Buzz Bin

by Inlander Staff & r & & r & Awfully Big for a Rock Band & r & On Friday night, the Spokane Symphony Orchestra wore polo shirts instead of formal wear. (Scandalous.) After Eckart Preu -- always engaging from the podium -- compared the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth to Bernard Hermann's violin screeches from Psycho, Chang-Min Lee brought listeners to their feet with an amazing Paganini solo on the double bass. Then percussionists Rick Westrick and Paul Raymond used nothing but their hands to perform Steve Reich's mesmerizing Clapping Music. (Westrick showed up at ella's soon after to sit behind the drum kit as part of Brent Edstrom's jazz trio.) And the ever-elegant Kelly Farris wrapped up his long career with red electric violin in hand as he portrayed the evil Lex Luthor in Michael Daugherty's Metropolis Symphony. Note to SSO: Let's blur these cultural boundaries more often.





Zoo Closure & r & Starting with next week's issue, Spokane cartoonist Gabe Strine will have said goodbye to The Zoo. Don't worry, he'll be replacing it with Brinkerhoff, a comic strip about a post-divorce world in which the protagonist fantasizes about how their parents' separation would affect the kids he never had. So check out the final Zoo on page 65.





Shortcut in View! O! the Joy & r & Everybody remembers Lewis and Clark making it all the way to the Pacific. But the return trip? Feh. And yet the LC Posse took chances on the return trek: They cut corners on a curve of the Snake River and took an easterly shortcut that wound through present-day Prescott, Waitsburg, Dayton, Pomeroy and Clarkston, Wash. (Oh, and Lewiston, Idaho, too.)


Learn all about it in a half-hour documentary airing on KSPS tonight at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3:30 pm. Call (509) 335-6536 for KWSU air times.





The Day the Sign Stood Still & r & During his daily commute, a guy over in King County passes workers doing road repairs near his house. Yet weeks after the construction project is over, the roadside electronic sign informing drivers about delays and detours is still blinking repeatedly, aimlessly.


Guy wonders if he can do anything about it. Much to his surprise, the sign's keypad is unlocked and the password clearly posted.


So, like any normal American in such circumstances, the guy reprograms the sign to read "Klaatu Barada Nikto." Once that message is blinking on and off, over and over, he moves on to the next sign, with similar intent.


A jogger passes by, breathing heavily. Had the guy noticed that sign back there? Something wrong with it. Written in some kind of foreign language. Weird.