THE LOWDOWN ON WHAT'S UP THIS WEEKEND >>>

WEATHER REPORT

Friday: Partly sunny, possible showers hi 61, lo 49

Saturday: Partly sunny, hi 66, lo 48

Sunday: Partly sunny, hi 70, lo 53

>>> FRIDAY-SUNDAY, JUNE 24-26: Taste of Tacoma

For more than 26 years, the infamous Taste of Tacoma - a three-day, food-focused festival in Point Defiance Park -- has offered live music, entertainment, craft booths, exhibits and more. The long stretch of food booths - Gluttony Row - is the source of both excitement and financial woe. And sometimes heartburn. And, almost always, at least one elepehant ear.

• Point Defiance Park, 11 a.m. - 9 p.m. Friday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Sunday, admission is free, 5400 N. Pearl St., Tacoma, tasteoftacoma.com

>>> SATURDAY, JUNE 25: Tacoma Urban Chicken Coop Tour

Honestly, you know your city is coming up in the world when you have an urban chicken coop tour. Yes, an urban chicken coop tour - here in Tacoma. It's happening Saturday, and no, we're not pulling your leg. People actually raise chickens at their house, mainly for the eggs - though sometimes there's a hair of companionship too. We first wrote about urban chicken farming last year, and it's only blown up since then. Saturday's coop tour, which is organized by GardenSphere in the North End, will include eight coops according to the website. Maps can be picked up at GardenSphere through Saturday, and the tour runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

• Tacoma Urban Chicken Coop Tour, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., maps available at GardenSphere - 3310 N. Proctor St., 253.7617936

>>> SATURDAY, JUNE 25: DYDD Championship Bout

You've waited all season. Screamed in excitement. Winced in empathy. Cheered with vigor. And it all comes down to this. The Dockyard Derby Dames hold their championship bout Saturday afternoon at the Foss Waterway Seaport building. The festivities will match the Femme Fianna and Marauding Molly's in what's described as  the "ultimate grudge match,´ before the Trampires and Hellbound Homewreckers do battle for the league crown. Hype says it's going to be "epic," and we can't see how that could not be accurate.

• Foss Waterway Seaport, 6 p.m., $12, 705 Dock Street, Tacoma

>>> SATURDAY - SUNDAY, JUNE 25-26: Urban Art Festival

The Urban Art Festival is a grassroots festival at its best - a little bit of every kind of art (including some varieties not always recognized as art) all dumped into one public park, then shaken, not stirred, with lots of music and other cool stuff. Now in its seventh year, the Urban Art Festival has expanded to two full days, and will take place June 25 and 26 along Thea Foss Waterway.

• Thea Foss Waterway, from the Museum of Glass at 1801 Dock St.,to beyond the 21st Street Bridge, Tacoma, tacomaurbanart.com

>>> WHERE OUR STAFF IS GOING

NIKKI TALOTTA Features Writer
This weekend marks my official shift change at the bar, meaning this Saturday will be my last Saturday night! The bar is hosting an after bout party for roller derby ladies  - so it should be a blast. A good friend is visiting this weekend as well, so I look forward to catching up with her. And Netflix just sent me the next season of Weeds, so I'll get my boob tube fix as well. Good times all around.

CHRISTIAN CARVAJAL: Theater Critic
We're celebrating my father-in-law's 60th birthday with mounds of delicious dead cow, and I'll be up to my forebrain in Mamet memorization. I also need to finish unpacking so I can move my "office" off our kitchen table.

REV. ADAM MCKINNEY: Music & Film Writer
On the forefront of my mind will be dodging my friend who recently came down with a typically disgusting case of scabies (ach!). As part of my plan to come nowhere near contact with her, I will be escaping to the New Frontier on Friday for the Dignitaries, and I will be on hand at Dorky's on Saturday for their first ever show--featuring Red Hex, Si Si Si, and the dorkiest band in town, the Cutwinkles.

JOANN VARNELL Theater Critic
Friday night will be the last night in TX so I'll be soaking up the heat and packing for my Saturday flight. Saturday morning, my parents will drive my friend Casie, my little son and I to my brother's house for a family meal before we Tacomans head to the airport. Sunday will be a day of rest with my grad school husband.

ALEC CLAYTON Visual Arts Critic
Having dinner with two of the hottest musical theater stars in the South Sound, Matt Posner and Alison Monda.

