Seattle Theatre Group unveiled the (apparently) most controversial banner to date on Monday (May 19th) at 1:00PM on the east facing exterior of The Paramount Theatre. The banner features Lucy, star of Broadway’s Avenue Q, in all her provocative glory.
“This is the first billboard that’s made me blush,” says STG Executive Director Josh LaBelle.

AVENUE Q is Broadway’s smash-hit 2004 Tony Award® winner for Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. A hilarious show full of heart and hummable tunes, AVENUE Q is about trying to make it in NYC with big dreams and a tiny bank account. Called “one of the funniest shows you’re ever likely to see” by Entertainment Weekly, AVENUE Q features a cast of people and puppets who tell the story in a smart, risqué and downright entertaining way. AVENUE Q has not been authorized or approved by The Jim Henson Company or Sesame Workshop, which have no responsibility for its content.

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I like Daily Candy, don’t get me wrong. Someone sends me an email about things I may not know about around Seattle, and I feel a little cooler when I can tell people that I know these things and they don’t. But I’m usually disappointed when they send me something about fashion/furniture or really anything that would cost me money. I’m not sure if it’s Seattle, or Daily Candy’s fault but all the stores they promote are just crazy, stupid expensive. Do women really buy flats for $400? Or even another silk screen crap t-shirt for $50? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. For a shitty economy, and rent on the rise, and houses not selling and jobs being laid off, how does Daily Candy or all the boutiques in Seattle get the nerve to promote their fancy richie shit? I almost want to strangle them. Then again, I’m one of those girls who would rather put $400 in my IRA every month than into a pair of pointy-toed thingys that’ll only give me blisters if I wear them too long. But maybe that’s just me.

Two articles this morning. The first is about a new rule taking effect on January 1. Large chain restaurants (those having 15 or more locations) will be required to provide information about calories, saturated fat, carbohydrate and sodium content. King County is the first in the country to introduce these requirements.

The rules require restaurants to use a “reasonable basis” to justify the nutrition information that will be provided to consumers.

The county has assembled a list of software packages, nutrition companies and laboratories with the ability to analyze the nutritional content of a burrito, pizza slice or salad.

In a related article, Scripps Television Station investigated the nutritional claims by many major restaurants. The findings showed that the servings many restaurants claimed as being low calorie or healthy were in fact, not. Many of the meals contained twice the calories and as much as eight times the saturated fat then advertised. For example:

Taco Bell “Fresco Grilled Steak Soft Taco” had four times as much fat and almost twice as many calories as advertised. The steak taco is supposed to have 4.5 grams of fat and 160 calories; testing showed it to actually have 20 grams of fat and 297 calories.

The RDA for saturated fat is 20 grams.

Some critics have called Mermaid “the Russian Amelie” but although both films have some superficial similarities, both being centered on quirky young women who isolate themselves from the society in which they live surrounded by colorful eccentrics and who fall madly in love at first sight with men they barely know based on an unusual introduction to them, but Mermaid is an entirely different sort of fairy tale. Even the film’s creator, writer/director Anna Melikian agrees with this assessment, calling Amelie “wonderful” but denying any sort of connection to the film. Melikian also denies a direct connection with Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” although she does say that it was her favorite fairy tale as a child, “maybe because it is the only fairy tale with a sad ending”. There are some links between the two, and surely the tale is one of the influences on the creation of Mermaid (Russian title: Rusalka), but this strange story stands on its own.

As a young girl Alisa lives in a shack on the seaside with her mother and her grandmother. Both the older women have dreams of their own but it’s Alisa’s bold, bright dreams that propel the plot, along with her belief that she owns magic talents to control the weather and make wishes come true. Life is tough in their worn-down town; when an unexpected change in circumstances after Alisa turnes 17 sends the family to a new life in Moscow, it feels almost like a liberation for Alisa. Just how liberated can a teenaged girl who hasn’t spoken a word aloud be in the materialistic modern Moscow be?

