Tag Archives: Mr. Scatter

General, Humor, Laura Grimes, Storytelling, Theater

Jones for love? Try ‘Love Jones’

9 Comments

Wikimedia CommonsBy Laura Grimes

“I thought you’d like to write about it because storytelling is your thing.”

My thing?

My thing is very occasionally, if properly goaded, spinning a knotted-up yarn after a beer or two.

Mr. Scatter was trying to encourage me — nay, uncharacteristically apply pressure on me — to write about Love Jones, which we were seeing that night. He stood above me, strongly silent. He raised his eyebrows.

I scrunched mine and looked back at my non-pressing paperwork as if to say, I’m busy. Go away.

Continue reading Jones for love? Try ‘Love Jones’ →

Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Theater

Keep on truckin’, Scatter: grinding gears with OBT, Polaris, Sophie and Do Jump!

Leave a comment

By Bob Hicks

Shocking as it may seem, sometimes the denizens of Art Scatter World Headquarters don’t give it away for free.

Performers: Andrea Lawhead, Brittany Walsh, Nicolo Kehrwald, Wendy Cohen, Tia Zapp, and Molly Courtney in Do Jump!'s "Greatest Hits for the Holidays." Photo by Jim Lykins“If I can’t sell it gonna keep sittin’ on it, never gonna give it away,” the hard-bitten narrator of the bawdy blues tune Keep on Truckin’ declares. Her hardcore-capitalist sentiment is definitely not the motto at Art Scatter, where we tend to write what we write just because it sends little shivers up and down our spines. Still, we have an abiding fondness for those stalwarts of the heritage media who help us keep the spring in our mattress by paying cash on the barrel head for written contributions. O admirable concept! Here are a few recent pieces wherein we’ve made the noble trade of play for pay. We thank the editors of The Oregonian for assigning these exercises in fundamental free trade, and the publisher for his largesse:

  • A third of a century in, the prestidigious performance troupe Do Jump! just keeps getting better. Mr. Scatter reviews the company’s lighter-than-air holiday show. Catch it if you can.
  • Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief correspondent and maker of one mean seafood stew, reviews the old reliable Nutcracker and the new kid on the Oregon Ballet Theatre block, a witty grown-up revue with the dancers and singer Susannah Mars. As those TV guys say, thumbs up.
  • Mr. Scatter takes in Repo, the latest show from Polaris Dance Theatre, and reviews it.
  • More than a quarter-century after she first hit the stage in Soph, trouper Wendy Westerwelle once again embodies the amazing Sophie Tucker, last of the red-hot mamas — this time in a leaner, more intimate show. Mr. Scatter compares and reviews.

Grab a seat and come along for the ride. We’ll be truckin’ ’til the break of day.

*

Andrea Lawhead, Brittany Walsh, Nicolo Kehrwald, Wendy Cohen, Tia Zapp, and Molly Courtney in Do Jump!’s “Greatest Hits for the Holidays.” Photo: Jim Lykins.

General, Laura Grimes, Visual Art

When it comes to art, I got balls

8 Comments

By Laura Grimes

Mr. Scatter: What’s a dirty dog ball doing in the dishwasher?

Mrs. Scatter: Um … getting clean.

Mr. Scatter: We don’t have a dog.

Mrs. Scatter: That’s why it needs to get clean.

*

Points if you can find the clean dog ball.

OK, I confess. I completely took poetic license with that dialogue. In other words, it didn’t happen. Which is exactly what makes it highly unusual.

When Mr. Scatter sees a dirty dog ball in the dishwasher he doesn’t even bother to ask anymore. He just packs more cups and saucers around it, and closes the dishwasher again. He’s used to finding tile pieces and doll legs in the silverware caddy. He knows better than to toss a perfectly good broken plate when it’s sitting on the counter.

This is what you call marriage security. I have to stay married to this man because I could never find someone else who would put up with dirty dog balls in the dishwasher.

