Seth Kolloen

Maybe you know the old joke about the Chicago Cubs: "Anyone can have a bad century." For Bishop Blanchet High basketball, it hasn't gotten quite that bad. But it has been a pretty bad 25 years.

The banners hanging in Blanchet's gym attest that, despite the school's success in other sports, they are in the midst of a hoops drought. Last time the Braves won a league title was during the Reagan administration.

Now last time I went to a Blanchet game, they got blown out and I spent most of the game watching the social interaction between members of the band. This time? Blanchet got blown out and I spent most of the game watching the social interaction between members of the band.

Blanchet's problem seems to be consistent year after year--they aren't very good at shooting basketballs accurately. Being as how that is how one scores points in basketball, it puts them at a distinct disadvantage. In football if you can't pass you can try to run. In baseball, if you can't hit homers you can try to bunt and steal bases. But in basketball there's really no getting around the fact that you have to put a round object into a cylindrical target. And if you can't, you lose and you upset your spectators.

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One moment stands out--a Braves player had an open six-footer from the baseline, plenty of time to shoot, set himself, rose, and fired the ball up...and off the bottom of the front of the rim. I made a sort-of "sheesh" noise and turned to my lovely companion, attending her first high school basketball game ever. Even she was shaking her head in disbelief.

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We had long since turned out attention to the band, after they unexpectedly ripped off a version of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance." After that song, we saw that a trumpet girl and saxophone guy were having a moment. She had put her music sheets down his back, and would occasionally reach out to touch him playfully. We three Metro League Tuesday attendees agreed that they were definitely flirting.

But then, at the halftime break, the same girl ran up behind some other dude and whacked him, then jumped on some other guy for a piggy-back ride. High school never changes. Every Metro League Tuesday, you see the same types you remember from your high school days--the bored cheerleaders, the over-excited and geeky sports nerd (that was me), and, as evidenced, the flirty chick.

Still, we can see this at any high school basketball game. What we'd really like to add into the mix some excellent basketball. This Blanchet cannot, at present, provide. Not that the players weren't trying--they played really tough, especially inside where they battled for rebounds against a much bigger Seattle Prep team. They just didn't have the firepower to win this fight.

After the game, over extremely high-alcohol-content specialty beers at the marvelous Uber Tavern on Aurora, one of our party made a request. "Let's never come back to Blanchet again."

And so it will be: Despite its proximity to Uber, and the entertaining flirtation among members of its band, Blanchet is hereby banned from Metro League Tuesday. Sorry, Braves. For your sake and ours, we hope your basketball team makes a spirited rise back to the 1980s glory years. We'll be keeping an eye out.

2010 Seattle Seahawks Team Photo

The Seattle Seahawks are losers. This is not an insult, it's documented fact. The Hawks won seven games and lost nine. Still, that was good enough for first place in their division.

And due to the NFL's lenient playoff policy, division winners host a playoff game. Just so happens that the Seahawks will host, and have a chance to dethrone, the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints. The Saints, a Heartwarming Story of Redemption For A City That Has Been Through So Much, are the NFL's favored children. The Seahawks, not so much.

Witness this scene when Saints quarterback Greg Marmalard Drew Brees visited the office of Faber College Dean Vernon Wormer NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:

Goodell: "Drew, what is the worst playoff team in the NFL?"

Brees: "Well that would be hard to say, sir. They're each outstanding in their own way."

Goodell: "Cut the horseshit, son. I've got their statistics right here. Who gained 1,000 fewer yards than their opponents? Who finished 31st in the league in rushing? Who lost to Denver?"

Brees: "You're talking about the Seahawks, sir."

Goodell: "Of course I'm talking about the Seahawks, you twerp!"

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While this dialogue has been liberally interpreted, you mustn't doubt that the Seahawks' appearance in this year's NFL playoffs displeases the league. The NFL tries above all to control media messaging, and political stats guru Nate Silver writing in The New York Times that the Seahawks are the worst playoff team in the history of pro sports is not the message they want to see. The NFL even tried to hide from the Seahawks' record on their website. What gives? Why are the Seahawks on trial? Otter Pete Carroll doesn't think it's fair:

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You can't hold a single football team responsible for the playoff system! For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole NFL? And if the whole NFL is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of professional sports in general? I put it to you, isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.

