Culture Features

Mollie Hogan knows how to hoop it up with the best of them.A passing train blocks the sunset, momentarily dimming the Mountain
Comfort Warehouse, but the rhythm of the train can't compete with the
tribal beats emanating from a small stereo system. Twenty-eight bodies
fill the warehouse with spinning hoops gyrating around their waists.
Some of the Hoopers (don't call them HulaHoopers-that's patented by
Wham-O…think "disc golf" versus Frisbee) move with ballet grace, some
channel a funky hand jive, some are as sensual as belly dancers, and a
few are still looking for a groove. They've been hooping spontaneously
for the last five minutes, starting to shed layers, dewy faces grinning.

The cup never lies.It seems pretty simple: A pint equals 16 ounces. So when you go into a bar, pub or restaurant and order a pint of beer you'll get 16 ounces of beer, right?

Well, maybe. Or maybe you'll get only 14 ounces. Or 13, or even 12.
Like most naïve beer drinkers, I always assumed that when I paid for a pint I got a pint. It was only after stumbling across Portlander Jeff Alworth's "Beervana" blog that the hideous truth began to dawn on me.

A deadly Dalek threatens to EX-TER-MI-NATE other convention-goers. Why aren’t they scared?Question: What's geekier than a Star Trek convention?
Answer: The 19th annual Doctor Who convention, held a few weeks ago in Southern California.
So what was I doing there with more than 1,000 sci-fi geeks at the LAX Marriott hotel?
I
was looking for a story, but I was also fulfilling a childhood fantasy.
I discovered Doctor Who in the late 1970s during the "dark ages" before
cable TV. As a latchkey kid, I watched the super campy series after
school on PBS. I loved everything about it: the psychedelic intro, the
British humor, the tin-foil aliens. It was like tripping on acid at the
tender age of 10. The campy, sci-fi series first hit British airwaves
in 1963, running for two and a half decades before being cancelled
abruptly in 1989.

The HDCs Jenni Peskin: She’s not only one of the minds behind HERstory, she’s also a performer.Women's history month is upon us, and what better time to celebrate
women than spring? Fertile, re-birthing, glorious spring! Though we
certainly do not forget women for the rest of the year, the National
Women's History Project successfully petitioned to have March adopted
as Women's History Month in 1987, 10 years after March 8 was designated
as International Women's Day.

Before the NWHP, even the concept of
women's history was unheard of. Throughout the 1970s the group worked
hard to promote the study and recognition of women's unique place in
the historical record. With this study comes the inevitable scrutiny of
the word "history" itself and in this era that has witnessed
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, most people can break it down to
read "his story." During the cultural revolution referred to as Women's
Liberation, the term "HERstory" was coined to refer to the study of the
past in which women play more than a wifely role. This year the NWHP
has chosen the theme of "Women's Art: Women's Vision." Women chosen to
be honorees by the organization include painters, sculptors and
printmakers.

Welcome to the Doll Hospital. Local writer Suzanne Burns reads from her flip book at Barber Library. The first reading by Dave Eggers I attended exploded midway through, as
two dwarfs dressed in medieval armor burst into the San Francisco
bookstore, battling through the crowd. The event ended then and there,
and we all knew Eggers had hired them. Larry Brown and I downed a
bottle of Jack Daniels before our (and one of his last) readings in
Oxford, Miss. Slurring throughout, the crowd gave him a standing
ovation afterward. So we went back to the bar to down another.

Barney Rubble is going to want that TV back.There are some differences between men and women - far beyond what you
may have learned from a nervous junior high school nurse in your first
sex education class. And whether you like it or not, these
dissimilarities are funny and there's never been a shortage of writers,
television producers and comedians to cash in on the topic. But
somehow, someway, people are still laughing, and that's why Defending
the Caveman is still packing theaters.

The one-man show that has been
performed around the country since 1991 and eventually became the
longest running solo play in the history of Broadway, is again dragging
its club into the Tower Theatre-and with perfect timing…the show plays
on Valentine's Day and the day after.

The Fantasticks: Waving jazz hands for 40-plus years.Luisa is 16, "pretty for the first time," and quite insane. Matt is 20,
nerdy, and wondering what's beyond that road. Oh, and they're in love
and as close together as the wall their parents have literally built
between them allows. This isn't another Romeo and Juliet or Pyramus and
Thisbe, but The Fantasticks - the longest-running off-Broadway musical
(some 17,162 performances spanning 42 years), loosely based on Edmond
Rostand's Les Romanesques, and now available to hum along with at the
Cascades Theatrical Company.

Marking the middle of the CTC's 29th
season, The Fantasticks is a stage standard; dripping with nostalgia,
audiences lap up the escapism and the cast ever-cognizant that they are
part of history. Yet the CTC has again offered a twist: Director
Kymberli Colbourne has dared to alter the time-tested formula of The
Fantasticks by replacing the two meddling fathers (who built the wall
to manipulate their children) with two equally errant mothers. Bellomy
(Kimberlee Lear) and Hucklebee (Mandy Rockwell) bring new life to the
sometimes quaint script, while Jimena Romero as Luisa and Scott Carroll
as Matt never take themselves too seriously - which is most welcome
when watching a play nearly a half-century old.