Although here it is, if you missed it the first time.

This is a sculpture made with pencils by an artist named Jennifer Maestre (via apostropher):

Much more, including similar pieces made with nails, available here.

Apparently ConWorks is dead. Who knew?

Transcribed:

SEATTLE, WA, December 6, 2006. Consolidated Works announces with regret that it will cease operations at the end of the year. The organization announced this past summer that it was unable to renew the lease for its warehouse space due to seismic improvements required to be made to the building. Later, it had to let go of its staff while efforts were made to find a formula to relocate and carry the organization forward. Unfortunately, those efforts have proved unsuccessful.

Allena Gabosch, President of ConWorks, observed, "This is a very difficult time for arts organizations. We see institutions like Empty Space Theatre closing after more than 30 years of operation, and we hear from other arts organizations that they too are considering closing. ConWorks has been at a standstill for several months now, and restarting the organization in the present climate seems less practical than throwing support to others in the hope that they will survive this period."

ConWorks takes this opportunity to thank the many artists, staff members, donors, volunteers, and audience members who have supported the organization over the years. ConWorks is thankful to have had the opportunity to add to the cultural fabric of Seattle and the Northwest.

A couple of thoughts:

1. ConWorks comparing (even tangentially) its own rise and fall to that of Empty Space is nauseatingly arrogant. The difference in impact and scope and long-term community value and plain old longevity—not only aren't they playing in the same ballpark, they're not even playing the same goddamned game.

2. What "support" will ConWorks be "throwing" the rest of the arts community? It sold off its assets in a motherfucking garage sale.

To exit on a note of false benevolence and relevance is worse than just slipping out the door without saying goodbye.

Male star of Broadway musicals accused of molesting a 15 year-old girl.

As someone who's gotten drunk at karaoke and tried to sing Eminem—and bombed!—I feel Jessica Simpson's pain.

Capitol Hill Arts Center has long hosted the best damn stand-up comedy night in town with the worst damn name: the monthly LaffHole. The comics are young and smart and so are the audiences, so the jokes don't have to pander to a Tacoma-type crowd. Tonight, the center kicks off an even better comedy event with, perhaps, an even worse name: Laffstraveganza. There are two shows, an all-ages one at 8 pm starring several under-21 comics and an adults-only show at 10 pm starring a bunch of cool guys, none of whom were featured in the Seattle International Comedy Festival. Tickets are $5. I'm buying one.

Headlining is Hari Kondabolu, who the Seattle Times glowingly profiled as a comic who "eviscerated Western hypocrisy with a verbal razor that had overtones of Lenny Bruce." He tells jokes like this:

"I was a Republican when I was 7 years old. It wasn't my fault. The symbol of the Republican Party is an elephant and I'm a Hindu. I got confused."

Oh, snap. Eviscerated.

Dan the Automator (FRANKENSTEIN HIPHOP)

From the brain productions of Dan the Automator we get Dr. Octagon, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Deltron 3030, Gorillaz, and Lovage. In the way Tarantino reanimated the dead careers of Hollywood actors (Harvey Keitel, John Travolta), Dan the Automator reanimated the dead careers of hiphop rappers (Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Kool Keith). Tonight, Chali 2na of Jurassic Five and Casual of Heiroglyphics will join the Automator on stage. Opening will be our own Common Market. (Neumo's, 925 E Pike St, 709-9442. 8 pm, $15 adv, all ages.) CHARLES MUDEDE

For those who are naturally horrified by classic Disney films—get ready to pee-pee your pants! It's MARY POPPINS re-edited as a horror movie trailer. (And I'll be damned if it isn't pretty freaking creepy!)

Thanks to the Disney Blog!

The final price tag on this famous Givenchy dress: $807,000. That was six times the pre-sale estimate and a record figure for movie memorabilia auctions. The proceeds from the sale will go to City of Joy Aid, a charity apparently endorsed by the late Ms. Hepburn which helps poor populations in India.

A few interesting points of contrast: The lightsaber wielded by Mark Hamill in Star Wars sold for $200,600, while the kangaroo-hide bull whip cracked by Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark went for a mere $43,000. The costume Daryl Hannah wore in Bladerunner went for $18,000. Unsurprisingly, the pants, vest and tie worn by Hervé Villechaize ("Tatoo") on Fantasy Island only sold for $600.

