List
Map
Category
Date
Popularity
TagsDiana Szeinblum's "Alaska", featuring Lucas Condró, Leticia Mazur, Alejandra Ferreyra Ortíz, and Pablo Lugones. Photo by Jazmin Tesone.
The people at On the Boards are usually enthusiastic about the shows they bring to Seattle, but there's a special vibe coming from the Behnke Center down at First & Roy this week. They're serious when they say they've been working to try to bring the Argentine choreographer Diana Szeinblum to town for six years, and the sense of pride and excitement in Alaska, which runs tonight through Sunday (Nov. 5-8, tickets $24), is palpable.
Tuesday afternoon, I sat down with Szeinblum as her crew of dancers worked out, for a brief conversation about her work. A former student and dancer for the legendary choreographer Pina Bausch, Szeinblum first drew substantial notice in the U.S. in 2002, with Secreto y Malibu. Last year, she returned with Alaska, first at the Dance Theatre Workshop in New York, and then at REDCAT in LA, where the show earned stunning reviews.
The first thing that pretty much anyone, I imagine, asks Szeinblum is about her experience with Bausch, who died a couple months ago. Bausch was a lion in the dance world, a pioneer of German tanztheater whose work stood in marked contrast to even the work of other Moderns like Martha Graham....
Easy Street West Seattle's latest live event features photography from the neighborhood's own rock photographer David Belisle and tunes from the singular, moody Tiny Vipers (Jesy Fortino).
West Seattle resident David Belisle was tour photographer and personal assistant to R.E.M. from 2001-2008. His photo journal of the band, Hello, was our best-selling book of 2008. David has photographed cover art for Tiny Vipers, Yeah Yeahs Yeahs, the Blakes, Mudhoney and the Presidents of the USA, and his work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Spin, Mojo, Q Magazine, The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Village Voice and numerous other publications. Currently, he has been touring as photographer for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.The show, "Musicians and Landscapes," will feature many of Belisle's photos of prominent musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, R.E.M., Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Band of Horses, Patti Smith, Eddie Vedder, Fleet Foxes and more. And, as the title implies, there will also be a generous number of landscapes from his travels with these bands.
The exhibition starts at seven. Tiny Vipers plays at nine. Gotta assume there will be priced-to-drink libations on hand, as there have been at previous Easy Street events.
We're jazz pushers here on The SunBreak, and we're not ashamed of it.
Hey kids, want some jazz? There's nothing I won't stoop to. Free ticket giveaways to a jazz orchestra concert? Hells yeah. Seattle has some terrific young jazz musicians, and you don't have to go to Earshot to find them.
Tonight the Zubatto Syndicate plays at Town Hall, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 adult/$5 student. I visited a rehearsal and can vouch for the fun quotient being way up there. If you are not sure you like jazz, give Zubatto a shot. It's brand new music for the late Oughts.
Saturday it's the University District Jazz Walk. In celebration of their one-year anniversary, Lucid owner David Pierre-Louis has booked an afternoon and evening of jazz up and down the Ave. 22 acts in 24 hours, at Lucid, Tully's, University Theatre, College Inn Pub, Herkimer Coffee, and more, more, more. A $5 wristband gives you discounts at the participating venues.
Also on Saturday, if you're in the Madrona area, drop in at St. Clouds from 9-11:30 p.m....
Just found this black-and-white candid portrait in The SunBreak Flickr pool, courtesy of seadevi. It's actually two portraits in one, if you include the tattoo, and you should. I was struck by how both were caught in motion.
Franklin grad Peyton Siva didn't take long to make an impression at his new school, Louisville. Last night, in the Cardinals' exhibition win over Bellarmine, Siva displayed the otherworldly hops we Metro League fans enjoyed these last four years, claiming two of ESPN's top ten plays. Watch here.
The first, #6, comes when the 6'-0" Siva flies above the rim to block a shot attempt. He also claims #2 with a putback reverse dunk.
"Those were two of the more spectacular plays I've seen," said coach Rick Pitino. "Not too many six-foot guys do that," he said, adding (to laughter), "I did it a few times...."
Another stellar member of Washington's hoops Class of '09 made his debut last night: Former Bellarmine Prep guard Abdul Gaddy came off the bench in Washington's exhibition win over Central Washington.
Gaddy's debut was not as explosive. On the bright side, he displayed his playmaking skills by contributing six assists in just 24 minutes. But he also committed 4 fouls, turned the ball over three times, and missed all three of his shots.
