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P. 41
Blazer (adopted from CAT) / photo by Dave Childs
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P. 8
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VOL 37/05 12.08.2010
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
Take a trip inside an Oregon football fan’s troubled mind. By Henry Stern | Page 15
rachelle hacmac
BACK COVER
NEWS City Hall’s least favorite study. DISH Stew of the angels. SCREEN Dirty, sexy swans.
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EDITORIAL Managing News Editor Henry Stern Arts & Culture Editor Kelly Clarke Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, James Pitkin, Beth Slovic Copy Chief Kat Merck Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Peggy Perdue, Sarah Smith Special Sections Editor Ben Waterhouse Screen Editor Aaron Mesh Music Editor Casey Jarman Assistant Music Editor Michael Mannheimer Editorial Interns Stacy Brownhill, Christina Cooke, Leighton Cosseboom, Jessica Lutjemeyer CONTRIBUTORS Stage Ben Waterhouse Classical Brett Campbell Dance Heather Wisner Visual Arts Richard Speer
PRODUCTION Production Manager Kendra Clune Art Director Ben Mollica Graphic Designers Soma Honkanen, Adam Krueger, Carolyn Richardson, Dylan Serkin Production Intern Taylor Schefstrom ADVERTISING Director of Advertising Jane Smith Display Account Executives Sara Backus, Alisha Barnes, Maria Boyer, Carrie Hinton, Janet Norman, Kyle Owens Classifieds Account Executives Michael Donhowe, Jennifer Lee Advertising Assistant Ashley Grether Marketing and Events Manager Jess Sword Marketing and Promotions Coordinator Brittany McKeever
Our mission: Provide our audiences with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference. Circulation: 80,000 Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law. Willamette Week is published weekly by City of Roses Newspaper Company 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 243-1115 Classifieds phone: (503) 223-1500 fax: (503) 223-0388 Willamette Week welcomes freelance submissions. Send material to either News Editor or Arts Editor. Manuscripts will be
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WWEEK.COM READERS COMMENT ON… “SEXT CRIMES” “It’s crazy for any legal statute to be so vague that this happens. Treating people who are under 18 but over 15 as child pornography is ridiculous.…[If I] am a 16-year-old girl and I use my computer to e-mail some naked pictures of myself to my 16-year-old boyfriend, it’s no problem. But if I do that through text messaging on a cell phone, I get thrown in jail for 25 years? That doesn’t make any sense. I think sexting should be legal as long as people are not distributing actual child pornography (13 y/o or younger) and we should repeal all mandatory minimum sentencing laws.…” —Multnomer
It’s interesting how this is the one DA’s office in the state that added new attorneys during the budget crises, while other offices were forced to cut as many as 25 percent of their staff….” —Prosecutor Joe
“This is a phenomenal and absolutely necessary piece of reporting. It’s widely known even among other District Attorney offices that the Washington County DA’s office is the laughingstock of the state. The phrase “charging discretion” is absent from their vocabulary.… This is what happens when complacent suburbanites sign ‘public safety’ ballot initiative after initiative, giving the DA’s office seemingly unlimited funds and no one asks where this money goes.
“They were three years apart in age at the time they met, but both were teenagers…. You do not magically transform from callow youth to wise adult on your 18th birthday. We all know people age 18+ who are still growing up. In fact, there’s research out there that shows that a person’s brain is still developing well into their 20s. And we all also know youth under age 18 who are mature beyond their years. You need to cut teenagers and young adults at this age some slack; they’re still growing, learning, and hormonally charged. You don’t prosecute them and give them a felony conviction (which will cause them trouble with employers the rest of their lives) and threaten them with inclusion in the sex-offender registry. I myself don’t get why teenagers and young adults sext, but Lord knows I did a lot of things as a teenager that perplexed adults. What they did was not smart, but calling down the full force of the law is a miscarriage of justice. Yes, we can’t encourage this kind of behavior, but instead of locking people up we should be educating them as to why it’s a bad idea and giving them (at most) a misdemeanor to put a little bit of a scare into them without damaging their reputations and employability for the rest of their lives.” — Davey_Blunkett
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words.
SUBMIT TO: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Fax: (503) 243-1115 Email: mzusman@wweek.com
Fifth generation Portlander, with tons of family, friends and neighbors. NONE of whom think the slogan “Keep Portland Weird” is amusing. Makes us look like fools. —K.H.
native-born Portlanders who are the outliers, the aberrations—the freaks? Which brings us to the question I’m going to pretend is implied by your letter, K.: Everyone knows a lot of Portlanders were born outside Oregon. But how many, exactly? How large is this nonnative cohort, such that effete hipster transplants— many of whom can’t even field-dress an elk—dare call themselves the typical Portlanders? Well, as of 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 57.7 percent of Portlanders were born outside Oregon. That’s nearly three out of every five. I’d say that makes us nonnatives pretty typical. You know, normal. Human. Still, Portland isn’t quite tops in out-of-state births nationwide. Of the 30 biggest U.S. cities, we come in seventh, below Seattle and San Francisco, and far behind Las Vegas, where only 23 percent are native-born. So call your out-of-state buddies—we’ve got some catching up to do.
“Aside from terrorizing relatively innocent youngsters, this sort of prosecutorial indiscretion has the perverse effect of trivializing laws designed to take truly heinous offenders off the streets.” —Edward Hershey
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Wow, a genuine olde-tyme Portlander! I appreciate your taking time from log-splitting and pelt-scraping to let me know you don’t hold with such newfangled notions as willful eclecticism and complete sentences, K. Your oddly joyless missive suggests nostalgia for a simpler time, when real Portlanders wore flannel, knocked down trees and stoned adulteresses to ensure a bountiful harvest. And I feel your pain—these days “real Portlanders” wear skinny jeans, knock down $6 pints and lose sleep over the greenhouse implications of their own farts. Grizzly Adams we ain’t. To add insult to injury, a lot of us aren’t even from here. In fact, you could make a case that the archetypal Portlander is one who was born somewhere else. After all, statistically, isn’t it the
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CITY HALL: The $14,000 study Mayor Sam Adams doesn’t like. POLITICS: Where did all Oregon’s young Democrats go? MEDIA: Who’s ticked by the “Tail Blazers” ads. ANIMALS: Why two guys are scooping elephant poop in Africa.
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
A COLUMN THAT’S ALWAYS “CAPTAIN AWESOME.” Supporters of Antjuanece Brown and Jolene Jenkins, the subjects of last week’s “Sext Crimes” cover story, have established a trust account to help Brown repay the $3,000 in court fees she owes as a result of her guilty plea in Washington County Circuit Court. That plea to a felony charge of luring a minor stems from a sexting case that supporters of Brown and Jenkins say never should have been prosecuted. Anyone interested in donating to the Jenkins-Brown defense account can contact lawyer Susan Reese at 1 SW Columbia St., Suite 1800, Portland, OR, 97258, or via email at aquit@aol.com. Two bands will play a benefit Dec. 18 to raise money for a man who Portland police believe was attacked, likely for being gay. Ian Mandis is hosting the 9 pm event at the Tonic Lounge (3100 NE Sandy Blvd.). “It just felt like the right thing to do,” Mandis says. The entry cost to hear the People’s Meat and Subversive play is $6. And attendees are encouraged to donate an additional $5 to $10, all of which will go to help the victim cover medical costs for serious head and abdominal injuries from the Nov. 1 attack in Southeast Portland. Portland Public Schools last week took two bold steps toward reinventing its long-troubled department for teaching English as a second language. First, on Nov. 30, School Board members unanimously approved a resolution urging Superintendent Carole Smith to reform the department. Then, as first reported Dec. 3 on wweek.com, the department’s director, Diana Fernandez, learned she would be on paid administrative leave from her $110,000-a-year job. The $548 million construction bond for Portland Public Schools may not be the only tax measure on the May ballot to support the state’s largest school district. Portland School Board members also are weighing whether to put an operating levy before voters at the same time as the halfbillion-dollar-plus construction bond in 2011. PPS currently has an annual operating levy of about $40 million, which voters approved in 2006. And although that levy doesn’t expire until 2012, momentum is growing to campaign for both tax measures at the same time, says longtime school REGAN board member Bobbie Regan. Facts so far about WW’s 2010 Give!Guide: 1) It’s approaching $300,000 in donations; 2) That’s about 40 percent ahead of this time last year. 3) Our readers are awesome. 4) The first round of incentives to donors will be going out in the week ahead—redeemable coupons for contributors of $50-$499.99 and home-delivered packages of Oregon wine, coffee, tea, beer and chocolate for those giving $500 or more. Please go to wweek.com/giveguide to donate—and don’t miss the typing kitty video.
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Two facts are clear from looking at a trio of cases similar to Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s alleged plot to attack Pioneer Courthouse Square. What the feds include in their initial account sometimes omits key information. And law enforcement will go to great lengths to justify the arrest of suspected terrorists. The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court alleges the FBI was in contact with Mohamud for nearly six months, supplying the fake bomb and van he drove to a Nov. 26 Christmas tree lighting ceremony. He pleaded not guilty to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted. Mohamud’s public defenders have indicated they may pursue an entrapment defense (see “Bomb Plot Fallout,” WW, Dec. 1, 2010). U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder publicly defended the FBI’s tactics, and the criminal complaint alleges Mohamud forged ahead with the plot after agents gave him several chances to exit. But New York lawyer Martin Stolar says key aspects of Mohamud’s talks with the FBI may still be unknown. As he learned from his own work defending an accused terrorist, initial discussions are unlikely to be recorded on tape. “Once somebody’s been induced, and they agree to do the crime, that’s when the tape recording starts,” Stolar says. “He’s already been induced to commit the crime, so everything on the tape is shit.” Stolar was on the defense team for Shahawar Siraj, sentenced to 30 years after his 2006 conviction for conspiracy to bomb a Manhattan subway station. Siraj’s lawyers accused the FBI of stoking his rage using pictures of Muslims suffering at Americans’ hands. But if that happened, the incident was never captured on recordings of Siraj’s talks with a paid FBI informant. The court found no evidence the feds acted out of line except Siraj’s own word. Likewise, the FBI claims its first meeting with Mohamud went unrecorded due to “technical problems.” That was the meeting where the FBI says it first asked Mohamud to “do some research about possible targets.” Mohamud’s lawyers have already questioned why that important meeting wasn’t taped. The feds initially omitted a key fact in a second case similar to Mohamud’s—the 2009 arrest of James Cromitie and three others later convicted of trying to blow up a synagogue in the Bronx. The defense’s case rested in part on the fact that an undercover informant had promised the defendants $250,000—information left out of the government’s indictment. A third case similar to Mohamud’s from 2009 shows how far law enforcement will go to make a terrorism bust. In 2007, the FBI in Springfield, Ill., began tracking Michael Finton, a fry cook who’d converted to Islam while in prison for assault and robbery. The feds’ paid informant was a convicted drug trafficker still dealing small amounts during the investigation, according to an affidavit that said law enforcement considered him “highly reliable.” Finton was “very upset” about the 2008 Israeli offensive
in Gaza and wished to travel abroad to fight with Hamas, the affidavit says. He said he didn’t want to be a suicide bomber and “would rather carry a gun on the front lines wherever it was needed, whether Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia or anywhere,” the affidavit says. “It appeared that Finton was on the verge of taking action, so it was decided to proactively provide him with an opportunity for action that we controlled,” the affidavit says. An FBI employee told Hinton he “needed to look and see what the best targets were” in Springfield, suggesting “targets that would really shock people,” according to the affidavit. Finton suggested the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, but the FBI employee “said federal would be better,” the affidavit says. Finton finally suggested the Paul Findley Federal Building in Springfield, with possible collateral damage to the office of U.S.
P H I L I P C H E A N E Y. C O M
EXPERTS SAY KEY FACTS COULD BE MISSING IN PORTLAND’S TERRORISM CASE.
Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) across the street. As in Mohamud’s case, the FBI prompted Finton to dial a phone twice trying to detonate a phony bomb. Finton now faces a life sentence if convicted of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder of federal employees. His trial is set for March. Facts and context find their way eventually into the court record—even when they’re omitted from the initial criminal complaint, says Xavier Amadour, a clinical forensic psychologist at Columbia University. “In fairness to the FBI, they’re cherry-picking,” he says. “In reality, we do have a presumption of innocence. You have to look at everything.” Amadour—a defense witness for the Unabomber and alleged “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui in the 9/11 attacks—says the 19-year-old Mohamud seems like an “angry adolescent screwing around on the Internet” rather than the determined terrorist the FBI has depicted. “It appears to me,” Amadour says, “that he was window shopping and then got pulled in by a good salesman.”
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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A new study of Portland’s business climate shows the “City That Works” might deserve another, less laudatory nickname. But rather than let Portland become the “City of Meh,” Mayor Sam Adams, on behalf of Portland Development Commission officials, rejected the new $14,000 study by an economist at Portland’s ECONorthwest. The mayor characterized the independent analysis that PDC commissioned this fall as unimaginative and incomplete. “While we at the city and PDC have great respect for ECONorthwest as an organization and for the quality of work and analysis the firm produces, we do not believe the deliverable presented to PDC captures the intent of what was requested or the creativity and comprehensiveness of what was expected,” opment at PDC, the client, says the study grew Adams wrote in a letter to ECONorthwest that out of the debate over Measures 66 and 67, the WW obtained in a public records request. January ballot initiatives that successfully raised So what exactly did the 21-page report say income taxes on Oregon companies and its about Portland? The author of the report, Robert highest-earning residents. Opponents of those Whelan, concludes, “The analysis paints a very tax increases point to Measures 66 and 67 as evicompelling story for Portland.” dence that Oregon is hostile toward business. Just not compelling enough, apparently. In response, PDC sought to identify other Compared with seven other similar cities in ways to quantify the positive aspects of doing the West—Seattle, San Jose, Boise, Las Vegas, business in Portland, Oregon’s largest city. Denver, Hillsboro and Vancouver, Wash.—PortBut Quinton says what ECONorthwest land is neither the best nor the worst in several turned in was “too much of a rehash” that didn’t categories. use enough creative indicators to measure PortThe cost of driving downtown to work, for land’s true value. example, puts Portland in the No. 3 spot com“It didn’t really meet our needs,” Quinton pared with the other cities. Portsays. “We end up looking good on land ranks the same in terms of some indicators and not others.” FACT: To read the study, go cost of living. It’s cheaper to live Yet PDC has no intention of not to wweek.com/bizclimate. in Portland than in either Seattle paying the $14,000 to ECONoror San Jose, but the price of livthwest, even though the agency is ing among tall bikes, tattoos and setting aside the consultants’ initoo many baristas exceeds the cost of comfort in tial findings. Shawn Uhlman, a spokesman for PDC, the five other locales. says PDC officials will take the study in-house. This middling performance extends to PortQuinton denies PDC was looking for a marketland’s average wages, which rank somewhere ing device. “If we were doing a marketing piece, in the middle compared with the other cities, we wouldn’t have hired ECONorthwest,” Quinton according to the study. said. “The goal was to get objective analysis.” ECONorthwest, the go-to firm for public Yet Adams’ letter to ECONorthwest underagencies across the city, including Portland Pub- cuts that assertion. It suggests what the city lic Schools, also sought to measure qualitative wanted was a marketing piece in the guise of aspects of living in Portland. Among the indices economic analysis. it looked at were weather, crime rates and air “I believe by claiming and understanding our quality. In all of these measures, Portland fell in regional assets and quality of life in economic the middle of the pack. terms we will be more effective at our economic “The goal was to provide an objective analysis development work,” Adams writes. “In my expeknowing that some findings would be welcome, rience, the case for doing business in Portland is but others less so,” Whelan, the study’s author, largely unknown nationally and internationally; wrote in an introduction to the report. changing the perception will improve our ability Whelan declined to be interviewed about his to recruit and retain companies.” report, which he called a draft. He wrote in an Business groups don’t appear to agree. On email that “interviews should be coordinated Tuesday, the Portland Business Alliance released through the client.” its own study from ECONorthwest that echoes Patrick Quinton, a manager of urban devel- PDC’s rejected report.
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POLITICS
NEWS
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The groups saw new registrants as crucial to making up both for Republicans’ historical turnout advantage and the anticipated national Republican wave in 2010. Green says Our Oregon agreed to raise money for the Bus to do its registration work. (It costs anywhere from $5 to $8 to register a new voter, he says.) Both Our Oregon and OSA hit their targets, registering 20,000 new voters each, Green says. But the Bus came up short, signing up only about BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS njaquiss@wweek.com 7,000 new voters in September and October. “I’m disappointed about that,” Caitlin BagDemocratic operatives in Oregon have identi- gott, who led the Bus registration efforts, says. fied a troubling problem for the party in future Baggott says registering new voters late in the elections—apathetic young Dems statewide. election cycle is particularly challenging. “Young voters were a particularly dark spot “Our Oregon was really helpful in providing for Democrats—across the state, 18-to-29-year- funding, and so was SEIU,” Baggott says, referold Republicans beat Democrats by the largest ring to the 45,000-member Service Employees margin of any age group,” wrote Josh Berezin, an International Union. analyst for the labor-funded Our Oregon advo“[But] trying to ramp up in September when cacy group. no experienced organizers are available is tough,” Berezin also wrote in a recent post-mortem Baggott says. after the November election, “This could be the Baggott adds that despite the failure to meet harbinger of a real problem for 2012, as young short-term targets, the Bus met or exceeded Democratic voters’ enthusiasm in 2008 was annual registration targets its board set earlier, critical [to] Democratic wins at every level.” including those for January’s special election on Democratic turnout weakness in the 18-to- Measures 66 and 67. 29 age group—a difference of “We have a great track record 4.5 percentage points compared for meeting our goals,” she says. FACT: More Oregon voters to GOP voters in the same age “But what we see is that late under 30 are registered either range—is somewhat surprising, funding is really difficult to use as unaffiliated or with a minor given the high-profile efforts of effectively.” party than with either major party, according to state filthe Oregon Bus Project. Our Oregon’s Green says he ings. That does not hold true In October, for instance, Bus was disappointed that the Bus for any other age group. Project executive director Jefmissed its target. ferson Smith, a Democratic state “There was an enthusiasm representative from east Portland, appeared on gap this year, especially among young voters,” MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to promote Green says. “It meant that making sure that the Bus’ widely publicized pre-election “Trick or every young voter was registered and turned out Vote” program. The effort aims to entice Orego- was critical.” nians to vote. Green also highlights the massive gap But the Bus, a nonpartisan nonprofit co- between younger and older voters. founded by Smith in 2003, spun its wheels on a Only about 40 percent of registered Oregon votkey voter-registration goal assignment prior to ers under 30 bothered to fill out a ballot; 88 percent Trick or Vote. of registered voters aged 60 to 69 inked theirs. “We were stunned because all the groups “If youth turnout had been anywhere near were talking about how voter registration was [that of ] older voters, the governor’s race critically important,” says Patrick Green, direc- wouldn’t have been so close,” Green says, citing tor of the advocacy group Our Oregon. Democrat John Kitzhaber’s narrow 22,000-vote Three groups—the Bus Project, Our Oregon victory over Republican Chris Dudley. and the Oregon Student Association—committed “I’m sure the Bus is thinking about how they to registering 20,000 new voters each in Septem- increase goals for 2012,” he says, “because the ber and October, Green says. stakes are high.”
THE OREGON BUS PROJECT MISSES A KEY VOTER REGISTRATION TARGET.
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MEDIA TAY L O R S C H E F S T R O M
NEWS
SIGNS OF DISCONTENT BILLBOARD WORDPLAY HAS CAUGHT THE BLAZERS OFF GUARD AND ANGERED SOME FEMINISTS.
And other residents of a city known nationally for its child sex-trafficking problem and myriad strip clubs are objecting, too, beyond the quibbles from some of the lawyers group’s 1,500 members. BY TH AC H E R SC H M I D 243-2122 “They’re horrible, horrible,” said Jennifer Faust, 42, squinting at the Tail Blazers It takes a second glance to realize that billboard above the Lucky Devil strip club some billboards in the city that’s home to on Southeast Powell Boulevard. “It’s like, why? Why do we promote this?” the Trail Blazers aren’t a typo. “It’s cowardice, actually, and very disThe capital letters, several feet tall and a dozen wide, spell the words “TAIL BLAZ- criminatory and prejudiced,” said William ERS” and are nestled between the faces of Bierbrauer, a 57-year-old Blazers fan who actors Charlie Sheen proudly recalls the and Neil Patrick Harris. FACT: “Tail Blazers” is also the name of team’s 1977 championThey’re plastered on at a Portland group of dog lovers—mostly ship season. A Trail Blazers least three billboards women—who get together to play a game called flyball, in which dogs spokeswoman disand one MAX light-rail navigate obstacles to retrieve balls. tanced the team from train as part of a NW32/ Co-founder and certified dog trainer KRCW ad campaign Greta Kaplan wrote to say that her the ads. “ We are aware of to pitch two TV series, teammates found the billboards “crass.” the sign and it is apparSheen’s Two and a Half Men and Harris’ How I Met Your Mother, ent that they are looking to leverage our just as the Trail Blazers’ basketball season brand to promote their programming,” spokeswoman Alissa Moore wrote in an started in October. Both shows appear in syndication and email. “We don’t care for the message as it share womanizing as a leitmotif. But the is not aligned with how we look to conduct ourselves.” ads have sparked controversy. It’s an especially sensitive topic for the In early November, the Oregon Women Lawyers email listserv erupted in a flurry of Blazers, still struggling to live down the emails about the ads, calling them “demean- “Jail Blazers” era, when Zach Randolph, Damon Stoudamire and Qyntel Woods had ing,” “scary” and “genuinely offensive.”
AD MEN: Neil Patrick Harris and Charlie Sheen oversee this corner of Northeast Portland.
run-ins with the law and Ruben Patterson was required to register as a sex offender after he pleaded guilty to the attempted rape of his children’s nanny. NW32’s owner, the Chicago-based Tribune Company, did not respond to a request for comment. Charlie Sheen’s agent, Stan Rosenfield, also declined comment about the timing of the ads, after recent allegations by a porn actress that Sheen assaulted her, as well as Sheen’s guilty plea in August to charges of assaulting his wife last Christmas. The recent discussion on the OWLlistserv was intense and intellectual, ranging to
such far-flung topics as traditional Muslim hijab dress and the Junior Blazers Dancers. OWL members who responded to a Nov. 28 posting with this reporter’s name and telephone number had diverse takes on the controversy. Not all were offended by the billboards. “I wasn’t offended by it at all, and actually, it seemed outrageous how big of a deal it was made out to be,” said Alana Iturbide, 25, a Lewis & Clark law student. “It was pretty one-sided, people felt it was demeaning to women, etcetera. Everyone is entitled to put up billboards and have free speech, essentially.”
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ANIMALS
TWO PORTLAND EXPLORERS GET THEIR HANDS DIRTY IN AFRICA TO SAVE WILD ELEPHANTS. BY C H R I ST I N A CO O KE
ccooke@wweek.com
Portlanders Trip Jennings and Andy Maser will be tromping through Central Africa next month, packs of elephant poop strapped to their backs. Accompanied by armed park rangers, the two explorer-filmmakers will penetrate the jungles and savannas of the Democratic Republic of Congo for six weeks starting Jan. 28, scooping samples of fresh elephant scat into plastic vials. Um, why? Because the two are working with University of Washington conservation biologist Dr. Samuel Wasser to collect elephant feces to create a DNA map of African elephants. The tool will help international police identify poaching hot spots and trade routes by matching the genetic material in confiscated ivory with the gene info left encoded in the crap. If you must know, Jennings describes elephant-poop piles as “gigantic,” measuring several feet across and weighing up to 25 pounds. But he isn’t feeling at all squeamish about the mission to help save the endangered population.