Elizabeth Kolbert (LECTURE) Elizabeth Kolbert's continuing series in the New Yorker about global warming (her most recent essay discusses the acidification of the ocean) is popular science journalism at its most elegant. Interviewing her onstage is Tim Egan, author of National Book Award—winning The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl—the chronicle of yet another man-made ecological disaster. (Benaroya Hall, 200 University St, www.lectures.org. 7:30 pm, $15—$60.) ANNIE WAGNER

I admire (Jen) Graves wholeheartedly, and yet her enthusiasm can lead her to imply problems where there aren't any. Reading her, I sometimes envision a cheerleader: Ok Guys! Give me an AF! Give me an N and add a T! What's that spell? ART! (Shake of pom-poms.)

As I'm a bit of an art cheerleader myself, I warm to this tone. When I compare it to the DOA art criticism praticed at the Seattle Times, I want to shake my own pom-poms in tribute to Graves' energy and committment. Go girl go.

Posted by Regina Hackett at December 4, 2006 4:46 p.m.

Now, I hate to imply another problem where there isn't one, god knows. But for the sake of afnt in Seattle, and amity between afnt critics, can somebody tell me what this means?

UPDATE: So I just talked to Regina. She says a copyeditor at the P-I once told her she was the worst speller in the history of the paper, and she believes him. She simply meant to write A-R-T. "When it comes to me, it's Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is the right one," she said. "I'm not Charles Mudede."

Charles laughed one of those great Mudede laughs when he heard this.

I felt sure that my problem-implying problem would have me yelling out the wrong letters as a cheerleader. I need a drink.

Mystery solved.

Thanks to Keith for my first super-exciting Christmas gift of 2006.

Calling all fans of director David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, etc.) and all things WEIRD. Here's the trailer for his newest mind-fucker entitled INLAND EMPIRE. And it looks MUY CREEPY! Augghh! There's weird guys in suits wearing rabbit heads! Augghh! There's a gooey pancake face guy! Augghh! There's drunk mom from Twin Peaks! Augghh! There's confused Laura Dern! AUGGHHHH!

Elizabeth Kolbert (LECTURE) Elizabeth Kolbert's continuing series in the New Yorker about global warming (her most recent essay discusses the acidification of the ocean) is popular science journalism at its most elegant. Interviewing her onstage is Tim Egan, author of National Book Award—winning The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl—the chronicle of yet another man-made ecological disaster. (Benaroya Hall, 200 University St, www.lectures.org. 7:30 pm, $15—$60.) ANNIE WAGNER

You say you haven't read Lindy West's hilarious takedown of The Nativity Story in this week's paper? Well get to it!

In today's NYT:

Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone.

Dear Thomas Hardy,

On behalf of dim book critics everywhere, sorry.

best,
christopher

PS--It's pretty cool that your heart is buried in one place and the ashes of the rest of your body are buried somewhere else.

PPS--Nice moustache.

The answer to that question is: a coat of pinkish-purple paint covering his entire body, so he looks like a cross between Barney the Dinosaur and My Little Pony.

Yes, that is the treatment of choice by some anonymous vandals who last night painted Michael Magrath's salt sculptures of Iraqi men and boys a vomitous shade of pinkish purple. The sculptures have been standing outside in Occidental Square since September.

Magrath, who has already had to defend his sculptures from the idiots at various news outlets who called them memorials to the American victims of September 11, now probably will have to take them down before they have a chance to fully melt. They were made with a salt-based material that was intended to melt, poignantly, to nothing. In the first few months, appendages had already begun to drop off, and the effect was powerful and creepy.

This from Magrath:

I just wanted to put out that this act of vandalism is not part of the intent of the artist, who finds the alteration incomprehensible. It's not like it suggests blood or anything. That would at least have been a commentary. It's a kind of pink or plum color. Like Christo's island. It's just stupid-looking. Unfortunately the outcome is that the sculptures will likely now be removed prematurely, as they cannot be cleaned, and the effect of the paint is to alter the work beyond recognition. Other than that, the city has been so amazingly kind to these figures. I am truly astounded at the outpouring of dismay. I am working now on recasting these figures and installing them in NYC soon, btw.