Gaddy told the Times' Percy Allen afterward that he had a little trouble adjusting to the speed of the college game....
It's a squeaker! Mike McGinn still leads Joe Mallahan, but by just 462 votes. City Council races are not so close: Richard Conlin, Sally Bagshaw, Nick Licata, and Mike O'Brien all have comfortable leads over their rivals. Pete Holmes has still soundly thrashed Tom Carr in the city attorney's race. Full results are here. More updating this time tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, until the last syllable of recorded time. I don't agree with Susan Hutchison on that much, but waiting for all the mail-in ballots to arrive is anti-climactic.
Jenny Schwartz's "God's Ear," Washington Ensemble Theatre, 2008
This is the second in a three-part series on the design work of Etta Lilienthal; for Part One, follow this link, or for a gallery of her select work, click here.
"In film, it's actually that the whole world is your canvas," Etta Lilienthal told me as Victrola's timers beeped in the background and a bustling crowd swarmed around the espresso bar. "And sometimes when you're filming on location, you're dealing with houses and the sky and trees and grass, and it's very huge. And you can also get very, very detailed, more than you can get in theatre, ever."
Over the past few years, Lilienthal has done more and more film work. Her most notable work includes production design work on a pair of dramatically different movies: the Charles Mudede-penned Police Beat (2005) and Cthulhu, Grant Cogswell's 2007 adaptation, directed by Dan Gildark, of H.P. Lovecraft's 1931 novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
This isn't the place to recount the rather tragic tale of hubris and hopes crushed that was Cthulhu (Cogswell has already done that, for those interested), but for those who have seen the film, it is notable for the complexity and challenges presented by Lovecraft's surreal philosophical horror novel, and Lilienthal and I spent most of our time discussing it.
"When you do film, you sort of attack the locations and the built sets separately. Either you're on location at a space that you're dressing the set for, or you are building sets on a stage," she patiently explained. "And we actually had a space and we actually built several sets, so I was also dealing with carpenters and painters to get these what wound up being really amazing sets, but which took a very long time to do, and it was very sort of haphazard."...
What's a good pictogram for the employment situation, I asked myself. Photo courtesy The SunBreak Flickr Pool shootist Slightlynorth.
I just heard via Facebook (oh, the cold blade of irony) that Classmates.com has "graduated" another round of employees, and TechFlash has the story on Microsoft's 800 layoffs, 200 from the Seattle area.
Jon Talton's timely "Sound Economy" post includes the warning: "More importantly, the holiday layoff season--when companies clear their year-end books and start serious job cutting--is only beginning. Talton observes that while we "only" lost 200,000 jobs nationwide last month, we really needed 125,000 new jobs, net, to keep up with new entrants to the workforce.
So far, as the Seattle Bubble will graph out for you, the stimulus has worked far better for financial giants and stock market profits than for job creation. Now, you have heard that employment is a "lagging indicator," but that doesn't mean it's allowed to lag to infinity--from Talton: "Rutgers economists say it could be 2017 before we recover the lost jobs."
The Tim claims (yes, there's a graph), unemployment is now one percent higher than that predicted by administration economists without any stimulus. This has to be of some consternation in the White House, as historically, high unemployment results in presidential unemployment.
There's something going on in music right now. And yes, that's intentionally vague, but what I mean to say is that it seems like there's yet another movement afoot. Not too long ago, all the energy was behind the modern yet antiquated, even ritualistic, sounds of Grizzly Bear, Yeasayer, Animal Collective, and TV on the Radio, not to mention Fleet Floxes, Bon Iver, and their ilk.
Not to say that that still isn't going on--everyone is of course eagerly anticipating Yeasayer's second album due February--but there now seems to be a slew of r&b-leaning bands who like to throw in some blues flourishes along with their indie rock. There's much-buzzed-about English bands like The xx and The Big Pink (both of which have upcoming shows at Neumo's over the next few weeks). And then tonight there's Dirty Projectors, who still have one of the best-reviewed albums of the year.
Dave Longstreth's Brooklyn band is here touring behind Bitte Orca, which is an odd duck of a record, in the best possible way. First single "Stillness is the Move" is clearly the album's jam. And yet, despite the stutter-step beats and the girl harmonies, Bitte Orca is still a rock album with quirkily accessible art-pop sensibilities. Tickets are somehow still available, so check 'em out tonight. Little Wings opens.
- Dirty Projectors play Neumo's tonight. Doors 8pm. $15; 21+.
