Monday, April 26, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Interesting DFW Interview
Roughly a decade before his suicide, this has some great moments (and unfortunate headwear).
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
Friday night of this week was the last time the Belltown art walk will be held on a Friday. In fact, we knew before we left the house that it was not even an official art-walk night: as of this month the BAW conformed to the other AW paradigms around town and moved to third Thursdays, becoming in the process the more-broadly-titled Belltown Art Walk and More (BAWM).
So, Joe Nichol hung what was probably his last Friday opening at the Whisky Bar (sp) at Second and Stewart. The artist he chose, as curator of that particular bar's AW night, is a photographer who prints her images on wood panels in such a way that they look, to my eyes, like American photorealist paintings of the late-middle 20th century. Their similar subject matter may be a part of that - they prominently feature human-occupied objects like houses and cars.
Before the Whisky, we had what will almost certainly be our last meal at a favorite restaurant of ours, Txori. Txori has been open for a couple of years and features delicious and aesthetic Basque pintxos. In a little more than a week it will close. The owner was there and talked to us about the closing and her plan to relocate the restaurant, eventually, to Capitol Hill. Its space will be taken over by, remarkably, another pintxos restaurant. "I've been crying for weeks," the owner said, summing up her feelings about the economically-based closing.
In conversation at the Whisky, I brought up the closing of the Fun Forest at the Seattle Center. It is the only amusement park in the city of Seattle and it is certainly dilapidated, having been open for all of the years since the '62 World's Fair and with most of its technology undoubtedly of that vintage. There is a lot of grumpiness among the locals around here regarding the closing, not so much from nostalgia for the amusements, but more out of despair for the change it signals.
The local aristocracy (currently reshaping the whole of the South Lake Union area into a sort of urban-bourgeois playground) has decided that the Fun Forest space would be better suited for that 21st-century moneyed-middle-class version of an amusement ride: another Chihuly (tm) museum (ahem) of glass. This is the kind of thing that gets the working-class artists at the Whisky and the jaded quasi-hipsters at the local eateries a little red in the face and/or green around the gills.
"You'll have to pay to get in," Joe emphasized. "It's just another thing in this city that's only for people with money."
Saturday, we had lunch in West Seattle. The skies were hazy-sunny blue, but there was a cold wind. We hurried back to the city because one of our friends was participating in some kind of public performance-art thing (flash mob), which we knew little about, but which Jaime wanted to see. It was novel and was close to our home, being on the grass below the Space Needle, so it seemed worth the walk.
When we arrived there were already dozens of the apparently dance-inclined milling around and practicing circus arts and engaging in similar activities that you might expect. The dozens soon swelled to over a hundred and after a few minutes the dancing started; the music was broadcast over loudspeakers mounted in the bed of a truck that had pulled up. They danced straight through a medley of four songs in a practiced routine. It ended with all of them frozen in place (what else?) and holding some sort of L-shaped hand sign extended above their heads.
We were talking to another friend, on the sidelines, who is the boyfriend of the guy who was participating. He explained the hand signal and the rest of it. The whole thing was inspired by a current television show, "Glee". Neither of us having seen it before, Jaime and I weren't sure of the significance of any of it.
As we walked home I began to wonder whether it might have all been some sort of guerilla-marketing thing for the television show. I still don't know whether I watched a commercial or a spontaneous showing of sincere fandom.
As we walked home we stopped and tried the "whisper dishes" outside the Pac. Science Center. They rely on principles of sound, reflection and refraction to allow you to whisper to one another over the distance of a hundred feet or so, without the use of any modern technology. They didn't seem to work today - we couldn't hear one another. We blamed it on the wind.
It was still sunny but cold when we got home. As I was looking at some pictures I took, I had a thought and mentioned it to Jaime.
"Did you know the Space Needle is still privately owned?"
So, Joe Nichol hung what was probably his last Friday opening at the Whisky Bar (sp) at Second and Stewart. The artist he chose, as curator of that particular bar's AW night, is a photographer who prints her images on wood panels in such a way that they look, to my eyes, like American photorealist paintings of the late-middle 20th century. Their similar subject matter may be a part of that - they prominently feature human-occupied objects like houses and cars.
Before the Whisky, we had what will almost certainly be our last meal at a favorite restaurant of ours, Txori. Txori has been open for a couple of years and features delicious and aesthetic Basque pintxos. In a little more than a week it will close. The owner was there and talked to us about the closing and her plan to relocate the restaurant, eventually, to Capitol Hill. Its space will be taken over by, remarkably, another pintxos restaurant. "I've been crying for weeks," the owner said, summing up her feelings about the economically-based closing.
In conversation at the Whisky, I brought up the closing of the Fun Forest at the Seattle Center. It is the only amusement park in the city of Seattle and it is certainly dilapidated, having been open for all of the years since the '62 World's Fair and with most of its technology undoubtedly of that vintage. There is a lot of grumpiness among the locals around here regarding the closing, not so much from nostalgia for the amusements, but more out of despair for the change it signals.
The local aristocracy (currently reshaping the whole of the South Lake Union area into a sort of urban-bourgeois playground) has decided that the Fun Forest space would be better suited for that 21st-century moneyed-middle-class version of an amusement ride: another Chihuly (tm) museum (ahem) of glass. This is the kind of thing that gets the working-class artists at the Whisky and the jaded quasi-hipsters at the local eateries a little red in the face and/or green around the gills.
"You'll have to pay to get in," Joe emphasized. "It's just another thing in this city that's only for people with money."
Saturday, we had lunch in West Seattle. The skies were hazy-sunny blue, but there was a cold wind. We hurried back to the city because one of our friends was participating in some kind of public performance-art thing (flash mob), which we knew little about, but which Jaime wanted to see. It was novel and was close to our home, being on the grass below the Space Needle, so it seemed worth the walk.
When we arrived there were already dozens of the apparently dance-inclined milling around and practicing circus arts and engaging in similar activities that you might expect. The dozens soon swelled to over a hundred and after a few minutes the dancing started; the music was broadcast over loudspeakers mounted in the bed of a truck that had pulled up. They danced straight through a medley of four songs in a practiced routine. It ended with all of them frozen in place (what else?) and holding some sort of L-shaped hand sign extended above their heads.
We were talking to another friend, on the sidelines, who is the boyfriend of the guy who was participating. He explained the hand signal and the rest of it. The whole thing was inspired by a current television show, "Glee". Neither of us having seen it before, Jaime and I weren't sure of the significance of any of it.
As we walked home I began to wonder whether it might have all been some sort of guerilla-marketing thing for the television show. I still don't know whether I watched a commercial or a spontaneous showing of sincere fandom.
As we walked home we stopped and tried the "whisper dishes" outside the Pac. Science Center. They rely on principles of sound, reflection and refraction to allow you to whisper to one another over the distance of a hundred feet or so, without the use of any modern technology. They didn't seem to work today - we couldn't hear one another. We blamed it on the wind.
It was still sunny but cold when we got home. As I was looking at some pictures I took, I had a thought and mentioned it to Jaime.
"Did you know the Space Needle is still privately owned?"
Monday, April 5, 2010
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