Edward Scissorhands

Edward Logo And ImageWhen I posted about the discount on tickets to tonight’s performance of Edward Scissorhands, I left out one small detail of the “very kind offer” — namely, that Prairie and I were offered (and accepted) tickets to see the show last night!

I’m still at a loss as to just how I ended up on the promotional radar for this show, but however it came about, I’m incredibly glad it did. After wrapping up at school yesterday evening, Prairie and I headed downtown and found our way to the 5th Avenue Theatre. We’d been told our tickets would be waiting at the Will Call window, so we walked up and I gave my name to the ticket girl. She flipped through her box…nothing. Could it have been misfiled under my first name? Nope. “Well,” she said, “maybe they’ve got them over at the VIP/Press table.”

blink

Apparently, Prairie and I were VIPs (perhaps press, but since I didn’t get one of the fancy press packets, we decided we must be VIPs — something that we’ve been convinced of for quite some time now, but it’s always nice to get some acknowledgment)! We were handed our tickets (quite nice seats, too: orchestra level, row W, seats 3 and 4), the doors opened just a few moments later, and we wandered our way in. After spending a few moments in the lobby waiting for the auditorium doors to open, they did, we found our seats, ogled the theater (which neither of us has been to before, and is absolutely gorgeous) and settled in to enjoy the show.

The show itself was wonderful. I don’t really know what mental processes it took to watch the film and turn it into a…well, my first impulse is still to call it modern ballet, though the production seems to prefer terming it a “musical play without words”. Whatever you call it, and whatever it took to put it together, it works. It works quite well, in fact.

With very few changes, the story is essentially the same as the film: Edward is created, but left unfinished when his creator dies, leaving him with hands constructed of razor-sharp shears. When a chance encounter brings him and the townspeople together, he is taken in by the community…until his differences begin to overshadow their acceptance. Told entirely through music and dance, the show does a remarkable job of conveying all the emotion of Edward’s struggle to belong (heartbreak and hilarity both, as the story progresses — one of my personal favorite moments was the sudden appearance of a beanbag).

We got a real kick out of the sets, which are obviously strongly inspired by Tim Burton’s design aesthetic for the original film, from the gothic lines of the mansion and graveyard to the off-kilter architecture and bright pastels of the suburban town. They were all very simplistic, too, another nod to the starkness of Burton’s sketching (which always struck me as somewhere between Edward Gorey and Jhonen Vasquez…though, given the chronology, I suppose it would be best to classify Vasquez as somewhere between Gorey and Burton, but now I’m going completely off the subject), and a nice contrast to the admittedly impressive, but often overblown and bombastic sets of productions like Les Miserables or any of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s shows.

Prairie and I both had a blast last night, and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Finding favorite moments was difficult, but in the end, Prairie’s favorite scene was the Act I closer, “Topiary Garden,” while I ended up deciding that “The Annual Christmas Ball,” towards the end of Act II, was my personal favorite.

I’m very glad that I got this opportunity to see the show. It will be playing here in Seattle though May 13th, and it’s got the official Eclecticism seal of approval (which I’m sure will be appearing on their website, just as soon as I figure out what an ‘Eclecticism seal of approval’ might be or look like…)! Set aside an evening, have a ‘date night,’ and head out to the theater. It’s worth it.

Close to Home

When Prairie came home last night, there were a couple police cars in our parking lot, along with a couple of large black SUVs. She wasn’t sure why they were there, but after an hour of them sitting in our parking lot, she got a little nervous and decided to come up and wander the mall until I got off of work.

Today, as more news about Saturday’s shooting in Capitol Hill was released, we found out why they were here.

A Seattle Police SWAT team and bomb squad raided a North Seattle apartment Saturday night looking for evidence that neighbors say is tied to the shooting on Capitol Hill that morning which left seven dead.

KOMO 4 News has learned that inside the apartment, police found guns, ammunition, and a hand grenade.

[…] Police came to search an apartment where twin brothers have lived for the past four or five years. When one of them came home, police put him in handcuffs and took him away.

