By Bob Hicks
The new baby arrived the other day, and it’s a whopper: 12.2 inches long, 10.3 inches across, almost 2 inches thick and 8.5 pounds. It came after a labor so long you don’t want to contemplate it, but when it finally arrived it came out handsome and beautifully illustrated.
Coffee tables across America have [...]
By Bob Hicks
“Tuesday, May 22, 1990,” Rosanne Parry heads the first chapter of her newest novel. “West Berlin.”
Like a lot of writers, Parry just picks her scene and throws you right into the middle of it. Ah. Berlin. Nineteen-Ninety. Scant months after the jubilant tearing-down of the Wall.
Feels like yesterday — except that for the [...]
By Bob Hicks
So it’s happened. Oregon’s House of Representatives has officially endorsed the Code of the West, a business opportunity ridin’ hard out of the hills of Texas into the hearts of legislators from Cheyenne to Salem. A trademarked moral compass, as it were, ready-made for tryin’ times. Keep ‘er simple. Keep ‘er pure. And [...]
By Bob Hicks
It’s astounding to remember, but there was a time not too many years ago when seeing almost any sort of theater in Portland was a west-side-only affair.
Mr. Scatter recalls an east side cabaret space on Northeast Broadway between 14th and 15th, on the block where Peet’s Coffee is, and another cabaret on lower [...]
By Laura Grimes
Oregon Battle of the Books didn’t disappoint. It was nerve-wracking. And it wasn’t just me.
After the Ninja Unicorns’ sudden-death face-off among three teams for the eighth and final position to move on to the elimination rounds in the regional competition, I poked a dad who graduated from the Naval Academy.
“Tell me that didn’t [...]
By Laura Grimes
Today is the big regional competition for Oregon Battle of the Books. As we say in the Scatter household: Go Ninja Unicorns! Kick book!
The Small Large Smelly Boy has been reading and studying for months. Really, the plotting for this competition started a year ago when the team lost a late-round nail-biting battle [...]
By Martha Ullman West
According to Jennifer Homans, whose Apollo’s Angels the New York Times Book Review has anointed one of the 10 best books of 2010, ballet is dead, not only because Balanchine is dead, but also because the courts of Louis XIV, XV and XVI are long gone.
That conclusion is [...]
By Bob Hicks
He was on no one’s list of the great novelists of the 20th century. Many literary critics barely knew he existed. He didn’t create an overarching epic of good and evil like J.K. Rowling, or cause squeals of vampire lust like Stephenie Meyer.
But somehow or other, while critical eyes were cast elsewhere, Brian [...]
Hot licks and good times with Andy Stein, Padam Padam
Closing the books: Powell’s layoffs, Looking Glass R.I.P.
Patrick Page plucks praise from “Spider-Man” carnage
In the room with Egypt’s fierce cultural protector
Alexis Rockman and good news at the Smithsonian
By Bob Hicks
Hot licks and good times with Andy Stein, Padam Padam: My old friend and neighbor Jaime Leopold [...]
By Laura Grimes
Shhhh! Be vewy vewy qwiet! Maybe I can sneak in here when Mr. Scatter isn’t looking. Won’t he be surprised?
Won’t you?
I thought I could sneak in when Mr. Scatter was on the road, but dang if he didn’t crack the wi-fi code at the secret hangout. Then I thought I could sneak in [...]