All posts by Bob Hicks

I've been observing Portland and its culture since 1974, for most of that time as a writer and editor at The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal. I finally left The O in December 2007 so I could spend more time hanging around coffee shops and catching up on good books. My journalistic wanderings have led me into the worlds of theater, dance, music, the visual arts, literature and food. I'll continue writing about those and broader cultural subjects for Art Scatter. They're terrific windows onto the great mysteries of life, and thinking about them makes the mendacities of our wayward national political culture a little more bearable.
General, Laura Grimes

Blogging by the seat of our pants: Part Two

4 Comments

Gas station in Pie-Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Photo: Russell Lee via Library of Congress. Wikimedia Commons

In honor of the guerrilla tactics of people climbing onto MAX trains without wearing pants, we’ll pretend we have an important news angle and tell this tale:

My brother* showed up at my house wearing pajama pants.

We hugged. He hauled his suitcase into the guest room. He was casual for a while and then felt compelled to come clean. He looked away, paused a long time, then said, “Ummm … I hate to tell you this …”

Slowly, he started to tell how a short way into his long drive he had stopped to fill the gas tank. He was in a certain state to the north of Oregon** where people have to fill their own tanks. He didn’t want to get his hands dirty and smell like gasoline for the whole trip so he used a paper napkin to grip the pump.

The gas tank filled. As he removed the pump the napkin started blowing around so he grabbed it, accidentally engaged the pump and spilled gas all over his pickup truck and pants.

Scrunched in the cab, he opened his suitcase and got out his pajama bottoms.

Wikimedia CommonsAs he was taking off his pants they started to vibrate. His phone was ringing.*** It was his daughter.

“Where are you, Dad?”

“I’m, uh, at a gas station.”

Of course, he was neglecting to provide a key piece of information. One tiny prepositional phrase would have made that statement completely truthful. So let’s try it again. What he really should have said was:

“I’m, uh, at a gas station … IN MY UNDERWEAR!”

He finished the call and changed his pants. He stuffed the gas-soaked pants into a large, black plastic garbage bag.

He continued on his way. The cab smelled like gas. He pulled over.

He put the black plastic bag in the back of the pickup.

He continued on his way. The black plastic bag started blowing around. He pulled over.

To anchor the black plastic bag, he wedged (wedgied?) it in the side of the tailgate and shut it. He complained how putting up the tailgate produced extra drag and lowered his gas mileage. (Did he miss the irony of producing extra drag?)

Then he came to why he was telling me all this (as if he could keep quiet and not give me blackmail fodder for the rest of his life): “I’m not sure what to do with my pants.”

I stopped laughing long enough (not really) and went to the Google and typed in “How to get gas out of pants.”****

Of course I was being goofy, and was slightly disappointed Large Smelly Boys didn’t pop up on top, but the first item was titled, no kidding, “How to get gas out of pants.”*****

Tip No. 1 suggested laying the pants out in the sun. Like that’s going to happen in January in Oregon.******

We looked out the window at the rain. We considered how attractive a pair of smelly jeans would look splayed out on the front porch. We decided to hang them in the garage.

After a brief discussion about spontaneous combustion, I got the key, opened the industrial-strength lock on the garage and my brother hung the pants over a handcart.

Afterward, he settled in at the dining table with his pajama pants and a warm drink. Like he really needed to say it, but he did anyway, thankfully giving me a great quote: “You know the whole irony of it? I was trying to keep my hands clean.”

Epilogue: He left yesterday. As he was packing up, he asked – you can’t make this stuff up –” “Do you have the key to my pants?”*******

***************

* Yes, Art Scatter regulars will know him as the same brother who has sprayed cold water on me with a garden hose while I was in a second-story shower and cleaned puked pasta out of my sink.
** Geography points if you can name the state above Oregon.
*** Imagine the headline: “Cell Phone Ignites Pants.”
**** For journalistic integrity, I really typed in “How to get gasoline out of pants,” but who cares?
***** For journalistic integrity, it was really titled “How to get gasoline out of clothing,” but who cares?
****** Geography points if you can name why it’s nearly impossible to lay out gasoline-soaked pants in the sun in January in Oregon.
******* Extra credit if anyone has the key to his pants.

***************

My brother was worried about telling me all this because he didn’t want a big public ordeal. I promised I would only tell his story, show his picture, and give his name, phone number and e-mail.

I was kidding him, but here’s a picture of him anyway:

Laura was the adoring kid sister even back then.

