Monday, February 2, 2009
Theater A Few Things about Intiman
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:05 PM
1. Their new managing director, Brian Colburn is settling in. His wife and daughter son and dog Briscoe are moving up from Los Angeles this week, to their new house on Queen Anne. He's a baby-faced guy, 35, and wears a a warm coat indoors. "The maternal part of me wants to tell you to take your coat off," said Stephanie Coen, Intiman's communications director, as she introduced me to Colburn. He did not remove his coat.
2. When Colburn talks about theater, he speaks in the language of business. He talks about plays as "products," as in: "Historically, we have a great product, but we've been behind in connecting with donors." That kind of talk makes sense for a managing director, but may grate on Seattle ears.
3. Intiman just finished a $5 million fund-raising campaign, reducing its accumulated deficit $500,000 to $1.6 million.
4. Colburn comes from the Pasadena Playhouse, where he became managing director at the age 24 31—he started in fund-raising and as general manager seven years prior to that—when the theater was on the verge of closing. "The theater thought it only had three months to live," Colburn says. "They said it would be an educational experience for me."
The charismatic black actor and director Sheldon Epps took over and together, he and Colburn radically changed the theater—overhauled its programming, doubled its budget, raised an endowment. "I'd love to attribute that to my own business acumen, but it was Sheldon's change of the programming."
Now he works for a brighter rock-star director, Bart Sher. He says Sher's star status is "geographically challenging, but the benefits far outweigh the costs."
5. Intiman's American Cycle—a five-year project of producing lavish, big-cast plays from great American novels: The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, Native Son—has been declared a success. Every production sold out performances, school groups bought lots of tickets, and other theaters have begun to imitate the series (Arizona Theatre Company and Indiana Rep, both of which launched with productions of To Kill a Mockingbird).
So they're doing it again, starting the next American Cycle with Abe Lincoln in Illinois, an epic play for around 20 actors by Robert E. Sherwood, directed by Sheila Daniels.
6. Also, Intiman has a new development director named Melaine Bennett.
Media A Question for Joel Connelly
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:43 PM
If a science teacher believes—you know, way deep down in her conscience—that the world was actually created in seven days by a big white-haired dude in the sky, and that dinosaurs walked the earth with people, and that the fossil record was planted by Satan to throw humans off—would the state be obligated to let them continue teaching science?
Because that's exactly what you're saying when you argue that people who think, falsely, that Plan B causes abortions have a right to keep their jobs as pharmacists even when they refuse to dispense prescribed medication.
(Additionally: Let's say I'm a pharmacist who thinks that instead of taking cholesterol-lowering drugs you should just eat better and exercise. Or that instead of taking birth control pills, you should use condoms because pills don't prevent STDs. Or that it's unfair for you to get Viagra for five bucks when your health insurance doesn't cover the Pill. Do I get a "conscience clause"?)
Film "You want me to fuckin' trash your lights?"
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:38 PM
I love Christian Bale's acting, and now I hate him a little bit, after listening to this tantrum he unleashed on a director of photography after he unwittingly wandered into the shot. What a dick!
It also makes me feel weird to know that actors call McG "McG" when they're on set. I always figured he had a first name he only told friends and co-workers.
(Via.)
UPDATE: Christian Bale photo changed to new "Hot-n-Spicy" version because Lindy West thought the previous photo from The Machinist was too gross.
??!! / Homo / Wilderness It's Official!
Posted by Lindy West on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:36 PM
It is my sad duty to announce that I am finally bored by stories about animals who love each other. A labrador who snuggles with some tigers? Over it. A baby owl who thinks a carrot is its mom? WHATEVS. A hippo and a turtle who are best fwiends? 'Kaaay.
But wait, says Paul Constant. You are remembering it wrong. That hippo and that turtle from back in 2004 weren't best fwiends—they were homosexual lovers! And interspecies gay lovers are still totally interesting!
But wait, says I. What ARE you talking about, Paul Constant? From National Geographic:
The strength of a unique male bond between a young hippopotamus and a 130-year-old tortoise will be tested later this spring when conservation workers introduce a female hippo to the mix.While other tortoises, monkeys, and antelope roam in that enclosure, Mzee has shown no affection toward any of them. But he has surprisingly become attached to the young hippo, Owen.
For now, the hippo and tortoise are best buddies.
I see no evidence of interspecies pederastic intercourse in this article. Can't two dudes hang out without it being a gay thing? So an elderly tortoise wants to pal around with a baby hippo. So what?
Let's settle it:
What IS the deal with the hippo and the turtle? And do you care anymore?
