Bloglander

If you're checking out this month's First Friday happenings around town tonight, use this map to find out what exhibits and events are taking place at downtown Spokane's galleries and businesses. Click on the blue markers to find out more. 

Local funnyman/videomaker/notable beardsman Aaron Fink, he of the viral Taco Bell taste test video, wants to take you on a dream date to the Northtown Mall.

Now, ladies, don't you all come flocking at once, ya hear?

You've got just three days left to submit your stories for The Inlander's short fiction contest. Multiple stories by one author will be accepted, but each story must be 2,000 words or less. This year's theme, however you wish to interpret it, is "The End." Winner or winners will be published in our late December short fiction issue.

The deadline is this Thursday evening, 11:59 pm PST, Nov. 22. Send stories along in word attachment to Joe O'Sullivan.

Before you get too crazy this weekend, here are a bunch of things that are as easily preventable as stepping in front of a train/bus. All in one adorable PSA. (Where are your ads, STA?) Be careful out there.

(The spot is from the Australian metro and the song is available to download here.) 

The Spokane Symphony announced today that comedian Robin Williams will perform as a part of its Spotlight Series. "An Evening of Sit Down" with Williams and comedian David Steinberg, will take place on Monday, Jan. 14, at 7:30 pm at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox. The show is a riff on Steinberg's mid-2000s show Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg, in which he hosted informal chat-like interviews with actors and comedians.

Tickets go on sale on Monday, Nov. 19 at 10 am, and can be bought at ticketswest.com or by calling (800) 325-SEAT.

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What if your vote counted for a lot more than just one measly person? What ifyour vote was extrapolated to represent hundreds of people? And what if yourvote, instead of changing the course of monetary policy, civil rights or whichcountries get invaded and how hard, counted for things that impact you much moreclosely: Whether your favorite television shows get canceled.

As a TV critic, as just a fan of the medium itself, I’ve long held  a grudgeagainst TV ratings. They killed Terriers. They killedFirefly. They’ll probably kill Last Resort.

But last week, I opened my mailbox to discover a mysterious envelopeaddressed to  a “Daniel Morales” at my apartment number. And it’s from a companycalled “Nielsen.”

“We’ve produced the TV ratings for over 50 years!” the envelope proclaims.

It was every TV fan’s dream: I, or somebody who shared my first name, hadbeen handed the power of life or death over television. For once, whether or notI watched a program would actually matter.

Inside were five crisp 1 dollar bills, presumably a hefty sum 50 years ago,but an insulting sub-grandparent-birthday-card sum today. Also inside was apaper salmon-colored booklet that appeared to be printed on the same material used for SAT tests.

But that’s where the catch came in: Right on the Nielsen Viewing Diarybooklet’s front it said: This Diary is for the TV in room: ________.

That’s a trick question. I don’t have a TV.

Despite watching hours and hours – months if you add them all up– of television programs, the notion of watching them on actual honest-to-godteevee set feels as old-fashioned as making movie-popcorn using a fire pit and butter churn.

This is the age of downloads and streaming, Netflix and Hulu. These are thedays where a TV fan in Seattle can finish watching an episode of Sonsof Anarchy before the “Previously On” sequence even starts on the West Coast.

“Unlike a newspaper or magazine, where a publisher can count how many copiesor sold, there is no simple way to know how many people are watching anyprogram,” a brochure in the envelope read, “The Nielsen Company measures theaudience of TV programs with the information gathered from people like you.”

Imagine that. The Nielsen Company was asking me to sit down, in front of aphysical television set, pick up a pencil (do they still make those?) andmanually record every single show that I watched on which channel and when.

It seems stunningly inefficient. The diary wanted me to record any show thatI watched, even only for a minute. If, say, I watched Gossip Girlbecause I just HAD to see if Blair and Dan were going to patch things up,that doesn’t mean I would want to admit such embarrassing habits to theViewing Diary. It’s a system easily overturned by fraud, inaccuracies,omissions and just plain laziness. The Nielsen Company had randomly assignedhomework —  optional homework — and an entire medium hinged on whichviewers completed it.

And for people like me, without a TV, it was a moral quandary: To make anyimpact on the television landscape I would have to lie. For one, Iwould have to pretend my name was Daniel Morales. I would have to pretend that Ihad a TV. And I would have to go through the effort look up when which show airswhere and weave an elaborate alternate history where I had plopped in front of aflat-screen, instead of a laptop, for hours at a time. I would have tocross-reference, making sure that television programs I’d supposedly watcheddidn’t actually occur at the same time.

To do so could a help save a great but low-rated shows like Last Resortand Parks and Recreation. But it would also mean putting a lot ofwork into what, ethically, was equivalent to voter fraud.

Ultimately, I couldn’t do it. First of all, it was wrong. And moreimportantly, I was lazy.

It might seem like the Nielsen system was hopelessly outdated. It a way, itwas. But the point was never to measure which television shows were beingwatched. It was to measure how much of commercials in between certain TV showswere being watched.

The modern way of watching television – cheap, nearly commercial free, andoften illegal – doesn’t make make much money. To the business model oftelevision networks, it’s essentially irrelevant.

Yes, the paper booklet and gift of five $1 dollar bills are relics from another time.But so is the TV industry.

Although leadership of the Spokane Symphony originally told its musicians that negotiations over a pay cut were over, talks between the two sides have gone back to the table.

Before heading to another meeting with symphony leadership this afternoon, Adam Wallstein, a timpanist and leader of the committee negotiating for a new contract, confirmed that the musicians have "overwhelmingly" voted in favor of going on strike if a suitable agreement is not reached. They notified the symphony's higher ups about the possibility of a strike yesterday.

Wallstein hopes that it doesn't come to a strike, but says they are ready to do so if needed.

"We’re willing to make concessions in light of the symphony's difficulties. They just need to be concessions that we can realistically live with," says Wallstein.

The symphony has previously announced a 13-percent pay cut to the musicians, a decision which caught a little national buzz this week.

The meeting is set for 1 pm today, but it's unclear when and if a resolution will be made. We'll keep you posted on this.

Checking out tonight's First Friday festivities? Use this handy map to plot your way. Click on the markers to see what's happening where.

The kerfuffle surrounding the Spokane Symphony's decision to cut the pay of its musicians has made waves outside of the Inland Northwest.

Huffington Post caught wind of the Symphony's 13.5 percent pay cut to musicians after they cut short negotiations with the players. We covered this in last week's edition of the paper.

The HuffPo story, is essentially an opinion piece arguing that the Symphony's musicians got a raw deal. Here's a sample of the piece by David Beem (who himself is a cellist):

Reflecting on the financial toll the 13.5 percent pay cut will have on Spokane Symphony's 62 full time musicians is an exercise in frustration. The identity of its musicians is largely married couples. (17 singles/45 married.) Poverty level in Spokane, for two adults and one child is $18,304. One adult, without children, hits the poverty threshold at $10,836. The contract in contention is offering roughly $15,000.

Things become more depressing when one grasps that poverty models don't accurately reflect the realities of musicians' lives. Spokane players, for instance, are saddled with considerable student debt. Masters and doctoral degrees are common among their ranks. Instruments, and instrument maintenance, cost a fortune also. Management is gorging itself on the benefits of these expenses, which are absorbed by labor on insultingly low wages, disproportionate to the symphony's fiscal outlook.