Ferreting out a viable rhythm for an urban life
My friend Elisa is editor at ParentMap, a parent’s resource magazine that is both a monthly printed magazine and a website and blog. She asked me if she could republish on their blog the story I wrote last fall about J.P. Patches, who was created and portrayed by Chris Wedes, who died over the weekend at age 84.
I said could she ever. She did a great job of it. It’s here:
http://www.parentmap.com/blog/12281/the-city-dump-will-never-be-the-same-a-patches-pal-remembers-jp
Issy, who won the sixth installment of our Great Seattle Gargoyle Hunt, has also gone back and won the fifth. She correctly identified the location of the grimacing gargoyle in GSGH #5 as the old Coliseum Theater on Fifth and Pike, now the Banana Republic store.
Gargoyle #5
I’ve been waiting for a non-rainy moment when I could take a picture of the venerable movie palace to include here, but instead I’ll include another photo by the ubiquitous Joe Mabel, who seems to have photographed every interesting building in Seattle and then licensed all the images to the public. (Thanks again, Joe.)
At least it's still standing. Our gargoyle is to the right of the entryway about fifteen feet up. Image by Joe Mabel licensed through Creative Commons.
My history with this place is that back in 1990, my friend Marni called me and told me that the Coliseum was showing its last movie and would be closing afterwards and that we needed to get down there. At that time I knew little about Seattle’s historic buildings and didn’t even know what the Coliseum was. It was stunningly beautiful inside. We saw Tremors*, a horror-comedy about giant earthworms starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, and at the end of the movie the staff dropped a cloud of balloons down on us from the balcony. Thanks to Marni, I got to participate in this historic finish to a great run.
Wha-----------------!!!!!!?????
pshhiiiiiiiiirrrr!
My friend Pedro and I recently went in there hoping to be shown around the old balcony, which is still up there behind the remodeled interior, but no soap. Pedro had previously used his effortless charm on the clerks to wheedle his way into the hidden historic spaces, but the policy had changed when he came back with me for another go. We hit them on a jittery day this past summer, when management wasn’t taking any chances about lawsuits (or, you know, just being fired for letting people off the street claiming to be history buffs walk around in the back rooms of their business place).
Stucco entities rescued from the theater's interior now work security for the Banana Republic. I don't know whether these are the original decorations or castings made from them.
I told Issy that repeat winners don’t get additional limericks, but she suggested I write one for her as “Isabelle”. I’m not that gullible, but I am that much of a wimp, and so I relented. Plus, her husband (or at least someone CLAIMING to be her husband) made a funny comment on that gargoyle page.
Here you go, “Isabelle”. Thanks again for participating!
Isabelle said, “I know this old Liam.
In my mind’s eye I certainly see him”
The way that she’d go
When she’d step out for joe
Led her back to the old Coliseum.”
*It’s on my list of favorite movies of all time, and Fred Ward is one of my favorite actors.
We go lion-hunting again for the sixth installment of the Great Seattle Gargoyle Hunt. I’d be inclined to rate this an easy one, but no one has yet even taken a wide swipe at the still unsolved GSGH #5, which I would have thought was very easy, so who knows? For rules of play see the first entry, here.
Where are these lions? Use the comments to submit your answer. Again, past winners play for love, not for limericks.
"Down on the corner where the cats hang out" was a lyric by the '80s band Timbuk 3. These corner cats are the subject of GSGH #6
Louis from Brazil* won the second round in our Great Seattle Gargoyle Hunt before it had been up 30 minutes, correctly identifying the Interurban Building as the location of Gargoyle #2. Here’s his prize:
Though Lou now raised his smoke in Brazil
Our quest he set out to fulfill
‘That cat ‘bove the door?’,
He winked, ‘Seen it before’
Then went in for the virtual kill”
Thanks for playing, Lou, and for supporting this blog through your comments for the past two years!
Check out Louis’ online radio station, Rocco’s Musica! Musica!, for some cool lounge, jazz and other great music. Listen while you work!
*Maybe I should explicitly note that people who actually live in Seattle are also eligible to win.
As an early Father’s Day present, and really just because we’re such big fans, Angela treated me to A Prairie Home Companion for a second year in a row. Last year we attended the show for my birthday. Since I wrote last year about the show and what it means to me and to us, I’ll forego the background this time.