Seahawks head coach Jim Mora threatened his players' jobs after Sunday's loss to Dallas. Hoo boy, accountability was going to be a bitch for many underperforming Seahawks.
I wondered which players GM Tim Ruskell would deem responsible for this season's 2-5 start: Deion Branch, the multimillion-dollar receiver with just fifteen catches? Darryl Tapp, the pass-rush specialist who's recorded just one sack? Lofa Tatupu, the supposed team leader whose been outshone by his backup?
Yesterday the axe fell, and the following heads were pulled out of baskets: Two backups and a special teamer.
Um. I feel a rant coming on...
Here's the thing -- if you preach accountability, you need to hold the correct people accountable. Not just a random selection of guys who barely play. On a list of people responsible for the Seahawks' dismal start, the three guys they cut today would be somewhere beneath Ken Behring and Sea Gal Lindsay.
If team management doesn't want to hold anyone accountable for the team's performance, they themselves...
Our volunteers reenact the fall from a 20-foot wave. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.
Cliff Mass posted last night about a big storm over the ocean on Thursday: "They don't call these storms hurricanes because they aren't tropical, but they pack a bigger punch. Huge size and big winds. And very, very dangerous to be near them on the water."
Models show 40-foot waves out on the ocean proper, and 20 to 30-foot swells which will roll up the Washington coast. Mass suggests Westport or Ocean Shores for a front-row seat on the maritime action. The mention of surf spot Westport made me wonder if any of the big wave riders are hastening that direction.
I'm not a strong swimmer, so I am far from encouraging anyone to take to their board--in fact, if you go just to watch, I'd suggest you keep your distance. People have been washed away and drowned by swells a lot smaller than you'd think would do the trick. And that's not even mentioning those crushed by drift logs. It's probably safest just to stay home and watch this Ocean Shores webcam, come to think of it.
Shot of the Dow Constantine election party around 10:30 p.m., by Seth Kolloen
As SunBreak editor Seth Kolloen continues making his way through the detritus of 101 election night parties in Seattle, I've returned home to the comforts of hot tea and cats to bask in the warm glow of a good night. While the verdict is still out on both the mayoral race and Referendum 71, Seattleites can at least half-relax in the knowledge that they've done well tonight.
The success of the Mike O'Brien-Pete Holmes-Mike McGinn ticket (should McGinn's lead hold) is good news for Seattle, and not just because I agree with their policies. And the groundwork for their success was laid over the last decade, by a dedicated core of activists who nearly (or actually) burned themselves out fighting the prevailing winds on transportation issues, like Cary Moon and Grant Cogswell.
These candidates' success shows that progressives and environmentalists in Seattle can prevail in a one-party climate, which stands in marked contrast to the rest of the country. No doubt John Corzine's defeat in the New Jersey gubernatorial election is already being used as right-wing fodder to suggest the public is turning against President Obama's policies, when in reality it's owed mostly to the corrupt, ossified political culture of New Jersey Democrats.
The Seattlepi.com's description of McGinn's campaign as "populist," while charming, is a disservice. McGinn's success, like Pete Holmes's and Mike O'Brien's, is owed to the fact that he ran on solid policy positions that both appeal to the city's sensibilities while constituting sound, far-sighted choices. While Mike McGinn has backtracked on his opposition to the tunnel, his potential election signals a departure from the failed tenure of Greg Nickels and breathes new life into the city's liberal political culture.
Susan Hutchinson's once-competitive campaign was owed largely to the public's increasing lack of faith in the local Democrats. She was an attempt to hitch the radical, anti-environment policies of the ex-urban fringe to a candidate with suburban appeal. Dow Constantine's decisive victory should put to rest idle talk of the region swinging to the political right. And while it's unlikely to put to rest the town-country divide and the attendant vitriol that was aimed at Ron Sims for his environmentally sound land-use policies, the fact that Sims's protege has prevailed clearly signals that the majority in the region understand that the value of our natural resources justifies the inconveniences.
Pete Holmes's victory is especially pleasing. Tom Carr was fundamentally out-of-step with Seattle in his longstanding battle with the city's thriving night-life. Not only has Seattle unequivocally stated that it believes there's a better way to balance neighborhood quality-of-life with a thriving bar and club scene, but it has spoken strongly in support of the cultural scene--the theaters, rock clubs, galleries, and literary events--that's so closely tied to night-life.
