Weekly Volcano Blogs: Walkie Talkie Blog

Posts made in: July, 2011 (158) Currently Viewing: 51 - 60 of 158

July 11, 2011 at 2:47pm

Neal Brennan Thursday at the Tacoma Comedy Club

CO-CREATOR OF CHAPPELLE SHOW COMES TO TOWN >>>

We've been trying desperately (or, at least moderately) to get an interview with comedian and writer Neal Brennan. He's scheduled to appear at the Tacoma Comedy Club Thursday, July 14. When the co-creator of the Chappelle Show comes to town on a Thursday it makes for a pretty big deal, or at least we think it does. Sadly, as of this writing, the odds of procuring that interview aren't looking good.

That said, the situation allows us to prove once again how amazingly adept we are at searching YouTube for videos...

Filed under: Comedy, Tacoma,

July 11, 2011 at 5:06pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: The seas and mountains of Susan Christian

ONLINE CHATTER >>>

Today's comment comes from Jill Tokarczyk in response to Alec Clayton's latest Visual Edge column, a review of Susan Christian's latest show at Childhood's End Gallery.

Tokarczyk writes,

Looking forward to seeing Susan's work at Childhood's End Gallery!
Her work on seas and mountains are two of my favorites. She looks out to a world sometimes calm, sometimes choppy, sometimes quiet, sometimes waiting to give us sounds of natural strength.

Filed under: Arts, Comment of the Day, Olympia,

July 12, 2011 at 7:06am

5 Things To Do Today: The Lovely Bad Things, Local Artists Appreciation Day, Geeks Who Drink and more ...

The Lovely Bad Things will fill The New Frontier Lounge with garage pop tunes.

TUESDAY, JULY 12 >>>

1. The Lovely Bad Things play blissed-out, fuzzed-up garage-pop that bursts with jangly exuberance. Their sound is unmistakably Californian in its laid-back pop-mindedness. Catch them at 8 p.m. inside The New Frontier Lounge.

2. It's "Local Artists Appreciation Day" at the 6th Avenue Farmers Market beginning at 3 p.m. in the North Pine Street and Sixth Avenue neighborhood. Southern Skies provides the soundtrack.

3. Every Tuesday, the Northern Pacific Coffee Company takes a look at who and what's giving the South Sound the giggles with its comedy open mic hosted by Jennifae beginning at 8 p.m.

4. It would feel a lot better losing a quiz game if you were drunk. A genius in Colorado has taken that concept, and the Irish pub quiz tradition, to "next-level" status, incorporating multi-media quiz questions and opportunities to win stuff through the national craze Geeks Who Drink, hosted locally by Holland Hume every Tuesday at 8 p.m. inside Paddy Coyne's.

5. Hindershot, The Northern Rail and Eo Ipso will rock Le Voyeur around 9 p.m.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

LINK: Tuesday Nightlife It List

July 12, 2011 at 12:04pm

Paper covers Rock

TODAY IN CLUB CLOSURES >>>

The Firwood Rock Lounge's outside windows are covered with white paper. A sign on a window reads: "We are re-decorating our place!! We'll be back in a few weeks!! Thank you!!

No doubt the double exclamation points mean they are serious.

So we wait. ...

What changes do you hope the Firwood makes?

LINK: Josh Rizeberg reports on the Firwood's closure

Filed under: Club News, Tacoma,

July 12, 2011 at 12:28pm

MOVIE BIZ BUZZ: Back to School (Part Two) with Hirsh Diamant

Hirsh Diamant. Photo by Mary Donahue

TAKING STUDENTS THROUGH SPACE & TIME >>>

Talk about a globetrotter. Hirsh Diamant began life as a Ukrainian in the capital city of Kiev, eventually left as a dissident, at one point studied in Israel, and has acted in New York. Westward he continued from Big Apple to the Evergreen State, in part a desire to escape, in his words, "the crack capital of the world." For the next fifteen years he toiled as a farmer before ultimately going broke.

Fate has drawn Diamant to yet another capital - Olympia, back in academia as a teacher at Evergreen State College. The school's well-known reputation for an educational structure looser than its contemporaries lets this world traveller engage students across multiple disciplines.

"The world is so interesting and so complex," Diamant says. "Teaching so many things allows me to be interested in a lot of different areas."

With a focus on arts and cultural studies, Diamant designs his various courses in unique ways. Visual Literacy (which just wrapped for the summer) looks at the evolution of visual art and technology, commencing with drawing, then progressing to photography and the modern digital revolution. These, for Diamant, explore the three dimensions of space.  When still pictures are linked together in a sequence, the fourth dimension comes into play.

This is the realm of cinema, for "film is a medium of time," Diamant states.

The man has seen his own progression as a filmmaker, from performing in his older brothers' home movies as a child to creating works like the stunningly beautiful NuWa Dreams (still a memorable entry from 2008's Olympia Film Festival). Diamant will keep alive his love for "the most captivating, the most enjoyable medium of the 21st century" by volunteering again at OFF this autumn.            

