By Laura Grimes
Book Club is coming. Book Club is coming.
And it’s coming to my house.
I never thought I was a Book Club person. I love the idea of a gathering of people for the primary reason of discussing a book, but I chafe at the thought of being told what to read, spending [...]
By Bob Hicks
Over at Splattworks, playwright Steve Patterson delivers this nice farewell to America’s second-most-famous Rooney, after Mickey. Professional television curmudgeon Andy Rooney is dead at 92, and he kept on keeping on with his 60 Minutes moments almost to the end. Patterson, an old newshound himself, appreciates Rooney’s old-fashioned reporting skills, and signs off [...]
Kino Lorber, Inc.
By Bob Hicks
If you’re going to fall into a painting, choose carefully. Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie might be exciting, but after a while you’d start to feel like a mouse in a maze. Edvard Munch’s The Scream? You don’t want to go there. One of Henri Rousseau’s Edenic wild beasty scenes would [...]
Margot Voorheis Thompson/Sitka Invitational
By Bob Hicks
Tonight is First Thursday, Portland’s monthly gallery art walk. (We also have First Friday, Last Thursday and a few other gatherings, but this remains the big one.) Of course you don’t have to see the new exhibits tonight — most of them will be up all month — but if [...]
By Bob Hicks
Mr. Scatter is getting old.
At least, judging by his junk mail, the world seems to think so.
Rest homes (or “active senior residences”), pharmaceutical companies, retirement financial planners, purveyors of musical nostalgia in the Pat Boone mold have got their hands, if not on Mr. Scatter’s obituary, then certainly on the records of his [...]
By Bob Hicks
So this is the way it gets.
Lying in bed awake
at 3:17 a.m.
my wife’s heavy breathing
the weight of the dog on my leg
I am visited by the ghosts
of past mistakes
and dance to a symphony
of regrets
I wouldn’t change a thing
This is who I am
counting my blessings
in the dark morning
That’s Portland writer Charles Deemer’s poem The [...]
By Bob Hicks
Keep Portland Pickled. Or maybe, in honor of a certain shape of preserved cucumber, Keep Portland Speared.
Imagine a city where something called the Portland Fermentation Festival is such a mind-boggling hit that you can’t get in the doors. It’s like reporting that the Iowa City Haggis Festival or the Twin Falls Ukelele and [...]
Patrick Weishampel
By Martha Ullman West
I’ve already expressed my outrage at the comments posted on Marty Hughley’s preview of Oklahoma! in The Oregonian that confirmed what I already knew: We are decades away from a post-racial society, whatever that means. It will be a joyful day when we celebrate our differences rather than [...]
By Bob Hicks
A few days ago my friend Barry Johnson, the guy behind the infant but swiftly growing online magazine Oregon Arts Watch, asked me to sit down with him and talk about Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and actor William Hurt’s starring performance in it at Artists Repertory Theatre. I said sure, and Barry [...]
James McGrew
By Martha Ullman West
Last night I returned to Keller Auditorium because I wanted to see again Nicolo Fonte’s highly detailed urban rendering of Petrouchka, and to see Haiyan Wu dance Micaela in Carmen. I’m very glad I did.
Apparently, for some readers, I failed to convey in my original review for The Oregonian that [...]