Kristen Kosmas didn't come all the way back from New York in order to not do theater. I'm glad to report that her new show, The Scandal, due to open last weekend at Consolidated Works before conflicts led to a mutual parting of the ways, has found a new venue, and will open only a couple of weeks after its scheduled start. The show's set to debut June 16 at New City Theater's space at First Christian Church on Broadway, and local talent Michael Chick has been enlisted for a supporting role in the otherwise one-person show.

Adding to the crowd of part-time returnees (the crowd that inspires the frequently voiced complaint "If you want Seattle to notice you, leave town") is Christopher Welch, rejoining us from New York this summer to act in some play or another at A Contemporary Theatre (A Skull in Connemara). This means, of course, that his great "hollerin' band", the Ottoman Bigwigs, will treat us to a bunch of local shows this summer. The loudest all-acoustic band ever created, the singer/guitarist/drummer trio is your one-stop source for songs about fingering goats and islands made of candy, as well as for poetic lyrics like "I'm hard enough to be your family tree."

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A few weeks back, I expressed my gratitude that the dot-com trickle-down was finally reaching art types, noting the slew of local arts pros snapped up by habit.com. Unfortunately, it took habit less than a month to figure out what took me five minutes--on the web, original content is a money loser--and they've quickly begun to purge their ranks of my friends and acquaintances, including ConWorks' Meg Shiffler and Seattle theater fixture Phil Endicott. But as some leave the land of milk and honey, others enter: Paul Allen's still rich as shit, and his Experience Music Project just stuck a very large prop under the finances of my friends at the Northwest Film Forum, who have added staff due to their new job booking films at the soon-to-open rock museum. Their budget is large, and their brief is wide-open, involving everything from basic film presentation to commissioning silent-movie scores. The money influx to NWFF (which runs the Grand Illusion and the Little Theatre) is a particularly good thing at the moment, as they just got robbed, bigtime, last week. Thieves made off with computers, a new video-editing system, and, just for good measure, cofounder Debbie Girdwood's bike. Anyone with information about this shitty crime should call the cops, or get in touch with the nice NWFF folks at 329-2629.

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Does the Experience Music Project have a lot of money? It certainly does. Some $240 million has gone into the building and its exhibits so far, entirely out of the pockets of Paul Allen. The current generation of philanthropists likes to make money as well as spend it, though, which is why visitors to the EMP will be soaked to the tune of $19.95 each visit. It's a tourist rate, basically; if you're interested in going at all, you might as well buy a membership. They start at $45 ($35 for students under 21) and offer unlimited entry, discounted tickets to special events, and other perks. If you'd like to go to the museum anytime in the first couple of months after it opens, it's probably a good idea to buy now; there's a lot of demand chasing not much capacity. You can buy advance tickets for specific time slots at Ticketmaster now. That's not a plug; I'm just letting you know.

Send gossip and complaints to eric@thestranger.com.