I agree with the "just stupid-looking" line of thinking. The only redeemable reason for this would be if it's some kind of absurdist anti-statement-statement, and even then, the fact that it shuts down the actual function of the piece is contemptible. I'm having a bad day already, so I'm falling on the side of screw you, vandal, whoever you are and whatever you meant or didn't mean. I for one wanted to see these things melting.

Here's the sad spectacle now:

So this is what SAM was after.

Since May, Seattle Art Museum has sold $2.35 million in American art at auction, and a portion of that money went to pay for this painting, John Singleton Copley's Sylvester Gardiner (circa 1772).

In a recent conversation, SAM American art curator Patti Junker told me that major early American paintings were so expensive that they were "out of the question." I guess all I can say to that is: um, not?

Sylvester Gardiner, measuring 40 by 50 inches, pictures a physician and real-estate developer born in Rhode Island who happened to be on the wrong side of the American Revolution (which meant he fled to Nova Scotia after 1776), unlike Copley's other famous subject from his American period, Paul Revere (who comes off in Copley's portrait a bit like a hobbit).

From SAM's release:

The subject, a distinguished surgeon of admirable intellect, was a good friend of the artist's in Boston, and their warm personal relationship may account for the extraordinary human presence that this painting conveys. Copley portrayed Gardiner simply as a man of seeming curiosity and bemusement. The portrait may have been the result of a business agreement; Gardiner had sold Copley property on Beacon Hill, and perhaps Copley painted the portrait as partial payment for those lots.

Copley was widely revered as a painter in the colonies prior to his departure for London in 1774. (He was primarily self-taught, and there's an endearing strain of awkwardness to his portraiture before he decamped to Europe and joined the Royal Academy of Art in Britain.)

Of the portraits Copley painted between 1771 and 1774, "all but Sylvester Gardiner made their way into museum collections long ago," according to the museum. "This work remained, in its original frame, in private hands until its recent acquisition for the Seattle Art Museum."

Copley's lack of expressed political conviction in this tumultuous time in Boston is partly explained by his careerism as a painter. He was known as the foremost portraitist in Boston, so he strained at neutrality and painted both patriot and loyalist subjects in various manners in the years leading up to his departure for Europe in 1774. In the end, at least circumstantially, he sided with his father-in-law, one of the merchants whose stuff was dumped in the Boston Tea Party, and other loyalists, in signing a letter against the patriots' non-importation act. Copley never returned to America after he left.

The press release announces that this is SAM's first 18th-century portrait, and it is probably one of the very few Copleys on the West Coast. In those terms, it is certainly the type of treasure the museum has been promising to buy in exchange for the paintings it has sold lately, including two Hartleys, a Marin, and a Cassatt. Funds from those sales were cobbled together to purchase Sylvester Gardiner from an unnamed private collection, and donors pitched in, too, but judging from the few auction records I could find for Copley paintings (around $400,000), the museum still has plenty of money to play with in the American department.

What should I say about whether the exchanges were worth it? Two thoughts come to mind. One, I never got to see the Hartleys, the Marin, or the Cassatt, except in reproduction. (An aside: As veteran P-I critic Regina Hackett pointed out to me privately recently, the museum did have one of the Hartleys on display a few years ago, even though the museum's own exhibition records show that the painting in question had never been out of storage since coming to the museum. The museum's response to this oversight is that exhibition records only record showings that generate scholarship, or catalogs, and that they don't include permanent collection exhibitions. This, according to the museum, is standard practice in the industry. Well, so was keeping sales a secret, and that was wrong, too—so wrong that SAM has admirably changed its position and agreed to publicize its sales in annual reports. Hey, SAM, can I offer another request?: How about compiling real exhibition records for artworks? Otherwise, it's impossible to determine which parts of your collection you value enough to include in rotating collection shows over time. That's historically and culturally important, don't you think?)

Because I never got to see those paintings, and because I've never seen Sylvester Gardiner either—any more than you have—I can hardly throw out an educated opinion on which paintings are more appealing. And it's arguable whether, say, Hartley or Copley is a better and more important artist for a West Coast museum to own in the year 2006. But in most cases at SAM, the museum hasn't had to choose. It has kept other Hartleys and Cassatts, for example, and added Copley, and a whole vital segment of American history with him, to the roster.