I was kidding him, but here are his initials anyway (props to the Large Smelly Boys and Mr. Scatter):

Tough Rat Gonads
Two Rowdy Gerbils
Twin Reproductive Glands
Terminate Religious Guppies
Tranquilizer Reaches Gut
Testosterone Rattles Girlfriend
Totally Real Gore
Teacher’s Really Gruesome
Toss Rocks at Goliath
Teeth Get Rotten
Totally Rad, Girl
The Robust Girls
That Rascally Gal
Tch! Really, Guys?
Timberwolves Rally Gazillions
Tiny Rectal Glitch
Tonic Rattles Gizzards

— Laura Grimes

***************

PHOTOS, from top:

  • This is not the station where Laura’s brother stopped to gas up. Nor is this his pickup, although he might prefer it. And the men hanging around did not help him change pants. But the photo was taken in Pie Town, New Mexico, in 1940, and we don’t get many chances to type “Pie Town.” Photo: Russell Lee via Library of Commerce. Wikimedia Commons.
  • These are not the pants that got soaked with gasoline when Laura’s brother was trying to be all Felix Unger. But we think it’s nice that the parts are labeled. Wikimedia Commons.
  • Laura and her brother. She was the adoring kid sister even back then.


Bob Hicks, Cities, General, Theater

Blogging by the seat of our pants: Part One

3 Comments

It’s a little after 3 on Sunday afternoon, and Mr. Scatter is wearing pants.

U.S. Government Printing Office/Northwestern University Library. Wikimedia CommonsI mention this because apparently several people in Portland aren’t wearing pants at the moment, and what’s more, they’re riding around town on public transit.

As Scatter friend Peter Ames Carlin reported in Saturday’s Oregonian, a carefully calculated event called the No Pants on Max Ride shed its inhibitions at 3 this afternoon, allowing “all local pranksters to let their freak flags, and boxers or bloomers, fly in public.”

Evidently those canny policy wonks at MAX, Portland’s light-rail system, have decided this is A-OK, as long as everyone follows the rules of decorum and keeps their privates private with suitable swaths of undergarment.

This could actually be an improvement on the cheeky low-rider revelations of some of the transit system’s sloppier regular customers. Still, Mr. Scatter detects a whiff of desperation in the whole knock-kneed enterprise. Surely this is a product of those KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD folks on the prowl again.

I’m all for weirdness, I suppose, but I wonder: Can it truly be weird if it feels compelled to announce itself? Shouldn’t weirdness simply … happen? If weirdness arrives with a press release, is it nothing but marketing?

A couple of points about No Pants on Max:

  • First, it isn’t original. In its third year, it mimics a similar, older and much bigger trousers-free event on New York’s subway system. How weird is copycat weird?
  • Second, Portland’s pants-free pioneers GOT PERMISSION. How anarchic can it be if you don’t doff your trousers until the authorities give you the green light? How can you twit the system when the system says it’s OK?

Imagine the No Pants scene in one of those recruits-and-a-drill-sergeant movies. (Mr. Scatter imagines a young Richard Gere as the rebel-with-a-permit-clause and Louis Gossett Jr. as the contemptuous sarge):

Sir! Permission to drop trou, sir!

Stand up straight, soldier! You’re a disgrace!

Yes, sir! Standing up straight, sir!

You disgust me, soldier. If I had my way dropping trou in public would never be tolerated. What if the enemy saw this display? But the politicians at the Pentagon say we have to put up with this sort of perversion in the New Army. Permission granted. But wait until I’ve turned my eyes away.

Thank you, sir! Sorry about your disgust, sir!

Dismissed, maggot.

All in all, Mr. Scatter prefers to keep his pants in place. But then, Mr. Scatter is also aware that he doesn’t possess the prettiest legs in town, and he feels a certain social responsibility to protect the visual sensibilities of his fellow citizens.

Yet everything about No Pants on Max appears to be legit. Too legit. Conspiracy theorists are wrong about this one: It’s definitely not part of a vast cover-up.

That would be just weird.

***************

  • ILLUSTRATION: World War II poster, United States Government Office. Collection Northwestern University Library. Wikimedia Commons.
Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

It’s a new year, Scatterers: Think outside the box

1 Comment

Pere Borell del Caso, Escaping Criticism, 1874. Madrid, Banco de España. From artdaily.org

Sometimes you write a post purely as an excuse to run a picture you’ve fallen in love with. This is one of those times.