“If we can’t protect a species as worldrenowned, as iconic and as much like humans as elephants, what good are we?” asks Jennings, 28. “What does that say about us as a species?” Under the name EP Films (epfilms.tv, formerly Epicocity), Jennings and Maser, two pro kayakers who got their start making extreme kayaking videos, have undertaken five international wilderness expeditions over the past three years, all funded in part by grants from the National Geographic Society. The African elephant population has decreased by 95 percent over the past 50 years, to between 450,000 and 500,000 animals. And if poachers continue to kill at the current rate—10 percent of the total elephant population each year—few if any wild elephants will remain in a decade. Because elephants disperse seeds in their manure and clear vegetation to let sunlight in, the health of the ecosystem depends on their survival, Wasser says. “There are a lot of species depending on them,” he adds. The gene map is nearly complete, with the only major holes in Angola and Congo, countries where armed rebel groups and poachers make feces collection not only an icky venture, but a life-threatening one. After hearing about Jennings and Maser’s
H AW K K R A L L
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work on similar expeditions into politically unstable countries, the biologist commissioned the two to help with the Elephant Ivory Project (elephantivoryproject.org). The prevalence of guns among poachers and guerrilla insurgents in the bush is what worries Jennings the most about his upcoming trip. “They call them ‘AK credit cards,’” he said. “You can get whatever you want with an AK-47 in the Congo.” Maser, 25, hopes viewers come away from EP films realizing that “the decisions we make here affect places halfway around the world.” When people buy an ivory figurine, he says, or a hunting knife with an ivory
handle, for example, they’re supporting the decimation of a species. “It’s easy to get disconnected from where all of the stuff around here comes from,” Maser says. “For me, it’s rewarding to get people to understand all the different things that are going on and how interconnected everything is.” GO: “Go Wild—A Night of Fashion and Celebration to Save Elephants” features a fashion show of locally designed, ecofriendly couture, a raffle, a silent auction, a photo booth and, oh yeah, body-painted models wandering all around. Ten bucks includes a pint glass and unlimited beer from Full Sail Brewing. All proceeds benefit the Elephant Ivory Project. Boothster, 521 NE Davis St., 703-9148. 8 pm Friday, Dec. 10.
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TAKE A TRIP INSIDE AN OREGON FOOTBALL FANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TROUBLED MIND. BY HEN RY ST ERN
hstern@wweek.com
PHOTOS BY RACHEL L E HAC M AC
STORY BEGINS on page 16
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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Here’s a guess: You’ve got a passion, an obses- The first Oregon game I attended, oddly enough, sion that gets your heart pounding and lets you was in Corvallis. endure the humdrum of work, home, sleep, work, I was 7. And it was the Civil War, the annual home, sleep. battle between Oregon and Oregon State that Maybe it’s for a band. Perhaps you’re a foodie. was played last weekend for the 114th time. Or you like to collect snow globes. A friend’s dad who was a UO alum took me and Whatever your fixation, it helps get you his son to the 1972 game at which Oregon ended through the day, connects you to others who share Oregon State’s eight-year win streak over the your itch and helps separate you from the hoi pol- Ducks. And I clearly remember Donnie Reynolds loi who aren’t smart/witty/handsome/athletic/ running 60 yards for a TD on Oregon’s first play. well-read enough to recognize you’re part of a I grew up near Beaverton, and while my older super-special community of fellow travelers. sister attended Oregon, I didn’t, choosing to go My passion? Ducks football. Has been for 38 east for college. years. I don’t pretend to know why this attachment On the outside, I’m a normal guy. from childhood stuck while others have faded. I’ve got a fantastic wife and two awesome kids. But I do know the following: But my mania has caused me to miss family At age 11, I mowed lawns to be able to buy a get-togethers, soccer games and ticket for the Oregon-USC game. trick-or-treating with my kids. The Trojans won 53-0. Topping my all-time I’ve made loved ones schedule I sank into a depression so deep list of favorite Ducks: Reggie Ogburn, around my sacred Saturdays. I’ve in 1979 you would have thought Anthony Newman, done household chores like cleanmy dog had been run over. The Vince Goldsmith, Lew ing gutters, emptying dishwashreason? I witnessed Oregon blow Barnes, Bill Musgrave, Reuben Droughns, ers and starting the laundry for a 17-0 second-half lead over WashJoey Harrington and no reason other than to absolve ington on an otherwise-glorious Keenan Howry. my guilt. fall day at Autzen Stadium. I’ve spent more money than is During my senior year of high rationally supportable on game tickets as well as school, a time when my friends were spending Oregon caps, car flags, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hood- their loose cash on pot, record albums and term ies and socks. papers, I bought season tickets. The Ducks Given all that, and given that the Ducks com- went 2-9. pleted an undefeated season last weekend and While going to college in Washington, D.C., are playing in their first national championship I flew home for Thanksgiving, driven not by freshman homesickness but so I could go to the game next month, you’d think I’d be in heaven. 1982 Civil War between one-win Oregon and Actually not. I’m scared. Really scared. one-win OSU. After college, when I lived in New Jersey for 16
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
PHOTOS: RACHELLE HACMAC
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several years, I spent many Saturdays on the phone—listening to the Ducks broadcast. In that pre-Internet world, I’d either spend untold amounts of money calling my nephew in Portland to put his radio by the phone, or I’d pay for a phone service that would do the same thing for college football games in 10-minute increments. In 1990, to my everlasting shame, I made a woman who drove down from Allentown, Pa., to visit me in Jersey wait in my apartment before we went out to dinner. The reason? I just had to hear the second half of the Oregon-UCLA game. (The Ducks won.) On my wedding day in Portland in September 1992, my nephew took the microphone at the reception to provide regular updates of the Oregon-Texas Tech game. Early in my marriage, my wife awoke long after midnight and caught me in our West Virginia hotel room during a trip tuned to a TV channel we lacked at home. No, not porn. A sports cable channel broadcasting the Oregon-USC game, with the video scrambled by the hotel but with the audio still coming in clearly. And, of course, I flew cross-country in 1994 for a 24-hour visit to see Oregon beat the Beavers in the Rose Bowl season. Perhaps that history explains how my fan’s madness plays out now. As with most obsessions, I cannot keep Ducks football compartmentalized to one day a week. Each day, I wake up, read The Oregonian’s sports page, hop in the shower and listen to 95.5 The Game. At work, I check Oregon websites (sorry, boss) like Addicted to Quack, Duck Territory, (Eugene) Register-Guard reporter Rob Moseley’s blog and the Ducks’ recruiting page at Scout.com. Why? Because it’s very important to learn if some five-star linebacker from Texas has committed to play for Oregon, or what the latest update is on the health of a backup wide receiver. And then there’s the holy day—Saturday, when my routine is as regular as an extra point. CONT. on page 19
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PHOTOS: RACHELLE HACMAC
TAILGATING: Fans cheer as the Oregon marching band makes its rounds through the parking lot.
DUCKIN’ NUTS: University of Oregon students Cameron Mertens, 22, Ben Hollander, 24, and Ashley Kirsinnkas, 21, prepare to head into Autzen Stadium.
For the past decade since moving back to Oregon, I have had four season tickets. My nephew and a buddy get first crack at two of the tickets, and the fourth I offer to friends and family (more on that in a bit). On game day, I wake before dawn (no need for an alarm) to make coffee. I pour it into one of my three Ducks mugs while watching ESPN. I set the UO flag outside my front porch, near the Ducks door knocker and welcome mat, and go inside to dress. I make my sartorial selections for the game itself with greater care than the Pope preparing to celebrate high Mass. If it’s an early season game with warm weather, I choose the Hawaiian shirt with an Oregon pattern. Cooler weather calls for the dark-green Oregon hoodie and one of two UO windbreakers. The usual headwear of choice among my dozen or so is a white Oregon football cap. Rainy weather calls for the rainproof 2001 Pac-10 champions hat. I pack a change of clothes in a Ducks bag my daughter made me for Christmas. It’s all pretty much function over form. I’m not superstitious, with two exceptions. Once a year, for the Civil War game, I wear a “Turf’s Up” T-shirt that has meaning because I wore it in 1994, when Oregon won the Civil War game and went to the Rose Bowl. And I also wear one of the Rose Bowl hats I bought in Pasadena, so OSU fans can see what one looks like. There are car flags and a football with an Oregon logo to retrieve from the basement, as well as a Ducks cooler and a radio to listen to the pregame show while tailgating. Whatever mix of folks is using the other three tickets assembles at my house at least five hours early to minimize the chance of hitting traffic during the 110-mile drive to Eugene. I choose the people for my tickets with one criterion foremost in mind—they must be low-maintenance.
TOUCH OF MADNESS: Oregon’s mascot reaches out to Darla Silling of Klamath Falls.
No showing up late. Leaving late increases the chance Between one and three bottles of Jägermeister are of traffic, which increases stress, and I don’t want the ten- passed around the circle. In the first pass, you predict the sion of missing even one play added to my pregame jitters. final score, take a swig and pass it to the next person. It’s my routine: If you want to come to the game, don’t Topics vary for subsequent rounds. Sometimes you screw with it. predict how many rushing yards Oregon will get. The car radio is usually tuned to 95.5 The Game for Before this year’s UCLA game, participants offered up the pregame show until we get closer to Eugene, when which STD they wished for Bruins coach Rick Neuheisel, we switch to 590 KUGN. On the ride, we’ll discuss the whose sins include calling for a fake punt late in Cololunacy of some radio callers and hash out our own idio- rado’s 1996 Cotton Bowl rout of Oregon when he coached cies of whether defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti is call- the Buffaloes and, of course, coaching Washington from ing enough blitzes or why quarterback Darron Thomas 1999 through 2002. doesn’t keep the ball more often during the option read. We’re a mature group. We arrive in Eugene and head to a The circle welcomes people regardless killer parking lot that’s comparatively of political affiliation, sexual preference Topping my all-time list of cheap at $20 and allows easy access back or rational thought. opposing villains: former onto I-5 for the drive home. At this year’s last home game against Washington coach Don James, former OSU coach Sorry, it’s like a great fishing spot—I’m Arizona, Rob Cornilles, most recently a Dennis Erickson and, of not going to tell you where it is. serious Republican congressional candicourse, Neuheisel. But I will tell you I’m usually respondate, was there. He didn’t drink. But he sible for bringing the beer in my Ducks brought signs comically patterned after cooler—three six-packs for a foursome and whoever hap- those the Ducks use to signal plays from the sidelines. pens to drop by our tailgater. And yes, if kickoff is at 12:30, that means we’re cracking a beer by 9 am. After the circle, I race to my seats in Section 37. Cigars are reserved for special games like Washington I want to arrive in time to hear longtime stadium or Oregon State. If my buddy Gary is there, he’s got his grill announcer Don Essig’s ritual after the national anthem. out with sausages so good that if you’re quiet enough while There’s his call for home fans to welcome visiting fans, his eating them, you can hear your arteries hardening. weather forecast for the game. And, of course, he leads us Believe it or not, drinking three beers, eating sausage, in a chorus of “It. Never. Rains. At Autzen Stadium.” throwing a football and occasionally smoking a cigar during Next come the highlights of past glories on the jumbo a two-hour stretch in a parking lot doesn’t leave me wasted. screen, always culminating in the seminal moment of But my next stop could. Kenny Wheaton’s interception in 1994 that fans will tell The past few years, I’ve been fortunate enough to be a you turned around Oregon’s fortunes forever. part of the “Jägermeister circle,” a pregame gathering of a Then. The Game. couple dozen folks that begins about an hour before kickI won’t waste your time waxing about the dreamlike off in a lot closer to Autzen Stadium. trance I enter for the next few hours as I become absorbed I barely know many of this ritual’s participants. But it’s a wonderful tradition with simple rules. CONT. on page 20 Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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in the play-by-precious-play panorama of spotting cornerbacks who bite on quarterback fakes, running plays mysteriously called to the short side of the field and imminent big punt returns. Suffice to say, if I concentrated this fully on anything worthwhile in my everyday life, I’d have achieved Grandmaster status in chess or become a virtuoso pianist. I scream on every play when Oregon is on defense in the belief that it helps rattle the opposing quarterback. And I like the fact that my seats are next to the section reserved for visiting fans, which allows me to rattle my car keys at them when they leave early during an Oregon win.
a legitimate claim to have concocted a secret sauce with his razor-quick offense. If you need evidence showing the benefits of an arrogance that’s outsized even in a sports world of huge egos, check out how often Oregon goes for it on fourth down. Or consider how the Ducks seemed unfazed by trailing in eight of their 12 games. In 2009, Kelly replaced Mike Bellotti, who had compiled an unheard-of 116-55 record despite Oregon’s generally dismal football history. But for all that, most fans never placed the seemingly decent and definitely milquetoast Bellotti in the class of college football’s most-feared coaches. Kelly is in that feared class. Funny that. After Kelly ’s first game as head coach—a loss at the start of last I get why Oregon State fans On Nov. 19, I attended an event season to Boise State—I wasn’t hate fans like me who did not attend UO. The animus is at the UO’s Old Town campus sure if Kelly would even last mutual. And I have no room in Portland. There, Athletic three seasons. To my untrained for “platypuses”—those who Director Rob Mullens greeted eye, he looked totally lost on root for both the Beavers and Ducks until the Civil War. more than 100 Ducks supportthe sidelines as the Ducks Schadenfreude at your rival’s ers with the obvious, “It’s a melted down in Boise. losses is half the fun. great time to be a Duck.” Kelly has coached Oregon With a national championto a 22-2 record since then. ship in the offing, it’s easy to excuse the swagger And while his dismissive responses to sideline that was in the room that day, or the cackles reporters’ often-inane questions can be painful that Mullens elicited by telling us that Oregon to watch, he’s our cocky SOB and he’s winning. football has become so popular nationally that And he’s brought my passion, my craving, to a “the ESPN football programmer has us on his scary precipice I thought I’d never see. speed dial.” The polished Mullens was treated as a minor So here we are. A month away from the champideity. onship game Jan. 10 in Glendale, Ariz., between But for the real demigod, you have to look to undefeated Oregon and undefeated Auburn. head coach Chip Kelly. Decades of entrusting my happiness to a Kelly is one of those rare guys who has the bunch of oversized strangers who wouldn’t piss arrogance needed to succeed in sports, plus on me if I were ablaze.
RACHELLE HACMAC
QUACK HOUSE: Fans in the student section cheer as Oregon beats Arizona 48-29 at Autzen Stadium on Nov. 26.
Years of willful ignorance of the big-time hypocrisies of college sports and Phil Knight’s bankroll buying unending permutations of uniforms, among other things. Wasted Saturdays—and much of my mental bandwidth on weekdays—worrying about every play and injury. I won’t be in Glendale. The lottery for tickets doesn’t have room for season-ticket holders like me who can’t afford to donate to the athletic department beyond the $1,500 I shelled out this season for the four seats. But that’s OK. I’ll be very nervous between now and then, hoping for a big win and planning to celebrate quietly at home if it happens. I am, of course, worried that big and fast Auburn quarterback Cam Newton will dominate the Ducks like big and fast Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor did in last year’s Rose Bowl. But what really worries me almost as much is that the Ducks’ point-a-minute spread offense, led by LaMichael James and Darron Thomas, plus Cliff Harris and an opportunistic defense, will add up to a package so lethal the Ducks will beat Auburn 52-49. Why? Like so much in life, it’s the hoping that matters as much as the achieving. Scratch something big off your bucket list and then what? It’s the journey, not the destination, and all that. ESPN “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons dealt with this question in Now I Can Die in Peace, his 2005 book about his beloved Red Sox breaking their curse and finally winning the World Series. He likens the question to the one expressed by Robert Redford’s character in The Candidate, when he wonders at the end of his victorious Senate race, “What do we do now?” If the Ducks were to win, what would I do now? Pine for a second national championship? Sure. But it somehow seems like it would be, well, less dramatic than the past 38 years. Maybe I could collect snow globes.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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HEADOUT: Your friends and neighbors. With video cameras. 23 DISH: Heavenly Mexican pork stew. 24 ONLINE: Give local nonprofits a happy holiday with a donation to WW’s Give!Guide 2010: wweek.com/giveguide.
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NEW WHEELS: After shutting its doors earlier this year, North Portland’s beloved Little Red Bike Cafe is back—in truck form. According to the cafe’s still-active blog and Twitter feed, owners Evan Dohrmann and Ali Jepson will soon be hitting the streets in a 1986 Chevrolet Step Van named “Lucy” with their new business, “Lucy’s Original.” The truck will be based in St. Johns, but they say they’re hoping to travel all over the city and suburbs. No word yet on the menu, but a few posts suggest it may include classic diner-inspired dishes.
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REEL BEER: Add the Hollywood Theatre to the ranks of arthouses serving suds: The 1927 movie palace, run by the nonprofit Film Action Oregon, has applied with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission for an alcohol license—and confirms that it will begin serving beer and wine with its independent films next year. “I think [beer has] just become as standard as popcorn, particularly in Portland,” says Film Action Oregon’s new executive director, Doug Whyte. The Hollywood Theatre is modeling its foray into brew viewing on Cinema 21, which added a three-keg tap in 2009. Like Cinema 21, the Hollywood Theatre shows first-run indie films, and hopes to obtain a similar exception to the OLCC’s 21-and-up rules. “We want to be all-ages still,” says Whyte. The Hollywood joins Cinema 21, the Clinton Street Theater, Living Room Theaters, St. Johns Twin Cinema & Pub and Vancouver’s Cinetopia as first-run venues with beer among their concessions.
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GLUTEN-FREE SCORE: Local gluten-free gourmet baker Kyra Bussanich is getting some sweet national TV face time this week. The Portlander, owner of the custom-order operation Crave Bake Shop, competed on last night’s “holiday tree lighting”-themed season premiere of Food Network’s Cupcake Wars. “I did not win; I was first runner-up,” says Bussanich. “The judges loved my flavors, but they loved other [contestants’] display. I was very pleased. My biggest goal was just not to go home first.” The first gluten-free baker to ever compete on the show, Bussanich surprised the judges with hot-chocolate cupcakes filled with peppermint dark chocolate truffle and topped with fresh marshmallow cream, as well as eggnog cupcakes. Want to taste test them yourself? Place an order at cravebakeshop. com. Bussanich is even thinking of launching Crave dry mixes in grocery stores in 2011. HOLIDAY HOPE: Christmas music sucks. So each year, WW puts together a local holiday compilation of epic proportions. Another Gray Christmas Four, a download-only holiday album featuring tracks from A Weather, Key Losers, Incredible Yacht Control, And And And, Grey Anne and much more, will be available starting this Saturday on wweek.com for $5 (proceeds go to local youth-outreach program P:ear). We’re also throwing a totally free party for it at Mississippi Studios on Wednesday, Dec. 22, with Duover, Bret Vogel of Incredible Yacht Control/Crosstide, and special guests to be announced. How’s that for holiday cheer?
HEADOUT
MUSIC: All hail St. Cohen. STAGE: Highly enjoyable Torture. GALLERIES: Corey Arnold gets fishy. BOOKS: The real Roosevelt. SCREEN: Polluting Swan Lake.
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WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY DEC. 8 [MUSIC] THE POSIES The Posies are an underrated institution of Northwest music. Two decades after the Bellingham-born soft-pop group’s formation, it’s still releasing relevant, affecting and rocking records. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $20. 21+.
FRIDAY DEC. 10 [SCREEN] STRAIGHT TO HELL Director Alex Cox (he of Repo Man cult fame) drives up from his Ashland home to talk about the director’s cut of his 1987 punk-rock spaghetti western. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 238-5588. 7 and 9 pm. $8. [SCREEN] RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE A new Finnish movie finds Santa Claus buried in the ice. When thawed, Santa eats children. This is exactly what we wanted for Christmas. Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10, 846 SW Park Ave., 221-3280. Multiple showtimes. $10.50. [STAGE] ZOOZOO Imago pulls together favorite scenes from the company’s two puppet/ pantomime/mask shows, Frogz and Biglittlethings, for a tour-friendly bundle of surprising visual delights. 7 pm Fridays (except 2 pm Dec. 24), 2 and 7 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays Dec. 10-19; 2 pm Sundays-Tuesdays and Thursdays, 7 pm Wednesdays Dec. 21-29. No show Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. $29, $25 students, $16 under age 16.
LOCAL HEROES HOMEGROWN DOCFEST IS HOLIDAY FILMMAKING FOR LOCAVORES. Cinema begins at home. That’s the motto of NW Documentary (it is not actually its motto, but maybe it should be), the local nonprofit that teaches Portlanders to tell personal and neighborhood stories through documentary filmmaking. It’s like a farming CSA, but for movies. And this Friday is the thrice-annual feast: The first-time filmmakers who’ve participated in NW Documentary’s 10-week fall workshop present their work in the Homegrown DocFest at the Mission Theater. The people on the screen will also be in the audience: The directors are asked
to invite their subjects to watch the premieres of movies about them. “It’s kind of a bonding between the filmmaker and the subject,” says NW Documentary instructor Ian McCluskey, “and a giving back— saying, ‘You gave me your story; here it is back.’” Don’t think of it as a film festival—think of it as a barn-raising for the digital age. (With beer.) Here are five of the movies being raised this weekend. AARON MESH. GO: Homegrown DocFest screens at the Mission Theater & Pub, 1624 NW Glisan St., 223-4527. 7 pm Friday, Dec. 10. $7. 21+.
FOR THE LOVE OF PING PONG Director: Meggie Finn Former Olympic table-tennis player Sean O’Neill trains a new generation to wield the tiny rubber paddle.
BETWEEN SASQUATCH AND SUPERMAN Director: Perrin Kerns A profile of a young man with Down syndrome, whose two heroes are Bigfoot and the Man of Steel. BLACK COFFEE Director: Isaac Pendergrass A study of a first-wave java phenomenon: the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
[MUSIC] BIG FREEDIA Every Big Freedia concert should take place in a strip club—like, say, Sassy’s, where Freedia played an impromptu set for Into the Woods during this year’s MusicfestNW. The bootie-bass queen will play Holocene tonight, but that really shouldn’t stop anyone from getting naked. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 9 pm. $13. 21+.
SATURDAY DEC. 11 LITTLE DRUMMER BOY Director: Martin Barrett Punk drummer Spit Stix (real name: Tim Leitch) loses his job, his marriage and his brother, then starts over as a caretaker for an elderly woman with dementia. FROM EGG TO FRY Director: Trev Kubat The director is in eighth grade, but he returns to his elementary school to film a program where kids raise salmon eggs to release the fry into wild rivers.
[DANCE] A HOLIDAY REVUE Oregon Ballet Theatre has a vision, and it involves more than dancing sugarplums. Artistic director Christopher Stowell’s new show is based on the stories and cultural traditions of the company’s dancers, who come from far-flung parts of the globe. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 222-5538. 7:30 pm Saturdays, Dec. 11 and 18; 7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 17. $21.70-$141.05.
SUNDAY DEC. 12 [SHOP] CRAFTY WONDERLAND SUPER COLOSSAL HOLIDAY SALE The local crafting extravaganza returns with more than 250 artisans. Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Exhibit Hall C. 11 am-5 pm SaturdaySunday, Dec. 11-12. Free. Info at craftywonderland.com. Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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DISH PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: KELLY CLARKE. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
Forks Over Knives
Move over modern medicine, and make room for Forks Over Knives, the new food documentary that preaches the efficiency of health food over modern medical techniques. The film examines the idea that heart disease, type-2 diabetes and even cancer “are almost always preventable, and in many cases reversible, through diet alone.” After the film, there will be a panel discussion with several of the filmmakers, along with vegan bodybuilder (and former WW cover story subject) Robert Cheeke, who is actually pretty buff for someone who lives off beans and microgreens. LEIGHTON COSSEBOOM. Regal Cinemas Fox Tower, 846 SW Park Ave., 221-3280. 7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 9. Suggested donation of $8 to benefit Northwest VEG.
The Dark Side of Chocolate
Kids will go to extraordinary lengths for the sake of chocolate, but there is a flip side to the tasty-treat industry— where chocolate is used to exploit children. Recently the Global Exchange has been pressing Hershey’s, Mars and other chocolate manufacturers to end child-labor practices in places like Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. The nonprofit’s short documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, shines a light on the “child slavery and exploitation within the chocolate industry and cocoa farms in West Africa.” Now that’s some bitter chocolate. On the bright side, the film is screening as part of an “Economic Justice for the Holidays” bazaar and
forum that’ll include awesome ecogifts and free Equal Exchange Fair Trade coffee, chocolate and tea. LC. First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 12th Ave., 725-3307. Dark Side of Chocolate screening 2 pm. Holiday Bazaar 1-5 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. Free.
New Deal’s Season’s Eatings
New Deal Distillery unleashes a sixhour holiday food and booze extravaganza, with delectable eats, sweets and drinks from Clive Coffee, Xocolatl de Davíd, Tails & Trotters, Random Order Coffeehouse, and Hop and Vine, plus porky goodness from the People’s Sandwich, among others. And all the canned food and cash raised at the event goes to the Oregon Food Bank. LC. New Deal Distillery, 1311 SE 9th Ave., 234-2513. Noon-6 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. Admission is one non-perishable food item.
Ave., 6:45 pm Sunday, Dec. 12. $120 per person (gratuity included). Info at feastworks.com.
