d.p.
May 23
d.p. commented on Why Shoot?.
Of all the artist interviews I've read, that was definitely... one of the longest.
May 23
d.p. commented on American Gothic.
Just look at the comment history of "BrianBlood" and... oh, wait... he just registered today!
For artists who burn their penises, huff ether, and get themselves shot, the members of the Saint Genet crew seem surprising thin-skinned!
For artists who burn their penises, huff ether, and get themselves shot, the members of the Saint Genet crew seem surprising thin-skinned!
May 22
d.p. commented on And What Really Makes the Bullitt Center Green?.
@5 also missed the part where the lone Capitol Hill subway stop will be nearly a mile from here, requiring a rainy, zig-zagging walk with at least a couple of pedestrian dead zones along the way.
This because the assholes at Sound Transit found it more important to give commuters from Lynnwood a 30 seconds faster ride to the CBD than to provide actual urban transit of any sort, and so mounted a "blame the soil" campaign to cheap out and delete the First Hill station (which would have been a comfortable .4-mile straight shot from this part of Madison).
Now those headed to the hospital district and this part of Capitol Hill or the C.D. get to enjoy their jawdroppingly shitty buses until the end of time, in addition to a 6mph streetcar-to-nowhere that runs too infrequently to bother waiting for (and which cost nearly as much as the deleted subway stop).
The Bullitt might as well be on a suburban campus, Charles, because this city is far too transit-retarded to ever coax the majority from their cars.
This because the assholes at Sound Transit found it more important to give commuters from Lynnwood a 30 seconds faster ride to the CBD than to provide actual urban transit of any sort, and so mounted a "blame the soil" campaign to cheap out and delete the First Hill station (which would have been a comfortable .4-mile straight shot from this part of Madison).
Now those headed to the hospital district and this part of Capitol Hill or the C.D. get to enjoy their jawdroppingly shitty buses until the end of time, in addition to a 6mph streetcar-to-nowhere that runs too infrequently to bother waiting for (and which cost nearly as much as the deleted subway stop).
The Bullitt might as well be on a suburban campus, Charles, because this city is far too transit-retarded to ever coax the majority from their cars.
May 21
d.p. commented on American Gothic.
The last time Derrick Ryan Claude Mitchell found himself criticized on the pages of Slog, a mysterious "drcm" registered just in time to offer an insufferable, windbaggy, kneejerk defense of Mitchell's unimpeachable artistic process.
Which member of Saint Genet might you be, "alms"?
Which member of Saint Genet might you be, "alms"?
May 21
d.p. commented on American Gothic.
For those who have the unregistered comments off, @4 totally nails it. And @6 captures Saint Genet's aesthetic merits and ultimate deflating hollowness.
No matter how deeply Mitchell may believe he is forging a new medium and a new framework for processing it, the fact remains that when you assemble an audience that has paid a fixed, non-negligible ticket price to sit in an established performance space and watch you, your work exists in conversation with that audience and within the history of performance works similarly offered for public consumption.
That "flour and dirt, gold leaf and leeches, exquisite choreography juxtaposed with people getting so drunk and high they fall over trying to execute it... a field of wheat on the stage, stuffed and headless pheasants whirring in circles overhead, and a mound of dirt that contained a performer, requiring him to stay buried for hours and emerge only at the end" describes without variation a Saint Genet performance in the more inherently immersive and interactive Lawrimore space more than 18 months ago confirms my suspicion that Mitchell is an artist without growth and without purpose.
To even mention him in the same breath as Chris Burden or Marina Abramović -- evolvers both, and in the case of Abramović, epiphanically eloquent about her art -- is an unwarranted flattery.
More...
No matter how deeply Mitchell may believe he is forging a new medium and a new framework for processing it, the fact remains that when you assemble an audience that has paid a fixed, non-negligible ticket price to sit in an established performance space and watch you, your work exists in conversation with that audience and within the history of performance works similarly offered for public consumption.
That "flour and dirt, gold leaf and leeches, exquisite choreography juxtaposed with people getting so drunk and high they fall over trying to execute it... a field of wheat on the stage, stuffed and headless pheasants whirring in circles overhead, and a mound of dirt that contained a performer, requiring him to stay buried for hours and emerge only at the end" describes without variation a Saint Genet performance in the more inherently immersive and interactive Lawrimore space more than 18 months ago confirms my suspicion that Mitchell is an artist without growth and without purpose.
To even mention him in the same breath as Chris Burden or Marina Abramović -- evolvers both, and in the case of Abramović, epiphanically eloquent about her art -- is an unwarranted flattery.
May 20
d.p. commented on No Wonder So Many Drivers Resent Seeing Their Tax Dollars Spent to Subsidize Transit.
@4: Firstly, way to randomly apply a price tag to a 150-year-old stretch of rail. Making shit up is always so persuasive.
Secondly, the result is an hour to go 22 freaking miles, between two small cities, and through the type of distant-suburban sprawl that could be easily described as Bailo-land.
