The Comedic....Um....Arts

On Friday my long awaited need to see Aussie comedian Jim Jefferies came to an end at the Showbox at the Market.
Showbox website.
I first saw Jim (I can call him Jim because we are dear friends now (not really)) when I was house/dog sitting in Greensboro over the summer. The house that I was at had TIVOed his HBO special I Swear To God and so I watched it one night knowing nothing about it other than that I had not seen the likes of HBO in months and was therefore thrilled to have it. About 2 hours later I was laughing out loud to myself and turning to Scooby (the dog) saying, "This guy is freaking hilarious!" I watched the whole thing over once more as soon as it had ended and laughed just as hard.
HBO special I Swear To God
From that point on I began constantly searching for his tour dates only to discover that he wasn't really coming anywhere near where I was except for one weekend he was to be in Greensboro at the same time that I was at the beach with Kevina and Greg having our last bit of fun before they left for the Peace Corps. Do I abandon my friends that I shall not see for 2 years to go and see a comedian? I may or may not have considered it but no I didn't.
Further checking of his website left me disappointed to discover that ALL of the tour locations were in Europe. I had already become a 'fan' of his page on Facebook long ago and had just come to the conclusion that it was never going to happen. THEN magically as if it were an answer to a prayer it showed up on my newsfeed that he had added new US dates to the tour, the 3rd of which was Seattle! Yes! Yes! Yes! I blindly bought 2 tickets without consulting a calendar or any of my friends to see if they wanted to go.
Fortunately Josi did want to go however no one else could be sold on the matter, which in retrospect may have been a good thing because the guy really is pretty offensive and may or may not have been a problem for some of my more PC PNW friends.
We got to the Showbox around 7:45pm to discover that a line had formed in the hopes of going inside. We met a super friendly and informed teenager in the line who described his first Jim experience identically to mine, and made a hilarious joke about how I must have tested Josi's sense of humor for the show by yelling the word 'cunt' at her repeatedly. I did not but this would be an accurate way of determining whether your friend or loved one has the capacity to withstand Jim. We get inside and manage to sit at the front, though it seemed mostly occupied by really young people, who I began to nervously wonder if they were even going to laugh.
The show was opened by two comedians who were local and said that they played somewhere on Tuesday nights or something that I could not bring myself to care about because I didn't like them as much.
And then JIM: He looked to be about half hammered before even getting on the stage and so adorable in his skinny jeans (no emo) and button down shirt. He was glorious. He did all new material and then at the end took requests for jokes from the HBO special. The crowd was a bit much. The Showbox has a sitting section in the front and two bar areas on the side. You are not permitted to take drinks into the sitting section and most people have to stand if you are up by the bars. I was in the front row and not thirsty enough to compromise my good fortune. So the bar crowd would not shut the hell up through much of the performance, which Jim handled with much grace mostly by yelling at them gently.
Regardless the show was wonderful. The best joke/story was probably the one about him taking his 30 something year old virgin terminally ill friend to a brothel. The poor guy was wheelchair stricken as a result of multiple sclerosis (i think) and had never 'known' a woman. So Jim and the guy's brother resolved to get him a prostitute which they feared may kill him but decided that it may very well be worth it to their friend/brother.
Other favorite high points of the show included a kind of a lull at the end when Jim claimed to be on 'borrowed time' and was just somewhat talking to the audience. This hilarity began when someone from the bar yells something which causes a man behind me to yell, "homo".

Bar Person: "a;sdkfowe98324** asdlkfj"

Man Behind Me: "Homo"

Jim (to man behind me): "What was that sir?"

Man Behind Me: "I said he was a homo."

Jim: "He's a homo? My aren't we quick to pass out that term when someone yells something. So quick to call someone a poofter. That's what they call fags in Australia. And in England a fag is a cigarette. But I guess a homo is a homo everywhere."

Different Man from Bar (taking advantage of the lull to attempt to make Jim discuss popular topics in the media aka Tiger Woods): "What about Tiger?"

Jim: "What about Tiger? No a tiger is still called a tiger in Australia. It's not like we see a tiger and say, "Oh look at that dog." No it is still called a tiger all over mate. Because when you see one, no matter where you are, you need to run away from it. So it is still called a tiger."

And scene.