Breakfast for Dinner at Cafe Nell
There are few things Portlanders love more than breakfast. Local author Paul Gerald caters to the city of biscuit, waffle and omelette aficionados with his newly updated book Breakfast in Bridgetown. The 2010 edition includes more than 120 breakfast restaurant reviews, plus a new section on ethnic breakfasts by Kenny & Zuke’s co-owner Nick Zukin and sections on food carts and out-oftown locations. At the “Breakfast for Dinner” book party, Gerald will speak on topics ranging from book publishing to bacon, and Cafe Nell will provide nibbles like Monte Cristo sandwiches, housemade pork sausages and silver-dollar pumpkin pancakes. “I
aim to tell the story of each breakfast place,” Gerald says in a press release. “Whether it’s a mom-and-pop diner or a fancy weekend brunch, I like to give the reader a sense of the place: what’s the food like, who eats there, and what the scene is like.” LC. Cafe Nell, 1987 NW Kearney St., 295-6487. 5:30-8 pm Tuesday, Dec. 14. Tickets $9 or free with purchase of a book, $16. Call or e-mail deli for reservations.
Second Annual Deschutes Brewery Chefs Challenge
Deschutes celebrates Portland’s culinary and brewing supremacy with an Iron Chef-style food- and beer-pairing competition featuring seven local chefs. Everybody from Alba Osteria’s Kurt Spak and Genoa’s Dave Anderson to Ben Dyer (Laurelhurst Market and Ate-Oh-Ate) competes to see who can create the entree that best comple-
ments the brewery’s suds. The whole shebang benefits Morrison Child and Family Services. LC. Deschutes Brewery & Public House, 210 NW 11th Ave., 2964906. 5:30 pm Tuesday, Dec. 14. $75, limited to the first 100 who register.
Beast Vegetarian Dinner
Once again Naomi Pomeroy and her crew eschew their natural tendency toward blood, meat and entrails to create a seven-course all-veggie feast. Think cream of savoy cabbage soup, farro risotto, hazelnut and wild mushroom tarts, cornmeal crêpes with black mission fig ice cream and more— you get the tasty picture. It’s $100 a person, but that includes wine pairings with every course. KELLY CLARKE. Beast, 5425 NE 30th Ave., 841-6968. 7 pm Tuesday, Dec. 14. $100. Call or visit beastpdx.com to reserve seats.
REVIEW CAMERONBROWNE.COM
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Feast Dinner Series
Hardcore food couple Ethan Bisagna (Laurehurst Market’s head butcher) and Ashley Brown Bisagna (Clyde Common) unleash another of their Feastworks dinners, this time pairing their five courses of grub with selections from Penner Ash Winery. Their take on a holiday menu includes Dungeness crab consommé, rabbit loin with crispy terrine and Riesling-cured mussels—oh and mousse au chocolat with “cracklings crispies,” of course. LC. The Art Department, 1315 SE 9th
DEVOUR
FOOD INNOVATION CENTER’S “TIME TO MARKET” SHOWCASE For every food and drink product on market shelves, there are heaps of others waiting in the wings and vying for retail space. Of course, shelf space isn’t the be-all and end-all for food entrepreneurs. There are other ways to rustle up Free samples are only the beginning. foodstuff attention—start a food cart, sign up for a farmers market booth, start an underground supper club. But what if you need some food-safety tutoring so your first customer doesn’t go belly-up, or what if you know nothing about marketing or trademarking your product? Students enrolled in Portland Community College’s 13-week Getting Your Recipe to Market program learn all of that and then some from food industry professionals. Next Tuesday night you can meet 15 students currently enrolled in the program—and sample the end results of their blood, sweat and tears—at the free and open-to-the-public biannual “Time to Market: A Showcase of Local Foods” at the Food Innovation Center. The event is hosted by Portland Community College, Oregon State University and New Seasons Market. Get your tiny spoon and Dixie cup-clutching hands ready! Here are some people and products worth lining up for at the event. LIZ CRAIN. Gluten-free brownies: Portland-based former corporate training manager Linda Chaplik will serve up gluten-free chocolate, mint and espresso brownies, inspired by good old familial guilt (her sister is gluten-intolerant). She plans to market the brownies to local cafes. Spicy smoky dried-pepper blend: Seasonal farmworker Polly Wilson of Junction City will make you sweat and/or sneeze with her spicy, smoky, trademarked Hell Dust hot-pepper blend. Local fish stock: Upstate New York transplant and Newport resident Julie Wasmer will ladle out samples of her heal-all-wounds fish stock based on a Sally Fallon recipe in Nourishing Traditions. GO: Time to Market: A Showcase of Local Foods takes place at the Food Innovation Center, 1207 NW Naito Parkway, 872-6680. 6-9 pm Tuesday, Dec. 14. Free. All ages. For info, visit foodbizstartup.net/events. 24
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
WINTER WARMERS: Angel Food and Fun’s cochinita pibil and other dishes.
HEAVEN SENT
ANGEL FOOD AND FUN’S COCHINITA PIBIL WILL CONVERT YOU.
spread of parched pork and produce is woefully lacking a marinade or dressing or some such viscosity to enliven the platter. Better is the relleno negro ($9.99), a simple mud-black turkey soup BY CHR IS STA MM 243-2122 with a mellow burnt-chile broth. It has potential to become a winter favorite for snifflers fed up It might lack the truly lunatic ring of Portland’s with pho, but the lukewarm pool I dipped into favorite restaurant name, “Husky or Maltese recalled nothing so much as yesterday’s chicken Whatever,” but Angel Food and Fun is a downright noodle soup. Perhaps this is the temperature at silly designation for an establishment that doesn’t which relleno negro is traditionally served. If so, have a ball pit or bedazzled strippers. The “fun” no tradition has it all wrong, but a few more minutes doubt refers to the Mexican joint’s adjoining pool over flames is all the correction it needs. hall—a drafty, fluorescent-lit space that resembles Angel Food and Fun would be yet another hitthe saddest Corona-themed bar mitzvah of all or-miss neighborhood convenience if it didn’t do time or one of those chintzy one thing so soul-stirringly dens of iniquity in which a bad Order this: Cochinita pibil ($9.99). well that I hesitate to publicize it for fear there will guy in a Steven Seagal movie Best deal: Panuchos ($1.75) make for an excellent prelude to cochinita indulgence. might meet his maker. not be any left for me when So let’s just say the ambi- I’ll pass: The dry, bland poc chuc ($11.99). I return. That thing is called ence is lacking in a rather cochinita pibil ($9.99), and intriguing way, and that the Yucatecan specialties I want to marry it. Angel’s take on the Yucatan’s being cooked up in the restaurant proper are a bit most famous dish finds citrusy, sunburn-red broth more exciting than Angel’s idea of fun. The beauti- swimming with slow-cooked cuts of tender pork fully constructed panuchos ($1.75) are ideal start- that fall apart at the touch of a spoon; by the time ers: These three-bite wonders tweak the tostada half of the bowl is empty, you will be tucking into formula with bean-stuffed tortillas acting as crisp a gloriously unified mass of steaming flesh and carriers for shredded chicken, avocado and pick- grease that would not look out of place burbling led onions. The similar salbutes ($1.75) are essen- up from the earth as a lava-slow current of perfect tially panuchos minus the savory contributions sustenance. You will not be disappointed—unless of black beans; delightful snacks they may be, but you hate life. eminently skippable so long as their superior fraEAT: Angel Food and Fun, 5135 NE 60th Ave., ternal twins are on the menu. 287-7909. Lunch and dinner 11 am-7 pm Monday, Skip the poc chuc ($11.99) along with the sal- 11 am-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 11 am-11 pm Friday butes: Though colorfully comely, the flavorless and Saturday, 11 am-8 pm Sunday. $ Inexpensive.
Best Sushi Deal in Town
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Dinner
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with purchase of drink per person. From regular dinner menu only. Discount on food item only. Dine-in only. Cannot combine with other offer. Some restrictions may apply. This promotion is subject to change without notice.
Le Hana South Waterfront
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urban contemporary dining Enjoy a sweet selection of wines by the glass. And amazing hand-crafted cocktails. Make a meal of awesome appetizers. All day dining. Happy Hour 3 - 7 pm and 9 pm to close Monday thru Saturday; open to close Sunday. Free valet parking at Hotel Fifty. More info at facebook.com/H5Obistro. 50 SW Morrison • 503.484.1415
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626 SW Park at Alder • 503-236-3036 • BrasseriePortland.com Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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THE CANADIAN TENORS THE PERFECT GIFT ON SALE $12.99 CD On ‘The Perfect Gift,’ the Canadian Tenors - Victor Micallef, Clifton Murray, Remigio Pereira and Fraser Walters - have added their original and inspirational touch to both new and classic holiday songs.To create this one of a kind holiday album, they worked with legendary producers Humberto Gatica (Andrea Bocelli, Michael Bublé), Jeff Wolpert (Loreena McKennitt), Stephen Moccio (Celine Dion) and Asher Lenz (Josh Groban).
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
CELTIC THUNDER CHRISTMAS ON SALE $12.99 CD $12.99 DVD
STING IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT… ON SALE $12.99 CD $19.99 CD/DVD
The newly recorded Celtic Thunder Christmas record features 14 all time Christmas favorites done Celtic Thunder style and includes “Winter Wonderland”“Let It Snow” “ Silent Night”“All I Want For Christmas Is You” and more. Celtic Thunder has been the number one music show on PBS for six consecutive pledge periods.
‘If on a Winter’s Night’ presents an arc of songs that conjure the season of spirits, the eerie silences of the snow; days of solitude and reflection for some, a time of re-birth and celebration for many. With traditional music of the British Isles as their starting point, Sting and his guest musicians draw the listener in through a collection of songs, carols, and lullabies spanning the centuries.
ANDREA BOCELLI MY CHRISTMAS ON SALE $13.99 CD $23.99 CD/DVD
The first-ever Christmas recording from Andrea is a heart-warming collection of seasonal favorites produced by the legendary David Foster.‘My Christmas’ will also be a major component of a PBS Great Performances special to air on Public Television this December, featuring Andrea and David Foster with additional special guests.
MUSIC
MUSIC
DEC. 8 - 14 GUEST COLUMN
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
ADAM KRUEGER
Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply. Addresses for local venues are listed in WW’s Clublist column, page 36, or online at blogs.wweek.com/music/clublist/ Editors: CASEY JARMAN, MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, enter show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitmusic. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: cjarman@wweek.com Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 8 The Posies, Brendan Benson, Aqueduct
[POP PERFECTION] The Posies are a perennially underrated institution of Northwest music. Two decades after the Bellingham-born band’s formation, it’s still releasing relevant, affecting and rocking records. Blood/Candy is a huge undertaking that kills from start to finish, rivaling Superchunk’s Majesty Shredding for the year’s best pop comeback record. Whether the Posies’ core songwriting team of Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow is tackling operatic rockers (like the Queen-meetsWeen “Licenses to Hide”) or low-key radio fare (the Beatles/XTC-esque “Holiday Hours”), these guys pretty much nail it. That’s been the case for most of the Posies’ seven albums, and yet plenty of Northwest music diehards dismiss the band as too soft or palatable. I’ve gotta think those people just aren’t listening closely enough. CASEY JARMAN. Aladdin Theater. 8 pm. $20. 21+.
Neon Trees, Tokyo Police Club
[POLICE ACTION] 2006 was cruising along just fine when Tokyo Police Club lobbed its debut EP, A Lesson in Crime, into the indie music scene like a rhythmically ambitious grenade. Clocking in at less than 20 minutes, the EP’s seven tracks handily earned the Canadian quartet an opening slot for Weezer, a deal with Saddle Creek Records, and carte blanche to set off on an equally manic career. The group’s most recent LP, Champ, takes a less diabolical tack with its song structures, though note for note, Tokyo Police Club is still giving it more energy than most rock bands are even capable of imagining. SHANE DANAHER. Crystal Ballroom. 8 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. All ages.
Dick Dale, Jimmy Dale, Lana Rebel
[SURF AND TURF] It’s cool enough that surf guitar godfather and shredding septuagenarian Dick Dale is taking the small stage of Dante’s with his son Jimmy. The dude practically invented surf guitar, and generations of bands (and Pulp Fiction fans) owe a debt to Dale and his dexterous fingers. But the show also serves as one of the
last chances to catch Portland country siren Lana Rebel before she splits town. Somewhat mismatched with Dale, Miss Lana specializes in strippeddown country crooning with a dash of whiskey. She’ll be sorely missed, but hopefully sharing the stage with Dale will encourage her to visit often. AP KRYZA. Dante’s. 9 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
Datura Blues, Edibles, Analog Abuse
[ORGANIC POP] Portland has a long and colorful history when it comes to musical collectives. The worst of them sound like big muddy disasters. The best of them—from Smegma to Ohioan and Native Kin—confront listeners with something unexpected at each performance, but at each performance there’s a vitality and energy to the music that serves as a common thread. Datura Blues has dabbled in soundscapes and folk balladry over the course of the past decade, most of which has been pretty damn successful. New songs (mailed to WW last week with a handcut ransom note attached) sound like lost, druggy improvisational jams from late-’70s Steve Miller Band rehearsals. Which is to say that they sound awesome. CASEY JARMAN. Rotture. 9 pm. $5. All ages.
Bill Mallonee, Drew Grow, Chris Marshall
[COMFORT FOOD] What do you get when you strip an excellent singersongwriter of his backing band? In the case of Portland pop tunesmith Drew Grow, you get a pretty startling EP that instantly brings to mind all those Neutral Milk Hotel comparisons the local press has been scared to bestow. The Comfort Feel is composed of six original songs recorded this fall that push his warbling, full-throated voice to the forefront, and you can’t help but notice how his cadence sounds like a combination of Jeff Mangum and Devendra Banhart. Grow’s songs aren’t quite that good, but the barebones approach highlights his strong melodies and voice. Here’s hoping that Grow’s next full-length with his gospel-tinged band, the Pastors’ Wives, continues his ascent to the top of the local songwriter pile. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. The Woods. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
TOP FIVE
CONT. on page 29
AND RE W JACKSON J I HA D
TOP FIVE ALBUMS WE PUMP IN OUR VAN. Todd Snider, Live at Grimey’s These seven songs are brilliantly written and endearingly performed live by Mr. Snider. This guy makes all songwriters jealous. Mac Dre, Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game (Vol. 2) Sweet remixes from the Bay Area’s fallen court jester. It’s hosted by DJ “Dragonstyle” Rick Lee, and is packed with the “smooth and fun party lyrics” that Mac Dre was known for. Pantera, Vulgar Display of Power These dudes were pissed. Insane Clown Posse, The Great Milenko Say what you will, fuckers. This album is the Human Centipede of music, terrifying and hilarious. Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, A Larum Ben found this record at Amoeba a few years ago and we fell in love with it. It’s very elegant. It’s also the most English thing ever recorded. SEE IT: Andrew Jackson Jihad plays Thursday, Dec. 9, and Saturday, Dec. 11. Both shows at Artistery. 8 pm. $8. All ages.
PERHAPS LOVE IS, IN FACT, A VICTORY MARCH LEONARD COHEN TAKES ONE MORE LAP. BY N ICK JA IN A
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I saw Leonard Cohen two years ago in Baltimore, at what I thought would be my last opportunity. He played in an outside pavilion in a miserable cold rain, but onstage he radiated all the warmth of the center of the Earth. He took his hat off after every song and embraced the applause like a man who would never hear another clap again. What Leonard Cohen seems to be saying: Soak this up. We don’t know how long we get, you with me or I with you. I decided right then, watching this old man who’s written more brilliant lyrics than everyone in the world combined, that if Cohen could be graceful in the swirl of applause at the end of his life, then there’s no reason for me to ever be ungrateful for anything. I try to live this way, and then forget. It’s hard to keep in mind we’re all going to die someday. There will be moments where I can hold an image of Cohen’s smiling, crinkled face in my mind, and I can embody that as I receive some bounty on my plate and respond to the giver that I am thankful. But then, at the next meal, I’m back to sulking with my elbows on the table, pushing the Brussels sprouts to the far end of the plate, begging to be excused to watch some mind-erasing television program. We’re all kids at the dinner table, no matter how old we get. I don’t know how Cohen got to such a place, but his spirit left a bigger impression than any guitar solo or drum fill ever has. I would try to squint my eyes and wish his band away; polished as they were, they were just too fancy for such a show. I was hoping to just have Cohen and nothing else, though the contrast between him and the overzealous musicians was probably what made everything so striking. How many times have you left a concert floored by someone’s humility? Maybe his is a groundedness discovered in the Buddhist monastery where he spent several years, or in the loss of his savings to a manager who stole it
while Cohen was meditating. Gratitude is certainly not a trait you find in songwriters from the ’60s still performing today. If you see Bob Dylan live, you don’t get the impression he particularly cares that you’re there at all. See Paul McCartney and you feel like you’re just another cardboard-cutout fan in the Disneyland ride of his life. But go see Cohen and you really feel like you’re participating in the knighting of a saint, or the sainting of a knight, or you’re getting to eulogize someone while he’s still alive and beaming with pride about his good fortune. I can’t say Cohen’s transition from soft-voiced folk singer to strip-mine-voiced soft-jazz growler was easy for me as a listener. I once bought a cassette of his 1992 album, The Future, for a road trip,
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU LEFT A CONCERT FLOORED BY SOMEONE’S HUMILITY? somehow hoping to hear echoes of the man who sang “Suzanne” so tenderly. I couldn’t handle the doom in his voice as he sang about crack and anal sex, and I had to throw the tape out the window to hold onto my image of him, like spitting out a sip from a corked bottle of wine. I was unwilling to embrace Cohen getting older. And it’s usually such a diminished road to follow your favorite singer into his 60s and beyond. But when I saw Cohen on that stage in Baltimore, it was like seeing him perform from the afterworld. All the weather and wear was in his voice, but none of the bleakness. It was like watching your grandfather sit on top of your family tree, singing you to sleep with every lullaby your mother never sang you. Nick Jaina is a Portland-based songwriter, musician and writer. His tour diaries and columns can be found at wweek.com. SEE IT: Leonard Cohen plays at the Rose Garden Wednesday, Dec. 8, at 8 pm. $49.50-$200. All ages. Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
stur-D
THURSDAY PROFILE
STEPHEN SCHEFRIN
THURSDAY, DEC. 9
MUSIC
White Album Christmas
[I’VE GOT TINSEL ON MY FINGERS!] This can’t be the first time someone has thought to do this, but it is a novel idea nonetheless. The Wanderlust Circus has again put together a holiday show that features a band playing the Beatles’ self-titled album (you know it as “The White Album”) in its entirety. You know: a “White Album Christmas.” It’s punny as all get out, but will still be something to hear as the group playing these familiar tunes includes members of the MarchFourth Marching Band and Stereovision, as well as Carl Solovox. I can’t wait to hear how they manage their way through “Revolution 9.” ROBERT HAM. Alberta Rose Theatre. 9 pm (minors accompanied by parent). $20 advance, $25 day of show. All ages.
Andrew Jackson Jihad, Royal Monsters
[PUNK UNPLUGGED] If Neutral Milk Hotel had been angrier, dirtier and funnier and had a shorter attention span, it probably would have sounded much like Phoenix duo Andrew Jackson Jihad. Since its excellent, mostly acoustic 2007 debut LP, People That Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World, the folk-punk group pulled a Dylan, adding some electric guitar and a dash of drums, strings and horns to 2009’s Can’t Maintain. Live, however, the band’s only accompaniment still comes from fans screaming and swearing along to songs about drugs, smoking and death. RUTH BROWN. The Artistery. 8 pm. $8. All ages.
Padam Padam
[CABARET] Rocking a repertoire that encompasses French cabaret, klezmer, tango and Tin Pan Alley, Padam Padam (named after an Édith Piaf song) should work nicely for a classy, continental evening out. Vocalist Lisa Platt has a winking sort of delivery that bridges the gap between the eras of the songs’ origins and the sensibilities of contemporary listeners. The interplay between Kathy Fors’ accordion and Barbara Bernstein’s viola, with the strong support of Jaime Leopold’s double bass, conveys the pleasure of shared music-making. And, to these ears, it’s actually Leopold’s own composition, “Window on Prince Street,” that is the highlight of the ensemble’s self-released, self-titled album. Hopefully, the group will continue to synthesize its influences and come up with more original material. JEFF ROSENBERG. Corkscrew Wine Bar. 8 pm. Free. All ages.
Broken Bells, Mimicking Birds
[LIMITED LIABILITY PARTNERSHIP] Broken Bells, James Mercer’s extraShins project with Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton, he of The Grey Album and Gnarls Barkley fame), is back in PDX again. Since Portland is Mercer’s home base, his band, which released its self-titled debut back in March, has performed here several times already. But as the year winds down, Burton and Mercer are back once again to remind everyone of the mellow, surprisingly dark tunes they created together (or maybe Mercer just needs to stop home to pick up clean socks for the rest of the tour). Admittedly Broken Bells isn’t as good as either of its members’ other projects, but that doesn’t mean the thrill of seeing Danger Mouse and the Shins’ main man on stage together is gone. REBECCA RABER. Crystal Ballroom. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.
Peter Hook & Friends perform Unknown Pleasures
[MANUAL TRANSMISSIONS] Much of what makes fans’ continued devotion toward Joy Division so special, if not unsettling, surrounds the quality of undisturbed absence, an immediate and enduring
CONT. on page 30
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BAD ASSETS SATURDAY, DEC. 11 Trucker rock is best enjoyed while hurtling down I-84.
[ROADHOUSE BOOZE] I’m hoisting shots and beers at Troutdale’s massive TA truck stop when Bad Assets guitarist Jeff “Motor Jeffries” Moyer starts talking about a lonely stretch of I-84. “You go out there and there’re ghosts. It’s an amazing place,” he says, running his hand across his shaved head. “If you were driving through the Gorge tonight, you’d be scared shitless. There would be truckers throwing a 6-foot wall of slush into your face. That’s kind of where this album came from.” That album is I-84, the first release by rowdy-ass Portland country quartet Bad Assets, a band gaining steam with steady gigs at Jubitz and a Thursday spot at White Eagle. The band formed almost two years ago, though drummer Damon Rose and Motor previously teamed with doomed country provocateurs Party Country. Seeing them live, you’d think the members grew up playing together. The album—recorded over seven months in Brian Appel’s StoveTopStuff studio and fueled by Patrón, Pabst and pantslessness—details driving from Portland to Wilder, Idaho, for “The Ditch,” an outdoor festival Rose’s family hosts annually. “I’ve done the drive a thousand times, and parts of it are terrifying,” says Rose. “Then you cross this hill and you see the Treasure Valley of Idaho. That’s where I start drinkin’.” Suddenly, Motor, Rose, guitarist Ben Cosloy and bassist-vocalist Kevin Marcotte decide the best way to experience I-84 (the album) is actually driving down the highway during our interview. They shove me, glassy-eyed, into an SUV and crank the stereo, and off into the first snowstorm of the year we drive. I-84 (the album) starts with a revving engine, dips into highway hypnosis with ballad and presents terror and joy in the form of stories about working at a shitty Chinese joint in The Dalles, cement factories in Lime and watering holes in Baker City. The album’s arrival in “Ontario” is in the form of a butt-rock anthem, complete with goofy call-and-response lines like “Goin’ to Ontario/ Doin’ lots of blow-ee-oh.” A trucker describes a steep mountain pass on “Cabbage Hill,” with its thumping bass and drums (think “Roadhouse Blues”) propelling Marcotte’s gravelly, whiskey-strained voice. Motor, the group’s principal songwriter, says he was inspired by Woody Guthrie’s Pacific Northwest tunes, but Guthrie never wrote about blackout drinking, Camaros and weed. There are some bittersweet moments and darker ballads, but I-84’s overall tone is giddy— a solid mix of old and new country, rock, funk and bumpkin blues. Back on 84, snow is falling, the stereo blares and conversation halts. Marcotte’s voice growls eerily through the speakers: “Cabbage Hill, 18 wheels on Cabbage Hill/ Drive all night, drive all night.” As if sensing doom in the storm, Rose switches the stereo to “Greenleaf,” a hootenanny-style song about Tater Tot factories. The contrast between tones, which switch frequently on I-84, is perfect. Everyone begins to clap along exaggeratedly, singing, “where the Tater Tots grow” along with Motor’s recorded warble. “We wanted it to sound like a ’70s country-rock album, but almost like one of those really raunchy, debauched Rolling Stones albums where they kind of didn’t give a shit,” says Motor. In a way, it worked. It may not be Exile on Main Street, but I-84 is a perfectly eclectic companion on the road—something I learned while riding shotgun with Bad Assets. AP KRYZA.
