Day 16, Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

Warning: I had a lot of espresso before I wrote this one. Happy Balumtime's Day, everyone.

On the sixteenth day, we did not rest. I'm not sure what day sixteen corresponds to biblically, but it probably isn't rest; probably it is something about people begetting each other, there's a lot of that in the early parts. If you've never read it, just think of the most Amish sounding names that you can and place them at random into a list of who begot who, and who they begat, and you'll be fine. For example, "Jebediah begat Ezekiel, who begat Methuselah, who begat beards, and lo, beards were good." That's very biblical, which is sort of like fetch. Gretchen, stop trying to make 'fetch' happen. Maybe sacrifice a goat or a fig tree or something.

Anyway.

The sixteenth day was full of promise. To begin that promise, I wrote some things, then walked to the SCCA guest services desk at high speed. I did not speed walk because no one should ever speed walk, because no one was meant to wiggle that awkwardly in that many directions simultaneously. Remember, friends don't let friends speed walk.

At the guest services desk were tickets for the opening night of Warhorse, the play based on the book and, probably influenced by, the movie of the same name, about an English boy and 'is 'orse, back around and through World War One, a.k.a The Great War, a.k.a. when trenches were fashionable housing for young men and people put mustard gas on everything. The play was to involve giant puppets and regular non-giant people, which makes you think of Muppets and comedy, but you would be a little bit wrong on both counts. I'll get to that later. I also had some scheduling issues to resolve, but that's ancillary to the main thrust of the story. Which is to say that it happened, and it affects my life a teense, but I'm not going to get into the details.

Once I returned with the tickets, we set off for an afternoon's adventure; a necessary prelude, as the play wasn't until seven thirty in the evening. First things first: I returned my Verizon LTE MiFi unit. It worked just fine, but it was clearly not going to meet my needs, and would also cost me a lot of money to not meet my needs, what with my tendency to use an exorbitant amount of data. From there, we continued to the Seattle Art Museum.

Note: museum, not gallery. I am not sure why they differentiate, but it does give the building a name; everyone, say hello to SAM.

SAM, among other thing, is currently playing host to "Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London." How do you describe a collection of paintings by European masters? Awesome? Not quite appropriate in its modern context. I went through the showing twice, and we bought memberships. I'm certainly not going to try to do the show justice. Those were some incredibly detailed paintings. If you ever get a chance to see them, you should feel suitably impressed at the skill that went into producing them. Lets leave it there.

After art came food. We tried LaLot (there were accents on those vowels, but hell, I don't know how to do that on blogspot), a Vietnamese bar and grill with a very modern design aesthetic - lots of glass and right angles, very clean and spacious. The food was pretty and pretty alright. We shall return. There was a clay pot cooked pork and coconut meat dish that I am anxious to try out.

After food, Warhorse! Actually, we went home first. Have I mentioned that we don't have a car and that most of what I've been talking about is within twenty minutes' walking distance of our home? Because it is. I really like being in a walking city. Exceptions to the 'most' include the airport and the place in Edmonds where we went for that EKG. That's it, so far.

So, home for a change of clothes after a long, sweaty day of looking at art, then Warhorse. It was playing at the Paramount Theatre, which is sort of a grand old place with heavily gilded and filigreed walls, multiple levels, and a generally opulent feeling. Our seats (free from the guest services desk at the SCCA) were in row U on the third mezzanine, the nosebleed section. I was initially concerned that we wouldn't be able to really make out what was going on, but I needn't have been worried, if anything, the distant vantage made the puppetry even more compelling.

The puppets, of horses primarily, were staffed by three-to-five people, depending on the level of action involved, and were large enough to be (and in fact often were) ridden by the actors. The puppets had a framework, mechanical, almost unfinished look to them, and at first, all you really noticed were the operators. That soon passed. By the first intermission, you thought of them as real horses. And the guy who was operating the goose? He was a genius.

Warhorse is part lighthearted comedy, part serious drama, and well worth seeing. In fact, if you can see this play and you don't, there is something seriously wrong with your priorities. I don't even care if you think you don't like plays; you will like this one. They managed to make slow motion explosions in the heart of trench warfare seem realistic. Trust me. Go.

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?