That kid crawling out of the picture frame is from an 1874 trompe l’oiel painting by Pere Borell del Caso, and he lives at the Banco de Espana in Madrid. The title of the painting? Escaping Criticism. Seems Pere Borell had some issues with the nattering nabobs of the press, and he whipped up a pretty foolproof case for himself.

Escaping Criticism is part of the exhibit Genuine Illusions: The Art of Trompe-l’oiel, which opens Feb. 13 at the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg. Besides fooling the eye, trompe-l’oiel is about wit: It has fun fooling you, and you have fun back. Critics be damned, right, kid?

Read more about it at Art Knowledge News.

***************

A couple of weeks ago the Oregon Jewish Museum reopened in new, much bigger quarters on Northwest Kearney Street in Portland, and I wrote about it in last Friday’s A&E section of The Oregonian. You can read that story, which discusses the new space’s first big show, The Shape of Time, here.

One thing I didn’t mention in that story: The museum shares a parking lot with its neighbor ComedySportz. Culture is all about collaboration these days, so think of the possibilities. Jewish humor is vital to the American comedy scene — it’s almost as if Jews invented American comedy, especially the urban variety. What might the Jewish Museum and the improvimaniacs at ComedySportz cook up besides parking Priuses if they really got their heads together?

Just a thought.

Bob Hicks, Books, General

Mr. Scatter’s excellent book adventure: Reading in 2009

15 Comments

Melk Benedictine Abbey Library/Emgonzalez/Wikimedia Commons

Mr. Scatter has never been much of a list-keeper, and although he reads a lot of books and other products of the printing press he finds it easy to lose track of them. Their ideas and images become part of some vast quasi-literary soup of the subconscious, like the broken-down bits of verbiage in Jasper Fforde’s wry novel The Well of Lost Plots.

Mrs. Scatter is a seasoned list-maker, and she Keeps Track of Things. She is sometimes shocked by people who Do Not Keep Track of Things, so in her presence I attempt to downplay my disability.

“Can you imagine someone forgetting they’ve read a whole book!” she’ll say now and again. “I mean, a magazine article, OK. But how do you forget you read a book!”

I’m sure I don’t know.

Which is just to warn you that what follows is bound to be at least partly a work of fiction. I’ve decided for some reason I can’t quite fathom to take a beginning-of-the-decade accounting of the books I read in 2009, and arrange them into – yes, yes – a list. It will be faulty. And, don’t worry, it’ll be relatively brief: I won’t be mentioning the whole lot, only the ones that are still rattling around my brain with a fair amount of vividness. The ones, in other words, that successfully evaded becoming just part of the soup.

Hey boys, that's where my money goes. Wikimedia CommonsAs near as I can figure in the aftermath, I read about 75 books in 2009: a decent clip, though still pretty minor-league compared to the truly devoted. I won’t pretend to be as catholic or compulsive in my reading habits as Art Scatter’s friend Rose City Reader, who consumes books the way a competitive professional eater downs hot dogs or oysters while training for the world championships; or as omnivorous as my erudite sister Laurel, who in 2009 almost accidentally read or reread all of Charles Dickens’ novels while maintaining a steady speed diet of the classics and a few contemporary books, some of them in foreign languages just to brush up on her linguistic skills. (This year she’s aiming at a slightly less prolific target, James Galworthy, in addition to her “regular” reading.)

I won’t be counting the small number of books on tape I listened to, which at any rate this year would amount only (as I recall) to the five volumes of Lloyd Alexander’s enjoyable Chronicles of Prydain fantasy series, slipped into the CD player of the Scattermobile to lessen the effect of teen/tween squabbling during long car voyages, and the first book and a half in Susan Cooper’s equally breathless The Dark Is Rising series, undertaken for the same reason.

Nor am I promising that I didn’t read one or two of these volumes in 2008. If so, it’s not that I’m trying to cheat. I just suffer from Faulty Memory Syndrome. And I’m quite sure I’ve read some books this past calendar year that I simply can’t remember having read at all. (Several of those would have been borrowed from the public library, leaving me no physical reminder of our brief flings.) Shocking, yet true. Please don’t tell Mrs. Scatter.

