When I first heard that the new movie musical of Hairspray would star John Travolta as Edna Turnblad (originated on film by the brilliant Divine and reprised in the musical by a Tony-winning Harvey Feirstein), I did more than reserve judgment--I actively hoped Travolta was harboring some untapped camp talent that would make the casting make sense and perhaps result in triumph. It seemed possible: Why would John Travolta want to do something he's horrible at?

Who knows, but judging from this preview clip, he does, and has, and it ain't pretty. As Defamer notes, "The scene prominently features Travolta's Edna Turnblad delivering her dialogue in an utterly inscrutable Southern-ish accent (doesn't it take place in Baltimore?) in a register slightly deeper than Travolta's own."

As for "untapped camp talent," Travolta displays none. I'm tempted to say, "This is the kind of drag your dad would do," but it's too weird. One thing's for sure: Travolta's never seemed straighter. Weird.

(However, I remain excited to see Alison Janney's take on the spastic-with-racism Mrs. Pingleton.)

You must listen to Seattle artist Whiting Tennis talk. This episode is one of the best artist interviews ever on In/Visible (the weekly art podcast). Seriously.

Did you know, for instance, that the piece the Seattle Art Museum recently bought was actually intended to move around the city, sitting in empty lots, Matta-Clark-style?

That a cat carrier can be made of string?

Tennis is smart, he's open, he's slightly grumpy, he's easygoing, and he's an important Seattle artist. Check it out.

^{Detail of Blue Tarp by Whiting Tennis (2007). The whole painting is 12 feet wide and 8 feet tall, and went on display Saturday night at Tacoma Art Museum.}

As long as we're analyzing classic movies, I figured I might as well link to local institution Outlaw Vern's masterful deconstruction of the Die Hard series. Among the highlights: a brilliant insight into the Passion of John McClane.

Bruce is crucified when he walks barefoot across the glass. This is when he dies as far as on a symbolic level. at first he seems to have retired to his fate and tells the walky talky cop to apologize to his wife for him. however he changes his mind and comes back to life (again i must point out this is in a metaphorical way) to ascend to the heaven of the upper floor of the building.

When Bruce finally sees his wife again it is a dramatic type lighting as he steps out with his arms raised like on a cross. This is a very christlike portrayal and so what do you think his wife says? That's right, she says "Jesus!"

Grenada has an underwater sculpture garden.

(Thanks for the tip, Nancy!)

The substance of the remake of The Hidden Fortress:
I bring this up on the Slog today because I learned last Friday that the idea had never occurred to our very own Star Wars expert, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee. But at the bottom of all that is in and about Star Wars is junk. The leading motive of the movie is junk: what to do with it, how to get rid of it, and how you can be confused with and crushed by it. The Millennium Falcon is a piece of junk, a whole race of little Arab-like people survive by selling junk on desert planets, and robots have only two conditions: being junk and being not junk.

Now for a little Marx. The base from which this fear, this preoccupation, this nightmare of useless stuff arises is the real problem that America faced (or felt it faced) in the 70s with consumer garbage. At the time, recycling was not yet considered to be a real solution to the problem, and so the only solution, and one that was a doomed solution, was to keep finding new empty places (spaces) to dump consumer junk. The problem is still with us today, but it's not dominating the American mind as it did back then, at the beginning of the end of the 20th century.

Did someone at Town Hall last night really ask Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini--there to read from his new book, A Thousand Splendid Suns--if he knew where Osama bin Laden is hiding?

Pictured is Jon Sibi Okumu and Rachel Weisz:
This is the situation in the movie The Constant Gardener. Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz) works with Dr. Joshua Ngaba ( Jon Sibi Okumu) in the slums of Nairobi. Tessa Quayle is English (Wiesz is Jewish), and married to Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), an Englishman (Fiennes is English). Justin works for the British Embassy and almost never sees his wife; not he but she is too busy at her work, too busy trying to save the world in the slums of Nairobi.

Justin suspects his wife is fucking the African doctor. He suspects this because she is always with the doctor, and also because he sees himself as a weak man, a petty civil servant. He is not as spirited as his wife. His wife burns like a man, has the will of a wild horse, and the hunger of a tiger. She leaps at any injustice; she bares her teeth at any man who dares to challenge her determination. Justin is in love with a power he can not satisfy. But the African doctor can satisfy her. Why? Because he is an African. How can he, a man with two thousand years of civilsation behind him, sexually compete with an energetic African--even if the African is a doctor? But it turns out the African is not fucking his wife because the African is gay. The African fucks men not women. This has another direction of meaning that I cant take in this post (but, quickly, gay sexuality for the basic African mind means decadence, means all that civilisation, that education, that doctoring has finally corrupted the wholesome African meat of the man and made him a Westerner from just below crust to core).

