TODAY IN ONLINE TALK >>>

Today's comment comes from Sara Y in regard to a comment from Gordon Anderson on our article detailing the renovation of Cheney Stadium.

Sara Y writes,

@gordon anderson

They had to take out a few rows of seats for the remodel. Places for cranes, workers, and equipment to go. There will be more rows added back once the remodel gets closer to completion. If you look where home base is you'll see that there is plenty of space for these seats as well as for dugouts.

SATURDAY, FEB. 5, 2011 >>>

1. Lakes High School graduate Donald Glaude taught himself to wreck records with a pair of mismatched turntables and a Radio Shack mixer in the '80s. He began to DJ anywhere he could in the Seattle and Tacoma area, working the same clubs as another up-and-coming DJ by the name of Dan. In short order the pair managed to spark a rave scene in Seattle and developed masses of underground fans. Today, Glaude travels the world anchoring nights, including tonight at the Gruv Lounge on Sixth Avenue.

2. 99 Bottles in Federal Way hosts a Snoqualmie Falls Brewing tasting from 4-6 p.m., including root beer floats for the kids.

3. Gig Harbor-based singer and guitarist Michael O'Neill has successful organized a monthly Americana music dinner show at Morso Wine Bar. Tonight at 8 p.m., singer/songwriter Templeton Thompson will draw from a deep well of influences that combine with her Texas roots to give her style of country music a distinctive, soulful edge. Reserve your spot at 253.530.DINE.

4. Tacoma Opera presents a local production of Emmanuel Chabrier's An Incomplete Education and Joseph Haydn's The Building Soprano at 8 p.m. inside the Theatre on the Square. This is original staging, with chorus members and orchestra players from our neighborhoods.

5. DJ Mauro will up the fog machine, hype the crowd in Spanish and spin his unique mix of Latin-infused music beginning at 9:30 p.m. inside Club Vanity at 56^th and South Tacoma Way. Witness the most intricate, talented and sensual dancing you'll ever see.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Wine tastings!

LIVE MUSIC TONIGHT IN THE SOUTH SOUND >>>

Doyle's Public House Tacoma - Stadium District. Blvd Park. 9:30 pm. NC.

The Fuse/Pt. Defiance Casino Ruston. Billy Roy Danger & The Rectifiers. 9 pm.

Jazzbones Tacoma - Sixth Avenue. SweetKiss Momma, Superfekta. 9 pm. $5.

JR's Hideaway Belfair. Green Briar Project. 9 pm.

Kilworth Chapel Tacoma - Northend. Victor Lamonte Wooten performs and speaks. The bassist is a five-time Grammy Award winner. All Ages. 7:30 pm. $9.

Hell's Kitchen Tacoma - Downtown. Mom's Rocket, From The Sea, Gebular, Tangent, Plastic Joe. 9 pm. $5.

• Believe it or not, the Volcano's Matt Driscoll originally turned Bobble Tiki on to Mom's Rocket, a band hailing from Olympia, Wash., but about as unapologetically rock (no art about it) as you can get. In an awesome way. At the time of Bobble Tiki's introduction, Mom's Rocket was the "house band" for KJR 950 AM, a sports-talk station. Naturally, they also happened to be big sports fans. Something tells Bobble Tiki they'll be pulling for the Packers on Sunday, like all good Hawk fans. Driscoll interviewed bassist Randy Keller at the time. Check it out in Bobble Tiki's column. – Bobble Tiki

Little Creek Casino Shelton. Randy Linder & The Classix. 9 pm. NC.

Mandolin Cafe Tacoma - Central. David Robert King. All Ages. 6 pm. NC. Gwyneth & Monko. All Ages. 8:30 pm. $5.

Morso Wine Bar Gig Harbor. Templeton Thompson. Part of the Americana Music Series. 8 pm. $25.

Northern Olympia - Downtown. EGYHOP & Rosie's Place Benefit, with Margy Pepper, Red & Black, Lazer Zeppelin, Hysterics, Female Dog. All Ages. 8 pm. $5.

The Peabody Waldorf Gallery Tacoma - Downtown. Drew Grow Benefit with Big Sur, Elk & Boar, Alexander Graham Bell. 8 .m. $5.

• Roughly three weeks ago, Portlander Drew Grow (of the Pastors' Wives fame) was in a devastating automobile accident, which left him saddled with piles of medical bills, including costs covering a stay in the hospital, surgery and the months of rehabilitation he will likely need. In order to help soften the blow of the hospital bill's crude insult to injury, five benefit shows have been arranged in the Pacific Northwest, and the Peabody Waldorf Gallery will be host to Tacoma's contribution tonight. – Rev. Adam McKinney
  

R & R Live Graham. Whiskey Creek. 9 pm.The Royal Bear Algona. Rumble Underground. 9 pm.