I’ll leave it to you and Dr. Freud to figure out the patterns inside this list. I’ll mention just one: In 2009 I reread a lot of books. This, I think, is a good thing. I’m branding repeat readings with an RR

And now, on with the list:

Continue reading Mr. Scatter’s excellent book adventure: Reading in 2009 →

General

The holiday isn’t over until the rotund gentleman sings

Leave a comment

S. Claus, world-class gourmand and right jolly old elf

Merry Christmas, one and all. The rotund gentleman above may not be singing, but neither is he hawking a Coke, and we’ll take that as a sufficient act of saintliness. Regular Scatterers may recall that the jigsaw puzzle pictured was begun and completed over the Thanksgiving weekend by the Large Smelly Boys. We showed a close-up of the old gent’s face a while back and promised that if you were good, we’d show the whole puzzle. Well, our secret operatives inside The Google have been keeping a sharp eye on you and have reported that on the whole you’re a pretty sterling lot, so here’s the picture. Congratulations: Well done!

Now quietly shut down your computers and join your friends and families for a cup of good cheer. Art Scatter World Headquarters is closed for the holiday.

Barry Johnson, Bob Hicks, General, Journalism, Visual Art

Comings and goings, farewells and hellos

4 Comments

Odin, slayer of the Frost Giant, riding Sleipnir. 18th C. Icelandic, Danish Royal Library/Wikimedia Commons

Three days before Christmas and a day past Winter Solstice, our lives are a crazy mixup of anticipation and loss. The longest night has given way to the rebirth of light. Summer’s a bare blip beyond the horizon, but we’ve turned the corner. Old Father Time is creaking toward New Year’s Eve, when that perky bouncing baby takes over with all the foolish optimism of inexperience. Christmas presents? Yup, we’re looking forward to ’em. Midwinter indeed, but hope is on the rise.

It’s a season for goodbyes and hellos and reinventions, and as we say a few farewells we suspect the people involved are like the seasons: This is a passage to something invigorated and refreshed.

***************

Fifty-two Pieces, one of Art Scatter’s favorite blogs, is about to enter its fifty-second week, and for its authors, Amy and LaValle, that will mean an ending and a beginning. They started their blog on Jan. 1, 2009, with the express intent of continuing it for fifty-two weeks and then letting a good thing go.

Each week this year they’ve chosen a single artist in the collections of the Portland Art Museum and explored his or her life and work in all sorts of fascinating ways. We’ve enjoyed the journey immensely, and now it’s almost over. We can hardly wait to see what comes next. God Jol.

***************

Father Christmas riding a goat; origin unknown. Wikimedia CommonsOur good friend Barry Johnson, the original Scatterer, who had the idea for this blog and brought it into being before parting amicably to pursue his own arts column and Portland Arts Watch blog for The Oregonian, has come to another parting. Friday, Dec. 18, was his final day with The Oregonian: He took one of the buyouts that have become business as usual in the newspaper racket, following Mr. Scatter’s example from two years ago. Time to reboot, Barry said in his final column. Out with the old. In with new ideas.

Some of the newest ideas he’s packing with him. We welcome Barry with open arms into the outside world, where we’re sure he’s going to have a key role in reinventing arts journalism for the post-print universe. Have your people call Mr. Scatter’s people, Barry. We’ll do coffee. (Lunch, in the post-paycheck economy, is a rarer commodity, but hey, we might spring for that, too.)

***************

As newspapers continue their freefall toward what every sane observer hopes will be a soft landing spot of shrunken but lively equilibrium, a lot of other former colleagues from The Oregonian have accepted their walking papers, too. Informed opinion has it that the 30-plus in the newsroom who accepted the latest buyout aren’t enough, and next time around, for the first time, it’ll be layoffs — maybe as early as February. Oh, yes. It’s midwinter, all right.

A few from the class of late ’09 (there was a spring class, too; Mrs. Scatter got her diploma then) I don’t know, or barely know, or in a few cases, such as photographer Olivia Bucks, don’t really know except through their often exemplary work.

Let me mention a few I have known and admired and enjoyed as colleagues. As the song says, the best is yet to come:

Inara Verzemnieks, a wonderful storyteller whose stories are only going to get bigger and better. We swapped ideas and talked about writing. I even learned how to spell her name without looking it up.

John Foyston, a terrific feature writer and a good amateur painter who was a bracing antidote to journalism by Ivy League degree. Not many newspapermen are also experienced motorcycle mechanics. Fortunately he’ll continue writing his yeasty beer column for the O.

Don Colburn, a damn fine poet; Jonathan Brinkman, who knows how to make business writing lively and engaging; Abby Haight, a model of journalistic flexibility; Gordon Oliver, quiet competence and all-around good sense incarnate.

