Oregon Voice Winter Issue

O RE G O N Opening sesame 198 9

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opening sesame since 1989

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editor in chief LUCY OHLSEN publisher BENJAMIN MCPHERSON FICKLIN art director TAYLOR JOHNSTON managing editor JOSEPH DE SOSA multimedia director DEREK CHESNUT public relations SAIGE KOLPACK web director MICHAEL MCGOVERN contributing editors ALYSSA PERSONS BEN STONE TRO Y BRYNELSON THOMAS EDMONDS MK MORONEY cover art IMOGEN BANKS contibutors MARISSA MCLAIN, EMMA IVIE, TRACE CABOT, KATEY FINLEY, ARIEL WILLS, JOSH LARSEN, SAUMON GHAEMI, JORDAN CHESNUT, COLETTE LEVESQUE, JACOB DODDS, SHERLOCK DOMEZ, GRANDPA, ZEV HAGGIT, MICHAELA GIUNCHIGLIANI, RITA CLARE, INDIA CHILTON, ININA KACHELMEIR, SHERLOCK DOMES, ALYSSA PERSONS, ANDREW HARDT, JACOB DODDS, MONTANA AGNEW, SAM TAYLOR, DEVON FRAZER, CLIFTON ROSE, TASHIA DAVIS, RUBEN GARCIA board of directors CARA MERENDINO, STEPHEN PERSON, SCOT BRASWELL, SARA BRICKNER, KOREY SCHULTZ, SCOTT E. CARVER, HALEY A. LOVETT, JENNIFER HILL, RYAN BORNHEIMER, RAECHEL M. SIMS, BRIAN A. BOONE, SARAH AICHINGER-MANGERSON, ROBERT K. ELDER, AUTUMN MADRANO, SAM PARKS, MIKE RUSSELL, CLIFF PFENNING

ED-LISHER’S NOTE Heads up! After a recent scientific discovery that life’s not easy, more hard-hitting, up-to-date data also indicates that life’s great. And though we have remote controlled killing machines, dictators living up to the true definition of the non-anatomical dick, and babies wail for reasons universes beyond a soggy wet diaper, there are other sides to everything.

The internet has many sides, and lately I’ve been doing a lot of clicking. Links on links on links lead me to a feeling of unabated business-like importance. Yes, the Oregon Voice has a website, and yes, a lot of my clicks lead me to very important day-today cocktail-party-status-intelligence. But my clicks have a tendency to take on a sporadic speed so uncontrollable that sometimes, I feel like my digital self is becoming more me than me.

It takes some self-reflection to get to the bottom of even the truthiest of truths. How do I really feel about drones? Do I feel that way because of my morality or because of Heems’ “SOUP BOYS” video? What is the social host ordinance and why do I feel so weird defending my desperately grasped, putatively claimed right to party? Who is telling me to buy Vyvanse? Are Converse still cool?

This issue features several stories of internal discovery. Ben Stone takes us on a romantic journey through his entanglement with slang. Thomas Edmonds challenges the accepted notion that a modern “downtown” can be a lively place. And India Chilton shares her affinity for and experience with Buddy Wakefield, a renowned slam poetry artist.

Click on, but don’t forget to eat your beets and wash your sheets.

1:27 a.m. The bottle is empty, Joseph delves into a rant about a scientific construction of reality, and the OVoice machine rumbles away. Chug, chug, chug, it feeds out beautiful nonsense that borders on making sense.

Fuel: Coffee Cabernet Encyclopedias of monsters and ghosts The dedication of a lot of dawgs.

The OV Factory has been blessed by a lot of new faces. We have potion brewers, lion tamers, mechanics, janitors, demolition experts, and wizards. My Winter Issue goes out to all y’all. Dad is very proud of you.

OV loves the Art Department, Laura Hinman, and the OIED! OREGON VOICE is published as many times as we want per academic year. Any and all official or unofficial or superficial nonsense can be directed to 1228 Erb Memorial Union, Suite 4, Eugene OR 97403 or to publisher@oregonvoice.com. Copyright 2012, all rights reserved by OREGON VOICE. Reproduction without permission is prohibited, but the thought is really flattering!

OREGON VOICE is an arts and culture publication that eccentrically expresses the University of Oregon and its relation to the Universe. The program, founded in 1989 and re-established in 2001, provides an opportunity for students to publish works of journalism, art, prose, poetry, and genetic alteration. Administration of the program is handled entirely by students.

OFFICIAL STUFF

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BEER! 100% NOTHING

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DEAR SADFACE

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BREAKING NEWS!

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DOWNTOWN SADTOWN

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THE DEATH OF DOPE

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RECIPE!

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DIY

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An imposter!

My shoe is untied RevitaLIES

What the cool kids are saying People eat food Flacid veggies

opening sesame since 1989

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Politics suck.

with MK Moroney

Politics according to India Chilton’s 9-year-old brother:

NOTHING

His name was Nathanial, but his friends all called him Nate.

Those were highschool friends, now everyone calls him Nathan.

Nate sits at the EMU loading dock around two o’clock am. Cigarette, tallboy, loneliness.

It’s not so cold, not anymore, but he’s sad.

Puff. Drink. Puff. Drink. Drink. Drunk. Sad. Over analyization education’s significance.

A person walks confidently from the breezeway. A tall girl with a black beanie pulled low places a sticker that reads “FUCK YES” on a newspaper box.

Scared but, whatever.

“Hey, want a cigarette?”

-Nathanial Bradford

Grandpa’s Advice

lots of beautiful people in the h ere are world. D T on’t get distracted by the millions.

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This Just In From Devon Frazer’s Bathroom!

Upon our downstairs bathroom flooding, our plumber found tampons, baby wipes, and weed in our pipes. Not smoking pipes— plumbing pipes—connected to the toilet, pipes. And not little baggies of weed—whole fucking plants of Mary Jane, lurking in the depths of the toilet bowl and waiting for someone to light his or her poop on fire. The mystery remains unsolved.

100%

My poop is green My green is poop I love my poop My poop is green like money!

-Joseph de Sosa

Sometimes, sitting on the toilet, she wondered if an egg was sitting below her. It was plausible, as she was a young woman, fertile by assumption. She liked to poke at the white stuff that accumulated in the mid-triangle section of her fancy panties. It was usually squishy, and she wondered if human eggs were squishy too.

She didn’t want a baby, though having someone to take care of sounded sort of fun. But fun in the way that a fleeting Friday night was fun – a brief encounter with a pair of warm, fuzz ridden lips, an encounter that lasted only long enough for it to be locked up in memory land, nestled comfortably in the hippocampus.

-Lucy Ohlsen

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Briefs art TAYLOR JOHNSTON

BATHROOM BOTTLE OPENERS words INDIA CHILTON As I walked into a bare-bones motel somewhere in the dirty innards of Phoenix, Arizona, I admit that in my ignorance I expected nothing more than a place to set down my backpack. This place, grimly illuminated by flickering neon signs advertising four strip clubs on a single stretch of pockmarked road, owed its existence to a free airport shuttle, a prospect that appealed to my near-empty billfold. What, then, was I supposed to think when rushing to pee after too much shitty airplane coffee I found the holy grail of desert panache, the answer to all my bathroom needs, nailed to the bathroom wall?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my eyes fell upon the dingy glint of a wall-mounted bottle opener, perched just a few bruised tiles up from a lonely roll of single-ply.

The neon pole-dancer out the bathroom window spat pink electricity at the cement.

This was revolutionary. Now, our most famous yellow-faced Springfield resident and patron saint of all that is hopped and bubbly, wisely notes, “alcohol is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems”. As a devout Eugenian (this is a religion, isn’t it?

I mean, at this point it’s got to be at least considered its own philosophy. Think of the used bookstores! The farmers markets! We have hemp everything here!) I have to agree, and pose no objection to the possibility that defecation could outlast your 12oz.

And shower sex? Puh-lease. Like you’re going to let all the steam out just to avoid the risk of realizing how much you’re going to regret this in the morning. They’re not mistakes if you can’t remember them, man. If only for lack of a White Russian, you crack that bottle!

I stood next to the toilet in disbelief. The missing tiles and cigarette butts in the soap holder seemed to fade away in light of this grand discovery. How was I to know that I had checked into an establishment of such class! I mean, shit, how is this not a thing everywhere yet? Why don’t I have one of these? Turns out, the only problem with having a bottle opener in the bathroom is that the fridge is not.

UNITED YOU SUCK words KATEY FINLEY Having finally acquired the perfect cute steel eco-friendly water bottle of my dreams, I was eager to put it to use while traveling over winter break. I was two hours into a five-plus hour flight from San Francisco to New York when I finished the water I’d brought with me onto the plane, and, feeling dehydrated, I flagged down a flight attendant for a refill.

I was shocked to hear that they refused, as a matter of policy, to fill my water bottle, and instead would only offer me one disposable 5 oz. cup at a time. Although the cups had a recycle symbol stamped on the bottom, I witnessed the hundreds of cups used during my flight being thoughtlessly thrown into what was clearly the garbage, along with all of the other non-recyclable waste from the trip. The attendants would not even refill the same plastic cup and insisted on giving me a new one for each tiny allotment of water.

Being a good Eugene girl, after the fifth cup I started collecting them myself to recycle when I returned home. I then snuck into the bathroom to refill my bottle from the sink, which allegedly dispensed potable water.

Dehydrating your passengers and harming the environment at the same time? What the fuck, United Airlines? opening sesame since 1989

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Briefs GRAMMYS words MICHAEL MCGOVERN It’s award show season again. It’s that time when we all gather around the television to relish in the great artistic triumphs of the past year. We admire the experts behind these shows as they kindly help us decide what constitutes greatness so we don’t waste time forming our own opinions. Usually, I trust the Grammys to do just that. Their tradition of steadfast commitment to musical talent is supposedly a consistency in the world of art; however, this year they made a slight mistake in one of their categories. The “Best Rap Album” award is always highly anticipated and competitive, but this year, there is a clear frontrunner. One of the nominees is the voice of a new generation: 2 Chainz. In his groundbreaking album, “Based on a T.R.U. Story,” Mr. Chainz aggressively challenges hiphop’s status quo. With mesmerizing lyrics like, “All I want for my birthday is a big booty hoe,” or “Yeah, I love dem strippers,” and even, “A half a million dollars worth of crack money,” he has turned the world upside-down in pursuit of lyrical immortality. It’s this authentic perspective that the hip-hop community has been longing for. Up until now, few have had the daring bravery to take on the issues of strippers, money, and fame. O captain, my captain! 2 Chainz is at the helm, guiding rap out of the foggy abyss and into a sparkling sea of rhythmic genius. If you don’t believe me, or the fine folks on the Grammy voting committee, you can trust his words: “Middle finger up to my competition / I’m different, yeah I’m different.” So, they have nominated an artist who deserves recognition. What’s the problem? My beef with the Grammys is that this one-of-a-kind talent is not in a category all by himself. WTF Grammys?

