Bloglander

Each Wednesday on Bloglander, we give you a taste of happyhours going on at bars around town that night. (Read previous posts.)

315 Martinis and Tapas,in Coeur d'Alene, celebrates happy hour from 3:15-6 pm. Specialsinclude $3.15 orange-chicken appetizers and $3.15 cosmopolitans.

Big Foot, innorth Spokane, serves up happy hour from 11 am-7 pm (wells specialsonly valid from 4-7 pm). Specials include: $1.50 domestic drafts and$3.25 wells drinks. 

Bolo's,in Spokane Valley, offers happy hour from 3:30-7 pm. Specials include16-ounce beers for $1.50, $3 mugs and $6.25 domestic pitchers.

Dupus Boomer's, in Pullman, serves happy hour from 4 pm to close. Specials include $5 martinis and $5 lettuce wraps. 

Clinkerdagger,in downtown Spokane, welcomes happy hour from 3-6 pm. Specials include$4 select drinks and half off appetizers like buffalo chicken wings,crab and artichoke dip, potato samplers, French dip sliders and teriyakitenderloin.

This video about a perhaps not-too-distant future in which we interact all day with various types and sizes of glass information displays has been making the rounds over the last couple of weeks. And while it's a blatantly self-serving advertisement for Corning (who made that casserole dish on your stove top), it's also kind of awesome. And scary. And exhausting. 

In the video, we watch an entire day through the eyes of a single family. He gets up and watches the news on the stove he's cooking on. She gets a message in her mirror while she brushes her teeth. The kids talk to their grandmother via their kitchen counter. 

There's a lot of cool stuff here, and I reckon Corning's suggestion — that we'll each one day have not many computers but just many ways of accessing the same computer — might not be too far off (I totally predicted thin, roll-up displays years ago!), but it's also a little daunting. Do we want to get nagging messages while we're brushing our teeth? Do the consolidation of computing and the digitization of everything pose any security risks?

What do you think?

Corning - A Day Made of Glass from WESTERNIZED Productions on Vimeo.

Go see a play this weekend. You'll meet grunts in Vietnam, people riding elevators to Hell, a "poisonous hunch-backed toad," and actors performing four different one-hour shows at the Civic. All that, and a Kander and Ebb revue in CdA, too.

Hal Holbrook appears in Mark Twain Tonight! (Sat, 7 pm, INB Center). Visit bestofbroadwayspokane.com. The recent controversies over bowdlerization of Huck Finn and Garrison Keillor's critical review of the first volume of the Autobiography shouldn't obscure the fact that this might be the 86-year-old's final visit to Spokane in the ice cream suit and whiskers. Read a preview.

Jeff Sanders, who's a lecturer in theater at EWU and is currently playing the father in Privilege at Interplayers, has adapted Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War novel, The Things They Carried — which is also the focus of Spokane's version of the Big Read, with discussions and theatrical events taking place all around the area through April 24 and featuring O'Brien's appearance at the Bing on April 16 as part of Get Lit!

Several playgoers have written in to say how impressive they think Sanders' adaptation and his wife Sara Goff's direction are. Just four performances left:  Thurs 5 pm, Fri-Sat 7:30 pm at EWU's University Theater, Cheney; and a special free performance at the Bing on Friday, March 18, at 7:30 pm .

The Washington State Community Theater Festival (known as "Kaleidoscope") is at the Civic: Fri 7-8:30 pm, Sat 2-6 pm. Because of Tacoma's cancellation, Friday brings just one performance (a comedy from Richland about two hacks trying to write a play), while Saturday features three (a two-hander from Richland set in a mansion; the Civic's one-hour version of Spelling Bee; and an Arthur Miller drama from Bremerton). Food and parties at each day's end. $15 and $20. Call 325-2507.

Privilege closes at Interplayers on Saturday. Read a review.  

Damon Mentzer, who has played leading roles at the Civic, Interplayers and Actors Rep, takes on the longest role in Shakespeare in Richard III at SFCC: Thurs-Sat 7 pm. $8. 533-3592. (That's Laurence Olivier in the 1955 movie, right.)

Eurydice is at Whitworth: Fri-Sat 8 pm (final two performances). It's a quirky drama by by Pulitzer nominee Sarah Ruhl (pictured; no, she's not the one in the crown) about the myth told from the wife's point of view: What if she misses her father so much (he's already in Hades) that she doesn't really want to follow her husband back into our world? (Orestes doesn't think of anything besides music anyway.) Brooke Kiener's production in Cowles Auditorium suffers some from proscenium-distancing, but there are lots of humorous moments in this 90-minute show. College shows often have trouble with elderly characters, and this show's no exception; further, the three choral Stones hit a languourous, cynical tone and not much else (there's more potential in the script). But the two leads are full of grace and youthful idealism -- and best of all, set designer Peter Hardie actually pulls off the watery special effects for the rides down to the Underworld. (No spoilers, but it's the show's signature visual effect.) And the final sequence (involving those SFX) was exquisite.  

Ham on Regal ("Hollywood Hogwash") plays at Ferris HS on Thurs-Fri 7:30 pm and Sat 1:30 and 7:30 pm. Call 448-1668.

Menopause the Musical is at Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights, March 12-17 (times vary). Call 242-7000 or visit northernquest.com. And The Music Man will be playing the Pend Oreille Pavillion there on April 5-10.

Fri-Sat 7:30 pm, Lake City Playhouse in CdA has a musical fundraiser directed by Troy Nickerson and music-directed by Carolyn Jess: And the World Goes 'Round: The Music of Kander and Ebb, featuring songs from Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Cabaret, Funny Girl, The Rink and New York, New York, among others. Call (208) 667-1323.

Did you hear about Charlie Sheen?

