Snow Tease

I would love to have a good 3 day snow storm just shut down Seattle-not too long, just three days, solid of snow and cold. None of this snowing overnight just enough to make everyone complain about their commute (“we had 3.5 inches in Kent!”) but turning to rain by 11am teaser crap. Where’s the solid foot of fresh powder blanketing the town. Think of the quiet, the peace that would befall.

Today, I woke up to a good half inch on First Hill, with patches of ice. Man I’ll tell you it was rough walking the 4 blocks to get here.

However, as the employees trickle in (“Bothell-2”!), I have plenty of time to round up some thoughts on some of the recent arts activities I’ve partook in around this town.

I saw novelist Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist, Apex Hides the Hurt, John Henry Days) read at Benaroya Hall 2 weeks ago. My mother was generous enough to invite me to join her in the patron section, which means you are close enough to really notice all the nervous ticks and grooming issues of the fiction writers speaking on the Seattle Arts and Lectures circuit. Not that Colson has any of these issues, it’s just that I always expect writers to be these social outcasts. Turns out that a lot of them are quite respectable, good lookin’ even. Hell Colson can even speak-I mean he entertained the crowd. This was not just a reading, it was a fun talk. Mostly about how he got started writing. There was a fun chart involving “inverbs” that he broke out….inverbs like “wearin” and “lookin”. It all had to do with a semi-autobiographical novel he is writing that takes place in the early/mid eighties and the vernacular of the time involved a lot of insults, slung with in phrases that with the inverbs…so like a descriptor, such as Benson, and inverb, and an object…you can basically choose from a list of descriptors and objects and just plug ‘em in a random to make the insult work. For example, “You Benson lookin’ Motherfucker”. That is a bad example and not very funny- his were all funny-but you get the idea.

I better just move on….so Colson was great, his talk was a 4 Molo talk, not that I review talks, but if I were to review it, I’d give it 4. So I guess I just did.

One of the other interesting points he brought up had to do with Baby Boomers…with how basically, the BB still control culture in this country. Because they control the money I suppose now, or a good deal of it. That’s why there’s still all this reverence for the summer of love and all the hippy crap associated with it. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love the Baby Boomers, my parents are awesome, a lot of cool ideas and culture have come from that culture, but like Colson, I wonder why is this still such a big deal? I mean hasn’t anything important happened since ’69? Or do we still have to “Keep on Truckin’”?

If you did not get my reference there, it’s from the famous cartoon by R. Crumb. The long-haired old guy in exaggerated mid-stride keeping on trucking. If you still can’t picture it, think the Coen Brother’s Dude’s attitude (“take ‘er easy Dude”). The deadbeat Lebowski is one of our most famous heros to embody that era’s attitude, a hippy who never got serious with life while his peers all went on to become tax consultants and brokers.

R Crumb is like the Dude, if the Dude were a really insane, creative, perverted weirdo. Self-proclaimed as such. Crumb has made a living at self-deprecation. An enormous living. Why do I bring him up? Because the Baby Boomers and their cultural liaisons, have seen fit to bring R. Crumb to the Frye Art Museum, for a big retrospective. 40 years of Crumb. Comic book nerds everywhere. It smells like certain neighborhoods in San Francisco in this exhibition. Like a couch that had a thousand joints ashed on it.

The work though, the work is actually pretty fun to take in. I could debate for you, if you want, the merits of a comic book artist show in a museum…I have reservations as to what the point is-I mean what do you gain by looking at these drawing in person, these artifacts and comics that you don’t get from them in print form…but I’ll just leave it at that. There is a ton of work, and if you don’t mind rubbing shoulders with a lot of ZZ Top beards, you might enjoy it. Especially if you are a Baby Boomer, because it is, nostalgic. 3.5 Molos I guess-it’s worth that much just to see the expressions on certain patrons faces when the see some of these comically vulgar images.

So does this mean that in 20 years, when the Baby Boomers children have finally inherited culture, that the old folks will be talking about the 60’s and free love and rock’n roll as the “good ol’ days?”


In mainstream pop-culture:

Cloverfield – Caught this intense flick at the Cinerama the other day. I enjoyed it-very well done….yes the novelty of a shaky cam DV-only picture is a little tired, and yes we have all seen Godzilla before, and yes, it is apparently now okay to play off the fears of Manhattanites for their island to be under extreme duress…but all those interesting things aside, this movie was fun and exciting. It’s stupid fun. Oh and by now you have heard about people getting sick in the movie…yeah the first 15 minutes were rough, but I held it together and once the action started it seemed to be fine. 3.5 Molos

No I haven’t seen Rambo yet.