LEGGINGS words SAIGE KOLPACK I’ve been spending a decent amount of time contemplating this new trend of wearing tights as pants. And let’s be honest it’s more 80s than actually new, but our generation’s inability to create its own fashion trends is another what the fuck on its own. And I know what you’re thinking: I of course, am going to bash it because they’re called tights for a reason. We’re not talking yoga pants tight, we’re talking I can see every curve of your ass tight. But that’s not really my issue with it, my problem is that I’m getting serious mixed signals of whether it’s okay to wear them or not. I look at these girls and I feel torn. Should I make fun of them? Or should I feel jealous? I mean these girls have found a way to go out in public not wearing pants, and for the most part it’s accepted. It’s not like they’re going into a restaurant and being asked to leave due to their lack of pants. And I’m pretty sure the majority of people, if given the choice to wear pants or not, would choose the latter.

Like any logical person, I turned to the Internet for an answer. But finding facebook statuses saying: “You know tights aren’t pants right,” a reference to Gossip Girl deeming the practice shameful and unacceptable, only led me to further uncertainty. On the other hand, there are a million gifs saying, “When I wear tights as pants” followed by some random celebrity judge spinning in circles in a swivel chair, their arms raised up as “Gave no fucks,” flashes across the screen.

So I decided to try it for myself when I was home for winter break. And I felt like every single person in that Trader Joe’s was judging me. It also didn’t help that I’d made the mistake of confiding my fears of being mocked for my lack of pants to my sister, who would periodically turn around in the store and exclaim, “Where are your pants?!”

Needless to say, I have now been seen in public without pants. And I’m left right where I started, with uncomfortable denim rubbing against my skin, watching as others frolic with no pants.

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BORING PRIZES words ALYSSA PERSONS

CONTINENTAL BREAKFASTS words JOSEPH DE SOSA If you have ever stayed at a motel, your memory of the apathetic concierge’s promise of the complimentary “Continental Breakfast” is bound to be one of disappointment, confusion, and feeling taken advantage of.

The next time a pair of those empty, glazed over eyes offers me those dreaded words, I will respond with a few questions I have since prepared. Like, “What continent is this breakfast from, North 7-Elevenstandia? Or, “Oh shit, why am I being fed plastic-wrapped junk food for breakfast?” Or maybe “Are you really allowed to hide the fact that the orange juice is ‘Tang’ from your guests?” After doing some research, I discovered that continental breakfasts are from Europe. And over there, they don’t pile store-bought plastic-wrapped Danish butterballs on the breakfast table.

They give you actual pastries, cheese, meat, and juice. And, your table isn’t covered in empty, sticky plastic convenience store wrappers at the end of your meal. But I guess after having thought about it a bit more, that’s what going to Europe is for. Getting to experience the European way of life, like not being sticky or tweaking out. In fact, what better way is there for stuffy Europeans to get the authentic American experience than on a raging sugar high supplemented by an extrathick Folgers instant coffee? I mean, what do you think Toby Keith ate for breakfast before threatening to put his boots in some terrorist ass? And what kind of food do you think Glenn Beck and his fans eat before those cultish book signings?

What the fuck Continental Breakfasts, you’re the American way.

For those of us who haven’t graduated to the big kid section of the cereal aisle—I’m talkin’ Grape Nuts, Special K, and anything that hides its sugar content in the form of dehydrated berries—the most important meal of the day has been kind of a huge bummer as of late. Sure, Froot Loops still taste awesome, even to a refined, mature palette. But what’s the point if everything in the box is intended for consumption? I mean why, for the love of God, can’t I find a color- changing spoon in my bowl of Cap’n Crunch anymore? Cereal box prizes go way back; they were first introduced by Kellogg’s in the early 1900s in order to entice the youth to arguably the most interesting and flavorful cereal in history: Corn Flakes. Other companies followed suit, and this marketing strategy continued well into recent years.

Take a stroll through your local grocery store these days and the potential for free stuff is considerably less apparent. Of Kellogg’s own dismal offerings, the best option is a mail- in offer for a “Collector’s Wristband” on a box of Mini Wheats. What sort of collector is this elusive wristband meant for? Who cares! It can’t be poured directly into my cereal bowl and it’s definitely not a promotional tie-in with a popular animated movie!

According to a Kellogg’s customer service representative, in-box prizes are mostly a “marketing decision” and are still available from “time to time”. The representative on the phone was unwilling to divulge any information past her vague talking points, summing up Kellogg’s giveaway strategies as “depending on, you know, what promotions are going on”.

A similar conversation with an employee from General Mills yielded even fewer answers. In my own desperate attempt to pierce through the corporation’s PR bullshit I naively asked if there had been significant litigation or, perhaps, a major scandal that the dearth of prizes can be attributed to. Naturally, my helpful representative did not answer my question nor provide me with any further details.

Even if this is just another part of a really intricate marketing plan, I’m not convinced.

The point is that no one wants a stupid wristband or a coupon booklet, especially children. If these companies aren’t going to indulge the masses with squirt guns and secret decoder pins, they can at least get with it. The next time I reach for Trix I’m expecting an iPod inside the box.

opening sesame since 1989

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D Dear Sadface

ar

Dear Sadface,

Dear Sadface,

I met my girlfriend’s father yesterday and not only are we both named Nigel - we were both wearing corduroys with a camo combat jacket and yellow sandals but mine were better. I didn’t like him, so afterwards I told my girlfriend she has to choose between me or him because I’m not sharing her with that rat son of a bitch and now she’s not talking to me anymore. How do I get her address?

A principal idea will take you to places you never expected not to visit. That memory we used to share wanted the TRUTH! The clear star that is yesterday gambles with lives, happiness, and even destiny itself, and now Political Correctness has gone mad? End the Fed!

Need Help, Incensed About Incest Leave it to a university-educated LIEberal elite to not recognize an opportunity for some good family fun when he sees it. And the Constitution says nothing about the legality of a triple-common law marriage including a father and his daughter and his effeminate, soft-handed city boy son-in-law, and therefore it is our BiblicallyGuaranteed Constitutional Right, and even then the courts flying the gold-fringed Admiralty Flag have no right to challenge it on land or enforce an income tax which was not added to the Constitution legally by the consent of the people, but instead added in by a chrono-crossing Reptilian Agent dosing the USA government with COINTELPRO LSD in their radium treatment (Now Banned by the FDA, a.k.a. Fascist Democrap Agenda, along with raw milk, and Christmas next). This is historic fact, backed by 2 Kings 2:24 and Ezekiel 23:20.

Keep away from my guns, ObaMao*! Also, you can probably find her on the Google, courtesy of the KGB (Google, KGB, connect the dots!) and reverse-engineered Grey xenotech. Wake up, America! *AKA Fresh Prince of Bill Ayers, Obi-wan Nairobi, etc. See freerepublic. com for complete list.

-USA Super-Patriot N.B. Rand Free Man on the Land 8

This month’s column was written by Nathan Bedford Rand after leasing it from regular columnist Sadface for a fistful of purestrain gold doubloons and all the colloidal silver-infused moonshine Mr. Face could drink. Mr. Rand is Prisonplanet.com’s top Northwestern correspondent on black helicopters, the Homintern, and UN water fluoridation for the purpose of stealing bodily fluids. He presented Sadface with his generous offer because “the American people need to know about Majestic-12’s demolition of Building 9 on 9/11, the top-secret base of operations for the Neo-Bavarian Illuminati during their war with the Quebecois ZOG, courtesy of Baquack Hussein Obumbler. Building 9, 9/11, Ezekiel 9:11, “Then the man in linen with the writing kit at his side brought back word, saying, “I have done as you commanded.” Do the math, people!”

Kyoon?!

Finally, someone speaking my language! The principal idea of the Constitution, biblically translated by the Founding Fathers into the memory we used to share, the Truth, is now under attack by the International Communist Menace that we SURRENDERED TO in Vietnam in 1974 (1 Year Before the “Official” end and 23 years before the Trilateral Commission Black-Ops ended Viet Cong Operations in the USA. Sound familiar? Like Deuteronomy 23:1? There are Satanists everywhere, friend!) at a secret Jesuit conference at the Bohemian Grove attended by the Bush family and the Rothschilds (and perhaps a young secret Kenyan madrassa student? I’m just asking questions) and only you, me, and our fellow patriots stand to protect OUR RIGHTS with our Bushmaster AR-15/BNR-PL Rifles from the Clear Star (AKA Satan, AKA Moloch [Moloch, Michelle [Obama!], hmm… sound familiar?]). Keep your powder dry!

-Mega-Patriot N.B. Rand “Go ahead punk, make my day!” – Robert E. Lee

Dr. Dodds

art ANDREW HARDT

Oregon Voice’s personal sex haikuist Dear Dr. Dodds, is dick cheese a real thing?

The answer’s a quest, what’s white and rank lies hidden still beneath foreskin No, but honestly, finding out if dick cheese is a condition is much like going on a quest. And sometimes you don’t even know you’re on such a quest. You meet a nice guy, you hit things off, things start to heat up, you innocently pull out his penis and WHAM! Perfectly aged man cheese hits you in the face (figuratively of course). Dick cheese (or smegma) is just a buildup of dead cells lurking viciously under some unsuspecting guys foreskin, waiting to ruin both your night and your appetite. So I leave you with this: Yes, smegma is a real thing, but like the worlds most elusive creatures, you never know where or when you will run into it.

Dear Dr. Dodds, is there any etiquette for Snap Chat?

Child, fear no longer.