Alisa takes a series of odd jobs and meets an assortment of odd characters around the city. After one of her wishes comes with an uncomfortable price tag Alisa swears off wishing and then falls into despair until she meets a man with despair of his own. Alicia instantly falls for successful salesman Sasha but her attempts to romance him seemed destined to fail. Alisa recovers her voice and finds her magic again, but is that enough to bring about her happy ending?

Mermaid is a beautifully shot, visually arresting film with a rich palette of colors and textures. The camera work is top notch and there’s always something to catch your eye. Melikian and crew successfully created a world both real and fantastic all at once. Particularly enjoyable were the many views of the many views of the rustic rural seashore and the busy metropolis of Moscow. The plot presents some interesting concepts but the story isn’t always interesting–there were several scenes that felt unnecessary and some of the eccentric characters that Alisa encountered seemed added in just to give Alisa something to do for a few minutes while she wandered the city’s streets. Alisa herself is clearly meant to be likeable but I found it hard to warm up to her. Still, the movie has much to offer fans of films that combine fantasy with realism; those who prefer their fairy tales to stay on the sweet side might want to take a pass on this one but those who don’t mind a bit of the sour might find much to savor in Mermaid.

Mermaid plays Saturday, May 24 at 1:15 pm at the Egyptian Theater and Monday, May 26 at Pacific Place.

It’s here: SIFF 2008 launches tomorrow with a red carpet and genuine stars walking in on it to introduce Battle In Seattle, about the massive protests of the 1999 WTO. It’s followed by a party where you’ll probably drink too much and spend too much time plotting to casually run into a celebrity guest. After that, the festival starts in earnest. Here are a few suggestions from your friends at Metblogs about how you might spend your opening weekend:

PVC-1 [siff] : A Colombian movie about terrorists, bombs and money? Go figure. But this movie sucks you in and spits you out. Please see this movie because it’s true and sad and everything in between. [yayunicorns/ba]
Friday, May 23, 4:30 pm,; Monday, May 26, 9:00 pm (Harvard Exit)

The Fall [siff] : During the parade of trailers at the press preview, this one was the most dazzling by far. Five stories of revenge told to a hospitalized child spring to vibrant life under the direction of Tarsem, previously famous for making jaw-dropping commercials. Although the NYT wasn’t in love with it, I can’t imagine that the hypersaturated wonderland isn’t at least worth your time should at least be enough to hold your attention on a big screen. [josh]
Friday May 23, 4:30 pm; Sunday May 25, 6:30 pm (Uptown).

Continental: A Film Without Guns [siff] : A Canadian film about loneliness and alienation illuminated by a witty black comedic bent. [zg] ]
Friday, May 23, 9:30 pm; Saturday, May 24 (Pacific Place)

Transsiberian [siff] : Here as part of the “Sir Ben Kingsley Extravaganza”, this mystery/thriller that takes place on train crossing China also includes the unconventional cast of Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer and what should be spectacular cinematography. Your games of Six Degrees of … just got a lot easier. [j]
Saturday May 24, 9:30 pm (Uptown); Monday May 26, 1:30 pm (Egyptian).

The 3 Little Pigs [siff] : Three brothers meet in the hospital room of their comatose mother to debate the finer points of infidelity in between episodes of their own explorations into the subject in this comedy which is by turns satirical, saucy, and genuinely sweet. [zg]
Saturday, May 24, 1:30 pm, Pacific Place Sunday, May 25, 9:45 pm, Pacific Place

Gonzo [siff ] : Unfortunately, this one’s not about the beloved muppet. Instead, the life and times of Hunter S. Thompson. This could be the more PBS-like telling of the infamous journalist’s life, with Johnny Depp providing narration rather than impersonation. Why let all that hard-earned channeling go to waste? [j]
Saturday May 24, 3:45 pm; Monday May 26, 9:00 pm (Egyptian).

