Nathan Weinbender

You can hear it from the sidewalk – the hollering, the wild applause, the boos and the hisses. If you happened to wander by Boots Bakery and Lounge on Sunday evening, you may have wondered what was going on inside. It was a poetry slam, a raucous celebration of spoken word and performance art, and local poets gather at Boots, 24 W. Main Ave., on the first Sunday of each month to present their writing to the public.

The town of Wallace will host its second annual Blues Festival this weekend, highlighting the music of blues bands from Washington, Idaho and beyond. Wallace may be a small town – its population is just shy of 800 – but they’re looking to make a mark on the summer music festival scene. The first fest was named 2012’s Best Blues event by the Inland Empire Blues Society and welcomed nearly 2,000 attendees.

When I was a kid, around 8 or 9 years old, I was hopelessly enamored with things that every impressionable boy likes at that age. You know, cool stuff like robots, monsters, fast cars, spaceships and superheroes. Since I’ve grown up, my tastes have naturally changed (whether they’ve been refined is still up for debate). But every time I wander into the theater to take in the latest big-budget action blockbuster, what do I see? Robots, monsters, fast cars, spaceships and superheroes. It’s as if everyone in Hollywood is making movies aimed exclusively at the elementary-school set.

The moment it was announced that Johnny Depp would be portraying Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s “faithful Indian companion,” in Disney’s big screen adaptation of the famed 1930s radio serial, the Internet began frothing at the mouth. A quick Google search for the keywords “Lone Ranger,” “Johnny Depp” and “racist” produces a number of online editorials, a lot of which were written before the movie had even started filming. Many are thoughtful, well-researched think pieces about the state of ethnicity in Hollywood, while others angrily declare prejudice. One even likens Depp’s turn as a Native American to Al Jolson’s blackface number in “The Jazz Singer.”

Since its inception in 2007, Saranac Art Projects has made it a goal to bring more color and life to the Spokane arts scene. It’s a nonprofit art cooperative made up of 20 or so local artists and art educators, and their gallery inside the Saranac Building downtown features diverse and challenging work from artists in the region. Beginning today, the gallery will be split into two new exhibitions that are wildly different but complementary – “PRIME” and “ARTifacts.”

Allie Kurtz Vogt isn’t so much influenced by the world around her as she is energized by it. The people she knows, the places she’s been, even the linen tablecloths she remembers from a childhood home in Des Moines, Iowa – they all contribute to the fragments that make up her art.

It all started with “The Music Man.” Douglas Webster first took the stage in a production of the famous Meredith Willson musical when he was in sixth grade, and from then on performing became his primary pursuit. “I was singing loud and obnoxious into a microphone, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever,” he said.

On the side of a pedestrian bridge right outside of downtown Lewiston, a bright blue and yellow rattlesnake leaps out from the otherwise unassuming landscape. Three sockeye salmon adorn the opposite side of the 200-foot-long bridge, which crosses Highway 12. The piece, titled “Confluence” in reference to the converging of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, is by Spokane artist Melissa Cole. Typical of Cole’s trademark style, the piece is vibrant and playful, an image from nature fused with a sense of magical realism.

On the side of a pedestrian bridge right outside of downtown Lewiston, a bright blue and yellow rattlesnake leaps out from the otherwise unassuming landscape. Three sockeye salmon adorn the opposite side of the 200-foot-long bridge, which crosses Highway 12. The piece, titled “Confluence” in reference to the converging of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, is by Spokane artist Melissa Cole. Typical of Cole’s trademark style, the piece is vibrant and playful, an image from nature fused with a sense of magical realism.

It may have been a risk, but it finally paid off. Coeur d’Alene’s Lake City Playhouse was recognized at the regional level by the American Association of Community Theatre for its production of “K2,” which ran in January as part of the 2012-13 season.

Todd McFarlane calls himself “a jack of all trades, master of none,” although it’s difficult to see where he’s coming from once you take all of his accomplishments into consideration. Born in Alberta in 1961, McFarlane came to Cheney as a student athlete, playing baseball for Eastern Washington University in its 1982 and ’83 seasons. On top of his academic and athletic pursuits, McFarlane worked as a janitor on campus and devoted about an hour every night to a skill that would later become his profession: drawing comic book characters.

When you think of superheroes, there’s one who leaps to your mind: Superman. It’s a natural reaction. He’s the purest crystallization of the strength, integrity and patriotism a superhero is meant to embody, right down to his image as the handsome, well-groomed, all-American male ideal. The “S” emblazoned on his chest might as well stand for “Symbol.”

At first glance, “Blancanieves” looks like a gimmick: It’s a Spanish film based loosely on the story of Snow White, and it’s photographed to resemble a black-and-white silent film from the earliest days of narrative cinema. But, like 2011’s mostly silent Best Picture winner “The Artist,” this is the case of convention breeding invention, and director Pablo Berger is artistically liberated by his techniques when most filmmakers would be shackled by them. Spain’s official selection as Best Foreign Film for this year’s Oscars (it wasn’t nominated), “Blancanieves” begins in the tradition of grand, lurid melodramas. In 1920s Seville, a famed bullfighter is gored in the ring, and his pregnant wife goes into labor as she looks on. She dies giving birth, and her husband, now paralyzed, rejects his newborn daughter in grief.

The work of bestselling humorist and Sandpoint native Patrick F. McManus is returning to the stage in the new production “McManus and Me: The First 20 Years.” The show, which makes its Washington state premiere in time for Father’s Day weekend, is the sixth adaptation of McManus’ stories to star Tim Behrens as a one-man cast of colorful characters. Credited as an “indentured actor”– he claims that designation is for tax write-off purposes – Behrens has been bringing McManus’ witty musings to life for the past 20 years. He transforms himself throughout the show to portray the wacky residents of the fictional town of Blight, Idaho, with such wild names as Melba Peachbottom and Rancid Crabtree.

G-Dog is the last nickname you might expect to belong to a guy like the Rev. Greg Boyle, but the reformed gang members he works with have been calling him that for years. A Jesuit priest who received a bachelor’s degree in English from Gonzaga University, Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit program designed to keep the at-risk youth of East L.A. off the streets. (His motto: “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”) Boyle and his staff care for nearly 12,000 kids every year, mostly from low-income families susceptible to drugs and gang violence.