“Well, they said it was in connection with the shootings down on Capitol Hill that happened,” said apartment manager Regina Gray.

The folks who run the apartments tell us police told them little else. But, we do know, officers evacuated the entire third floor of the complex where the brothers lived.

We’ve also been told, police collected weapons, numerous rounds of ammunition and a grenade out of the apartment.

Later in the day, more confirmation came out.

Seattle police believe the man responsible for Saturday’s Capitol Hill massacre is Kyle Aaron Huff, 28, who had lived in North Seattle since moving from Montana with his twin brother about four years ago.

The assistant manager at the Town and Country Apartments where the brothers lived said police told him that Huff was the suspected shooter.

Jeff Green, a dispatcher for the Whitefish, Mont., police also said that Seattle police contacted the department Saturday and told them Huff was the perpetrator of Seattle’s worst mass murder in 23 years. Huff previously lived in Whitefish.

[…] Police raided the apartment Huff shared with his twin Saturday evening. They arrived at the Town & Country Apartments in the 12300 block of Roosevelt Way Northeast with a battering ram and a shield, but they were apparently let in to the apartment by the suspected killer’s brother, said Jim Pickett, assistant manager of the apartment.

Police brought out three rifles and what appeared to be a grenade, Pickett said.

[…] During a news conference this afternoon at Seattle police headquarters, Whitcomb said police recovered a semi-automatic rifle, a machete and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from a Dodge Laramie pickup belonging to the suspect which was found near the Capitol Hill house where the shooting occurred.

[…] Pickett said the Huff brothers had never been a problem for him.

“They were very friendly, very friendly, very polite. They said ‘yes sir, no sir’ and they were always glad to help.”

So…yeah. It appears that the Capitol Hill shooter was a neighbor of mine. The next building over, and I don’t recognize him from the picture in the Times article, but still one of my neighbors.

Freaky.

Olympics Opening Ceremony

Prairie and I have been watching the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy, but…it’s after 11pm, the torch still isn’t lit, and according to news reports that give a 3-hour run time for the whole thing, it’s not over ’till midnight, which is too late for us. It’s a little frustrating — this thing’s on a tape delay, why couldn’t they have started it at seven or eight in order to get it done with at ten or eleven? Urgh.

We’ve enjoyed seeing the first two hours of the show. Mostly.

Good things: The Italians have a wonderful flair for theatrics, and some of the portions of the show have been just wonderfully bizarre. The cow ballet earlier in the show, the sun and moon balloons with the aerialists, the dance piece…all very much fun. We were also enjoying watching the parade of nations, where it was rather amazing how many of the smaller republics that just came into existence over the past few years with the fragmentation of Russia and parts of Europe have been able to send delegations to the games. Not to mention North and South Korea marching in together!

Bad things: The show was scheduled to start at 8pm, and I suppose that in theory, it did. However, from eight until nine was just blather about all the athletes, and the actual opening ceremony didn’t start until nine. Commercials, commercials, commercials! Every. Two. Minutes. Ugh…no matter what was going on, they had to break for commercials, and while they at least took advantage of the tape delay for the parade of nations, they didn’t seem to do so for the rest of the opening ceremony. I’m pretty sure that at least five to ten minutes of the presentation disappeared so that we could sit through more SUV commercials. Ugh.

And last, but definitely not least — the commentators were horrid! Here we are, watching the opening ceremonies of the biggest forum for friendly international competition, and every time they could, the commentators were bringing up every horrid, unfriendly, divisive piece of trivia they could. Italy was singled out as the third largest member of the US’s ‘Coalition of the Willing,’ Denmark’s entrance was used as an opportunity to talk about the Muslim cartoon scandal (and even worse, when the commentator couldn’t think of anything to say about Estonia, who entered directly after Denmark, he just returned to blathering about the Danish cartoons)…it was horrid. Badly done, and so incredibly inappropriate.

Hooray for the Olympics, and good luck to all the athletes from all the countries. But a big, big thumbs-down to NBC’s approach to presenting tonight’s ceremonies.

