Bloglander

Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene opens The Scarlet Letter this weekend: Fri-Sat 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm. (It closes April 3.) In Phyllis Nagy's 1994 adaptation — edgy, feminist, sensual — Pearl is all grown up and acts as the narrator, Hester Prynne is less ashamed than self-assertive, and Hester's husband Roger Chillingworth uses sex to control others. There's devil worship and boot-licking and all kinds of Freudian overtones. Director George Green's production will condense and modernize Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, just not the way Grandma remembers it. Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City, Warm Springs, won a Tony for Rabbit Hole in '05) appeared in a Greenwich Village production in '94, reviewed by Ben Brantley. 

9 to 5 sets every woman's revenge fantasy — showing up your arrogant, sexist boss — to music. And every song was written by Dolly Parton herself! Thurs 7:30, Fri 8 pm, Sat 2 pm and 8 pm, Sun 1 pm and 6:30 pm at the INB Center. Tickets: $32-$61. Read a preview and another.

'Team Spliff' comes out smoking — Columnist John Blanchette looks at all the smoke and mirrors behind WSU basketball's latest pot bust. (SR) And, the Cougars beat Northwestern in OT to make NIT semifinals in Madison Square Garden (SR)

Spokane Valley, the other white meat — After months of clucking and scratching, Valley loosens up on chickens. Mmmm. (KXLY)

Bomb suspect pleads not guilty — Feds arraign Kevin Harpham as suspect who placed bomb along route of Spokane's MLK Unity march; keep probable cause documents secret. (KXLY)

Heavy metal washout — No, it's not Ozzy Osbourne. January floods washed 176 tons of lead mining waste into Lake Coeur d'Alene. (SR)

Bonus! 'Hard' time for porn hacker — Russian hacker who flashed porn onto digital billboard along busy Moscow road (creating quite the traffic jam) is sentenced to 18 months. (BBC)

The local arm of Sensible Washington has firmed up hours, locations and contact information in the petition drive to legalize marijuana in the state.

The group, which is framing the debate as a repeal of prohibition on cannabis, has been collecting signatures for the past week for Initiative 1149, which would put the legalization question up to vote in the fall election. Backers must gather 241,153 valid signatures by July 8.

Local organizer David Bilsland says volunteers who wish to gather signatures — or who have completed forms to turn in — can gather at the street-level meeting rooms at the downtown branch of the Spokane Public Library every Wednesday from 10 am to 8 pm.

In our March 17 blog post, we printed an incorrect e-mail address for Bilsland. The correct e-mail address is bilabamboo@yahoo.com. Bilsland says there is also an information phone number, 509-703-0709.

Also, for more information, visit the Sensible Washington site.

The laugh track gets a bad reputation.

In his book, "Eating the Dinosaur," Chuck Klosterman wrote a whole essay snarking against the use of laugh tracks on television. He actually found them offensive: He didn't need a laugh track, he said, to tell him what was funny.

He made a number of errors. Most of the shows he lambasted don't use canned laughter. Most shows with background laughter perform the show in front of a live studio audience, and that studio audience's laughter is recorded for broadcast. Both laugh tracks and the sound of studio audience laughter aren't there to let us know what's funny. They're there to put us at ease, to simulate the experience of laughing along with an audience. Laughter, after all, is contagious.

There are three types of sitcoms. Some, like Community and  30 Rock, are "movie-style" – they have no disembodied laughter in the background. These sort of sitcoms saw a resurgence in the 2000s with shows like Scrubs and The Office. A lot of young viewers, like me, prefer this style. It seems normal. And it comes with advantages – a single-camera comedy, without a studio audience, can go anywhere and do anything. Like Community, these shows can prance off on long rabbit trails with a genre spoof – where the humor comes from atmosphere and style, rather than jokes. Like Scrubs, they can easily transition from comedy to tragedy without feeling a need to keep generating laughs through the whole episodes.

But let's not kid ourselves. Movie-style sitcoms tell us when we're supposed to laugh just as much as sitcoms with audience laughter. They do it with quirky music, quick cuts and key pauses. Watch a particularly unfunny episode of Perfect Couples and you'll see the moments where you are supposed to laugh, just in the rhythm of the line delivery and the editing.

Other sitcoms use studio audiences (Big Bang Theory, Cheers.) It not only simulates watching a comedy in a crowd for those watching at home, performers testify that having a live audience reacting invigorates and improves their performance. It's the difference between the quality of a comedian's act when he performs it in front of the mirror and  when he performs in front of a packed theater. And just as it forces the performers to woo the audience, it forces the writers to pack the scripts – for good and bad – densely with punchlines. It does no good to write a script to make the audience amused, or make them smile. It has to make them laugh. As a result, in these shows we see broader, rimshot comedy valued over the "comedy of tone/comedy of quirk" style that, say, Wes Anderson uses.