Continue reading When it comes to art, I got balls →

Bob Hicks, General, Music, Visual Art

I didn’t know what time it was. Then I met Mingus

11 Comments

By Bob Hicks

Salvador Dali, "The Persistence of Memory," 1931

We live in an age of miracles so commonplace we rarely think to marvel at them. On a quiet cloudy afternoon Mr. Scatter is standing in his kitchen, balancing on a floor made of oak chopped down and milled and planed almost a century ago, but looking new because it’s protected from scuffs and stains by an invisible, magical plastic coating that freezes entropy in its steps. He is pulling dishes out of a robotic mechanical device called an automatic dishwasher, giving them a swipe or two with a colorfully printed cloth woven somewhere in modern industrial China — China! — and putting them into cupboards that except for their compressed-particle composition aren’t much different from the ones you might see in an 18th century English country house. Scant steps away is the little breakfast nook which, well-wired, is Mr. Scatter’s electronic portal to the virtual world (and what, Mr. Scatter wonders, might a virtual world actually be?).

Charles Mingus, playing in Lower Manhattan on the U.S. bicentennial, July 4, 1976. Source: Tom Marcello Webster, New York, USA/Wikimedia CommonsA few more steps into the dining room is the small stereo system on top of which is cradled a sophisticated, powerful little green computing and storage device called an iPod. Ignoring this more recent communications miracle, he’s fed the system a small bright disc that, powered up, fills the room with sounds that the great bassist and composer Charles Mingus, with an ensemble of other innovative musicians, made in 1959 for an album called Mingus Ah Um. Mr. Scatter relaxes as the burnished rigor of a former revolution curls sharply and gently around him — a revolution that, a half-century on, has become a living, cultured comfort. Exactly the same as it was then, and worlds different.

This is our world: Time melts. Salvador Dali is our prophet, and his 1931 melted-clock painting The Persistence of Memory is our holy image.

*

ILLUSTRATIONS:

— Salvador Dali, “The Persistence of Memory,” 1931. Wikimedia Commons

— Charles Mingus, playing in Lower Manhattan on the U.S. bicentennial, July 4, 1976. Source: Tom Marcello Webster, New York, USA/Wikimedia Commons

Food, General, Laura Grimes

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter go shopping

10 Comments

By Laura Grimes

One Stop Shopping Center Where Mr. and Mrs. Scatter Buy Hosiery

(Editors note: For the safety of our readers, Art Scatter insists on maintaining proper blog decorum. Translation: We don’t swear. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter at all times maintain proper blog decorum in their everyday lives, inside and outside the computer screen, in order to set prime examples for their tender Large Smelly Boys and for the general public.

Also, Mrs. Scatter searched the interwebs high and low for a proper photo and finally picked the one above from Wikimedia Commons and then looked at the caption. It’s from a Fred Meyer store in Portland, Oregon! Hullo! Cue the dialogue, puhleez!)

Mrs.: You park over here? I never park over here.

Mr.: Where do you park?

Mrs.: I park over by the sidewalk so I can safely walk into the store without getting run over.

Mr.: This area is closest to the entrance. (Points in a general direction.)

Mrs.: You go in that door? I never go in that door. You just like to park near the coffee shop, don’t you?

Mr.: I never go to the coffee shop.

Mrs.: We’re going to get run over.

Continue reading Mr. and Mrs. Scatter go shopping →

Cities, General, Laura Grimes

London: Flying high on the blog

5 Comments

by Laura Grimes

JoJo and I say hello from London. Let’s surprise Mr. Scatter by filling him in this way about our travels, shall we?

Editor’s note before I begin: I have The Wimpy Camera and when it comes to camera equipment, even the wimpy kind, I am technically disabled. So my deep apologies in advance. (Some of these photos were taken with The Wimpier Camera, my Blackberry.)

*

Postcard from London to Portland, London to Portland

When I picked up this postcard from SCRAP in Portland a few weeks back, my friend, Holly, said, “If you send me that from London, I’ll know where it came from.” Well, guess what?

*

The Pantsless Brother (TPB) has been waylaid by an ash cloud. Regular Scatterers will remember his predicament with gas in his pants so being waylaid by an ash cloud should be considered par for the course for him. In the meantime, I’ll scatter while I wait late at night and try not to drink all the beer before he gets here.

*

Before JoJo and I left Portland, his buddies in the hood wished him well:

JoJo's buddies from the hood

*

After having endless trouble checking in online a day before departure I’m happy to report that once I was at the airport I was checked in, through security and had ordered coffee even before Mr. Scatter was back home. Considering we live only a hop, skip and barely 20 minutes from the airport … slick!