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JENNIFER JOHNSON Food and Lifestyles Writer 
Exploring the booming metropolis of Lacey Friday evening followed by dancing. Saturday I'm attending a church brunch followed by Urban Arts Fest and a stop in at Pacific Grill. After church services Sunday, I'll drop in at Metronome to see SONS play at 8 p.m.

STEVE DUNKELBERGER Meat Market Photographer
I'm in North Dakota. For reals.

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the South Sound

THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2011 >>>

1. Olympia's Elizabeth Lord brings back Smoking Is Cool tonight, and spreads the hilarity through Sunday with performances each night at the Midnight Sun. Find details here.

2. Seasons Grey will rock Hell's Kitchen tonight. Expect facial hair. If you shaved this morning, perhaps you'd be better served by browsing the Volcano's extensive live local music calendar.

3. Phil Slater visits Oscar's Restaurant & Lounge on Hosmer.

4. Write stuff? Wanna share the stuff you write with other people who write stuff? OK, good. Check out the "Writers' Round Table" tonight at Barnes & Noble in Olympia. Or, if you detest the written word, perhaps a browse through the Volcano's comprehensive Viva South Sound Arts & Entertainment Calendar would do you well.

5. Vote for Tacoma's best baristas, politicians, bloggers, bartenders and local businesses in the only 253 "Best Of" issue that matters. The Volcano's annual Best of Tacoma issue publishes July 28, and this year's readers' poll launched last week. Let your vote be heard now! Find all the details here.

LINK: South Sound Live Local Music Listings

LINK: Viva South Sound Arts & Entertainment Calendar

ONLINE CHATTER >>>

Today's comment comes from Becky Knold in response to yesterday's "Clayton on Art" SPEW post, in which Alec discusses trompe le'oeil.

Knold writes,

Trickery and Illusion... no one likes to be tricked and fooled... unless they are somehow "in" on the joke. The job of the artist, it would seem, is to somehow let the viewer know that he knows that they know, and that it's cool to be "in the know". But if the artist is simply trying to fool the public, he will never succeed (and if by some chance he did, he will be resented for it!). Play nice with your friends.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2011 >>>

1. Catch ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and Ringo Deathstarr tonight at the Capital Theater. It'll be musical awesomeness at it's finest, not to mention its  most absurdly named.

2. Continuing on the music front, albeit the strange music front, Stasis Field will be at Northern tonight. Find more info here.

3. In Tacoma, and far grittier than experimental, the Curse of Western Culture will rock Hell's Kitchen to the core. Get your beer and rock on, midweek style.

4. Every Wednesday a "fast paced (over 16 mph), hilly, 40 mile training ride, led by members of the Tacoma Wheelmen Bicycle Club," takes off at 9:30 a.m. from the Proctor District Starbucks. Go here for more info.

5. Vote for Tacoma's best baristas, politicians, bloggers, bartenders and local businesses in the only 253 "Best Of" issue that matters. The Volcano's annual Best of Tacoma issue publishes July 28, and this year's readers' poll launched last week. Let your vote be heard now! Find all the details here.

LINK: South Sound Live Local Music Listings

LINK: Viva South Sound Arts & Entertainment Calendar

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

Trompe le'oeil is a nice little, hard-to-pronounce French word. Literally it means "Fool the eye." As an art term it means art that makes you think it's real and not a painting. The phrase originated in the Baroque period (roughly the 16^th and 17^th centuries) but actually goes back to earlier Greek and Roman murals. Trompe le'oeil paintings were very popular in the 19^th century, but they simply do not work as paintings any longer because viewers have become far too sophisticated and cynical to buy into the trick of making part of a painting look like it's extending beyond the painting. It's paintings' version of 3-D movies. Been there, done that.

But trompe le'oeil can still be artistically effective when used in the way the ancient Greeks and Romans did - in murals. Because in murals the painted images interact with the natural environment in ways that are not possible in framed paintings on a wall. The most effective Trompe le'oeil murals picture urban scenes similar to those in the real world surrounding them, such as paintings of buildings and cars or maybe the painting of a tunnel on a wall, which I have seen pictures of and which can be very dangerous because some fool might try to drive through it.

There is a very good mural on the flat wall of the old North Wilkesboro Hardware Store in Olympia, now the Lowe's store on Martin Way. It's a painting of buildings and a street with an early 1940s Dodge pickup traveling on it by Larry Kangas. It's best seen from the Safeway parking lot next door. I often shop there and even after seeing the mural for years I am sometime thrown for a loop when I glance over and for a moment can't distinguish the surrounding buildings and cars from the painted buildings and the old truck. It's disorienting in a fun way. Usually the only giveaway is that (1) the truck never moves and (2) the actual sky and the painted sky are usually not the same color, depending on how cloudy or sunny it might be.

