Bloglander

That's a quote from one of my favorite movies, Friday. And, folks, this is a Friday that could go down in the books. 

Start your weekend with a punch in the face. Well, not your face (unless you deserve it, but that's your deal). There's a chance other people's faces will be punched at the art/music/extravaganza planned tonight at Spokane Boxing (1826 E. Sprague). Art by dozens of amazing Spokane artists will adorn the walls of the boxing gym, and bands — Please Draw In Me, Jaeda, Quiz, Freetime Synthetic, Stone Tobey, Ze Krau, DJ Likes Girls and Belt of Vapor — will cram in the ring to play. Musical punches fly from 6 pm to 1:30 am. $5. All-ages — and yes, there will be booze for you 21-plus-ers.

Chests will be bared, panties will likely be thrown over at The Blvd tonight. Yes, the Makers — known for their over-the-top stage antics and fierce brand of garage rock — are back in town for one night of debauchery. Magnaaflux and Ze Krau open the show at 9 pm. $10, 21. 

You don't have to be a ginger to be there, but Empyrean is throwing the "Red Head Bash" for its ginger-haired co-owner, Michelle Riddle. It's her birthday, and Whiskey Dick Mountain, Imperial Sparks and Hey is for Horses are taking the stage to make some noise for her. Show starts at 7 pm, and will cost you $5. All-ages. 

If you have any ounce of the blues in you, you'd be in good company all day Saturday at Daley's Cheap Shots (6412 E. Trent). Crosstown, Don Larson & the Cynics, the Longnecks, Voodoo Church and the Boozefighters. It's 10 bucks for all day. And the show poster says "Dress up to get messed up" ... so you're probably going to want to do that. 

Bust out your powdered wig and head to Sunset Junction for that annual west-side band invasion, WigBash. Tomorrow night Space Opera 77 takes the stage with Paris Spleen, the Globes and SHIM. $6. 9 pm. 

Damn. Now that's a weekend for ya.  

“It’s a powder keg of black fury that’s about to explode!”

That line was a great way to advertise the 2009 blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite. And when real estate developer Chris Olson watched the film with coworkers recently, he thought it would also be a great way to attract renters to his latest condominium project, in Peaceful Valley.

“We laughed our asses off,” Olson says. “It’s a great movie, it makes for a funny poster.”

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A Black Dynamite banner now hangs outside the C4 condos, located near Maple Street and Clarke Avenue, Olson’s phone number and the words “Now Leasing” appearing alongside star Michael Jai White with an afro and nunchucks. The sign makes passersby do a double take at the dark, square condos, which stand in stark contrast with the older homes of the Peaceful Valley neighborhood.

“I’m just trying to get people to notice it,” Olson says. “If I don’t get any action off the sign in a week I’ll probably change it to something a little tamer.”

Olson says people who visit the condos are amused by the sign, which has been up since Saturday. So far he hasn’t received any negative reactions, but he welcomes anyone with complaints to give him a call.

“It wasn’t to piss people off,” he says, “It was for people to look at it and giggle… If people got offended to the point where they get really pissed off at me I would probably take it down.”

Olson says this banner is tame compared to other advertisements his real estate company, O on Clarke, has put out. He declined to give examples.

“We send funny crap like that all over the place all the time,” he says. “The people who appreciate stuff like that are the people I want to rent the buildings.”

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Wind up You thought the windstorms were bad this week? They're about to get even worse, with gusts up to 45 miles an hour hitting today and tonight. Pity the poor out-of-shape biker who must cycle against such cruel headwinds.

Rebates for refrigerators A new program funded by the federal Department of Energy will begin giving $100 and $75 rebates to those Washingtonians who switch to new, more efficient home appliances.

The explosions of Gaza Stimulus: Twenty rockets and mortars were fired into Israel from Gaza last month. Response: Israel retaliates with four air strikes against what the military says were weapons manufacturing centers.

Too big for your breaches? The Army Corp of Engineers recently released a plan for how to eventually create a plan to possibly breach the four dams on the lower Snake river. Upgrading to a full study, the Corps said, would require some sort of key event, like a massive decline in salmon population.