The white woman turns out to be faithful to her white husband. But this is not the matter. This is what I want to point out (and here I must turn to Zizeck and Lacan for some guidance): Even if Tessa was fucking the African doctor, the fact of Justin's jealously, a jealously that has racist reasons, is a problem that needs to solved in and of itself. (The film fails to see this.) Why do African men, in the presence of European women, make him feel this way, feel this jealously, this fear? Where do these feelings come from, and how do they fit into (and work within) his identity? Can he have an identity without them? He can't, which is why he dissolves and dies at the end of the film.

He is only alive when he is imagining the worst: his white wife with the bewitching black doctor.

'Force of Nature' (Piles of Paint) Elise Richman is called a painter, but what she does is this: She sculpts paint into landscapes of stalactites and gives them frames. Every tiny, brightly colored peak is an accumulation of dozens of drops of paint. There's the applying, the waiting, the meticulous repeat. Each show is hundreds and hundreds of these little rainbowy formations. They aren't paintings, they're devotions. (Gallery 4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Pl S, 296-8674. 8:30 am—5 pm, free.) Jen Graves

From the website for McSweeney's (publisher of excellent books, publisher of the McSweeney's quarterly, publisher of The Believer, publisher of DVD quarterly Wholphin):

As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000—actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big.

Taking a cue from Fantagraphics (when Fantagraphics was "in similarly dire straits"), McSweeney's is selling everything in their store at discounted prices (including subscriptions to McSweeney's, the huge faces-of-The Believer poster, and fine T-shirts) AND holding an auction of rare items.

What sorts of rare items? Right now, an original Tony Millionaire drawing of Ben Gibbard, a painting of an amputated president by Dave Eggers, a copy of Wholphin doodled on by Spike Jonze, this awesome package of Marcel Dzama Berlin Years prints doodled on by Dzama, and more.

You know what to do.

(Now please enjoy some reviews of Seattle audiences written for The Stranger by McSweeney's and Believer alums: Sarah Vowell in 2002; Ben Marcus in 2002; Vendela Vida in 2003; Paul Collins in 2004; Sean Wilsey in 2005; Dave Eggers in 2005; John Hodgman in 2005; and Ryan Boudinot in 2006.)

Joe Nickell, the Missoulian writer who is part of a new blog on ArtsJournal called Flyover: Art from the American Outback. Nickell writes at the heart of his subjects (chiefly music), he's mellifluous in print, and, in person, he has a hell of a way with old-timey shirts.

The blog is a group portrait of art in smaller cities by arts journalists of all kinds. It's exactly the sort of thing I wish had been around (Nickell and co. invented it several months ago) when I was writing about art in Denton, Texas, and in Tacoma, where my boss once asked me whether the dancers at the ballet also sing while they're performing.

These writers have tough jobs, jobs with high highs and low lows, jobs where cynicism is not an option. Read them. Throw in your comments.

As yet to be made is a great movie based on a novel by Vladmir Nabokov--Rainer Werner Fassbinder came close with Despair, and Kubrick's Lolita is weak because it's unfaithful to Nabokov's screenplay. The Russian had this to say about the horrible movie that was made out of Laughter in the Dark.

I have [seen it]. Nicol Williamson is, of course, an admirable actor, and some of the sequences are very good. The scene with the water-ski girl, gulping and giggling, is exceptionally successful. But I was appalled by the commonplace quality of the sexual passages. I would like to say something about that. Clichés and conventions breed remarkably fast. They occur as readily in the primitive jollities of the jungle as in the civilized obligatory scenes of our theater. In former times Greek masks must have set many a Greek dentition on edge. In recent films, including Laughter in the Dark, the porno grapple has already become a cliché though the device is but half-a-dozen years old. I would have been sorry that Tony Richardson should have followed that trite trend, had it not given me the opportunity to form and formulate the following important notion: theatrical acting, in the course of the last centuries, has led to incredible refinements of stylized pantomine in the representation of, say, a person eating, or getting deliciously drunk, or looking for his spectacles, or making a proposal of marriage. Not so in regard to the imitation of the sexual act which on the stage has absolutely no tradition behind it. The Swedes and we have to start from scratch and what I have witnessed up to now on the screen--the blotchy male shoulder, the false howls of bliss, the four or five mingled feet--all of it is primitive, commonplace, conventional, and therefore disgusting. The lack of art and style in these paltry copulations is particularly brought into evidence by their clashing with the marvelously high level of acting in virtually all other imitations of natural gestures on our stage and screen. This is an attractive topic to ponder further, and directors should take notice of it

I exchanged e-mails with this guy who plays in the band in Village Theater's production of Tommy. Given last week's hilarious brouhaha about my spoof review, I'm posting the exchange.

From: johnehigh@comcast.net
Sent: Fri, June 8, 2007 9:11 am
To: josh@thestranger.com
Subject: The Who's Tommy

Hi Josh,
I recently read your review of Issaquah's "The Who's Tommy," and it certainly inspires questions. First, I won't hide - I play in the band for the show. Having said that, I'm not writing this to go on the offensive. I read all reviews with respect for the reviewer's opinion, and I take no offense if a reviewer dislikes a production for any reason.

I do have to ask, how familiar are you with the story and history of "Tommy?" The show is certainly not a new work, as you state in your review ("new musical premiering...", having originally been written by The Who in 1968, produced as
an Opera (by the Seattle Opera company in 1970), a movie in 1975 (starring Ann-Margret, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton, and others), and as a Bro adway hit in 1992 winning five Tony awards, including best score. Each production includes necessary story elements, including the Acid Queen, World War 2, and Pinball. All I can conclude from reading your review is that you are not familiar with Tommy, nor with the Who in general.

Again, I'm not here to convince you that your opinion of the show is right or wrong. The public decides this for themselves, and given that other mainstream reviews have been positive and ticket sales are brisk, I think success speaks for itself. You don't have to like the show at all, but I have to admit - your review does read as if you did not do your homework. Sorry to say. Responses and open discussion welcome.

John High, and no I'm not a "self-indulgent Issaquah Hippie."

To: johnehigh@comcast.net

John,

I'm 400 million years old. I've had The Who's Tommy in my record collection since I was 12. It was a joke. I didn't like the shows devout veneration of classic rock. That worship contradicted Tommy's whole point. Townshend wrote Tommy because he was freaked out by the fact that rock was turning teens into zombie fans. He was spoofing rock worship. But the Village theater show goes as far as to end with rock icons as deities. That move represented everything the show was against. Since you guys were so hung up on the power of classic rock, I figured I'd spoof you by saying your show was derivative of Radiohead.

From: johnehigh@comcast.net
Nice. thanks for the response. I'll be sure to share with the guys....

Haneke Retrospective (Film) Grand Illusion continues its Michael Haneke (Caché) retrospective with two brutal and fascinating features for the price of one. See the original Funny Games ahead of the upcoming remake with Naomi Watts, and catch a rare and timely screening of 1994's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, about the circumstances that draw various characters into a massacre perpetrated by a 19-year-old student in a Vienna bank. (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, 523-3935. Funny Games at 7 pm, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance at 9 pm, $5—$8.) Annie Wagner

Part two of African Cinema will begin by thanking Ousmane Sembène for leaving the world with four masterpieces (Xala, Faat Kiné, Mandabi, and Moolaadé). The death of the great Senegalese director brings to an end the post-colonial period of African filmmaking, the highest of achievement of which is Hyènes, a film by Sembène's countryman and protégé, Djibril Diop Mambéty.

Now, let's have a quick look at an image that has no equivalent in the democratic cinema of Sembène:

The first thing we see is Lucy and her man:

The second thing we see is the Savage Queen from Heart of Darkness. In both the novella and movie, Children of Men, the Savage Queen is, like Ethopia's Lucy, the absolute life-force. But there's an important difference: In Heart of Darkness, the Savage Queen is abandoned for the infertile white woman at end of the novella; in the movie, on the other hand, she is retrieved and protected (dying Europe needs her fertility) and the infertile white woman is abandoned (after she is shot in the neck). Outside of African cinema, we have yet to see the image of an African woman who is not in essence Lucy or the Savage Queen.

Three will be this...

Northwest New Works Festival (Awesomeness) Every year, a little more energy hums around this two-week performance party (four shows, two weeks, 16 acts) because it keeps getting better and better. The early show: Joe von Appen (a one-man flipbook who begins by directly wooing the front row: "I'm a mammal and I'm looking for something three-dimensional to call my own"), tEEth (tableaux, karaoke, angry stripping), and more. The late show: maika misumi (martial-arts dance), Implied Violence (punks, dandies, and German expressionism), the mellifluous marimba of Erin Jorgensen, and more. I can't wait. (On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, 217-9888. 5 and 8 pm, $14.) Brendan Kiley

Among other things my wife and I collect boring postcards. While we don't have too many masterpieces on the level found in Martin Parr's brilliant series of books of cards from the UK, the USA, and Germany, I did find some just the other day from the untapped splendor of the Soviet Bloc. I'm just getting around to scanning them. Here are four from Poland -- respectively Gorzów Wlkp., Boleslawiec, Wroclaw and Warszawa:

Over bottles of two buck Chuck last Friday at my old friend Ben Gibbard’s house, I picked up some interesting knowledge from my new friend John Krasinski. You may know Ben from his indie-rock sensation band, Death Cab For Cutie, or perhaps from his work in The Postal Service. John used to be an intern on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, but you probably recognize him as the dude that plays Jim Halpert on The Office.

A few years back, while he was still waiting tables in NYC, and well before the success of The Office, John managed to sweet talk his way into buying the film rights to Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace published in 1999. I didn’t really get to the heart of what the hell Krasinski was thinking when forming his game plan for this project; frankly, I was gobsmacked by the daunting notion of adapting Wallace’s epic prose into film.

I mean, come on, we’re talking about some heavy duty writing, stuff that doesn’t scream out make a movie out of me! It’s not exactly blockbuster-making material and I would guess that Krasinski had to do some serious hustling to finance the project. I have a feeling that Wallace’s literary agent probably thought the project would never get off the ground.

But, not only did Krasinski manage to get the project off the ground, he scored a slew of interesting actors, including Oscar winner Timothy Hutton and our very own Benjamin Gibbard. It is Krasinski’s debut as a director and, based on his real-life charm and abundance of smarts, I think it’s going to turn out pretty well.

Shooting for Brief Interviews with Hideous Men wrapped early this year and the film is currently in post-production. It is the first David Foster Wallace book to be adapted to film. It is also Gibbard’s first role on the big screen. He will not be leaving his day job in Death Cab For Cutie for the bright lights of Hollywood any time soon. Whether or not the recent stamp rate increase will affect any future releases from The Postal Service is yet to be determined.

Anyone who's found themselves thirsty in Sea-Tac airport has probably fallen victim to the Talking Fountain. Even when I know to expect the startlingly loud noise of an amplified babbling brook, I feel instantly nervous, hurried, and vulnerable. I guess it's sort of amusing to watch unsuspecting travelers jump during their turn at the fountain, but I don't think it's the calming work it was intended to be. The piece was designed by Jim Green in 1992.

According to the Wall Street Journal, both DC Comics and Marvel will be publishing many U.S. manga titles aimed at teen girls this year, instead of the usual male-dominated titles they have done in the past.

DC Comics is launching the Minx line of manga, with titles such as Good as Lily, Re-Gifters (Tae Kwon Do girl falls for surfer boy and re-gifts him), and Clubbing (goth city girl into music and lit gets caught using fake ID and is exiled to country club life of grandparents).

Marvel Entertainment is supposedly doing the same, but you can't find anything not action-figure guy-oriented online there.

I'm going over quota here, and stepping on my co-guest-sloggers' film mandate.

The scene early in John Schlesinger's Billy Liar, made in England in 1963, where Julie Christie steps into the world to the sound of some flutey jazz, is the moment the 1960s began. Not the Beatles, not JFK: Julie Christie.

I wish I could rip it and YouTube it, but I am too dumb.

Later, Christie again shows why she shone brighter than a thousand other, supposedly prettier, girls (only Rita Tushingham can match her) in this scene with the great Tom Courtenay:

LIZ: I want to marry you, Billy.

BILLY: Ah, I think I get engaged a bit too often.

LIZ: Oh, I don't want to get engaged, I want to get married.

BILLY: Well, uh—we will one day.

LIZ: Yes. "One day."

LIZ: Billy.

BILLY: What?

LIZ: You know—you know what you wanted me to do that night, when we were walking through the park? And I said, "another night."

BILLY: Yes...

LIZ: Well it's another night tonight, isn't it?

BILLY: Are you sure?

LIZ: Yes.

BILLY: Uh.... [they kiss]

LIZ: Billy.

BILLY: Mm-hmm?

LIZ: You know there have been others, don't you?

BILLY: Well, uh, somehow I imagined that there might have been.

LIZ: Shall I tell you about them?

BILLY: No, no—

BILLY: Well, then, go on, tell me about it.

LIZ: No, not now.

BILLY: Go on, tell me about it.

LIZ: You think that's why I'm always going away, don't you?

BILLY: I don't know!

LIZ: Oh, it's not that.

LIZ: Sometimes I want to go away. It's not you, Billy. It's this town, it's the people we know. I—I don't like knowing everybody, I don't like becoming a part of things—d'you know what I mean?

BILLY: Yes, I do, Liz, I do—

LIZ: What I'd like to be is invisible. I'd like to be able to move around with having to explain anything.

And then the world changed. What light.

I’m going to skip this when it comes to the Paramount, but I’d totally see Blazing Saddles, the musical.

After the great age of Roman building, the art of the viaduct and aqueduct lay fallow for many centuries, until the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, when the burgeoning network of canals and railways needed ways to to get around each other. The most wonderful of these structures was the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, in Wales, built by the genius Thomas Telford in 1795. This carried the water of the Llangollen or Ellesmere Canal in a cast iron channel over the River Dee. Imagine looking up from a boat on the river in the eighteenth century and seeing the mast of a ship high in the sky above you!

The first great railway viaduct was the Sankey Viaduct, built by George Stephenson in 1830,which carried the first proper railway, The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, over Sankey Brook (part of the Sankey Canal, which was in some ways the first modern canal).

The dreamlike Millau Viaduct in southern France, finished in 2004, and carrying a highway over the valley of the River Tam, is a superlative example of the modern engineer's freedom from the customary restraints of the earth.

The Lai Chi Kok Viaduct in Hong Kong, currently under construction, is more prosaic but just as technologically challenging.

The viaduct of the Cahill Expressway in Sydney, Australia frames the bustling heart of the most beautiful harbor in the world (center right in photo).

Our own entry in this catalog of pathways through the sky is the beautiful and functional Alaskan Way Viaduct, which elevates hundreds of thousands of cars above the city and the heads of its residents, allowing them to pass freely beneath between the commercial districts and the waterfront.

While some malcontents complain of dark and gloom and noise and dripping dankness, they are insensible to its considerable charms. Concrete, humankind's most versatile and beautiful material, acquires a sumptuous grey-green patina after bathing in decades of rain, mildew, and exhaust, and glows with a depth that mere stone requires centuries or millennia to acquire.

The bold unadorned structural elements speak of the unpretentious working life of the blue-collar city, speeding aircraft mechanics, waitresses, longshoremen and administrative assistants to their jobs. It also provides anyone with a car the spectacular Puget Sound views that would otherwise belong only to those in expensive downtown condominiums. It also forms a cohesive whole with the seawall that keeps the city from sliding into Elliott Bay on its foundation of slippery mud. Surely this is a triumph not only of the engineering and construction arts, but the urbanized aesthetic beauty of a great regional center?

The church is a cloud of solitude.

The relationship between land and sky, however, is troubling. So much so that I'm selling all of my worldly possessions and moving to wherever this church is and making it my mission in life to correct the imbalance. How I will battle these forces I know not, but I know it is important to do so. The church was built by god knows who and is located in the Greek Isles. (Sorry Charles,
I had to!)

Staying home this weekend and watching DVDs.

The weather is supposed to royally suck this weekend and unless you already have tickets to SIFF I suggest just staying home and watching any number of DVDs that came out this week.

Personally, I am going to make a big batch of spaghetti and meatballs and get fat watching The Sergio Leone Anthology, which includes remastered, full-length cuts of Leone's three Clint Eastwood westerns: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and his lesser known James Coburn-Rod Steiger western, Duck, You Sucker (aka A Fistful of Dynamite).

This eight-disc set comes with 10 hours of extras including every deleted scene that has survived, interviews with surviving cast and crew members, period advertising, and recent visits to the locations that were used 40 years ago. Add Leone's two-disc deluxe version of his 1968 masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West that came out a few years ago and you have a solid 25 hours of Anglo-Italian goodness.

The biggest art exhibition in the world has begun to accept visitors, and the critics are blogging. I won't be able to send updates tomorrow, when many will probably come in, because of Freaky Friday, but I can tell you who's out there doing what.

The NYT's arts blog, Artsbeat, looks like it intends to be all over it, with words and pics.

Time critic Richard Lacayo, the best blogging critic for my money, is already in with some preliminary thoughts about Rob Storr's big show in the big show.

Charlotte Higgins from the Guardian podcasted on her first day here, and I'd stay tuned to the Guardian blog—it always has something going on. (A good little backgrounder by Adrian Searle here.)

Wish I were there; I'm hoping to go in September. More soon on how the Felix Gonzalez-Torres sculpture of reflecting pools just barely touching (below, installed in the entry courtyard of the US pavilion, photo from the NYT today), almost stood at Western Washington University instead.

So perfect for ads!

From Bernard Perroud.

The man who made the movie Sharkwater is first seen sitting on the bottom of the ocean, hugging a shark. The shark stays in the hug at least five seconds before it swims off.

Later, the man is on the roof of a building, discovering another rooftop full of hundreds of shark fins drying in the sun, in what is a major South American mafia trade. The bad guys scramble to take the fins out of sight and then they give chase. The shark-hugger runs.

There is another chase, too, a boat chase. The shark-hugger joins forces with a badass environmental vigilante who citizen-arrests shark poachers at sea. When the poachers get citizen-arrested by the shark-hugger and the vigilante-boater, the government whose laws they are violating protects them and arrest the shark-hugger and the vigilante-boater instead. A legal chase ensues.

Here's what the poachers do: They catch the sharks. They pull them aboard. They chop off all their fins. They dump the stubby bloody sharks back into the water, where the sharks sink to the ocean floor and bleed to death.

Sharkwater says that 90 percent of the world's sharks have been killed in recent years so that class-conscious people can eat fancy sharkfin soup sold to them through powerful organized criminals, and so that superstitious people can eat the ground-down powder of sharkfins although it has not been proven to have any health benefits.

Watch this movie. Start with the trailer above, and then here's the making-of on YouTube (which includes the hug scene).

Sharkwater plays at SIFF Cinema, down in the bowels of McCaw Opera Hall, tomorrow (Friday June 8) at 7 pm and Sunday (June 10) at 7 pm.

Just got off the phone with Kim Brown Seely, who's in charge of the search committee for a new director for Seattle Arts & Lectures. (Seely is vice president of the board.) SAL's current director, Margit Rankin, announced earlier this week that she is stepping down.

THE STRANGER: I was just looking at SAL's website, and it says "There are currently no open positions with Seattle Arts & Lectures." That's not exactly true.
KIM BROWN SEELY: Well, we have a search committee that is being put together as we speak. We're launching a national search. The website I suppose is a day or two out of date.

It must be a hard job to do a search for the position, since the right person has to be an excellent administrator with the educational background to oversee SAL's three educational programs and dream up the lecture series and be its emcee. Have you guys considered dividing the executive director role into two roles, like an artistic director and a managing director?
It's actually too soon for me to speak to that. We're looking at a number of possibilities, and the organization has grown to the extent that we may be looking at a different model.

Is the organization secure enough--you're going into your 20th year--that you guys are willing to take a few more risks?
Absolutely.

What about finding a local literary superstar to dream up and emcee the lecture series on a not-full-time basis? Is that a possibility?
It's way too soon for me to speak to that.

I've always thought it would be great to hire someone like Sherman Alexie to do that. He's great on stage.
It's interesting that you should bring that up. We've been looking at all sorts of different models--maybe even having different people host each lecture. Sherman would be phenomenal.

Does the new director of SAL need to wear glasses? Will that help them in the interview process?
That's a very difficult question. As someone who's legally blind, I can't wear glasses. They would be too thick to wear. Now that's literary! They would be thicker than coke bottles. [Laughs.] They don't need to look the part, obviously. We're looking for someone who's interested in ideas.

Will you consider internal candidates--current SAL staffers?
It's too soon to speak to that.

Rebecca Hoogs really smart.
I know.

I know you haven't even put the whole committee together yet, but if people want to apply, what should they do?
They should contact the office directly.

[Rankin is leaving at the end of July. The official press release about her departure is after the jump.]

Continue reading "Who Will Be the Next Director of Seattle Arts & Lectures?" »

I just want to salute Paul Constant on his wee review of The Little Girl and the Cigarette, which I also read and loved:

The Little Girl and the Cigarette

by Benoit Duteurtre

(Melville House) $ 14.95

You've got to hand it to the French. Benoit Duteurtre is a young satirist who's written 10 books, and Milan Kundera has sung his praises. Duteurtre has a reputation as a rabble-rouser and provocateur, so what do the French do? They give him his own TV show, called Astonish Me Benoit. Imagine if we did the same in the U.S.—the mind reels at the thought of a 1970s variety show called That's So Vonnegut.

The Little Girl and the Cigarette is the first of Duteurtre's books to be translated into English, and luckily the satire translates as smoothly as the language. A man sneaks a forbidden cigarette in a bathroom, when a child walks in on him. The little girl screams bloody murder, and soon enough, the smoker is on trial for pedophilia—corruption of a minor, don'tcha know—while a cold-blooded killer on death row starts spouting Deepak Chopra–like platitudes and the masses scream for his release. Like most satires, the ending is a little weak (can you really remember how Gulliver's Travels ends?) but the novel goes down swinging—it gets its excited jabs in at everything from the nanny state to the way that children rule the adult world like tiny tyrants. PAUL CONSTANT

Paul Constant, I salute you!

More about Benoit:

•This is his first book translated into English. Which is a fucking shame.

•He was discovered and mentored by Samuel Beckett.

•Astonish Me Benoit is actually a radio show (no fault of Paul's—it was wrong on the press release) on which he plays light opera, Brian Eno, Offenbach, Spike Jones, and whatever else he wants.

•In 1995, he wrote Requiem pour une avant-garde, an attack on the institutionalized "avant-garde" in French music. It made him famous. (He also studied music with György Ligeti and palled around with Iannis Xenakis.)

•You will be hearing more about this guy. He is 47 years old and he's incredibly smart.

You should read The Little Girl and the Cigarette, even though I have a feeling it isn't his best work. It's slim and can be read in a single day in the sun. And it's got funny, grim scenes, like the terrorist group called John Wayne's Conscience that kidnaps internationals for ransom and puts on an internet TV show called A Martyr Idol—the hostages have to sing karaoke, dance, answer trivia questions, etc. Viewers can vote and the contestant who gets the fewest is beheaded.

And it has a beautiful cover:

I liked the book so much I wrote to Benoit, though his publisher, and he responded. The complete exchange follows the jump, but here are some bits:

As for poor John Wayne, it’s not really about him—but it is interesting to me that the Islamic terrorists lay claim to an American model that fascinates them in many respects.

The dominant cultural model today is American, and no longer European. And we are partly responsible: in France, for example, the avant-garde of the ‘50s (the “Nouveau Roman”) had a very tedious idea of what was avant-garde literature. For a long time, I myself preferred American novels, because they were about more interesting things about modern life.

Ligeti was the most remarkable, because he had such a free spirit, and we would talk equally about Schumann, the Marx Brothers or Astor Paizzola.

Question: The first page of the novel contains this sentence: “Obviously, the idea of defending the health of a man condemned to death could be considered puzzling, unless you viewed it as a refinement of cruelty.” The book is, basically, about the refinement of the worst parts of life—bureaucracy, terrorism, the worship of the juvenile. Are we all falling more deeply in love with the worst parts of ourselves?
Answer: Yes, certainly.

The whole damn thing follows the jump.

Continue reading "Benoit Astonishes Me" »

In this week's paper, Jeff Kirby writes about Ivan Brunetti's new book Misery Loves Comedy. Kirby's description of the book--hateful, self-loathing, misanthropic--is absolutely correct. But I'd like to add that I've been following Brunetti's work for over ten years, and I happen to think that he's hi-fucking-larious, like an irredeemably nihilistic Woody Allen who's read too many Nancy comics*. And, more importantly, Brunetti will be appearing at the Fantagraphics store tomorrow night. I can't make it (work commitments) but you should totally go.

There's more to Brunetti than what appears in Misery Loves Comedy, of course. His last issue of Schizo, not collected in Misery, hints at personal growth: besides a couple strips that seem to imply that he's gotten into Hello Kitty worship and also meditation, much of the book, for once, isn't even all about Brunetti, instead telling cute, one-page stories of great twentieth century artists. He's also one of the finest comics historians on the planet: he's versed in just about every style, movement, and obscure 1940's comic book creator that you've never heard of. His Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories is the best comics anthology that's ever been published. And he's done a few New Yorker covers that are genuinely sweet.

If you couldn't begin to care about comic books or cartoonery, but you've still read this far, I'd like to give you a consolation prize: the title for this Slog post came from one of Brunetti's early stories, which in turn cribbed the line from a ca-ray-zee beatnik poetry scene from the movie High School Confidential (a.k.a. Young Hellions.) Here is that scene:

* In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to point out that though I've never met him, Brunetti did the spot illustration for an early Stranger piece of mine, here,and it remains one of my favorites.

Christopher Hitchens
(Eloquent Atheism) You can call Hitchens many things—heretic, traitor, genius, liar, coward, hero, hack (and that's without going ad hominem)—but "people pleaser" isn't one of them. His brilliant new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, is a characteristically polemical and belligerent argument against not only the existence of a deity, but against the idea of a deity. Amen, brother. Hitchens will read and debate all comers. He will also be funny and charming and serious and rude. He will also be right. He usually is. (Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. 7:30 pm, $5.) Sean Nelson

Since you all loved my Tommy coverage so much (btw dunderheads: In the 7th grade, after I bought the Who album, I drove my mom, dad, and big brother completely crazy because I would not. stop. singing. "I'm a gypsy/the acid queen" over and over for about a month), I wanted to alert you to my coverage in this week's Stranger of the greatest punk new wave band ever.

Here' the anti-Ramones thesis statement :

It's the Kmart barre-chord electric-guitar riffs and spat-out lyrics—"Hero Worship" and "52 Girls" are the standouts—that give the album a "we are fucking serious" octane that the "we are goofing" Ramones never matched. And it is that realization, that the B-52s were fucking serious about their monster-movie shtick, that they meant it when they sang—no, pleaded—"Don't go on the patio, beware of the pool," that makes their histrionic pose legitimate and beautiful.

An action scene from Blood Diamond:
What is Blood Diamond about? Not Africa, of course, nor about the evils of globalization, but about the maintenance of American middle-class values in the storm of the public's growing awareness about the evils of globalization.

Middle-class values are entirely attached to property laws. Which is why the marriage in the middle-class system converts love to property, to an agreement, a contract. The symbol of that contract is the wedding ring, which is often the most valuable piece of property in a middle-class home. What Blood Diamond attempts to do is, one, make an ironic connection between the violence in poor West African countries and the diamond on a wedding ring purchased from an American jewelry store: death for love, pain for joy, and so on and so forth; and, two, to provide a solution that adjusts, rather than totally changes, middle-class values. The adjustment that will correct this evil (the false problem) is how one shops, how one buys diamonds and other products originating from the mineral-rich cradle of mankind. But the property value (the real problem) remains in essence the same.

What must be smashed to pieces first is the middle-class mind and its mousey faith in land ownership, in savings, and the laws that convert a marriage into a piece of property. These values are the burden of the world. They fill university class rooms with students not looking for an education (in the Latin sense of that word) but job security, for the sunshine of a big paycheck. The middle-class mind cant produce knowledge or low/high culture because all it can think about is building financial certainty. But the designs of the middle class are the same as a house being built on running water, on a river that can never be crossed twice. The middle-class mind is one of a slave who pays his absent master for the job of overseeing him/herself.

My next images for consideration will be, two...

and three...

In all the architectural and big-name chatter at the SAM opening, many interesting and more obscure artists were pushed aside, most of them dead or at the very least already established (the late John Covert and the very much alive Jo Baer, who was born in Seattle and educated at UW and who might make a good SAM survey considering her various turns, for example).

But then there's the young Canadian artist Sonny Assu, whose work is marooned in a hallway off the Native American galleries. His cereal boxes are bitingly revamped to reflect the relationship between natives and the governments that screwed them: "Treaty Flakes," "Lucky Beads," "Salmon Crisp," "Salmon Loops," "Bannock Pops."

In case you noticed his work dangling out there alone in the hall and wondered in what context it really belonged, Assu will talk about his art and influences Saturday (June 9) at 6 pm at SAM's auditorium.*

^{*(We might have Suggested this, or at least run it in the listings, but Seattle Art Museum sent the release about the event after the paper went to press this week.)}

Apparently, I fucked up on my review of Tommy at Issaquah's Village Theater.

But come on, who knew that some band called the Who (kinda of a cool name anyway) originally did this in 1969? I mean, how can you expect someone to know about some hippie rock album from nearly 40 years ago?

Anyway, these letters just in:

I am so confused by Josh Feit's article Baby Bomber, where he calls the performance of Tommy performed in Issaquah a "world premier" and talks about how the soundtrack sounds like radiohead. Ummm...Tommy was written in 1969 by The Who, and was translated into both a movie (1975) and a stage musical (1992). We performed it at my highschool. You can buy the soundtrack on Amazon. I love the Stranger, but this just seems crazy. Josh, if you are reading this, there are no Iraq metaphors because the music was written forty years ago, and it's bizarre and has weird shit about pinball because they were probably all on acid when they wrote it. As to why it sounds like a mix between Queen and Radiohead...I don't know. —Anna Berentsen

And this:

Dear Josh: I must admit that I don't often agree with The Stranger's reviews, but I do appreciate the fact that they're usually written with strong convictions and an educated perspective of the piece in question. Your recent review of Village Theatre's production of The Who's Tommy, however, seems to have all of the former and none of the latter.

The show is described in the secondary headline as a "World-Premiere Musical" and in the first paragraph as "a new musical premiering at the Village Theatre", but this stage version premiered on Broadway in 1993 and won five Tonys. You say that the show's numbers are "derivative of Radiohead, with flourishes of Hendrix and Queen", but nowhere in the article do you mention that this is Pete Townshend's own adaptation of The Who's 1969 rock opera album. While the show adds a new song, rearranges the track order, and includes several new or rewritten lyrics, the majority of the music is left pretty much alone. Perhaps this is the reason you feel the music is "mired in rock cliches" - some would argue that The Who were a bit influential in creating several of those cliches. And while your criticism that the production lacks any allegories to modern times may be fair, dismissing the concepts and themes of the show as "tired baby-boomer touchstones [dredged up for] self-indulgent Issaquah hippies" only underlines your ignorance of the show's origins. It's like wondering why Shakespeare had to write so damn much about royalty.

Hate the show if you want, but at least do some of your basic homework before showing up at the theatre. And shame on the drama phags and so-called music lovers on The Stranger's editorial board for not catching this before it went to print. —Matty Worth

Yeah, shame on my editors for not catching this. The nerve.

UPDATE
Sanity from Fnarf. This comment just in:

I thought it was hilarious. Not knowing who the Who is or what Tommy was is the funniest thing Josh has ever written. Zoom zoom, over their heads. It's not like there weren't hints all the way through the piece. I mean, c'mon, Josh has posted Who video clips to the Slog before. Posted by Fnarf | June 6, 2007 5:09 PM

He's right, I have posted Who clips b4.

... is this one, for the French release of Persepolis. (Which all of Seattle read, right? So you know the story.)

Do not, I repeat, do not stop the video before the French lady pipes up with "Eye of the Tiger."

The Handsome Family
(Music) Married couple Brett and Rennie Sparks are a slightly creepy, slightly country duo from New Mexico who sing about ghosts in convenience stores, bottomless holes in Ohio farmlands, and Nikola Tesla. She writes the lyrics, he writes the music, and their songs (played on banjo, saw, trombone, guitar, etc.) are sepia-toned but never hokey. The Handsome Family is sweet, eerie, and sad—nostalgia incarnate: "Come with me to the forgotten lake, where covered wagons and the wings of missing planes float between blind fish beneath the velvet waves." (Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave NW, 789-3599. 8:30 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, 21+.) BRENDAN KILEY

She's a longtime Seattle artist and teacher, she's fighting breast cancer, and she's in need of financial aid, her students tell me. If you've ever intended to pick up one of her paintings for your collection, now's the time.

^{Mexico, 2002, oil and wax on canvas}

The police and the insurance company are now involved in investigating the embezzlement of $200,000 from the Bellevue Arts Museum that the museum has said was committed by its chief financial officer.

From a new letter BAM sent its supporters:

First, we filed a notice of claim with our insurer. Second, we made a referral to the Bellevue Police Department. We intend to work with both the insurer and the authorities to ensure that the Museum's interests are protected and that any losses are recovered. In addition, the Museum is taking steps to tighten its financial controls. We have already adopted a number of controls designed to prevent similar misconduct. The forensic accountant, our independent auditing firm and our financial committee are reviewing and approving an updated and improved accounting procedures manual, as well as considering other measures.