Filed under: Arts, Culture, Screens, Olympia,

July 12, 2011 at 12:31pm

CLAYTON ON ART: Old folks

"Six": Papermate pen and pencil by Bob Gillis, courtesy Art House Designs.

THE VOLCANO'S VISUAL ARTS CRITIC WEIGHS IN >>>

The name of the latest show at Art House Designs in Olympia is "Three old guys and one old lady."

The good thing about old folks is they've been at it long enough to get good. Olympia painters Dale Witherow, Bob Gillis, Ron Hinson and Georgia Munger prove it with this show.

Witherow is a pure abstract expressionist. Young people might think that AE died way back in the '60s, which by now is also ancient history, but I'm one old guy who thinks the Abstract Expressionists were the best painters America ever produced and the movement will never die. Witherow paints light and movement - not angst, which AE is known for, but unbridled joy, with heavily layered and exuberantly brushed impasto and sparkling glazes. I've seen a lot of Witherow's paintings over the years, but there are some in this show unlike any I've seen before, including a painting of a single flower in a long-stemmed vase (imagine a flower as painted by Cy Twombly if you can) and a repetitive pattern of squares with letters reminiscent of some early Jasper Johns paintings.

The best of his work in this show is one called "Faded Glories," which has random blotches or circular marks both painted and scratched into the surface  of a pattern of overlapping white-on-white glazes (actually pink and gray, but it feels like layered sheets of snow and ice) and the mark making is like that of the above-mentioned Twombly, one of the last of the greats who died just last week.

Hinson is represented by a series of highly inventive and humorous illustrations from "Alice in Wonderland" and two powerful charcoal drawings from his series of mythology drawings, "Birth of Adonis" and "Prometheus Bound." These have been shown in other exhibitions, and I've reviewed them before. They are outstanding in both conception and execution.

Gillis is showing a suite of eight pencil and ink drawings titled "One," "Two," "Three"... and so forth up to "Eight."  These are totally unlike anything I've ever seen from him, more like graphic illustrations than the abstract paintings he's known for. They are highly stylized, high-contrast, black and white pictures of fronds, trees, flowers, and one of a flock of birds.

Munger is known around Olympia for her paintings of crows, but there's nary a crow in anyone of her little pastel drawings in this show. There are, however, one of two other birds and a horse, and a lot of abstract paintings with bright colors - some of which are based on landscape and remind me of Wolf Kahn and others which are arrangements of organic and geometric forms on a flat surface. My favorites are the landscapes, although there's something really enjoyable about that silly looking horse.

Art House Designs has expanded and renovated its gallery space in the past year providing a nice venue for some good art from three old guys and one old lady. See them at the corner of Fifth and Franklin in downtown Olympia through July 21.

[Art House Designs, Three old guys and one old lady," 420 Franklin St SE # B, Olympia, 360.943.3377]

Filed under: Arts, Olympia,

July 12, 2011 at 12:55pm

Sandwich Report: You're not fooling me Kris Blondin

GROTTO-ED >>>

Every week STINK Cheese and Meat owner Kris Blondin and crew serve a different toasted cheese sandwich special. And, it's not your mother's Velveeta between two slices of Wonder with the crusts trimmed off version. Nope, every week the special leans heavily toward the gourmet. This week, it's a tasty Jarlsberg Swiss and Black Forest ham with a tangy dijonaisse and tomato. A large fresh salad of spinach and warm goat cheese coated in crushed pecans rides shotgun.

Hey, wait a minute. That sandwich was on the old Vin Grotto Cafe menu - Blondin's former wine bar along Pacific Avenue. If you're going to serve delicious sandwiches from your past Kris Blondin, then bring back server Jason Ganwich!

STINK Cheese and Meat

628 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma
253.426.1347

Filed under: Food & Drink, Tacoma,

July 12, 2011 at 2:55pm

PERSON, PLACE or THING with Steph DeRosa: Mr. Jalapeno

Hot sauce: DeRosa fantasizes about it

This week ...

Place: Mr. Jalapeño

Serving: Mexican food

Not actually: A dude named Mr. Jalapeño

Much: To my disappointment

Where: Bonney Lake

I hardly: Go to Bonney Lake

Because: It's too damn far away

I get it: If you live in Bonney Lake

But: Why would you live in Bonney Lake?

It's: Too damn far away!

To read this week's full column click here.

July 12, 2011 at 5:06pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: Art on the Ave was awesome, but needed more garbage collection

ONLINE CHATTER >>>

Today's comment comes from Ray in response to Jennifer Johnson's review of this year's Art on the Ave festival, which happened Sunday.

Ray writes,

Great article! It was such a great day of great entertainment from one end to the other! The artists were all so great and eclectic...although I wish there were more people in charge of collecting the garbage during the course of the day. Biggest surprise would be the cupcake shop actually being a bath salt company....almost ate some soap it looked so good!

July 12, 2011 at 11:56pm

Tunnel vision

Photo credit: Steve Dunkelberger

Filed under: Tacoma, Ruston,

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