Steelers take the Superbowl

Neither Prairie nor I really know much about football, and we don’t really care to know much. However, that didn’t stop us from kicking back and having a fun time watching the game and doing our own form of silly armchair quarterbacking.

Favorite commentary moment: after a player got injured, the commentator was trying to figure out just what the injury was and said that, “I can’t tell if that’s an ankle or a head.” To which I responded, “good thing you’re not a doctor!”

Best commercials: the “Don’t Judge Too Quickly” series (for an insurance company…I think) were a close runner-up, as was the Bud Light “Streaker”, but my favorite (due to being completely bizarrely surreal) was the Burger King “Whopperettes” bit.

And, in the end, the Steelers took it. Still — at least the Seahawks were there.

And now, a few hours without TV before Grey’s Anatomy comes on. Code black!

Neri di Bicci, ‘Virgin and Child With Six Saints’

Procession from Town Hall to St. James Cathedral, Seattle, WAAs we were on our way back up the hill after running an errand downtown today, Prairie and I noticed a procession leaving Town Hall. There was a large icon-type puppet figure towards the back, an angel figure towards the front, and quite a few children in acolyte’s robes, so we figured that it was religious in nature, but didn’t know much more than that. Prairie noticed a gentleman standing near us wearing a priest’s collar and asked him what was going on.

As it turns out, we’d stumbled into the celebrations surrounding the return of a 15th century altar painting by Renaissance artist Neri di Bicci to St. James Cathedral after restoration work. This piqued our interest, so we followed along up to the cathedral to watch the pageant and blessing service.

Neri di Bicci's 'Virgin and Child With Six Saints' at St. James Cathedral, Seattle, WAWhile there, we found out that there’s something of a mystery surrounding this work of art — namely, how it got to St. James Cathedral in the first place.

But the big question surrounding the Renaissance work remains unanswered: How did this 15th-century altar painting by Florentine artist Neri di Bicci end up in St. James’ basement? Did a parishioner buy it? Was it an anonymous gift?

Art historians, church administrators and amateur sleuths have all taken their shots at solving the puzzle, but none has succeeded.

[…]

Church officials didn’t know they had a museum-quality piece until 1991. Then, an architect weighing a bid for work at the church asked a friend, Elizabeth Darrow, to take a look at it.

Darrow, then a UW art graduate student who had studied Renaissance art in Florence, was stunned when she saw the regal young Virgin sitting on a monumental throne.

“This is the most important Renaissance artwork in the Northwest — and the largest,” said Darrow, now a guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Darrow believes it is among the most exquisite and detailed works of the Virgin Mary by the prolific di Bicci.

“The colors are very intense and vibrant,” she said.

“Her face is round, with rosy, translucent skin and refined features: straight nose, delicately arched eyebrows,” she said. “It’s very beautiful.”

[…]

Art scholars suspect the painting hung in an Italian church for most of its existence and was probably sold in the 19th century when the market for Renaissance artwork began. When it was found at St. James, it was in a 19th-century frame, Dorman said.

How it ended up at a Seattle church is less clear.

“It’s a great mystery,” said Darrow, who has gone so far as to track down wealthy local Catholic families for clues. She still has not given up hope of solving the puzzle; she’s even enlisted the help of art scholars in Florence.

St. James administrators have searched all their archives at the cathedral and the archdiocese, “and there is no record, no bill of sale, no letter,” Ryan said.

Church officials heard there was an art dealer or collector who moved a few di Bicci paintings to the United States — mostly to the Midwest — during the 1920s and 1930s, but it is unknown whether the St. James Madonna was among them.

Church administrators have tracked down congregation members and workers from the 1950s. The best they can tell is that someone, perhaps an architect, found the painting in a crate in the lower level of the cathedral during a major renovation in 1950.

Really a fascinating little piece of local art history to stumble across on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon. The painting was still partially under wraps for today’s ceremonies, but it will be hung this week and formally dedicated during next Sunday’s 4pm vespers service.

More photos can, as usual, be found in a Flickr photoset.

