Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

Link: over the falls without a barrel

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Thomas Moran, "Shoshone Falls on the Snake River," 1900. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

By Bob Hicks

One of the things on our mind today is the great 19th century American painter Thomas Moran. Why? Because his iconic 1900 painting Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, all 12 feet wide of it, opens Saturday in a single-oil show at the Portland Art Museum. It’s on loan from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Mr. Scatter wrote about the show and the painting in this morning’s A&E section of The Oregonian. The main story, Window on the West, is about Moran and how he developed from a very good Hudson River School painter depicting scenes mainly in Pennsylvania into a grand-scale chronicler of vistas from the rugged West.

The second story, PAM chief sees multiple facets of one-piece show, is a lengthy interview with Brian Ferriso, the museum’s executive director, about Moran and the painting and the idea behind one-painting exhibits (which aren’t really solo shows: this one includes a half-dozen smaller Moran watercolors, plus a terrific, six-foot-wide photo of the falls taken in the 1880s). The online interview is a fair amount longer than the print version, and gets into some interesting areas you might like to see.

A nice bonus is this 14-photo gallery by Amiran White of the painting’s installation at PAM. It tells its own intriguing story.

A teaser from the Ferriso interview, this one about Moran’s fellow painter of the West Albert Bierstadt, whose 1869 painting of Mt. Hood is a treasured piece in the Portland museum’s American collection:

… Bierstadt in particular understood the marketplace. He would very much create idyllic scenes, sort of these manufactured landscapes that were compositionally well-shaped. The Mount Hood that we have that Bierstadt did, there is no such place. You can’t go to that place, because the lake that he depicted doesn’t exist. He’s added it.

I once gave a tour to some visitors when I was overseeing a Hudson River School show, and one of them said, “Now this is the kind of art I like. It’s real. It’s a real place.” And I said, “Well, don’t be too sure, because it’s not real. It’s a fabricated view. Don’t be fooled by what you see.”

Bob Hicks, General, Journalism

The emperor with no clothes hangs it up

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By Bob Hicks

A while back, in this post, we groused about the shocking unprofessionalism of the team of bozos that had taken over management of The Tribune Company, publisher of such flailing giants as the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the Baltimore Sun.

Illustration from Hand Chriastian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes." Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 - 1859)/Wikimedia CommonsWe were responding to David Carr’s report in the New York Times, laying bare the boorish behavior of the new guys on the block, whose obvious disdain for journalism and lack of respect for people in general seemed indicative of the moral morass that way too much of corporate life seems to be stuck in these days.

So, how about a modest celebration? CEO Randy Michaels, the overgrown frat boy at the center of the debacle, has resigned. Who knows what comes next, but it’s a beginning. You can read the Trib’s own report on the resignation here. And just imagine the celebrating in the newsroom.

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Illustration from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 – 1859)/Wikimedia Commons

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music, Theater

Curtains up, hit ‘The Heights’

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In the beauty salon, "In the Heights": Lexi Lawson, Isabel Santiago, Arielle Jacobs, Genny Lis Padilla. ©Chelsea Lauren 2010

By Bob Hicks

If the theater is truly the Fabulous Invalid, is any subsection of it any more fabulously ailing than the Broadway musical — and more of a fabulously unlikely survivor?

Before last night’s opening of the eagerly anticipated touring production of In the Heights at Portland’s Keller Auditorium, the last musical Mr. Scatter had seen was the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s glowing revival of She Loves Me, the masterful, small-scale 1963 romantic comedy by Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. (Mr. Scatter wrote about it here, and Mrs. Scatter expanded admirably on it, and the appeal of musicals in general, here.)

On the surface there’s not a whole lot of connection between She Loves Me and In the Heights, the 2008 Tony winner that Mr. Scatter took in with Oscar/Dennis. She Loves Me is a delicate love story based on a 1937 Hungarian play, Miklos Laszlo’s Parfumerie, and in style, sensibility and musical association it harks back to the heyday of central European operetta. In the Heights, with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, is a not-so-delicate love story that bursts with the Dominican-American flavor of Manhattan’s Washington Heights and takes its musical cues from hip-hop, soul, and the Caribbean sounds of salsa and meringue.