But for all the thrill of performing in front of a live studio audience, it comes with a problem. It's generally stuck with very few sets. The show's world becomes that much smaller. If How I Met Your Mother was stuck with a studio audience, it could never do a fun sequence like this. Notice how the laughter is subtle, much more unobtrusive and organic than the sing-songy wacky music of an ABC comedy.

That's because How I Met Your Mother, generally regarded as a more sophisticated comedy than Big Bang Theory, uses that dreaded thing called a laugh track. Early on, Mother showed video of a completed episode to a studio audience and recorded the laughter but that technique was soon abandoned for a straight laugh track. In the past, sure, laugh tracks have been loud and obtrusive, but in How I Met Your Mother it only serves as an undercurrent, sweetening jokes, not interrupting them.

Here we have the contrast: Modern day laugh tracks are quiet enough to slot in between and on top of dialogue, without intruding. Studio audiences, hyped up on being there live and in person, will laugh at nearly anything – and they will laugh loud and long, as the actors fidget and sway to kill time. Here, for example, is a Big Bang Theory scene with the audience laughter cut out.  Notice the length of the pauses.

A few weeks ago, Raj, one of the four principal nerds on The Big Bang Theory, leaves the room with the line: "I have to tinkle." It isn't an especially funny line. It's a filler. It appears to be a line written for four-year-boys by four-year-old boys.

But under each sitcom style, there are three ways such a line could have landed:

In a movie-style sitcom, like Community, it would come and go without incident. It's a weak line, but said with the right delivery with a character like Abed or Troy, it could be funny enough for a "heh" or two from those watching with home. In a sitcom with canned laughter, the producers, aware of the line's hokey nature, it could lay over a muted small-chuckles response from the laugh track. Instead, Big Bang Theory's heavily miced studio audience doubles over in gales of loud and long guffaw.

For the performers and studio audience members, these gales of laughter are a sort of exhilarating high. But for those at home, it's painful.

Laughter can improve the rhythm of a show, or it can suffocate it. I tend to prefer that any laughter at all comes from me, the viewer. But when producers can control their own laughs – choosing when to add laughter, and how loud – laughter becomes a tool, like music or sound-effects, not a risky variable.

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David's Pizza, near downtown Spokane, celebrates happy hour from 2-5 pm. Specials include $1.25 slices of cheese pizza and $1 glasses of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The Flame, in east Spokane, serves up happy hour from 5-7 pm. Specials include $2 wells drinks, $2 cans of Budweiser and Bud Light, and $1.75 cans of Bush and Bush Light.

The Fort Ground Grill, in Coeur d'Alene, ushers in happy hour from 2-5 pm. Specials include $2.50 wells drinks, $2 pints of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Bud Light, and $4.95 select appetizers.

Goodtymes, in Spokane Valley, celebrates happy hour from 5-6 pm. Specials include: buy two domestic pints or two wells drinks for half price.

Litz's, in north Spokane, serves up happy hour from 4-7 pm. Specials include: $4 for whiskey well drinks.

The bill — Senate Bill 5073 — passed the Senate last month. It would regulate the state's burgeoning cannabis dispensary industry, which is currently operating without the protection of law. Last week, Scott Shupe, a former owner of a local dispensary, was convicted of multiple drug trafficking charges stemming from his duties at Change, the dispensary. This has led many local dispensary owners to close their own doors, fearing the same thing could happen to them.

But if the Legislature clarifies the law and licenses dispensaries, the medical cannabis landscape could change. 

Indictment for Spokane bomb — Federal grand jury sees enough evidence to indict Kevin Harpham as a suspect in planting a shrapnel-laced bomb at January's MLK Unity March. Harpham goes before a judge today. (SR)

Guys, it's not Reefer Madness —  WSU basketeers lose a third player, DeAngelo Casto, to a marijuana citation on eve of NIT quarterfinal game. (KREM)

Mini megaload madness? — Imperial Oil is cutting down its 33 megaloads at the Port of Lewiston to move them up U.S. Highway 95 to I-90 at Coeur d'Alene. (Moscow-Pullman Daily News)

"Hot" water in Japan — Radioactive iodine detected in Tokyo tap water; parents warned to keep it away from infants. (BBC)

Liz Taylor Bonus Link No. 1! — Taylor and Burton heat up the screen ... in French! (YouTube)

Liz Taylor Bonus Link No. 2! — Portraits of the lady through the years. (YouTube)

OMG HAVE YOU SEEN THE NEW 3D handheld thingy? We haven't either. But we've heard things. Less heard than witnessed: the collective shruggings of millions in the videogame community. Nintendo made a handheld gaming unit with a 3D screen that doesn't require glasses? Rad. The screen is like three inches? Less rad. It costs a million dollars? Hmmmm.