My second thought is about museum sales in general. (In her blog, Hackett declares the subject too boring to give any time to. I'm torn; I have a secret fear that she's right, but I also find it rather a more colorful corner of wonkery than most.) Bloggers like Tyler Green and Lee Rosenbaum seem opposed to most sales on principle, and they make good arguments. No matter how good the intentions of a museum, its decisions are always based on the subjective reasoning of a particular moment in time. (There was an era, for instance, when nobody would have cared whether Hartley took a hike; now it seems nobody cares whether a regional-period Hartley takes a hike.)

Yet hanging on to anything and everything by a name artist evokes the same spirit of hero worship that drives stale blockbuster shows. Isn't this exactly what's wrong with museums?

A museum like Seattle's will never truly be encyclopedic in its collections, but that doesn't mean that historical gaps in the collection will not be glaring if the museum intends to tell certain national stories. If SAM is to have an American department, which it now has for the first time in its history, better that the holdings reflect breadth in quality instead of shooting for skewed pockets of depth. (Not that four or five Hartleys, which is how many the museum had before it sold two, could ever constitute depth.)

I, for one, am excited to see Sylvester Gardiner. The traitor.

Northwest Film Forum (HOLIDAY PARTY)

You enjoy le cinema. You enjoy parties. So what's keeping you from the Northwest Film Forum's annual holiday blowout? Not only will there be food and drink, not only will there be vintage holiday TV shows for the peeping, and not only will there be some sort of performance called "The Snowy Joey Christmas Show," but our very own Annie Wagner, film editor and notorious boozehound, will be decked-out as Santa Claus. Unhappy with one of Annie's reviews? Make sure to let her hear about it while sitting on her lap. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 329-2629. 7 pm, FREE!) BRADLEY STEINBACHER

This weekend, I had the great pleasure of attending the new Dina Martina Christmas Show at Re-bar, and it was amazing. Extended touring has made the Dina Martina Experience an extremely tight and well-oiled machine, and the Christmas show is a start-to-finish knockout. The new material is prime, the recycled bits are choice and brightened by the recontextualization, and I laughed till I cried at least three different times. I tell people to go see all of Dina shows. This one you shouldn't miss. Get your tickets here.

(And yes, that is a photo of Dina with Three's Company Joyce DeWitt. And yes, Dina is wearing her signature brown pipe cleaner to help raise awareness for "rump cancer.")

For those unfamiliar with the singular magic that is Dina Martina, here's my Stranger profile of Dina creator Grady West from 1999, a treatise on the genius of Dina by Andrew Sullivan from 2006, and an astute if stuffy pro-Dina screed from Blogcritics.org.

People Against Fundamentalism (PROTEST)

Mars Hill is an evangelical megachurch that lures converts with rock music, a "come-as-you-are" dress code, and a nightclublike setting. Its beliefs, however, are anything but modern: Pastor Mark Driscoll teaches his flock that women shouldn't work outside the home; that Adam and Eve were real people and that evolution is a myth; and that homosexuality is akin to "cancer." People Against Fundamentalism leads the protest during the first of Mars Hill's four (four!) Sunday services. (Mars Hill Church, 1401 NW Leary Way. 10—11:30 am.) ERICA C. BARNETT

826 Seattle Anniversary, Fantagraphics Store Opening (TWO LITERARY EVENTS)

From noon to 5:00 p.m. is the one-year birthday party for youth writing center 826 Seattle and affiliated retail concern the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. The party features Sherman Alexie, Sean Nelson, Ellen Forney, other notables, and free jelly donuts. Then, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. in Georgetown, is the grand opening of Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery. The inaugural exhibition is 30 Years of Misfit Lit featuring Bagge, Blanchard (that's his drawing above), Burns, Clowes, Crumb, Forney, Sacco, Ware, Woodring, and others. Many of them are expected to be there. (826 Seattle, 8414 Greenwood Ave N, 725-2625, free; Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, 1201 S Vale Street, 658-0110, free.) CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

I'm stuck sick at home and can't stop coughing long enough to fall asleep. But Bob Ross is here with me, and he says that even though viewers write in to tell him not to paint dead trees in his landscapes, he persists in painting dead trees "because they're a part of nature."