Tomorrow, most commentators will be talking about how King County's overwhelming support for the Approve 71 campaign (roughly two-to-one in favor) played a decisive role in likely swinging the entire state (where it's tentatively passing 51-49 percent), but that's also unfair. Sixty-five percent of King County voters are not pinko commies. The success of the Approve 71 campaign is owed to great outreach to voters of all stripes, and the ability of gay rights advocates to convince the larger community that gays are your friends, neighbors, and co-workers, and at the very least deserve most of the rights and privileges afforded to their straight neighbors.
Oh, and as for Tim Eyman's failure to pass his latest anti-tax initiative? It means nothing except that the vast majority of Washingtonians aren't stupid.
Yes on 71 Party. Photo by Seth Kolloen.
8:16 p.m.: Odd news. Just checking the news sites before decamping and found a Seattle Times article on the anti-Ref. 71 party's media quarantine up in Everett. Apparently the news isn't being let in. According to Seth Kolloen, the opposite is true at the Yes on 71 party downtown. According to Seth: "Hard to find since housing levy party is right down street and has similar sign. Count 7 laptops and about 20 cameras. Press ratio about 1:8. Question I get: "Is there a place called 'the warroom' or is that the name of a party?"
For the record, yes, the McGinn party is up at the War Room, and the doors opened at 7 p.m.
The SunBreak news room (i.e., this author) is decamping to a quiet bar in Lower Queen Anne to source reports for the rest of the evening.
8:18 p.m.: Well, that's no good! The Stranger's website is down.
The Twitter buzz is that Prop. 1, the affordable housing levy has passed, and Constantine is claiming victory against Hutchinson, 57 to 43 percent!
8:33 p.m.: 1033 failing miserably. Thank God....
The Belltown Dispatch has released its list of the Top 75 Seattle Media Websites for 2009, and we're...well, first of all, we're on it, and second of all, we are safely middle of the pack at #44. How exciting is that? We're two months old and averaging 1,000 page views per day.
Since we're powered by Instivate's Neighborlogs platform, we will also share with you this graphic highlighting the eight Neighborloggers in the top 75. That's some nice work. I don't get too hung up on these Dispatch ratings since they do vary wildly depending upon whatever secret sauce the Dispatchers use (and oops! they left out the Puget Sound Business Journal), but it's always great to see all the e-media going on around Seattle.
You can help us rise in everyone's estimation by following us on Twitter, becoming a Facebook fan, or subscribing to our RSS feed. We appreciate your readership!
Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" at Seattle Repertory Theatre, 2009
This is the first of a three-part series on the scenic design work of Etta Lilienthal. Click here for part two, or follow this link for a gallery of her work for theatre and dance.
Set design is one of the trickiest yet least appreciated elements of theatre production, mostly because audiences only really notice the design when it's bad. A bad set makes you aware that it's not working, and draws you away from the action. A decent design (and most design, even at the big regional theatres, is only decent) works because you don't notice it. It's a backdrop that doesn't distract, a functional space for the performance to inhabit.
A truly great design, on the other hand, is usually so integrated into the production that audiences assume that most of it is purely the director's concept. It's hard to imagine the designers, rather than the director, playing such a profound role in generating the collaborative synthesis that's determining where the actors are onstage and what they're doing, let alone to imagine, as happens from time to time, that the very concept you're seeing onstage may have been primarily the idea of the designer, who had to sell it to a skeptical director.
Etta Lilienthal is one of only a handful of scenic designers in Seattle who creates great sets. A long-time collaborator with choreographer Maureen Whiting, with whom she's done some of her best work, Lilienthal has designed sets for everything from big shows at Seattle Rep to solo performance pieces staged in little Capitol Hill theatres. She's also worked in film, serving as the production designer for both Police Beat and the ill-fated Cthulhu, and in addition to recently finishing an art design job with The Details, a Tobey Maguire movie that was filmed in Seattle, she designed the set for Seattle Rep's Opus, which opens this week.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with Lilienthal at Victrola on Pine Street for a wide-ranging discussion of her work. Swiss-born but raised on Martha's Vineyard, Lilienthal has a slight build with short-cut, curly hair and a clever, knowing gaze. The daughter of a carpenter father and an artist mother, Lilienthal attended Smith College for two years, including a semester abroad studying textiles in Scotland, before transferring to CalArts, where she completed a BA in theatre and an MFA is set design.
"I don't usually say yes to a project unless I'm really interested in collaborating specifically with that director," she said of her varied work choices. "Now, that's not always the case, obviously sometimes you take work regardless."