Chow / The Ladies "A Great But Unrecognized Truth of the Age"
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:32 PM
The practice of ostentatiously declaring one's love for, and ostentatiously consuming in quantity, bacon, is, EQUALLY, like that of straight girls kissing each other in bars, except without an obvious application specifically regarding attracting members of the opposite sex.
City SDOT Bike Racks Replace, Resemble Cars
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:10 PM
I didn't notice it in the photo I posted last week, but the city's new "bike corrals"—each of which hold about eight bikes and take up as much curb parking as one car—are shaped like... ready to have your mind blown?... a CAR. Complete with fake front grille, fake wheels, and fake lights. I applaud the impulse to turn infrastructure into art, but the heavy-handed symbolism (it's a CAR! with BIKES on it! where a CAR would otherwise be!) I could do without.
Photo by Brian Geoghagen.
Tech Church Computer Literacy With Mrs. Bobby
Posted by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:57 PM
Are you ashamed by your lack of computer literacy? Do you find it hard to navigate your church website, and find the hospital lists and sermon recordings you need? Now thanks to the people at Sunset Church of Christ, it's easier than ever to navigate the interweb tubes—especially with Mrs. Bobbie's easy to understand instructions!
Hat tips to Neatorama!
Chow / Economy Eighty-Sixed: Restaurant Layoffs Loom
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:53 PM
PSBJ:
More than half of restaurant owners and managers who responded to a recent Washington Restaurant Association member survey said they expect to lay off staff in the first half of 2009. With 13,000 restaurants in Washington, the number of laid-off restaurant workers could easily exceed 6,900....
General Mills Inc and other food makers are benefiting from a sharp rise in home cooking in the United States and to a lesser extent in Western Europe.... "We are seeing some very interesting changes in consumer behavior as we plunge deeper into the recession," Chairman and Chief Executive Ken Powell told a panel at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.Two or three years ago, around half of the $1 trillion spent by Americans each year on food went into the tills of restaurants and fast-food outlets. But the fashion for eating away from home—a strongly growing feature of the U.S. marketplace for the past 35 years—has now been thrown into reverse.
"What we see now, over the last year and a half, is a very, very significant change in the direction of that trend," Powell said. "Basically, consumers in North America are rediscovering the grocery store and cooking at home again, clearly to the benefit of some and the disbenefit of others as many restaurants really struggle in the U.S. right now."
No numbers from Reuters on what, exactly, "a very, very significant change" is.
??!! At Least There's That
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:15 PM
Jesus, we're not even covering all the layoffs: Has this even been on Slog? The 7,000 layoffs at Macy's? It seems like the Internet is just a huge woe delivery system these days. So at least there are still diversions, like the How Many 90 Year Olds Could You Take In a Fight quiz. You have to skip over an ad for some sort of dating site or whatever, but it's important to know this kind of information, especially since we all might be fighting for a loaf of bread some day soon.
(Thanks, Presurfer.)
Media / Chow Re: Over the Weekend
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:13 PM
The New Yorker isn't the only venerable glossy publication that's threatened by declining ad sales. According to 24/7 Wall Street, Gourmet Magazine, another Conde Nast publication, "will probably not see the end of the year." Gourmet manages to be both accessible and appropriately food snobbish. It is endlessly surprising (a recent recipe called for ground dried shrimp, galangal, and long beans; a recent travel feature focused on Walla Walla) and beautiful (the rolls in this month's cover story, including orange pumpkin cloverleafs, above, give a new meaning to the term "food porn.") The arrival of Gourmet in my mailbox is a jump-up-and-down highlight of my month. It would be a huge blow to see it go away or "survive" in some diminished, online-only form.
Media Meet Your E-Mail Stalker
Posted by David Schmader on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 4:07 PM
Esquire is ready to tell you everything you always wanted to know about David Plouffe. The profile contains F words and numerous references to "beer pong."
Nightlife Last Night at the Twilight Exit
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:57 PM
Eric Grandy reports on the last night of karaoke—ever!—at the Twilight Exit on Madison. It was ridiculously packed and very Boss-y.
City / Media Making It Up as They Go Along?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:40 PM
Given Hearst's silence on the central questions about its plans for the P-I, one eventually ends up wondering: Does even Hearst know what it's doing?
Most of the time, my default assumption is that it does—that a giant media corporation such as Hearst would have a big project like closing down the P-I pretty well gamed-out in advance. Put the P-I up for sale on Jan. 9, stop printing newspaper in early March, execute Top Secret Plan Z immediately thereafter. Or something like that.