Okay, that speech may not exactly have happened, but this did: A reporter asked Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck today whether the team should apologize for making the playoffs with a 7-9 record. Hasselbeck's response? "Apologize to who?" Damn straight. The Seahawks didn't make the system, they just live in the system. Like it or not, that system gives our lovable losers a home game and good chance of knocking out the defending champs. And Bluto Hasselbeck is back from injury and ready to lead the troops, possibly with these words.

What the fuck happened to the Seahawks I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst. 'Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Hass, we might get in trouble.' Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Goodell, he's a dead man! Brees, dead! Colston...

Garfield High, ground zero of Seattle's Central District, has a reputation as a dangerous place. This reputation is well-founded! Where else is one confronted by roving bands of pre-teen vendors who shame you into purchasing their product?

Two such miscreants approached a small group of us during last night's Garfield/Issaquah basketball game, asking $3 for a game program. My friend Frank demurred and resumed checking his smartphone, but the vendor, a curly-haired four-footer, persisted.

"You got a iPhone, you can afford three dollars."

Frank did not deny the justice of this statement, and forked over the cash. And everyone had a good laugh at his expense. Until we checked out the program and realized he got a bargain!

The program turns out to be a fount of entertainment, much more diverting than the blowout basketball game that was the putative reason for our visit. Besides the indescribable picture which illustrates this post, the program contains a Q&A with Garfield boys and girls hoopsters. Where else will you find out who senior forward Bria Lancaster's biggest supporter is? ("My boyfriend Robert!"). Or what sophomore guard Cierra Levias' listens to before a game? ("Teach Me How to Dougie," by Cali Swag District). Or what sophomore guard Will Dorsey likes most about basketball? ("I work hard during practice and get the chance to kill people during the game.")

Garfield High's girls basketball team, doing...something

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But the main danger in the Garfield gym was the Bulldogs' senior guard, Tony Wroten. The 6'5" Wroten, the 24th-best senior in the nation according to ESPN.com, matched up against Issaquah's Nick Price, who averages more than 20 points per game. On a possession in the first quarter, Price brought the ball up the court against Wroten, who clapped his hands in anticipation. Just as Price reached midcourt, Wroten struck with the speed of a rattler, tapping the ball away from Price, slipping behind him to recover it, streaking down the court and dunking.

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Later in the game, Wroten would swipe the ball again. This time, instead of merely dunking the ball, Wroten threw it off the backboard to himself for a slam.

If you get the sense that Garfield was not taking Issaquah seriously, you'd be correct. The Bulldogs seemed to be treating the game like a scrimmage. Their two best players, Wroten and Glenn Brooks, didn't even start the game. Still, they led Issaquah by 8 points at the end of the first quarter and coasted to a 34-point victory. Wroten finished with 29.

Wroten will bring his talents to Montlake next season after choosing the University of Washington over a host of other collegiate suitors. Wroten is 6'5", very athletic, has incredible court awareness, is a tenacious defender, and throw the most incredible no-look passes you've ever seen. He's the most entertaining player in the state at any level. He seems to be enjoying himself in his senior year, as he should. But any attempted off-the-backboard passes for Washington coach Lorenzo Romar will likely get him sent to the locker room, not offered a low-five as he was by Garfield coach Ed Haskins.

We shall mention a third danger, this one from the Issaquah side, in the form of senior Taylor Wyman. An all-league running back on Issaquah's much more successful football team, Wyman is the son of former Seahawks linebacker Dave Wyman. After coming into the game in the late minutes, he displayed a linebacker's affinity for contact, with some ambitious steal attempts that drew whistles from the referees. Issaquah could've used Wyman's moxie early in the game, when the Bulldogs were dictating the action on the floor.

#1-ranked Garfield, now 8-1 on the year and 5-0 in Kingco, hosts Inglemoor tonight at 7:30 p.m. Issaquah falls to 4-7, 1-5 in Kingco, and play at Skyline on Friday.

Help us, HAL 9000, you're our only hope

It's ironic that computers run on binary code, because it's us humans who tend to see things as either ones or zeroes. Deciding a moral issue? Pick right or wrong. A political one? Pick Democrat or Republican. An athletic one? Pick win or loss.