Spirits were high at the distillery this afternoon. Asked for a comment, co-owner Kent Flesichmann — hands covered in mash — said, "How about 'yahoo'?" 

"'Hell yeah.' That's our comment," said another co-owner, Don Poffenroth. "We worked hard getting that done and Chris Marr was gracious enough to help us once again." Marr also authored the state's first craft distillery law, in 2007. This one raises the amount distilleries are allowed to produce from 20,000 gallons per year to 60,000. Poffenroth says last year they produced about 12,000 gallons and were worried they'd be brushing up against the old ceiling this year. Thus, their lobbying for this new legislation.

“We needed to do something,” Marr said in a press release this afternoon. “Here we’ve got a local success story exceeding all expectations and other distilleries popping up in other communities. We need to get out of the way and let them grow.”

The new law also allows craft distilleries to contract their services out to agricultural producers. A farmer might provide their own grain, says Poffenroth, go to Dry Fly to distill it, then head back to the farm for bonding and aging before returning to Dry Fly for bottling. (This booze would be included in the distillery's 60,000-gallon limit.)

"We have one farmer out of Colfax we're working with right now on an Irish-style whiskey," Poffenroth says.

Another periodic release of Dry Fly's own whiskey on Saturday went like a flash — some 65 cases of the stuff disappeared in two hours.

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The department has "clear legal duties under the Clean Water Act to prevent sediments and other pollutants from spewing into these streams, and they're not doing it," Eichstaedt says in a press release. "WDOT and its contractors should have been paying attention to prevent polluted stormwater from pouring into these waterways."

You can download the legal notice to file suit here. To read our profile of Eichstaedt from January, go here. The full press release is after the jump.---

Spokane Riverkeeper files notice to sue Washington Department of Transportation over polluted stormwater flowing into local streams from highway construction.

On behalf of the Spokane Riverkeeper, the Gonzaga University Environmental Law Clinic has filed notice with the Washington Department of Transportation that it intends to file a Clean Water Act lawsuit to stop illegal stormwater discharges to two Spokane River tributaries. Specifically, the notice alleges WDOT has "failed to take adequate steps" to prevent pollution-laden stormwater (draining from land that has been disturbed for construction of the U.S. 395 North Spokane Corridor Project) from entering and visibly polluting Deadman Creek and the Little Spokane River. Deadman Creek is a tributary to the Little Spokane River in north Spokane, and the Little Spokane River is a tributary to the Spokane River.

"Just to be clear," said Eichstaedt, "this is not a suit to try to stop or otherwise impede construction of the new highway. The problem is that WDOT and its contractors have clear legal duties under the Clean Water Act to prevent sediments and other pollutants from spewing into these streams, and they're not doing it. Deadman Creek and the Little Spokane are not Third World drainage ditches. These are streams that contribute to the aesthetic and ecological values that recreational users and property owners in Spokane have every right to expect, by law."

Both Deadman Creek and the Little Spokane are currently listed (http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/tmdl/littlespokane/wq_issues.html) as out of compliance with state water quality standards, including for turbity, which stormwater runoff can contribute to.

"The fact that both streams are subject to water quality restoration plans is all the more reason WDOT and its contractors should have been paying attention to prevent polluted stormwater from pouring into these waterways," Eichstaedt said. "Of course, any pollution dumped into Deadman Creek and the Little Spokane just heads downstream to the Spokane River, which is also subject to stringent water quality restoration plans. The Spokane River certainly does not need any more pollution."

Among other things, the notice letter alleges WSDOT and its contractors have violated the project's construction permit by failing to employ best management practices and install adequate control measures to mitigate stormwater pollution.

"BMP's [Best Management Practices] have not been put in place on downward slopes along the Road Project to provide proper sediment control," the notice states. "The slopes are either completely uncovered, or inadequately covered, and therefore during storm events water easily flows down the slopes carrying sediment and discharges into Deadman Creek and/or the Little Spokane River. Additionally, vegetation has been removed from the slopes without any alternative sediment control measures put in place." (Construction photos showing the disturbed and exposed soils can be viewed on the WSDOT website: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/US395/NorthSpokaneCorridor/Photos.htm

The notice includes photographs of drainage piping apparently used to route stormwater directly into streams, and eye-witness accounts of stormwater events during which citizens reported that stream water turned "dark brown" or "bright green" as a result of pollution. One of the eye witness accounts comes from Spokane Riverkeeper member and former County Plan Commission chairwoman Lindell Haggin who contacted Eichstaedt after she observed dark brown water in Deadman Creek in early January. Haggin does volunteer water quality sampling for the Spokane County Conservation district on both Deadman Creek and the Little Spokane River.