Ralph Wells, an articulate gentleman and former cab driver (and husband of Carol Wells, a freelance theater critic who’s brought some sparkle to the O).

Copy editors Jan Jackson and Pat Harrison, who on many occasions quietly saved me from myself. Copy editor Ann Ereline, an Estonian who gave me good advice about visiting there 10 years ago. And copy editor and old friend Ed Hunt, who was at the O and its late sister the Oregon Journal even before I was, and who helped me through a post-merger crisis when a long-departed editor was gunning for me. Ed’s advice was stunningly simple and practical: Go over his head.

Photo guy Mike Davis, who fought for visual storytelling.

John Hamlin, who moved from news and design (he was once a managing editor) into the strange new world of computerization and ably helped the rest of us do the things we needed to do.

The brain drain in the newspaper industry has been swift and barely fathomable. While a few nitwits in the blogosphere celebrate this, it’s creating a crisis for the great American experiment in representative democracy.

But the days are getting longer. A whiff of hope is in the air. Some of these people will be finding solutions to the newsgathering crisis. All of them will move into fresh new lives. It’s cold, but it’s also kind of exhilarating.

Goodbye and hello, my friends. And thanks.

***************

Illustrations:

  • Top: Illustration from an 18th century Icelandic manuscript of Odin riding his steed Sleipnir after defeating Ymir, the Ice Giant. In the midst of darkness, let there be light. Danish Royal Library/Wikimedia Commons
  • Inset: Father Christmas riding a goat; origin unknown. Wikimedia Commons.
Dance, Film, General, Martha Ullman West

I love Paris at the Opera Ballet (but not the movies)

11 Comments

Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief international dance correspondent, took in “La Danse,” Frederick Wiseman’s documentary film about the legendary Paris Opera Ballet. How does it go wrong? Let her count the ways:

From "La Danse." Paris Opera Ballet

Last night I took a friend to Cinema 21 to see a benefit screening of La Danse, documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s take on the Paris Opera Ballet. Before I scatter a little venom about this highly uneven film, I would like to express my profound gratitude to Cinema 21 for supporting Oregon Ballet Theatre, the beneficiary of the screening.

Wiseman likes to be a fly on the wall with a camera (conjuring interesting visions of Vincent Price, come to think of it) at various kinds of institutions, from high schools to juvenile courts. And he’s no stranger to ballet: In 1993 he did a similar film on American Ballet Theatre, Ballet.

A scene from Frederick Wiseman's LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLEThat one was OK, but just OK, though I quite loved the scene of then artistic director Jane Hermann losing her temper on the phone with the Lincoln Center administration, using language she did not learn at tea in the James Room at Barnard College.

La Danse isn’t quite the worst dance film I’ve ever seen — Robert Altman’s The Company, not quite a documentary but not quite a feature film either, is probably worse.

But what these two directors seem to me to share is really lousy taste in choreography.

In The Company, which is about the Joffrey Ballet, all the revelations of the inner workings of the company culminate in a performance of the ghastly The Blue Snake, choreographed by Robert Desrosiers.

In La Danse, we see a lot of rehearsals and a pretty lengthy slice of performance of Angelin Preljocaj’s Medea, which culminates in the murder of her two children and the gorgeous ballerina Delphine Moussin covered in fake blood. There are literally buckets of the stuff on the stage, and post-infanticide, she carries a large piece of red fabric in her mouth.

Scatterers who are familiar with Martha Graham’s Cave of the Heart, which has no fake blood on a stage defined by Isamu Noguchi’s extraordinary set pieces and props, surely will feel as outraged as I was by this cheap knock-off.

In Graham’s masterpiece, Medea seems to pull out her own guts, which are represented by a red velvet rope: It’s a brilliant piece of theater that makes me shudder every time I see it. Preljocaj’s buckets of blood would have given me the giggles if I hadn’t remembered Melina Mercouri laughing her way through a performance of Medea in Jules Dassin’s movie Never On Sunday.

The rehearsals recorded in La Danse are quite interesting, especially when Preljocaj, having set the ballet, tells Moussin that it is now up to her, giving her a good deal of freedom to interpret the role.

Moussin is hardly the only perfectly gorgeous dancer we see in the film. All the dancers he films are lovely to look at, with extraordinary technique, and he shows them working in studios with raked floors, high up in the Palais Garnier, the arched windows overlooking the Paris rooftops. (Those shots, as well as exterior shots from the roof of the building, made me want to jump on the next plane to Paris).

We see them taking a break, eating in their own cafeteria (in which the food looks neither healthy nor like haute cuisine), getting on the elevator, walking down long corridors, being made up.

A scene from "La Danse"/Paris Opera BalletWe also see them being coached by long-retired dancers, in one session a man and a woman (unidentified; typical Wiseman) arguing with each other about whether a leg should be raised or lowered. It’s all very amusing and quite lovable, like the old dancers in that most excellent of ballet films, Ballets Russes, by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller.

But that seems to be Wiseman’s only real bow to tradition. He completely omits the Paris Opera Ballet School, which is where those poor murdered children in Medea, forced to huddle with buckets over their heads, came from. For a good look at the ethos of the Paris Opera Ballet, and how students rise from the ranks, through a fixed hierarchy, there is an old, black-and-white French film called in English Ballerina that tells you a lot more about it than La Danse.

In a piece of directorial self-indulgence that makes this 158-minute film much, much too long, you do become extremely familiar with the corridors of the upper floors and the subterranean passages of the Palais Garnier. I did quite like the fish who, in the words of a colleague, had set up housekeeping in a flooded passage, and the metaphor of the beekeeper on the roof of the building was not lost on me: With providers of food, costumiers, set builders, accompanists, janitors, cleaners, ballet masters and Brigitte LeFevre, the queen bee who is the artistic director of the company, the building is indeed a hive of activity.

And it was a pleasure, a profound pleasure, to see these dancers performing some bits of Paquita in the grand tradition — and what a contrast to the rehearsals of Rudolf Nureyev’s unspeakable staging of The Nutcracker, which would appear to be completely free of children.

Wiseman does know how to film dancers: He isn’t obsessed with their feet, and he does show the whole body. On the other hand, a lot of the time, in the studio, he filmed them from the back so we saw their reflections in the mirrors — somewhat distorted, at that.

In the end, La Danse provides a pretty distorted view of a company that is one of the best in the world, and that’s a pity. It deserves better, and so do we.

General, Laura Grimes

Penny dreadful, part 5: the best seats in the house

11 Comments

1948 American Standard pink bathroom

Many months ago I showed up at a friend’s beach cabin and before I could walk even a few feet in the door she regaled me with a story about how when she arrived at the cabin the kitchen was perfectly pristine except for a piece of paper, conspicuously propped up. Excited, she picked it up, thinking a family member had left a special note. It said something close to:

Milk
Eggs
Thyme
Toilet seat

Puzzled, she looked around. She checked the fridge. She checked the toilet seats. She wondered what someone was trying to tell her. She called her mom. She pressed me about what it could mean.

I stood there still wearing my coat and holding my bags, and we fully discussed how it was a tiny town and there wasn’t a hardware store around for miles. We discussed how you couldn’t just run to the little local grocery store and buy a toilet seat. We discussed that at a store you couldn’t just stick a toilet seat on a conveyor belt with milk and eggs. We discussed that you would have to buy a toilet seat in the city and bring it with you, but you wouldn’t buy the milk and eggs in the city.

Why was the list at the beach? Why was it displayed so prominently? Like a message. Like a toilet seat is a perfectly normal thing to have on a grocery list. We looked at each other, baffled. This was a strange mystery we couldn’t crack.

And then we laughed our guts out. We couldn’t stop laughing. We cried. We laughed so hard we kneeled nearly to the ground. I had to kneel. I’d been driving a long time without a pit stop.

We got up the next morning and both confessed we had woken up early, thought of the list, and convulsed silently into our pillows so we wouldn’t wake up the other.

So when I decided to buy toilets, I sent her an e-mail: “I have a grocery list that includes two toilets. Do you suppose I can find them at the beach?”

She said, “Absolutely!” and recommended a certain kind. She said she loves hers. And then she wondered if that was possible.

Apparently so.

Just ask a plumber. Or better yet, don’t.

Because otherwise you’ll learn all about top-of-the-line deluxe model toilets and a whole lot more than you bargained for.

You’ll learn about his own toilet, which has a bidet, a warm seat and a hot water thermostat that can be programmed for different temperatures for different people. And it comes with a remote.

You need warm water?

Yeah, apparently at first his wife thought the toilet was a waste of money, though he explained he got it for free. But now she likes the warm water.

Really?

I tried to act very cool and nonchalant, like it was a perfectly ordinary, everyday thing to stand in my kitchen talking to two men who were total strangers and listening to how this guy’s wife likes warm water on her tush.

What are you going to say? Tell me more about her habits?

He didn’t look away or shuffle his feet. This was serious plumberspeak.

But I get that. I talk writerspeak. Mention commas and I get all juiced up. I can go on for days about quotation marks. Singles and doubles.

I figured I could unabashedly talk plumber with the best of  ’em. “It comes with a remote? Like a TV?”

Let’s just change the channel and end it there, shall we?

–Laura Grimes

*********************

1948 American Standard bathroom. Not a remote in sight.

Environment, General, Laura Grimes

Penny dreadful, part 4: DIY port-a-potties

3 Comments

An ancient Roman public toilet. Wikimedia Commons

E-mail to colleague first thing: “I won’t be at the office this morning. I’m getting new toilets.”

And just in time. The hard-to-lift boxes had to get out of the Large Smelly Boymobile before Dungeons & Dragons Dad picked up six Large Smelly D&D Players.

Sound familiar?

The last story started there but veered to pants. And kilts.

Mr. Scatter pointed out in a baffled, you-gotta-be-kidding voice, “You don’t talk about toilets again?”

Mrs. Scatter: “Uh … no.”

Mr. Scatter: “What happened to the toilets?” (As if he personally doesn’t know how the story ends and what’s in our bathrooms.)

Mrs. Scatter: “Uh … I ended up talking about pants.”

Mr. Scatter (in the same incredulous voice): “When are you going to finish talking about toilets?” (As if this were a perfectly normal question.)

Mrs. Scatter: “Uh … in another post.”

Let’s refresh the story so far – including the wayback blog parchment days ago:

Which somehow brings us to chauffeuring toilets all over town.

An 1800s Dutch bidet with Chinese porcelain. Wikimedia Commons

  • On a sunny Sunday afternoon, two muscly guys lifted two heavy big boxes full of spanking new toilets into the Large Smelly Boymobile.
  • The two boxes were way too heavy to get back out of the Large Smelly Boymobile.
  • The two boxes were way too big to leave around the house.
  • The two heavy overbig boxes were left in the van.
  • I called a plumber and left a message.
  • I drove the two heavy overbig boxes to the office.
  • I started to worry when I didn’t hear back from the plumber.
  • I drove the two heavy overbig boxes to a meeting with a lot of colleagues.
  • I drove the two heavy overbig boxes to a board member’s house.
  • The plumber called, and we made an appointment for Thursday morning.
  • Thursday was perfect, I thought. Just in time to get the hard-to-lift boxes out of the Large Smelly Boymobile before Dungeons & Dragons Dad picked up six Large Smelly D&D Players.

Sound familiar?

The plumber arrived. He made a bunch of noise in the bathroom and then said, “Where do you want the old toilets?”

“Great,” I said. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

I opened the back of the van and realized a chunk of my day would be shot getting rid of crappy porcelain.

The plumber’s boss arrived.

We got two new toilets that flush and don’t wiggle.

*******

After the plumbers left, I zeroed in and got a bunch of work done. The clock ticked away. It inched into the afternoon. Long past lunchtime. And then I remembered. I had old toilets in the back of the van. I had to drive to the recycling center in the hell-and-gone suburbs and be back in time for D&D Dad to take the van. It was either that or he would have to chauffeur six Large Smelly Boys while two toilets clunked around.

I had a deadline. I had to scoot. As one of the plumbers said, “Be careful around the curves. That bowl can go flying.”

To be continued … one more time.

— Laura Grimes

***************

Illustrations, from top:

An ancient Roman public toilet: The group approach was perhaps the rise and fall of the Roman Empire … going … going … gone. Wikimedia Commons

An 1800s Dutch bidet with Chinese porcelain: A creative mix and match elevates the idea of crappy porcelain. Wikimedia Commons

Bob Hicks, Film, General, Music, Theater

Scatter happy holidays edition: puzzling out the season

7 Comments

Santa Claus jigsaw puzzle (detail)

Here at Art Scatter World Headquarters we’re used to friends and associates grumping about Christmas and the holidays. “Bah,” they say. And again, “Humbug.” A seasonal deficit disorder afflicts our closest circles of civilization, and we’ve learned to grump along with the chorus, just to keep things running smoothly.

But the truth is, we sort of like the holiday season. Yesterday afternoon the Scatter Inner Circle brought home its Christmas tree and got the lights and some of the ornaments artfully arranged before settling in to watch Christmas in the Clouds, an affable, low-key romantic comedy about life at an American Indian-operated resort lodge, with terrific wintry scenery from the grounds of the Sundance Institute in Utah. Graham Greene plays a vegetarian chef who tries to scare all of his customers out of ordering meat, and M. Emmett Walsh plays a foul-tempered drunk who has a change of heart, and the DVD arrived from friends in New Mexico who sent it just because they’d enjoyed it and wanted to share it, and that’s kind of what the holidays are about, isn’t it?

Of course Mr. Scatter is way behind on shopping (and several things need to be sent, which requires the sort of logistical hoop-jumping that often ties Mr. Scatter’s brain, if not his stomach, into knots). And many dozen cookies remain to be baked: The Small Large Smelly Boy insists. Never mind. It’ll all get done. Holiday CDs are pretty much in continual loop here at AS world headquarters (we’ve been listening to 16th and 17th century carols from the Baltimore Consort) and some members of the inner brain trust have been doing serious damage to the national eggnog supply.

The picture of Santa Claus above is a detail from a jigsaw puzzle assembled over Thanksgiving weekend in Port Angeles, Washington, mainly by a junior member of the Scatter clan. The corporate brain trust discovered a shop in downtown P.A. that specializes in mostly used jigsaw puzzles — and actually assembles every puzzle before offering it for sale, to make sure no pieces are missing. It’s apparently an obsession. This particular puzzle comes from a little artisanal outfit in Kansas City called Hallmark. If our records show that you’ve been good, we’ll run a photo of the whole completed puzzle before the season ends.

***************

Among other things, December is a month of beautiful music, and in Portland there is far more of it than a person can hope to take in. We regret, for instance, missing the medieval caroling of the women’s ensemble In Mulieribus, Portland’s answer to the Anonymous 4, and London’s Tallis Scholars, who know how to put the pedal to the pedagogy and make it soar.

On Friday night the Scatter clan braved the threat of ice and trekked to the Aladdin Theatre for Holidays with the Trail Band. It was well worth it. We hadn’t seen the Trail Band in a few years, and it was worth making the reacquaintance. The Trail Band is the baby of Marv and Rindy Ross, who back in the 1980s had a shot of national success as leaders of the pop group Quarterflash, and earlier were the core of the terrific bar band Seafood Mama. Since starting the Trail Band 16 years ago to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail, they’ve been digging deeper and wider into the roots of popular music, and the result is a smart brand of musical eclecticism that is what it is and doesn’t really care what the tastemakers think.

The holiday show featured a great lineup including the highly talented guitarist Cal Scott (who’s also blowing a mean cornet these days); Phil and Gayle Neuman of the Oregon Renaissance Band, who bring the likes of pennywhistles and flageolets to the party; fine fiddler Skip Parente; the subtle and attentive drummer/percusussionist Dan Stueber; and Mick Doherty, who rescues the hammered dulcimer from the yellowing pages of history and revives it as an exciting contemporary instrument. Plus, guest shots from actor/comedian Scott Parker, who gives the nativity story a hilarious spin; flash guitarist Doug Fraser, the Rosses’ old Quarterflash sidekick, who rocks and roars through a funky little ditty called Mustang Santa; and the hugely talented Michele Mariana, whose warm, deeply measured Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas brought pulses in the house to a halt.

Try as we might, we just can’t grump about a show like that.

***************

On Saturday night Mr. Scatter and his younger lad went to Northwest Children’s Theater and School to see the company’s musical play Narnia, based on C.S. Lewis’s children’s fantasy The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A small review ran in Monday morning’s Oregonian; here’s the link to my much longer online review on Oregon Live, in which I touch lightly on the phenomenon of Christian parable in 20th/21st century kids’ lit, from Tolkien to Lewis to L’Engle to Rowling.

How, you might wonder if you followed the link, did Robert Frost get into the mix of the longer essay? Credit goes to the book group with which I’m loosely associated, an erudite and genial collection of lawyers, writers, classical musicians and even an actor who gather once a month to eat, drink and do lit talk. One member happens to be a noted Morris dancer; a couple have been getting their jollies recently by writing dueling sonnets based on rousing biblical tales.

December in this group is poetry month, and this year’s reading choice was Frost. So the ice man was fresh in my mind when I sat down to write about Lewis’s ice queen, and I discovered that Frost fit the discussion neatly. Fire and ice, baby. You can’t get much more Narnian than that.

And, oh yes: Father Christmas puts in an appearance in Lewis’s tale. He’s very welcome, thank you.