As a proof of concept, though? Jury's out. Might end up killing, like the original DS. Might find a place on the shelves of ignominy next to the Virtual Boy.

We'll let you all spend your money finding out. Keep us posted, though.

DVD

The Tourist
The every-man-embroiled-in-espionage ended up being so effing laughable it earned Golden Globe nominations in the comedy category. Can't make this stuff up, folks. At least Depp and Jolie are still hot. Rated PG-13 

Yogi Bear 
I know some of you have children, so I feel compelled to alert you to the existence of this film. That is all. Rated PG

How Do You Know
Classic love triangle during a quarter-life crisis, sexed up by the fact that Reese Witherspoon is a hella good softball player. Wait, did we say sexed up? We meant ...  Rated PG-13

MUSIC

We could waste a day going through all the releases this week (Jennifer Hudson! Green Day live! Panic at the Disco, etc) sure to interest fans of certain kinds of music, but we thought we'd focus on two releases that may just stand the test of time. The way obelisks in Egypt do. Maybe not that test, but a similar one.

All You Need Is Now | Duran Duran
Okay, another DD album is cause enough to celebrate. But then we heard Mark Ronson was producing. Then we heard Ronson describe All You Need Is Now as an "imaginary follow-up to Rio that never was," and we were like "OK, this guy gets it."

W.A.R. | Pharaohe Monch
NY Rapper gets lots of critical acclaim for bringing merciless bleakness back to rap — and not in a schizoid DMX way, or a coke-game way, or a Michael Vick way, either. These are not narrative raps. They're stacked rhymes about kicking ass. 

VIDEOGAMES

Another thin week. Mostly ports from one current-gen format to another (as in the case of ASSASSIN'S CREED: BROTHERHOOD coming to PC) to remakes of classic games (as in the PSP's DISSIDIA 012, an update of SquareEnix's Final Fantasy universe fighting game).

The one interesting release is Ridge Racer 3D, which, critical consensus says, makes the best use of the Nintendo 3DS' 3D screen out of all the titles available at launch — showcasing what's possible, if not totally justifying the device's existence.

Sweet Madness! — Gonzaga women shred UCLA, gain Sweet 16 of NCAA women's tourney. And meanwhile, in the NIT, Cougars advance. (SR)

Dazed and confused — Medical marijuana dispensary owners pack City Hall, ask council to clear up laws on supply and sales. (KXLY)

Grand jury hears bomb evidence — Federal authorities, hoping for an indictment, today will present the evidence that led to the arrest of a Stevens County man as the suspected  MLK bomber. The suspect, Kevin Harpham, won't be present. (KREM)

Are we in "Blade Runner?" — Spokane did it's best impression of moody, damp, wet, rainy, gloomy, drizzly (did we say wet?) Harrison Ford movie. (SR)

A cut too far — Congress' budget-cutting bill wipes out program for homeless veterans. (SR)

Bonus link! RIP, Pinetop — A video tribute to blues pianist Pinetop Perkins. (YouTube)

Tuesday double bonus! — Is this the future, or Spokane on Monday? (YouTube)

In January, Rose Dempsey, feeling that her views were unheeded and ignored, resigned from city council. Now the second voice of dissent, Bill Gothmann, says he will not run for re-election.

Earlier this year, Gothmann had filed with the Public Disclosure Commission for a 2011 candidacy. He says that he had not made up his mind at that time — he just wanted to be able to legally pay money to set up a website.  

Last week, Gothmann spent eight days in Kaua'i with his wife, discussing whether he should run for office for another term. Ultimately, he decided that, really, he'd rather focus his retirement on spending time with his wife and traveling to places like Kaua'i. He says he welcomes the private life, away from the public "fishbowl."

Gothmann served as a councilman for six years. (Spokane Valley, unlike Spokane, doesn't have term limits.)

"I'm not a believer that city council members should be lifelong politicians," Gothmann says. "I think council should be citizen folks, not professional politicians."

This November, four city council spots will be up for grabs in the election, at least three of which will not feature a full-term incumbent.