Sizizis Coffee & Tea House Olympia. Bill & His Six String, Love Songs From the Hated, Slim Biscuit & The Gravy Train. All Ages. 8 pm. NC.

Swing Wine Bar & Cafe Olympia - Westside. Jazz In The Cellar, hosted by Vince Brown, with guest musician Michael Gray. 9 pm. NC.

Tacoma Dome Tacoma - Dome District. Ozzy Osbourne, with Slash. All Ages. 8 pm.

• Everyone knows about world-class rock guitarist and top hat enthusiast Saul "Slash" Hudson's axe-slinging exploits with Guns N‘ Roses, Velvet Revolver and as a lone, hard-rocking wolf (when he opens for Ozzy Osbourne tonight, it will be a sans-"snakepit" solo performance), but seldom is Slash the Actor discussed. The man's appeared in everything from The Anna Nicole Show to the rockumentary Anvil!. Click here for a survey of some of his other notable onscreen appearances. – Jason Baxter
  

Uncle Sam's American Bar & Grill Spanaway. Cancer Benefit For Bandido Padre, featuring All-Star Jam with Jerry Miller, Kim Workman, Tom Murphy. 9 pm.

LINK: More live music in the South Sound

INSIDE GINNY RUFFNER'S WORLD >>>

A few minutes into the documentary A Not So Still Life, a nameless woman peers into the camera, her features massive on the screen. We, the unseen voyeurs shielded by a lens, have momentarily become the observed. But the woman can't see us, only a thick layer of reflective glass. Apparently she misunderstood the "Look In Here" sign posted out of frame, mistaking the camera for a viewfinder, expecting an image but unaware she is the recorded image. Its makers intended that posting for interviewees; so, put another way, the woman interpreted an instruction as an invitation.

By the same token, Still Life, which plays at 2 p.m.. Sunday, Feb. 6 at the Tacoma Art Museum, resembles an old friend's colorful invitation you discover one afternoon in your mailbox. The film's subject, the prodigiously talented Seattle artist Ginny Ruffner, warmly welcomes you into her world, her life, her head. Fittingly, the documentary opens on streams of guests (not unlike a movie theater train) arriving at Ginny's home for a party. The interior buzzes with laughter (much from the older hostess herself, who emanates a wonderful laugh), but also with the multihued painting and glass creations scattered everywhere. For Ginny, home really is where the art is.

Amadeus remains my first pick in the genius-bio genre. Besides the obvious reasons for its enduring popularity (um, the soundtrack?), the film wisely avoids lofty explanations of its hero's talent. Nature simply (or not so simply, I guess) hardwired music into Mozart. Still Life operates under the same principle; with the introductory party scene, director and head editor Karen Stanton very quickly erases the traditional lines between Ginny's studio and home, work and play, art and "everything else." Once we remove the brackets that distance Ginny-artist from Ginny-individual, we find these two identities radiate from the furnace of a single soul.

Stanton adhered to this directorial approach from the outset, when producer Tom Gorai (Outsourced) and executive producer David Skinner (Smoke Signals), both representing ShadowCatcher Entertainment, first suggested she helm the project. Her "core goal and target for the film," she told me, "was that when someone saw it they would feel that they had spent time with her and actually knew her, in a very authentic way." A gulf between artist and public always persists in some form, but A Not So Still Life (a title of one of Ginny's works) gives depth to a larger-than-life figure emblazoned on a two-dimensional screen. Notice the way I refer to her in this article - not by the more objective and journalistic "Ruffner," but by her first name. Who doesn't call the most exalted classical composer "Wolfie" after watching his film?

Just as Mozart's impish antics "lower" him to a commoner's level, so Still Life portrays its subject as a genius of, and not above, the people. Some docs give a living artist minimal screen time, and the mirror into their lives stays curtained. In contrast, we experience Ginny a great deal through archived footage and candid testimonials. You'll laugh with this southern belle through moments of endearing self-deprecation, as when she dismisses the imposed moniker "glass artist" because it implies an artist blown from glass.

Like the "Look In Here" incident, characters in Still Life engage in wordplay, a casual and sometimes comical spin on traditional phrases and appearances. If I walked past Ginny on the street before knowing her story, I would have had no idea of the tornado swirl of energy and creativity behind those blonde curls. We must peer ever deeper into our individual and collective stores of potential, for as the film's bookend song says, "You only live once/So you better think twice."