HUGE DANCE FLOOR FRI 12/10 @ 9PM
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SEE IT: Bad Assets plays Duff’s Garage on Saturday, Dec. 11. 9 pm. Cover. 21+. Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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MUSIC
THURSDAY - FRIDAY
silence without real parallel in this modern world. Credit the surviving members of the band with honoring their departed friend’s wishes by changing the group’s name and beating their post-punk cred into synth-pop ploughshares. As well, credit global dancefloors with granting New Order such extraordinary success, a truly era defining ubiquity that Curtis’ intensely personalized woe would never have approached. However, bassist Peter Hook’s decision post-New Order split to perform the songs of Joy Division’s debut alongside his son three decades after the album failed to chart is not, exactly, Beatlemania, and recurrent criticism instead concerns his visible discomfort at the front of the stage and the impossibility of ever replicating Curtis’ legendary croon. JAY HORTON. Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $23 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
Copy, Matt Carlson, Daniel Menche, Thomas Thorson, DJ E*Rock
[NEW CLASSICAL] This concert kicks off a most welcome new quarterly series called New Musics, co-curated by Megan Holmes and Explode Into Colors’ Claudia Meza, that encourages collaborations among adventurous musicians regardless of category. In this debut installment, the local classical rebels will perform music created for them by Portland’s own experimental sound artist Menche, veterans of some of our most compelling dance and visual arts companies, former WW “Best New Band” winner Copy, and more, including one of Philip Glass’ string quartets. The best sound you’ll hear is that crashing of silly genre boundaries collapsing. BRETT CAMPBELL. Holocene. 8:30 pm. $7. 21+.
“Famous in Portland” Gong Show, with Buttery Lords
[KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD] In the pantheon of joke-rap songs, Buttery Lords’ “Famous in Portland” falls somewhere between Weird Al’s “White & Nerdy” and the Chronicles of Narnia digital short that ran on SNL a few years ago. The only difference is that Chris Parnell might be a better rapper than MCs Dr. Marble, Hub and Baby Powder Fresh. I know that sounds like a major diss, but let’s take it as something of a compliment—songs like this are meant to be a little silly, and the lyrics (things like “That’s really sweet you got a writeup in the Mercury/ From where I’m standing you’re still looking like a jerk to me”) are funnier with the MCs’ awkward delivery. Tonight the Lords’ celebrate the single and the first-ever “Famous in Portland” Gong Show, which riffs off the classic, campy ‘70s variety show with “celebrity” judges like Portland Elvis and Tender Loving Empire founder Jared Mees. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Matador. 9:30 pm. Free. 21+.
The Bellboys, Fruition, Shook Twins, Hives Inquiry Squad
[COUNTRY POP] Taking a quick glance, it’s hard to tell whether the Bellboys are Portland hippies or Nashville outlaw country types. The likely truth is that they’re just dudes with beards. Dudes with beards and good taste in music: Debut full-length I’ll Be Here All Night features a hearty dose of banjo-picking, bluegrass harmony, Western swing guitar leads and blues chords. It also features some nice songwriting, despite my creeping suspicion—especially on backto-back tracks “All My Love” and “Caroline”—that Sublime is a reasonably big influence. Still, the Bellboys are doing a lot of things right. CASEY JARMAN. Mount Tabor Theater. 9 pm. $6. All ages.
FRIDAY, DEC. 10 The Greenhornes, Hacienda
[VINTAGE RIFFS] Before last month’s hard-to-Google release, ★★★★, the Greenhornes hadn’t
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
released a full-length together since way back in 2002. Therefore, the Cincinnati-based garage-rock crew hasn’t been to our town in a while (though you may have seen the rhythm section backing Jack White as part of the Raconteurs more recently). In the meantime, the band has sanded down many of its roughest, rawest edges (as ★★★★ proves), but its knack for British blues-rock melodies hasn’t faded away. Fellow garage revivalist Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys discovered San Antonio’s Hacienda, a Mexican-American group made up of brothers and cousins, so you know tonight’s bill is well-matched. REBECCA RABER. Berbati’s Pan. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
Cake
[ROBO-BEATNIKS] Admit it: You never thought you’d be reading about Cake in 2010. When the Sacramento band first appeared on rock radio at the tail end of the Alternative Era, it seemed to come with an expiration date branded on its side. Its 1996 breakout single, “The Distance”—with its chugging guitar riff, plaintive background trumpet and deadpan spoken-word vocals about a resilient racecar driver triumphing against the odds— somehow transcended its expected one-hit wonderdom to become one of those uplifting, strangely motivational tunes that just never dies— kind of like a late-’90s version of “Whip It.” The band’s kitchen-sink approach to songwriting—crossbreeding white-boy funk, ‘70s riff rock and bits of country, soul and hip-hop—preserves it a shockingly large cult, and it has a new album, Showroom of Compassion, dropping in January. No wonder Cake could cover “I Will Survive” so credibly. MATTHEW SINGER. Crystal Ballroom. 8 pm. Sold Out. All ages.
Stornoway, Greylag
[LONG-DISTANCE LULLABIES] Maybe it’s the circles I run in, but I’m a little amazed that more people in town aren’t salivating at the prospect of Stornoway coming to town. The quartet from Oxford trucks in a sound that would seem to please the discerning palate of many a Portland music fan or musician. The band’s debut album, Beachcomber’s
Windowsill, is rife with romantic yearning, acoustic instruments and plaintive singing that would be indistinguishable from the material released by Hush or Tender Loving Empire were in not for the thick English accent of singer Brian Briggs and penchant for Gaelic-inspired melodies. ROBERT HAM. Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Thee Oh Sees, Bare Wires, Cyclotron, Orca Team
[WILD AND LIVE] A few years ago a close friend of mine told me that San Francisco garage-rock outfit Thee Oh Sees were the best live band in the world. Ever the skeptic, I throw out a handful of names (Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Sleater-Kinney) and told him he was full of crap. And then I finally saw Thee Oh Sees in the flesh and almost broke my nose from moshing so hard. There’s simply no frontman in the world like John Dwyer, who plays guitar like a tattooed punk rock Dwight Yoakam, hopping around the stage shouting and growling and trading off bah-bahbah vocals with keyboardist Brigid Dawson. It’s a visceral, intense experience, especially if you’re in the front row, and especially if the band plays the title track of its new record Warm Slime, a 14-minute beast that takes Dwyer’s beloved Nuggets and B-52s LPs and coats them in gasoline and reverb. Trust me, friends, you don’t want to miss these guys. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. East End. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Big Freedia, Beyondadoubt, Onuinu
[ASSQUAKE] Every Big Freedia concert should take place in a strip club. At this year’s MusicfestNW, the reigning transgender queen of “sissy bounce”—the gay-centric booty-rap offshoot based exclusively in New Orleans—had three gigs: opening for Major Lazer at the Roseland, headlining Holocene, and shooting an installment of local Web performance series Into the Woods at Southeast titty bar Sassy’s. All of them served as hyper-stimulating introductions to the shamelessly raunchy noise that’s had asses in the
PRIMER
CONT. on page 34
CASEY JA RMA N
LOW Formed: 1993 in Duluth, Minn. Members: Guitarist-vocalist Alan Sparhawk, drummer-vocalist Mimi Parker, bassist Steve Garrington. Sounds like: Drowning in the Great Lakes; a family of Quakers getting drunk on whiskey for the first time and forming an indierock band. For fans of: Red House Painters, Leonard Cohen, Portishead, Dolorean, Menomena, Neil Young, Spiritualized. Latest release: Is still 2007’s Drums and Guns, which feels like Low’s belated answer to Radiohead’s Kid A—all trippy organic samples and odd angles. Why you care: Because this band has never put out a shitty album, and it has never lost track of its singular muse. Though Low’s songs can be almost suicidally slow and barren at times, Sparhawk and Parker (who are married with children and Mormon, to boot) are magicians of vocal harmony and sparse orchestration, weaving Zen lyrics into buzzing death marches that make Minnesota seem even colder and sadder than it actually is. In person, Low is warm and funny—a lighter side that only occasionally comes through in the trio’s songs (see “Santa’s Coming Over,” a tune the band will surely play on this special holiday tour). Low is ostensibly touring on Christmas, a recently reissued-on-vinyl collection of gorgeous holiday tunes originally released in 1999. And really, no one captures the mournful, bleak spirit of the holidays quite like Low. SEE IT: Low plays Saturday, Dec. 11, at Mississippi Studios, with Charlie Parr. 9 pm. $16 advance. 21+.
Meet Pink Martini Saturday 12/11 @ 3pm
At Music Millennium
A
t long last Pink Martini has released their first holiday album ‘Joy To The World.’ In true Pink Martini fashion, the band has created a globally-inclusive holiday album for the 21st century, performing 14 festive songs in eight languages. Featuring traditional holiday favorites alongside gorgeous, lesser-known discoveries, the album is enhanced by an array of guests, including Japanese pop star Saori Yuki and NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro, backed by a fabulous gathering of Portland choirs.
The perfect holiday gift?
A SIGNED CD BY PINK MARTINI!
SEE THEM LIVE NEW YEAR’S EVE @ THE ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL OFFER GOOD THRU 12/31/10
THIS HOLIDAY…GIVE THE GIFT OF MUSIC INDIGO GIRLS HOLLY HAPPY DAYS ON SALE $13.99 CD Grammy award-winning duo Indigo Girls release their first-ever holiday album, ‘Holly Happy Days.’ This 12-song holiday collection features new, original songs like “Your Holiday Song,” “Happy Joyous Hanukah,” “There’s Still My Joy,” and “The Wonder Song” alongside holiday classics and favorites including “Oh Holy Night,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” and “Angels We Have Heard On High.”
ROBIN TROWER THE PLAYFUL HEART ON SALE $12.99 CD Recorded with his touring band and produced by long-time musical cohort Livingston Brown, the songs on ‘The Playful Heart’ show a more introspective Robin Trower. The guitar work alone requires that any aspiring player have this CD in his collection. A 50-city tour will be underway starting in January 2011.
SHAWN MULLINS LIGHT YOU UP ON SALE $13.99 CD LP ALSO AVAILABLE GRAMMY® nominated singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins returns with ‘Light You Up.’ Produced by Mullins and drummer Gerry Hansen, this marks a newfound level of musical and lyrical expression for the veteran artist. Shawn has undergone a series of transformative experiences leading to this captivating new song cycle. His experiences included delving into the collaborative creative process by intensive co-writing, and in one instance putting him atop of the country charts via a key contribution to the Zac Brown Band’s ‘Toes.’
JOHN SCOFIELD NEW MORNING: THE PARIS CONCERT ON SALE $14.99 DVD John Scofield is considered one of the most important and influential jazz guitarists and composers since he arrived on the scene in the mid seventies. A masterful improviser at the peak of his creative art, Scofield revisits today compositions & interpretations richly combining post-bop, funk edged jazz, and R&B influences. The New Morning is deeply honored to welcome this 2010 performance by John Scofield (backed by master drummer Bill Stewart, bassist Ben Street and pianist Michael Eckroth) to its series of DVDs dedicated to the great musicians of the Sons of Miles generation.
JOHN GRANT QUEEN OF DENMARK ON SALE $11.99 CD
SEE HIM FRIDAY 12/17 @ DOUG FIR MOJO’S ALBUM OF THE YEAR! ‘Queen Of Denmark’ is the debut solo album from John Grant (former vocalist and songwriter with The Czars.) It is a record of gravitas and grace, of FM melody magic laced with raw emotional bleeding. It asks why relationships are roulette and love is hell in a last-ditch attempt at self-improvement and atonement after a decade of alcohol and cocaine dependency. Grant’s backing band on the album are Denton, Texas’ mightiest Midlake - contributing their most empathic ‘70s-style Soft-Rock know-how.
OFFER GOOD THRU: 12/21/10 Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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MUSIC CALENDAR Editor: Michael Mannheimer. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, enter show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitmusic. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: mmannheimer@wweek.com. Find more music: reviews 27 | clublist 36 For more listings, check out blogs.wweek.com/music/calendar/
[DEC. 8-14] Dye Hippie Dye, Kelly Slusher
The Knife Shop
Tiger House, Adventures With Might
The Woods
Kenseth Thibideau, Trawler Bycatch, Secret Codes
ADAM KRUEGER
Miller & Sasser
Tonic Lounge
Wizard Boots, Empire Rocket Machine, The Downtown Tramps
Tony Starlight’s
The Linda Lee Michelet Big Band CD Release Party
Twilight Cafe & Bar The Steaking Healys, Abolitionist, Quentessentials
Vino Vixens
2JazzGuitarists
White Eagle
Renegad Minstrels, Quality Shine (8:30 pm); Lincoln Crockett Electric Trio (5:30 pm)
Wine Down East Lew Jones
FRI. DEC. 10
WED. DEC. 8 Aladdin Theater
The Posies, Brendan Benson, Aqueduct
Alberta Rose Theatre Portland Fiction Project with music by Future Historians
Aloft
The Andre St. James Trio
Andina
Toshi Onizuka
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club Cubaneo
Ash Street Saloon
Imaginary Airship, No More Parachutes, Tigress, Cloud City Rollers
Beaterville Cafe Paul Chandler
Berbati’s Pan
Piano Throwers (9 pm); Scott Law (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery Lynn Conover
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern Lincoln Crockett
Mount Tabor Theater
Rare Monk, Stolen Rose, Sunny Travels
Muddy Rudder Public House Stumbleweed
Press Club
Swing Papillon
Pub at the End of the Universe The Indigo Art Tribe, Rumble Box, Irie Idea
Rose Garden
Ray Tarantino, Josh Schroder, Krista Herring, The Slants (Acoustic)
Leonard Cohen
Biddy McGraw’s Little Sue
Datura Blues, Edibles, Analog Abuse
Bo Asian Bistro
The Country Inn
Jordan Harris
Brasserie Montmartre Kit Taylor
Camellia Lounge Mike Fekete
Crystal Ballroom
Neon Trees, Tokyo Police Club
Dante’s
Dick Dale, Jimmy Dale, Lana Rebel
Duff’s Garage Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); Chris Olson’s High Flyers (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club Rozendal, Southpaw, Kowloon
Fire on the Mountain Joe McMurrian
Hawthorne Theatre
Focus Focus, The Study, AM Exchange, Noir City
Holocene
Microfest: Jeffrey Jerusalem, Brainstorm, Billygoat, Hoop Dreams
Jimmy Mak’s
The Mel Brown Quartet
Kells
Cary Novotny
Rotture
Dub DeBrie Jam
The Woods
Bill Mallonee, Drew Grow, Chris Marshall
The World Famous Kenton Club
Elks, Ribcages, Weirding Module
Twilight Cafe & Bar
Mosley Wotta, Reed Turner, Dennis Florine
Ash Street Saloon
Gunfighter, Stereo Sons, Domino Trauma, The Warshers
Backspace
The Booy Jays, Hotface, Wreck and Reference, Guidance Counselor
Beaterville Cafe
Shug Mauldin & Riders in the Round
Berbati’s Pan
The Expendables, C Money, Outpost
Biddy McGraw’s Morgan Grace
Blue Monk
Alan Jones Quintet
Alberta Street Public House
Holly Tones Cabaret “Wrap It Up”
THURS. DEC. 9 Aladdin Theater
Holidays with Trail Band
Alberta Rose Theatre
White Album Christmas: The Wanderlust Circus & The Nowhere Band
Alberta Street Public House Lyris and Johanna, The Orchestration
Andina
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
Heathman Restaurant & Bar Johnny Martin Trio
Holocene
Classical Revolution: Copy, Matt Carlson, Daniel Menche, Thomas Thorson, DJ E*Rock
Jimmy Mak’s
The Tony Starlight Show
Kells
Nux Vomica, Squalora, Dark Black, Dead by Dawn
JB Butler
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Acoustic Attic: Crown Point, Jordan Harris, Ray Tarantino
Camellia Lounge Andrew Oliver
Chapel Pub Chris Phillips
Know
LaurelThirst Public House
King-Grand Blues Band, Warren Pash (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
Matador
Padam Padam
“Famous in Portland” Gong Show, with Buttery Lords
Crystal Ballroom
Mississippi Pizza
Corkscrew Wine Bar Broken Bells, Mimicking Birds
White Eagle
Wilfs Restaurant
Big Stupid Circle, Papa Coyote, Basketball Jones
Brasserie Montmartre
Gretchen Mitchell
Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen
Left Coast Country
Hawthorne Theatre
Cary Novotny
Dante’s
6bq9
Everyday Prophets
Beautiful Small Machines,
Ron Steen Invitational Jazz Jam Session
The Brave Chandeliers (9 pm); Mo Phillips (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
Katie Sawicki, John Vecchiarelli, Timmy Straw
Mount Tabor Theater The Bellboys, Fruition, Shook Twins, Hives Inquiry Squad
Stornoway, Greylag
Duff’s Garage
The Insomniacs (9 pm); Joy & Her Sentimental Gentlemen (6 pm)
East Burn
Camaro Island
East End
Thee Oh Sees, Bare Wires, Cyclotron, Orca Team
Fire on the Mountain Scrafford Orser
Mikey’s Irish Jam Beautiful Lies
Rockstar Karaoke
Hawthorne Theatre
Afflictions End, Curse of the North, Ghosts & Monsters, Move the Earth
Heathman Restaurant & Bar Naomi LaViolette
Holocene
Big Freedia, Beyondadoubt, Onuinu
Jimmy Mak’s Devin Phillips
Kells
Know
LaurelThirst Public House
Moon Mountain Ramblers (9:30 pm); Quick and Easy Boys (6 pm)
Local Lounge
Noah Peterson Soul-Tet
Macadam’s Bar & Grill The Sale
Mississippi Pizza
Aloft
Gordon Neal Herman Trio
The Flailing Inhalers (9 pm); Ginkgo Murphy (6 pm)
Andina
Mississippi Studios
Sambafeat Quartet
Ash Street Saloon
Mnemonic Sounds, Hurtbird, Anne
Pitchfork Motorway, The Interlopers, New York Rifles, Purple Heart
Mount Tabor Theater
Backspace
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Yoyodyne, Your Rival, Goat, Teal Bluestone
Beaterville Cafe
Drive By Empathy
Berbati’s Pan
The Greenhornes, Hacienda
Biddy McGraw’s
Yamn, Sugarcane String Band
This Not This, Alien Funk Squad, jokers & Jacks
Muddy Rudder Public House Reverb Brothers
Original Halibut’s Lloyd Jones
Jimmy Boyer, Rollie Tussing (9:30 pm); Billy Kennedy & Jimmy Boyer (6 pm)
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
Blue Monk
Night Beats, Junior’s Gang, Youth Bitch, The Shivas
Berthaline
Bo Asian Bistro
Reggie Houston & Janice Scroggins
Branx
The Polish Ambassador, Copy, Natasha Kmeto, Cory O
Brasserie Montmartre David Friesen & Greg Goebel
Camellia Lounge Prom Trees
Lynn Conover
Plan B
Press Club
Matt Cadenelli a.k.a. Don of Division St., Celilo & Friends
Railside Pub
Buddy’s B-Day: The Thornes, Assistant Manager, Zmoke
Red Room
Dr. Mastermind, Laden Saint, Ace of Spades
Clyde’s Prime Rib
Sellwood Public House
Hellhounds (9 pm); Portland Playboys (6 pm)
Original Halibut’s
Crystal Ballroom
Slabtown
Dunes
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
Dante’s
Duff’s Garage
Neck Beard Wild Pack of Canaries, New Lights By Dead Vines, Trash Pop
Ella Street Social Club The Shoguns, The We Shared Milk, The Woolen Men
Terry Robb
Andrew Orr, Jen Howard
Plan B
Lickity, Tiny Knives, Perfect Look
Red Room
Mentes Ajenas, Rumblebox, The Secret Whistle, Feral Drollery
Carl Smith & The Natural Gas Co. featuring Carlee Smith Norman Sylvester Cake
Schism (Tool Tribute)
Disjecta
Fall Girls Rock Institute Showcase Concert: The Smurfettes, Fuzzy Gold Fish, Gummy Bear Pandas, More
Tonic Lounge
Tease Time Rockin Holiday Burlesque Show: The Twangshifters, Lucky Lucy O Rebel, More
Tony Starlight’s
The Tony Starlight Christmas Extravaganza
Twilight Cafe & Bar After Nothings End, Animal R&R, AM Exchange
Twilight Room
The Space Neighbors
Up Front Bar and Gril
Rob Swift, Animal Farm, DJ Wicked, DJ Wels
Vino Vixens Charming Birds, Station Zero, Monstress (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Lauren Sheehan & Greg Clarke
Peter Hook & Friends perform “Unknown Pleasures”
First Unitarian Church
Hawthorne Theater Lounge
Pete Krebs
Roseland
Muddy Rudder Public House
The World Famous Kenton Club
Jim Mesi
Cider Mill
Doug Fir Lounge
Fenouil
MillionYoung, Teen Daze, The Great Mundane
Ford Food and Drink
Thee Headliners, Ghostwriter, Denver
Goodfoot
Kory Quinn
Doug Fir Lounge
Alberta Rose Theatre
Fire on the Mountain
Shirley Nanette with Vince Frates
Bo Asian Bistro
Vino Vixens
Greg Wolfe Trio
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Artistery
Andrew Jackson Jihad, Royal Monsters
Gordon Neal Herman Trio
Amadan
Wanderlust Circus, The Nowhere Band, Kazum, AWOL Dance Collective, Solovox, Russell Bruner, Leapin’ Louie Lichtenstein, Sarah King, Blake Hicks, March Fourth Stiltwalkers
Fenouil
Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen
Aladdin Theater
Holidays with Trail Band
LaurelThirst Public House
The Woods
Donerail, Guests
The World Famous Kenton Club
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS: Broken Bells play Thursday, Dec. 9 at the Crystal Ballroom.