Capture every dirty part; no consequences Once again technology has found a way to make us less responsible for our actions. No longer do we have to regret a drunken dick pic sent to an ex nor fear that an atrocious photo of your friend passed out in his own vomit is going to continue circulating Frat Row. Thanks to Snap Chat, a new app for smart phones that allows you to send a photo that will expire seconds after being opened by the receiver, you no longer have to worry about anyone saving pictures you send them. Snap Chat has provided another way for us to hide our embarrassed sexualities behind social media and moves the pressure of commitment even farther away from our daily lives. To answer your question, I think we should take this opportunity and run with it. Send everyone you know dirty, raunchy, over-the-top photos because you can. Fuck believing that any social etiquette is possible because social etiquette requires an ounce of social interaction, and with this new app that is now no longer required.

BREAKING NEWS

words MK MORONEY

Hey everybody it’s February now and there’s a couple things I think we should all be aware of. First off, pics of your cats on the internet still O.K. so keep ‘em coming folks. Now for the news. The news! If you are reading I will go out on a limb and say hey, I bet you know a thing or two about Chip Kelly throwing in the towel on UO, but joke’s on you Chip Kelly because we’re all soaked to shit and could really use that towel! Smartest student in Oregon, Firstname Lastname, told reporters last Sunday, “Who is Chip Kelly?” and later, “Are you going to eat that?”

a nice fig pie for my grandmother before she kicks the bucket” and if Earth says yes then you can eat figs in February. 2. make a nice figshape out of paper mache and inject dream juice into it and if you believe in the juice, there will be at least one fig available for your consumption. 3. Invent a machine that turns popcorn into nickels (or you can use actual nickels if you already own some) and take them down to the Outback Steakhouse in Springfield and ask the hostess for Calvin. Calvin will then invite you to join him out back, and if you have brought the nickels, he will give you figs.

Meanwhile in the Big Sky, the sun will be coming out for fifteen seconds later this month so get out those Ray Bans kids because you never know when you’re going to need them! Here at the Oregon Voice, we set out for an interview with the sun, who was nowhere to be found. Earlier this week, however, old man sun posted on his twitter page “L8r suckerz,” which has been re-tweeted by all Californians in the Eugene area.

Have you got a special someone? Do you want to make smush-smush with a local chiller? The valentine’s day gift outlet opens up again this month with tons of sexy shit! And the real news here, folks, is that nothing costs more than two burritos! You might be asking yourself in your brain, can I really get the smush-smush with a <2 burrito$ gift? But trouble your mind no more because if you provide enough alcohol, any gift will do!

Grocery stores this month are still fully stocked with yummies but you can forget about eating figs because they don’t sell figs in February.

Here are a couple ways you can make your own figs: 1. Go outside and tell Earth, “Hey there it’s me, ____, and I would really like to make

Mitt Romney sent us a postcard earlier this month reading “Winter in hell still 2 hot 2 survive,” so try your very best to be smart and nice to each other, okay kids? This coming to you from OV channel 1, chill on young dawgs. MK out. opening sesame since 1989

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DOWNTOWN SADTOWN

downtown resident breaks the lauded “revitalization” wide open

words THOMAS EDMONDS art SAUMON GHAEMI

If for whatever reason you decide to visit downtowneugene.com, you will quickly find out that downtown Eugene is “the heart of the city, where business, education and community come together. The arts, cultural and entertainment districts offer an impressive selection of lodging, dining and events. Awe-inspiring events and an intriguing cultural experience are waiting for you.” Being a proud resident of downtown Eugene for almost two years, I couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed of my obliviousness to all that awe-inspiring what’sits and intriguing cultural happenings that are taking place outside my window. By my account, when you find yourself stepping into the actual Downtown Eugene, you will quickly realize that there is absolutely nothing awe-inspiring to speak of.

Firstly, I doubt anyone would consider downtown the heart of Eugene.

Even if the metaphor is supposed to be representative of the interstate being veins and the university being the mind or whatever, it still doesn’t hold up geographically. And never once have I ever been in a conversation where I tell someone about Eugene and they respond, “Oh, check out downtown—it’s like the Renaissance never stopped!” or “Wow, that shit’s like the finest cultural hub Oregon has to offer.”

Usually the response is more along the lines of, “Wow! How long does it take you to get to campus?”

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not against Downtown Eugene or the many businesses and residents within it, but let’s be honest: The only things close to culture it has to offer are the occasionally decent WOW hall shows, the occasionally decent café, and the occasionally decent transient asking for a cigarette or money or “whatever you got”. In terms of culture it’s not exactly Paris, France. Hell, its barely Paris, Texas.

In the many times I’ve traversed downtown, only a few businesses have really caught my eye. There’s an internet café that I always mistake as a history exhibit of the 90’s cyberspace boom. There’s Lazar’s Bazar, which specializes in “lava lamps,” “relevant books (whatever that means),” “clever patches & stickers,” “witty, funny buttons,” and knockoff Usher posters from 2004. It’s your go to supercenter for all things intellectual and patchouli-smelling.

Voodoo Donuts is located downtown and functions as Eugene’s local monopoly on plain donuts and donuts with whatever kind of bullshit cereal you would like sprinkled on top. So I guess Downtown is the social epicenter for fried bread.

If you’re not into fried bread you might want to go to Olive Grand. They sell olives, gourmet vinegars, gourmet salts, and everything you could find in the spice aisle of a regular grocery store ,but with gourmet added onto it. Olive Grand is conveniently located next to the Eugene bus station, which is probably where you would want to go if you’re 14, prefer to wear pajamas, and are desperate to bum cigarettes. It’s pretty much Eugene’s largest youth center for juggalos and scene kids that also happens to be the center for public transit. As if that weren’t enough, the local government insists on attaching speakers on any available rooftop, which constantly blare the anthem they play in North Korea to wake up citizens to praise the great leader. Not even slightly kidding about that.

If specialty olives aren’t enough to satisfy your salty-sophisticated cravings, then I suggest one of the many contemporary antique stores that pop up every day. These stores are all indistinguishable; they’ll usually have a high-class sign that’s wooden with illegible calligraphy carved in. Going inside you’ll usually find a journal that has ivy drawn around the borders and any type of weird vase or candle stick holder that suits your fancy. You can’t really leave these places without spending a 3-digit sums and you can’t really get the key to the bathroom unless you spend said 3-digit sum.

In between the random assortment of shops and restaurants are some office buildings with big windows that allow you to stare at sad men in cubicles who stare at their computers, which in all honesty is my favorite activity downtown Eugene has to offer. Yeah, there are bars, probably a theatre or two, and all the other establishments the collected social consciousness has deemed authentically “downtown”—but who cares? The whole Downtown concept has been antiquated since the mid-90s. People move to suburbs where there aren’t the high levels of crime and pollution that define the city center, and business and consumerism gravitate to the internet where geography is a nonissue. If there ever was a downtown culture it’s gone the same way as hair metal and disco, leaving only a few passionate and dedicated stragglers that maintain the dream is still alive.

All things considered, if Downtown is supposed to encapsulate and reflect the culture of a given city, then Eugene’s does well at representing a culture that is characterized by an apparent discoherent mish-mash of Pacific Northwest transcendental elitism and trendy yeast breads.

Go to the oregonvoice.com movie blog for more about Paris, Texas

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THE SCHNITZER PRESENTS:

WEST

OF CEN TER

EVOKING THE EXPERIMENTAL OPTIMISM OF THE 1960’S COUNTERCULTURE

words KATEY FINLEY

I

f “art museum” and “boring” are synonymous in your mind, what would you say to a psychedelic light show, a spinning, strobe-lit painting, interactive inflatable sculptures, and bean bag chairs for extra-cush seating?

West of Center is not your typical museum exhibition.

Subtitled “Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977,” the exhibit, which opens February 8th at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, features art and ephemera from many different groups of west coast artists and art collectives from the 1960s and 70s. The wide-ranging exhibit will encompass over 100 works from groups as diverse as the Black Panther Party to the Cockettes, a partcommune, part-theater troupe drag queen glam performance group.

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“THE GALLERY IS JUST GOING TO BE FULL OF ALL OF THESE SORT OF SURPRISING AMAZING OBJECTS AND DIFFERENT SORTS OF LITTLE ROOMS.” Curator Jessi de Tillio says that the exhibition is really about a moment in time when artists tried to branch out from the idea of institutional art and go beyond producing a simple, beautiful painting or sculpture. Instead they created an experience— expanding art from object to lifestyle and bringing it into the everyday sphere. “The goal is to make people think about things in a new way, think about the 1960s and 70s in a way that isn’t the cliché about hippies doing drugs. It’s much more than that and more about utopian visions, about seeking change, about bringing art into everyday life,” says de Tillio. One such attempt featured in the exhibit is the nomadic architecture of the Drop City commune, that identified with the back-to-the-land movement and made livable, portable domes out of recycled materials.

The travelling exhibition originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and was brought to JSMA Director Jill Hartz’s attention by Kate Mondloch, UO professor of contemporary art. She recognized the exhibit’s potential for broad, multi-disciplinary academic connections in art, art history, history, architecture, landscape architecture, women’s and gender studies, and political science. JSMA Chief Preparator Charly Swing, along with curator Jessi de Tillio, spent many hours on the phone with the exhibit’s creators in Denver to successfully adapt the large show to JSMA’s compact space while remaining true to the vision of the original curators. The result is something like an “an art obstacle course,” says de Tillio. “The gallery is just going to be full of all of these sort of surprising amazing objects and different sorts of little rooms.”

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JSMA Communications Manager Debbie Williamson Smith is particularly excited about the collaborative theme of the show, which was especially evident during the challenging process of installing such a unique exhibition. UO students from the departments of Art and Architecture helped to build the inflatable sculptures that are featured in one section of the exhibit.

De Tillio says that she is especially excited about one particularly unusual work with a mysterious past. “It’s a giant disk, and it was designed to encompass all the movements of art history in one painting,” she said. The work was last displayed in the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1968, and after de-installation, was never seen again. It has been painstakingly recreated from a high-resolution photograph of the original exhibit. At the push of a button, the disk begins to spin, illuminated by a strobe light. As the speed of the strobe changes, different patterns emerge from the painting.

The exhibition prompts contemporary viewers to reconsider some of the questions raised by critical discourse from the 60s and 70s about the role of art in contemporary society: Who is it for? Why should it be confined to elitist institutions like galleries and museums? Where should it be instead?

“I think that contemporary art has sort of fled the optimism of the 60s and 70s in a lot of ways and returned to being all about the market and elite objects and that sort of thing. I think it’s an optimistic show. I think it’s supposed to inspire people,” says De Tillio.