But here's an e-mail from P-I publisher Roger Oglesby that reminds me it's also possible that Hearst has no firm grand scheme beyond limiting the money it's currently bleeding through the P-I's print edition. All that talk of a Hearst master plan to stop the presses and maybe transform the P-I into an online-only publication? Well, as of Jan. 14, five days after the P-I was put up for sale, Hearst, via Oglesby, was still fishing around for ideas about how that might be done:
From: Oglesby, RogerSent: Wed 1/14/2009 11:52 AM
To: PiStaff
Subject: ideas for the online model
We've recently spent time with the leaders of Hearst Newspapers' Digital Media group, focusing on creating a viable online-only model for this market. We're exploring all the options, and would appreciate your help and input.Some of you shared with Lincoln Millstein during his visit last week your thoughts about what an online-only seattlepi.com should look like. Lincoln asked that we capture your ideas and forward them so they could be considered during this business planning phase.
If you have thoughts about how an online-only seattlepi.com should operate, please email them to Michelle Nicolosi. She'll pull them together and forward them to Lincoln and Ken Riddick.
Here's their explanation of what they're looking for:
"Please don't confine yourself to staffing proposals. We're interested in your thoughts on how to maintain and grow our online audience so we might have the competitive advantage in the market. If you have ideas to help us drive the revenue side of the business we're interested in that, too.
"Send along ideas for partnerships, part time models, revenue sharing, freelancing and any other creative types of structures that might help us reach our goal of creating a profitable business model in the market.
"Think outside of the box. Break the molds. Be inventive. Be bold. Think lean. Invent what journalism can and should be at a lean online-only operation."
Here's your chance to weigh in. Thanks in advance for your creative thinking to help flesh out what a vibrant and profitable seattlepi.com might be.
If you have any advice, Sloggers, it sounds like Hearst would appreciate it.
Homo / Politics / Religion Oh, That Funding
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:20 PM
Remember how the Mormon Church denied funding Prop 8, other than $2,078 in travel expenses to send an Elder to California? A lawsuit filed by Californians Against Hate seems to have changed the church's position:
Mormon church officials, facing an ongoing investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, Friday reported nearly $190,000 in previously unlisted assistance to the successful campaign for Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.The report, filed with the secretary of state's office, listed a variety of California travel expenses for high-ranking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and included $20,575 for use of facilities and equipment at the church's Salt Lake City headquarters and a $96,849 charge for "compensated staff time" for church employees who worked on matters pertaining to Prop. 8.
When I interviewed several Mormons in December, asking what they thought about the congregation members donating to the measure, they initially denied knowledge of it. When told that individual Mormons had donated nearly two-thirds of Prop 8's funding, they acted like the number was far too big to be real. But all along, they insisted, the Mormon Church itself had never meddled in the measure; that could have been illegal, seeing how spending money to affect elections jeopardizes a church's tax-exempt status.
Via Americablog.
Books Food for Thought
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:14 PM
...we thought it was worth pointing out that it costs the [New York] Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead.
I'm against the Kindle because it's not DRM-free, but this should be kind of an eye-opener for newspaper subscribers. I'm surprised nobody's tried some version of e-newspaper delivery yet.
(Via.)
Hetero Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:03 PM
Ohio:
The Caesarscreek Twp. man who used a shock collar and water torture to discipline three of his four children was sentenced to 16 years in prison by Greene County Common Pleas Court Judge J. Timothy Campbell Monday. David O. Liskany, 39, of Hussey Road, was sentenced to six years each for two counts of second-degree felonious assault and to four years for one count of third-degree attempted felonious assault.“The only thing you didn’t do was wrap their faces in cheesecloth. They basically were waterboarded,” Campbell said before handing down his sentence, which was far harsher than the 4 years in prison recommended by state probation authorities.
According to Campbell, Liskany abused three of his four children—who were 13, 11 and four at the time of the abuse—by using a dog’s shock collar on them, holding them underwater, subjecting them to cold showers and spraying water up their noses.... Liskany’s ex-wife Wendy Liskany addressed the court on his behalf before sentencing. “My children did not wish for David to be prosecuted,” said Wendy Liskany. “I don’t feel that incarcerating him will help.” ... On his own behalf, Liskany told Campbell, “I just want the opportunity to try and be a father. That’s what I was trying to do, be a loving father.”
City City Drops Charges in Urban Golfer Case
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:00 PM
The City prosecutor's office has dropped its case against 25-year-old David Hulton for his alleged role in an assault during a Seattle Urban Golf event in October.
During Urban Golf the event, a bystander was struck in the eye with a foam golf ball. The bystander called police, who broke up the golf tournament and arrested three golfers, including Hulton. In December, prosecutors filed misdemeanor assault charges against Hulton for the incident.
Days after Hulton was charged, another man claimed responsibility for the assault but declined to turn himself in.
