I woke up on Saturday with no idea that I'd be spending the bulk of the evening in Keizer. I'd never been there before and really had no reason to pay a visit. Then along came two colleagues who are absolutely convinced that the city offers some of the best Mexican food in the state.

The menu at La Hacienda Real is huge and has to be at least the size of the one you'll find in a Cheesecake Factory. More impressive is the decor. The Keizer location of the three restaurant chain is tucked away in an unassuming strip mall. The inside resembles a cartoon village. Cactus lamps hang from the ceiling and a "tortilla lady" cranks out shells in a kitchen built inside a facade that looks like a guest house.

The portions are huge but the Iron Horse in Milwaukie still gets my vote for "Best Mexican Restaurant in Oregon."

Near the front door we spotted this sign for a local high school's production of The Taming of the Shrew: The Yee Haw Version. None of us had heard of this twist on the Bard's anti-feminist screed. It was closing night and curiosity got the better of us. We'd never get another shot at something like this.

We arrived at McNary High School with time to kill so we wandered the darkened halls. All in all, it seemed fairly normal. Trophy case by the gym, student-made posters about The Great Gatsby outside an English class...

...and then we found the pornographic modern art sculpture made out of bubble wrap up on the second floor.

I broke out my iPhone if only to later prove that the sculpture wasn't the product of group hypnosis. If you think you can handle a few blurry NSFW cell phone photos, click here and here. I can only assume it was an art student's senior prank.

Kids these days...

We made it through the entirety of Shrew's nearly three hour running time. The girl who played Kate was great and the cast spent a good portion of the play running around with prop guns. Kate had a real whip and swung it over the heads of the audience and her cast mates. I was once a teenage drama geek in the PPS district and I was never once allowed to wield an actual weapon on stage (dammit). I guess they just do things differently in high schools further down the I-5 corridor.

Labels: restaurants, theater