WEDNESDAY 11/17
Ralph Lemon
Ralph Lemon brings sci-fi and grief to OtB on Thursday.
Paramount
Eyes on the page, Bob.
Related Content
More About
Books: Water, Water Everywhere
There's a lot of water in the Atlantic Ocean, and there's a lot of history sloshing around in Atlantic (Harper, $27.99). Simon Winchester starts before there was any such ocean, just a single continent that would gradually divide into the map we recognize today. (Though, the English writer warns, the Atlantic is inexorably widening, and the facing continents will eventually collide ass to ass.) Previously the author of Krakatoa and The River at the Center of the World, Winchester tacks among many subjects here: Caribbean pirates to the Spanish Armada, The Tempest to J.M.W. Turner, cod to conquistadors. He also interweaves some of his own sailing journeys and adventures in journalism; the effect is like sitting back after dinner to let a polymath tell you, over several expensive bottles of port, all about the Atlantic Ocean. Only here the telling takes a relatively abridged 500 pages. Itself comprehensively indexed, Atlantic is like the index to all the other Atlantic histories at the library. Not that you're likely to read them—that would be like swimming across the Atlantic. Winchester's Atlantic is more a manageable Olympic-sized-pool length. Your arms may be tired at the end of it, but you'll have learned a little something. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
THURSDAY 11/18
Football: Dawg Day Afternoon
Before the current UW football season, scheduling a game during Thursday-night rush hour seemed like a pretty neat idea. Quarterback Jake Locker was billed as a Heisman favorite and appeared ready to lead the embattled Dawgs back into the Pac-10's better half. The younger players, lacking experience in a surprisingly competitive 2009 campaign, had more seasoning, and newish coach Steve Sarkisian was held in universally high esteem. Perhaps best of all, the visiting team on that fateful Thursday would be the UCLA Bruins, led by hated ex-Husky coach Rick Neuheisel, blamed by many for the demise of UW's once-dominant program. Today, however, with the Huskies reeling from three straight conference losses by 30 or more points (a lamentable first in the school's history), Locker is banged up, Sarkisian's honeymoon is over, and the Huskies, now 3–6, will need to win three straight games to be eligible for a bowl game. Hence, the prevailing sentiment is that it was a really dumb fucking idea to schedule a Husky home game during Thursday-night rush hour. Fortunately, you can also watch it on ESPN—assuming you're not stuck in traffic. Husky Stadium, 3800 Montlake Blvd. N.E., 543-2200, gohuskies.com. $32–$66. 5 p.m.MIKE SEELY
Photography: The Zen of Assembly
"The coordinates of a place are four- dimensional, not just three," says Chris Engman, an artist who builds and photographs temporary edifices—stacked 55-gallon oil drums, split logs, wooden scaffolds, even a gravel heap—with time in mind. First there's the time he spends assembling them, the solitary labor you don't see in the final image. Then there's the secondary process, the waiting, as the sun clocks overhead to assume a position in the sky that precisely reverses the angle in one shot, which he then captures in a second. But look closely at, say, a seemingly random pile of cinderblocks in the Nevada desert, and you'll see that they too have been reversed. The diptych panels collected in his new show Dust to Dust often have such subtle multiples, a doubling of labor and image. Engman calls his unseen efforts "the manual version of Photoshop," the careful schlepping of materials instead of the clicking of a mouse. But his photos only document the effects, not the sweat. And when his projects are over, they're disassembled or allowed to decay, subject to the erosion of time. "Nothing lasts," says Engman, "just like the mountains." (Ends Dec. 31.) Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., 624-0770, gregkucera.com. Free. Reception: 6 p.m. (Also: artist talk Sat. at noon.)BRIAN MILLER
Classical: Four Green Composers
Ravel's Boléro hypnotizes not only because of its sultry (but unyielding) tempo or languid tune, but because that tune repeats—and repeats—with only the instrumentation changing. Philip Glass, too, learned how to make a lot from a little, building his chugging, brightly colored Violin Concerto from steady rhythms, simple harmonies, and melodies clearly outlining those harmonies. Bizet also constructed much of the first movement of his Symphony in C (written at age 17) from simple outlined chords, do-mi-sol patterns kittenishly bouncing up and down. He too knew how to recycle and transform; in the scherzo he uses the same main melody for the A and B sections, like Ravel changing only the orchestration. And once Rossini hit on a surefire template for his opera overtures, he saw no reason not to reuse it; for his Semiramide overture, he took a new bolt of cloth but cut it out in the same pattern as many of the others. Four composers who, one way or another, took a highly economical, even parsimonious, approach to music-making: I wonder if these resemblances were deliberate on guest conductor Riccardo Frizza's part, or coincidental, when he was programming tonight's Seattle Symphony concert? The SSO's Elisa Barston is the solo violinist in the Glass. (Repeats Sat.) Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. & Union St, 215-4747, seattlesymphony.org. $17–$105. 7:30 p.m.GAVIN BORCHERT
