A quarter-century after a literary landmark in Oregon, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Let’s see. Urban/rural split, with a vengeance. A recession in the city, which means a depression in the small towns and countryside. Newcomers wide-eyed with enthusiasm over their new home; old-timers narrow-eyed with suspicion and mistrust. Jobs [...]
A moment, please, to remember comedian Soupy Sales, who is with us no more, although the image of whipped cream cascading thickly from some passing celebrity’s pie-toss’d kisser remains vivid in our mind’s eye.
Sales, born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton, North Carolina, reportedly tossed 20,000 pies into the pusses of willing victims [...]
Meet the family: Ardi, or Ardipithecus ramidus, in the flesh. At 4.4 million years old, she’s our REALLY great aunt. Illustration: Jay Matternes, Science magazine
As we all know, modern life seems to be zipping around us at something approaching light speed: Whole trends and movements sometimes flower and die before we’re even aware of them. [...]
One day in 1978 a shadow fell over my desk at the old Oregon Journal in downtown Portland. I looked up and there stood a giant of a mountain man, beard down to his chest, big grin peeking though from the bramble of hair, hand outstretched in greeting.
Joe Meek, maybe. Jedediah Smith. Liver-Eating Johnson. Jim [...]
Books come in all shapes and sizes and perform all sorts of functions, in addition to acting as containment vessel for reading “matter.” And almost anything can function as bathroom reading. Where else memorize your credit card numbers? Now, it turns out, almost everything is worth the paper it’s printed on.
Japanese horrorist Koji Suzuki has [...]
Art Scatter feels a bit like Cole Porter’s Miss Otis, who regrets she’s unable to lunch today. Not that Mr. Scatter drew his gun and shot his lover down, or got strung by a mob from the old willow across the way. Far from it.
But Mr. Scatter realizes he’s been incommunicado for a full week [...]
So last night, after the Super Bowl, I was channel-surfing. I’m not proud of it, but there you have it. Sometimes I think that’s the way the universe is trying to talk to me: If I happen upon the “Dog Whisperer,” I might conclude that I’m not calm and assertive enough (or maybe not submissive [...]
Martha Ullman West reminded us below in the comment section that Harold Pinter wasn’t the only death of a prominent artist over the holidays. Eartha Kitt departed, too. I imagine her in a heaven populated by Wall Street plutocrats, seducing a healthy portion of their ill-gotten gains out of them, though how the plutocrats [...]
Art Scatter friend Whitney Otto has been following Entourage on HBO, part of her ongoing submersion in the television soup for strictly professional reasons. OK, maybe not “strictly” and maybe not “professional” and were not sure that “reason” has anything to do with it, either. Nonetheless, before the final episode this year, she sent [...]
OK, let’s just put a few cards on the table: There is a certain variety of reality television show that can be practically irresistible to Art Scatter, at least its lesser precincts. Bravo’s Project Runway,” on which younger or youngish or young-in-spirit fashion designers compete each week for exposure, of course, and some fabulous prizes, [...]