"At least two areas of concern have been identified by Riverkeeper along the 10-mile road project," the notice reports. The first is at a newly constructed culvert where the project encounters Deadman Creek in the "US 2 Section." The second is at the "Wandermere Section" of the project where the Wandermere golf course abuts the Little Spokane River where the road project "features significant grading on a steep de-vegetated slope."

Both Eichstaedt and Mike Chappell, the law clinic’s director, say they're especially disappointed in the extent of the observed violations given how much public money is involved.

"This is a high profile project that has sufficient funding to ensure compliance with the Clean Water Act," says Chappell. "The project recently received a substantial amount [$35 million, http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/funding/stimulus/tiger.htm] of stimulus money from the federal government, so the Department of Transportation has no excuses for not complying with environmental laws and protecting our natural resources."

“Our hope is that this action will bring WSDOT to the table to develop a plan to quickly bring this project into compliance with the law,” says Eichstaedt. “We also want to send a message that compliance with stormwater permitting requirements is an important measure to protect our river.”

Eichstaedt and Chappell noted that the investigations leading to the notice letter are part of the Spokane Riverkeeper's emphasis on detecting and correcting industrial and construction stormwater pollution in the Spokane River basin.

"The Washington Department of Ecology has only issued four permits for industrial stormwater in Spokane County," Eichstaedt noted. "But we estimate they're at least dozens and possibly hundreds of sources that should be subject to permits." --CFJ

Few local productions have been more deserving of a bigger budget than Amadeus. With a powerful performance by Damon Abdallah as Antonio Salieri (the accomplished composer who is nonetheless outshone by Mozart’s brilliance) and several features that distinguish it from what you think you know (from the 1984 movie) about the script, director Jhon Goodwin’s production accomplishes much with minimal resources.

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Barren set. The Vienna court nobles, not in powdered wigs and silks, but running around in shirts and ties like so many middle managers or insurance salesmen. Mozart’s wife, Salieri’s prize pupil, and the two Venticelli (here played by two women) displaying cleavage in corsets atop long skirts — plenty of sex appeal, but a contemporary look instead of 18th-century elegance.

The payoff in making such a virtue of (financially constrained) necessity was in Eric Paine’s hipster Mozart, a Hollywood producer type in floppy sleeves and jeans, way cooler and more rebellious than his aristocratic Viennese patrons. Here, the contemporary touch worked: At a glance, you could see who’s uptight and who isn’t.

Playwright Peter Shaffer has revised his script repeatedly, pointedly making room in the conclusion for greater historical accuracy (or at least less self-assurance about the circumstances of the Requiem and Mozart’s death at age 35). That, the de-emphasis of spectacle and underscoring of the language here, Paine’s unself-consciousness about the fact of Mozart’s genius, and the energy provided by the Venticelli are all reasons to take in this show (and not assume that you’re good because once, long ago, you saw the movie).

As Salieri’s gossip-mongerers and hangers-on, Marnie Rorholm and Ariel Cansino emphasize seductiveness over energy. The suggestion that poor repressed, conservative, married Salieri has beautiful admirers sets up his manipulative seduction of Mozart’s wife Constanze (Janelle Frisque, sultry) nicely, but the energy of rapid-fire news-gathering seemed to be missing. The Venticelli, however, allow Shaffer to move the plot along and provide Salieri some allies, so he’s not quite so alone.

Abdallah — at first hunched over as an elderly man in a wheelchair, later the hands-crossed-in-submission schemer at court — delivers one of the best local performances in memory. He achieves great intensity in the Act One-closing sequence, Salieri’s impassioned rejection of any God who would choose vulgar Wolfy instead of dignified Antonio to be the vessel of divine musical brilliance. (“What use is man, if not to teach God a lesson?” – Yikes, I could feel the blasphemy and feared the oncoming thunderbolt.)