There are more Trompe le'oeil mural images here and more fun ones by John Pugh here.

As for paintings in frames and hung on walls there is only one artist who has ever done them effectively as meaningful art and not just as visual trickery, and that is the great trickster Rene Magritte. The thing that makes Magritte's paintings so interesting is that he knows it is a trick and he presents his trick paintings in the manner of the Wizard of Oz with the curtain open so you can see he's just a fat little man full of tricks. Among Magritte's most famous "fool-the-eye" paintings is one of a naked woman standing in front of an open window in which the top half of her body becomes part of the sky seen through the window, and another one - actually many versions of this one he's done - is a painting of a sky resting on an easel in front of an open window so that the view out the window and the painting become one and the same. The thing that makes his paintings great is not just that the visual tricks work well but that his paintings are comments on the trickery and on the nature of art and illusion.

I just wish Kangas' mural on the Lowes building was as sophisticated and as tongue-in-cheek as a Rene Magritte painting, but then I don't guess he could get away with painting a 20-foot tall naked woman on the side of a building on Martin Way.

TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2011 >>>

1. Lookout! Modern day crooner Chris Anderson performs tonight at the Red Wind Casino. You could lose money, and your heart ...

2. Tonight is a huge night for trivia around the South Sound. Drinking and question answering can be had at the Swiss, Farelli's in Tacoma and Sumner, Paddy Coyne's, the Hub ... and the list goes on. Or, the Midland Tavern (Lil' Vic's) in Tacoma offers "Crazy Vegas Barstool Bingo" - which has to be awesome, right?

3. Drop in on the Tacoma Sixth Avenue Farmers Market from 3 - 7 p.m. This is a farmers market better suited for the late-sleepers - something we can totally get behind.

4. Tuesday always means comedy at Jazzbones, hosted by local laugh-man Ralph Porter. After the giggles, keep the party going at Jazzbones with DJ Omar.

5. Hey! Go Skate Tacoma!

LINK: South Sound Live Local Music Listings

LINK: Viva South Sound Arts & Entertainment Calendar

A CRITIC POSES AN INDELICATE QUESTION >>>

We theater folk are, for the most part, a tribe of earnest liberals. I'm sure there are a few Glenn Beck junkies running around on the boards, but they stay mostly in our GOP closet. We're all wonderful, kind, inclusive people who embraced color- and gender-blind thinking long before the nation at large caught up with it. I've seen black Galileos and male Juliets, female Prosperos and short Macbeths, gay apostles and deaf sopranos. And that's good. It really, truly is. It makes audience members, including critics, confront their own biases; so until such choices hobble the text, I'm all for it. But there's one aspect of wide-open casting that I'm still, I must confess, trying to wrap my head around. I'll admit my leanings here, then put it to you to decide how backward or unreasonable those opinions might be.

Be honest, though: Don't be hypocritical in your feedback, no matter how much you want to impress your fellow liberals. Tell the truth.

Is it possible for an actor to be too fat or unattractive for a role?

Now, just so you don't think I'm being willfully obtuse, I will tell you up front that I myself am a person of size, well past the 200-pound mark. I wear black for a reason. The last time I was cast as a romantic lead, it was years ago and purely by necessity, and I can't remember the time before that. I will warn you that anyone who casts me in a dancing role deserves what he or she gets. I'm not without sympathy for actors who are outside the culturally (and, let's face it, genetically) determined standard of physical perfection. I'm also well aware that overweight people can be attractive, which is why I put the word "or" between "fat" and "unattractive" above. But there's a reason why chorus girls tend to be thin, and it's not just the dreaded "male gaze."

"Oh, he's talking about me," someone out there is thinking, already feeling that visceral pain. But I'm not asking this admittedly unsavory question in response to the work of a single actor. Far from it; in fact, it's more than a few. In all candor, I'm asking partly because I've been thinking about my own fitness for various roles. Rumor has it certain companies prefer actors who fall within preferred physical standards. Is that OK? Do we hate that? Do we secretly get why they do it? Should we fight it? Are they right? The fact is, a director must cast the person who seems most effective in a role, and sometimes, plausibility is a definite factor.

