The Omnivore's 100

This has nothing whatever to do with the arts in Boise, but I thought it was interesting:

The Omnivore's Hundred

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at http://www.verygoodtaste.co.uk/ linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (it'd have to be fixed really well for me to eat it. Carp, at least around here, is junk fish.)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream (honestly can't remember, so I'm leaving it on)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras (hated it)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi (I want to say I've had sweet lassi, though)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (separate, but since I've had fat cigars with other hard liquor, I'm counting it)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (chocolate-covered crickets)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk (I don't think so, but I've had goat's milk cheese)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (I wish!)
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala (I've had many Indian dishes, but I'm not sure if this is one of them, so I'm leaving it on the list for now)
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (not sure)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (all four, actually)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho (most of the time I heat it up, but I'm pretty sure I've had it cold at least once)
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe (no, but I've had anisette)
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (I have never known what my restaurants are rated.)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (Technically, just rabbit. And oh, man, this woman at the Saturday Market was so trying to guilt-trip me about it.)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse (I was inclined to cross this out, but then I remembered I've eaten tripe, so comparatively, how bad can it be?)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano (I've had poblano and mole, but not together)
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Kitchen Witches

Tonight is preview night for Kitchen Witches, and I have to admit to being a little panicked. Our actors seem to be doing well -- there may be a few slightly rough patches in the dialogue, but overall, they're doing really well. In fact, when we told them they couldn't call for lines any more and I finally got to get my nose out of the book and look at what they were doing again, I found myself laughing at new places every night. I was a little worried about Brad, our newbie, being able to jump back into his role after a two-week vacation he got back from on Aug. 18, but there was no real cause for worry -- it was almost like riding a bike for him. And we started playing with food props during Brad's vacation, so our actresses had plenty of time to get used to them.

But our costume mistress, who was really sick for two weeks, has just barely been getting some of our costume pieces done. I think we've had two nights to practice with the tear-away "naughty apron." And as of last night she still hadn't gotten one of the biggest pieces, a Scarlett O'Hara dress for Dolly with a specially made bodice that Isobel can plop biscuit dough into, done. There's a quick change into the Scarlett O'Hara dress, too. Kevin Kimsey, who's playing Rob the cameraman, joked last night that she's got "all day tomorrow to finish it." I said, "And I've got all day tomorrow to sh!t myself." In about a half hour I'm going down to the theater, and hopefully I'll be able to get some time in practicing the change.
--
Update (Sept. 5): Our costume mistress still hadn't brought the Scarlett O'Hara dress by as of the beginning of our preview night, though we can blame part of that on miscommunication and a good chunk on the fact that her house was one of the houses in a huge fire that week (did I not mention that in the original post? I could have sworn I could have mentioned it -- we were all worried sick about her, but she apparently got out of her house with the pets and the costumes and little else. Her house is apparently one of the most smoke-damaged on the block). Anyway, she came through with the hoop skirt midway through Act 1, maybe half an hour or so before we had to use it, and it fits fine and there's plenty of time for the costume change. No bodice, so we just paired it with a blouse from the costume room, and we've been using that ever since because it fits and works better than the bodice our costume mistress had been working on.

We did actually have one other costume snafu -- the tear-away boob on the "naughty apron" actually flew off into the audience one night. Now that's comedy.

We had a great opening weekend, and the show has run pretty smoothly overall. Come see it if you get the chance!

Visual Arts Collective

I've been to Visual Arts Collective before, when it was on Grove Street (it's on Osage now, just off Chinden behind the Woman of Steel Gallery). I remember ... lots of sculptures with gas masks. So when I went to watch Boys' Life there a couple weeks ago and look at some of the exhibits at the same time, I knew to expect some unusual pieces.

I was not, however, prepared for a detailed, cross-hatched ink drawing of the evil toy monkey from Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. (Hi! I'm Satan-approved!) It was surrounded by the faces of three men, rendered in watery sepia India ink.

The evil toy monkey was actually from one of my favorite exhibits at the VAC, a collection of circus-themed sculptures and paintings. I'm afraid I don't know who the artist was, because not all of the pieces at VAC were well-labeled. There were pieces with painted clowns and sculpted elephants and warnings printed on the canvas: "Beware of dog." "Warning." "Use only as directed." "Keep out of reach of children." I liked these mixed media collages a lot. I think clowns should be kept out of reach of children as a general rule.

[I'm writing this post a few weeks after I took these hastily scrawled notes about the art, and I don't entirely understand what all of my notes say any more. But one of them, with a line drawn to my notes on the circus pieces, says, "Create your own schizophrenic puppet." I think that was the text in another of these circus-themed collages. Whatever it was, I'm pretty sure it was awesome.]