Speaking of dead trees, last night was the opening of a terrific show of new work by Seattle artist Dan Webb at Howard House. His wood carvings—of a face mask stretched and squished, of a candle full-bodied and burnt, of a grocery-store helium balloon—toy with the memorial aspects of sculpture, its presumed responsibility to mark and fight time. This is his Splash. (What appears to be a late-afternoon shadow falling on the object is in fact just the color of the wood.)

Webb is not only funny, he's smart, and he's giving a talk at the gallery tomorrow at noon. It'll be good.

The exciting local movie news this week is James Longley's Iraq in Fragments won the Gotham Award for documentary, beating out nominees An Inconvenient Truth (the Oscar front-runner), Deliver Us from Evil, and more. The more attention it gets in the weeks leading up to the Oscar nominations, the better chance it has of making the final five. (It's already made the 15-film shortlist.)

Here in Seattle, Iraq in Fragments is back at the Crest ($3!) for another week. See it, see it, see it, or risk missing the first locally-produced Oscar nominee in... I don't know, ever?

If you haven't read Lindy West's review of The Nativity Story, um.... SCREEEEEE! I think I can confidently say her review is 8 billion times funnier than the movie.

At Northwest Film Forum, you've missed today's marathon screening of Béla Tarr's Sátántangó (the 7+ hour formalist epic is considered the Hungarian filmmaker's masterpiece), but you can still catch it tomorrow and Sunday from 2 until 10 or so (screens with two welcome intermissions). My preview is here—looks like I'm not going to be able to make it, unless my obligations on Sunday somehow dissolve, so you'll earn permanent cinephile bragging rights over me if you do. (The Tarr series continues next week with Damnation and Werckmeister Harmonies—both reviewed here.)

Also opening today: 10 Items or Less (shouldn't that be "fewer"?), The Beales of Grey Gardens, and Fuck—all reviewed here. Plus, Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj and Turistas.

_________________________

The Stranger's carefully prepared, lovingly updated Movie Times.

And Film Shorts, a compendium to all dance films (NEXT Fest NW!), planned chaos experiments (Bring Your Own Projector!), Humphrey Bogart-in-a-face-surgery-mask (Dark Passage!), and Grand Illusion's program of bits and pieces of film they found lying around the projection booth (late nights now only $2.50 for members and $5 for the general public!).

Why are some straight guys so worried that a gay guy is going to jump them? Maybe because of Allen Ginsberg.

Below Andrew Bleeker's takedown of the popular poet on the books page this week—it's the 50-year anniversary of the publication of Howl, and lots of books have just been published to capitalize on the moment—don't miss Brendan Kiley's anecdote about getting hit on by the 68-year-old Ginsberg.

Here's another anecdote from another straight guy, Stranger contributor Chris McCann. He says:

I was interviewing Robert Creeley for my senior thesis and Ginsberg rolls into the room, all jowls and slobber and crazy eyes. He then begins massaging my shoulders and neck with what can only be called an erotic touch. Creeley starts snickering as I try to engineer my escape, made more difficult as Ginsberg whispers a few unprintable words (both wetly and hotly) into my appalled undergraduate ear.

Needless to say, I hastily concluded the interview. And then I ran.

So if you haven't heard already, the film version of the smash Broadway musical Dreamgirls is due on screens this Christmas. I never saw the show, haven't heard the soundtrack, don't like musicals, and am actively repelled by one of the film's stars (that means you, Jamie Foxx.)

Nevertheless, I am nearly jumping up and down with excitement to see the film, and it's entirely the result of the avalanche of hype being dumped on Jennifer Hudson, the former American Idol contestant who reportedly steals the film, leaving the cast's high-wattage star power—Foxx, Beyonce, Eddie Murphy—sputtering in the dust.

For a taste of the intoxiciating buzz swarming around Ms. Hudson, check out this story in today's New York Post. (This is one of a dozen such pieces that have landed over the past couple weeks.)