Grab a beanbag chair, take your epilepsy meds, and get inspired starting February 8th at JSMA. O V

The Man

Behind the

Mullet An Interview with Les the Barber

words MICHAEL MCGOVERN art TAYLOR JOHNSTON With tuition, rent, food, and alcohol raiding the bank accounts of helpless students, visiting the local barber has become a luxury. I myself become blinded in tangled bangs searching blindly and fruitlessly through empty pockets. I almost gave up hope before I began hear a few rumors from friends about a personable, professional, penny-saving barber. They spoke of a respectable man who puts his customers first with great prices and great conversation.

I had to seek him out; it seemed too good to be true. I headed over to 13th and Pearl, and only when I saw the big “$12” sign on his shop’s front window did I realize that Les was my savior.

As I approached his unassuming shop, I was swept away in a nostalgic trance that I assume is shared by many youngsters during their childhood trips to the local barber. Places like these are immune to the changing times: The spinning candy-cane pole, the jar of lollipops, the swiveling, cushiony leather chairs, I was convinced Eisenhower was still president. When I realized it was 2013, I sat down, looked up, and saw him. His distinguished metal-framed eyeglasses, well-trimmed beard, and stylish loafers were all overshadowed by a magnificent mullet. An unusual cross between Gandalf and 1980s John Stamos, it was magically suave. When it was my turn, I walked up to his chair and said, “You must be Les.” With a straight face he replied, “The chubby short guy? Yeah, that’s me.” It was off to a great start.

It turns out he has been cutting hair since 1958. That is 55 years in the biz. In ’63, he was drafted into the army, in ’68, he moved up to the Bay Area and met his wife, and by ’71, he had fled the radically hippie atmosphere Oakland had to offer and settled down in Eugene. He attributes his long career with his ability to adapt to changing times, “In the late 60s, people started to ask for specific hairstyles. So I had to go back to school and learn how to cut long hair. A lot of places went

out of business because they refused to change.” Les always knew that a long career of making people ridiculously good was ahead of him.

As we continued to talk, he trimmed away with complete ease. He moved naturally with the clippers, scissors, thinners, and comb. He looked like a veteran completely in his element.

Les has been the man behind the style of countless college students over the years. For him, barbering in a college town like Eugene is unique. “I like cutting students’ hair because they don’t bitch and whine all the time. With older folks, they talk about their problems with kids, their jobs… frankly I don’t give a damn.” I let out a chuckle, because I knew by the way he said it, he didn’t really feel that way, but was venting like his customers do. He doesn’t see himself as just a barber — he jokingly claimed to have applied for psychiatrist, therapist, and family counselor licenses. He enjoys keeping up with the changes in people’s lives and likes to reconnect with graduates who have come back to Eugene. The love for the men, women, and kids that come through his shop is obvious.

As Les put down the clippers, he brushed off my shoulders, pulled off my cape, and paused for a moment, “I guess, for me, it’s the people,” he said, “I enjoy people, and their haircut is like picking out a shirt or any other style. When I can give them the cut that makes them happy, it makes me happy.” My sloppy mop-top had been transformed into a fresh ‘do, and I was indeed happy.

This architect of appearance, this sculptor of scalps, this lover of locks, is real and in the flesh. I felt humbled to spend 30 minutes in the shop of a man whose career spans over half a century. In a culture where a person’s passion is not necessarily synonymous with his or her work, Les has followed his passion from the beginning and he’s been helping people get jobs and dates ever since.

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THE DEATH OF DOPE EXAMINING A SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH SLANG words BEN STONE

art&photos SAUMON GHAEMI

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he first time I ever heard the word “dope” was from a kid named Geoff in 8th grade. He was kind of a freak. The only things he talked about were sex and skateboard trucks , and I think he became marginally famous when a math teacher jumped out of a two-story classroom window to tackle him while he was smoking a blunt on the school lawn. One day I was standing outside school on the curb and Geoff called at me as he was rolling by.

“Heyo. That shirt is dope.”

It was one of the few times in my life that I have been mystified by slang. My shirt was purple. I didn’t like the shirt, and I didn’t like “dope”. I didn’t like how it sounded. My favorite word at the time was “sick,” which I loved the sound of—the way it clicked, the way I could bend it out for five seconds with my hand planed over my mouth when something (dope) happened. Saying “dope” sounds like you’re swallowing a sob. I didn’t like how it was both an antique way of saying “dumbass” and heroin. And though I had some respect for Geoff because he claimed he could make a bong out of any tropical fruit, he had no sway with me, and “dope” passed me by.

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Over the next few years, I got neck-deep into hip-hop, and I began to feel like a fool. “Dope” wasn’t just a homespun Geoffism—it was scattered all across the most respected and on-point 90s east coast hip-hop. GZA the Genius used it in a shark-eyed battle rap context in 1993 to close out Wu-Tang’s “Protect Ya Neck” (First of all, who’s your A&R?/A mountain climber who plays an electric guitar?/But he don’t know the meaning of dope/When he’s looking for a suit and tie rap that’s cleaner than a bar of soap.). Busta Rhymes used it in a more rude partysex context in 1996 on “It’s A Party” (But anyway we ‘bout to break out in my Lands/Pursuin’ our thoughts and executin’ all plans/The dope shit is that we both understand/That it’s a one-night stand and you ain’t even thinkin’ bout your man/*Ooh* OH! We ‘bout to turn on the heat again.)

But Boston emcee Edan was the one with the definition of “dope” that I connected with, used with a flick of the wrist in the title of his 2001 song, “Dope Rhythms for Sure.”

My high school was practically an isolated environment, so movements in slang worked slowly. But by senior year, “dope” had sprung up like a weed in my vocabulary, strangling and replacing all my former slang crushes and many key descriptive adjectives. People started to get

killed it: To give vent to high spirits; as an exercise of wit; for novelty; to allow of picturesque speech; to arrest and startle; as an escape from cliché; for conciseness; to enrich the language; to invest the abstract with concreteness; as an antidote to pedantry and pomposity; to allow one to talk up to or down to the level of another person; for ease of intercourse; to induce intimacy; to allow one to indulge in the special talk of class, or school, or profession; to prove that another person is an outsider, not ‘in the swim’; to be mysterious, to use a secret language.

One could modify this list to acknowledge the way the internet has broken down the barriers that have historically hidden the terms of and meaning behind slang from outside groups. For instance, one can now look at message boards and sites written by members of any social group, based out of anywhere in the world, and simply bite their slang and transplant it anywhere. As H. Samy Alim puts it in the hip-hop linguistics essay compilation Global Linguistic Flows, “we are living in an age of wireless identities, or the abo-digital age.” Slang now moves through communities so effortlessly that unmanageable

If one uses a single piece of slang “as an exercise of wit” it will soon cease to be funny, and if one uses it “to be mysterious” it will soon lose its mystery as its context becomes clearer, et cetera. So when Parks and Recreation (however charming it is), uses “dope” to sell dialogue, therefore putting a middle-aged slang term on permanent record, that is the exit cue. “Dope” may be good, but it is no “cool.” annoyed. Over a serious conversation with my uncle this summer, he told me that he had always hated “dope” and its connotations, and that when I used it, it had disturbed him. “But now when I hear it, it reminds me of you, and it just makes me laugh. I kind of like it now.” That night, he called the hamburger I made him “dope.” Only a few months ago in Saint-Petersburg, I was leaving a hip-hop show and a Russian girl named Yulia asked me if I thought it had been “dope.” I was stunned.

World domination.

“Dope” and I have fallen in and out of love, and every time I come back to it, I try to spin it in a new way. I’ve developed new ways of saying it, such as trailing off slowly to avoid the “p” sound (“Doooooooough…”) and saying it repeatedly in fast staccato (“Dope, dope, dope.”). It’s even evolved into a pretty meaningful term for me that fills the hole I feel there is in the English language for describing friends. But after the five years that “dope” has been a pivotal piece of my vocabulary and communication, it recently lost its magic. I was watching Parks and Recreation and eating an apple when I heard Tom say, “Damn, those pants look doooope!” Bang. Dead.

The exact cause of death puzzles me. In principle, it is in poor taste to reflexively discard a routine object from your life when it becomes widely popular—“hipsters” who do this have attracted a lot of mainstream ridicule in recent years. And yet, “dope” on television is different for some reason. And I think it has something to do with why we create and spread slang to begin with.

In 1941, the journal American Speech published an article titled, “Slang,” that listed linguist Sir Eric Partridge’s reasons for why we use it.

It’s a long list, and it reads as stiffly as one would expect an academic journal from the 40s to read. But for all intents and purposes, Partridge

amounts of slang pile up, leading to new, anarchist uses of slang—for instance, exclusively using phrases like “chill” and “real talk” to describe anything, especially things that are unchill and unreal.

All things considered, Partridge’s list is perceptive. And in an interesting way, it complements something that UO assistant Linguistics Professor Tyler Kendall told me recently: “There’s a lot of subjectivity in terms of what is and isn’t slang,” Kendall said. “Slang usually refers to lexical items that come and go. Interestingly, while slang is usually thought of as short-lived (that is, specific slang terms are thought of as shortlived), terms like “cool” have been around (and viewed as slang) for many, many decades.”

After looking at Partridge’s list, I now know why it was so unsettling to hear “dope” on a highly rated television show. Almost every use on his list that matters to me is based on the premise that the piece of slang will, sooner or later, die. If one uses a single piece of slang “as an exercise of wit” it will soon cease to be funny, and if one uses it “to be mysterious” it will soon lose its mystery as its context becomes clearer, et cetera. So when Parks and Recreation (however charming it is), uses “dope” to sell dialogue, therefore putting a middle-aged slang term on permanent record, that is the exit cue. “Dope” may be good, but it is no “cool.”

Strangely, considering the hundreds of thousands of times that I have said “dope” since 8th grade, I am now as disillusioned with “dope” as I was when I first heard it come out of Geoff’s mouth. With a bit of selfcontrol, “dope” will eventually fade completely from my vocabulary, exiting some years from now with a final, lackluster description of my sister’s haircut. And so it goes. But I’m not worried. I’ve already used “iced up” like five times today. O V

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photo openingCOLETTE sesame sinceLEVESQUE 1989 17

LISTENING

BY TALKING words and inspiration with world poetry slam champion buddy wakefield

Buddy Wakefield is a two-time individual World Poetry Slam Champion and author of the books Live for a Living and Gentleman Practice. He travels all over the country performing and teaching his art. The Oregon Voice’s India Chilton had the chance to attend his workshops and talked to him about his process and what goes on in the mind behind the magic.

words INDIA CHILTON art ANNA CHELSKY “Make love to me Like you know I am better Than the worst thing I ever did.