You truly are a moron for the ages, Bailo.
Secondly, the result is an hour to go 22 freaking miles, between two small cities, and through the type of distant-suburban sprawl that could be easily described as Bailo-land.
You truly are a moron for the ages, Bailo.
May 19
d.p. commented on You Have an Hour and a Half to Get to On the Boards to See Saint Genet.
"Jessie Smith choreography" would have been the only valid reason to brave Ryan Mitchell's fleetingly enthralling but ultimately flimsy and vacuous performance tableau -- sorry, "aesthetic declaration", as he is fond of insisting his work be meaninglessly described.
Much as I might continue to be curious, I could not bring myself to contribute $20 to what appears to be Mitchell's perpetual ego-thought-loop, impervious to intellectual and artistic growth.
Much as I might continue to be curious, I could not bring myself to contribute $20 to what appears to be Mitchell's perpetual ego-thought-loop, impervious to intellectual and artistic growth.
May 15
d.p. commented on "Bus service shouldn't be optional—it should be a right.".
Being a stalwart transit advocate, someone who relies primarily on Metro, or someone who has never owned a car in his/her life -- I qualify as all three -- does not require you to endorse Metro's habit of jacking up fares, trolling for additional tax revenues, and threatening a transit apocalypse every four months all in the service of keeping the same collection of overlapping, labyrinthine, poorly aligned routes running at 30-minute intervals barely faster than you can walk.
Metro needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Losing that barely-useful service right outside your door is not such a bad thing, if you can suddenly walk four blocks to a route that comes every 10 minutes and actually moves you across town quickly and in a straight line. Transfers suddenly become feasible, so now you can use the bus for more than just going to work.
Best of all, a system of ultra-frequent core routes can be run for much less money (and at a lower fare for the end-user) than what we have now, because consolidated corridors shrink the standard deviation in run-time caused by demand spikes and keep Metro from having to schedule buses to loiter for 25-45 minutes at hundreds of route ends.
That's not to say I fully trust current Metro administrators to implement consolidation correctly. Ballard RapidRide was totally botched -- not actually faster, not particularly frequent -- so walking further or transferring to it almost never pays off. And the schedule revisions associated with RapidRide managed to completely fuck over evening and night frequencies to any part of northwest Seattle.
But I'd still take the risk of budget-coerced restructuring over giving Metro endless money to keep things the crappy same.
More...
Metro needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Losing that barely-useful service right outside your door is not such a bad thing, if you can suddenly walk four blocks to a route that comes every 10 minutes and actually moves you across town quickly and in a straight line. Transfers suddenly become feasible, so now you can use the bus for more than just going to work.
Best of all, a system of ultra-frequent core routes can be run for much less money (and at a lower fare for the end-user) than what we have now, because consolidated corridors shrink the standard deviation in run-time caused by demand spikes and keep Metro from having to schedule buses to loiter for 25-45 minutes at hundreds of route ends.
That's not to say I fully trust current Metro administrators to implement consolidation correctly. Ballard RapidRide was totally botched -- not actually faster, not particularly frequent -- so walking further or transferring to it almost never pays off. And the schedule revisions associated with RapidRide managed to completely fuck over evening and night frequencies to any part of northwest Seattle.
But I'd still take the risk of budget-coerced restructuring over giving Metro endless money to keep things the crappy same.
May 11
d.p. commented on A Waity Encounter With Secret Chiefs 3.
The Sunset Tavern show on Tuesday followed the same pattern, though everything was shifted a half-hour earlier: the first set ("UR") started promptly at 9:15, and it must have been shorter than your "Masada" set; the second set ("Ishraqiyun") had begun by 10:45.
The drummer did flash a series of hand-signals on his way to the intermission that were clearly intended to inform us they'd be back. Perhaps the message got lost in the comparatively cavernous Crocodile.
I've found SC3's studied obliqueness both draining and offputting in past shows, but Tuesday's's dual sets were the most focused and rewarding I've ever seen them pull off. I would have loved to catch the counterpoint pair at the Crocodile, if I hadn't been busy. It's a shame that you felt the need to leave.
I won't try to defend the super-long intermission, though it's better than sitting through a mediocre opener followed by a set-up/soundcheck of similar length. Spruance turned each of his robes into a sweaty, dripping, clingy mess; is it possible he needed a shower during the break?
More...
The drummer did flash a series of hand-signals on his way to the intermission that were clearly intended to inform us they'd be back. Perhaps the message got lost in the comparatively cavernous Crocodile.
I've found SC3's studied obliqueness both draining and offputting in past shows, but Tuesday's's dual sets were the most focused and rewarding I've ever seen them pull off. I would have loved to catch the counterpoint pair at the Crocodile, if I hadn't been busy. It's a shame that you felt the need to leave.
I won't try to defend the super-long intermission, though it's better than sitting through a mediocre opener followed by a set-up/soundcheck of similar length. Spruance turned each of his robes into a sweaty, dripping, clingy mess; is it possible he needed a shower during the break?
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