"In general, I have a really open approach" to designing a show, she said, "and I really want to hear what they [the directors] see, and if there are really specific things that are, for them, like, 'We must have this, for this show.' Or ideas they have, very specific images. And then I read the play several times, I meet with them several times, and then I start to develop my own vision. And it's just basically images coming into my mind, and if I'm stuck, or the way that I start, is by sketching, and often by going in and flipping through books in the library, just art books—very often contemporary art books. Just to sort of spark strong spatial relationships and color relationships. Sometimes I'll fixate on a particular image that might be very realistic, or sometimes I'll see, for instance, an installation that's actually very abstract that I feel is somehow a very interesting space, and I can see the play living in that somewhat abstract space."
"Abstraction" is a good way to describe Lilienthal's work. Rather than thinking realistically ("I personally don't like to go to the theatre to see things that I see all the time," she told me, "like my kitchen or my bedroom, so I tend to design from a place that's kind of in a dream and doesn't really exist in the world"), Lilienthal tends to approach design sculpturally, as a way to engage and make use of the particular performance space.
She talks a lot about the "volume of space" to be dealt with, and about the challenges different theatres—particularly ones with large vertical areas—present. Even her more realistic sets for traditional plays often skew the vertical and horizontal perspectives. In her design for David Auburn's Proof at Madison Repertory Theatre in 2002, she set the facade of a house angling upstage-right, veering away from the audience. For Nilo Cruz's The Beauty of the Father at Seattle Rep in 2004, she raked (angled up) the stage-floor as steeply as actors' union rules allow, about two inches per foot.
"It's hard," she said of the process of making such choices, of not only finding the right angles and perspectives but actually turning them into a functional design. "I'd say mechanical drafting is not my forte, and neither is math. But I'm very interested in what people see. So often when I want to skew perspective, or shift or change it, or force it down or extend it, I actually work in model-form. So I actually make a model, maybe a quarter-inch scale, and then I adjust shapes and move them around, and change my eye-line, and play with those shapes and volumes and shift them even slightly to see what kind of different feeling it gives.
"And it really is a feeling. It's like, that feels too angry. Sometimes you can shift a perspective so much that it's very aggressive. And maybe that's good," she added. "Or that feels too soft, or that's not doing anything for me."
This last year, Lilienthal did the design for two radically different but equally well-received theatre pieces: Seattle Rep's production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, and Keith Hitchcock's mind-bending solo show Muffin Face, performed at the Balagan Theatre.
Betrayal was one of the highlights of an otherwise fairly rough season for Seattle Rep, and that came as a bit of a surprise. Betrayal is one of Pinter's mid-career plays, written after he'd given up on the avant-garde, menacing qualities of his earlier works like The Birthday Party and Homecoming. In many ways, it's a tame domestic drama, about an affair between a woman and her husband's best friend that unfolds over years. It's well-worn territory that even the best theatre artists can rarely breathe life into. But Pinter had one brilliant insight that helps make Betrayal work: the story unfolds in reverse, beginning with the devastating consequences of the affair and ending with the generally innocent beginnings.
That reversal forces the audiences to constantly reassess the narrative, since you only get the back-story to each scene after the fact. And it was this sense of reassessment and claustrophobic absorption in the story that influenced Lilienthal's set, which worked far better than even she anticipated.
The trick was simply a moving wall, that came forward about four feet at a time during the scene transitions, until by the end it's crowding the actors on the lip of the stage.
"As this wall moved, first it [just] moved, and the second time it covered a window, and then it covered another window. By the fifth time it moved, it was all the way downstage," she explained of the process. "Ninety-five percent of the audience told me they never saw the wall move, until they realized both windows were covered. Now, for me this was astonishing! And so many people stopped me and talked to me about this. They were totally stunned, and they sort of had to backtrack the entire play and re-imagine what was happening."
"I thought it would be, 'Oh wow! The wall's moving. Cool,'" she said sardonically. "Or, 'Oh interesting, the space is changing.' But I had no idea that people wouldn't notice it, and that they would be so affected by it, that it changed they way they knew and understood the characters and the space and the relationships."
Keith Hitchcock's Muffin Face is about as different from Betrayal as you can get. A surreal one-man-show in a tiny, intimate space, Muffin Face is the one show I'm positive too few people saw last season. The audience enters a theatre made up like a conference room, centered around a long table, but with numbered, assigned seats wrapping around it and seemingly inexplicable arrows drawn on the floor. Hitchcock, dressed in a gray three-piece suit and wearing a head-mic, enters and performs as something between a motivational speaker and an infomercial pitch-man, leading you through the "pre-show" to Muffin Face.
