By Laura Grimes
Yellow buses streamed down the Park Blocks in Portland and unloaded masses of schoolkids. Some wore striped tights and sparkly hair. They bounced along and filed into the Newmark Theatre where they chatted and wiggled until the lights dimmed.
Like the White Rabbit said: “It’s time to rock and roll!”
UPDATE: Prompted by reader comments on this story from the Corvallis Gazette-Times, Mr. Scatter checked the Web site of the Federal Elections Commission for expenditures by Jim Huffman, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate running against Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon. Huffman’s campaign has paid Third Century Solutions, the listed publishers of Economic Times of Oregon, [...]
By Laura Grimes
It happened. Art Scatter World Headquarters is now the official home to not one, but two teenagers. Yes, today is Felix/Martha’s big-kid birthday. Forget sending sympathy cards. Better yet, send a life raft.
In that spirit, and as a little present, here is one of Felix/Martha’s favorite stories.
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THE GREAT FLOOD
Felix/Martha, barely 3 and [...]
By Bob Hicks
Mr. Scatter loves his Lee Kelly, and is exceedingly fond of Buster Simpson’s Host Analog, that ever-changing downed Douglas fir sprouting fresh growth outside the Oregon Convention Center.
And especially during this absurd election season, he smiles every time he sees Raymond Kaskey’s renegade gambler Portlandia down on her knees, tossing the dice: private [...]
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 [...]
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.
We were responding to David Carr’s report in the New York [...]
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 [...]
By Bob Hicks
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 [...]
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 [...]
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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By Felix/Martha
Did you know that the diameter of Uranus is four times that of the Earth’s? In fact, Uranus is so big [...]