East End
Nasalrod, Stag Bitten, Old Junior
Slim’s
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
The Saratoga
Jingle Bell: The Doobie Brothers, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Leon Russell Dick Lappe & Friends
Miss Lana Rebel, Growler, Joy and Her Sentimental Gentlemen
Slim’s
Grand Coulee
Star Bar
Riot Act Christmas
The Knife Shop
Paper Brain, The Crash Engine, Margo May
White Eagle
Wilfs Restaurant
Sinatra Night with John Gilmore Holiday Style
SAT. DEC. 11 Aladdin Theater
Holidays with Trail Band
Alberta Street Public House
Bearkat (9:30 pm); Dan Weber with Nightfolk (7 pm)
Andina
Toshi Onizuka Trio
Artistery
Andrew Jackson Jihad, Royal Monsters, IOA
Ash Street Saloon
Hillstomp, Sassparilla, Cicada Omega, DJ HWY 7
Augustana Lutheran Church
Augustana Jazz Quartet
Backspace
Natasha Kmeto, Doubleplusgood, Jeffrey Jerusalem
Beaterville Cafe Lorna B. Band
Biddy McGraw’s
Power of County, The Redeemed (9:30 pm); Twisted Whistle (5 pm)
Bishop Creek Cellars/ Urban Wineworks East Noir Notes
Blue Monk Wy’East
Branx
Arsis, Powerglove, Conducting From the Grave, The Absence
Brasserie Montmartre Bryant Allard Quartet
Buffalo Gap Saloon Break As We Fall & Lindsey Pool
Camellia Lounge Blake Lyman Trio
Clyde’s Prime Rib Norman Sylvester
Crown Room
Das EFX, Kruse, Love Loungers, DJ IZM
Dante’s
Appetite for Deception, Western Aerial
Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen
The Andre St. James Trio
Dots Cafe
Blue Holiday Bash featuring Rat City Brass
Doug Fir Lounge
Tame Impala, Stardeath & White Dwarfs
Duff’s Garage
Elizabeth Ames & The Countrypolitans, Bad Assets
Dunes
Deras Krig The Wolfman Fairies, Slutty Hearts
East Burn
Chris Boone and Friends
Burning Leather, Moss & Guests Toni Lincoln with Greg Goebel Hope 4 Friends
Goodfoot
Ben Darwish’s Commotion, Reva Devito
Hawthorne Theatre
Indelible Terror, Myselfdestruct, Devil Riding Shotgun, Run Bitch Run, Hou Farr Long, Seraphica
Heathman Restaurant & Bar Barbara Lusch
Jimmy Mak’s
The Curtis Salgado Band
Kells
Amadan
Know
Aerial Ruin, Aranya, Scrolls
LaurelThirst Public House
Pagan Jug Band (9:30 pm); Tree Frogs (6 pm)
Macadam’s Bar & Grill Big City Smile
McMenamins-Grand Lodge Little Engine, Michael Hurley
Mississippi Pizza
Z’Bumba (9 pm); Wicky Pickers (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios Low, Charlie Parr
Mock Crest Tavern
Alan Benson Experience
Mount Tabor Theater Ozric Tentacles, Mars Retrieval Unit
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge Stellakinesis
Muddy Rudder Public House Alan Hagar
O’Connor’s Vault
Dave Fleschner Trio
Oak Grove Tavern
Dreizehn, Endless Rage, Puffer, Revolution Overdue
Original Halibut’s Duffy Bishop
Plan B
Princess, Sex With Strangers, Pep Assembly, Dramady
Press Club
Rachel Taylor Brown, Holcombe Waller
Q Center
Turning of the Wheel: Yuletide Festival
Radio Room
Give!Guide Benefit for KZME: The Dimes Acoustic Trio
Red Room
Perseverance, Set to Burn, Sinfix, Tragos
Report Lounge
Matthewdavid, Devonwho, DTCPU, Ages, Citymouth
Rotture
Freddy King of Pants, Kid Whatever
Sellwood Public House Dale Miller
Slabtown
The Estranged, Shallow Seas, Lookbook
Slim’s
Woodbrain featuring Jimi Bott
Someday Lounge
Rick “The Godson” Wilhite, 3 Chairs, Stilove4music, DLYTE, Bliss
The Knife Shop
System and Station, Oxcart, Police Teeth
The Saratoga
Don’t, Confessions, The Neat
The Springwater Grill Zenda Torrey and Neal Mattson
The Woods
The Civil Wars, Great Wilderness, The River Empires
The World Famous Kenton Club
Doug Fir Lounge
82nd & Heartbreak
Badly Drawn Boy, Justin Jones
Tonic Lounge
Fez Ballroom
Faithless Saints, Dunbard Number, Joyland
Twilight Cafe & Bar Dicophonies, Wave Sauce, The Twangshifters
White Eagle
The Caps, Cabinessence (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant Jean Ronne Trio
Wonder Ballroom
The Grouch w/DJ Fresh, Brother Ali w/ DJ Snuggles, Eligh, Los Rakas
SUN. DEC. 12 Aladdin Theater
Holidays with Trail Band
Jackie Beat
Fire on the Mountain Mimi Naja and Jay Cobb
Hawthorne Theater Lounge Justin Stark & the Elicitors
Hawthorne Theatre
Valentine’s
Old Junior, The John Sutherland Band, The Happening
Vino Vixens
Alexander’s Real Time Band
MON. DEC. 13 Alberta Street Public House Scott Browning
Aloft
Holocene
Scott Head
LaurelThirst Public House Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott (9 pm); Freak Mountain Ramblers (6 pm)
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom
Martini
Andina
Ash Street Saloon
The Pink Snowflakes, Levator, Jon Garcia
Beauty Bar Trial Balloons
Biddy McGraw’s Eric Tonsfeldt
Bo Asian Bistro
Donovan Edwards
Alberta Rose Theatre
The Parson Red Heads, Lewi Longmire Band
Brasserie Montmartre
Andina
Mississippi Pizza
Lather, Rinse & Repeat
Dante’s
Blame Sally
Danny Romero
Ash Street Saloon
Granada, Armed With Legs, Tall as Rasputin
Mississippi Studios Strangled Darlings, Heroes and Villains, Rachael Sage
Monolith, De Le Warr, Analog Fiction
The World Famous Kenton Club
S.I.N. with Lana Rebel & The Love Lasers
Thirsty Lion
Knuckle Duster, Gaia, Bury Odessa, Nihilist Youth, Filth Machine
Morning Teleportation, Mimicking Birds, Yours
The Knife Shop
D.K. Stewart
Karaoke From Hell
Duff’s Garage
Big “D” Jamboree (8:30 pm); Chris Miller Band (6 pm)
Eric John Kaiser Hosts The PDX Songwriter Showcase
Tube
Transient, Thrones, DJ Nate C
Twilight Cafe & Bar SIN Night
White Eagle
Brad Creel and the Reel Deel
TUES. DEC. 14 Alberta Street Public House Flower, Power and Einhorn
Andina
Fire on the Mountain
Bo Asian Bistro
Goodfoot
Fez Ballroom
Jimmy Mak’s
Groove Suite
Scott Pemberton Trio The Mel Brown Septet (8 pm); The Metropolitan Youth Symphony Jazz Orchestra (6:30 pm)
Justa Pasta
Tom May
Slim’s
Frightening Waves of Blue
Local Lounge
Pamela Jordan Band
Macadam’s Bar & Grill
Baby Ketten Karaoke (9 pm); Supadupa Marimba Brothers (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
The Dan Balmer Band
Blue Monk
Rontoms
Raashan Ahmad (of Crown City Rockers), Coolzey
Kells
Blue Monk
Mock Crest Tavern
Bo Asian Bistro
Plan B
Bo Asian Bistro Jeffery Trapp
Brasserie Montmartre Ramsey Embick
Clyde’s Prime Rib
Ron Steen Jazz Jam
Crystal Ballroom
The Dandy Warhols, Blue Giant
Dante’s
Sinferno Cabaret, The Twangshifters
Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen Ed Neumann
Duo Denim, Baltic Cousins
Roseland
KUPL’s Acoustic Christmas: Jewel, Chris Young, Lee Brice
Someday Lounge
The People’s Yoga Fundraiser Concert: Ohioan, Lovers, The Akron Extended Family Yogic Flyers
The Knife Shop
The Phoenix Variety Revue
Tony Starlight’s
The Tony Starlight Christmas Extravaganza
Tom May
Know
Profits
LaurelThirst Public House
Kung Pao Chickens (9 pm); Little Sue & Lynn Conover (6 pm)
Mississippi Pizza Switchgrass
Mississippi Studios
Lumineers, John Heart Jackie, Nevele Nevele
Steel Drum Music Justin Klump
Brasserie Montmartre Chance Hayden & Sam Howard
Camellia Lounge Weekly Jazz Jam
Dante’s
The Ed Forman Show, DSL Open Mic Comedy
Duff’s Garage
Muddy Rudder Public House
Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
O’Connor’s Vault
Ella Street Social Club
Lloyd Jones
Julie and the Boy
Peninsulas, Skip Roxy
Highway To Hell
Living Room Theaters
Jackstraw
Jimmy Mak’s
Andrew Oliver Trio
DJ Seoul Brother #1
Saucebox
Music Millennium
United Travel Service
House Call
LaurelThirst Public House
Biddy McGraw’s
Felim Egan, All Ages
Groove Suite
Matador
Mississippi Pizza
Berbati’s Pan
WED. DEC. 8
Kells
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club Baker London
Soulstice
Hall of Records
JB Butler
Ash Street Saloon
Twice As Nice
Anson Wright & Tim Gilson
The Station with Chris Lay
Rumberos del Caribe
DJ Anjali
Brad Parsons
Alela Diane, Denver, Alina Hardin Jeff Jensen Band
Levi, Bryan Minus & the Disconnect, The Born Again Heathens, Erik Anarchy
The Knife Shop
Video Vanguard With VJ Dantronix DJ DirtyNick
Star Bar
DJ Gregarious
Tiga
KM Fizzy
Valentine’s
DJ Raf Spielman
THURS. DEC. 9
Tiga
Maxx Bass
Valentine’s
DJ Hot Air Balloon and St. Forkner
FRI. DEC. 10 Beauty Bar Doc Adam
Crown Room
Bubblin: Dave Nada
Foggy Notion
Bent: Jodi Bon Jodi, Roy G Biv
Goodfoot
DJ Aquaman’s Soul Stew
Groove Suite
Blitz Ladd
Ground Kontrol
Crown Room
Holocene
DJ Gutter Glamour Video Disco With VJ Dantronix Graffiti Rock: Ryan Organ, Spekt1, Bones, Propur Luv
East End
New Music Night: DJ Slim Chances & DJCJ
Fez Ballroom Shadowplay
Ground Kontrol DJ Noah Fence
Tony Starlight’s
DJ Lord Smithingham
Valentine’s
New Jack City
After Dark
DJ Muggy Stuck, DJ Epor DJ Allan Wilson
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom ‘80s Video Dance Attack
Rotture
Live and Direct 1-Year Anniversary: Rev Shines, Slimkid3, DJ Nature, Starchile
Hall of Records
Tiga
Lagano Lounge
Valentine’s
XDS, Astrology, Blood Beach
Railside Pub
White Eagle
Rotture
The Shook Twins
The Fix: Rev. Shines, KEZ, Dundiggy, Elzhi and Guilty Simpson
Beauty Bar
Pony Express, Option B, The Fasters Nancy King
Someday Lounge
DJ Nate C
DJ Beyondadoubt, Gene Balk
Honest John Plaid Dudes with DJ Mason “Chains” Crumley and Kid Midnight
SAT. DEC. 11
Ground Kontrol
DJ Spencer Daran, DJ Flight Risk
Hall of Records DJ Green Mango
Holocene
Dr. Adam, DJ Freaky Outy, Colin Jones
Tiga
Radio 23
Valentine’s
DJ Tobias B.
SUN. DEC. 12 Ground Kontrol
DJ Metal Matt, DJ Shining Armour
Plan B
DJ Owen and Guests
MON. DEC. 13 Element Restaurant & Lounge Mello Monday’s with DJ Mello Cee
Hall of Records Clarence Duffy
The World Famous Kenton Club
Old Country Night with Billy Lee
Tiga
City Baby
TUES. DEC. 14 Beauty Bar
DJ Sugarplum/DJ Spinnaface
East End DJ Lucifera
Hall of Records Tah Rei
Tiga
I’m Dynamite!
Tube
Awesome Racket
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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MUSIC
FRIDAY - SATURDAY
HOW MANY PRESS PHOTOS MUST WE TAKE!?: The Posies play Wednesday, Dec. 8, at the Aladdin Theater. Big Easy jiggling for over a decade now, but it was at the latter show where the genre’s tweeter-frying bass and raw, ambiguous sexuality really made the most sense. After all, this is music primarily meant to soundtrack undulating flesh. Alas, Holocene isn’t a nudie joint—but that shouldn’t stop anyone from getting naked. MATTHEW SINGER. Holocene. 9 pm. $13. 21+.
Buddy’s B-Day: The Thornes, Assistant Manager, Zmoke
[HEAVY-METAL ROADHOUSE] Portland is blessed with a lot of good folks, and DJ Rock Thrower is one of the best. Affectionately known to all his friends as “Buddy,” this Warm Springs Indian brings credibility and kindness to the metal scene. He’s often the last to be seen smiling and nursing an IPA at the end of many a heavy show. Tonight is his birthday (and he’s a lot older than you’d think!). So he’s asked a few buddies of his own to rock out at the Railside Pub—a quality roadhouse out on East Lombard. This place boasts a wall of video poker, great bar food, clean bathrooms, drink specials named after Budgie tunes, and T-shirts modeled on the demon locomotive from the cover of Motörhead’s Orgasmatron. Happy birthday, Buddy! NATHAN CARSON. Railside Pub. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Live and Direct: Rev Shines, SlimKid3, DJ Nature, Starchile
[HIP-HOP] It’s an ambitious idea: Get three skilled DJs together and make them remix songs on the spot. It opens the door for more mistakes and trainwrecks than your standard Serato DJ ever has to contemplate. But each month, the Live and Direct crew pulls it together quite nicely—sometimes magically—and the improvisation and interplay that happens onstage here is something you don’t find at many DJ gigs. If this fact is lost on you—that Nature, Lifesavas’ Shines and the Pharcyde’s SlimKid3 are making great songs greater with cuts, keyboards and MPCs— longtime Portland party host Starchile will be there to remind you that you’re just not partying hard enough. Tonight also marks the debut of a new collaborative track called “Who I Am” from Tre and Starchile, and we’re pretty interested to see what they have up their sleeves. Happy birthday, Live and Direct! CASEY JARMAN. Rotture. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
MillionYoung, Teen Daze, The Great Mundane
[DREAMPOP COME TRUE] Florida electronic dreampop artist MillionYoung—a.k.a. Mike Diaz—is one of those dang Internet success stories: He released free EPs online, the electro-blogosphere collectively wet itself, he scored a slot on SXSW, his next EP was picked up by an indie, which received a glowing review on Pitchfork, he signed to New York’s Old Flame Records, and now he’s touring the country and preparing to release
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
a debut LP. Oh, and all this happened in the space of about a year. Damn know-it-all kids. If he wasn’t so good, I’d hate him. RUTH BROWN. The Woods. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages.
Rob Swift, Animal Farm, DJ Wicked, DJ Wels
[CLASSIC(AL) HIP-HOP] The great Rob Swift—turntablist extraordinaire, ex-X-ecutioner, radio personality—has made a few visits to the Rose City as of late, and that’s cause for celebration. Mr. Swift is on, as they say, some “next-level shit” with his latest full-length, The Architect, an inspired mix of classical music and hip-hop that reminds of Portishead, Massive Attack and those scary noises from Inception. Always a man with a singular vision, this latest material separates Swift from his peers...by a few miles, at least. This time out, Swift will be live onstage with Portland’s own Animal Farm—he’s collaborating on the group’s forthcoming Culture Shock record—in addition to his solo set. Two great, vinyl-loving local turntablists—DJs Wicked and Wels—kick things off. CASEY JARMAN. Up Front Bar and Gril. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
SATURDAY, DEC. 11 Das EFX, Kruse, Love Loungers, DJ IZM
[TONGUE-TWISTERS] I hated Das EFX as a kid. Dueling MCs Skoob Effect and Drayz shared a circus rapping style that seemed like a made-up language. I mean, Das EFX’s biggest hit, “They Want EFX,” opens with the befuddling lyric “Bum-stiggidy bum-stiggidy bum, hon/ I got the old pa-rum-papum-pum/ But I can fee-fi-fo-fum/ Here I come.” Even when the MCs played things relatively straight, there was a rubbery quality to the duo’s delivery and a fantastic quality to the lyricism that made me think we spoke a different language entirely. And in retrospect, we did speak a different language—which is exactly what makes Das EFX’s sound so vital. So, yeah, I finally get it. CASEY JARMAN. Crown Room. 9:30 pm. $5. 21+. Open bar for first hour.
Tame Impala, Stardeath & White Dwarfs
[PSYCH-OUT] Tame Impala has come a long way to become one of 2010’s most buzzed-about bands. Literally. The psych-rock quartet hails from Perth, Western Australia, one of the most isolated cities on earth, and one that is almost 10,000 miles away from Portland. But with a debut fulllength like Innerspeaker, the band’s May-released collection of spacey, druggy melodies and groovyhard guitar riffs, Tame Impala was bound to transcend its island homeland. Stardeath & White Dwarfs are from a city that’s much closer, but no less strange (that’d be Norman, Okla., the birthplace of the Flaming Lips, the band of
SATURDAY - TUESDAY
MUSIC
DATES HERE
DRESSED TO KILL: System and Station plays Saturday, Dec. 11, at the Knife Shop. singer Dennis Coyne’s uncle). And its noisy, fuzzy psych punk should make for a nice appetizer to Tame Impala’s main course. REBECCA RABER. Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of. 21+.
System and Station, Oxcart, Police Teeth
[PORTLAND ROCK] I wake up every morning with a ringing in my ears—and I blame System and Station for that. The Portland rock outfit is known to play real loud, and there’s a lot to miss should you stick some earplugs in: the shoegazer twang in the guitarwork, the occasional vocal harmony, intricate drumming and frontman RFK Heise’s acrobatic vocal growls. Tonight marks the official, slightly belated release of the group’s latest disc, A Series of Screws, and it’s among the band’s best efforts to date—with a mathy rhythm section smacking against furious guitar licks throughout. We love these guys for playing actual rock ’n’ roll for the past decade—even if they’ve helped destroy our hearing along the way. CASEY JARMAN. The Knife Shop. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
The Grouch, Brother Ali, Eligh, Los Rakas
[HIP-HOP XMAS PARTY] When you put together a hip-hop lineup this strong, you really don’t need a gimmick to hold everything together. Still, for the second year in a row, Bay Area MC the Grouch is bringing a ton of friends—including fellow Living Legends star Eligh and the indelible Brother Ali—on the road for the “How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour.” And though I’m not sure how the Grouch intends to steal the holidays, I’m pretty sure that Brother Ali will steal the heart of anyone who shows up to this thing. Ali has one of those natural cadences that’s just perfect for rhyming, and it’s fun to hear him spit self-help advice and pick-meup tales over blaring soul horns on last year’s stellar Us. Just in time for the holidays, he’ll give you a reason to believe in hip-hop again. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Wonder Ballroom. 9 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.
SUNDAY, DEC. 12 Badly Drawn Boy, Justin Jones
[CHAMBER POP] Damon Gough creates gusty winds of his own, dressing his brainy, elegiac lines with dreamy orchestral warmth. The Dunstable, Bedfordshire (England), native thinks beyond his body’s mere two arms and legs, writing everything from the symphonic samples to the taps of the drums. With his band in tow, Gough can realize his many ideas, voiced through the whirls and eddies of October release It’s What I’m Thinking, Pt. 1: Photographing Snowflakes. Perhaps not as strong as BDB’s stunning Mercury Prizewinning debut, The Hour of Bewilderbeast, his new material is lasting and cerebral, a rare combo in pop. MARK STOCK. Doug Fir
Lounge. 9 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. 21+.
KUPL’s Acoustic Christmas: Jewel, Chris Young, Lee Brice
[[STUCK IN THE MIDDLE] It was 1995 when Pieces of You sold something like a quadrillion copies and secured Jewel her fame as a songwriter of clear, though frustratingly benign, talent. Since then, things have been a combination of rocky and bland for the queen of adult contemporary. There has been the dalliance in big band music (0304), the abrupt switch to country (Perfectly Clear) and the identity-obfuscating layer of shellac that has threatened to overwhelm these releases in a blond-beige deluge. With this year’s Sweet and Wild, Jewel seems to be sticking with both the country ethos and the stubborn, blissfully literal lyrics. SHANE DANAHER. Roseland. 7 pm. $16 GA, $25 seated balcony. 21+.
Ohioan, Lovers, The Akron Extended Family Yogic Flyers
[DOWNWARD DOGGY STYLE] You’ve probably patronized the People’s Yoga at least once in some foolhardy and short-lived attempt to quit drinking or smoking or betting on cockfights or whatever it is you do to pass the time as imprudently as possible. They need your money now. Your meager contribution will be matched by Ohioan’s haunted campfire chants, Lovers’ flawless melancholic synth pop, and an appearance by a mysterious conglomerate called the Akron Extended Family Yogic Flyers, which pairs journeyman soothsayers Akron/Family with a troupe of friends who will probably gyrate and bend in such a way as to you leave you feeling like a lunk of lard with a skeleton trapped inside. CHRIS STAMM. Someday Lounge. 8 pm. $10. 21+.
TUESDAY, DEC. 14 Alela Diane, Denver, Alina Hardin
[STILLNESS IS THE MOVE] Don’t fault Alela Diane for taking it easy this year. It’s par for the course that a girl would get tired when you have a year like Diane had in 2009, when she conquered Europe, opened for Iron & Wine, played Austin City Limits and released To Be Still, easily one of the year’s best records. But Diane’s starmaking turn on Blitzen Trapper’s “The Tree”—a duet with Eric Earley that she steals the minute she opens her mouth—might catapult her to the upper echelon of female singer-songwriters. If we’re lucky, we could hear “The Tree” tonight, as Earley is in the house singing classic country covers with Denver, and a slew of new Diane material is scheduled for release in 2011. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Mississippi Studios. 8 pm. $7. 21+.
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ALADDIN THEATER 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694 ALBERTA ROSE THEATRE 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055 ALBERTA STREET PUBLIC HOUSE 1036 NE Alberta St., 284-7665 ANDINA 1314 NW Glisan St., 228-9535 ARTISTERY 4315 SE Division St., 803-5942 ASH STREET SALOON 225 SW Ash St., 226-0430 BACKSPACE 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900 BEATERVILLE CAFE 2201 N Killingsworth St., 735-4652 BEAUTY BAR 111 SW Ash Street., 224-0773 BERBATI’S PAN 231 SW Ankeny St., 248-4579 BIDDY MCGRAW’S 6000 NE Glisan St., 233-1178 BLUE MONK 3341 SE Belmont St., 595-0575 BO ASIAN BISTRO 400 SW Broadway., 222-2688 BRANX 320 SE 2nd Ave., 234-5683 BRASSERIE MONTMARTRE 626 SW Park Ave., 236-3036 BUFFALO GAP SALOON 6835 SW Macadam Ave., 244-7111 CAMELLIA LOUNGE 510 NW 11th Ave., 221-2130 CLYDE’S PRIME RIB 5474 NE Sandy Blvd., 281-9200 CORKSCREW WINE BAR 1669 SE Bybee Blvd., CROWN ROOM 205 NW 4th Ave., 222-6655 CRYSTAL BALLROOM 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047 DANTE’S 1 SW 3rd Ave., 226-6630 DISJECTA 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449 DOC GEORGE’S JAZZ KITCHEN 4605 NE Fremont St., DOUG FIR LOUNGE 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663 DUFF’S GARAGE 1635 SE 7th Ave., 234-2337
DUNES 1905 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 493-8637 EAST BURN 1800 E Burnside St., 236-2876 EAST END 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056 ELLA STREET SOCIAL CLUB 714 SW 20th Place, 227-0116 FEZ BALLROOM 316 SW 11th Ave., 221-7262 GOODFOOT 2845 SE Stark St., 239-9292 GROOVE SUITE 440 NW Glisan St., 227-5494 GROUND KONTROL 511 NW Couch St., 796-9364 HALL OF RECORDS 3342 SE Belmont St., HAWTHORNE THEATRE 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 233-7100 HEATHMAN RESTAURANT & BAR 1001 SW Broadway, 790-7752 HOLOCENE 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639 JIMMY MAK’S 221 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542 KELLS 112 SW 2nd Ave., 227-4057 KNOW 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729 LAGANO LOUNGE 1435 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 664-6140 LAURELTHIRST PUBLIC HOUSE 2958 NE Glisan St., 232-1504 LOLA’S ROOM AT THE CRYSTAL BALLROOM 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047 MATADOR 1967 W Burnside St., 222-5822 MISSISSIPPI PIZZA 3552 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3231 MISSISSIPPI STUDIOS 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895 MOCK CREST TAVERN 3435 N Lombard St., 283-5014 MOUNT TABOR THEATER 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd., MUDAI 801 NE Broadway, 287-5433 MUSIC MILLENNIUM 3158 E Burnside St., 231-8926
PAPA G’S VEGAN ORGANIC DELI 2314 SE Division St., 235-0244 PLAN B 1305 SE 8th Ave., 230-9020 PRESS CLUB 2621 SE Clinton St., 233-5656 RAILSIDE PUB 5301 NE Portland Highway RED ROOM 2530 NE 82nd Ave., 256-3399 REPORT LOUNGE 1101 E Burnside St., 236-6133 RONTOMS 600 E Burnside St., 236-4536 ROSE GARDEN 1401 N Wheeler Ave., 235-8771 ROSELAND 8 NW 6th Ave., 219-9929 (Grill), 224-2038 (Theater) ROTTURE 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683 SLABTOWN 1033 NW 16th Ave., 223-0099 SOMEDAY LOUNGE 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030 STAR BAR 639 SE Morrison St., THE KNIFE SHOP 426 SW Washington St., 228-3669 THE SARATOGA 6910 N Interstate Ave., 719-5924 THE TWILIGHT ROOM 5242 N Lombard St., 283-5091 THE WOODS 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408 THE WORLD FAMOUS KENTON CLUB 2025 N Kilpatrick St., 285-3718 TIGA 1465 NE Prescott St., 288-5534 TIGER BAR 317 NW Broadway, 222-7297 TONIC LOUNGE 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543 TONY STARLIGHT’S 3728 NE Sandy Blvd., 517-8584 TUBE 18 NW 3rd Ave., 241-8823 TWILIGHT CAFE & BAR 1420 SE Powell Blvd., 232-3576 UP FRONT BAR AND GRILL 833 SW Naito Parkway, 220-0833 VALENTINE’S 232 SW Ankeny St., 248-1600 WHITE EAGLE 836 N Russell St., 282-6810 WONDER BALLROOM 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686
DEC. 8-14
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: BEN WATERHOUSE. Stage: BEN WATERHOUSE (bwaterhouse@wweek. com). Classical: BRETT CAMPBELL (bcampbell@wweek.com). Dance: HEATHER WISNER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
STAGE 1945 Christmas from Home
Tapestry Theatre completes its cycle of World War II radio variety show revues. PCC Sylvania Little Theatre, 12000 SW 49th Ave., 254-6919. 7:30 pm Fridays and Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays, plus 2 pm Dec. 11. Closes Dec. 19. $19-$22, $11 veterans.