If you happen to miss the Tacoma Art Museum screening, the film plays again on Feb. 18 at Seattle's Henry Art Gallery.                 

[Tacoma Art Museum, A Not So Still Life, Sunday, Feb. 6, 2 p.m., $5-$15, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.4258]

LINK HUB

LINK: Our interview with A Not So Still Life director Karen Stanton

SUNDAY, FEB. 6, 2011 >>>

We're practically counting down the hours until the Super Bowl kickoff, but not for the obvious reasons of gorging on bowls of clam dip and getting pie-eyed on cheap beer. Nope, we love Super Bowl Sunday because while folks are cloistered away screaming at their TV sets, the South Sound is the Weekly Volcano's oyster. Instead of watching a bunch of galumphing dudes in oversize shoulder pads, we raise Cain all around the South Sound during the big game, and no one is around to see the damage.

1. Midwestern lo-fi popsters Sleeping In The Aviary perform at 9 p.m. in Le Voyeur's music room.

2. The Midwest comes to the Pacific Northwest when the Oly Rollers Cosa Nostra Donnas take on the roller derby ladies of Motor City, the Detroit Derby Girls travel team at 10 a.m. at Skateland in Olympia.

3. To find the great American folk dance, you don't need to travel to some dark mountain hollow or backwoods firehouse. Just head for the heart of downtown Olympia. An all-ages square dance will go hoedown between 1-4 p.m. at The Loft on Cherry to raise funds for the Oly Old Time Fest. Dance music will be provided by Seattle's The Onlies. All the dances will be taught  by local callers Billie Burlock, Anne Marie Schaefer, and Maggie Neatherlin.  The Grizzle Grazzle Tune Snugglers will get you struttin' your stuff in a cakewalk.  And, making their debut performance will be The Bowpullers.

4. Prepare to be shaken at 2 p.m. inside the Capitol Theater during the special screening of END:CIV, followed by what's sure to be an insightful and poignant question and answer period with Director Franklin Lopez. Based (at least in part) on Derrick Jensen's Endgame, according to pre-event promotions END:CIV asks, "If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?" Well, would you?

5. Tacoma Little Theatre's 2 p.m. production of Frost/Nixon will be suitably sparse. As with the interviews themselves, the centerpiece throughout the bulk of the show will be simply a pair of chairs set up for a television interview. In lieu of a backdrop there will be a series of screens which project, in turns, actual news clips and a live feed of the interview conducted on stage. Read our full review of the show here.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Movie times!

BIG MUSCULAR MEN DANCING LIKE LITTLE GIRLS>>>

You've probably seen the classic "Super Bowl Shuffle." But what you may not have seen are the hilarious spoofs of the video that have been created since the '80s original debuted. There are hundreds of "Shuffle" remakes, but two that take the cake.

Please enjoy and go Packers!

THE ORIGINAL:

"The Super Broker Shuffle": (Proving once again that white men can't rap)

"The Sex Offender Shuffle":

MONDAY, FEB. 7, 2011 >>>

1. Spend an evening with the stars tonight, and more specifically the Astronomical Society, during tonight's "Star Party." Pre-event hype, expect "an evening of viewing stars through telescopes (weather permitting) and a chance to make your very own stomp rocket." Hot chocolate will also be served. Go here for the details.

2. Herman Boone - the football coach captured in the movie Remember the Titans, will be at the University of Puget Sound speaking in Schneebeck Concert Hall as part of the school's celebration of Black History Month tonight. You may have already seen the movie, but this will be even better.

3. Every Monday, The Loft on Cherry in Olympia hosts Community West African Drumming. Tonight might be an excellent night to get your drum on.

4. There's a reason Monday Rockaraoke at Jazzbones is a Tacoma institution. The booze flows freely, and there's nothing quite like letting it all hang out on the first day of the week. See for yourself tonight.

5. The Ozzie Fuhrmann Band plays the Mandolin Café tonight. It starts at 7 p.m., and - even better - it's free.

FRIDAY NIGHTS WON'T BE THE SAME >>>

"Into a bright new dawn of fresh enterprises, and challenges..."
--Richard Nixon, in Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon

It's often said of film sets that cast and crew form familial attachments, only to see them dissolve a few months later. It doesn't always happen that way in theater circles, but after months playing Bob Zelnick in Frost/Nixon at Tacoma Little Theater, I'm here to tell you several of us are going through withdrawal pangs following Sunday's final performance. This was a memorable ensemble in the care of an amiable, long-suffering, and dedicated crew. I've seen some of them semi-clad, some in emotional distress, but all were at the top of their game; and for a long while, it won't feel like a Friday night without them. But life goes on, so break a leg to one and all as you move on to new auditions or simply get back to your life.