Go slow.

I’m new to this.

But I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop Without jumping.

I have realized That the moon Did not have to be full for us to love it, That we are not tragedies Stranded here beneath it…”

T

he rust pushes itself through the fog. Its texture and weight, even in Portland, is particular to this hour. Reading Buddy Wakefield’s poems is an experience lost to any translation on paper — it is one that must be absorbed in as personal a way as it was written. Buddy’s words are meant to be read out loud. The rhythm of his voice that I’ve heard on a chance few occasions permeates the gauze that, even now, spreads thin across the Columbia and drapes itself across the train tracks beside me, seeming to lose no depth as it creeps onward. His style is one both familiar in the way it seems to lace through your own interactions with reality and foreign in the intense way it remains unique to the author’s own being. But as Buddy says in the words that now seem to animate themselves just through the glass keeping out the morning chill, 18

“We can stick anything into the fog And make it look like a ghost.

But tonight, Let us not become tragedies.”

Amidst stages plagued by the suicide-note-reading crowd craving a public forum, there are artists like Buddy. He captivates audiences and delivers a message derived from, but not communicative of, personal suffering. The secret, in his words, is “don’t fake cry”. Buddy proclaims himself fluent in Getting Better, a language that weaves itself through each poem he writes. Nervous energy propels his words offstage in a performance so theatrical that it is easy to forget that these words could be penned down on paper. It is a manic fusion of theater and verse, a modern soliloquy — the energy of which makes his gnomish figure seem to occupy every inch of the stage.

Spoken Word is just that, at its core: a public display of personal truth.

It’s through this medium that we are able to see the points at which our personal truths overlap, each unique experience colliding with those around it like a 1960s pinball machine, bells-a-ringing and lights-a-blazing. “There is a reason for all this vulnerability,” Buddy says. “It includes attempts at orchestrating emotional chaos to leave productive writing on the wall for others to use as sign posts.”

The way Buddy publicly shares his work by teaching and proselytizing his written messages contradicts the traditional way authors present themselves to their audience. He travels all over the country, speaking anywhere from high schools to prisons, teaching his art. He often holds slams after workshops, opening up the stage to hundreds of new voices. Using a genre less intimidating than classical poetry, Buddy coaxes out voices that might otherwise be bored or intimidated by iambic pentameter. These slams usually conform to the typical 3-round slam standard in which competitors are narrowed down by half in each round until a winner is chosen. The judges are often a mixture of slam veterans and audience members, and each holds up a score between one and ten to be counted by the scorekeeper.

These are hardly exclusive events — proper scholars and closet poetry junkies alike convene in coffee shops and theater basements to celebrate the art of spoken word.

Buddy Wakefield writes “like a nine to five job”. He works through each piece line by line like combing through a dreadlock, picking at each snag until it can be run through in one fluid sweep. The result is a rhythmic and sometimes abstract take on the life of a gay Texan who found his home on stage, a home far away from his Town, a place that’s

“Just too cute Like the difference between what we say and what we do Like the fact that violence in any form Is sanctioned by the government as criminal or insane Unless they’re the ones who commit it.

My town is cute like people who still shop at Walmart and claim to be patriotic.

Stop it.

My town is cute in the way we worry about the gays Fuckin’ up our family values and the sanctity of marriage Yet we still let our children watch television shows like Wife swap, the Bachelor, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, American Idolatry, and Fox News. […]

The first time my town saw the sky It sucker punched us in the throat Left us breathless Said, “I’m gonna keep you awake some nights without touching you” Needless to say, we’re glad he found it.

A finished poem, for Buddy, needs no outside affirmation of its greatness. “It’s like the first time you dropped acid in the back of your friend’s pickup and were like ‘is it hitting you yet?’ and he’s like ‘I dunno man, is it hitting you yet?’ Okay, you don’t need to do a survey, you know when you’re fucked up. You don’t need someone else to tell you.

It’s the same with writing a good poem. You know when you know.”

“THERE IS A REASON FOR ALL THIS VULNERABILITY,” BUDDY SAYS. “IT INCLUDES ATTEMPTS AT ORCHESTRATING EMOTIONAL CHAOS TO LEAVE PRODUCTIVE WRITING ON THE WALL FOR OTHERS TO USE AS SIGN POSTS.” Leaving the impression that slam poetry fits into a frame that I can lay down would be doing a disservice to Buddy’s work and to that of the other magnificent poets of his “Write Bloody” family. It is a writing style born of the worst of your world, the most devastating aspects of it, the parts pulling you through emptiness without mercy. It traces a journey that cross-cuts corners and jumps through hoops only to find itself back where it started. A reimagining of home and hope, and a new definition of self: broader this time and more forgiving, of humanity as an unapologetic work in progress.

“There are things wrong with us”, Buddy says. “There are things wrong with me, but I do have the ability to split epiphanies with my face on-demand. Hold me like a birthmark, awkward if you have to. Don’t worry.” Don’t worry.

Buddy’s tale is one that has had a great impact on my life as a poet and as an inhabitant of my own skin. His words seem to hold on sentiments apart from the esoteric realm of the intangible and, instead, root themselves deeply in concrete notions of “coming out of suffering at a root level”.

The phrase brings to mind my most memorable moment with Buddy, a moment that took his “self-observation operation” off the pages and out of the public eye and straight into my own life. When talking to him at a gala dinner at which we were both performing (me, quite out of my league), I asked him for the question underlying his quest for truth, the driving force behind what seemed to be a life so well captained at this point that we could only aspire to such direction. His answer: “can I get back to you on that?” O V

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Banginí on the gui-tar for good Walker T Ryan offers a one man band for the homeless on cold winter nights words LUCY OHLSEN

art ANDREW HARDT

Three inches of bushy, grey hair frame Walker Ryan’s face. He takes his derby hat off occasionally to scratch his head and air out the few hairs that remain on top of it. He grooms a scraggly, silver blonde mustache every few minutes—worn fingers pulling the sides into a greater mass of beard

When the Egan Warming Centers—places that open their doors to the homeless on the most extreme winter nights—open up, Walker offers his voice as a sort of lullaby for the guests.

Ryan’s self-diagnosis is accurate—each story he starts inevitably meanders down an adjacent narrative path. But Ryan’s “disorder” doesn’t come across as a defect. It’s just another thing he’s learned to accept about himself over the years. And, along his ambling search for a life in which he can believe that he is accepted and useful, there has been one consistent backbeat. For the past half century, he’s been banging on a guitar and singing songs.

glad, appreciative, and relatively quiet. Instead of trying to get a party going, the role his music plays is to still the waters for the evening.

When several hundred people from the streets gather, he says its easy for guests to become stressed out. He uses his tunes to set an ambience for a calm night

Ryan and his guitar have traversed the streets of Oakland, Eugene, Vancouver, Seattle—even parts of Scotland. For most of his life, Ryan has busked across the entire western US, his wife and uncannily clear voice in tow. After dragging her around on an endless string of towns and bar gigs, Ryan eventually divorced his wife. But he followed her to Eugene, mostly because of their two-year-old daughter. “I’m probably a better dad than husband,” he admits. Ryan said it was hard to disobey his desert-loving soul, but he forced himself to adjust to the humid life of the Willamette Valley.

a few originals, but he mostly plays covers from 60s artists like Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Pete Seeger.

“I feel like I’m empowered to be in there without all my crap coming up,” he said, referring to the anti-social nature he hides behind his Santa “I’m ADD as hell.” Ryan admits, brown eyes glinting with the sincerity of Claus face. “Feeling left out, can’t connect, stick my foot in my mouth.”

Pooh Bear. “It explains a lot.”

To Ryan, the homeless audience is everything a bar audience isn’t—

Ryan started performing at the centers 3 years ago, and started calling other musicians to do the same. There are 6 warming centers in Eugene, “It all started when I was just a 13-year-old kid, shy as could be,” Ryan and Ryan tried to get music to as many as he could. He’s since gladly said. Playing music was something that he could give back to the kids abandoned the organizational role, but his idea lives on. “I’m tickled at he hung out with. It allowed him to feel like he was capable of being how successful it’s been,” he said. social. “Music was the only thing I’ve ever done that made me cool,” he Ryan categorizes his music as “old blues stuff”—general words to said. encapsulate the songs that have come with him through his life. He has

“I’ve never sung a song I didn’t love to sing,” he said. He has to say “no” to some requests when he doesn’t know the songs, but he’s become okay with that. “For every song I have, there’s a story behind why I do it,” he said. “It’s about connecting the dots.” Each song matters, and has a personal and cultural history that goes along with it.

Ryan said he overheard a guest at one warming center saying that the music made her feel like a human being. This heartens Ryan, who says “I tried to be normal for a while,” he said. He became a social worker in that often institutions for the homeless somehow forget that people Eugene, and did it for eleven years. Though he never tired of interacting need more than food and warmth. with clients, he just couldn’t handle the intense social interaction with “It makes you feel good,” he said, a smile glowing over his flannel shirt. the other employees.

You can tell that he enjoys playing as much as he enjoys the usual good Ryan’s daughter is 27 now. Ryan is still in Eugene, and he’s still banging feelings one gets from doing community service. “I feel like I’m doing on his guitar. And though he reminisces about “the streets” with a far- what the music’s supposed to do.” off, fond gaze, he’s found a new audience that he loves to play for.

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d THIS BLISS words SHERLOCK DOMES

Fiction

Night had set in hours before the train arrived. It came just before midnight. He left the train and walked home in the cold quiet of a Sunday night.

His walk was silent. The feet below him fell quietly to the sidewalk. His breath exited his mouth like the exhaust of the cars that passed him on the street.

He looked to his left. There a homeless man lay shivering in the shadow of the gas station. His beard wavered and ached to be warm; all his blankets and jackets were on, fighting the cold, trying to stay alive at least through the night. He watched this homeless man and felt sorry for him, but continued his silent walk home.

As he arrived home, beer, cigarette-butts, and talking heads bounced to old music, and people slipped on their words like black ice was in their mouth.

He saw this and grinned at the sight of home. People he loved surround him as he set his bag down and joined in with the beer and talking heads.