He also took a minute towards the middle to berate some much younger teenagers sitting in the front row that had apparently not laughed during the whole show. During which he was merciless and I believe he frightened them into laughing because one of the smaller of the three began to laugh nervously while looking around and I am pretty sure that he had begun to fear for his life.
Jim was gracious enough to pose for pictures with fans after the show. His comedy isn't so different from anyone else. He still hits the same topics as all of the great comedians. Religion, sex, fat Americans that feel superior, and the way that the pandas are dying out because they will not have sex with each other. But he does it in a way that is horrifying because of the language he uses and the level of inappropriateness. As someone who feels completely desensitized by art school (particularly History of Women Artists class) and life in general, this is the only type of humor that does it for me. Its not for everyone but basically I am in love with Jim Jefferies.
Jim on Studs and Sluts
Jim on Pandas
Jim on Crazy Ass Women also known as 'This is Your Baby'

Because the Night Belongs to Lovers

Left early from a MFA meeting to see, hear, and experience Patti Smith at the stunning Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle. Thanks to Amanda's wonderfulness and Seattle Arts and Lectures genius this too was free to broke little me.
I am not going to lie, before last night all that I knew of Patti Smith was the song 'Because the Night'. After last night I intend to read her new book and potentially everything that she has ever written and advised others to read.
The woman was a delight and her voice is this perfect mixture of syrupy badassedness and liquid sex. She read from her new book Just Kids and spoke fondly of her friendship and life with artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It was unusual to hear someone describe Mapplethorpe the way that Smith did last night, as I had always thought of him as more of a Warhol type of character. At least in terms of relationships. I had imagined him as this somewhat cold man who thrived on controversy and the stereotypical artist lifestyle. It seems that this was not the case. Patti talked of him as a best friend and someone she lived with for years and considered family. She spoke of his photography methods and the organic way that a picture would manifest itself when he was the one taking it.
She began by reading some of her own poems and also some exerts from her books. She answered audience questions in a sly quick witted style.
When asked how it felt to be considered a fashion icon, she replied, "I have always had my own way of dealing with fashion."
When asked who would be someone she would like to collaborate with she replied: Russell Crowe.
Mediator: "Russell Crowe? Do you mean collaborate with him as an actor or as a musician?"
Patti Smith: "I mean as a girl."
This response got the biggest laugh from the audience.
After the question and answer portion of the night she sang some really touching songs while playing a guitar. Her guitar playing left a little to be desired (which she noted) and I somewhat wish that she had simply just sung the songs. Then finally she thankfully abandoned the guitar to sing "Because the Night" using us, the audience, for the chorus.
Perfect.
Loved it.
It was clear to see that she is someone who knows undoubtedly the importance of friendship. What an interesting life she has led and with so much loss. How unusual it must have been to have Robert Mapplethorpe as a best friend.
Seattle Arts and Lectures presents Patti Smith
Because the Night

David Mamet's Edmond

Thanks to Seattle Comp Tickets and a promotional that Balagan Theater was running I was able to see the play Edmond on Sunday night. For FREE! (My favorite.)
Edmond is the story of a sad, angry man that comes into contact with many unfortunate circumstances and reacts to them all in the worst possible ways. Tagline: "Do you know what madness is?"
I knew nothing of this play before seeing it except that my friend Josi insured me that since it was a David Mamet play we would probably hear the word 'cunt' at least once. We did. More than once. Among many other angry and often racially charged slurs.
I have been to Balagan Theater once before to see The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which I loved. (Also for free because the founder of the theater is a graduate of my MFA program.) The set for Signs of Intelligent Life was pretty minimal, in a good way. It was a lot of mirror fragments glued to the walls, floor, and ceiling and a couple of large wooden boxes that could be sat on. It was a one woman show and the one woman used this hilarious shopping cart/bed/chair/hat to contact aliens.
I was thrilled to see how different the layout was for the set of Edmond. There was a long table in the center of the room and the seats for the audience were on all four walls. There were two large screens suspended from the ceiling and facing each other and two rows of track lights that seemed to work perfectly regardless of the nature and setting of the scene. Balagan was completely transformed.
During the production the two screens would show scenes of city nightlife and lights. Perhaps my favorite moment was when Edmond was being questioned in front of a camera by police officers and the screens began to show a live feed of his interrogation. Very cool.
The story starts with a man leaving his wife and then heading out into the city where occurrences quickly go from bad to worse. As the audience we quickly realize that Edmond himself is mostly a really bad person. Really there is only once throughout the production that I felt pity for him. I won't give it away but let's just say I tend to wind up seeing plays that involve some sort of forced guy on guy sexual act.
Throughout the performance I was struck with this wonderful and nearly tangible feeling of discomfort and despair. I also realized that I kept unintentionally holding my breath. I left with the urge to go home and expose myself to something joyous in hopes of erasing the angry and horrible feelings.
Sam Hagan was the actor playing Edmond and I was completely impressed with his ability to yell. There was a lot of yelling in this play and this guy could really yell. Not just yell but the content of his yelling was words and phrases that I could never whisper alone in my room much less yell at another person, in front of a room full of people. Actors must be very brave.
Balagan posted an article about Edmond, Mamet and, the play which is where I learned that it has also been made into a movie starring William H. Macy as Edmond. The article quotes Mamet as having said that Edmond is a story of how, "An everyman descends into the maelstrom of big city degradation." I instantly added the movie to my Netflix. Something about William H. Macy playing him seems like a whole new world from this play. I think it would be easier to get on board with Macy as a victim of the city rather than a victim of his own inhumanity (if that is even the message). I am kind of imagining him in his roles in Pleasantville and Magnolia and how he is such a victim and lacks control and therefore makes poor decisions. I also think that I would have an easier time feeling sorry for him than I did Sam Hagan.
The performance certainly evokes some intense emotions. It may have been a little much for me on a Sunday night, but then again I would not have wished to start off a Friday or Saturday with such an unfortunate emotion.
The Article
Balagan Theater
Seattle Comp Tickets