Annie
The one and only, performed for your enjoyment by Northwest Children’s Theater. NW Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 NW Everett St., 222-4480. 7 pm Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 7 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays and Dec. 31; 2 and 7 pm Dec. 21-23, 28-30 and Jan. 2. No show Dec. 24-25. $13-$22.
Christmas Merry and Dark
Readers Theatre Repertory reads Robert Anderson’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and Tennessee Williams’ “The Mutilated.” Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9th Ave., 234-2634. 8 pm FridaySaturday, Dec. 10-11. $8.
The Christmas Revels 2010
This year the annual, Renaissanceinspired revue of music and dance takes a Spanish theme. Scottish Rite Center, 1512 SW Morrison St., 274-4654. 7:30 pm Dec. 9 and 10, 1 and 7:30 pm Dec. 11, 1 and 5 pm Dec. 12. $7-$36.
A Christmas Story
Portland Center Stage has set itself a big challenge in unwrapping this charming Christmas present for the live stage. Unfortunately, Philip Grecian’s stolid adaptation of the 1983 film manages to suck much of the nostalgic holiday cheer out of this story of BB-gun mania. The biggest problem? There are two Ralphie Parkers. While the film overlays its wry adult narration on kid Ralphie’s cherubic face, PCS’s version forces kid actor Michael Cline to share the stage with his grown-up alter ego Darius Pierce, the latter often blandly pontificating over the minutiae of kid life while the former ineffectually mimes the action. That makes for a crowded stage. To make it worse, this version crams in at least another 20 minutes of superfluous dialogue, leading to a 2 1/2-hour slog that feels like an extended DVD edition of the film. KELLY CLARKE. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday. No show Dec. 25. Closes Dec. 26. $33-$63, $18 youth.
Dying City
From the outset, Christopher Shinn’s 2007 drama, directed at Portland Playhouse by Brian Weaver, echoes the familiar form of a whodunit. There is a corpse (Craig, a Faulkner scholar and Army reservist, dead in Iraq), a survivor (Kelly, his wife of two years), an investigator (Craig’s twin brother, Peter, an actor) and a slew of unanswered questions. But as the circumstances surrounding Craig’s demise are gradually revealed, we are left with deeper, more distressing mysteries that will follow us, nagging, into the night. Kelly finds Peter at her door, unannounced and with unclear intentions. What follows is a tense 90 minutes of conversational judo, interspersed with flashbacks to Craig’s last night at home. There is one obnoxious gimmick: The brothers are both played by one actor, Wade McCollum, with many costume changes. McCollum pulls off the trick fairly well, but he’s outperformed by Cristi Miles as Kelly, who completely inhabits the role of the damaged, grieving therapist. BEN WATERHOUSE. The Church, 602 NE Prescott St., 205-0715. 9 pm Wednesday, Dec. 8 and FridaysSaturdays, 4 pm Sundays, 7:30 pm Monday, Dec. 13. Closes Dec. 19. $12-$21.
Ebenezer Ever After
Stumptown Stages presents a musical by Don Flowers and Fred Walton, in which Ebenezer Scrooge journeys to the underworld to free Jacob Marley. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 503-381-8686. 7 pm Thursdays, 7:30 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays and Dec. 24. Closes Dec. 24. $30.
Everyone Who Looks Like You
Hand2Mouth’s 2009 show, back for a two-week run at the Interstate Firehouse after a whirlwind tour of West Coast colleges, is a warts-andall exploration of family: the people to whom you happen to be related, who made you who you are, who loved you more and caused you more pain than anyone else ever could, and whom you will one day inevitably become. The material is drawn from the memories of the cast and crew and informed by interviews with one another’s parents and siblings: the time Mom came home with a terrible perm, the time the parents bungled a speech about the ills of masturbation, the time a sibling stormed out of the house and vanished for five years. Should you invite family members to attend, you may find yourself in the midst of involuntary oversharing after the show. BEN WATERHOUSE. Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, 5340 N Interstate Ave., hand2mouththeatre. org. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Dec. 8-12. $12-$15.
The Faerie’s Gift
Story theater for children from The Brooklyn Bay. The Brooklyn Bay, 1825 SE Franklin St., Bay K, 772-4005. 10 am Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays through Dec. 19. $7, children under 2 free.
The Foreigner
[NEW REVIEW] This community theater favorite by Larry Shue is, at its core, a story about self discovery. The shy and socially awkward Charlie Baker (Jeff Gorham) is dragged to a Georgia fishing cabin by his friend Froggy (Brandon Weaver) for some much needed rest and relaxation. But because nothing scares Charlie more than talking to people, Froggy tells the other guests that Charlie can’t speak a word of English, as he is from a foreign country. The performance is a laugh riot, although at times the hasty stage direction and rapidly delivered lines have the potential to momentarily confuse audiences. But The Foreigner, chock full of Chaplinesque slapstick comedy and situational irony, proves itself to be an entertaining comic caper. LEIGHTON COSSEBOOM. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 635-3901. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Dec. 9-12. $24-$27.
Holiday Magic Breakfast Theatre
Lakewood Theatre Company’s kids Christmas revue. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 635-3901. 9 and 11 am Saturdays through Dec. 18. $11.
Killing Time
This “all-new world premiere comedy” from Portland sketch comedy company the 3rd Floor doesn’t do anything nearly so dramatic as the title suggests; rather, it languishes the time away with a lazy silliness that’s all the more frustrating because the show has the potential for something greater. Director and co-writer Tony St. Clair starts off with the year 1948 and Johnny Donovan (John Killeen), a sort of everyman struggling to make it until he’s swept into a whodunit caper of criminal, political, scientific and ultimately familial intrigue, all set off by a time machine. CAITLIN MCCARTHY. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., the3rdfloor.com. 8 pm ThursdaysSaturdays. Closes Dec. 18. $15-$18.
I M A G O T H E AT R E
PERFORMANCE
Mars on Life—Live!
Susannah Mars, everyone’s favorite soccer-mom chanteuse, revives her delightful holiday revue. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm WednesdaysSaturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays, 11 am Wednesday, Dec. 8. No shows Dec. 11-12 and 17-18. Closes Dec. 19. $25-$47.
Of Scary Ghost Stories and Tales of the Glories
The Free Theatre of Portland, a new company, presents a new holiday show about a man tormented by his brotherin-law and a ghost. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 238-8899. 7:30 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. Free.
The Santaland Diaries
Wade McCollum reprises his performance of this stage adaptation of David Sedaris’ memoir of a miserable season spent at Macy’s Santaland. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 pm Saturdays-Sundays, 10 pm Thursdays Dec. 9-30, 5 pm Dec. 31. No shows Dec. 25 or Jan. 1. $23-$50.
Soph: An Evening With the Last of the Red-Hot Mamas
[NEW REVIEW] Wendy Westerwelle reprises her hit 1984 performance as Sophie Tucker, a ribald turn-of-thecentury vaudeville star, for Triangle Productions. Westerwelle, a longtime veteran of Portland theater, was not yet 40 when she premiered the show, and I imagine the performance I saw was not as energetic as the one that, according to Oregonian critic Bill Hicks, had the audience at Storefront Actors Theater “on its feet, yelling and stomping for more.” But we all get older—Tucker went on performing right up until she died, at 80—and while Westerwelle may tire more quickly than she used to, she’s still got a great brassy voice and can tell the hell out of a dirty joke. Her delivery of big comedy numbers like “Mr. Siegel” and “I’m Living Alone and I Like It” is delightful. Don Horn’s production disappoints not in the performance but the surroundings, with a dull set and bizarre lighting design that leaves Westerwelle bathed in green through much of the show. BEN WATERHOUSE. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 239-5919. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. No Show Dec. 25. Closes Dec. 26. $15-$35.
A Tuna Christmas
The costume-swapping, characterhopping farce! Set in the tiniest, backwardest town in Texas! Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm Dec. 9-11, 14-16 and 18-23, 2 pm Dec. 12. $15-$53.85.
Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them
[NEW REVIEW] Portland Actors Conservatory presents a brave and disturbing comedy on torture and post-9/11 paranoia written by absurdist playwright Christopher Durang. Jessica Anselmo (Felicity) and Sam DeRoest (Zamir) appear, in bed, as a newlywed couple facing pressing postmarital issues: Felicity can’t recall the wedding and Zamir might be a terrorist. Temper tantrums, torture, porn schemes, Hooters and a shadow government ensue, in a play that blends the normal and absurd, beginning and end, with a bold sense of humor that usually works. The Loony Tunes score reminds the audience not to take anything onstage too seriously, and keeps us questioning reality. “I don’t know what normal is; that’s why I go to the theater!” appeals Sarah Lucht, who does a stunning version of a wife on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Those of you asking, “What’s real anymore?” after the recent nonbombing of Pioneer Square will want to see this one. The Conservatory pulls off a funny and surprisingly thoughtful performance on a weighty subject. STACY BROWNHILL. Portland Actors Conservatory, 1436 SW Montgomery St., 274-1717. 7:30 pm ThursdaysSaturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Dec. 19. $13-$25.
ZOOZOO
ZooZoo
Imago pulls together favorite scenes from the company’s two puppet/ pantomime/mask shows, Frogz and Biglittlethings, for a tour-friendly bundle of surprising visual delights that runs a little over an hour. Glowing eyes wobble in the darkness, polar bears molest the audience, rabbits attempt to hitchhike, a giant paper bag takes on a life of its own, penguins play musical chairs, and ninjas in red velvet pajamas have a paper fight. Jerry Mouawad and Carol Triffle have been doing this stuff for decades, but the shtick hasn’t gotten old yet. Go for a matinee, and the kids in attendance will teach you how to really enjoy a day at the theater. BEN WATERHOUSE. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 2313959. 7 pm Fridays, 2 and 7 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays Dec. 10-19; 2 pm Sundays-Tuesdays and Thursdays, 7 pm Wednesdays Dec. 21-Jan.2. No show Christmas and New Year’s Eve. $29, $25 students, $16 under age 16.
COMEDY Impulse!
Oregon Children’s Theatre’s Young Professionals troupe does improv comedy. Oregon Children’s Theatre, 600 SW 10th Ave., 228-9571. 7 pm Thursday-Friday, 6 pm Saturday, Dec. 9-11. $5-$10.
The Standup Comedy Showcase
The Brody Theater hosts local standup comics. The Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 10 pm Fridays. Closes Dec. 17. $7-$10.
Super Secret Spy Team
The Brody Theater improvises an espionage comedy thriller. The Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. $10, $7 students.
U.S.S. Improvise
The Unscriptables put on originalseries Star Trek uniforms and improvise new episodes. Unscriptables Studio, 1121 N Loring St., 309-3723. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Dec. 10-11. Pay-whatyou-will.
CLASSICAL Andrew Brownell
Portland Piano International snags another worthy up-and-coming keyboard genius—and it didn’t have to look far. Though he now lives in London, Brownell hails from Stumptown and has performed all over the world. He’ll play sonatas by Beethoven and Prokofiev and music by Schumann. Newmark Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 228-1388. 4 pm Sunday, Dec. 12. $28-$54.
Bach Cantata Choir
The six cantatas that compose J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio are some of the rare holiday-themed music that’s actually welcome every year. Rose City Park Presbyterian Church, 1907 NE 45th Ave., bachcantatachoir.org. 7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 10. $18-$23.
Classical Revolution, Copy, Daniel Menche, Matt Carlson, Thomas Thorson
This concert kicks off a series called New Musics that encourages collaborations among adventurous musicians. The local classical rebels will play one of Philip Glass’ string quartets as well as music by Portland’s own experimental sound artist Daniel Menche, veterans of some of our most compelling dance and visual arts companies, former WW Best New Band Copy and more. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 9 pm Thursday, Dec. 9. $7.
Commotion
Members of some of the city’s finest jazz and other bands compose the 10-member funk/afrobeat/jazz/party band, which this time will create mashups from tunes by everyone from Mingus to Fela to Talking Heads. Goodfoot, 2845 SE Stark St., 239-9292. 9 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. $8.
Magical Strings
Puget Sound institutions Phil and Pam Boulding’s annual family concerts have been bringing Celtic music, dance and storytelling around the Northwest for three decades. First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave., 245-1477. 7:30 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. $12-$28.
Portland Baroque Orchestra & Cappella Romana
The holy book of Brian declares that there’s only one true Messiah, buy of this year’s many versions of the seasonal classic—it’s actually the wrong season for Handel’s Easter-themed oratorio—this one will likely be the best played, best sung and certainly most authentic to the composer’s intentions. Featuring Portland’s finest vocal ensemble, the accomplished Roman early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini conducting and one of the nation’s worthiest historically informed music orchestras, it’s the top choice among available live Messiahs this year. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, 4 pm Sunday, Dec. 10-12. First Baptist Church, 909 SW 11th Ave. 222-6000. $22-$52.
Oregon Repertory Singers
Much-loved ORS music director Gil Seeley composed a new piece, Wonder Tidings, for this concert, which also includes Benjamin Britten’s lovely Ceremony of Carols and other seasonal choral and caroling favorites. St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1716 NW Davis St., 228-4397. 2 pm Sunday, Dec. 12. $10-$30.
Oregon Symphony, Northwest Community Gospel Choir
Charles Floyd leads the band and Gary Hemenway the 100-voice orchestra (drawn from 30-plus local churches) in the Symphony’s popular holiday gospel concert. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 2281353. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, 4 pm Sunday, Dec. 10-12. $23-$88.
Portland Gay Men’s Chorus
The chorus joins a 10-piece swing band and Locomotions dance troupe to perform seasonal tunes in a ‘40s style, plus works by Britten and Randall Thompson. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 226-2588. 8 pm Friday, 2 and 8 pm Saturday, Dec. 10-11. $16-$42.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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DEC. 8-14 A N DY B AT T
PERFORMANCE
A HOLIDAY REVUE
DANCE Capoeira Kids Campaign Kickoff
Another opportunity to shake off the winter gloom comes in the form of the Cultural Awareness Foundation’s Capoeira Kids Campaign kickoff. The foundation’s aim is to bring capoeira and other Brazilian arts to economically disadvantaged local kids, and to that end, it’s offering a showcase of Brazilian culture. Kids and adults will perform capoeira, a movement style that’s a kind of cross between dance, acrobatics and martial arts, set to live music. Bahia Brazil Art Center, 2512 SE Gladstone St., 6 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. Free; donations requested.
Do Jump! Greatest Hits for the Holidays Publishes January 26, 2011 space Reservation & Materials Deadline Tuesday, January 18 at 4pm
If The Nutcracker is not your thing (or even if it is), you may enjoy Divided We Fall, a parody of same. That piece is part of the Do Jump! Greatest Hits for the Holidays program, along with other favorite works from the company’s repertoire. The show, which doubles as a 33 1/3-year anniversary party for the company, will also include pieces from Tiger Lilly and Sunny Lu, NOW, At Such a Dizzy Height and other shows, all of which combine acrobatic athleticism, aerial manuevers and inventive, often comic, movement. Accompanied live by the klezmer band Klezmocracy, shows tend to offer a little something beyond the main event, so be prepared to be pleasantly surprised. Echo Theater, 1515 SE 37th Ave., 231-1232. 7:30 pm Fridays, Dec. 10 and 17; 3 and 7 pm Saturdays, Dec. 11 and 18; 3 pm Sundays, Dec. 12, 19 and 26; 3 pm Tuesday, Dec. 21; 3 and 7:30 pm Wednesday, Dec. 22; 7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 23; noon Sunday, Dec. 26; 7:30 pm Monday-Thursday Dec. 27-30, 7:30 pm. $20-$32.
Oregon Ballet Theatre’s The Nutcracker/A Holiday Revue
Oregon Ballet Theatre has a vision, and it involves more than dancing sugarplums. This year, the company is staging two seasonal shows. The Nutcracker will be staggered with OBT’s new show, A Holiday Revue, which is a bit more personal: The work artistic director Christopher Stowell has created is based on the stories and cultural traditions of the company’s dancers, who come from far-flung parts of the globe. Vignettes will be linked together and accompanied live by vocalist Susannah Mars and pianist Richard Bower. Nutcracker performances 2 pm Saturday, Dec. 11, 6:30 pm Sunday, Dec. 12, 7:30 pm Wednesday-Thursday, Dec. 15-16, 2 pm Saturday, Dec. 18, 1 and 5 pm Sunday, Dec. 19, 7:30 pm MondayTuesday, Dec. 20-21, 2 and 7:30 pm Wednesday-Thursday, Dec. 22-23, noon Friday, Dec. 24. A Holiday Revue performances 7:30 pm Saturday, Dec. 11, 17-18 and 2 pm Sunday, Dec. 12. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 800-745-3000. $21.70-$141.05.
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Polaris Dance Theatre
These days, it’s one foot forward, one foot back for Polaris Dance Theatre. The contemporary company, formed by Portland dance veteran Robert Guitron in 2002, has survived the recession (no small feat for an arts organization) and is planning for new classes and an upcoming dance tribute to Motown, Lil’ Mo, in 2011. Its present show, Repo, will preview new works in progress. That said, Repo is also a retrospective of Polaris works dating back to the company’s inception, including excerpts from Hueman and xChange. You can also expect performances of the mythically minded Solomente and Red Tied, a commentary on familial, religious and cultural influences, symbolized by swatches of red fabric suspended from the ceiling that bind individual dancers and prevent them from freely interacting. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 2421419. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Dec. 9-11. $15-$30.
Tease Time: A Rockin’ Holiday Burlesque Show
Burlesque and rockabilly go together like Jack and Coke, so it makes sense the Tease Time Rockin’ Holiday Burlesque Show would feature the Twangshifters as its musical guests. There shouldn’t be any shortage of Bettie Page bangs, vintage tattoos and red lipstick on this bill, which features performances by Frankie Tease, Madison Moone, Nina Nightshade, Tiffany Belly Dancer, the Dolly Pops and others, plus live music, cocktails, prizes and bodypainting. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 2380543. 9 pm Friday, Dec. 10. $7-$10.
Turning of the Wheel
The Q Center gets all festive with a spiral dance, Yule Prayer tree, “Pagan caroling” and other all inclusive, earthy-minded holiday-ish-ness. The Q Center, 4115 N Mississippi Ave. 3-8 pm Saturday, Dec. 11. $5-$10 sliding scale donation.
White Album Christmas
If you thought Eddie Izzard’s turn as Mr. Kite was the best part of Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, the Wanderlust Circus’ White Album Christmas may be the show for you. The Nowhere Band plays the Beatles’ White Album live in its entirety as performers showcase their particular (even peculiar) specialties, be they acrobatics, dance, comedy or the category known as Other. The Cascadian Freak Family is on the bill, along with AWOL Dance Collective, Leapin’ Louie Lichtenstein, the MarchFourth stiltwalkers and many more. Don’t be late. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 9 pm Thursday-Friday, Dec. 9-10. $23.
For more Performance listings, visit
VISUAL ARTS
DEC. 8-14
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RICHARD SPEER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show information—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: rspeer@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115. Emailed press releases must be backed up by a faxed or printed copy.
NOW SHOWING Stu Levy, Sara Siestreem
With intuition and invention, photographer Stu Levy subdivides his images into multiple frames to create collage-like wholes. Whether in wall-spanning monumental pieces or intimate psychological portraits such as Walter Chappell, he invigorates the eye while engaging the emotions. In the back-gallery group show, Sara Siestreem leaves her symbolist style behind in favor of self-assured abstraction. The bold, blue-and-red gestures of By Levitation or Ladder suggest that the artist is equally confident across a wide range of formal approaches. Augen DeSoto, 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056. Closes Dec. 30.
graphs, charts, blueprints and diagrams. His dry, unassuming wooden sculptures in the gallery’s center are an ideal complement, by which we mean that as a whole, the show has all the spark, fire, and soul of your high-school trigonometry class. PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063. Closes Dec. 31.
G. Lewis Clevenger
vilinearity, G. Lewis Clevenger brazenly and successfully evolves his abstract paintings. The large forms in Sullivan’s Gulch and the droll loops in Louie’s Swag feature the excavated underpainting the artist does so well. However, there are passages in the lower left- and right-hand corners of his work The Recipe which are unnuanced, flat and amateur-looking. This tactic is worthy of caution. In his quest for artistic evolution, Clevenger should make sure not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Pulliam, 929 NW Flanders St., 228-6665. Closes Dec. 30.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
Trading his signature grids for cur-
Passage
Wunderkind painter Blakely Dadson’s image of a fantastical schooner, Ivory Blackness, is something special. Seen in person the painting’s richest component is the blackness surrounding the ship, with its intricate brushwork and dark curlicues, highlighted by a gorgeous matte finish. It is only one or two notches below breathtaking. Chambers @ 916, 916 NW Flanders St., 227-9398. Closes Dec. 31.
Gwashi!, Gabriel Manca, Kris Hargis
The manga show Gwashi! is dually overshadowed by artwork by two other artists. Gabriel Manca’s hokey shadowboxes would have done well in the folk-heavy Art in the Pearl festival but are cringe-worthy in this setting. Kris Hargis’ suite of works on paper, however, redeems the exhibition. In these mixed-media drawings, he departs from the morose self-portraits he normally favors. The convoluted but ravishing imagery in Apple, Amaryllis, and Potato and the haunting female nude in Legs Crossed show an accomplished drawer excelling in economical but emotionally potent visual sonnets. Froelick, 714 NW Davis St., 222-1142. Closes Jan. 15.
Wire Line
Drawers and painters across the continuum from representation to abstraction love to talk about line. The nature of line. The meaning of line. The freedom of line. It’s one of those inexhaustible tropes without which M.F.A. thesis papers would actually have to say something new. In the elegant installation Wire Line, Paul Sutinen does just what the exhibition’s title promises: lines the wall with wire. In a single unbroken gesture, the wire meanders across each of the intimate gallery’s four walls, bisecting them with a simplicity that borders on sublimity. If you ever doubted Mies van der Rohe’s dictum, “Less is more,” this show will set you straight. Nine, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210. Closes Jan. 2.
The Template Files
D.E. May’s works on paper resemble
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Mario Caoile, Kanetaka Ikeda
Applying paint straight out of the tube, Mario Caoile has an eye for graffiti-influenced composition but an unfortunate sloppiness of execution. The incongruous sculptural protrusions affixed to his canvases and panels impart a junky, arbitrary appearance. Meanwhile, in the complementary exhibition, Tree of Life, Kanetaka Ikeda lines the wall with bizarre sculptural wooden heads, which unintentionally evoke the shrunken heads of the historic South Seas and Amazon Basin. An installation of the heads is piled with wood branches in the middle of the gallery, as if inviting a bonfire. Blackfish, 420 NW 9th Ave., 2242634. Closes Dec. 31.
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COREY ARNOLD’S POSITIVE BYCATCH, LE GUILVINEC, BRETAGNE, FRANCE.
FISH-WORK EUROPE AT CHARLES A. HARTMAN
JOAN RIVERS SAT JAN 8, 2011
CONCERT HALL ARLENE SCHNITZER | 50 3-2 28 -13 53 RG OR SY MP HO NY.O
Photographer Corey Arnold regularly leaves his Portland home and hops aboard commercial fishing boats bound for icy northern waters. The photos he brings back capture life on the seas, as crew members WW_2H_JoanRivers_SeriesOfThreeZingers_runs_12-8.indd encounter the capriciousness of nature, complete with gales, monster waves and bizarre creatures dredged up from the deep. Earlier this year, with funding from the Pew Foundation and a sustainable-fishing organization called Ocean 2012, Arnold set off on a series of expeditions off the shores of nine European countries. With a super-high-end digital camera he shot a whopping 35,000 exposures, from which he culled 22 prints for Fish-Work Europe. The fruits of using such a stellar camera—the best Arnold has ever worked with—are evident in the finished prints, which are strikingly more nuanced and vibrant than in any of his previous shows. Some are so sharp and high-contrast, they appear almost 3-D. Within the series are many of Arnold’s signature motifs: waves so wide and jagged, they look like mountains (The North Sea, Netherlands); crew members posing with fearsome sea creatures with glistening, gaping mouths (Willy and the Monkfish, North Sea, Scotland); and ravishing still lifes such as Beamer Catch, North Sea, Netherlands. That photo, with its spiny, big-lipped pink and brown fish lying on deck, soon to die in holding bins, is a visual orgy of detail: bubbles and blood, crabs and starfish, a Monet-like pastel tableau of gorgeous, impending doom. This hits upon the Freudian undertones in Arnold’s best work. The artist has a knack for transmuting photojournalism into metaphor. In Shark Display, Vigo, Spain, two crew members hoist a dead shark aloft in a graceful but fearsome S-curve: a trophy for humans’ increasingly worrisome pillaging of the world’s oceans. A symbolically loaded thresher shark makes an appearance in Positive Bycatch, Le Guilvinec, Bretagne, France, its lifeless, bloodied body hauled on a forklift to a fish auction, destined, perhaps, for a bowl of sharkfin soup. In this clinical environment, with its cold, fluorescent lighting, the shark might as well be a human body in a morgue, bound for an organharvesting facility. Who is the predator here and who the prey? The shark and the forklift operator are both cogs in a larger machine. Animal, man, cadaver, commerce—we are all somewhere along the continuum, Arnold seems to imply; it’s only a slight difference in the timing. RICHARD SPEER.