Essentially what Hitchcock does, through a variety of off-the-wall gimmicks and audience interaction, is to draw the everyday into hyper-focus for the audience when it leaves the theatre. The "pre-show" is all he gives you; Muffin Face (whatever that means) is your life afterward, and as promised, the effects of the show last until you go to sleep that night. It's akin to what it was like back in college to get high in your dorm room then stumble around campus at night, stunned by how weird everything seemed. "Profound" is perhaps too strong a word, but it was a stunning piece that did something to its audience that few works manage.
"You're coming at a space like that totally differently, because everyone is, like, two feet away from the performers," Lilienthal explained, chuckling at my reaction to the show. "That's when I like to get hyper-realistic, almost surreal. And that's what Muffin Face was for me. I was really interested in the idea of something that most people know very well—in this case, a board room or an office-style space—and making it kind of hyper, kind of extreme on that level."
But what Muffin Face really demonstrates is how a designer can play a fundamental role in crafting the overall work. I was surprised to find out from Lilienthal that there was no staging concept originally. The spoken text was all that Hitchcock prepared, while the setting—which was ultimately a huge part of the show—could have been anything, anywhere.
"I actually knew from the beginning that that was where it was going to end up at," Lilienthal commented slyly, in the one of the few moments she betrayed anything other than complete humility to the collaborative process. "But I don't get to say that to the director, and we went around and around, we went in this huge circle to get back to that. Because usually the vision I have in my head is right."
Other concepts proposed for the setting ranged from a prop warehouse to a bathroom (with Hitchcock performing in the tub) to a chemistry lab to the Bat Cave.
"All of those could actually have really worked well, and that was what was so tricky about this play," she explained. "There was a working script that was just words, nothing happens in it. It was one of the most intellectual projects I've ever worked on. Keith's an intellectual, I'm intellectual, and the two directors he worked with were very intellectual."
Ultimately, one of the biggest constraints on the design was the desire to make it tour-friendly. "From the beginning, he said, 'I want to make sure we can tour this,' so we had to pull way back, and get really, like, 'We're going to get these few items, that can come apart, fit into a car,'" Lilienthal said of the final choice. "And so it ended up going into a very simple place."
"But for me, it really preserved and hit on these really funny, key elements that even if it had been this really complicated chemistry lab...that might have even overshadowed the actual words," she continued. "He's a great writer, he's very funny, and I felt the set wasn't too overpowering, but it was strong, it was compelling. It had a strong character role that it played, but not one that was over the top of Keith. Because Keith needed to be bigger than the set, and a lot of our initial ideas were much bigger than Keith could have ever been."
Tomorrow night's your first chance to see the University of Washington basketball team play against another team. The game is an exhibition (and, thus, viewable for the bargain price of $10) against Central Washington University, a team of predominately Puget Sound area kids. If you are any kind of high school hoops fan (and if you aren't, what's stopping you?) you will recognize some of the names on the CWU roster.
But let us discuss the Huskies. When we last left them, they had suffered a close loss to Purdue in the NCAA tournament's second round. But I prefer to remember the home win vs. Washington State which clinched the school's first Pac-10 title since the Eisenhower Administration, and watching an exultant Lorenzo Romar cut down the nets. One of my favorite Seattle sports memories.
This year, the Huskies confront life without four-year starter and team captain Jon Brockman. The school's all-time leading rebounder, now playing in the NBA (here he is dunking against the Zombie Sonics!), averaged a double-...
Pub trivia. 8:00. The Old Pequliar in Ballard. I'm hosting.
Be there, answer questions, win valuable cash and maybe-valuable-if-you-squint-just-right prizes. And win free beer for answering this question correctly:
The Assault, Betty Blue, Elling, My Life as a Dog, and The Wedding Banquet: Four of these films belong together. One of them doesn't quite match up. Which is the odd film out, and why?
(Email your answer to james at sunbreakmagazine.com. One team that comes up with the correct answer wins a free pitcher of beer.
What else do you need to know? The quiz starts at 8:00, but it's usually a good idea to come earlier to get a table. You can have up to 6 people on your team. It costs $5 (for 5 or fewer players) or $7 (for 6 players) to play. And by request, there's one round on Steely Dan, and seven rounds that have nothing to do with Steely Dan.
Photo by zenobia_joy from the SunBreak Flickr pool.
(h/t to Belltownpeople)
The slogan for Belltown's Moda condominiums is "Fashionable living. With money left for life." There is not, apparently, money left to pay the subcontractors who installed the balconies.