Another of my favorite exhibits was a sculpture with several rubber gloves, each of which had a label printed on it: "Take one tab by mouth every 24 hours." "Lexapro -- used to treat depression." "Prednisone $5.32."

There were also some collages on newspaper with painted images of red skulls, space shuttles, diagrams of the brain and pictoral step-by-step instructions for putting someone in a straitjacket.

It would be easy to consider the art pretentious if there wasn't a band onstage at the time playing songs with lyrics like "rock out with your cock out" and "hung like Jesus."

The large black and gray paintings with silhouettes of ginkgo leaves, dragonflies and dandelions were both nicely done and a nice change of pace from the often confusing message pieces. So was Alchemy, a collection of miscellaneous colorful resin squares.

Roundup

August

• Now through Aug. 21: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, a love story about a cowboy and a farm girl, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Aug. 18 and 21. Times are 8:00.
• Now through Aug. 22: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Aug. 16, 19 and 22. Times are 8:00.
• Now through Aug. 23: Music Theatre of Idaho presents the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, a love story about a cowboy and a farm girl, at the Nampa Civic Center. Show dates are Aug. 16 and 21-23 at 7:30 and Aug. 16 at 1:30.
• Now through Aug. 23: Starlight Mountain Theater presents Crazy for You, a musical about a stagestruck New York City playboy in a Nevada mining town, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Aug. 20 and 23. Times are 8:00.
• Aug. 23: Rosalie Sorrels performs a benefit concert at 8:00 at Stage Coach Theatre at Orchard and Overland.
• Now through Aug. 24: The Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by illustrator, painter and sculptor Frederic Remington called Frederic Remington Makes Tracks: Adventures and Artistic Impressions.
• Now through Aug. 29: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival produces Macbeth, a tragedy in which Shakespeare's Scottish anti-hero lusts after power and ultimately commits regicide, at 8:00 at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise. Show dates are Aug. 19-20, 23-24 and 28-29. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• Aug. 29: Stage Coach Theatre opens Kitchen Witches, a comedy about two cooking show hostesses who have hated each other for 30 years who are forced by circumstance to share a cooking show produced by the long-suffering son of one of the women. It's all he can do to rein them in when the insults and the food start flying. The show continues Aug. 30 and Sept. 4-7 and 11-13 at the theater on Orchard and Overland in the Hillcrest Shopping Center in Boise. Times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays and 2:00 Sundays.
• Now through Aug. 29: Bogus Creek Outfitters is hosting a Western action adventure melodrama, The Jerseys Done It! Show dates are Aug. 22 and 29.
• Aug. 29: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Let's Murder Marsha, a comedy about a housewife who becomes convinced her husband is plotting to murder her and hatches a plan to thwart him, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues Aug. 30 and Sept. 1, 5-6 and 12-13. Times are 7:30 Fridays and Saturdays and 6:30 Monday.
• Aug. 30: The Boise Art Museum opens Upstream Fly Fishing in the American West, an exhibit of photographs by Charles Lindsay.
• Now through Aug. 31: Idaho Shakespeare Festival presents Into the Woods, a Stephen Sondheim musical about what happens after "happily ever after" in several classic fairy tales, at 8:00 at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise. Show dates are Aug. 16-17, 21-22, 26-27 and 30-31. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• Now through Sept. 14: The Boise Art Museum hosts Ties of Protection and Safe Keeping, an interactive braid sculpture by Oregon artist MK Guth. Woven into the sculpture are ribbons on which hundreds of people have written their answer to the question, "What is worth protecting?"
• Now through October: The Boise Art Museum is displaying Gerri Sayler's exhibit Ad Infinitum. It consists of more than 900 glistening strands of sculpted hot glue.
• Now through Nov. 9: Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach.