People were dancing to Bollywood, bobbing their bodies, and jutting their hips. He did the same, twisting and shouting, as others waved and wobbled around the dancers. They moved with fluidity, as others sat in chairs laughing, all warm in their bodies freeing themselves.

He didn’t think of the homeless in the shadows, just his trivial truths. But he was privileged to think of this, holding onto bliss.

THE THREE LIVES OF PETE THE ROCK words SAM TAYLOR Before they broke his hands, Pete was known for his talents at the bass. He played every jazz club in town. We called him Pete the Rock because his timing was solid, his rhythm perfect. They called him Pete the Rock because he was big and broke bones. But he got tired of “the life,” so he left, at least that’s what he told us.

Watching him groove was something else. I don’t think he was there some of the time. I mean he was there, but his mind was somewhere far off when he played. His eyes would glaze over and he’d get this look of complete relaxation. I like to think God spoke to him, and that he worked through Pete’s fingers.

But they found him. He doesn’t talk much now. He comes to the club sometimes and sits in the back where there’s no light. If you look closely, you can see where they slammed his knuckles in a drawer. He tried to leave the life, but the bosses showed him you can’t get out to play jazz.

COLD FINGER MUMBLES words MICHAELA GIULIANCINI Sunlight gathers its tendrils in a warm embrace. The gnats are illuminated as they dance among the leaves and the wind. I am surrounded by fires. The cold crisp air is temporarily talked out of its harshness to warm the toes of children and men alike. The embers grow to a steady waltz from spark to flame. Outside, these fires stand no chance against the impending stamina of wintertime. I sit and watch as my feet scoot dangerously close to the fire, threatening an inkling of pain here and there. I miss the days of sitting at this pit when the fire itself was not there, but there was warmth nonetheless. It was summer, and it was effortless. Images of dancing and twirling in the evening twilight, sleeveless and content, swim behind my eyelids. Imagining a time when life was easier, less hurried and swift, was what kept me in the harsh outdoor climate.

My limbs began to long for the warmth of a blanket, a heater, perhaps the sun. Mentally, I am content to sit and ponder the past and long for a time in the distant future, but my body is less than still as I stare into the pit.

A large, red Adirondack chair is the color of warmth and a picturesque scene of summers long gone. But today, the chair sits in the frost and wind and mumbled sighs of cold fingers. The cold is but a figure that follows heat, chases away night strolls and playful dips in a local pond. Although the sun is present on this day, it is weak. The tendrils try with all their might to pierce the afternoon air, but slowly retreat back to their distant, warm mother and leave me to mumble about cold fingers.

words MARISSA MCLAIN The sidewalk threatened to crumble underneath his feet, as if the weight of all his worries and all his worries about people other than himself were too much to handle for the cold concrete. He walked, the tips of his once fancy shoes sliding on ice and his velvet bowler hat occasionally being hit with falling snow from a building. He whistled the upbeat tune he had heard last night in Harlem, man could those boys play. The sounds echoed in his head, blaring improvisations guided by creativity and confidence. God, he envied them.

He envied their spirit – one he knew he had, but just couldn’t figure out how to unearth it from the broken cavities and torn organs that were stored in his chest. He remembered that music was the only thing that could lift his spirit. It was the only thing that made sense anymore, amongst all the violence and injustice; a single sound could rouse an inexplicable feeling that let him know that he was still alive.

He was here, and he had his instrument. He looked at the weary sidewalk, and looked at the weary people. Raised up his saxophone and began to play. The first sound that came out was haunting but people raised their tired eyes and smiled as he continued, his eyes sparkling with that untamed, jazzy spirit that he knew was there all along. opening sesame since 1989

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STARFISH AND A HAT words EMMA IVIE

art SHERLOCK

DOMES

Fiction

There was once a starfish that lived by the ocean. The starfish was a lovely orange with spiny legs and a nice little tide pool for a home, but the starfish was lonely. It longed for a companion. One day it saw the most wondrous hat perched upon the head of one of the beach-goers.

The starfish fell in love. For a week it gazed longingly at its beloved. The hat would sit on the beach when its carrier would go into the water to splash about, and sometimes its servant would carry it over near the tide pools. Once the starfish saw the hat tilt flirtatiously in its direction when the hat carrier leaned over the water. The starfish was never happier than when it was sitting facing the ocean, and sharing the sunset with its darling. Its happiness wouldn’t last, because soon everything went terribly awry. The servant began to speak of leaving the beach and the starfish had to watch as the hat was forced into a netted bag, torn from the starfish’s side. The starfish was so desperate and distraught that it threw itself after the hat. The starfish fell to the ground, far from the safety of the tide pool, but the hat was fading into the distance. Seeing the starfish’s display of love, the gods decided to take pity on the poor creature. In a show of compassion, they joined the starfish with its beloved in a beautiful union of echinoderm and hat. To this day, the starfish can be seen lovingly wrapped around a felt head-cover, threaded to the contours of its love in an eternal embrace.

A FEW DEGREES TOO COLD FOR SUMMER words MONTANA AGNEW Last night I burnt the place down. I went there at midnight with a can of gasoline and a lighter and I burnt it down. Right down to the ground.

Afterwords I ran across the street real quick and hid in the bushes and watched and waited. Five minutes later I could hear sirens and I knew they were close. I just nestled myself deep in there and watched. Those bushes there across the street, I know ‘em. I know ‘em cause I hid there all the time when I was just a kid. Whenever mom would send me over to Johnson’s place I hid in there until he gave up. Bastard never found me there.

When the trucks came there was no way they could save the house. It was just a ball of fire and heat and I was squatting there inside the dark but I smiled anyways and I could taste salt on my mouth. I don’t know if that was tears or sweat. Mom never believed me about Mr. Johnson. I know that’s cause she fucked him and he gave her money to help with bills. But she died and then I took her house and pretty soon after ol’ Johnson died too. So my memories and I were alone in her house and his house rotted down the street but whenever I passed it bent over me like a big oily crow and the shade was always a few degrees too cold for Summer. So I turned it to ashes. I don’t feel much better.

words ZEV HAGGITT He sat near a window facing the East. The sun shone through the bay windows, rising slowly, rhythmically in incremental unison with his beating heart. His desires were unattainable, and his life ultimately unfulfilling yet he found himself rising to greet the new day all the same. His life was a simple pattern, a ten-piece puzzle. He was well to do, but after sixty years of wealth, money was not what it used to be. He didn’t care about much anymore. He used to love his wife, his children, his dog, his house, his garden, and his job. But with each passing breath his love for such things dwindled. Useless, everything was useless to him, even himself.

He could not pinpoint the moment this pessimism set in, but he thought it might have been around his sixty-fifth birthday, around the time of his stroke. He remembered his father’s stroke, his grandfather’s stroke, and his great-grandfather’s stroke. He tried to not allow the stroke to disillusion him as it had his family before, but he bowed under the keel. He was ready for his life to end. As he looked out that window to the East he saw the most wondrous sight. He gasped, his faith and love of all things restored, but it was too late. The reaper beckoned to him from across the room as his heart stopped.

THREE BROTHERS AND A TROLL words CLIFTON ROSE A long time ago in a very cold place there once lived three brothers. They lived in a drafty hut with a single wooly sheep to mark their meager wealth. One day a troll came out from the nearby mountain and took their sheep to his home carved from a smooth, round boulder. The eldest brother vowed to slay the troll and was very strong, but failed and barely escaped with his life. The middle brother was very skilled with a spear and vowed to slay the troll, but failed and barely escaped with his life.

The youngest brother was often very foolish and vowed to save the sheep, but his brothers simply laughed. So the young brother took a cask of beer to the troll’s home for a neighborly drink. The troll happily got drunk and fell asleep. The brother then took a bucket of the troll’s silver, a bucket of gold and the wooly sheep. As the troll slept the brother pushed the troll’s spherical home with all his might until it rolled down the mountain and into a lake where it is trapped today. The young brother returned triumphant and the three lived rich, happy lives thereafter.

22

LEGENDS OF THE HOUND

An anthology of memories from the Greyhound bus

words ININA KACHELMEIER

art RITA CLARE

The Greyhound’s reputation is a little like the Eugene Greyhound station—streaked with cigarettes and the remnants of more powerful drugs, with a legacy of stories trailing behind. Here are some memorable Greyhound experiences from some nice people at the station and myself:

potential murderer once. He kept mentioning that he “had to get away in a hurry,” and carried only a small carry-on bag as if he didn’t have time to pack. He also had a weirdly intense whispered phone conversation halfway through the ride. He was a really nice guy though, and gave directions to the best local bars.

The Police Stop: When I asked one couple at the Greyhound station whether they had any bus related tales, they said not really. “Oh, except that time when the police stopped the bus and made us stand in a line outside. We saw two coyotes pass by. Nothing interesting.” Whether they know it or not, a lot of people have some interesting Greyhound stories.

The Ferret: One ride I sat next to an older, pudgier gentleman. Part-way through he started stroking his stomach and calling it “his precious.” And then something under his shirt starting moving. “Want to see it?” he asked.

I wasn’t really sure what “it” was so I didn’t say anything.

He slowly reached under his shirt and pulled out a ferret.

A Fox on the Hound: It was county fair time, a magical time. People were celebrating, kids were playing, and an older woman got onto the Greyhound, started dancing in the middle of the aisle, stripped until she was butt naked, and got tackled by the Greyhound authorities. All I can say is: you go Grandma! You’re never too old to be awesome.

The Potential Murderer: I like to think I sat next to a

Greyhound has a bad reputation, but maybe it’s a little like a guy with a ferret under his shirt. It is not exactly a luxury ride—you’re cooped up in a bus with no wi-fi, minimal leg room, and occasional worry about the sanity of the people sitting around you. But despite its grungy reputation, most Greyhound rides are like a long, slightly smelly nap. They are a great opportunity to meet some interesting people. And after all, sitting nestled in a sea of strangers gives you a certain freedom to be as weird as you want.

words BENJAMIN FICKLIN

Having your car die in the middle of the Gila National Forest is a defeating feeling, but being rescued by a Greyhound, spending 30 hours next to a man boasting murder, and then idling in Los Angeles traffic makes one want to never fight again. Standstill LA traffic also does horrible things to small dogs. A stained overweight blonde woman boarded with her chihuahua. The bus driver protested, but the woman’s yells of “I can’t go anywhere without my service animal!” defeated the driver. Plus, what could a small animal like that do? The dog was old and looked content to sleep.