The Island of Slaves

Last night I attended a FREE dress rehearsal of the Lee Center's Island of Slaves. We were warned at the beginning that because it was a dress rehearsal the cast may have to stop at some point, but that never occurred.
The story begins when two men wake up on an island to discover that their ship has wrecked and they are stranded. Harlequin is the servant of Iphicrates and the two come to realize that they have landed on the Island of Slaves. A place where masters are either killed or enslaved and servants rule. They are soon joined by a man who repeatedly plays the guitar and breaks into song and acts as a kind of enforcer of the laws of the island. He makes the men switch clothes and explains their new roles on the island. He does the same to an upper class woman and her maid and then sends them to live on the island as such for 3 years.
The comedy bits got a few laughs but overall I was bored by the amount of repetitive dialogue. The story was originally conceived in 1725 as a kind of preemptive commentary on the French Revolution. So the amount of dialogue makes sense. The whole thing ends with an appeal to the audience and a kind of moral message to treat others as you would be treated. Or as the final all cast musical number would put it, "Who do you think you are?"
However the audience participation was somewhat lost on me as the message just seemed kind of outdated in lieu of more useful messages. I cannot imagine why.......1725. It ran for 2 hours with an oddly timed intermission that came about 20 minutes before the ending rather than in the middle. Most of the time I had no clue what the songs were about, for lack of being able to clearly decipher the words. The highlights were the costumes and the three background island girls who had really cute color coordinated outfits. Otherwise I was mostly bored.

Hunter Gatherers: Sex, Death, and Meat

Last night my friend Josi was nice enough to take me with her to the Washington Ensemble Theater for a production of their currently running play Hunter Gatherers.
To give an idea of the basis of the play the tagline is "A living room play about sex, love, and meat." Three of my favorite things!
The story starts with a seemingly normal married couple in their seemingly normal living room killing a lamb in a cardboard box for the night's dinner party. Pam begrudgingly assists Richard by holding and calming the lamb by petting it and telling it a magical story about a wizard, while he cuts its throat.
The two are later joined by their oldest and dearest friends, Wendy and Tom, and we quickly learn that the four shared a joint wedding and meet for dinner once a year. We also quickly learn that Richard and Wendy have each year, been using the excuse of stuffing mushrooms, to go and have sex with each other in the kitchen.
While having sex on this particular occasion a pot falls off of the rack and hits Richard in the head. He begins to bleed, and Tom (who is a doctor) stitches him up. Tom is fully aware of his wife's infidelities with Richard, but innocent and naive Pam is in the dark and refuses to believe when Tom informs her.
When the girls are alone together, we learn that Wendy is desperate to have children. In a roundabout way she asks Pam to lend her blessing to the idea of her and Richard having sex in order to conceive. Pam seems as though she may agree to it but then suspicious, asks Wendy if she may have some stuffed mushrooms. Wendy realizing that Pam now knows of her indiscretions proceeds to tell her that she intends to take Richard for herself.
Later Richard and Wendy begin to awkwardly dance with one another while Tom and Pam look on in horror. Pam removes the lamb from the oven and brings it into the living room only for Richard to discover that it is still raw. He and Wendy eat it anyway, off of the floor, in a ravenous animal like manner and then begin to have sex but fall asleep as a result of all of the meat.
Meanwhile Pam and Tom are upstairs feeling victimized and when they begin to have sex Pam gets too into it and accidentally chokes Tom to death.
I won't ruin the end but by the time it was over we had witnessed an attempted ass raping, several murders, and meat and mixed nuts being thrown around the stage and clinging to the walls. Needless to say it was a comedy. The characters were hilarious and much more complex than I have made them out to be.
By far the person who stood out the most was Patrick Allcorn who played the role of Richard. The guy had this frightening Amityville Horror look to him and a style that instilled fear and comedy simultaneously.
Hunter Gatherers inspired the same discomfort that I received while reading Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. I do so adore that feeling.
It will be running at the Washington Ensemble Theater until February 8th.
Washington Ensemble Theater