Last Friday, Hideous Belltown was tipped off by a passer-by that men on a ladder were partially removing balconies from Moda. He inquired what they were up to, and they said they were owed $20,000 and were taking the balconies back.
Hideous Belltown's Keller took a walk by this week and it was true--the railings were gone from a number of balconies. The word is, the units of each are occupied, so there's a chance here for a particularly brave resident to--if he or she survives--to file a spectacular personal injury lawsuit.
Photo courtesy of Hideous Belltown/Igor Keller
Moda, unsurprisingly, did not return Hideous Belltown's call for comment.
Yes, it's two days in a row for Slightlynorth, but voting is timely. Don't forget to act irrationally from an economist's perspective and vote. (From the SunBreak Flickr pool.)
I remember being shocked to find out that O'Dea coach Phil Lumpkin played point guard in the NBA. He didn't cut a very athletic figure: His potbelly barely contained by his maroon O'Dea polo, jutting out over his jeans.
But Lumpkin did play two seasons in the League, and a key role in what's widely regarded as the greatest NBA game ever--Game 5 of the 1976 Finals. Lumpkin took over at the point when the starter went down with injury and the Suns down 22 points.
Said Phoenix coach John MacLeod: "(Lumpkin) was a very deliberate guard, and when we put him in, he slowed everything down. It calmed everybody down, and we made a heck of a run. I think we'd have been blown out if not for Phil Lumpkin."
Lumpkin brought that deliberate style to O'Dea, winning five state basketball titles with it. Lumpkin's teams weren't flashy, and didn't often blow opponents out; instead they'd slowly strangle them with stifling defense and deliberate, careful halfcourt offense.
When Lumpkin's players played poor defense, or sloppy offense, his verbal eruptions were a sight to behold. I once saw him make a player cry on the court.
But from what his players have told the Seattle Times' Mason Kelley, they appreciated his tough love approach. (Casey McNerthney of Seattlepi.com has also written an excellent obituary of Lumpkin).
Perhaps the best compliment to Lumpkin as a coach is this: He's the guy then-Sonics coach Nate McMillan entrusted his own son to. Jamelle McMillan played on three state title teams playing point guard, his dad's old position.
Lumpkin had been O'Dea's hoops coach since 1991; taking over the same year legendary Garfield coach Al Hairston left the Metro League for Seattle U. Hairston had won five titles at Garfield--Lumpkin matched that feat.
O'Dea hasn't announced when or if any memorial for Lumpkin will be held. Watch their website if you're interested.
Somebody needs to tell director Andrew Bujalski that not everything needs to be a movie. True, that's kinda the point of the mumblecore movement, which focuses on "real life" and at least semi-non-scripted scripts. After Mutual Appreciation and Funny Ha-Ha, his latest feature-length film Beeswax is yes, a more mature effort, as it covers late-twentysomethings' business dealings, as well as the requisite friendship, family, and romance. In the end, nothing much happens. Just like real life, I suppose, but most filmgoers use movies as an escape, not to deal with the same ol' boring minutiae of the day to day.
That's not to say the film isn't worth seeing. Bujalski of course captures naturalistic, organic performances from non-actor actors (and real-life twin sisters) Tilly Hatcher and Maggie Hatcher. And the chemistry (and awkwardness) between characters is palpable. I just want a little more by way of forward movement the next time around.
- Beeswax plays at the Northwest Film Forum twice daily (7 p.m., 9 p.m.) through Thursday, November 5. $9 non-members, $6 members. Happy Monday tickets available at the door tonight for $4.50 non-members, $3 members.
Vote Nirvana this Election Day. On Tuesday, the band's seminal first record, Bleach, gets the 20th anniversary reissue treatment from Sub Pop on both CD and white vinyl. And its "I was there!" (and we all know you're lying) 1992 Reading Festival show hits both CD and DVD shelves. Oh, and you can watch the latter on Fuse (Comcast channel 476) at 8pm. How's that for bipartisan?
"This is too painful," says a lean, towering Krist Novoselic into a stage-right microphone. Then he shifts from mock compassion to mock reassurance: "You're gonna make it, man."
He's talking to a frail, blonde fright-wig- and hospital gown-wearing Kurt Cobain—and to the thousands assembled at the 1992 Reading Festival—who's being ushered to his own mic via wheelchair. The Nirvana singer grabs the mic with jittery hands and feebly pulls himself up. The chair's pilot, British rock journalist Everett True, rolls it away.
