Gossip should have no friends

[June 11th, 2008]

• DRAM SLAM: Portland Center Stage walked away from the 29th Annual Drammy Awards ceremony—the Portland theater community’s recognition of outstanding achievement by its members (co-sponsored by WW)—Monday night with a whopping 12 of the 37 awards, fully half of them for Twelfth Night Directed by Seattle’s Jane Jones, it won for acting, direction, set design, costume design and overall production. Two big surprises: first, The Wild Party, the first non-concert production by Live on Stage, which our reviewer didn’t like very much, won three awards for acting and choreography. The second was the shortage of acting awards for women : a grand total of four, versus 10 for male actors. The imbalance moved Eleanor O’Brien, who co-hosted the ceremony with her mother, Vana, to ask the women in the audience to join her in a collective “What the fuck?” followed by a temper-soothing “om.”

• GLOBAL WARMER: You might know him as CNN’s go-to-guy when the skies get stormy, but we remember former KATU forecaster Rob Marciano (1997-2003), as the hottest weather guy to hit town since Jim Bosley. His beauty was finally recognized in the pages of VMan—the male version of V magazine, an international rag about “fashion with a capital F and all the things that go with it: art, music, film, architecture...you name it.” Which now includes weathermen —the mag did a full photo spread and Q&A with Marciano in an upcoming edition. Although 40-year-old Robbie still sounds just about as deep as he did when he was on air back in PDX (“I get excited about storms—the bigger and badder, the better,” he told VMan), we can’t help enjoying his trailblazing “warm front.” Watch your ass, Anderson Cooper.

• ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Last week Scoop reported that The Oregonian’s longtime “weird sports” guy, Brad McCray, defected to mixed martial arts website sherdog.com, but he isn’t the only recent defector. Three reporters on the news side have also announced they’re leaving. David Austin, part of the team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, is going to work for Multnomah County’s Human Services Department; Esmeralda Bermudez is leaving for the Los Angeles Times; and Washington County reporter Kathleen Gorman is going to work for Legacy. No word on replacements.

• FEST LESS: While it’s been estimated that attendees of this year’s Sasquatch Festival dropped more than $400 each (on food, camping, gas and tix, etc.) to see headliners like R.E.M. and Modest Mouse, a li’l two-day fest called 3900’—June 27-28 at Horning’s Hideout—might get the ax for lack of ticket sales. Organizers the Union Records, a PDX label, are touting 3900’ as a festival of openingbands, championing the idea of an event based on local talent rather than potential sales. Tender Loving Empire co-head and fest sponsor Brianna Mees explained that roughly 300 more tickets need to be sold—by this week—for the fest to survive. Need incentive? Tix ($53 before June 15, $75 after, theunionrecords.net) are cheaper if you buy ’em now! Unless you’re still tapped from Sasquatch, that is.