I happened to see the Oprah show featuring the Dreamgirls cast, and the segment featuring Jennifer Hudson was one of those Beatles-on-Ed Sullivan/LL Cool J-on-MTV Unplugged moments I won't forget. The Beatles/LL Cool J parallel is an imperfect one, as Hudson didn't perform on Oprah—she just came out for an interview alongside Beyonce and Foxx. Still, it was electrifying: Oprah had seen the film, the entire audience had seen the film, and everyone in the entire studio (with the notable exception of Beyonce; see the above link for more on that) was beside themselves with amazement and adoration for what Hudson achieves.

Best of all, Jennifer Hudson was as amazed as anyone. Here she is, this chubby young woman who got axed from American Idol and had been performing on cruise ships, who not only scores a role in a major film with major stars but totally steals everyone's thunder and then some. "You've not just arrived, you've smashed through the wall," said an adoring Oprah to Hudson, who sat there with the stunned smile of a lottery winner.

I love shit like this. Sports fans have their glorious goosebump memories, their Michael Jordans and 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey teams, and pop-art lovers have moments like the Hudson hype, when a chubby underdog comes out of nowhere and kicks everyone's ass, including snooty glamorous skinny bitches like Beyonce.

Counting the minutes till Dreamgirls and Jennifer Hudson's glorious Oscar speech...

'We Never Like Talking About the End' (DANCE) Since her time as one half of Seattle's freakishly awesome dance-theater outfit 33 Fainting Spells, Dayna Hanson has been creating brilliantly loopy concatenations of dance (modern), film (à la Cassavetes), and assorted obsessions (near-death experiences, biodiesel, Gena Rowlands). This weekend's world premiere also includes music by Maggie Brown (the Garfield student who played Kate-at-13 in Lynn Shelton's We Go Way Back) and an appearance by Hanson's dad, Vern. (On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, 217-9888. 8 pm, $18.) ANNIE WAGNER

Nicolai Ourousoff waxes poetic in this morning's New York Times about the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, which opened Oct. 26 in what used to be an abandoned car dealership.

The headline, "Seeing the Seediness, and Celebrating It," made me cringe for fear that the architect and the sophisticates involved in funding and organizing MOCAD were, well, making a show of slumming it, and that Ourousoff had jetted in from New York to jot down the charming phenomenon.

But Ourousoff's piece explores the links between contemporary art and urban cycles of creation and destruction as opposed to suburban fantasies of stasis. And check out the photographs.

Here's the aptly glum facade of the building, decked out with Barry McGee's sardonic graffiti exhortation, the barely readable "AMAZE."

Here's a Kara Walker video showing in a typical exhibition space, which looks post-something, sort of bombed out and halfway to oblivion. (For better or worse, this is a place where you can barely imagine showing a painting.)

Here's a Nari Ward piece on the wall, but that burst of light you see in the background is near a ceiling space heater, which is the crude way that the place gets warmed up. (In Detroit!) In another gesture that isn't visible, the architect, Andrew Zago, housed the mechanical systems for the museum not in a side room or a hidden bubble on the roof but in the corner of a gallery, behind a chain-link fence.

The other architectural news this week (sorry about my absence, I've been away!) is that Brad Cloepfil's Portland-based Allied Works won the contract to design the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. It's a plum job, because a single-artist museum offers an architect something very, well, singular to bump against conceptually, and also because Still is a particularly intriguing character, he of the high-minded anti-commercial principles that gave Rothko such a heavy conscience.

Still was a classic modernist, the very height of the movement in all its piousness and surety. Jeff Jahn on PORT (which also has a great look at Thom Mayne's new courthouse in Eugene, although it glosses over Seattle artist Cris Bruch's contribution) writes that Cloepfil's earthy/heavy and light/airy sides are a perfect match for Still's dichotomous paintings. I don't know; the tidiness of Cloepfil (he of the Seattle Art Museum expansion downtown, among many other projects) would seem to deflate the oversized grandeur of Still. Stay tuned for the design.