Those who want to skitter between two absolutes usually find themselves traveling a road bumpier than Madison St. after a Pineapple Express. Recently, in morality, Jack Kevorkian. Lately, in politics, Barack Obama. And now, in basketball, the University of Washington Huskies.

The humans who cast votes in the Associated Press national basketball poll look at the Huskies and see they've lost three, won six. They therefore do not consider Washington one of the top 25 teams in the country.

But computers see shades of gray. They note that the three teams who've beaten the Huskies are among the nation's best. That those three losses were by a combined 13 points. And that, in their six wins, the Huskies have beaten their opponents by an average of 33 points.

So the two best-respected computer polls make a far different assessment than humans do. Ken Pomeroy's computer rankings put Washington 7th in the country. Jeff Sagarin's USA Today computer ranks the Dawgs 5th (look in the "predictor" column, which accounts for margin of victory).

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Of course it's not "computers" that make these rankings, it's people who have programmed the computers. But they do so precisely to banish the indefensible preferences of the human mind from the multi-million-dollar business of prognosticating basketball games.

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Vegas bookmakers pay more attention to computer rankings than wins and losses when making their picks. However, the people who matter to fans--the committee charged with seeding teams in the NCAA basketball tournament--see things in that traditional binary way. The RPI rating system they use does not consider margin of victory, only wins and losses. How dumb is this computer? It currently ranks Cal ahead of Washington. That's Cal, with three double-digit losses.

Ken Pomeroy ranks Cal 81st in the nation. Sagarin ranks them 83rd. Even the poll voters don't like the Bears--Washington, Arizona and Washington St. all got at least one poll vote, but Cal didn't get any.

Having lost all three of their key non-conference games--no matter the scanty margin--Washington has probably destroyed their chances at winning one of the top four seeds in March's NCAA Tournament, which would guarantee them a smoother path to their goal, the Final Four.

Meanwhile, the Huskies will keep plugging away, taking on and destroying lesser opponents like the University of San Francisco, which comes to town Saturday night, with little hope for an NCAA tourney bump. Unless our future computer overlords make their move in the next couple of months, that is.

O'Dea's student section: Note "ref guy," "condom hat guy," and "golf breeches guy."

So you have O'Dea. An all-boys Catholic high school. Their student section stands, chants and moves in unison. Their basketball team plays an intricate, switching style of defense. Their coach, former Sonic Al Hairston, paces the sideline poker-faced, arms crossed.

Then you have Rainier Beach. A co-ed public high school. Their cheerleaders didn't manage to show up until halftime. Their basketball team plays a playground-style, drive-and-dish offense. Their coach, Mike Bethea, shouts and gestures wildly at his players all game.

O'Dea, the 2nd-ranked 3A boys basketball team in the state: Order.

Rainier Beach, ranked 1st: Chaos.

Who wins? Tuesday night, Chaos triumphed, in a fittingly chaotic finish.

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Chaos smacked Order at first. Beach sped to a 24-12 first quarter lead, beginning the scoring with a thunderous Michael Middlebrooks dunk. Later, Hikeem Stewart, who'll play for the University of Washington, turned chaos into an art form. Stewart drove from the right wing down the baseline, collapsing the O'Dea defense around him, then passed to an open teammate on the left wing. But Stewart wasn't done. He followed the path of his pass, ending up along the baseline opposite where he started. The teammate he'd just passed to fed it back to Stewart, who set himself, received the pass, and swished in a three-pointer. He had four threes in the first half.

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But Order crawled back into the lead with aggressive half-court defense and opportunistic offense. After going on a 24-8 first-half run, O'Dea held tough in the second half and led by two possessions with under a minute left. Then Rainier Beach introduced even further Chaos: A full-court trap that forced two O'Dea turnovers. Beach's Lavell White, an explosive 6'6" guard who led all scorers with 29 points, hit four free throws to keep the game close. Then White banked in a three-pointer with under 10 seconds left to bring Beach within two points. Still, after O'Dea stretched their lead to three with 1.6 seconds left, a win for order seemed inevitable.

Basketball is best captured through the lens of a Motorola phone.

No sir. Chaos had yet another trick up its sleeve. Beach sophomore Marques Davis took an inbounds pass on the run, made two long dribbles, and hoisted up a 30-foot desperation shot at the buzzer. It banked low off the backboard, off the inside off the front of the rim, and through the basket. Eyes traveled back to the referee nearest the shot. He thrust his arm downward, signaling a made basket--Davis' first of the game. Overtime.