Continue reading London: Flying high on the blog →

Environment, General, Laura Grimes, Music, Theater

Epilogue: Scattering live from the opera

1 Comment

By Laura Grimes

Portland Opera's The Barber of Seville

Mrs. Scatter’s final thoughts and look back — and a chance to add what she missed before:

Forget coherence. Forget cohesion. Stutter and start is the only way to blog live about the opera. People talk and joke and all that is part of the cheerful scene, but forget trying to put two words together that make sense on the computer screen.

To read our meandering live blogs about the opera:

Mr. Scatter’s.

Mrs. Scatter’s.

Though it’s nice to make sense, frankly it’s icing on the cake when it happens because the whole point really is that it’s brilliant marketing on the part of the opera. It costs them a little staff time to arrange (but what’s a few e-mails), some flier bills describing the blogs and the people  (which call us “prominent local bloggers” — elbow elbow), a bag of nuts (Mr. Scatter calls them salty), and a few glasses of wine (blog lubricant). So, really, for peanuts they get a buzz going in different directions among different people. Brilliant. You put on a show and you want people to see it. That’s just smart business.

Continue reading Epilogue: Scattering live from the opera →

General, Laura Grimes, Music, Theater

Friday night live: Mrs. Scatter gets a curl

6 Comments

By Laura Grimes

Mrs. Scatter is considerably fond of facial hair, and Mr. Scatter’s beard in particular, so she’s concerned what type of shave he has in mind. Let’s hope it’s the farcical kind because we’re blogging in tandem tonight about The Barber of Seville. That’s right, folks …

Live from Portland Opera, it’s Scattering Night!

We’ll be updating our posts as the night goes on, so check back, scroll down and see what’s new!

LIVE FROM ART SCATTER WORLD HEADQUARTERS, 5:35 P.M. FRIDAY, MAY 7, 2010 –

Two hours until Curtain Time: This is a test photo from The Wimpy Camera:

Mr. Scatter in his home office

In the meantime, I’ve been boning up:

  • This is the second barber show in two nights for the Scatter Family. On Thursday night, they ventured to see Sweeney Todd at Grant High School.
  • The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini premiered in 1816 … the same year  Jane Austen’s Emma was published.
  • Jennifer Rivera, who plays Rosina, has a kick-in-the-pants blog, and the videos are not to be missed.
  • Bob Kingston, who gives the pre-performance talks at Portland Opera, shared this podcast from LA Opera.
  • The blog at Portland Opera by Operaman, otherwise known as Stephen Llewellyn, is personable and insightful about opera in general.
  • And, thanks to Operaman, that’s where I found my most useful resource, though stink if I can get it to embed:

Warner Bros. presents \”Barber of Seville\”

LIVE FROM KELLER AUDITORIUM, 6:49 P.M. FRIDAY, MAY 7, 2010 –

The wine has arrived, the personal nuts, the pretzels, the cookies …

Continue reading Friday night live: Mrs. Scatter gets a curl →

Bob Hicks, General, Music, Theater

Friday night live: Mr. Scatter gets a shave

3 Comments

By Bob Hicks

Mr. Scatter is all lathered up in the lobby of Keller Auditorium, and Mrs. Scatter is at his side, underneath one of those big-bubble hairdrying doohickies. Each of us is posting live on opening night of Portland Opera’s “The Barber of Seville.” We’ll be updating our respective posts as time allows, so if you read them early, check back: There’ll be more.

"The Barber of Seville." Photo: Cory Weaver/Portland Opera

LIVE FROM ART SCATTER WORLD HEADQUARTERS, 5 P.M. FRIDAY, 2.5 HOURS BEFORE CURTAIN, MAY 7, 2010 —

Famous barbers in history:

— Sal “The Barber” Maglie, star pitcher for the Giants, Indians and Dodgers in the 1940s and ’50s, so nicknamed for his eagerness to brush back hitters with high inside fastballs in the vicinity of the jaw and neck. In baseball parlance, he gave ’em a close shave with a little chin music.

— Benjamin Barker, a skilled bladesman from Fleet Street in London, who, after being frightfully wronged by a corrupt judge, took to a life of crime as the infamous “demon barber” Sweeney Todd, casually slitting his customers’ throats so his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, could grind ’em up and pop ’em into meat pies.

— Samuel Barber, American composer of works including Knoxville: Summer of 1915. In photographs he appears graciously clean-shaven.

