Gossip Should Have No Friends

[November 8th, 2006] IT'S SMACKTASTIC Comcast and Portland Wrestling have entered an agreement to produce the very first PW pay-per-view ! The big cable behemoth will carry the event all December, and PW is going hardcore-big with specialty matches geared toward male viewers. Watch mohawked Luster the Legend and Paul Isadora, a 7-foot-2 former basketball player, brandish TLC (tables, ladders and chairs) from the depths of their grape smugglers. Learn how to street fight Philadelphia-style from wrestling legend Mustafa and local gent Billy Two Eagles. The night culminates with a Barbed Wire Death Match , where an especially lethal three-pronged barbed wire, straight from a farm store, goes up to wrap the ring. Promoter Frank Culbertson tells Scoop it's a brutal event and very popular in Japan: Large patches of skin may be torn off. Taping will take place Saturday, Nov. 11, at the Kliever National Guard Armory. Available Dec. 1-31 on Comcast for $9.99. Check out portlandwrestlingtv.com for details.

PALETTE TO THE FACE Speaking of matches, P-towner Steven W. Ochs is bringing artists together by having them kick the dada out of each other on artfaceoff.com . This site pits two artists head to head in a bracketed format in which artists move ahead with online votes from curators, fellow artists and visitors. (Curator votes count more than all others, but anyone can participate to bruise the shit out of fragile egos .) Eventually, two artists will meet in the championship for rights to the title "Humanity's Greatest Living Artist" and a grand for more paint. P-town benefits as the site draws competing artists from around the world to show at 625 NW Everett St. #104 every First Thursday. Right now they've got Nation N. Nation , a liquid wizard ranked in the top 20 of the some 900 Face Off artists. Yo, Lizzy Leach, you ready to throw down?

PLAY IT AGAIN Even in the wake of the recent mega-acquisition of House of Blues by Live Nation , the events behemoth that owns, operates or has booking rights at 153 venues worldwide, there's still hope for music's little guys. According to live event site Pollstar 's latest total ticket-sales tabulation, four of Portland's own music promoters rank among the top 100 in the world . Which means that, thanks to Mark Adler/True West , Mike Thrasher Presents , Monqui and Double Tee , Portlanders can now be well justified in sticking their tongues out at corporate promoters, since (apparently) we're not giving them much business.

WOULD YOU, COULD YOU SEE HIS PLAY? Loaded uranium heir and self-described "best playwright alive" Charles Augustus Sheen III—who made headlines in 2004 when he was found guilty of attempting to extort $2.5 million from Dr. Seuss' widow, Audrey Geisel, who he claimed plagiarized a children's story he wrote—is back with a new, sci-fi-themed play, Them & Virtuous Man, playing Nov. 12-19 at Rotture. Here's hoping it fares better than his still-unproduced 2003 work, The Tragical History of Audrey Geisel, or How the Grinch Plagiarized My Goddamn Children's Story.

For more dirt on opera-company closures and hot shoes, visit wweek.com.

^WEB-ONLY SCOOP:

FAT LADY SINGS AFTER ALL Well, Portland Opera may be not be ready for its swan song (see Scoop, Nov. 1), but Gresham-based Oregon Lyric Opera, birthed in 2004 by local mezzo sensation Angela Niederloh and tenor-conductor Jason Ogan, has called it quits. After producing a series of benefit performances in 2003 and 2004 and a well-received full production of Verdi's "La Traviata" in 2005, the company floundered, in part because of the romantic split between Ogan and Niederloh. Dennis R. Ogan, OLO president (and Jason Ogan's father) called the company's shuttering "an extremely difficult time in the life of our family," and went on to say this: "We have come to the end of our resources—every attempt to bring opera to our community has failed and no one is more disappointed than Jason and I."

IN THE BOX Another sneaker giant has set foot in P-town. The spanking-new Puma Portland Store, one of 40 concept stores across the globe, is located across the street from Powell's Books at 40 NW 10th Ave. According to those in the know, it's designed to look like a shipping container and is "an extension of the energy and social nature of Portland itself." Whatever. So, how does Puma market itself in a town full of Nike and Adidas junkies? By creating a "Meet New Friends" social area. First Thursday will never be the same.

EAST COAST BRAVO The co-director of Portland's Imago Theatre, Jerry Mouawad, is getting rave reviews for his East Coast production of Sartre's No Exit, which uses the same set he first debuted in Portland in 1998. The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout says, "Though the concept is brilliant, the script is repetitious and insufficiently pointed—but Mr. Mouawad's tilt-a-world makes [No Exit] seem better than it really is."