Shaffer’s much-reworked plot and some laggard pacing, however, worked against the effect: at two and a half hours, some of Shaffer’s urgings about Salieri as mediocre talent, the resentment of Mozart’s childish behavior, his ravings against God — all seemed over-extended. Goodwin might’ve trimmed here and there — and in the blocking, he sometimes allowed five-person-wide static groupings of actors to impede the onstage progress.

Paine, a talented comedic actor, was engaging in the early going, with his high-pitched giggles and calm self-persuasion that yes, I am just about the greatest composer who has ever lived. (You have to admire a guy who commuted weekly, 800 miles roundtrip from Marysville, for the sake of a volunteer acting gig; and he was memorable in Lend Me a Tenor at the Civic in 2002). But the final, tragic sequence seemed beyond Paine’s grasp: the loss of his art and his Constanze still had a kind of bemusement about it, when the script calls for tragedy and despair.

Random notes: Abdallah’s dismissive gesture on “the voice of God in an obscene child” was powerful. Paine looked authentic in plinking away at the “harpsichord.” Paine’s mockery of Italian composing as unimaginative (“tonic and dominant, on and on”) was self-assured. Words like “breeches,” Idomeneo and “seraglio” were mispronounced. Frisque was reluctantly seductive and Abdallah was nervous and awkward — both, just as the script calls for — in their seduction scene. Paine needs more weight in his remorse over the (retold) death of Mozart’s father, Leopold — and more horror and guilt near the play’s end.

Despite flaws, however, Goodwin has presented a meaningful drama that reconceptualizes some of what it means to go on in life, as we all do, knowing that we aren’t the best at what we do. Not even near it. And yet on we trudge.

Salieri, a mediocrity, speaks for and to us. And some of those moments under Bryan Durbin’s light design — Abdallah’s upturned, anguished face; Paine’s quizzical chortling — are moments that will live in your memory. If you get out to CdA this weekend.

Amadeus runs at Lake City Playhouse through Sunday (April 1-3 at 7:30 pm)

Coming up at Lake City Playhouse:  Jekyll & Hyde (the musical), May 1-2, 6-9, 13-16, 20-23

U.S. Commerce Secretary and former Washington governor Gary Locke today defended President Obama's recent reformation of health care in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

"I understand that in these difficult economic times, the potential for any additional expense is not welcomed by American businesses," Locke writes. "But in the long run, the health insurance reform law promises to cut health-care costs for U.S. businesses, not expand them." 

The editorial comes on the heels of 13 attorneys general (including Washington's Rob McKenna) taking action against the federal government, citing the 10th Amendment and the Commerce Clause as protection against reform.  

Shifting market forces The Spokane Farmers Market Association is upgrading from a parking lot to a marching band practice field. Thanks to construction on Second Avenue -- which may become a permanent location for a different market --the Farmers Market will switch from the New Covenant church parking lot to the Lewis and Clark marching band practice field on 5th Avenue and Brown Street.

Methematics 101 Lake Pend Oreille High School students have, for the fifth year, made their position on methamphetamine known: They're against it. Around 100 students marched in an anti-meth rally yesterday. No word if any meth dealers have been swayed by the signs and chants.

Where slug bugs are born Moses Lake may become the new site for a BMW factory to build small parts for lightweight cars. At least, that's what the former Moses Lake mayor reports. The city itself hasn't heard anything.

Parking tickets aren't something to joke about Beware of tall men in basketball jerseys bearing parking tickets. For these tickets slapped upon your car may not be a ticket at all, but a piece city-wide April Fools prank played by the Harlem Globetrotters, who are handing out free vouchers for their upcoming April 15 game. But be careful placing bets, sports fans. I hear the Washington Generals have been really coming together in practice.

The liberal national politics blog, Talking Points Memo, today aired local objections to Barack Obama's pick for U.S. attorney in Eastern Washington.

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Quoting liberally from a recent Spokesman story, TPM reiterated criticisms against Mike Ormsby for his role in the development and construction of River Park Square.

The story's got some legs at this point, but could it sink Ormsby's nomination? 

Check it out here.