I hate it when I’m stupid

A few months back, after having been a happy user of Six Apart‘s TypePad service for about a year and a half, I decided that I wanted to go back to having the finer level of control and options that Movable Type would offer, and moved my weblog back onto my own server. I made sure to make the move a couple months before my TypePad subscription ended, so that I would have time to move all my files over and off of their servers before I got locked out of my account.

Today I got a comment notification from my TypePad site. This was a bit surprising, as my account should have died in December. When I bounced over to the TypePad site, though, I was able to log in without a problem. Starting to wonder if I’d been stupid, I checked the Account status page.

Oh, dammit.

Sure enough, I’d made sure to save my credit card information and turn on auto-renewal at some point, and TypePad had very obligingly signed me up for another year of service in December. Me being my usual brilliant self with finances had never noticed this (in itself actually not a bad thing, though — I’m still far below where I’d like to be, but if I can take a $120 hit to my bank account without it causing major issues, things are definitely improving). I checked the TypePad FAQ, and sure enough, no refunds if you’ve paid in advance. Ah, well, that was what I expected anyway.

So now I’ve got a TypePad account that I’m not using that’s all paid up and useable until next December. What in the world do I do with that? I’ve discovered over time that I don’t do well trying to keep up with posting on multiple weblogs, so starting a second weblog just doesn’t seem like a realistic option. I don’t want to move back to TypePad — not only would that be a fairly major pain, but I don’t want to lose some of the extras I have with Movable Type that TypePad doesn’t offer. I use [Flickr][5] for my photos now, so a photoblog isn’t really necessary.

[5]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djwudi/ Flickr: Photos from djwudi”

Prairie suggested I try selling it on Ebay, but there’s hassles with that. While I could probably delete most of my personal information, the URL for the site is djwudi.typepad.com, and I don’t want to hand the ‘djwudi’ name off to someone else — until I actually started using my full name regularly, ‘djwudi’ was my normal online ID, and I still use it in [quite a few places][7].

[7]: http://www.google.com/search?q=djwudi&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Google for ‘djwudi'”

I guess I’ll just keep it around in case something really strikes my fancy and seems like a realistic project. No point in canceling it, as long as it’s paid up through the year, at least.

The City Sleeps

Stealing down an ally on a cold dark night
I see a halo in the rain around the street light
I stop and look, and listen to the sound
As the raindrops penetrate the silence all around
Alone, I gaze into the glistening street
The distant thunder echoing my heartbeat
Urging me on to a secret goal
Away from the light from this lamp on a pole
So I turn, slip away into the rain
Drifting like a spirit through the shadows in the lane
Clutching the tools of my trade in my hand
An old box of matches and a gasoline can
Darkness envelopes the scene like a shroud
A veil of emptiness hangs from the clouds
Filling up the cracks in this desolate place
Cradled by the night in an icy embrace

Moving to the town like a ghost in the rain
A dim reflection in a dark window pane
Blackness beckons from every side
Creeping all around like an incoming tide
A broken window in an empty house
I slip inside and begin to douse
The whole place with the fuel that will feed the fire
And push back the night, taking me higher
On out of the darkness in a defeaning roar
The match in my hand is the key to the door
A simple turn of the wrist will suffice
To open a passage to paradise
I pause, I think about the past and the gloom
The smell of gasoline permeates the room
Everyone has a little secret he keeps
I light the fires while the city sleeps

(Like the 4th of July)

The match makes a graceful arc to the floor
And time stands still as I turn for the door
Which explodes in a fireball and throws me to the street
I hit the ground running with the flames at my feet
Reaching for the night which recoils from the fire
The raindrops hiss like a devilish choir
Dying in the flames with a terrible sound
Calling all the names of the sleepers all around
But then in the arms of the night, they lay
Their dreams sprout wings and fly away
Out of the houses in a gathering flock
Swarming overhead as I hurry down the block
I make my escape with the greatest of ease
And savor the darkness, drop to my knees
And the lightless window, my hand on the latch
I reach in my pocket, and pull out a match

(Like the 4th of July)

MC 900 Ft. Jesus, “The City Sleeps

So, the big news of the moment is that we appear to have an arsonist running around North Seattle. It’s really freaky to think about — thirteen fires in the North Seattle area over the past three days, the majority of which have been definitely determined to be arson, and now there’s a reward of up to $30,000 for information leading to an arrest.