Order jumped out to an early lead in overtime, too, but Chaos came back. Beach suddenly found room in what must have been a tired Irish defense. Driving lanes that hadn't been there suddenly opened up. Beach pulled into the lead.

Rainier Beach huddling in all their orange glory.

Then, suddenly, chaos seemed to be on O'Dea's side. Down two points with 3.6 seconds to go, they intentionally missed a free throw by firing it off the rim. The bounce went out of bounds off Rainier Beach. With 2.4 seconds left, they'd have another chance. Their attempted inbounds play caromed off several players and bounced high in the air. It fell out of bounds, and the referee signaled O'Dea ball, just as the buzzer sounded. But the refs declared the game over. Final score: Beach 75-73. O'Dea's student section stood, stunned, for several minutes, then began to file out.

Order seemed unconcerned. They expected to prevail eventually. "This always happens," said a kid in an O'Dea letterman's jacket. "We lose to Beach during the regular season, then we beat 'em at State."

Hundreds of Seattleites walked through the rain to Safeco Field this afternoon to remember Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus. It was the largest such memorial since Kurt Cobain's in 1994. Cobain and Niehaus shared this gift: They were both storytellers.

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion wrote. I will append this: We also listen to stories in order to live. And when the storyteller dies, we feel compelled to thank them for their life-sustaining work.

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Niehaus and Cobain performed in different media, to be sure, but the stories they told weren't as different as you might think. For Niehaus, it was the annual struggle of the Mariners--a team with a lousy stadium, disinterested owners, and a knack for bad decisions--to compete with their wealther, smarter big brothers of baseball.

Even when people didn't come to the games, they were listening. The Mariners had some of the highest radio ratings in baseball. This was the early 1980s, a dismal time for America, the time when my father, born and raised in Seattle, tells me he first saw a man looking for food in a dumpster.

It's also the time when a young Kurt Cobain was growing up on the evenm more economically depressed Olympic Peninsula, first in Montesano, then in Aberdeen. Cobain's stories of struggle came from that experience. Who knows, maybe he even listened to Niehaus, whose voice was heard throughout the Pacific Northwest.

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Cobain's death brough a massive crowd of teenagers to Seattle Center, to hear Courtney Love and others pay tribute to Cobain. Niehaus' death brought people of all ages, to hear the actors of this stories, former Mariner players, pay tribute to their narrator.

When their time to speak came, Mariners players--the actors in Niehaus' drama--recounted how he enriched their playing careers:

Ken Griffey, Jr. (who appeared via video): "You could always take something that he said home...it was always positive."

Dan Wilson: "As a player he could really make you feel like he conquered the world."

Edgar Martinez: "I loved to hear Dave Niehaus talk about my at bats. He made me feel better than I was."

Jay Buhner: "It's hard to imagine him not being here."

Mariner President Chuck Armstrong closed the program by annoucing that a statue of Niehaus will be built outside Safeco. But the statue will be mute. Now Niehaus' voice will live on in our memories.

SunBreak editor Michael van Baker makes the point that, from a city planning perspective, having two 60,000-seat football stadiums six miles away is bad. And he is right. From a city planning perspective.

But the University of Washington is not, and should not be concerned with, city planning. Not primarily, anyway. For something as important as the largest public gathering space on the campus, and the most attractive location for such a space on maybe any campus in the world, the needs of Seattle's citizens should be a poor second to what's best for UW.

Does The Sorbonne worry about Paris city planning? Does the University of Oxford worry about Oxford's planning? I don't know, I've never been there. Who do I look like, Rick Steves? I have been to New Haven, CT, and Philadelphia, PA, and and Harlem, NY, and I can tell you that Yale, Penn, and Columbia do not give a crap about the slummy neighborhoods in which they reside. This perhaps is not good citizenship, but it hasn't hurt those universities much.

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Being a fourth-generation Seattleite, I obviously don't want my city to turn into West Philadelphia. But I think we can manage on our own. Let the university have (and pay for) their football stadium, let us have ours, and let us both march boldly and partially independently toward the 22nd century and beyond.

 

Does it make sense for the University of Washington to lay out $250 million to renovate their football stadium, while cutting programs and raising tuition, when there’s another 60,000-seat football stadium just six miles away? Of course not.

