The Mark Restaurant, Burien (review)

Omaha and I went to The Mark, a restaurant in Olde Burien, the tiny one-block core of the ancient founding of my little city. The Mark is in a deal with the Burien Little Theater to provide "dinner and a show," in which you buy your tickets through the Theater, and get $20 off any entree. (The term 'entree' is very specific: if you buy an entree under $20 and a separate salad, you only get the entree for free.)

Our salads were unremarkable: commercially cut lettuce and hastily cut tomatoes, with weirdly cut, almost noodle-like mozzarella.

Omaha got the pot pie, which she registered as very good. The plate was American sized, meaning she took some of it home.

I got the small prime rib, "aged 28 days." I asked for it medium rare; I was expecting it to be hot, slightly firmed up, but still pink in the middle. What I got was something more like cow sushi: bloody red, slightly above body temperature, incredibly loose. It you like your meat so raw as to be recoverable, it was perfect, but it wasn't quite like what I expected.

The wait staff was eager and helpful. They had to be; the math on their receipt was a little hard to follow. Also, this place is part of an inter-business initiative to drive up awareness, so everything is branded: the water pots are "made by the pottery place up the street," the glassware is available down the block, the ice cream comes from the place across the street, and so on. It doesn't feel obtrusively spammy, mostly because none of them are national brands. It's not like Kraft and Nabisco are in your face. But it's still prevalent.

On the whole, the experience was somewhat meh.

Reefer Madness, The Musical!

The Burien Little Theater, a classic small-town theater in my home town, is putting on a presentation of the comedy musical Reefer Madness, a hilarious send-up of the 1936 movie.

We got there after our dinner at The Mark, knowing very little about the presentation. The theater is in the old city auditorium, but the amount of technical set-up was quite impressive. The seats were comfortable, the lighting rig was extensive, the sets looked well set-up, and the band had a good set-up stage left.

The play follows the movie. An official-looking man at a podium addresses the audience, where he introduces and then tells the story: Jimmy meets Mary, who wants to take Jimmy to the dance. Jimmy meets a guy who promises he can make Jimmy a dancer, but instead gets Jimmy hooked on marijuana. Jimmy tries repeatedly to break away, but can't. At the "reefer den" where he gets his weed, Jimmy watches as the tragic inhabitants smoke their lives away, prostitute their bodies, sell their babies, escalating with incidents of manslaughter, murder, cannibalism, and Aztec human sacrifice.

Which is all the harder to take when, at Jimmy's first puff, an orgy scene complete with brightly colored harem costumes breaks out around him, and Jimmy is slowly stripped down to a furred loin cloth.

And when Mary gets hers, the men are paraded around in boxers and the women in dominatrix outfits. Had me wondering where one of the women got that fabulous mop flogger she was weilding.

The star of the show is undoubtedly actor Russ Kay, who plays the narrator, and ten more roles throughout the show, including arresting cop, Jimmy's mom, train conductor, soda jerk, and the Greek God of Desire. We were impressed, moreso because Omaha spotted in his biography that he'd worked at Little Red Studio, too. It's hard not to giggle when, after the first orgy scene, you know he's spending the rest of the show in these uptight, well-constructed suits when you know just how much body paint he's wearing under there...

But the rest of the cast is awesome. Nathaniel Jones plays Ralph, but his best moment is as Sally's baby boy. That's a hard voice to nail, and nail it he did.

The cast was seriously on that night. It's obvious that they're having a lot of fun. The band was surprisingly restrained, and managed not to get in the way of the play; I've seen that happen far too often in musicals with live music. But this was absolutely delightful, although you could kinda see the guitarist wincing at having to hold back.

If there's a problem, it's the audio. A converted town auditorium doesn't have the acoustics for a musical, and the sound was muddy during some of the louder musicals. One of the characters had her mic kick out on her in the middle of her solo, which also detracted.

And Johnny Patchmalta, the actor who plays drug dealer Jack, can't sing. I mean, he hit the one octave he knows perfectly well, but outside that range he just kept hitting a wall.

The concession stand sold brownies. That was a nice touch.

The script is supposedly a riff on how officials and communities use paranoia about something new to scare up loyalty and obedience, but it can't quite carry the day. The first "Listen to Jesus, Jimmy" set piece is far too earnest, as is much of the rest of the film, and tacking on a lecture at the end, even a sung one, doesn't do much for that lack of carriage. If you want to talk about paranoia, you have to pump up official condemnation of many absurd things to be paranoid about, but Reefer Madness concentrates on one thing, pot, and so lacks that essential absurdity. This is why Stephen Colbert is funny: he makes everything seem scary, and we laugh when we realize just how stupid being scared of bears, sushi making robots, and cuff links really is.

If you like community theater, this is an excellent show to hit. It's really worth the time and effort.

Signal Boost: Spirit Day, Oct 20, 2010

It’s been decided. On October 20th, 2010, we will wear purple in honor of the 6 boys who committed suicide in recent weeks/months due to homophobic abuse in their homes and/or at their schools. Purple represents Spirit on the LGBTQ flag and that’s exactly what we’d like all of you to have with you: spirit. Please know that times will get better and that you will meet people who will love you and respect you for who you are, no matter your sexuality. Please wear purple on October 20th. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and schools.

RIP Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh (top)
RIP Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase (middle)
RIP Asher Brown and Billy Lucas. (bottom)

REBLOG to spread a message of love, unity and peace.

Hostile Takeover Scenario

Ezra Klein writes:

People say that the government should be run more like a business. So imagine you are CEO of the government. Your bridges are crumbling. Your schools are falling apart. Your air traffic control system doesn't even use GPS. The Society of Civil Engineers gave your infrastructure a D grade and estimated that you need to make more than $2 trillion in repairs and upgrades.

Sorry, chief. No one said being CEO was easy.

But there's good news, too. Because of the recession, construction materials are cheap. So, too, is the labor. And your borrowing costs? They've never been lower. That means a dollar of investment today will go much further than it would have five years ago -- or is likely to go five years from now. So what do you do?

If you're thinking like a CEO, the answer is easy: You invest. You get it done. Happily, that's what the administration is proposing to do. But its plan is too modest. The $50 billion bump in infrastructure spending it has proposed is only for surface transportation. The infrastructure bank envisioned in the proposal is also likely to be limited to transportation. And as for our water systems, our schools, our levees? This is not a time for half-measures. It's a rare opportunity to do what we need to do and to save money doing it.

Unfortunately for Ezra, the shareholders are balking at the outlays; the conservatives complain that the debt will hold back the stock's value, and the liberals complain that these proposals will harm future dividend payments. Neither is accurate, but perception is everything. So she shareholders balk, and complain, and at annual meetings browbeat the board into doing nothing at all, and when the times comes they vote to change the board into one that will try to get along with the existing infrastructure.

Eventually, of course, the infrastructure fails and the corporation goes bust. I wonder what the US Federal Government's bankruptcy sale will look like? Will China bid on Yellowstone, and if so, will they want it for a tourist attraction, or a place to build condos?