Thanks again to director Brie Yost for giving a curmudgeonly theater critic a space on the boards at TLT. You were right. I did have something to prove. I'll let you and the rest of the gang assess my results.

With regrets--especially since auditions for A Few Good Men are coming up--I'll be taking a break from acting for a while. It conflicts with my review schedule, for one thing, and my girlfriend is starting to forget what I look like after two shows in four months. This weekend brings the opening of Parallel Lives at the Midnight Sun in Olympia; it's a sketch show written by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najima. The Prodigal Sun production stars Elizabeth Lord and Lauren O'Neill, both of whom are enormously gifted when it comes to connecting with an audience. This script requires them to play numerous roles including Supreme Beings, so let's hope their range is in full effect.

I know a show is terrific when I sit in the audience thinking, "God, I wish I were in this." But no matter how good Parallel Lives or any other show this spring turns out to be, I'll feel less of that envy; because after the last few months, any imperfect experience will seem like rather a letdown.

Adios, Mr. Zelnick, wherever you are.

SUPER MARIO PRODIGY>>>

I used to dream of being a doctor, then a singer, and later in life, a writer for the New York Times. After watching this video, I realize my goals in life haven't been nearly ambitious enough. This guy beat Mario Brothers 3 in less than 11 minutes. What took several years of my childhood, he accomplished in less time than it takes to shower. Damn, Gina.

STRIVING TOWARD THE GOAL >>>

As most who follow such things (definitely still a minority, sadly) know, the Tacoma Food Co-op (the organization) has been seriously discussing the idea of purchasing retail space on Sixth Avenue near The Red Hot - more specifically, the 6th Avenue Market. This would provide a physical spot for the Tacoma Food Co-op to exist, which after countless hours spent by co-op volunteers and organizers is the next step in the process.

However, the plan is no slam dunk - and, as is life, will probably come down to dollars and cents. The Tacoma Food Co-op sent out this email today to keep members and supporters in the loop on where the process is at:

Tacoma Food Co-Op Begins Raising Funds for Purchase of 6th Ave Market Location

Store purchase and membership drive focus of upcoming Coffee Talks

After several months of researching and discussing various locations and finance options for the future Tacoma Food Co-op retail store, the TFC board of directors has formally chosen to pursue the Neighborhood Market location on 6th Avenue and has launched a membership and fundraising effort to purchase the store.

"We've spent a lot of time making sure this location is the best option for our members and our community," says Corrinne Henderson, Board President. "This is a popular location with a seller who is offering us an incredible deal. Now it's up to our members to help us raise the funds."

TFC is currently in the development and planning stages of opening a cooperatively-run store providing local, fresh, natural and organic foods and goods. In the past couple of months the Tacoma Food Co-op Board of Directors has been focused almost exclusively on researching the financial and retail options associated with the Neighborhood Market location. John Loesch, current owner of Neighborhood Market, has indicated two other interested buyers and though he prefers to see the co-op move into the store, plans to accept an offer from one of the three parties at the end of February. Henderson says this makes the TFC's fundraising efforts all the more urgent.

"We've set some pretty ambitious goals for the month of February in orders to ensure Neighborhood Market remains a viable option for us," she says.

Loesh has indicated a willingness to accept $10,000 in earnest money along with a contingency offer that would allow TFC to secure the location while it raises the rest of the funds.

TFC currently has just over 300 members, and as part of its fundraising efforts, has made a February goal of reaching 400 members. Board members are hosting several informational and orientation meetings throughout February and encourages anyone interested in joining or learning more to attend.

For more information about the meetings, please email

casandra@tacomafoodcoop.com.

• Thursday Feb, 10: 5-6pm at Shakabrah Java (2618 6th Ave).  Please arrive at 4:30 if you'd like to order food.
• Saturday Feb, 12: 1130am-1230pm at Tully's Coffee (24 N Tacoma Ave) in the upstairs loft
• Tuesday Feb, 15: 8-9pm Webinar*
• Saturday Feb, 19: 12-1pm: Bella Latte (6450 Tacoma Mall Blvd)
• Thursday Feb, 24: 7-8pm Webinar*
• Monday Feb, 28: 6-7pm Greener Bean (1039 Regents Blvd)

*= For webinar link please see our website, www.tacomafoodcoop.com