We sat outside LA for over an hour. It was hot, all of our body odors combined into one thick stench, and the constant rumble of engines leached our sanity. Highway hell. Every rider was one lurch from screaming their hatred of reality.

But the chihuahua was more stressed than all of us. It waddled to the aisle, squatted, and unleashed a torrent of diarrhea. The spewed feces trailed through the aisle’s grooves, chunks rolling up and down bus.

“It’s just stressed! It’s just stressed!” Yelled the woman.

The rider sitting opposite of the dog’s owner leaned into the aisle and vomited. The cars continued to rumble out exhaust.

AND NOW, A POEM. Nerd’s Delight

words COLETTE LEVESQUE

I put my dick inside her and pretend I’m Yoshi chasing rainbow question marks.

Swerve right, duck left, jam the back button and hope she likes it.

Sometimes when I can’t cum I pretend she’s Peach and her giggle makes me blow my load everywhere.

opening sesame since 1989

23

DISNEYLAND how the happiest place on earth made me sad words TASHIA DAVIS

I never want to go to Disneyland again.

Don’t get me wrong — I had Cinderella sheets when I was little and I can still bust out every word of “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan. But at this point in my life, the happiest place on earth isn’t in Orange County.

My Disneyland virginity was first taken when I was seven years old. My family bought two-day passes to the theme park, rallied 12 hours down I-5 to Anaheim, and proceeded to pack an obscene amount of activities into those two days because we were going to get our money’s worth of family fun and Kodak moments, god dammit.

The initial buzz was killed almost instantly when the shortest line for any cool ride was longer than two hours.

Then we ate a $12 plate of shitty mac n’ cheese before Space Mountain. At one point we were held up in line for California Screamin’ because an overweight individual was too big for the ride. My three-year-old sister was asleep in her stroller the entire time. We tried to make the most out of it, but really we came home from the most exhausting two days of our lives sweaty, pissed off, and drowning in trinkets.

Somehow this horrific memory faded, so when I found myself as a freshman at Chapman University, which is eight minutes from Disneyland, the first thing I did was buy an annual pass.

At first it was great. We could bike to Disneyland after class and put in a couple solid hours of rides before the dining hall closed. Then we took it a step further and went on every ride in the park—even the trippy Winnie the Pooh ride full of black lights and neon creatures from Pooh Bear’s dream called Heffalumps and Woozles. Once we were bored with that, we realized what a prime photo bombing opportunity Disneyland could be. But you can only Instagram Sleeping Beauty’s castle so many times. Ultimately, we resorted to entertainment by intoxication.

We’d try anything that might get us into the alleged Disneyland jail that apparently exists underground and may or may not be guarded by a little dog that holds the keys in his mouth.

Soon, the advertised and over-hyped “magic” of the park was replaced with creepy stories and legends I heard from a classmate who worked “behind the scenes” with the Disneyland cast members. She said something like 200 people die at Disneyland every year, due to anything from heart attacks to “freak accidents”.

She also mentioned that the “river” that runs by the Haunted Mansion is so full of toxic chemicals from rides, shows, and people’s general shit that if someone falls in, which happens fairly often, they probably aren’t getting out. Ever. And if they aren’t found after about a month, their body is definitely full-on disintegrated anyway.

Disneyland was yet again a nightmare for me by April. Whenever I went, all I could see was throngs of disgusting parents doting on their screaming children, fat dripping from the unending supply of chicken legs and churros. A creepy 1984 feeling came over me between my newfound knowledge of the jail and Disney’s efforts to hide any flaws in the park from visitors. Why is Splash Mountain closed…did someone die? And is that a soggy French fry or a disintegrating finger in the water there?

Disneyland is no longer a magical place where all your dreams come true, no matter how badly I wanted it to stay that way forever. It turns out life in the OC in general wasn’t that great either. Whether it was the overload of bros and hoes, or the realization that a season pass to Mt. Bachelor is way more worthy of my money than one to Disneyland, transferring to Oregon was like coming back home to my own planet. Luckily, I now live in this magical place called Eugene where the sun never shines, the jackets are North Face, and Phil Knight watches over us all.

art JOSEPH DE SOSA words BENJAMIN FICKLIN ...Sigh.

Here at the Oregon Voice laboratories, we occasionally find small traces of “sports” hidden between our canvases, whoopie cushions, armpits, dance-off trophies, and buttcracks. Dedicating to capitalizing off the multimillion dollar industry, Oregon Voice is now covering “sports.”

It could be possible that Stanford recently rode a 57% shooting night to shellac the Ducks, presumably in Men’s Basketball. Rumors hint at a large discrepancy in points-off-turnovers (an old wizened lady claimed it was 21-4). We’ve yet to confirmed that this game even occurred.

In researching Stanford basketball, the janitor of the EMU told legends of victory. They shredded Utah into tiny-bits using a 31 point broadsword. California was smashed by their 10 point hammer. It seems these sentient trees are masters of weaponry. If the janitor spoke honestly, the Ducks should feel no shame in this loss (if the game really happened).

The aforelisted info took all our best black-market trading pieces. As we accumulate more drug paraphernalia and joke books, keep your eyes open for “sports.”

24

SPORTS

COR

NER

opening sesame since 1989

25

Fig. 7.

When a Constellator dies, his internal singularity collapses in on itself under the shared mass of the processing center, and creates a new universe. This, in turn creates a new universe in which Constellators can become a part of, and so a new Constellator is created in order to be the primary guardian of that universe. Constellator creation occurs when a star dies. At the moment before it becomes a singularity, its energy is harnessed in an internal processing center pyramid, which is then recalibrated for the new universe and a few others, and is then inserted into the body of a new Constillator, which is grown from the cilia clippings of a Constillator already living.

In the instance of an imminent intelligent species extinction, such as star death, a number of Constellators may congregate at a certain point near the specieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s planet in order to transport it to another universe where it will avoid destruction.

The Constellators can harness some of this quantum communication in order to create contact between universes should the need arise - this is done by way of communication via their right palm. Always the right.

The pyramidal light sources on their chests contain their central internal processing center, made up of a constant set of quantum interactions between the equal amounts of particles from all of the universes in which they reside. At the very center of these interactions is a singularity which keeps all of the Constellators internal particles in a constant state of balance, exerting just enough force on each universe to counteract the temporary wormholes being created by the quantum interactions in the central processing chamber.

They are incredibly dense because they are present in multiple universes at once and therefore must maintain a large amount of mass in order to avoid being sucked into any one universe at any given time. Due to their immense gravitational pull, they are known to attract debris and often use the matter they attract as a kind of adornment for individual expression. A common fad is to shape larger debris into the shape of a small planet as if to joke that they have the gravitational pull within any one universe to attract such a large object, but we all they arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fooling anyone.

Their exceptional detection skills come from the cilia patches located throughout their body, which grows out of specialized follicles attuned to urgent distress signals. The rest of their body is covered in translucent scales which themselves are covered in smaller, more fine cilia to maximize their ability to detect microwaves and fluctuations in dark matter - which indicate a disturbance in a regions peacetime continuum.

The Constellators are a prestigious organization of interstellar peacekeepers.

words&art RITA CLARE

Constellator

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NORESPECT RESPECT NO

Lars Larson refuses to tell us what was wrong with our article in the Last Issue

The UO doesn’t buy us enough internet

Lupe Fiasco got kicked offstage for bashing Obama

Mini desserts

Zooey Deschanell

E C RREE SS PP E C We’re going to “talk” about letting UO Police Kanye West is not carry guns on judging a rap battle in Bend, OR campus

Bitchy politics of the ASUO

26

Band kids get the short end of the stick again

WHAT RAPIDFIRE

THEFUCKS:

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WTF

THAT CAMPUS HOTTIE FULL NAME: Simran Dhaliwahl MAJOR: Political Science, General Science HOMETOWN: Sacramento, California FAVORITE MOVIE: Incapable of reducing the cinematic experience you take with each film to a crude hierarchy TURN OFFS: Extremists, universial truths TURN ONS: Taller than her, ambitious, respectful FAVORITE COCKTAIL: Honey whiskey and ginger ale over ice LIFE GOAL: to finish the Feminine Mystique (shouts out to Betty Friedman) FAVORITE HOBBY: “Chilling” DOES GOD EXIST?: One’s relationship with life is too fluid to adhere to any one theological doctrine or book

Oreo still milking its birthday for profit

Simran Dhaliwal shines so bright that it’s hard to maintain eye contact. When I first saw Miss Dhaliwahl I thought I was looking at a sun encrusted with diamonds. Metaphors aside, Simran is a radiant, ravishing, and refined beauty— though it would be a great injustice to discount her exceptional character. Once you begin speaking with her, you’ll find her personality to be just as intoxicating as her appearance. Simran can throw down on a wide array of topics: the strengths and weakness of organized belief, the inherent faults of capitalism, and the use of the death penalty in modern society. Whatever the subject matter, she’s always able to offer some valuable insight. She possesses an uncanny ability to humbly reflect on and evaluate her own ideals, which leads to a humility and grace that would be expected of history’s critical thinkers. If I had to draw to comparison I would say Socrates but way, way hotter. Though its plain to see that Simran has profound intellectual capabilities, she is also able to maintain a degree of lightheartedness that makes it simple to talk with her about inconsequential topics. The ease at which she’s able to transition from what makes the perfect breakfast (eggs, with a bit of tomato) to how capital punishment should be exercised (only on people who rape a lot of children) was quite astonishing. It would be hard to classify Miss Dhaliwahl as anything but a full package­—it’s difficult to see any hint of flaw or imperfection in her character. She also has really excellent posture so it’s unlikely she’ll any back problems in old age. Unfortunately, she’s not looking for anybody to tie her down. Oh! She’s not afraid to scrap either.

Nate Silver tries to extend his prophetic visions to sports

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Destiny’s Child Superbowl Reunion Puxatawney Phil Bendy straws MAD MADRESPECT RESPECT

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with THOMAS EDMONDS

C C TT RR UUMM Olivia Newton John

Concealed weapons carrier shoots self while on toilet

Endless Labrynths

Michelle Obama’s bangs

The feeling of assurance after getting laid

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REVIEWS

JOEY BADA$$

words RUBEN GARCIA

Most 18-year-olds have no direction in their lives, and merely live by going through life’s motions. But for rapper Jo-Vaughn Scott, better known as Joey Bada$$, life is completely different. The young cat is on his way to solidifying his name as one of the best rappers in the modern era, already dubbed by Pitchfork as a “prodigious rapper” and “advanced-level” lyricist. He combines that old-school rap swagger with piercing punch lines and a smooth flow that sets him apart from competitors. He annihilates his tracks and captures the listener’s attention with witty wordplay and complex lyricism: “All I ask is for friends without parasitic minds/But that’s as seldom as Paris city crimes/They don’t wanna see me eat, they feeding off my vibe/Rations of pride depleting them inside.” The boy is already being compared to Jay-Z, and he isn’t even old enough to buy alcohol.

Bada$$ was born in 1995, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up on the same block as Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z. He began writing poetry and songs at age 11. Last summer, he captured the music world’s attention with his first mixtape, “1999.”

He was 17 at the time: “My days numbered to infinity/When I close my eyes I see the trinity, mind, body, and soul holds the energy/But they don’t know the inner-G/I try to keep serenity, but enemies/Always try to end me and my entity.”

Not only can Joey Bada$$ rap like no other, he has a crew that can do the same. They call themselves PROERA (short for Progressive Era), and they say they stand for “revolutionary shit.” The group released a joint mixtape titled The APROCALYPSE on December 21, the day the world was supposed to end.

PROERA includes rappers CJ Fly, Kirk Knight, Chuck Strangers, and the late Capital STEEZ who, to much wonder and sadness, committed suicide two days after the tape was released.

Looking forward, the rap world is Joey Bada$$’s for the taking. 2013 already looks like the year that he will reach glorified rapper status—he was featured on A$AP Rocky’s new album LONGLIVEA$AP, and he’s set to perform at independent hip-hop festival Paid Dues this March. He recently teamed up with legendary producer DJ Premier to release his first single, “Unorthodox,” for his debut album set to be released sometime this year. Joey Bada$$ is the change that the rap game needs. His raps are introspective and poetic, and if more rappers like him emerge, maybe real hip-hop can finally kill “swag rap.”

Rating: Gourd warts out of genital warts

DYLLAN HERSEY

words JORDAN CHESNUT Rumour has it that Dyllan Hersey played some Johnny Cash at a party so hard that her hand got all shredded up and and sprayed blood everywhere.

“My name is Dyll, you’re a pleasure to meet,” muses singer/ songwriter Dyllan Hersey in “Breathe Deep”, the first track of her self-titled album.

She continues, “Look up to the trees, cuz they’re bigger than you and me / look up to the trees cuz they’re what make you breathe.” Her album is an ode to love and place, hitting those savory notes with only two ingredients — guitar and voice.

In Dyll’s world, Northern California is a mistress, a cowgirl, and a muse.

Moving from the coastal scrub, forests of madrone, and rocky bluffs of the rambling Point Reyes coastline, and the oak woodlands of Mt. Tamalpais and Marine hills; out to the infamous SF Bay dotted in white-sails (and Alcatraz escapees), and spread to thehoneyed valleys of Petaluma — the golden state is a-hollerin’! And Dyll is wailing right back.

The result is a folksy 14-track album released in July 2012 by Moonburn 28

records; and since its release, her music has echoed out past the borders of California to receive a heap of national applause. But listening to Dyllan’s album, onegets a sense that the artist would be perfectly content singing and strumming to nobody but the spirit of the outdoors, the W-I-L-D. “The countryside tells me everything will be okay,” Dyllan explains, “Wildness. Everything will be okay as long as I have reverence for her. She tells me what to do. And what I need to do is be close to her, and thus close to my heart. And make music that shows my heart.” Word sister, I feel you; but nothing says it better than the music. Dyllan’s husky-ass voice is so sultry it’s like mead and fresh-churned butter. It’s edible folk, homecooked country for your heart. It’ll take you in and spoon feed you. You could survive off this album and nothing else.

Listen to track 8, “Belly of the Beast”, and imagine you are a lost at sea; ahead you spot the coast, a flicker of light on the shoreline. The swell pushes your heavy wood boat through the current, and as you get closer you hear the gentle picking of a guitar through the hush and spray of the wave break.

Suddenly, a voice sings out, “…but a shark says to me, have patience my friend…” It’s Dyllan Hersey on the shore; she is cooking wieners and Jetpuffed marshmallows on a stick for you next to a fully stoked bonfire.

If California is a mistress, then Dyllan’s album is a place, and you’ve gotta get overhere. Why? Because it will make you feel good. “My advice on love is to live as if it’s all that matters but constantly expect no one to return it,” says Dyllan, “Let it ooze out of you for no reason [...] Let it pour for you and for the Earth.” Yeah, and she’ll break her hand apart playing music to prove it.

Rating: Morning Glory out of McMuffin

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CHILL SPOT

NOBLE CAFÉ

words CLIFTON ROSE

words MICHAELA GIULIANCINI

While driving the other night, I realized that I had forgotten to turn on the radio, and that the only sounds were coming from the engine and the steady rhythm of rainfall on the windshield. The quiet atmosphere was disconcerting, and then it suddenly struck me that I didn’t have a particular chill spot.

Not in the traditional sense, anyway. My chill spot is any place with music.

I was in a hurry to escape the cold, gray day when a tiny “open” sign illuminated in a window on 8th street beckoned to me. Not a second later, I found myself walking into the newly opened, unsuspecting-looking Noble Café.

I had a series of portable CD players in high school that I wore out over time, and I would use them to play the small collection of music I had scrounged together. Each disc would accumulate scratches over time until they looked like jagged spider-webs carved into the plastic.

Now, I have a fancy phone with sleek ear-bud headphones and a vast digital music collection spanning every major genre, but the principal is the same. When I have my headphones on, it makes any location more tolerable, and the world becomes a little more bearable for a song or two. In a way, my chill spot is mobile. I feel bad for people who require a single serene location to relax. For me, the concrete becomes comfy with the right soundtrack.

It’s less mind-over-matter than personal preference.

It alters my day so much that I find it hard to relate to people who don’t enjoy music. To me, it isn’t just a distraction—it’s what allows me to enter the headspace necessary to relax. A self-contained hideout I use to get my mind working in a creative way.

I heard once that people get hooked on music like a drug. If so, I’m hopelessly addicted. I’m up to an album a day. I’m okay with that, I’ll just add it to my list of vices along with dancing and reading political news. There is nowhere more private than your own mind, and I prefer to decorate mine with audible art.

Rating: Butterfly kisses out of bro greetings

I hurriedly feasted on a tortano roll from Hideaway Bakery with fried egg, ham, housemade pesto sauce, tomato, spinach, and cheese.

All the vegetables were local and organic, and the pesto tasted like an Italian grandmother’s prized creation. It was relatively small, but a perfect portion paired with a cup of fruit. I also sampled the mocha, which came out adorned with a leaf design in the foam. The espresso flavor wasn’t too bitter or weak, and the syrup added the perfect touch of sweetness without killing the whole drink.

Jars of shining, clear liquids lined the shelves on my left. Although a few chairs sat unoccupied, the entire place felt full with the quiet conversations of customers and an espresso machine softly wheezing. The place is tiny, and the seating is virtually on top of the barista.

Nevertheless, it was welcoming with prospects of a delicious lunch.

Christian Field and Jeremy Noble don’t seem new to the Eugene café scene, although it is their first experience owning a food establishment.

“I was downtown having coffee and saw a for sale sign. The ball’s been rolling ever since,” says Field. They envisioned their café as a more sophisticated, urban coffee experience rather than a noisy college-town cafe. Nevertheless, the new café offers something for everyone.

The menu features breakfast and lunch items, with options like the Greek veggie sandwich and potato cheese soup. Field and Noble created a menu based on local, sustainable, and organic ingredients, with many of the items like salad dressings and sauces actually house-made.

One of their most surprising offerings are the homemade syrups that go in their Italian sodas and coffee drinks. With an aversion to syrup companies like Torani, the two decided to create their own and control the quality of their coffee drinks down to the last drop. Field believes that most coffee drinkers tend to overlook the fact that Starbucks, Peet’s, and other large café chains ruin their coffee by over-sweetening and/ or diluting it.

As I swooned over my perfect mid-afternoon meal, the owner socialized with customers, happily greeting and chatting up each one with a level of ease that most café owners never show. When asked about the café’s success, Field answered “It’s been a pleasant surprise.” As for pleasant surprises, I found one in the Noble Café.

Rating: Butter Beer out of beer with butter in it

MAN PASSES OUT IN TATTOO SHOP WITH SHOES STILL ON words DEVON FRAZER

Where do you start when you look at someone’s face? The eyes? Mouth? A bulging zit? In the case of Alex Harrington of High Priestess Piercing and Tattoo, you look at the entire damn face, because it’s a work of art. Luckily for my curious eyes, Harrington jovially allowed me to gawk at the intricate design of his full-face tattoo without the justification of a notebook or recording device. He was unbothered by my eyes analytically darting around his face as he spoke, seeming to accept my fascination.

The map-like lines of the tattoo directed my gaze, providing clear directions on how to examine the design. I was drawn to his nose first—nostrils embellished with two large, symmetrical swirls and a gauge piercing. Arrows point up and down from a large dot in the center of Harrington’s nose, encouraging me onward, but a multitude of stacked arrows in the center of his forehead point me back from whence I came. The bottom arrow extends into an angry curl that wraps around his eye socket and culminates in a dramatic point aimed at his tear ducts. The upand-around flow circling his eyes is magnetizing, drawing my stare straight to his baby blues.

tattooed with shaded, smoky eyeliner that looks to be the work of a tattoo artist with red carpet experience. His jawline houses an upright braided pattern, sitting atop a U-curve that follows the contour of his chin and reaches up and out towards his cheekbones. Vine-like spikes splay out from the swirls. His eyebrows are made of these vines—double mounded like baby camel humps and accented with dots and eyebrow piercings that I secretly wish would match up better.

Large surface piercings sit above and below his mouth, thankfully replacing what would have been an awkward tattoo mustache above Harrington’s pair of completely tattooed lips. The upper lip comes to two sharp points instead of the dull curve of an un-tatted pair, and twists into a brilliant blue smile. This smile turns to a laugh, and I notice his trachea is donned by a shaded Poseidon-warrior mix that stares down anyone who tries to force feed Harrington anything he doesn’t want. It threatens to smite me with its harsh stare and trident, which could be hiding on a different part of Harrington’s body that I failed to see.

These eyes haven’t escaped the ink either, opening sesame since 1989

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opening sesame since 1989

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