Still, the Broadway musical feeds largely upon itself — that’s both a weakness and an enduring strength — and as She Loves Me smoothly incorporated aspects of earlier musical forms, so does In the Heights echo some of the successes of Broadway Past. It represents a particularly successful response to the dilemma that producers, writers and composers routinely face: Broadway audiences want to see something different, but not that different.

Continue reading Curtains up, hit ‘The Heights’ →

Bob Hicks, Poetry, Theater

Vox at bat: poetry swings for the fences

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By Bob Hicks

Cy Young baseball card from 1911, the last of his 22 years pitching in the big leagues. He won 511 games, by far the most ever -- and lost 316, more than a lot of Hall of Fame pitchers won. Wikimedia Commons.Today we offer a quick link to Mr. Scatter’s review for The Oregonian, under his non de plume Bob Hicks, of Achilles’ Alibi, the latest evening of choral poetry from Eric Hull and his company Vox.

The program repeats this Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 22-24. Good stuff; catch it if you can. You can also read about Mr. and Mrs. Scatter’s previous visit to a Vox performance, in April.

As the review suggests, the poems of William Stafford are at the heart of this edition. But lots of other fine poets are along for the ride, and in honor of the baseball playoffs and impending World Series — like fresh apple cider and the ritual bringing-out of the sweaters, they’re part of what makes autumn special — we quote from one of them, May Swenson‘s bases-clearing double off the wall, Analysis of Baseball:

Sometimes
ball gets hit
(pow) when bat
meets it,
and sails
to a place
where mitt
has to quit
in disgrace.
That’s about
the bases
loaded,
about 40,000
fans exploded.

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Cy Young baseball card from 1911, the last of his 22 years pitching in the big leagues. He won 511 games, by far the most ever — and lost 316, more than a lot of Hall of Fame pitchers won. Wikimedia Commons.


Bob Hicks, Books, Dance, General

Here there be faeries: fantastic, isn’t it?

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Lucas Threefoot as the Bluebird in Oregon Ballet Theatre's "The Sleeping Beauty." Photo: Blaine Truitt Covert

By Bob Hicks

“People must love fairy tales,” the fellow said, and then he laughed, in something that sounded like happy, faintly embarrassed resignation. “Me, too, I guess,” his laughter seemed to say.

The man and his companion were standing behind Mr. Scatter’s shoulders, in a Keller Auditorium crowded with people on their feet, most clapping loudly and a few even whistling and stomping and shouting out, during Saturday night’s curtain call for the final performance of Oregon Ballet Theatre‘s The Sleeping Beauty. Next to Mr. Scatter, the Small Large Smelly Boy, who is rapidly developing into an enthusiastic and discriminating follower of the ballet, had also risen to his feet, although as always he declined to clap: that would be too demonstrative.

Continue reading Here there be faeries: fantastic, isn’t it? →

General, Humor

Uranus, also called “the gas giant”

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Today’s post is brought to you by the Small Large Smelly Boy and his science report, which he read out loud at school today. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter have not changed a word.

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An image from the Hubble telescope in 1998 shows bands, rings and moons around Uranus. Wikimedia CommonsBy Felix/Martha

Did you know that the diameter of Uranus is four times that of the Earth’s? In fact, Uranus is so big that scientists have decided to name it after a Roman deity. According to legend, Uranus is the father of several titans, and it has much unkempt power – when Uranus’s power is let loose, disastrous things happen.

Uranus has a very strong gravitational pull, which means Uranus is very attractive. Many things are drawn to Uranus, including 27 moons orbiting around it, which were originally named after windy spirits, but now take the names of characters from Shakespeare’s plays. Scientists seem to think it important to associate Uranus with famous literary works.

Continue reading Uranus, also called “the gas giant” →

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Martha Ullman West, Poetry, Theater

Scatter and yon: life in the old stories yet

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Gavin Larsen is the wicked Carabosse and Javier Ubell her chief toady in the premiere of Christopher Stowell'sd "The Sleeping Beauty" at Oregon Ballet Theatre. Photo: Blaine Truitt Covert

By Bob Hicks

Scatterers have been sowing their wild oats elsewhere lately, and old topics are coming up new again. A quick update:

Meanwhile, some old friends are knocking on the door again.

