Play & Play

PETER PANTO:  Sunday afternoon we had the pleasure of attending a play at Hale's Palladium, just across the Ballard Bridge from us. It's not a fancy theater - basically a big garage-like building with concrete floors and folding chairs. "Why does it smell like bread?" Annabelle asked at the entrance. That would be because of all the beer they brew next door at Hale's Ales, kids.

The play was a British panto, which is short for pantomime. Not to be confused with mime, the silent form of acting which derives from the same root, this is far from a quiet performance. A panto is a British tradition of winter musical comedy theater. It's rowdy, rollicking experience, and audience members are encouraged to participate by booing and hissing at villains, cheering for heroes, and more.

This type of play play is an annual event there. Last year the kids saw a rollicking version of "Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs." This year's play was "Peter Pan." In panto, it's very typical for men to play women and vice versa, and there was plenty of that going on in "Peter Pan." The man playing Wendy and Michael Darling's nanny was hysterical! The actors were awesome, the house band was terrific, the dialogue and the songs were great. All in all, a wonderful production. I didn't have a real camera with me, so here's one crappy shot from my cell phone.

ROCKETBOX: Imagine our glee this morning upon finding our SpaceX model rocket kit had arrived. Yee haw! Can't wait to get this bad boy put together!

GAME TIME: Monday we spent most of our afternoon in one of the kids' favorite places on Earth: Gameworks. We had a couple of Groupon coupons good for all day game passes that we needed to use up pronto, so that's just what we did. (We also had a $25 Restaurant.com coupon to use for their restaurant, so our lunch was a screaming deal, too!)

The kids both played dozens of driving, shoot 'em up and beat 'em up games. They also played some old school arcade games (Pac Man and such), and a few rounds of air hockey.

There are a number of Japanese-language only games in the place. Sometimes that makes it a wee bit difficult for us to know how to play 'em.

Fortunately, the one above was about drumming to the right beat, and that's kind of universal, so Annabelle adapted just fine.

We rode the bus to and from Gameworks, since parking is so difficult to find and expensive in their part of downtown. The kids were excited that on the way home we got to ride an articulating bus, and they got to sit right in the middle. The seats they were sitting in were bolted to a disc-shaped section of the floor that swiveled as we rounded corners. Such fun! :)

POINTING FINGERS: I read an interesting story about the soon to be tumbling Phobos-Grunt spacecraft today. This article (on Ria Novosti's Web site). The story predicts the wreckage will land in Afghanistan and cites an interview with Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, in which Popovkin blames a number of elements for the missions failure. One factor he lists is the fact that it took too long (11 years) to build. More curiously, Popovkin seems to point a finger at external factors/entities, saying “today there is powerful equipment to influence spacecrafts, and the possibility of their use should not be ruled out.” Niiiice - how convenient to blame other nameless people outside of the project for its failure. Guess we should have had our cell phones on Airplane mode when Phobos-Grunt launched?