Photographer Corey Arnold finds death in them thar waves.
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GO: Corey Arnold’s Fish-Work Europe at Charles A. Hartman, 134 NW 8th Ave., 287-3886. Show closes Jan. 15. Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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WORDS
DEC. 8-14
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By LEIGHTON COSSEBOOM. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY DEC. 8 Bees: The Unfolding Mystery of Our Common Bond
Honeybees may seem pretty damn unrelated to human beings—they’re flying insects whose sole purpose in life is to collect honey and serve a fat queen in a nest. Right? Ecotrust thinks otherwise. The group’s presentation, Bees: The Unfolding Mystery of Our Common Bond, explores the similarities between humans and bees. Ecotrust, 721 NW 9th Ave., Suite 200, 227-6225. 6 pm. Tickets are $5 to $15 and can be bought online.
Julian Smith
PDX-based author and adventurer Julian Smith mashes up a globetrotting travelogue with true love in Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure. It seems the travel and science writer was a total commitment-phobe. So, to “test himself” he decided to “retrace the 4,500-mile route of Ewart ‘The Leopard’ Grogan, a legendary 19th-century British explorer who trekked the length of Africa for the love of a woman.” Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 2284651. 7:30 pm. Free.
The Benefit of Doubt
UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCE
THE GREENHORNES FRIDAY 12/10 @ 5PM
The Greenhornes – made up of Craig Fox, Jack Lawrence (The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs) and Patrick Keeler (The Raconteurs) – have been producing the highest quality rock’n’roll for well over a decade. The new album **** (Four Stars) was produced by The Greenhornes and John Curley and is an eclectic and mature work and very much band’s own.
MEET LEGENDARY PORTLAND 60’S PSYCH BAND
UNITED TRAVEL SERVICE SUNDAY 12/12 @ 3PM
In 1966, the Pacific Northwest was a hotbed for numerous local and regional bands, following the tradition of the renowned northwest fratrock of the Kingsmen and the uncompromising rock & roll of The Sonics and Wailers. Not so the United Travel Service. They were sadly overlooked at the time, but are now revered for their two brilliant, killer folkadelic 45 releases: Wind And Stone b/w Drummer Of Your Mind and Gypsy Eyes b/w Echo Of You. ‘Wind And Stone’ is a new collection of the band’s rare 45s, along with four more previously unreleased studio recordings, plus five home demos. At last, here is the long overdue legacy of one of the Northwest’s finest psychedelic bands.
Local nonprofit Bradley Angle and the YWCA believe domestic violence and sexual abuse should not be swept under the rug, so the groups are hosting the Benefit of Doubt show, a fundraiser for domestic violence awareness featuring readings from local writers and activists including Monica Drake (Clown Girl, and folk-pop band Future Historians. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 8 pm. $10.
Win McCormack
Curious about the famous 1970s Oregon cult leader who owned countless Rolls Royces, demanded gang rape of his followers, stockpiled machine guns and tried to rig an election by poisoning public salad bars? Go see local author Win McCormack speak on The Rajneesh Chronicles: The True Story of the Cult That Unleashed the First Act of Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil. In the book, McCormack places emphasis on (Osho) Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s charisma as a tool of manipulation— how he melded his doctrine of free love with absolute obedience in a plot to gain political power in eastern Oregon. McCormack will be joined by Lewis F. Carter, author of the field study Charisma and Control at Rajneeshpuram. Ristretto Williams, 3808 N Williams Ave., 288-8667. 7 pm. Free.
THURSDAY DEC. 9 Brad Klausen and Emek
Dear rock-’n’-roll junkies of all kinds: If you want to make your album art look as badass as that of Queens of the Stone Age, then check out From a Basement in Seattle: The Poster Art of Brad Klausen. Joining Klausen will be fellow rock poster artist Emek. In his book, Emek: The Thinking Man’s Poster Artist, Emek presents his illustrations and concert posters for a variety of musicians, including B.B. King, the Beastie Boys, and the Flaming Lips. Powell’s on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
FRIDAY DEC. 10 Viva Las Vegas
Portland stripper, author, musician and former magazine editor Viva Las Vegas debuts her latest nonfiction work, The Gospel According to Viva Las Vegas: Best of the Exotic
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
Years (her sequel to her autobiography Magic Gardens). Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 2284651. 7:30 pm. Free.
TUESDAY DEC. 14 One Jump Ahead
planet Earth is one thing, but the relationship between John Moore and his “AI-enhanced PredatorClass Assault Vehicle” named Lobo on planet Macken is something else entirely. In Mark L. Van Name’s latest science fiction thriller One Jump Ahead, he follows the partnership of a man and his machine as they battle interstellar corporations, hellbent on the domination of Macken. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651. 7 pm. Free.
For more Words listings, visit
The love a man has for his car on
REVIEW
EDMUND MORRIS COLONEL ROOSEVELT His slogan was “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” but Theodore Roosevelt is now remembered mostly for the stick and almost not at all for any softness of speech. And yet it is in his quieter moments that the former president emerges in the last volume of Edmund Morris’ TR trilogy, Colonel Roosevelt (Random House, Roosevelt’s best biographer 766 pages, $35), as a figure of reveals a mountain lion towering intellect, perhaps the in winter. closest thing the United States ever had to a Winston Churchill. Both men were well read in the classics, authored shelves of books on history and other subjects, and harbored a lifelong warrior instinct that left unchecked could lead to triumph or disaster. Colonel Roosevelt picks up right after TR leaves the White House in 1909 and embarks on a yearlong safari in East Africa. Morris recounts the expedition in a ripping prologue written in present tense before shifting to past tense, as if to warn readers of the long slog ahead, as the ex-president begins his celebrity tour of Europe in 1910. Morris’ only weakness is his tendency to fall for Roosevelt’s own self-propaganda. The author accepts at face value, for instance, Roosevelt’s repeated accounts of his receptions by European royalty as an exhausting ordeal when, in fact, a former statesman of his outsize personality probably relished every minute. Likewise, Teddy is portrayed as the reluctant politician drafted into running again for president in 1912, a pose Roosevelt himself cultivated in all his correspondence when, if truth be told, he had always regretted not running in 1908 and no doubt welcomed the chance to rectify the biggest mistake of his political life. Colonel Roosevelt also reminds us there was once a time when the words “progressive” and “Republican” could be used in the same sentence with a straight face, although it resulted in a GOP schism that would put only the second Democrat in the White House since the Civil War. And yet Morris presents Roosevelt as a politician of staggering contradictions—a hawk whose militaristic views would make Dick Cheney blush but a progressive reformer such as Obama Democrats’ dreams are made of. Roosevelt was still a young man when he left the White House, the youngest in fact to serve two terms. But he had only a decade to live—10 years that Morris reminds us were packed with a bitterly contested second run at the White House, a failed assassination attempt that left a bullet in his chest, a near-lethal expedition through the Brazilian wilderness, two libel suits for which Roosevelt served as the plaintiff and the defendant, respectively, and a world war the onetime Rough Rider had long seen coming but was, in the event, powerless to influence. Colonel Roosevelt cements Morris’ reputation as Roosevelt’s premier biographer, but his best writing traces how the 26th president’s ideas earned him a place on Mount Rushmore as surely as his actions. MATTHEW BUCKINGHAM. READ: Edmund Morris appears at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 226-4651. 7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 9. Free.
SCREEN
DEC. 8-14 REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
127 Hours
Danny Boyle’s new movie, 127 Hours, is in keeping with the happybummer contradictions he established in Slumdog Millionaire: It is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, a rock climber who in 2003 got his right arm pinned beneath a boulder, was stuck in a Utah canyon for five days, and ultimately survived by amputating his own limb with a dull utility tool. It’s a reminder that no matter how many other hobbies he undertakes, James Franco is primarily one hell of an actor. He’s very good at communicating not merely pain but annoyance—the crisis has all the frustrations of locking your keys in the car, except instead of his keys it’s his arm. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills Crossing, Fox Tower. 73
NEW
2010 British Advertising Awards
[TWO DAYS ONLY] “Some of the most spectacular examples of film art are in the best TV commercials,” lofty couch potato Stanley Kubrick once said in a Rolling Stone interview. “If you could ever tell a story, something with some content, using that kind of visual poetry, you could handle vastly more complex and subtle material.” Notwithstanding his odd ignorance of countless experimental filmmakers telling just such nuanced stories, Kubrick was onto something: Those radically condensed blasts of visual information sponsored by purveyors of toys and tinctures we don’t need frequently make for exhilarating explorations of new cinematic forms and technologies. (They are also a boon for creeps with a thing for talking babies and perverts who think chocolate somehow stimulates a woman’s clitoris.) So what do the latest and greatest works of sugarwater propaganda augur for tomorrow’s cinema? It’s hard to say. Turns out watching commercials for two hours straight is a bit like masturbating 20 times in one day: The assault is pleasing at first (talking fish sticks!), and the warm rhythmic pummeling produces a state of constant climax (butter tastes good!), but the experience quickly blurs into a masochistic hell of overstimulation (a tasteful ad about a woman giving birth to a child conceived during a rape as a landmine explodes in the distance!), until I go blind and my thumb is sore from fast-forwarding and I am ready to kill my mother for a Snickers bar. CHRIS STAMM. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 4 pm Saturday-Sunday, Dec. 11-12. 31
Burlesque
38 If you’re going to make a movie about an entertainment form based on skin, sex and bawdy belly laughs, your film ought to include any of the three. But the new Christina Aguilera comeback vehicle, Burlesque, hides its best assets beneath a leaden plot and enough soft focus to make even Cher look dewy. PG-13. KELLY CLARKE. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Moreland, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
Catfish
A compelling sociological study of the tactics people employ to be who they always wanted to be, if only on a computer screen. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Living Room Theaters. 74
NEW The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 3-D
20 The third Walden Media attempt at a C.S. Lewis epic (get ready for Shadowlands: 3-D!) is not quite so soul-smothering as the second, but it feels less like a movie than a velvet painting, or one of those Magic Eye posters you find in malls. There are water sprites and dragons, and if you stare at the thing long enough, out pops a giant moray with terrible inflammation of the bowels. Aahh! It’s enough to make you never want to go to the mall again. The rest of the picture (nominally directed by
N I K O TAV E R N I S E
Editor: AARON MESH. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: amesh@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
Michael Apted, though I suspect he wandered off set to paint tin soldiers or something) consists of various episodic temptations on a boat—everybody look at these British kids, ‘cause they’re sailing on a boat. Dawn Treader navigates to a land beyond parody: It very much resembles lost footage from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with whiskered old men bellowing warnings and a buccaneer mouse waving a cutlass. Aslan the lion (Liam Neeson) sometimes dodders by to give advice, and his gentle proselytizing is the least offensive thing in the film; you may disagree with it, but at least it has some intent. The rest of the picture is special-effects wizards making mud pies in a slum. PG. AARON MESH. 3-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville. 2-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreem, Lloyd Center, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard.
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
88 Alex Gibney’s detailed and damning documentary is interested in why the federal government went after “the sheriff of Wall Street” for his sexual transgressions with such ferocity—spending the kind of money and resources usually reserved for building terrorism cases on nailing a NYC prostitution ring. The answer? Spitzer was winning. R. KELLY CLARKE. Living Room Theaters. NEW
The Cyclocross Meeting
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR AND SUBJECTS ATTENDING] Brian Vernor’s documentary follows cyclocross racers Barry Wicks and Adam McGrath to Japan. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Thursday, Dec. 9.
Due Date
54 Here’s Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis in Due Date, which feels like the spiritual equivalent of smashing your funny bone against a door frame, popping a couple Vicodin, then smashing your funny bone again really hard. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, City Center, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Sherwood.
Enter the Void
93 Gasper Noé’s POV experiment is like a drug movie that actually drugs you. CHRIS STAMM. Living Room Theaters. NEW
The Exiles
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Tommy (Tom Reynolds) sits in a crowded barroom, tickling imaginary piano ivories on the wooden table to a rockabilly tune. Like all the characters in Kent Mackenzie’s 1961 neorealist register of young Native Americans in Los Angeles, Tommy is captive to unseen rhythms, which he tries to drown out with countless cans of cadged plonk. Mackenzie trails after Tommy and Homer (Homer Nish) as they carouse through L.A.’s Bunker Hill district; when the camera swings from a convertible’s steering wheel to tunnel-ceiling lights flashing by, it’s a frightening, dizzying shot, more effective than any MADD announcement. The movie’s social value may have been to depict the degredation of urban Indians—there is something mortifying about a beerfueled, stumbling powwow overlooking the city—but The Exiles maintains its freshness for anybody anywhere who’s ever lived night to night, bottle to bottle. AARON MESH. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Wednesday, Dec. 8. 78
Fair Game
More left-wing celebrity grand7 standing from studio Participant Media, Fair Game is a tribute to compromised
CONT. on page 42
BLACK MIRROR: Natalie Portman is ready for her close-ups.
THE HORNY DUCKLING BLACK SWAN IS FIGHT CLUB WITH FEATHERS. BY AA R ON MESH
amesh@wweek.com
It makes film study so much easier when a movie announces its own interpretation in the opening reel, and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is very helpful in this way—like an open-book exam right before winter break. “We open the season with Swan Lake,” declares Vincent Cassel’s ballet director to his New York City company. “Done to death, I know. But not like this. We strip it down, and make it real.” Aronofsky opens the Christmas movie season with Black Swan, a clammy, upscale horror flick with Natalie Portman as the dancer whose metamorphosis from “frigid little girl” to ballet queen—complete with the subsuming of a dark twin—is accompanied by madness and molting. So it’s a literalization of Swan Lake, yeah. But previous stagings didn’t include the Black Swan performing hallucinatory cunnilingus on the White Swan. Talk about stripping down. Aronofsky, himself a former Harvard film student, has put us through this test before. Every one of his previous works torments a hero who sacrifices him- or herself on the altar of an obsession—usually a lust for the spotlight. Portman’s travails in Black Swan—which include, but are not limited to, bulimia, erotic repression by an overweening stage mother (Barbara Hershey) and the sudden onset of webbed feet—most obviously recall Ellen Burstyn abusing diet pills in delirious preparation for a game-show appearance in Requiem for a Dream. But that mania is not so different from the mathematician drilling numerical relief into his temple in Pi, Hugh Jackman packing himself in a bubble to seek his dead wife in The Fountain, or Mickey Rourke sending his bum ticker back into the ring in The Wrestler. Aronofsky is a dom of a director, getting his jollies by brutalizing his characters. So it is a natural progression that in Black Swan, he explicitly denies Portman sexual release. It’s a movie about a girl who will go crazy if she doesn’t come. You can probably tell that I’m not a big Aronofsky fan. But even I’ll grant that Black Swan is a skillful
clinic in unpleasantness. Nearly every shot in the picture is spiked with sharp edges; at no point do you feel safe from the possibility of a pirouette ending in impaled or lacerated flesh. Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique film the opening dance number like it’s a slasher movie, with the camera stalking Portman across the stage (though this effect gets old by the movie’s last 15 minutes, where the long tracking shots through dim hallways start to feel like a ballet-themed basement at Baron Von Goolo’s FrightTown). The film also contains one of cinema’s greatest scenes of Mom Horror, when Portman tries to unwind with some early-morning
IT’S A MOVIE ABOUT A GIRL WHO WILL GO CRAZY IF SHE DOESN’T COME. self-pleasuring—only to realize, seconds before climax, that her mother is sitting next to her bed. But monitoring mommy could be a stand-in for the crabbed director, as Black Swan—like so many shock pictures that also seek academic respectability—keeps watch for any unguarded bliss that might sneak in. Portman is an Oscar lock, and her performance is certainly credible, but her character feels entirely predetermined, an offering to the arthouse gods. (Only Mila Kunis, as Portman’s understudy and rival, breaks through the movie’s shell with a healthy-young-girl naughtiness.) But that’s the trap of making a picture where every role is listed in the credits along with its analog in Swan Lake. Cruelty in pop directors is nothing new—Hitchcock abused his actresses, and a nasty streak fuels David Fincher—but Aronofsky delivers pummelings while exhorting us to think on higher things. He’s the Absent-Minded Sadist, and Black Swan—with its flayed skin and ominous doppelgängers—is Fight Club with feathers. Unfortunately for Portman, she met Darren Aronofsky at a very typical time in his life. 53 SEE IT: Black Swan is rated R. It opens Friday at Fox Tower.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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SCREEN
DEC. 8-14 ARTHOUSE FILMS
CIA officer Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband Joe Wilson. They are played by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn as weepy victims of the Bush administration’s march to war. PG13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. City Center, Fox Tower.
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43 Pitched as another unrelenting vengeance picture, Faster is jammed with the expected nasty violence, but no real payoffs, and its sentimentality seems pointless: If you’re going to spend the holidays visiting a peep show, you don’t want the proprietors to close the curtains right when you’re about to get off, to tell you about the needy orphans. R. AARON MESH. Clackamas, Eastport, Division, Forest, Oak Grove.
Four Lions
The cell of bumbling British jihadists in Chris Morris’ divine new comedy end up disguised as a turtle, an ostrich and a bear, but what they really are is morons. Their idiocy isn’t entirely caused by their embrace of radical Islam, though, as is the case with any religious fundamentalism, it doesn’t help. Seeking their 72 virgins, the five men who call themselves the Four Lions behave like the Three Stooges. Their aim is suicide bombing. They’ll probably manage the suicide part. Offended yet? Here’s the funniest thing about Four Lions: Though its mockery is unsparing and its conclusion unflinching, it humanizes Islamist terrorists in a way that no movie has even attempted before, because it understands they’re made from the same selfishness and stupidity as anybody else. It’s the bravest cinema of the year. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
WASTE LAND
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest 35 Lisbeth Salander, buried alive with a bullet in her brain at the end of The Girl Who Played With Fire, can barely walk when The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest begins. The Girl Who Opened a Can of Worms would have been a more accurate (although considerably less sexy) title: Salander’s injuries have her confined to a hospital bed for the film’s first half, and she is capable of little more than pecking out her autobiography on a cell phone. It’s artless trash, but the expositionheavy proceedings are conducted in a funny foreign language, and we all know “international cinema” is synonymous with quality, so yeah, go pay for this instead of watching a Law & Order rerun for free. R. CHRIS STAMM. Cinema 21.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
77 Everybody has tough teenage years, but damn does Harry Potter have issues. Sure, we’ve all dealt with shifty relatives and hormonally imbalanced friends with mean streaks. But we didn’t have the lord of all that is evil breathing down our necks, gigantic snakes trying to eat us, or a crazed government hunting us down in the midst of a genocide attempt on wizard-human lovechildren. PG-13. AP KRYZA. 99 Indoor Twin, Broadway, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, CimeMagic, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Roseway, Sandy, Sherwood, St. Johns Twin CinemaPub, Tigard, Wilsonville. NEW
HDFest
[TWO NIGHTS LEFT] The Historic Digital Cinema Festival’s last two days include a reprise of The Macabre World of Lavender Williams (4:50 pm Wednesday, Dec. 8),a 25-minute picture by Nicolas Delgado de la Camara that plays like a live-action All Dogs Go to Heaven shot by David Lynch. It’s about an orphaned girl who journeys with the zombiefied remains of her family mutt, Lester, a detailed creation that looks like something left rotting in Jim Henson’s garage for the past decade. Lester is voiced by Christopher Lloyd. God is voiced by John Lithgow. The dog and his
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master share a poignant reminiscence about the time he bit her and her parents subsequently shot him in the head. The festival closes with the debut of Oregon-shot feature film The Presence (7:15 pm Thursday, Dec. 9), which was not screened for press. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. Visit hdfest.com for a full schedule. NEW Japanese Currents: The Samurai Tradition
[FOUR NIGHTS ONLY] The NW Film Center’s survey of samurai films concludes with three recent additions to the genre: 1999’s Taboo (7 pm Thursday, Dec. 9), 2004’s The Hidden Blade (7 pm Friday, Dec. 10), and, from this year, Hideyuki Hirayama’s Sword of Desperation (7 pm Saturday-Sunday, Dec. 11-12). NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Thursday-Saturday, Dec. 9-12.
Love & Other Drugs
42 A cookie-cutter romcom that humps every cliché in the book with the same reckless abandon Jake Gyllenhaal mounts Anne Hathaway behind a dumpster: It’s cheap, it’s emotionless, and it uses explicit sex and comedy to disguise what is essentially a chick flick wrapped in a Trojan, ribbed with bare flesh (for his pleasure) and ready to be tossed in the trash. Hathaway’s character has early-onset Parkinson’s disease, a plot point exploited endlessly throughout the film as Gyllenhaal ditches boner pills in an effort—seriously—to find a cure. “I had places I wanted to go,” says Hathaway, following Gyllenhaal’s standard-issue manic freeway jaunt to stop her from leaving town. “I’ll carry you,” he replies to his trembling damsel in distress. That’s some stinky cheese, but the actors give it their best. R. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Forest, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
Megamind
66 Poor Megamind. Its writers must’ve thought they had a really clever idea—”What if we make an animated superhero movie with the villain as the protagonist?”— until Despicable Me came out this summer and became a sleeper hit built on that very conceit. Outside that basic premise, they’re not the same film, but the two will now be inextricably linked until the end of time—or at least until Megamind is completely forgotten, which should happen before this review even appears in print. PG. MATTHEW SINGER. 3-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen, 2-D: 99 Indoor Twin, Broadway, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Cinema 99, Cornelius, Division, Lloyd Mall, Moreland, Oak Grove, Sandy, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, Tigard, Wilsonville.
Morning Glory
Morning news shows are 51 made tolerable only by the grogginess of a pre-work stupor, and they grow more irritating with each sip of coffee. As such, they’re ripe for skewering, and at times Morning Glory nails the parody while
getting at the heart of why people watch this tripe every day. Rachel McAdams is a plucky producer steering a fourth-place Today Show knockoff back into relevance. To do so, she hires a disgraced journalist (Harrison Ford, playing a grumpy Harrison Ford-y cross between Mike Wallace and Dan Rather) as lead anchor. Sparks immediately fly between Ford and co-anchor Diane Keaton. It’s like Broadcast News for teenage girls. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Division, Forest, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd Mall, Tigard.
The Next Three Days
College professor Russell Crowe has three years to appeal wife Elizabeth Banks’ conviction for smashing her boss’s face in with a fire extinguisher. When he fails, he has three months to bust her out of jail before she’s transferred to a maximum-security prison. When the process is expedited, he has three days to spring her and flee the country with their young son. With The Next Three Days, writer-director Paul Haggis (Crash) has a mere two hours to make this remake of French flick Anything for Her interesting. Both barely make it. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Broadway, Clackamas, Sandy. 67
NEW
Nora’s Will
Why didn’t the distributors keep the original title, 5 Days Without Nora? Maybe they didn’t want to acknowledge the absence at the center of this Mexican bereavedfamily dramedy, set in the aftermath of a carefully planned suicide and featuring a galled widower (wonderful Fernando Luján) in tiffs with a series of rabbis even less helpful than those in A Serious Man. As with most movies focused on familial healing, I acknowledge the picture’s emotional efficacy without quite understanding its justification for existing. Like life, I didn’t think much of it, but I cried at the end. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. 55
Red
Turns out the AARP Team of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich is as contrived as The A-Team. Most of the joy in Red (“retired, extremely dangerous”) comes from watching the cast let the ham juice fly. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Clackamas, Eastport, City Center, Oak Grove, Tigard. 82
NEW
The Room
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, AGAIN] The Room is more than just a movie. It is like an object in space with a density greater than the center of the sun. R. KEVIN BURKE. Cinema 21. 10:30 pm Friday, Dec. 10.