September

• Sept. 5: Boise Little Theater opens Neil Simon's Plaza Suite at the theater on Broadway and Fort Street. The show continues Sept. 6, 11-13 and 18-20 at 8:00, Sept. 14 at 2:00 and Sept. 17 at 7:30.
• Sept. 5: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival opens Greater Tuna, a satirical comedy about small-town morals and mores starring two men in 20 roles, at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise. The show continues Sept. 6-7, 10-14, 17-21 and 24-27; times are 7:30 Wednesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sundays.
• Sept. 12-13: The Boise Philharmonic will perform music by Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Corigliano with guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine at 8:00 Sept. 12 at Northwest Nazarene University's Swayne Auditorium in Nampa and 8:15 Sept. 13 at Boise State University's Morrison Center.
• Sept. 19: Refugee Tibetan monks will perform The Mystical Arts of Tibet: Sacred Music and Dance at 7:30 at the College of Idaho.
• Sept. 19-20: The Langroise Trio will perform works by Schubert, Mozart, Bach and Jim Cockey Sept. 19 at the Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy in Boise and Sept. 20 at Langroise Recital Hall at the College of Idaho in Caldwell. Times are 7:30.
• Sept. 19: East Indian Follies opens Final Solutions, a play about an Indian family that struggles with intergenerational ideas about religion, politics, history, and in particular the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, at the Visual Arts Collective just off Chinden behind the Woman of Steel Gallery in Garden City. The play continues Sept. 20, 25 and 27 at 8:00 and Sept. 28 at 7:00.
• Sept. 19: Music Theatre of Idaho opens I Remember Mama, a musical about a Norwegian family's survival in the New World, at 7:30 at the Nampa Civic Center. The show continues Sept. 20 and 25-27 at 7:30 and Sept. 20 at 1:30.
• Sept. 23: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver reads her work at 7:30 at the Egyptian Theater on Main Street and Capitol Boulevard in Boise.
• Sept. 26: Prairie Dog Productions opens Indiana Stones and the Quest for the Holy Oil at 7:15 at the theater at 3820 Cassia St. in Boise. The show continues at 2:00 Oct. 12 and 19 and at 7:15 on Sept. 27; Oct. 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25 and 31; and Nov. 1.
• Sept. 28: Del Parkinson, a pianist for the Boise Philharmonic, will perform at 3:00 in the Morrison Center Recital Hall at BSU.

Boys' Life

Boys' Life is basically a show about boys behaving badly. There's not a lot to be said about the plot: one guy cheats on his girlfriend, then marries her; one guy is married, but plans an affair; one guy falls desperately in love with a woman who isn't interested in him. What carries it are the characters. They are well-drawn and well-acted. The best is easily Jack (the married man trying to have an affair with a jogger), played by Jesse Bastian. Basically, he's a big douchebag. He's thoroughly repugnant. Yet his friends, on the rare occasions when they try to call him on his douchebagginess, are always unable to point to a single thing he's done. Nothing he ever does is overt enough for them to call him on it -- it's always little things, like asking what their girlfriend's breasts are like whenever they talk to him about their relationship problems. (I'd like to touch on other members of the cast, who were also strong, but I have to run.)

Boys' Life has a lot of great things going for it, but sometimes the show's strengths are also its weaknesses. The dialogue is very random and colorful and all over-the-place. The characters go off on tangents at the drop of a hat, with jogger Maggie (played by Christen Atwood) suddenly complaining about her body-waxing boyfriend, or the dreadlocked Phil (Jake Wiest) rambling from the Statue of Liberty to fetuses in one memorable monologue. Some of these tangential conversations are set up on purpose, to illustrate our boys behaving badly. For example: "I feel all rotten and swollen on the inside. I love you." "I wanted to see if I could get away with it. I want to marry you." At first seems very innovative, very realistic and slice-of-life -- almost a statement about how people tend to talk past each other instead of to each other. And the rambling nature of the conversations are sometimes the setup for some very funny punchlines. But eventually it starts to wear thin, as it becomes increasingly hard for even audience members to tell what the characters are talking about. These moments could have been better if the play were paced a little better. Not everything needs a dramatic pause. The Statue of Liberty monologue and the two passages I've quoted were perfectly timed. But other sections could have used some tightening; the show just felt long after a while. The nature of these conversations and the pacing issues had me laughing my ass off at some moments, and then completely bored and puzzled a few minutes later.

First Thursday & True West

Don't forget -- First Thursday is tonight, and the True West Cinema Festival starts tonight and goes on through Aug. 10 at the Flicks. Pick up a copy of the Boise Weekly for info on both events.

Some of the interesting-sounding exhibits include:

• "Masked: Faces of the Soul," an exhibit of burned and carved gourd masks at Art Source Gallery on 1015 W. Main.
• Glass-blowing demonstrations at Boise Art Glass Studios at 530 W. Myrtle.
• "Dog Days of Summer," an art show and silent auchtion at the Flying M to raise money for artists and the Humane Society.

I recommend checking out American Cockroach and Ad Infinitum at the Boise Art Museum, and it's hard to go wrong at the Basement Gallery, one of my favorite galleries. They have a few Boise State professors and former professors this time and a guy who manated TV news stations for 30 years; the Boise Weekly synopsis mentions some Mesoamerican ceramic sculptures and some exhibit called "Eco-Series."

