As regular readers may recall, the Small Large Smelly Boy (a.k.a. Felix/Martha) is a lover of the ballet. Not so much contemporary dance — at 13, he’s a classicist at heart — but definitely the ballet. That made a trip to this year’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker at Oregon Ballet Theatre a command [...]
By Bob Hicks
“How do you feel about elk meat for Christmas dinner?” Mr. Scatter casually asked the Older Educated Daughter over the phone.
The long hesitant pause, coupled with the complication that several of us no longer eat any sort of mammal or fowl, anyway, suggested that a nice fat slab of salmon should be added [...]
By Bob Hicks
It wasn’t just the theater that merry King Charles II restored when he reclaimed the British throne for royalty in 1661. He brought back Christmas, too.
Many Scatterers undoubtedly know that when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans took over power in England in 1645, not all that long after William Shakespeare’s heydey, they put [...]
By Bob Hicks
Twenty-six years after she first impersonated the fabulous Sophie Tucker onstage, the big-talented Portland singer and comedian Wendy Westerwelle’s return to Soph: An Evening with the Last of the Red-Hot Mamas is a revival in more than one way. It marks Westerwelle’s own continuing return to the spotlight following her bravura turn earlier [...]
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief correspondent, shares some modern and classical moments with dancer/choreographer Rachel Tess and rediscovers that the distance between old and new is often whisker-thin.
By Martha Ullman West
I took thoroughly modern choreographer Rachel Tess to the opening matinee of Balanchine’s The Nutcracker with me on opening day last Saturday, the day [...]
By Laura Grimes
To Everyone Who Isn’t Oscar/Dennis:
My son is a champ.
The big, strapping lad was reduced to a wuss, a weakling no match for a kitten. He was so scary sick that he landed in the hospital.
To that, all I got to say is my kid is one tough cookie and the best possible [...]
By Bob Hicks
We are the land of the free, except, of course, when we aren’t. Fortunately, when we aren’t, we are still sometimes the home of the brave — or at least, of the politically canny.
In the latest turn in the David Wojnarowicz flap, the Associated Press reports that the Andy Warhol Foundation has given [...]
By Bob Hicks
Shocking as it may seem, sometimes the denizens of Art Scatter World Headquarters don’t give it away for free.
“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 [...]
By Laura Grimes
It’s time to re-institute home visits by doctors.
I want to hear the doorbell ring and see the black bag. With a sweep of my motherly arm I would graciously show the caring soul to the outdated plaid couch, where Oscar/Dennis would be slouched back in a daze, his slumber roused by the sound [...]
By Laura Grimes
Dear Everyone Who Isn’t Felix/Martha:
My son is a champ.
(For anyone who missed yesterday’s big disclosure, read this first or risk a spoiler.)
After posting yesterday, I had to wait not-so-patiently for Felix/Martha to come home from school to read the special message meant just for him. It was pouring rain, and he was completely [...]