"Some say love," Cobain croaks, "It is a river ..." And he falls flat on his back.
Somewhere behind him on the huge airplane-hangar stage, Dave Grohl punctuates the faux faint with a heavy, staccato drum flourish.
This is the ironic, winking opening of Nirvana Live at Reading, a long-overdue, never before complete document of the band's ability to wryly enjoy the music and the hype they created. However briefly they could.
Watching Kurt Cobain poke fun at his overblown, distressed media image and then tear into what would become the most storied show of Nirvana's abbreviated existence is somehow, 15 years after his death, still a bitter pill to swallow. From the moment he dons a guitar and effortlessly forces the instrument into a tortured squeal, you want the real guy back. Not his likeness in a stupid video game.
But the Reading show is the closest we'll get to a living, breathing Cobain, and, I think, to actually seeing how he viewed his career and fame. It's also perhaps the best Nirvana performance—in a studio or on a stage—we'll ever hear.
As the band tears through most of Nevermind's already-iconic tracks (only skipping "Something In The Way"), its frontman appears healthy, engaged, and enthused. Until Cobain dedicates "All Apologies" to his divisive wife Courtney Love, encouraging the massive crowd to overlook the "crazy stuff" they may have read about her and chant, "Courtney, we love you!", there's no physical sign—other than that opening jab at the media—of his pain, addiction, or irritations.
Cobain displays, through fleeting gestures and performance techniques, many sides of his chameleon personality in the two-hour set. He enthusiastically jumps around with his guitar through "Aneurysm" and employs a casual axe-slinging swagger in "School." The singer screws with his vocal inflection for the verses of "Sliver." He clears his throat after the first line of "In Bloom," then completes the song with what has to be an intentional, extra-gravelly monotone. As he and Novoselic tease the opening of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the frontman shoots the bassist a knowing smirk. (It's the closest Cobain gets to smiling, which Novoselic and Grohl do, with obvious aplomb, throughout.) He dumps his guitar on the stage during an extended "Love Buzz" jam. The man never takes off that hospital gown.
And after he tags a brilliant, Hendrix-style "Star-Spangled Banner" to the end of closer "Territorial Pissings," Cobain calmly knocks over speaker stands with his guitar's neck, climbs down off the stage, and hands the still-wailing instrument to the crowd. Cobain, it appears, in the midst of personal struggles and media-magnified drama, thoroughly enjoyed this performance.
I can't imagine any rock music fan who won't feel the same way. This is a legendary band at its best, with its fast-burning fuse at its brightest. Add a vivid film-to-video transfer, classic music video-style editing, Technicolor stage lights, and original, freshly mastered, multi-track audio, and Nirvana Live at Reading is the best means we have to celebrate what the band was—and wonder what it could have become.
Tonight at the Paramount Theatre it's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which gives you an insight into the state of underwater photography (in Bermuda) in 1916. Who knew? Universal's silent film, directed by Stuart Paton, is loosely based on Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues and his Mysterious Island, and it contains what some have called the most remarkable overacting ever recorded, from Jane Gail.
You are also cautioned that the Captain Nemo (Allen Holubar) is old and dresses like Santa Claus. But there is "a full-size navigable mock-up of the surfaced submarine Nautilus," reports the Paramount. The Paramount's Mighty Wurlitzer Organ is helmed this time by Jim Riggs, so apparently STG never got that contretemps with Dennis James sorted out. The show starts at 7 p.m. and tickets are $12.
Next Monday, November 9, it's The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the creation of a 23-year-old German teacher named Lotte Reiniger. In 1926, she used silhouette animation to tell the Arabian Nights-esque story of the prince Achmed, a sorcerer with a flying horse, Princess Peri Banu, and Aladdin. You will be familiar with the technique if you saw SIFF's trailers this spring or have watched the credits of A Series of Unfortunate Events recently. It took three years to make these 65 minutes of film, but people still call it "gorgeous" and "mesmerizing." So that's a top pick, if you're going to just one....
Most Viewed Stories
- Lakewood Shooter Suspect at Large in Seattle
- 206 Represent! Peyton Siva Has Two of ESPN's Top Ten Plays in First College Game
-
Jordin Kare on His Laser-Powered Lifestyle, Space Elevators, and the Almighty Joystick
- Memories of Phil Lumpkin, O'Dea's Hoops Coach, Who Died This Weekend at 57
- McGinn's Win is Seattle's Biggest Upset in Decades
Most Recent Comments