I've seen way too many productions of musicals, for example, with dancers who would never be hired in the jobs they're portraying. I've seen fortysomething seniors at Rydell High, an entire baseball team of prancing flamers in Damn Yankees, and a Ziegfeld Follies kickline that resembled a Richard Simmons video. I know it's rude to make fat jokes, and I'm in no position to judge...except we do. We do see physical shapes and sizes, out here in the wilds of Audience Land. It interrupts the flow of the story by taking us out of that delicate web of ersatz reality.

Even opera companies no longer cast zaftig actors in the roles of Carmen or Mimi. Why? Because whether fat people can die of consumption or not, it looks and feels false to the average patron. Yes, I know there are mismatched couples in the real world, but despite that, a hot Juliet making out with a corpulent Romeo is a speed bump for most people's brains. We can't help it. It's how we evolved. And directors can try all they want to make audiences more liberal by being extra super liberal in front of them, but it's almost impossible to dazzle an audience member out of his or her biological biases. A sweaty, heaving ingenue is always a tough pill to swallow.

My wife introduced me to, and quite possibly invented, the phrase "body-blind casting." It's an appealing idea philosophically, but I wonder if it just might not work. I support color-blind casting whenever feasible, but what about a black Patsy Cline? I'm for gender-blind casting, but would Oleanna work with a female professor? How about a male student? I submit to you that these would be horrible ideas, no matter how well-intentioned. And by similar logic, is it possible that body-blind casting isn't always the optimal solution?

You tell me.

P.S.: I'm told by one reader that "fat" is now a politically incorrect term. That may be true...but if we say "fat" is a bad word, aren't we also saying "fat" is a bad condition? Are we willing to imply that? I don't know.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2011 >>>

1. Eliot Lipp makes yet another valiant return to Tacoma tonight -- playing the New Frontier. It's sure to be awesome. Find details here.

2. The Tacoma Cult Movie Club gathers at the Acme Grub Cage tonight for "Things that make you go Vroom" - a night of cinema-obsession, presumably with a car theme tonight. It starts at 7 p.m. and the popcorn is free.

3. It's "Toxic Karaoke" time at Lady Luck's Cowgirl Up Steakhouse and Saloon in Parkland. Or, if that's not your ticket, find the Volcano's extensive live local music listings for the South Sound right here.

4. What's the coolest thing you're going to hear today? Quite possibly, Drunken Poetry, a twice monthly event organized and operated by Last Word Books in Olympia. What makes it so cool? You can just trust us, or find all the details here.

5. Today would be an excellent day to get into pottery, wouldn't it? Or maybe tomorrow. Either way, find details on the Pottery Class at Throwing Mud Gallery that kicks off today and runs for the next six weeks. Find specifics here.

ARTS + COMMUNITY = CULTURE >>>

Oliver Doriss is the last light on at the block of 13th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way on Hilltop. During his three years running the Fulcrum Gallery there, he's watched other storefronts on the block shut down and projects in the area stall out. But no one stops Doriss. This is largely why the Tacoma Arts Commission recently selected Doriss for the AMOCAT Arts Award for 2010 Community Outreach by an Artist.

"The ways I outreach to my community are a byproduct of what I do. Glass art is a kind of community thing, especially in this area," Doriss says. "There is no separation between arts and community; they are the same thing. Arts plus community equals culture."

If you haven't heard of Doriss, he is a major player in the local glass scene. His gallery is one of the coolest in town, featuring modern and contemporary glass art set right smack in the middle of Hilltop-providing what can only be described as a damn interesting contrast and a definite boost to a neighborhood that needs some love. Doriss has been a glassworker for 19 years, and is the mastermind behind those pleasantly creepy Baby Head Cups. Originally from New England, he has traveled far and wide honing his creativity. His projects include working with the Museum of Glass hot shop staff, and working as an instructor at the M-Space Glass Blowing Facility in Tacoma.

To read the full article by Kristin Kendle click here.

[Fulcrum Gallery, 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, fulcrumtacoma.com]

YOUR SOURCE FOR SOUTH SOUND THEATER COVERAGE >>>

David Auburn's Proof is built on relationships: a damaged girl and her broken father; the sibling rivalry of two sisters on very different paths; the uncertainty of young love. Each tie between two characters helps illuminate another.

Nominally, the play is about brilliance and madness in mathematics, but even that is another of the many relationships that bind together a topic-mathematical discovery-that would ordinarily be a bit dry for theater.

It is the execution of these relationships that drives the performance at Tacoma Little Theatre.

To read Joe Izenman's full review click here.

[Tacoma Little Theatre, Proof, through June 26, 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $15-$24, 210 N. I St., Tacoma, 253.272.2281]