What Floats?
In Monday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Susan Paynter opened her column by praising this year's Gay Pride parade floats as being "better than ever," due to the "more than $4,000 in prizes anted up by local businesses and private donors." At the same time, Paynter all but admitted she hadn't even been at the parade, a probability suspected by The Stranger's celebrity gossip columnist, Adrian Ryan, who, when asked about the improved floats, launched into the following: "Floats? WHAT floats? I am not sure what Susan Paynter was talking about. As far as I can tell, all you need to qualify to be in the Seattle Pride Parade is a small dog (e.g., 'Lesbians with Wieners' and 'Queens with Corgies'), and/or (but preferably and) a Bud Light banner. Unless, of course, those enormous gaps in the parade were some sort of overreaching attempt at being conceptual or artistic--ironically attempting to drive home the vast importance of 'visibility' for us GLTBs."
"But then again," Ryan mused, "does Paul Schell count as a float? Did he win something?" TRACI VOGEL
Declaring Independence
They say that tragedy is not a self-contained event, but ripples out into the world. Case in point: The electrical fire that destroyed the Speakeasy was not just a loss for the coffee-and-Internet crowd, but has also displaced the artistic endeavors that took place there. Bouncing back from this disaster, Joel Bachar, the curator of the microcinema series Independent Exposure, has announced that the interrupted monthly screenings will continue at a new location: Vital 5 Productions (2200 Westlake Ave), one of the coolest and most exciting new art galleries in town. At the recent Henry gala, both Bachar and Vital 5's Greg Lundgren seemed ecstatic over the small-scale merger: "It's so easy!" Lundgren crowed. "I just handed Joel the keys. So easy!"
So here's to the good ideas staring us right in the face--the ones we don't notice until someone burns down a perfectly good venue. EMILY HALL
Ghost World Rises
SIFF may be over, but its power lingers on. According to an e-mail sent by the film's publicist, the release date of Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World has been moved up from August 3 to July 20 as a direct result of the "overwhelming response" the film received at its two sold-out SIFF screenings! Ghost World is the long-awaited screen adaptation of Dan Clowes' classic comic-book novel. Thora Birch won the festival's Best Actress award for her performance as the hypersardonic (but secretly dead inside) Enid. Look for interviews with Birch, Clowes, and Zwigoff in future Stranger issues. SEAN NELSON
Hugo News
Congratulations to the just-announced Writers in Residence at Richard Hugo House: Kathleen Alcalá and Emily White. Alcalá, author of four books of poetry, has plans for such beguiling events as a Latino National Conversation. Emily White, who was editor of The Stranger for four greatly creative years, is a fiction writer as well as a nonfiction writer, with a book about girls branded sluts in high school coming out next year. Both writers start their residencies at the literary arts center in September.
Also, congratulations to precocious 18-year-old Maggie Sandford, who was awarded Hugo House's Founders' Award for promising writers. Sandford, who just graduated from Shorecrest High School, is a poet and playwright. She also helped found Hugo House's Stage Fright open mic for writers under the age of 24, and the character of The Simpsons' Lisa Simpson was based on her. Okay, I made that last part up. TRACI VOGEL
Call for Fall Arts
Artists and arts organizations are asked to e-mail their fall arts schedules (events slated for late August through December) to artsnews@thestranger.com.