Local weblogger Danelope had a night of listening to sirens, and included links to Seattle Police scanners streaming audio (which, unfortunately, wasn’t working for me when I just tried to listen in) and a resource that I keep forgetting about, the live 911 incident list for Seattle. A little unnerving to go down the list, though, as right now there is an active “Fire in Building” listing at North 61st and Phinney with multiple units responding. While it’s a little tough to be sure, it looks like it’s at least possible that the local fire departments might have another busy night ahead of them.

It’s also a little concerning because Prairie’s sister Hope just moved into a new apartment in the North Seattle area. While so far the arsonist seems to be avoiding populated buildings, and there haven’t been any injuries, there’s always the possibility that a fire might spread to other areas. We’ll just keep our fingers crossed and hope that North Seattle’s big enough that any new fires don’t hit Hope’s area — or if they do, that everyone’s alert enough that nothing happens.

Freaky stuff.

Almost amusingly, though, it’s almost starting to seem that my time living in Seattle is going to be punctuated by fires of one sort or another. The summer I moved down here was one of the driest in Washington in a long time, actually putting the state into official drought status, and there were fires all across the state for much of the summer. When I went with some friends to see the Barenaked Ladies perform at the Gorge in central Washington, much of the weekend was scented with woodsmoke, as we were often no more than a few miles away from one of the fires.

After getting everything set up at the campsite, we packed ourselves into two cars, and headed down a quicker route back to the Gorge for the show. The way there was fascinating — currently, huge amounts of the state of Washington are on fire, and there were amazing clouds of smoke from the fires just 40 miles away or so in the sky. The smoke turned an otherwise clear night to a completely opaque murk. Just fascinating to see — and the smell of burning pine in the air was an added reminder that all this stuff wasn’t that far away.

While I can’t come up with any notable fires over the past two summers, earlier this year the Jensonia Hotel, next door to my apartment building, went up in flames three times over the course of a couple months (two of which I got pictures of, in January and in March), eventually being damaged enough that it has been permanently closed down. I still haven’t heard any word on whether or not those fires were ever determined to be arson or accidental, though.

And now we’ve got this going on right here in town. I’m quite curious is the responsible party is going to be sticking to North Seattle, or if things are going to spread. You can be sure I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open.

Of course, all this did give me an excuse to post the lyrics to MC 900 Foot Jesus‘ “The City Sleeps“, written from the point of view of an arsonist on the prowl. This, of course, prompted Prairie to comment, “You WOULD have just the right creepy song in your collection!” :)

Benefits to being a music whore, I guess. ;)

Cheaper By the Dozen

I absolutely, uncategorically, and unquestionably refuse to go see the Cheaper By the Dozen movie currently playing in the theaters.

The original book by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey was one of my favorite books growing up. It’s the true story of the Gilbreths, a turn of the century family unlike any other. Father was an efficiency expert, hired by companies to examine their work processes and find ways to speed up production — and he ran his life and his household by the same standards as his business. His wife shared in his duties, giving lectures on efficiency techniques (no small feat for a woman in 1917), and continued her husband’s work and business after he died. Then, there were their children — all twelve of them.

At first, when I saw that there was going to be a new movie made from the book, I was interested. Then, I found out that it starred Steve Martin, and I began to worry. Then I saw the previews, and my fears were confirmed — in the name of “modernization”, the story I loved as a kid has been gutted to the point where apparently the only connection to the original source material is the number of children. Such a shame.

I was ranting about this to Prairie after seeing the preview a while back, and while she could sympathize with my frustration, she couldn’t empathize, never having read the book. So, one of her Christmas presents from me this year was her own copy of Cheaper By the Dozen. She’s been reading it off and on all evening as I’ve been dinking around on the computer, and I’m constantly hearing her start to giggle (or out and out laugh) at one passage or another. I love it when something I loved so much when I was younger gives someone else the giggles as they read it for the first time.