I have to miss First Thursday again because of rehearsal; we'll see how many of these places I can get to. The good news is that I got to see Boys Life, which has one more show this weekend at the Neurolux, and the exhibits at Visual Arts Collective, so I'll have posts on those soon.

I don't think I'm going to review film on this site; there's enough to do with local theater and visual art, though I may venture into opera, dance or the philharmonic when those start up again. But True West looks like it has a lot of great films this year, and I'd encourage everyone to go.

Roundup

• Aug. 2: Closing night of Company of Fools' production of Violet, a coming of age story about a girl growing up in the Deep South during the early Civil Rights Movement who goes on a journey of self-discovery, at 8:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey.
• Aug. 3: Closing matinee of Company of Fools' production of Noises Off, a farce about a theater production gone haywire, with 17 false entrances, 73 flubbed lines, 46 miscues and a missing plate of sardines, at 2:00 at Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey.
• Aug. 7: Encore Theatre Co. opens Once Upon a Mattress, a musical comedy based on the story of the princess and the pea, at the Northwest Nazarene University Brandt Center in Nampa. The show continues Aug. 8-9. Show times are 7:30 each day, with a 2:30 matinee Aug. 9.
• Now through Aug. 9: Climbing Tree Productions presents Boys' Life Aug. 1-2 at 9 p.m. at the Visual Arts Collective on 3638 Osage Street, Garden City, near the Woman of Steel Gallery on Chinden and Aug. 9 at 7 p.m. at Neurolux in downtown Boise.
• Now through Aug. 21: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Aug. 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21. Times are 8:00.
• Now through Aug. 22: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Aug. 4, 7, 13, 16, 19 and 22. Times are 8:00.
• Now through Aug. 23: Starlight Mountain Theater presents Crazy for You, a musical about a stagestruck New York City playboy in a Nevada mining town, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. Show dates are Aug. 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 20 and 23. Times are 8:00.
• Now through Aug. 24: The Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by illustrator, painter and sculptor Frederic Remington called Frederic Remington Makes Tracks: Adventures and Artistic Impressions.
• Now through Aug. 29: The Idaho Shakespeare Festival produces Macbeth, a tragedy in which Shakespeare's Scottish anti-hero lusts after power and ultimately commits regicide, at 8:00 at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise. Show dates are Aug. 2-3, 5-6, 9-10, 14-15, 19-20, 23-24 and 28-29. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• Aug. 29: Stage Coach Theatre opens Kitchen Witches, a comedy about two cooking show hostesses who have hated each other for 30 years who are forced by circumstance to share a cooking show produced by the long-suffering son of one of the women. It's all he can do to rein them in when the insults and the food start flying. The show continues Aug. 30 and Sept. 4-7 and 11-13 at the theater on Orchard and Overland in the Hillcrest Shopping Center in Boise. Times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays and 2:00 Sundays.
• Now through Aug. 29: Bogus Creek Outfitters is hosting a Western action adventure melodrama, The Jerseys Done It! Show dates are Aug. 8, 15, 22 and 29.
• Aug. 29: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Let's Murder Marsha, a comedy about a housewife who becomes convinced her husband is plotting to murder her and hatches a plan to thwart him, at Starlight Amphitheater in Garden Valley. The show continues Aug. 30 and Sept. 1, 5-6 and 12-13. Times are 7:30 Fridays and Saturdays and 6:30 Monday.
• Aug. 30: The Boise Art Museum opens Upstream Fly Fishing in the American West, an exhibit of photographs by Charles Lindsay.
• Now through Aug. 31: Idaho Shakespeare Festival presents Into the Woods, a Stephen Sondheim musical about what happens after "happily ever after" in several classic fairy tales, at 8:00 at the amphitheater on Warm Springs in Boise. Show dates are Aug. 7-8, 12-13, 16-17, 21-22, 26-27 and 30-31. Times are 8:00 Tuesday-Saturday and 7:00 Sunday.
• Now through Sept. 14: The Boise Art Museum hosts Ties of Protection and Safe Keeping, an interactive braid sculpture by Oregon artist MK Guth. Woven into the sculpture are ribbons on which hundreds of people have written their answer to the question, "What is worth protecting?"
• Now through October: The Boise Art Museum is displaying Gerri Sayler's exhibit Ad Infinitum. It consists of more than 900 glistening strands of sculpted hot glue.
• Now through Nov. 9: Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach.