Buzz Bin

by Michael Bowen & r & & r & Heil, Mountain Man


By now, Nick Heil has probably forgotten how difficult it is to be an arts and culture editor. He filled that role here at The Inlander in the late '90s, but does he really remember the mind-numbing hours, the fingers gnarled by endless hours of typing?





Nick's recent blog entries at outside.away.com (scroll down to "Online Exclusives") suggest that he's lost touch with real-world concerns. Instead of wrestling with quilt show schedules the way real men do, apparently he's been frittering away his time by climbing some mountain or other in Nepal or Tibet. He goes on and on about 40-below temperatures, about glare so blinding that he had to wear sunglasses inside his tent, about being bent over double and gasping for air while realizing that clumps of his hair were falling out, blah blah.





So OK, maybe surviving at 23,000 feet is a bit difficult. (Nick made it as far as the North Col, below the summit of Mount Everest.) But we're still hitting our deadlines here, you know. We're survivors too!





Hed(wig) (Not) in a Box


Sometimes, even a man in fishnet stockings and do-me heels can be shy. If anything, Dylan Simons wasn't flamboyant enough during his between-songs patter in Hedwig and the Angry Inch last weekend. But he nonetheless helped the Riverwalk show create some electrifying moments, from the indignation of "Six inches forward and five inches back" to the hard-won self-acceptance of "Midnight Radio." Hedwig screamed defiance throughout the hall -- even, at a couple of points, right out the door -- capping off three well-attended performances of a show that some thought Spokane couldn't handle. But audiences handled Hansel, all right; some acted as if they'd like to handle him again.





Our apologies for not crediting the photo we ran last week of the Hedwig cast; it was taken by Gary Peterson.





Sue's Not a Cheap Date


We were mistaken last week ("Meteor Rights") in claiming that the $7 admission to Jack Nisbet's June 27 lecture at the MAC would include an opportunity to gawk at the assembled dino bones. It doesn't. You'll need to fork over an additional $7 to see the supposedly carnivorous but decidedly anorexic-looking T. rex and the museum's other exhibits.??