Unfortunately, life does not make sense, so the University doesn't have a choice. Leaving Husky Stadium would cripple the Husky football team, which is something you don’t want. Even if you aren’t a football fan.

The University of Minnesota football team left their campus stadium in 1982 for the downtown Metrodome, which they shared with the NFL Vikings. Students and eventually alums stopped going, and the football program--once one of the nation's best--has been mired in mediocrity since. An on-campus venue is particularly appealing to student and to the most important constituency--the high school juniors and seniors deciding where to play their collegiate football.

Last year, the Gophers reversed their mistake, spending $288 million for a new on-campus stadium.

College football is about tradition. You go to the same stadium year after year, the stands where your father, your grandfather, maybe your great-grandfather--watched games. The last two years I’ve shared season tickets with my Dad, who used to sneak into Husky Stadium at age 14. Breaking that tradition with a move to Qwest Field would be like breaking a spell.

So, if I’ve established to your satisfaction that a move to Qwest Field would hurt the Husky football program, you may further ask: Who cares?

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People tend to forget how a sports team brings a community together like no other cultural event. Holidays like Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, and Christmas tend to have us scurrying to our family units. Even something as simple as the Chihuly museum can divide us. Sports teams bring us together. You may not be a football fan now, but if the Huskies get good again, trust me, you can get wrapped up in the spell too.

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And if the goal of municipal harmony doesn’t move you, how about money?

Fact is, a university's football team generates a tremendous amount of goodwill among alums, students and the community at large. But--especially and most importantly--donors.

Hey, I wish we lived in a world where people didn't decide how much to give a university based on how good the football team is. I also wish we lived in a world where animals were required to wear funny hats, whiskey was free after Seahawks losses, and Mad Men never stopped production.

But we live in this world, where American institutions of learning must maintain successful football teams in order to satisfy wealthy donors. You think university presidents like this system? Hell no. Current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who sends boys to die in combat, said this about his time as president of Texas A&M: “Texas A&M football caused me more stress than any job I've ever had.”

Reserving two parcels of our city’s most valuable real estate for football stadiums is manifestly nutso. But we are people. We do completely impractical things. We sing. We dance. We draw. And, yeah, we spend $250 million so our grandkids can watch college kids tackle each other on the same field we did. It’s what separates us from the animals.

Didn't take Cliff Mass to predict this: A football game played in Pullman, Washington, on December 4, will not be played in ideal conditions.

We can argue which Apple Cup participant will have an advantage in the 25 degree F temps and possible snow showers. But one group is a sure loser: Football fans, some of whom may make it to the pearly gates instead of Pullman.

Pullman is 75 miles south of Spokane, along meandering, two-lane Highway 195. So it's a pain to get to on sunny days. Add blowing snow and freezing fog to the equation and you're going from painful to treacherous.

Freezing fog? That's what I said 45 minutes ago, when my Coug fan co-worker, who had a hotel room and an SUV booked for the weekend, told me she'd canceled both because of it. Evidently it's condensation that freezes to the road, turning into black ice.

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With icy conditions from North Bend eastward, drivers will be crawling along--it could take 8-10 hours to reach Pullman from Seattle. Inevitably, some cars will hit black ice. Hopefully, their human cargo will emerge from the subsequent wreck safely. My friend isn't taking the risk; her seats will be empty.

So you may ask: Why the hell are they playing a football game on December 4 in Pullman, Washington? To win more.

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College football seasons, once 10 or 11 games long, are now 12 or 13 games long. Coaches like to schedule weeks off during the season--called "bye weeks"--for injuries to heal and for extra practices. Washington State has had two consecutive bye weeks leading into this game, so at kickoff they won't have played in 21 days.

From 1979-2006, the game was played the week before Thanksgiving (so, two weekends ago). But with the lengthening football season, playing on that date meant that either the game wasn't the last regular season game of the year for both teams, a long-held tradition, or that neither team got a precious bye week.

So the schools agreed to play this year's game December 4, the latest date in the history of the rivalry. To make things worse, for television scheduling reasons, the game kickoffs at 4 p.m. That's sundown in Pullman this time of year. The nighttime temperature could fall below 20 degrees F.

