Entertainment

When did this area become a mecca for good – even great – Italian food? We thought we had covered enough when we trumpeted Tony’s on the Lake (Sept. 6) and discovered Sundance Bistro (Feb. 6) in the first year of our culinary adventure.

Chris Isaak’s reason for doing an annual holiday tour is simple: He likes to sing Christmas songs. The San Francisco-based singer known for the smoldering hit “Wicked Game,” said by telephone recently he knows other artists – and he won’t name names – who make Christmas records quickly and with the sole purpose of knocking off a contractual obligation. Not so for him.

In December 1992, humorist David Sedaris made his debut on National Public Radio reading an essay titled “SantaLand Diaries,” a witty, acerbic account of the author’s experiences working as an elf in Macy’s SantaLand in New York City. The appearance jump-started Sedaris’ career – he has since become a best-selling author, with collections including “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day” – and NPR re-airs “SantaLand Diaries” every holiday season. Four years after its radio debut, “Diaries” was adapted into a one-man stage show by Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello. Coeur d’Alene’s Lake City Playhouse opens its version of the show Friday night, directed by Heather Bingman and starring Doug Dawson as the disgruntled department store elf known as Crumpet.

As the Seattle rock band Pearl Jam marches to the end of its latest U.S. tour, the reviews are in. And the reviews say fans lucky enough to score tickets to Saturday’s sold-out show at the Spokane Arena can expect a rockin’ and raucous night.

He is an ex-journalist who crossed over to a government spokesman job that has just blown up in his face. Depressed, embarrassed, the one story idea he’s been pitched is “human interest,” a story by and about “weak-minded, vulgar, ignorant people.” She’s an old, ill-educated Irish woman who might fit his definition of “human interest.” But she’s in need of a journalist – disgraced or otherwise.

Rarely has a story about an angelic schoolgirl been narrated by Death. But such is the case in the dark yet wondrous Nazi Germany-set “The Book Thief.” “Here’s a small fact: You are going to die,” we’re told via voiceover by the Grim Reaper as we meet our young heroine, Liesel Meminger, played exquisitely by 13-year-old French-Canadian newcomer Sophie Nélisse.

Elizabeth Mick waited until her senior year at Lewis and Clark High School to get serious about dancing as a career – late for a ballerina, she said. She’s 5-foot-4 – on the short side for a ballerina.

“Black Nativity” is a musical updating of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes’ play, based loosely – very loosely – on the way Jesus of Nazareth entered the world in a manger in Bethlehem. And once it finds its footing, this Harlem variation on the Nativity story manages to be sweet enough to touch people the way Christianity’s “Greatest Story Ever Told” always has. Credit the cast, especially the supporting players, and a sympathetic handling of the material by writer-director Kasi Lemmons (“Talk to Me” and “Eve’s Bayou”). They ensure that the sentimental never turns maudlin and that even the sermonizing goes down lightly.

Spokane’s future largest hotel, a 15-floor, 720-room project spanning an entire city block, is under construction across from the Spokane Convention Center. It’s expected to open in 2015 and includes a 900-space parking garage. When our readers saw the latest artist’s rendering, they piped up on Facebook with these comments about the project: Robert Barnhart