— Figaro, the clever schemer of Seville, whose comic adventures among the rich and dissolute are celebrated in two of our greatest operas, Rossini’s 1816 The Barber of Seville and Mozart’s 1786 The Marriage of Figaro. A little confusingly, Marriage is a sequel to Barber, even though it premiered 30 years earlier. The mixup straightens out once you realize that both operas were based on even earlier plays by Pierre Beaumarchais.

It’s The Barber of Seville that brings us to the lobby of the Keller Auditorium tonight, where Portland Opera has invited us to blog on our impressions of the opening night performance of its new production.

Who are we?

— Mrs. Scatter, aka Laura Grimes, co-conspirator of this very blog, who is entering her own version of the evening’s events in another post right here at Art Scatter. I’ll be fascinated to read it once I’ve finished my own. Can this marriage be shaved?

— Brandi Parisi, morning host at All Classical Radio 89.9FM, and no doubt intimately familiar with the territory. She’ll be posting on All Classical’s Facebook page.

— Mike Russell, writer, cartoonist and proprietor of the brilliant CulturePulp, who’ll be creating a cartoon report on his evening at the opera.

— Mr. Scatter, aka me, Bob Hicks.

TO BE CONTINUED …

Continue reading Friday night live: Mr. Scatter gets a shave →

Bob Hicks, General, Music, Theater

Snark escapes; Scatters chase barber

2 Comments

By Bob Hicks

Henry Holiday, Plate 9 from "The Hunting of the Snark"; "Fit the Seventh: The Banker's Fate." Wikimedia Commons

The Snark eluded Mr. Scatter. No matter. It was a sporting chase, and no doubt will be continued at the rising of another moon. Some of you may recall our earlier mention of Mr. Scatter’s recent benighted journey into the hinterlands on this odd quest.

Fortunately he has returned to the safe haven of Puddletown just in time to prepare for his next adventure: On Friday he and Mrs. Scatter will be blogging live from Keller Auditorium on opening night of Portland Opera‘s The Barber of Seville. Think of this dynamic duo as the Ferrante & Teicher of the journalistic keyboards, or the Nick and Nora Charles of musical sleuthing.

Daniel Belcher as Figaro and Jennifer Rivera as Rosina. Photo: Portland Opera/Cory WeaverThis four-hand feat, by the way, will come just before Mrs. Scatter’s departure on her own quest, this one to far London town on the trail of Tates ancient and modern, the Victoria and Albert, perhaps a groundling ticket to the Globe, and persistent rumors of dining opportunities beyond steak and kidney pie. It’s a reward well-earned over the past ninemonth; wish her godspeed. She’ll be in the convivial company of her brother the Philosopher King, master baker of bivalves.

But first things first. The Barber of Seville is Gioachino Rossini‘s 1816 comic masterpiece, based on an earlier comedy by Beaumarchais, who in turn seems to have been influenced by the satiric wit of Moliere. You know it, if for no other reason, from that stupendous Looney Tunes encounter between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. (You know another big Rossini operatic hit, William Tell, from the theme to The Lone Ranger.)

What happens, besides all that wonderful music? Here’s how Portland Opera describes the setup: “Let’s see if we can get this straight. The lovely, young Rosina is the ward of Dr. Bartolo, a comic old geezer who wants to marry her, but she’d rather marry Count Almaviva, who really wants to marry her too, but he can’t even see her because Bartolo’s always there, so what’s a guy to do?”

Bring in the barber, of course. Mr. Scatter notes with some reluctance that certain persons consider him to have robbed the marital cradle in his successful wooing of the young Mrs. Scatter. Mr. Scatter does not wish to be identified with Dr. Bartolo. Please do not jump to unwarranted conclusions.

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter will be joined Friday night by at least one other blogger, the immensely talented and amiable Mike Russell, lord and master of CulturePulp. He not only writes well, he draws well, and he’ll be — get this — cartoon blogging on the Barber. We could be outdone, if not undone.

*

Illustrations, from top:

— Henry Holiday’s original illustration for Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark,” originally 1876, this edition 1931. This is from the nonsense poem’s “Fit the Seventh: The Banker’s Fate,” in which The Banker is attacked by a Bandersnatch, and goes insane. According to unverified reports, the Bandersnatch has been tentatively identified as one Ben Bernanke.

— This is not a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Scatter, who remain curiously camera-shy. It is a picture of Daniel Belcher as Figaro and Jennifer Rivera as Rosina in “The Barber of Seville.” Photo: Portland Opera/Cory Weaver