The Social Network
David Fincher’s Facebook origin movie actually is superior entertainment. It is the most intellectually electrifying cinema of the year. Say what you will about screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who seemingly hits the “like” button on himself daily, but his script recognizes that rage is our culture’s prevailing mood. Even the haves feel themselves to 94
DEC. 8-14
NEW
“A thing of frigid beauty and
REVIEW
Straight to Hell
[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Straight to Hell looks like it must’ve been a blast to film. It’s basically the punk equivalent of one of those movies where Adam Sandler craps out a script and uses it as an excuse to pal around in some fun locale for three months with Rob Schneider and David Spade. But even though director Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy) has a way cooler group of friends, this 1987 spaghetti western spoof isn’t much less excruciating for the rest of us to sit through. Joe Strummer, co-screenwriter Dick Rude and Cox regular Sy Richardson play hitmen who, after blowing a job, decide to rob a bank and hide out in a small town run by a clan of coffee-addicted bandits, played by the Pogues. Courtney Love (still with her original nose and baby fat), Elvis Costello, Dennis Hopper and Grace Jones are there as well, engaging in wacky non sequiturs until everyone starts shooting each other. Hastily written and shot, the whole thing feels like a bunch of guys just screwing off in a Spanish desert for their own amusement. After two screenings of this new high-def director’s cut, Cox will be in attendance to answer such questions as, “Exactly what kind of drugs were you on when you made this?” R. MATTHEW SINGER. Clinton Street Theater. Friday and Sunday-Thursday, Dec. 10, 12-16. Alex Cox will answer questions after the 7 and 9 pm screenings on Friday, Dec. 10. 37
Sundance Shorts 2010
A selection of short films from Robert Redford’s annual mountain fest. Hollywood Theatre.
Tamara Drewe
Writing—or at least typing— always looks a little silly onscreen, but Stephen Frears (The Grifters, The Queen) makes the craft look especially preposterous in the opening minutes of Tamara Drewe, which find the denizens of a British writer’s retreat clacking out inanities on laptops. They are no more dignified in their lives. Everyone in the picture—even the tabloid-perusing schoolgirls—wants something they haven’t got, and everyone is just horrible enough that you’re dying to know what their comeuppance will be. (It involves cows. Lots of cows.) R. AARON MESH. City Center, Hollywood Theatre. 84
Tangled
60 Few marketing opportunities are missed in Disney’s update of the Rapunzel fairy tale: The opening ballad sounds like Hannah Montana tween twang; a tiny chameleon sidekick is Happy Meal-ready. The heroine, voiced by Mandy Moore, looks like a Mandy Moore baby doll—I’m actually a little surprised no one thought to stuff a stocking with her until now. But once you accept that the film appears built from a box of Playmobil toys, Tangled is moderately enchanting. PG. AARON MESH. 3-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Looyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville. 2-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Oak Grove. NEW
The Tourist
Jolie messes with Depp in Venice. Though directed by that Oscarwinning German with the impressive name, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, it isn’t being screened for critics until the night before release. Look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
CONT. on page 44
This holiday season, the real Santa Claus is coming to town.
twisted playfulness. Tots will probably never sit on Santa’s lap again.”
VA R I A N C E F I L M S
be have-nots. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway, Lloyd Mall.
SCREEN
-The New York Times
“The best anti-Christmas Christmas movie since ‘Bad Santa’!” -The Village Voice
HE IS HAVING A HOOTENANNY: Stephin Merritt, tooting his own horns.
STRANGE POWERS: STEPHIN MERRITT AND THE MAGNETIC FIELDS
STARTS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10 REGAL CINEMAS FOX TOWER STADIUM 10 PORTLAND (800) FANDANGO #327 DAILY: 12:50, 3:00, 5:05, 7:15, 9:40 PM
Behind every great gay songsmith sits a good woman.
Stephin Merritt, bard of the gay bars, writes unforgettable songs and speaks in uncompromising aphorisms. He’s a notoriously “difficult” interview—because every arts journalist not so secretly yearns to be validated by a subject, and he can’t be bothered—and Strange Powers, the new documentary about Merritt and his band the Magnetic Fields, is a Child’s Garden of Caustic Observations. “That’s how I feel about other people’s records,” he says, after dismissing most of 1970s cinema as ugly faux verite. “I think they’re emphasizing convention over beauty or interest, and I’m usually emphasizing interest and beauty over convention.” The film, directed by Kerthy Fix and recent Portland transplant Gail O’Hara, would probably fall just short of Merritt’s standards: Conventionally structured, Strange Powers neatly consolidates 11 years of Fields notes (mostly the tale of Merritt leaning on the ballast of keyboardist/saint Claudia Gonson) but hints at music as a kind of firefly jar, collecting feelings until they don’t glow as brightly. It also contains a priceless scene of Merritt cradling the Chihuahua he named after Irving Berlin and chuckling over his lyric notebooks, which include the discarded gender-bending line, “Come on my tits you hot Latin bitch.” The ridiculous and the sublime are in this moment—as in the montage of the gloomiest songwriter in the world recovering from accusations of racism by bicycling around New York to the tune of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Earlier this week, WW spoke to co-director O’Hara, who used to edit Merritt’s rock criticism at Spin. AARON MESH. WW: There ought to be some kind of post-traumatic stress counseling for people who’ve interviewed Stephin Merritt. What do you think is so polarizing about him? Gail O’Hara: I think he’s maybe intellectually threatening. He’s unashamed to say whatever he wants to say. I think he’s a little like Morrissey in that way—people respond really dramatically. Like in the movie, saying, “I’ve never recorded hip-hop because it’s too boring.” You could make a whole movie about that comment. But it’s also that he embraces stuff like standards and show tunes that rock critics don’t tend to respect a lot. It’s not exactly cool, In the film, you show Stephin and Claudia singing “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” and the song ’s masochism seems to be an oblique commentary on their relationship. A huge part of making the film was showing Claudia’s role in all of this. Stephin’s really talented, obviously, but without her I don’t think it would work.… She’s the social butterfly when he’s running out the back door to try to hide from people. Their relationship is fascinating: Significant others, boyfriends, girlfriends come and go, but that’s the relationship of their life. Although she did just have a baby [in August], so we’ll see what happens now. I can’t imagine adding a baby to that mix. Tell me about it! Everyone’s dying to know how Stephin reacts to it. I think there’s probably going to be some jealousy there. 70 SEE IT: Strange Powers opens Friday at the Hollywood Theatre and Living Room Theaters. Gail O’Hara will attend some Hollywood Theatre shows.
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A Chris
WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM CRITICS’ PICK
“ENDLESSLY FASCINATING.” Bilge Ebiri, NEW YORK Magazine
“FANS WILL DROOL AT THE GENEROUS ACCESS TO THE BAND.” OSCILLOSCOPE VARIETY
WILLAMETTE WEEK THU: 12/09 A film by Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara ALL.REX-A1-R1.1209.WI as as
Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
STARTS FRIDAY, DEC.10th! LIVING ROOM THEATRE 341 SW TENTH AVE. PORTLANd • (971) 222-2010 WWW.LIVINGROOMTHEATERS.COM CALL THEATER FOR SHOWTIMES
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TO VIEW THE TRAILER AND LEARN MORE - WWW.STRANGEPOWERSFILM.COM Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com
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SCREEN
DEC. 8-14
Two in the Wave
In 1976, three years after they severed ties in an epistolary pissing match, François Truffaut costarred in a little film called Close Encounters of the Third Kind and directed an insufferably sentimental picture called Small Change, while Jean-Luc Godard ran his increasingly alienating punning commentary on post-’68 radicalism into the ground with the inscrutably soporific Comment ça va. Truffaut died eight years later, robbing us of the inevitable reunion of these former French New Wave BFFs who helped dynamite a medium, first as rebel critics in the fifties, then as troublemaking auteurs in the following decade. Emmanuel Laurent’s nimble account of the New Wave’s heady beginnings and the Lennon (Godard)-McCartney (Truffaut) tag team at its center smartly omits the post-divorce proceedings to focus on the films these men made while they still had each other’s backs and still looked sharp in shades. It’s an invigorating reminder that films matter; that films are actually worth fighting for, fighting over; that films define us; that we can define films if we so desire; and, most importantly, that Anna Karina was heartstoppingly beautiful. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre. 90
* * These are color bars. The seemingly random pattern of hues actually helps set a standard for color information. Learn how to use this tool of the trade and more at the School of Film.
nwfilm.org/school
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& ENTHRALLING ROLLING STONE
CELEBRATORY &
SPELLBINDING GQ
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The Warrior’s Way
Kate Bosworth and Geoffrey Rush in a movie about ninjas. Not screened for critics. R. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Sherwood, Tigard. NEW
Waste Land
Due perhaps to a lingering adolescent presumption that happy endings make for bad art, words like “inspiring,” “uplifting” and “triumphant,” when used to extol anything save the virtues of my own amorous abilities, are anathema to me. They are the kinds of words Gene Shalit uses to describe those bright and colorful things that manage to penetrate his thick skull and poke at the nubby nerve endings in his brain. I see these words decorating a DVD cover and I run to the nearest snuff 81
film. You might feel the same way. If so, look away, dear reader: Waste Land is an inspiring, uplifting and triumphant record of Brazilian-born, New York-based artist Vik Muniz’s two-year collaboration with a band of trash pickers from Rio’s slums. Wisely avoiding pouring “salt of the earth” bromides into her subjects’ wounds, while sidestepping the paternalistic despair that sometimes sinks Werner Herzog’s documents of similarly stricken communities, director Lucy Walker turns what could have been a mash note to Muniz (who might actually deserve one) into a steady, mostly unsentimental look at a way of life at a place in time on a damaged planet that still admits of joy. CHRIS STAMM. Living Room Theaters.
REVIEW
Unstoppable
It doesn’t come as a great shock to find Tony Scott’s new movie, Unstoppable, starring decent Denzel Washington foiling a transportation disaster, and it’s even less surprising that the picture is a throwback. It is nothing more than a runaway-train picture. But—against all expectations and its own dreadful marketing campaign—it is a really good runaway-train picture. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cinetopia, City Center, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub. 90
Waiting for Superman
61 The documentary from Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth, introduces viewers to five cute kids on the precipice of academic failure and follows them and their struggling parents as they try to enroll in what they think are better schools. The solutions the film offers are too limited, too neat. BETH SLOVIC. Living Room Theaters. NEW
Wake Up
I do not feel qualified to say whether Jonas Elrod actually sees ghosts, angels, demons and auras drifting through New York streets or San Francisco hotel rooms. (Actually, I do feel qualified, but I don’t feel obligated.) But speaking as a movie critic, with a business card and everything, I must say something feels fishy about this slick SXSW-accredited documentary directed by Elrod and his girlfriend, Chloe Crespi. The movie is too artful to feel genuine: If you’re suddenly enduring spiritual manifestations at every corner, how are you concentrating on setting up multiple cameras, let alone writing a classy keyboard score? Elrod comes across as an awshucks Ben Roethlisberger-looking regular fella, going on a Chehalis vision quest and asking a lot of questions, except for the obvious one, which is, “Oh shit, how do I get these fucking ghosts to leave RIGHT NOW?” Anyway, according to the website, Sting is convinced, and suggests you buy it on DVD. If you’re looking for a handsomely made New Age movie, Wake Up is it. But that’s not what Elrod says he wants. “The worst thing I could hear,” he says, “would be, ‘I believe Jonas believes it.’ I’d rather someone say, ‘I just don’t believe you.’” OK: I just don’t believe you. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Sunday, Dec. 12. Jonas Elrod will answer questions after the screening. 31
JOWLY OLD ELF: Per Christian Ellesten is a caged Santa.
RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE There’s something very diabolical about an ancient man who watches children at all times, passing judgment on their behavior before breaking into their homes in the middle of the night. Finnish director Jalmari Helander knows there’s an inherent malice in the Santa Claus myth. He mines it to full effect with Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, a fantastical horror comedy in which the Fat Man is a sadistic enforcer of morals. Santa—“not the Coca-Cola Santa,” as one character puts it—is actually a demonic marauder (Per Christian Elletsen) who snatches naughty kids from their beds, replacing them with wicker dolls before chucking them into burlap sacks and carting them off. The film centers on shotgun-toting tyke Pietari (Onni Tommila), who becomes fascinated when an American excavating company starts digging in a mountain near his family’s rustic reindeer farm. He soon discovers the mountain is actually the tomb of Father Christmas himself. Crew members are advised to watch their language and refrain from smoking and drinking during the project, and soon after they start digging, Pietari’s father captures a deranged, naked, bearded man near a pen of slain reindeer. Sensing money to be made, he and his friends hold the assumed Santa for ransom. This, of course, is very naughty, and Santa’s punishment soon goes well beyond leaving coal in stockings. No fair to disclose more. Half of the joy of Rare Exports—based on a series of shorts—is derived from allowing the story, and its ample surprises, to unfold with its skilled mix of magic and mischief. Though the setup sounds gleefully macabre, Helander allows the tale to glow with a sense of childlike wonder, forgoing gore and scares for a giddy story of a curious kid who must conquer his fears to save the day. There is no shortage of irreverent holiday films, but not since Gremlins has a Christmas flick so aptly combined dark overtones with such imagination and abandon. Clocking in at under 90 minutes, Rare Exports is packed with a sense of childlike discovery, nailing the laughs and dread with an overriding sense of innocent curiosity. The result is poised to be an instant cult classic for those who have grown tired of George Bailey and his feel-good brethren. Naughtiness can be its own reward. R. AP KRYZA. He sees you when you’re sleeping.
86 SEE IT: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale opens Friday at Fox Tower.
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BREWVIEWS WA R N E R B R O S . P I C T U R E S
“THE MOST FUN“ YOU’LL HAVE ”THIS HOLIDAY!”
MOVIES
LAUREN SANCHEZ, EXTRA
6:25, 9:10 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 12, 3:05, 6:10, 9:15 MEGAMIND 12:25, 3:30, 6:35, 9:35 MORNING GLORY 12:05, 3:30, 6:05, 8:55 TANGLED 3D 12:10, 3:25, 6:20, 9:25 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 3D 11:55am, 3, 6, 9 THE SOCIAL NETWORK 12:20, 3:10, 6:15, 9:20 UNSTOPPABLE 12:30, 3:20, 6:30, 9:05
Roseway Theatre
7229 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-282-2898 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 1, 4:30, 8 TRON: LEGACY Thu 12:01
NORTHWEST
DO IT FOR THE OLD MAN, PT. 2: The central players Ben Affleck recruited to The Town—Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm—are each worth watching, but the movie’s secret cache is its collection of veteran character actors. In his sole scene, Chris Cooper dumps the weight of generational suffering on the picture’s shoulders; in barely more screen time, Pete Postlethwaite creates one of the most magnificently loathsome villains to grace the screen in years. The bank robbers Postlethwaite recruits may cover their faces with ghoulish Halloween costumes, but he don’t need no stinking mask. AARON MESH. Academy, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst, Mission, Valley. Best paired with: Double Mountain Vaporizer. Also showing: Trading Places (Laurelhurst). PLAYED WITH FIRE 9:35 Sat-Sun 4 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO 6:45 Sat-Sun 1 TWO IN THE WAVE Sat-Sun 3, 5 Fri 4:50
DOWNTOWN
“
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KRISTA SMITH, VANITY FAIR
PARTY.”
FRED TOPEL, SCREENJUNKIES.COM
AND BRILLIANT IN BURLESQUE!
”
“FUN AND ENTERTAINING.”
CAN “CHRISTINA SING.
SHE CAN DANCE. SHE CAN ACT. AND SHE’LL
”
BLOW YOU AWAY.
JAMI PHILBRICK, MOVIEWEB.COM
SHAWN EDWARDS, FOX-TV
Fifth Ave. Cinemas
Whitsell Auditorium
Broadway Metro 4
A HIGH ENERGY
CHER’S BACK
1000 SW Broadway, 800-326-3264 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 3, 7 MEGAMIND 2, 4:45, 7:30 Fri-Sat 9:45 THE NEXT THREE DAYS 2:15 Fri-Sat 9:30 THE SOCIAL NETWORK 2:30, 5:15, 7:45 THE WARRIOR’S WAY 5, 7:15
HALLOWS: PART 1 12:40, 3:45 Fri-Wed 7:15, 10:25 LOVE & OTHER DRUGS 12:45, 4:10, 7:10, 10:15 TANGLED 3D 1:10, 4:20, 7:20, 10 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 3D 12:30, 9:50 Fri 3:30, 7 Sat 3:30, 7 Sun 4, 7 Mon 4, 7 Tue 4, 7 Wed 4, 7 Thu 4, 7:15 THE TOURIST 1, 4:30, 7:30, 10:10 TRON: LEGACY 3D Thu 12:01
“A MUST-SEE.” JIM FERGUSON, KGUN9 ABC
“THIS MOVIE HAS IT ALL!” MARK S. ALLEN, CBS/CW STATIONS/REELZ CHANNEL NETWORK
“IT IS OFFICIAL...
THE MUSICAL IS BACK!” JAMI PHILBRICK, MOVIEWEB.COM
SCREEN GEMS PRESENTS A DE LINE PICTURES PRODUCTION A FILM BY STEVEN ANTIN CHER CHRISTINA AGUILERA “BURLESQUE” ERIC DANE CAM GIGANDET JULIMUSICANNE HOUGH ALAN CUMMING PETER GALLAGHER WITH KRISTEN BELL AND STANLEY TUCCI SUPERVISOR BUCK DAMON MUSIC EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY CHRISTOPHE BECK PRODUCERS STACY KOLKER CRAMER RISA SHAPIRO BY DONALD DE LINE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY STEVEN ANTIN CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES
2 COL (3.825") X 12" = 24" WED 12/8 46 Willamette Week DECEMBER 8, 2010 wweek.com PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK
510 SW Hall St., 503-725-3551 Call for showtimes.
Fox Tower Stadium 10 846 SW Park Ave., 800-326-3264 127 HOURS 12:05, 12:40, 2:20, 2:55, 4:40, 5:20, 7:10, 7:45, 9:35, 10:05 BLACK SWAN 12, 1, 2:30, 3:05, 4:25, 5, 5:35, 7, 7:30, 8, 9:30, 10, 10:20 Fri-Mon 12:30 BURLESQUE 12:10, 2:40, 5:10, 7:40, 10:10 FAIR GAME 12:20, 2:45, 5:15, 7:35, 10:15 FOUR LIONS 12:15, 2:35, 4:55, 7:25, 9:45 NORA’S WILL 12:25, 2:50, 5:25, 7:50, 9:55 RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE 12:50, 3, 5:05, 7:15, 9:40
Living Room Theaters 341 SW 10th Ave., 971-222-2010 CATFISH 2:35 Fri-Tue 7:45 CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER 1:40, 4:10, 6:50, 9:30 ENTER THE VOID 11:40am, 8:40 Fri-Tue 4:40 MORNING GLORY 12, 2:20, 5, 7:30, 9:50 STRANGE POWERS: STEPHIN MERRITT AND THE MAGNETIC FIELDS 12:10, 2:10, 4:20, 6:40, 10 WAITING FOR SUPERMAN 11:45am, 2, 9:20 Fri-Wed 4:30, 7 WASTELAND 12:20, 2:40, 4:50, 7:15, 9:40
Pioneer Place Stadium 6
340 SW Morrison St., 800-326-3264 DUE DATE 12:50, 4:40, 7:40, 10:20 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY
1219 SW Park Ave., 503-221-1156 BRITISH AD AWARDS Sat-Sun 4 SWORD OF DESPERATION Sat-Sun 7 THE HIDDEN BLADE Fri 7
NORTH Portlander Cinema 10350 N Vancouver Way, 503-240-5850 Call for showtimes.
St. Johns Pub and Theater
8203 N Ivanhoe St., 503-249-7474 EASY A 9 Sat-Sun 1 LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE 6:30 MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL Mon 5:30
St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub
8704 N Lombard St., 503-286-1768 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 4:40, 7:50 Sat-Sun 1:30 MEGAMIND Sat-Sun 1, 3:15 UNSTOPPABLE 5:25, 7:40
NORTHEAST Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-281-4215 STRANGE POWERS: STEPHIN MERRITT AND THE MAGNETIC FIELDS 7 Sat-Sun 1:15 SUNDANCE SHORTS 2010 9 Fri 4:45 TAMARA DREWE Fri-Tue 9:25 Fri 5:10, 7:15 Sat 2:30, 4:50, 7:15 Sun 2:30, 4:50, 7:15 Mon 7:15 Tue 7:15 Wed 9:45 THE GIRL WHO
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-249-7474 DESPICABLE ME Fri-Mon 3 HEREAFTER Fri-Wed 7:35 LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE Fri-Wed 5:30 Sat 12:30 Sun 12:30 Wed 2:30 THE TOWN Fri-Wed 10:10am
Laurelhurst Theater
EASY A Fri-Sun 4:40, 9:15 Mon-Thurs 9:40 GET LOW Fri 7 Sat-Sun 1:30, 7 MonThurs 7 SECRETARIAT SatSun 1:10 THE TOWN Fri-Sun 4, 7:10 Mon-Thurs 7:10 JACK ASS 3 Fri-Sun 4:15, 9:45 Mon-Thurs 9:45 TRADING PLACES Fri-Thurs 9:30 INCEPTION Fri 6:30 SatSun 1, 6:30 Mon-Thurs 6:30 WINTER’S BONE Fri 6:45 Sat-Sun 1:40, 6:45 Mon-Thurs 6:45 IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY FriSun 4:30, 9 Mon-Thurs 9
Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema
1510 NE Multnomah Blvd., 800-326-3264 DUE DATE Fri-Sun 5:20, 7:50, 10:15 Fri 12:30, 2:55 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 Fri-Sun 12, 3:45, 7:10, 10:30 LOVE & OTHER DRUGS Fri-Sun 3:55, 7:15, 10 Fri 12:45 TANGLED 3D Fri-Sun 11:50am, 2:20, 4:50, 7:25, 9:55 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER Fri-Sun 12:50, 4:40, 7:30, 10:20 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 3D Fri-Sun 12:20, 1:20, 3:10, 4:10, 6:30, 7, 9:20, 9:50 THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: DON CARLO Sat 9:30 THE TOURIST Fri-Sun 11:45am, 12:35, 2:25, 3:30, 5:05, 6:45, 7:45, 9:40, 10:25 THE WARRIOR’S WAY Fri-Sun 12:10, 2:40, 5:10, 7:40, 10:10
Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema 2320 Lloyd Center Mall, 800-326-3264 BURLESQUE 12:35, 3:35,
Cinema 21
616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515 THE ROOM Fri 10:30am THE STREET STORIES FILM FESTIVAL Sat 12
Mission Theater & Pub
1624 NW Glisan St., 503-249-7474 BLAZERS VS SAN ANTONIO Sun 12:30 IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORYSat 2:30 Tue 8 MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL: RAVENS VS TEXANS Mon 5:30 THE TOWN Wed 9:30 Sat 3 Tue 5:30, 10
SOUTHEAST Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St., 503-252-0500 DESPICABLE ME 4:40 Sat-Sun 12:10, 2:15 EASY A 5, 9:40 HEREAFTER 7 Sat-Sun 2:20 INCEPTION 9 JACKASS 3 9:50 LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE SatSun 2:40 NEVER LET ME GO 6:45 SECRETARIAT 4:50 THE TOWN 7:15 SatSun 12:05 TOY STORY 3 Sat-Sun 12
Avalon Theatre
3451 SE Belmont St., 503-238-1617 DESPICABLE ME 1:45, 5:15 EASY A 3:30, 7 INCEPTION 3:20 JACKASS 3 7:45, 9:25 LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE 1:30, 6 THE TOWN 8:45
Bagdad Theater & Pub
3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-249-7474 CONVICTION Fri 8:30 Sat 8:30 Sun 8:30 Mon 8:45 Tue 8:45 Wed 9:15 HEREAFTER Mon-Tue 6 Fri-Sun 5:15 LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE SatSun 2
Century at Clackamas Town Center
12000 SE 82nd Ave., 800-326-3264 BURLESQUE 11:10am, 1:55, 4:40, 7:25, 10:15am DUE DATE 12:15, 2:45, 5:10, 7:40, 10 FASTER 11:45am, 2:25, 4:55, 7:35, 10:05am HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 12, 3:30, 7, 10:15 LOVE & OTHER DRUGS 11:15am, 2, 4:40, 7:20, 10am MEGAMIND 12:40, 3:10, 5:35 Sat 10:10am MEGAMIND 3D 11:50am, 2:15, 4:45, 7:10, 9:45 MORNING GLORY 8, 10:35 RED 11:25am, 2:10, 4:50, 7:30, 10:10am TANGLED 12:30, 3:05, 5:45, 8:20 Sat 10am SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, DEC. 10-16, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED