Mr. Scatter has been seeing much too much of this nonsense of late.
To all perpetrators:
DONT DO IT.
Thank you.
That is all.
(Mr. Scatter would say more, but his copy editor has removed his colon. Fortunately, his spleen remains.)
Monthly Archives: September 2010
Pickles and Pagliacci: Two posts in one
By Laura Grimes
The pickles as social vehicle experiment is working! (Read what it’s all about here.) So far, the bartering offers include (some serious, some not so much):
- Sauerkraut
- Pesto plus a 2009 WillaKenzie pinot gris
- Elk meat
- Cream cheese braid
- $57.32 (perhaps not so serious, but I know the intent is true, because we split one of these jars of pickles for lunch recently on a hot summer day when we had nothing else to eat and had to dig out slices with our fingers)
- Designer labels for jars (also perhaps not so serious, but a little arm-twisting might work)
- “Ring of Fire” peppers with an 80K hotness (I still have no idea what this is, but my guess is an extreme distance running race after eating the peppers, which still sound painful)
- Kickass ginger molasses cookies (also sound painful, but in a good way)
- Apple pie I
- Apple pie II
- Henry James novel
The pickle show hits the road next week to pick up the kickass ginger molasses cookies. It involves a coffee date.
I’m researching how to ship fragile jars with amber liquid. The hot peppers that require running a long distance are being shipped from Idaho from someone I haven’t been in touch with much for more than 30 years. In return, I need to send pickles to a place on Wild Goose Way.
Other rendezvous are in the works.
It’s not too late to make an offer. Hurry while supplies last.
And, George, I saw that! We’re going to have to slice our cucumbers differently next year and call them Bartering Chips.
*
Pagliacci/Carmina Burana continues tonight and Saturday at Portland Opera. The Small Large Smelly Boy and I will be there and we have a fun post planned. Stay tuned!
If it’s Tuesday, this must be art season
By Bob Hicks
Hard to believe, but here it is late September and already Portland’s fall arts season is in full swing. Somehow things snuck up on Mr. Scatter (he knows he should say “sneaked up,” except he prefers the ancient and slightly disreputable “snuck”), and now he must do some serious catching up.
Some cool-looking things he sees on the near horizon:
TAIKO UNLEASHED and ROMP STOMP BOOM! A little bit of modern-music history storms the Newmark Theatre stage Saturday and Sunday when Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka and San Francisco Taiko Dojo join Portland Taiko for PT’s fall concerts. In American taiko circles, this is a little like having Scott Joplin, W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton dropping by a modern jazz club for a jam: just how cool can these original stick-swinging cats be?
In a sense, Tanaka is the father of North American taiko (the contemporary, ensemble approach to the ancient Japanese drumming traces only to 1959 in Japan), and over the years since the young postwar immigrant founded it in 1968, San Francisco Taiko Dojo has gained near-legendary status. Stylistically and inspirationally, Tanaka and his group have been key players in the extraordinary spread of modern taiko across North America.
The players of Portland Taiko, one of America’s handful of professional ensembles, are no slouches, either. (Mr. Scatter likes Portland Taiko so much, he’s on its board.) Wear your raincoats: this could be a tsunami of sound. 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 3; shorter family matinee Romp Stomp Boom! at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2.
We put pickles up ourselves and now we need your help
By Laura Grimes
When word got around that we put pickles up again this year, the barter offers started to come in. So far, we’ve received requests for pickles in exchange for:
- Sauerkraut
- Pesto
- Elk meat
This is not a bad combination. (Forget the fact that we don’t eat meat.) Now I’m thinking that if we strike enough deals we could put together an entire Thanksgiving dinner by the fourth Thursday in November. Whaddayasay? I’m hoping for pie.
Continue reading We put pickles up ourselves and now we need your help
How about a bridge we can live ON?
By Bob Hicks
Once again the fates have flung Mr. Scatter to the far reaches of Ecotopia, where yet another dismal drive through the 90-mile sprawl of the great Seattle megalopolis has underscored how little eco is left in this topia of ours. They paved Paradise and put up a freeway that’s a parking lot.
Well, sometimes you need a car. And cars need roads. And roads, when they run up to little impediments like the mighty Columbia River, need bridges. And bridges, we hear, can cost a cool four billion bucks. And four billion bucks (plus interest), we understand, will be coming out of everyman’s collective wallet for a long, long time to come.
Up to now Mr. Scatter has stayed out of the fray over the Columbia River Crossing bridge, the proposed replacement for the aging Interstate-5 span between Portland and Vancouver, Wash. Should the bridge be an architectural icon, a splendid work of art? Should it be a utilitarian get-‘er-done, a cheap and (presumably) practical slab of concrete designed to move the traffic and not much else? Truth is, Mr. Scatter doesn’t really know, although he’s grouchily beginning to ask himself a more basic question: Do we really need to bother with the damned thing at all?
The fresh ‘n’ fruity mutant edition
By Laura Grimes
Dear Mr. Scatter,
You really shouldn’t let me go shopping unsupervised. Because then I buy things like Baby Fuzzless Kiwifruit. They don’t look very exceptional. They look like hard little nuggets that should be skewered and stuck in a drink. But I don’t care about that. They’re called Baby Fuzzless Kiwifruit and that’s all that matters. The package says I bought One Half Dry Pint. All the signs in the store said Kiwifruit (oneword).
I also bought Elephant Heart Plums. I have no idea whether they’re any good. Who cares with such a cool name? I did, however, refrain from buying a long skinny eggplant that was folded like a bobby pin and a sweet potato that looked like a goose. Knowing me, you know I showed remarkable restraint in not filling the cart with a bobby pin, a goose and all their deformed friends.
The Oscar goes to Large Smelly Boy!
By Laura Grimes
Dear Mr. Scatter,
Thank you for cleaning the little black skillet before bailing again. It is duly noted that you mentioned it before you left and again on the phone. Please note that I have performed my wifely duty by appreciating it out loud. Now if you could just solve the little matter of getting the man-children to stop eating and requiring fried eggs, we could keep the little black skillet clean and our marriage contract would not be necessary.
No. Wait. That’s not what I meant.
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The jig is up with the Large Large Smelly Boy. We’ve been found out. Even though he hasn’t deigned to read the blog for months or have any technological connection with me besides texting when he needs a ride, he was looking at my computer screen while I was logged on to the blog, and he wanted to know about a recent comment in a post. I think his question went something like, “What was that about Nancy Farmer? Deliciously disturbed? Leather lampshades? What’s that all about?”
I said, “It’s in a blog entry. You can read it. Here.” And I clicked. Then I turned away and started to leave. I paused. “Sorry I’m sending you to Greenland.”
97 Hamlets, going on 116 — this year
Mrs. Scatter has unearthed this piece by Bill Varble in the Medford Mail Tribune about Alex Ainsworth, 12, of Ashland, who at the time of the story had seen the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s current Hamlet 97 times and was shooting for 116 — Hamlet No. 100 is due Wednesday. Amazing! Why so many times? “You learn more,” she told Varble.
Our own take on OSF’s Hamlet and Dan Donohue’s remarkable title performance is here. But we’re guessing Ainsworth could teach us a thing or three about the show.
Dan Donohue as Hamlet at OSF. Photo: David Cooper
Rushdie to judgment: Idaho journal
By Bob Hicks
Mr. Scatter has been traveling the byways of America quite a lot of late, and by a quirk of fate he found himself in an open pavilion in Sun Valley, Idaho, on the eve of September 11, listening to Salman Rushdie talk about Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Sarah Palin, the nonpolitical and political natures of art, the difficulties of free speech and the true perils of reactionary jihadism.
The unlikeliness, and yet the unabashed Americanness, of this event occurring in this place and at this time, nine years minus a few hours after the jihadist suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was perhaps less ironic than celebratory. It was proof, in a way, that in a world wracked by violent religious and cultural insanity, good sense and mere goodness can survive.
Potions, passions and a poetic pot-boiler
By Laura Grimes
Dear Mr. Scatter,
We have one zany concoction brewing here.
I noticed you waxed on about prunes and mustard recently. So I’ll wax some more about prunes (figuratively) and mustard (literally). The Large Smelly Boys helped throw a few more beastly things into the pot.
First the prunes. The feral teen was less feral today. I think the large dose of sleep helped. His body clock and all his inner-workings have been out of whack since school started. We finally went over his …
CHEMISTRY SAFETY AGREEMENT
Felix/Martha and I have been studying up on all the books that are going to be used in his division this year for the Oregon Battle of the Books. (Last year’s competition was an unbelievable nail-biter, and I’m not just saying.) We’re excited about several titles, but especially The Ear, the Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer. Once we started reading her astonishing bio on her website we just couldn’t stop.
So, we have prunes, mustard, Nancy Farmer, those drat safety agreements, and a few more surprises swirling together. I hardly know where one ends and another begins.