Everything Is Fine [siff] : Four young men in a group of five friends simultaneously commit suicide; the fifth struggles to come to terms with his pain while pursuing an awkward friendship with the father of one of his dead friends and a blossoming romance with the former girlfriend of another. [zg] Double recommendation! This started slow, but gradually and honestly revealed itself through a series of striking honesty and flashbacks. The pace is slow, but it earns the payoff. [j]
Saturday May 24, 7:00 pm; Sunday, May 25, 4:15 pm (Pacific Place)

Sita Sings The Blues [siff] : Think Triplets of Belleville with words, then mix in the humor of Monty Python. Now take all of that away and you get this wonderfully animated, musical movie about love and heartbreak, now vs. way back when. [yayunicorns (ba)]
Sunday May 25, 1:30 pm; Monday May 26 6:45 pm (Uptown Cinema)

King of Ping Pong [siff] : A fat kid who loves ping pong too much, deals with his weirdo dad, the guy he thinks could be his dad and the brother who doesn’t look anything like him. The beginning was promising and then I got bored. See it, maybe. [ba]
Sunday May 25, 6:45 pm; Monday May 26, 1:15 pm (SIFF Cinema)

Patti Smith: Dream of Life [siff] : Poet, activist, punk rock priestess and musician Patti Smith talks about her life over eleven year’s worth of film footage in this revelatory documentary about this extremely fascinating woman. [zg]
Sunday May 25, 9:00 pm; Wednesday May 28, 4:00 pm (Egyptian)

The University of Washington announced the layoff of 66 workers in the technology division, the largest layoff in a decade. The Seattle Times reports:

UW Technology Vice President Ron Johnson said the increasing availability of free or low-cost services on the Web through companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon.com are rendering some UW services — such as e-mail and document sharing — obsolete. He said annual revenue has dropped by $10 million, to $40 million.

A number of large research universities are finding themselves in a similar situation, Johnson said, and he wouldn’t be surprised if layoffs followed in other parts of the country.

The UW layoffs are effective June 30 and include people who work in a range of different jobs. About a dozen of the affected workers are unionized. The UW said it would try to place people in jobs elsewhere on campus or in the region whenever possible.

Seattle is one of the last areas of increased growth in the tech industry, buffered by many big names in the business.

With Memorial Day Weekend coming up, many people are heading out for some early summer fun on Washington’s rivers. Be careful though. With the intense heat last weekend (I am still recovering from my sunburn), the rivers are running very high due to increased snow melt.

“The rivers are swollen right now and near flood stage,” said Mark Kenny, boating law enforcement coordinator for Washington State Parks. “They’re swift, cold and unforgiving. Only very experienced river runners can navigate them, however, all people should stay out of rivers at this time because the danger is so great,” said Kenny in a statement issued today.

The water is moving very fast, and boaters may find themselves unexpectedly falling into water so cold that it quickly numbs reactions and makes self-rescue extremely difficult, said Kenny.

Be careful. (Source)

Seattle Climate Action Now has launched a new program called “Give Your Car The Summer Off”.

With transportation causing almost 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, why not try something different: Give Your Car the Summer Off.

We know that one size does not fit all. So we’re sharing lots of ways to get to your favorite summer events and destinations, saving money and reducing climate change pollution at the same time.

Incentives. These include discounts at the Woodland Park Zoo, SAM, Pacific Science Center, Tutta Bella, and more to be announced.
Online tools. Mostly links to trip planners and non-car transportation options.
CAN “In A Box”. The box provides everything you need to get your planning party started.
Car Free Days.

Seattle Metblog authors met last Saturday at Bamboo Garden (Queen Anne) for dinner. Bamboo Garden caters to the vegetarian crowd and is also certified Kosher.

I can’t recall the names of the dishes that my fellow Metbloggers ordered. Everything looked delicious.

More photos after the break. (more…)