintings can sell for over a million dollars.

So while his Seattle Asian Art Museum exhibit is called Wang Huaiqing: A Painter’s Painter in Contemporary China (through April 10, 2011), that's more a reference to his artistic focus than his artworks' general appeal. You can view 25 of the 26 pieces at SAAM; a large scale piece is being shown downtown at SAM. (I'm told the lack of larger pieces is due to the artist's residence not being very large, so no canvases more than about six feet would fit.) That may account over one-quarter of his life's work. 

---

What people tend to see in Huaiqing's work, at first, is what's not there: Much of the recent art from China has been in understandably belated public dialogue with the Cultural Revolution and Chairman Mao. But Wang Huaiqing's foremost association is with a now-disbanded group of artists called "The Contemporaries," whose manifesto called for, in the classical Confucian mode, "brushing away the ugliness, perversity, and deception, and preserving beauty, warmth, and candor."

---

Seattle Met's Culture Fiend says:

Wang’s paintings are certainly abstract. They’re almost entirely monochromatic, with the occasional explosion of red—the only reference to Mao’s regime. With the exception of his early sketches, he avoids using people as subjects. Instead, furniture dominates: broken chairs and tables, cloaked in dark shadows, litter his paintings. Dark columns rise from clay pots and light shines through narrow doorways.

Of course, it can nonetheless be interpreted as a political act to look beyond politics, to art. "During the Cultural Revolution he endured the hardship of labor camps and painted secretly in the dark of night," writes SAM's Josh Yiu. We're left to enjoy the "beauty, warmth, and candor."