According to Hulton, prosecutors dropped his case earlier today due to a lack of evidence.
In an email, Hulton says he's had to shell out quite a bit of money on legal costs for his case and says he thinks "it's great that [his case] didn't get any further than this but I still want to at least file a complaint with the police department and try to do what I can to make sure that the police do a bit more investigation before falsely arresting people."
Games For Your Afternoon Enjoyment
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:18 PM
Yesterday, while home sick, I really got into Bubble Spinner. It's a little flash game involving the Tetris-like pursuit of matching three bubbles of the same color (in order to make them disappear) with the obnoxious-yet-addicting twist of adding physics to the game. It's like playing a weird sort of pool on a table that spins with every shot. I recommend it.
Crime / City Apartment Wars
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:58 PM
Seattle Police were called to the Mission Inn apartments—near the intersection of Boylston and Howell on Capitol Hill—on Sunday after a resident reported that their windows were shot out over the weekend.
According to building manager Gary Huth, over the weekend, some one fired steel BBs through three windows and the balcony door of a third-floor apartment. “All but one window was shot out,” Huth says. "It’ll cost us about $3,000 to fix it."
Huth says he doesn't know who would've shot out his building's windows or why that particular unit might've been targeted, but he believes he knows where the BBs came from. "We lined up all the [BB] holes. [The shots] came from one apartment building across the street," Huth says.
Huth says he has not contacted the other building's management. "That's the [SPD's] job," he says.
Sex Get Your Bash On
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:35 PM
Valentine's Day is on February 14th this year—that's just 12 days away!—and you know what means: it's time for the Stranger's annual Valentine's Day Bash. Every year we host a party for the brokenhearted, the dumped, and the bitter. People bring mementos of their failed relationships and we destroy them onstage. We burn, we sledgehammer, we shred, we urinate upon. We are looking for some new and different ways to do away with love letters, engagement rings, sex toys and other mementos. Got an idea? Some method of destruction that you've never seen at the Bash but always wanted to? Just a happy memory of a Bash gone by? Let us know in comments...
Economy Notes from the Unemployment Line
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:30 PM
I'm still going through all the e-mails from unemployed people who want to be part of this Jobless in Seattle project. (If you're jobless and interested, click here.) But for now, a note that doesn't quite work for the project because it sounds like it already has a somewhat happy ending:
I moved to Seattle from Minneapolis a little more than two years ago to be near a lovely Oregon transplant from Ballard, who is now my wife. I worked as a contract paralegal for Microsoft, then found a good job at a large downtown law firm. Contract, of course. I was laid off in September. My wife was laid off from her job writing copy for a local on line retailer in November.By a stroke of good fortune (and better connections), about a week before I was laid off, a friend in California offered my wife and me some work harvesting and trimming a crop of outdoor marijuana. We called him to see if the offer stood. It did, and we spent some time in the hills of California trimming weed, making better money than I did working for lawyers.
Since then, I've trimmed in Oregon, collected some unemployment, and half-heartedly looked for a job. My wife is tutoring once a week, with a few hours of copy editing coming in here and there. In March, we plan to trim again in Oregon. In April or May, I hope there's a few weeks of work in California planting the next crop. Come fall, I'll be back down there trimming if there's a crop to trim.
Marijuana. The gateway to gainful employment drug.
Nightlife The Battle of January Is Won
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:26 PM
Cheers, weekend warriors. A threat last month to fatally poison approximately 55 people at gay bars with ricin “on a Saturday in January" has failed to liquefy any internal organs, the Seattle Police Department reports. (All that cheap vodka at CC’s may have liquefied a few livers). But the war continues. Not only must we, as committed gays and those who love them, continue to drink for the cause, SPD spokeswoman Renée Witt says homicide detectives are “on the case” and continue to investigate with “federal partners.” Like the bartenders who got you hammered, the police want tips. Please share any useful information you've got about the disgruntled ricin twit with SPD at (206) 684-5550. And drink safe in February: always wear a condom.
Chow Tomatoes: End the Madness
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:21 PM
At Oddfellows, the afternoon light is lovely, and the breakfast panini—poached eggs, bacon, tomato, smoked cheddar, and Gruyère—is pretty good. The bread's a little white-bread-squishy for my taste; denser bread would stand up to the onslaught of the egg yolk better, too. But the problem is the tomato. No one should put fresh tomatoes on anything at this time of year. They are all terrible: pale, mealy yet hard, tasting like a tomato's phantom limb, an approximation of what a tomato ought to be. In winter, tomatoes should be a memory and a hope.
Dance The Army Is Gay Enough Right Now, Thanks
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Are our troops in Iraq trying to send President Obama a message?
Via Towleroad.
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