  • Susan Banyas‘s fascinating memory play The Hillsboro Story, about a little-known but extremely telling small-town skirmish in the 1950s vanguard of the war for civil rights, returns for a two-week run at Artists Rep beginning Wednesday. The play has been getting lots of attention since we first wrote about it in January of this year, when it debuted in Portland’s Fertile Ground new-works festival, and it looks to have a long life ahead of it — as well it should — in school tours.
  • VOX, Eric Hull’s fascinating “spoken-word chorus” of poetry rearranged as a sort of spoken music, with the language conceived as if it were written as four-part sheet music, returns to Waterbrook Studio for shows October 15-24. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter plan to be there one of those nights. This version is called Achilles’ Alibi, and includes works by, among others, William Butler Yeats, Robert Burns, William Stafford, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michele Glazer, and Oregon poet laureate Paulann Petersen. We wrote about a night with the VOXites back in April, in the post Poetry off the page, or, the fat lady sings.

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Gavin Larsen is the wicked Carabosse and Javier Ubell her chief toady in the premiere of Christopher Stowell’s “The Sleeping Beauty” at Oregon Ballet Theatre. Photo: Blaine Truitt Covert

Books, General, Language, Laura Grimes

The language that brings us together

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Wordstock

By Laura Grimes

Wordstock is all about community. It’s about taking the very private act of reading and celebrating it with a giant public festival that attracts thousands of people. It’s a shared experience of language. It’s stories that connect people.

Over two packed weekend days at the Oregon Convention Center, it was a treat to hear one writer after another and glean their personal experiences. But the stories that stand out for me the most were in the first two hours.

I arrived on Saturday right at 10 a.m. when it opened. I hadn’t planned to be an eager beaver, but The Large Large Smelly Boy had to be somewhere and Mr. Scatter dropped me off.

The readings and panels hadn’t started yet so I cruised the aisles. I nearly passed by the booth for Title Wave, the store that sells books that have been withdrawn from the Multnomah County Library system, but a cover caught my eye. I had been helping the Large Large Smelly Boy look for it at home just two nights before. I walked over to the shelf.

A clutch of five volunteers were bunched in the middle and one whispered excitedly, “We have a customer!”

Continue reading The language that brings us together →

Bob Hicks, General, Humor

Miss it? Just wait ’til NEXT year

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O glorious day and date: it's one for the history books

By Bob Hicks

You have to get up pretty early on a Sunday morning to capture one of the numerically coolest moments of the century, but the Scatter household managed it. The Small Large Smelly Boy recorded this historic highlight with the trusty household palm-size camera thingie, which he took into the kitchen and aimed at the eerie glow of the stove clock.

Did you see it? 10:10 10-10-10 — or 10:10 a.m., on the tenth day of the tenth month of the century’s tenth year. If you missed it, keep an eye out for 10:10 p.m. — you won’t see the likes of this again for a while. If we’d had a digital clock with a second counter, we’d have shot for 10:10:10 10-10-10. How extremely binary!

Next year, on November 11, will be even cooler: 11:11:11 11-11-11.

Can’t you just feel the excitement building?

Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

What we have here is a failure to concoct a drink

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Just waiting for a mad scientist./Wikimedia CommonsBy Laura Grimes

THE SCENE: Mr. and Mrs. Scatter arrive home late one muggy evening after going to The Theatre. It’s October, when mad science takes over without warning. The Small Large Smelly Boy is waiting on the front porch to greet his adoring parents. The He Cat’s nose is just behind the slit door.

SMALL LARGE SMELLY BOY

(Gives his beloved mother a big hug.) I’m ready for a martini with two olives.

(Mrs. Scatter and The Small LSB unhug and open the front door. The He Cat bolts out the door.)

MRS. SCATTER

Hi, Jack the Barfer.

MR. SCATTER

(Laughing.) Why Jack the Barfer?

Continue reading What we have here is a failure to concoct a drink →

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