Of course you did. Last week, Sheen, the star of Two and a Half Men, was subject to one of those white-hot burnouts, in which some figure is thrust into the collective id of the Internet, the mob swarms like a plague of locusts, and then, a week later, all their easy jokes and taunts and Photoshops expended, the mob leaves a drained and withered corpse, in search of some new meme to consume.

This week it was announced, to the surprise of none, that the star had been fired from his hit television show. The felonies, the cocaine, the tardiness, the refusal to get help and — most of all — the repeated, public insulting of his boss had finally caught up with Sheen.

The question, moving forward, is not "What will happen to Charlie Sheen?" He'll sink deeper and deeper into the realm of pure TMZ fodder. The question is: "What will happen to Two and a Half Men?" For now, they've shut down production for the season. The future of this mega-hit is in doubt.  

Should this show continue without Sheen or with some other actor in Sheen's place? Or should Two and a Half Men be canceled despite its current rating dominance?

Nobody, least of all Charlie Sheen, believed Two and a Half Men was a truly great sitcom. My watch-one-episode-of-Two-and-a-Half-Men experiment this January left  me impressed with the construction of one or two jokes, disappointed with the lazy predictability of scores of other jokes, and nearly offended by the aggressively crass, completely amoral tone of it all. Like many other shows by creator Chuck Lorre (Big Bang Theory, Mike and Molly) the undercurrent of Two and a Half Men bubbles with a deep contempt for the characters.

If we lose Two and a Half Men now, in other words, it's no great loss. Many critics have been aghast at people arguing this — aghast at celebrating the shutdown of a show that employed many hard working people. That's understandable. But Two and a Half Men ran for eight years. That's far more than any live-action sitcom could ask for, and more than it deserves. ---

And it's not like Two and a Half Men will be replaced by static. A new TV show, with a new cast and new ideas, providing new jobs, will replace it. Creative destruction is good for the television landscape. Generally, eight seasons (for most, I'd argue five) is the limit for one show. (NYPD Blue and Cheers, fellow critics argue, may be notable exceptions.)

Even the Simpsons, with its amazing writing staff and no concerns about aging actors, took a nosedive in Season Nine. New premises and new casts are necessary for good television. Cancel a show and set those writers and actors free.

There's a bigger argument, of course, for canceling Two and a Half Men than its low quality or its staleness. It's losing the central character. Sheen anchored Two and a Half Men. He's literally 2/5ths of the show.

Countless other shows before now have tried to replace their central characters. After Phil Hartman's murder, Newsradio replaced the irreplaceable Hartman with Jon Lovitz and went out on an anti-climax. The same thing happened with 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, which continued for a season after John Ritter's death. When That 70's Show continued, painfully, without its central characters, something felt off-kilter — missing — about the set.

While Steve Carell is leaving the The Office on much better terms than Charlie Sheen is on his show, the question is the same: Can a show survive the elimination of the character all other characters must react to? Michael Scott may be one of my least favorite characters on The Office, but there's no denying that he's the catalyst for 90 percent of the action. For all his weaknesses as a believable character, he's woven into the DNA of the show. Replace him, and you've got a dramatically different show — one that viewers will immediately rebel against.

Both The Office and Two and a Half Men would benefit from cancellation. The best thing that can happen for a show's legacy is for it to be canceled "too soon." The worst thing that can happen for a show's legacy is for it to be canceled "too late."

The elimination of a crucial character is the perfect moment for a show to end. But The Office and Two and a Half Men are still hit shows. They will go on, even if they shouldn't. Becoming a hit show is like selling your soul to the devil: As long as you turn a profit, the devil can keep you dancing, like a lifeless marionette, long after any inner spark has died.

Sun. Feb 27, you were with a young blond, 5ish years old. Wearing a county firefighters tee shirt. I was wearing a WSU shirt & have long black hair. I was skating with an adorable 10 yo girl. Wish I had had the nerve to ask you to couples skate. Wanna meet me at the rink sometime?

2-25-11. It was right around 6:20p.m., I held the door for you as I was going in & you were going out. I had gotten my pizza & headed out & as I pulled into traffic, I had noticed you again. You had the hood up on your car. Not able to stop in traffic, I pulled around the block & as I returned, you were gone. I was hoping to be able to assist you & to also find out if you would be interested in meeting for a pizza sometime, if possible? Glad to see that you got on your way, guess timing is everything.

Wed, March 23rd. We talked about a museum and a book. You're from Oregon?

Driving down Lincoln in your 2 door silver Honda with the Grenade logo on the back, smiling away! Again downtown weeks later same old smile. Then AGAIN I see smiling beauty days later quickly passing me on High Drive. Tell me, is your music so uplifting every time you get in the vehicle a warm feeling takes over? Is your life so wonderful a frown is not possible? Does someones presence bring it out? I want to know what you are smiling about! Whatever it is, I found myself overcome by a smile.

Sat, 2/26. You & I kept making eye contact & smiling at the bar. I was talking to another guy who happens to be an old co-worker, but I was actually interested in you. Me: Tall, dark haired girl with a black scarf, You: Brown hair, wearing a grey UW lacrosse hoodie. I came out of the bathroom & you were gone. Can we have a "take two?"

When I first met you that summer night in August of 2009, I had no idea that it would be the most life changing moment for me. Falling in love was the last thing I was worried about doing but I managed to be one of the lucky ones to find it so easily. The first night you asked for my permission to kiss me I knew something amazing was going to come from it. I still admire the first bouquet of roses that you gave me on my birthday which was also our first official day of be a couple. Even though you are in the Marine Corps and sent you 5,000 miles away from me, nothing has changed the way that I feel about you. I love you more than words could ever describe and I look forward to any kind of future with you. Thank you for being the man of my dreams.