• Last weekend at On the Boards, audiences squirmed through the quartet, Heather Kravas‘s punishing four-part vivisection of dance genres: sinister naked cheerleading, agonizing ballet with interminable sous-sus steps (a hop up onto the toes and back down again that should be banned as torture under the Geneva convention), a Broadway-style chorus line whose only lyric was “want,” and disturbingly cartoonish (i.e., protofascist) European folk dance. Most of the audience sat on metal bleachers on the stage, adding to the discomfort—both psychological and lumbar. After the applause died down, a couple was heard to say, “We’re going to have to discuss this.” “Yeah. Hard.” The night was classic OtB, with the audience hacked into three camps: love, loathing, and confusion, or all three simultaneously.
• Onstage in New York last week, Jane Fonda handed former Stranger staffer Lindy West the 2013 Women’s Media Center Social Media Award while Lily Tomlin and Gloria Steinem cheered. West gave a rousing acceptance speech. “I… hear people asking, ‘Where is the next generation of the social-justice movement? Where are all the young feminists and womanists and activists?’ Dude, they’re on the internet. They’re working their asses off. And if you can’t hear them, it’s because you’re not listening.” Read her every day on Jezebel.
• In Iceland, you can bake a loaf of bread via geothermal energy by burying it in the ground. TRUE! We ate some of this bread last week, and it was good.
• After a well-received premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Megan Griffiths’s Lucky Them—the Toni Collette–led dramedy about a Seattle music critic assigned to track down her long-lost rock-star love (and featuring a key unbilled cameo by one of the biggest movie stars on the planet)—has been
acquired by IFC Films for US release.
• We already know that anonymous was a woman. Now there’s evidence to suggest that the world’s first artists—the cave painters—were probably women, too. Last week in National Geographic, American archaeological anthropologist Dean Snow shared his findings that most of the handprints in caves 20,000 to 40,000 years old were female, not male, as had been assumed. When you assume, you make a man out of you and me.
• Hear ye, hear ye. To get listed in the next round of large, spicy, post-them-on-the-fridge-useful A&P arts calendars, here’s what you need to know. The deadline: November 1. The dates covered: December 4 to February 28. The calendars: readings, performance, art, film, jazz, and classical music. Send info to calendar@seattleaandp.com.
• Canadian short-story-ist Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in literature last week. Only Bret Easton Ellis was jealous; everyone else was happy for her.
• As winter approaches, many Seattle Lyft cars are considering letting their beards grow out. 