It's one thing to inconvenience your fans--but our state's two biggest universities are asking fans to risk their necks in a dangerous weather situation that was eminently foreseeable. If scheduling football was a pass/fail class, neither would be getting a credit.

Ed: 5th Avenue Theatre has requested that we clearly mention that Seth is talking about a preview performance, and that seems like a good idea, because Seth thought he was buying tickets to the real show. It's an easy mistake to make. 5th Ave's publicity says the show runs from Nov. 26-Dec. 30. If you look at the schedule page, there's nothing distinguishing preview dates from the official run. Nothing on the ticket order page does. The show officially opens on Dec. 9, though after 15 minutes of clicking through the 15th Ave's site, I can't find any notice of this. 

Photo: 5th Avenue's "A Christmas Story: The Musical!"

Addressing a packed house Sunday night at the 5th Avenue Theatre, the theater's Executive Director David Armstrong shared a vision of Christmas future. "I'm hopeful that someday you'll look back and say 'I was at the creation of that holiday musical tradition, A Christmas Story.'"

I was dubious. But after seeing the show [Ed: As mentioned, a preview performance--it's not officially open yet, and what Seth saw has already changed a little], I think Armstrong's foresight may be 20/20. A Christmas Story: The Musical! is well-paced (far better-paced than its screen daddy), consistently funny, occasionally adorable, surprisingly smart for a musical that has a mostly pre-pubescent cast, and features a hilarious comedic performance by Broadway vet John Bolton.

Back East, on Broadway, another well-known story is getting a musical adaptation. Spider-Man is a $65 million (and counting) production directed by Julie Taymor and with music by Bono and The Edge. Here's what Bono has to say about the show's theme. "We’re wrestling with the same stuff as Rilke, Blake, ‘Wings of Desire,’ Roy Lichtenstein, the Ramones—the cost of feeling feelings."

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(If anyone has a hint of a clue what Bono is talking about, please drop a note in the comments. Sounds to me like a line the smarmy faux-poet dude in your freshman dorm would use.)

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The same night my lovely companion and I were enjoying A Christmas Story, preview audiences for Spider-Man endured a three-and-a-half hour clusterfart of a preview. Stage wires were dropping on them, pieces of the set were missing. The show's star got stuck over them at the end of the first act, "as three stagehands leaped up and down futilely trying to grab onto one of his feet to haul him back to earth," according to The New York Post.

Photo: 5th Avenue's "A Christmas Story: The Musical!"

A Christmas Story, the movie, steadily rose from a 1983 holiday also-ran (The New York Times haughtily dismissed it as an "Indiana Tale") to national entertainment tradition. A Christmas Story, the musical, starts out small once again, debuting in Seattle, not Broadway--but dreaming big.

Presumably you know the story? God knows Ted Turner's been force-feeding it to us for long enough. A boy, Ralphie, wants a toy rifle. His dad, known only as "The Old Man," wants, well, anything, and he settles for a tacky lamp.

Ah, that lamp. Part of the suspense of these movie-to-musical adaptations is how they'll treat your favorite scenes. My companion was keen to see whether the supremely non-PC moment where the Chinese waiter sings "Deck the Halls" ("Fa, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra.") would be kept in the show.

For me, it's all about the leg lamp. My prediction was that a giant version would descend from the rafters. That's not what happened. What does is much better.

John Bolton, who plays The Old Man as a sort-of whacked out Willy Loman, celebrates the leg in the best comedic moment on stage at the 5th Avenue in at least two years, the full cast song and dance number "A Major Award." Just fun stuff.

The staging and costumes are the second-best thing after Bolton. I don't want to spoil anything for you, so I'm not going to explain further. You trust me, right?

The kids in the cast do a fine job, including Olympia sixth-grader Clarke Hallum as Ralphie. Seattle theater veterans Anne Allgood (Mother) and Frank Corrado (Narrator Jean Shepherd) round out the starring roles. Neither are given a whole heck of a lot to do, but both elicit laughs when given the opportunity. Allgood is, unfortunately, saddled with one of the duller songs in the production, "What a Mother Does."

As we left the theater, we saw people buying their own leg lamps to take home. May they shine on, and may this new musical do the same.

A Christmas Story: The Musical! is in previews through December 8, then officially opens and runs through December 30 at The 5th Avenue Theater. Pick your seats through the 5th Avenue's awesome seat selector here!