Loudhailer (READINGS BY GENIUSES, WITH FOOTNOTES)

Jonathan Raban is going to read about an encounter with England's gloomy genius Philip Larkin. Matt Briggs is going to read a very short story involving a peach and an earwig. John Olson is going to read a prose poem that seems to boil insanely from within. Between readings by these past Stranger literary Geniuses, various Stranger editors will present footnotes—alluring images, true histories, sidelong connections, made-up stuff. By the way, the Henry's exhibition on the Genius Awards is up for two more weeks. (Henry Art Gallery, 15th Ave NE and NE 41st St, 543-2280. 7 pm, free.) CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

If you've ever wanted to display your artwork but didn't have the gallery space,
If you've ever been passed over by curators or snubbed by the art world,
If you're tired of the elite telling you what art is important,
If you don't really 'get art' but still want influence,
If you'd like to win free money,
If you're an artist looking for feedback,
If you're a rebel looking for a cause,
If you're a curator on the side of 'the people',
If you've ever secretly felt that art should be...democratic,
If you've nodded or choked back tears to any of the above,

Then you would fit right in on ArtFaceOff.com, which advertises itself as "A grassroots project bringing democracy to the world of art.� Its goal is to discover the next masterpiece, by democratic means, accomplished through "the people,� of course. Everyone is encouraged to join: art lovers, artists, curators, critics, even the casual web surfer.
Here's how it works: ArtFaceOff provides every artist who joins with free tools and webspace to create an online portfolio of work. Every artist who builds a portfolio is automatically entered into the first stage of the art competition, the Ratings stage. During this time, anyone, even unregistered voters, can look through the portfolios and rate work based on a scale of 1 to 10.

Then, artists with sufficiently high scores are entered into the next stage of the competition, the Face Off stage. This is hand-to-hand art combat: a series of one-on-one competitions in which two of an artist's highest-rated works appear side by side and viewers vote for their favorite of the two. The artist with the most votes moves on to the next round. Eventually, winners go up against winners until the pool is narrowed and there is only one artist left standing in each of eight media categories.

The artists who survive the competition win a cash prize and enjoy the prestige of being crowned "Humanity's Greatest Living Artist" by ArtFaceOff's underground co-op of art rebels.
Portland-based creator Steven W. Ochs's, who launched the site in early September, explains why he started ArtFaceOff: "Radio created rock stars—movies and TV created movie stars—the internet will create Art Icons."

Someone needs to shake poor Steve and tell him that striving to identify the world's next great artist on ArtFaceOff is like expecting to find the world's next supermodel on HotOrNot.com.
"Yea!� for a concept that invites all people to get involved in art.
"Nay!� for a structure in which the art equivalent of Britney Spears could be named "Humanity's Greatest�.
- Alli Urban

Actually, Josh, don't look. Everybody else: This woman makes art with medical themes and materials, often using her own blood. I'm particularly drawn to the Blood Scarf, a scarf knitted from clear vinyl tubing that attaches to the wearer via an intravenous device, filling with the user's blood. It's beautiful...

... and also creepy.

Also check out "Pillows," on which the artist has silk-screened close-up shots of human skin:

There's an equally squeam-inducing video of mirror-image blood drops approaching each other and receding over and over again, but you'll have to go to her web site to see it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Dear Washington Ensemble Theatre,

Let me just say, I love that you do shows on Mondays. No other theater does shows on Mondays. What's wrong with other theaters? Don't they know how much other stuff happens on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays? Don't they know that if they, like you, did Thursday-through-Monday runs, they'd reach a lot more people? And they'd stand a lot better chance of getting into Stranger Suggests?

That's all. Oh, I also love that you do awesome shows. (Spoiler alert! Brendan Kiley raves about Never Swim Alone in the paper coming out this week.)

signed,
your faithful Stranger Suggests wrangler

Coming in May 2007, sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick is transmogrified into a literary writer. The American Library is dedicating one of their fine fine editions to four Dick novels, including Ubik, which, in my opinion, is one of the greatest American novels.

If you haven't read Ubik, it's about how the reach of corporate culture extends into the land of the dead. It also features the creepiest villian, besides Enron's Andy Fastow, in American letters. I realize that Andy Fastow, detailed in this great book, is non-fiction. But as PKD once said, Ubik is non-fiction!!

The other 3 Dick novels in the volume are: The Man in the High Castle, The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Unfortunately, no Martian Time Slip.)

'Actual'
(ART) Which is a fact: a photograph or a sculpture? Um, a sculpture. A photograph is an opinion. But Roy McMakin has set himself the task of building photographs that are facts. He took hundreds of photographs of a single found domestic object—like a green dresser, or a Dutch oven—and piled them on top of each other, flattening the image so that it has no traditional three-point perspective and is true to scale. The subjects have been liberated from the constraints of photographic vision. They've become actual. (James Harris Gallery, 309A Third Ave S, 903-6220. 11 am—5 pm, free.) JEN GRAVES

"Neo-bavarian and Wagnerian," according to the Italian magazine L'Espresso, which offers this photo gallery.

(Via Sullivan)

From the Kuwaiti Times, of all publications...

After the worldwide success of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, that turned the central Asian country into global laughing stock, Austria now fears becoming the irreverent British comedian's next victim.

Universal Studios announced that after Borat wreaked havoc in the United States, he will be succeeded by Bruno "a gay, stupid, self-centred and Nazi-adoring Austrian, lifestyle journalist."

Bruno works along the same lines as Baron Cohen's alter ego Borat Sagdiyev from Da Ali G Show. Both show alarming dress sense, misbehave unscrupulously and provoke even more embarrassing reactions from their unsuspecting, but often not undeserving victims.

Bruno hosts "Funkyzeit mit Brueno" (funky time with Brueno) on a fictional Austrian TV channel, conducts interviews on fashion, celebrities and homosexuality....

Similar panic is now spreading among Austria's tourism marketers, who fear that the gay fashionista, Bruno, will trigger images of a country brimful of Nazis instead of the advertised mountains, blue lakes and pretty girls in Dirndl folk costumes.

Hm... Borat, however offensive he was to rube sensibilities, was at least a straight character. I somehow doubt that Sasha Baron Cohen will survive the filming of a Bruno movie if he attempts a similar sort of road trip through the American "heartland."

In 1977, the little old lady on top published this sentence in a book:

Our 'nursing' seldom involved more than dabbing gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on cuts and scratches, lead lotion on bruises and sprains.

In 2001, the man on bottom published this sentence in a book:

In the way of medical treatments, she had already dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on a cut, and painted lead lotion on a bruise.

Her name is Lucilla Andrews. His name is Ian McEwan.

Some people are outraged. He is standing his ground. She is dead.

All I want for Christmas is this.

'Days of Heaven'
(FILM) All the rapturous bleating about Terrence Malick's recent trifle The New World makes sense only in one context: the absolute glory of the films made before his 20-year hiatus. Days of Heaven, from 1978, is slow and takes visual luxuries that the story—about a love triangle between two migrant workers and a wealthy landowner—can't quite justify. But when you see those blissfully arid images pouring through a new 35mm print, you won't care. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 267-5380. 7 and 9 pm, $5—$8.) ANNIE WAGNER

More news on the inevitable mainstreaming of comics: this weekend brought a story in the New York Times about DC Comics partnering with patented shitty-stuff-for-teens-promoter Alloy for the development and release of a line of graphic novels for teenage girls. This is a smart move for the publisher, since American teenagers are increasingly hot for manga (Japanese serial comic books that rake in $5 billion internationally every year) and the first "graphic novels for girls" are going to be less like traditional graphic novels (a somewhat-scorned artsy term usually applied to BIG IMPORTANT works like Art Spiegelman's Maus) and more like manga and chick lit. The author of the first book released under the new DC Comics push previously penned works called "Boy Proof" and "The Queen of Cool". And the page of the new novel previewed in the New York Times is downright insipid.

Look at those sharp-faced Mean Girl stereotypes! This isn't surprising, but it's disappointing. What I like about cartooning is there's usually not a lot of money in it for anyone -- the artist or the publisher -- so the work is refreshingly weird. Comics have the ability to be unique and still be marketable, they routinely push the boundaries of art and narrative. But as the contrived panels above show, "girl comics" are the new ridiculous Superhero genre. Being creative is risky and books have such razor-thin profit margins that it makes financial sense to just copy the style of selling-like-hotcakes manga and chick lit. I just hope it doesn't do harm to real girl comics and pulls more people into comic book stores where they may, eventually, wade through the glossy shlock to something actually worth reading.