Copyright Infringement and the Lies of 20%

This quarter I am happily taking a class entitled Law and the Arts.
Or is it Law of the Arts.
Erroneous.
The class is wonderful except for the tiny unfortunate detail that it sometimes meets on Saturday beginning at 9am. Regardless of the meeting time, our first session was held this past Saturday which is how I came to learn of my past repeated infractions of copyright legislation.
Throughout my undergraduate college career I repeatedly came into contact with the concept of utilizing another artist's images within my own artwork. Most of the time I was doing this because it was something that was required for an assignment. Example: The Destroying the Icon assignment which is given to anyone who might have Ed Midget for Digital Imaging.
The idea behind this particular assignment was to pick a well known and recognizable image and alter it in Photoshop to the point that it is less recognizable in order to make it your own. The magic number that proved that the image had been sufficiently altered was 20%. Always 20%. Why 20%? I had no clue. I just did what I was told.
Digital Imaging was not the only place that this magic number came into my life. There was a certain Andy Warhol exhibit that I worked on, as well as at least one painting class that I took that also included the use of the magical 20%.
Well it was to my utter disbelief last Saturday that I was made aware that the whole 'exemption from copyright infringement by altering an image by 20%' thing is completely false and made up. My professor, a practicing Washington state lawyer, blew 20% right out of the water. He said that he too had heard the 20% rule throughout his scholastic career only to later in life, while practicing law, discover it to be wrong.
I was in such disbelief that I even raised my hand and asked him to restate and even clarify this craziness that he spoke of. He said that he knew that it was hard to believe and even posed the question, "How would you determine what constitutes 20% anyway?"
This was something I had never considered. Had I imagined that there was some sort of certified checklist within the big book of Artistic Image Theft? I had never considered how one might determine the 20% change. I had just always waited for Ed to tell me that my Elvis didn't look too much like Elvis anymore.
Now none of this really matters to me, as I have never sold any of my artwork, and really only utilized another person's imagery for that one particular project and maybe one other that I am pretty sure just found its way to the trash BUT this was something that had been told to me by professors and art professionals that had in turn been told to them as a way to bypass copyright laws. That is such a problem.
I am now hellbent on spreading the word. The word of copyright infringement and the lies of 20%.

Dario Robleto

Dario Robleto is one of my all time favorite artists. I first saw his work at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC (http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu/) and was recently reminded of how much I love him at The Frye Art Museum here in Seattle. (http://fryemuseum.org/)
Robleto uses unconventional materials in a way that might horrify most people. The first works of his that I saw were collage multimedia posters surrounded by paper flowers that I later found out were made out of actual letters written from soldiers at war to their loved ones back home. They were not made from copies of the letters but the actual letters themselves.
Other pieces in the Weatherspoon show included a drawer with buttons inside that were made from bone and a tiny rocking chair also made from bone.
The way that his work was explained by the assistant curator at the Weatherspoon was as such; When someone catches a fly ball at a baseball game does that ball hold the same meaning as one that you might purchase at a sporting goods store? It does not. It could not be replaced by the ball that is purchased because it does not hold the same sentiment for the owner. So what is it about the ball? Is it something that is in the chemical makeup of the ball? What if the ball were to be turned into something else? Does it still hold the elements that made it something of sentiment in the first place?
Robleto first began making art when he melted down some of his parents record collection in order to turn them into sculptures and creations. !!! He does some work as well with EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) or white noise. I have only seen one piece of his that involves this media but it seemed to go nicely with the theme of what it means for an object to contain sentiment.
Most recently I saw work of his at the Frye Art Museum in their recent exhibit, Old, Weird America. Robleto's work fit in perfectly with the feel of...well...old, weird America. His work was in the company of art by Kara Walker and Cynthia Norton. The pieces of Robleto's in this exhibit were very Americana and constructed from unusual media such as hair braids that were made out of pieces of audio tape of Sylvia Plath reading November Graveyard and paper made from soldiers letters home to their mothers and daughters.
I recognized his work instantly in the gallery because of the paper flowers and small carefully constructed objects.
I certainly love love love his artwork and the concepts behind the work.
This is not his official site (which I could not find for the life of me) but it has his bio and info about a current project. http://www.artistsrespond.org/artists/robleto/

Long overdue.....in my opinion.

I have been living in Seattle, WA now for 144 days now. (It sounds like a lot when I say it that way.) And I have seen some pretty great things. Thus far I have been to some amazing films, performances, exhibits, etc. and really not been documenting any of it except within the confines of my very slippery mind. Henceforth I have decided to share these wonders with the world. Or really just with whomever decides to read.
I will not bore you by backtracking but instead will begin now with updates on the things that I attend and see. Hopefully future posts will come to be more interesting than this one. :)