Angela had told me to save last Saturday for a date, just the two of us, but wouldn’t tell me what it was. I like surprise dates and don’t usually try deliberately to figure them out, but in this case I didn’t have to. Mara kept the secret, amazingly enough, but the day Angela went to “make the arrangements” for the date she also came home with some clothes for Mara and Millie from the Hanna Anderson outlet store, which I know to be in Woodinville. Knowing Angela’s bird-to-stone ratio, my first thought was that the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery is also in Woodinville and they host a lot of outdoor concerts and stage events on their big chateau-sized lawn, and Garrison Keillor has brought APHC to the Chateau Ste. Michelle stage before. But I didn’t really think she’d try to surprise me with APHC two years running, so I didn’t think that would be it. (Surprise!)
Anticipation...
Saturday morning, after a month of biting her tongue, Mara forgot herself as I made french toast for her and said that if we wanted to see “the show” that day we’d have to take our own chairs. Well, that pretty much sealed the venue. I told Angela that I had a pretty good idea of where we were going (not in front of Mara though, she would have felt bad), and then Angela decided she wanted me to know, then wanted me to guess. I guessed right.
We arrived early, like everyone else, and fetched ourselves up on the big lawn. The lawn is not naturally amphitheatre-shaped, and being a fretful person I started to worry that my experience of the day would most prominently feature the fountain of red hair that sprung in a large and lively mass — even before she fluffed it — from the head of the woman a yard or so in front of me. But then I finally realized, hey…this is a radio show. No worries. In fact, for much of the show I ended up just closing my eyes and enjoyed being stretched out next to my sweetheart under the cumulus-dappled blue skies over Chateau Ste. Michelle, while the swingin’ a capella stylings of the Bodacious Ladyhood trio and — even more impressively — Sarah Jarosz’ dark-edged folk rock and bluegrass wafted out from the stage.
Last croon on the lawn?
An episode of Guy Noir: Private Eye unfolds before us.
A highlight was the pre-ON AIR intro, when Mr. Keillor came off the stage with the microphone and strolled the big lawn in his signature red shoes singing old anthems and songs, hoping to entice the crowd into singing along. He didn’t tour our quadrant but he came close. Another is anything that Fred Newman, the sound effects wiz, does, and he did plenty for this show, including an entire bit at the end after all the impatient-to-get-out-of-the-parking-lot people had already folded up their Costco lawn chairs and were halfway across the big meadow so that they had to stop midfield and look like the impatient-to-get-out-of-the-parking-lot people that they were. I think I’m most fond of Tim Russell, who plays Armand, the maitre d’ of Cafe Boueff, as well as a host of other characters including Lefty (or Dusty, I can never keep them straight) in the “The Lives of the Cowboys” sketch, which they didn’t do this time (nor did they do it when we saw the show last year).
You mighta seen us there...My picnic partner and I.
On the way back from Honeybucket Alley at the south end of the big lawn, Angela ran into a friend of hers who said that she’d heard that this was to be APHC’s last Seattle engagement because Garrison is leaving the show. If that’s true then we’re really bummed out, because we had just decided while driving over to Woodinville that we should make APHC an annual tradition. We didn’t bring Mara with us this time, even though she loves listening to “The Lives of the Cowboys” (we sometimes turn the knob down or start coughing real loud during the occasional risque parts of this segment and “Guy Noir: Private Eye”), and now it seems she might never get to see Mr. Keillor do the show live. We regretted not bringing her, especially since in this venue kids who got the wiggles could be escorted to the far end of the lawn to run around where the show could still be heard. I googled and found where he’d announced that he’ll retire in 2013. Rumors say Erica Rhoades, whom I believe I’ve heard guest-host the show a time or two, is in talks to become his heir, but these are merely rumors as far as I know. If Garrison brings the show back to the winery we’re taking Mara for sure, and maybe Millie too just so we can tell her she saw him live.
I stepped to the back of the crowd to get a shot of the whole event. The sun breaking through at that moment was announced live on the air.
Most people find the idea of a Garrisonless Prairie Home Companion an oxymoron. I think I would be grateful that the show would continue on if it does, and I’d compartmentalize and think about these good ol’ Garrison days as the first incarnation of a great tradition. I’m sure there are fans of Jay Leno who don’t understand the loyalty of the fans of Johnny Carson, and fans of Carson who [ditto] Jack Paar. Then again, not even Johnny’s 30 years on “The Tonight Show” matches Garrison’s run.
It was a great day out. We’ll do it again…if we get the chance.
