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INBOX LOOK CLOSER AT CHARITY RATIOS
2010], using figures that seemed to indicate poor usage of funds. Without unbiased investigative reporting, this could appear to be the case. However, at the time the figures were gathered, p:ear was closed for many months after losing its lease to urban development. During this time, fundraising continued, but program expenditures were obviously not made, so the books showed gains without program expenses. Also, p:ear is unique since the administrators are the teachers, a fact not considered in the reporter’s calculations. It violates common sense to hurt the fundraising efforts of a program that is doing amazing work in your community during the most important fundraising week of the year, especially one that has been vetted for inclusion in your own Give!Guide! According to their literature, over 700 youth spent over 20,000 hours inside p:ear’s doors last year. Perhaps you’d rather have them sitting on your door stoop? P:ear now is located on NW 6th and Flanders and the directors/teachers of nine years, Joy Cartier, Beth Burns and Pippa Arend, will be happy to display their books and their numerous awards to anyone so that they might see how the program operates to benefit the whole community. I urge you to check the facts for yourself by contacting p:ear at pearmentor.org. It’s all about the young people. —Emily Othus, A proud supporter of p:ear
WHO ARE YOU CALLING “FLABBY”?
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
So Brandon Roy has no meniscus at all in his left knee. “It’s bone-onbone there,” Roy told The Oregonian. It seems like there’s a surgery for everything these days—can’t something be done? —Kevin R.
surgery, the same procedure that’s worked so brilliantly for Greg Oden. You can see why the Blazers aren’t exactly dying to send Roy under the knife. Microfracture surgery sounds like you’re repairing hairline cracks in bone, but you’re actually poking holes in the bone with a glorified carpenter’s awl. Bloody goop then seeps out of these holes to form a gelatinous internal scab which, you hope, will eventually congeal into scar tissue that (sort of ) resembles the lost cartilage. Meanwhile, “meniscectomy,” the operation that removed Roy’s torn meniscus in the first place, is more popular than ever, especially in college. After all, college coaching staffs don’t have to worry about where a player will be in four years; the important thing is getting the player back in action in time for the big game (or big tournament). Luckily, there’s a surgery for everything these days.
I’m writing about the article on overhead to program ratios in the Willamette Week [“Flabby Charities,” Dec. 22, 2010], and the issues with this measure that you really didn’t raise in the article. I’m not personally familiar with any of the charities you list, so I’m not making any claims about whether they are or are not “underperforming,” but you can’t tell that from this ratio. Simply taking the ratio of administrative to program costs is going to give “better” results for charities that have large program costs—usually groups who give a lot of “stuff” away. If the work of the organization is almost entirely organizing and administering volunteer programs, then the ratio of admin to program costs is going to be high because running the program doesn’t cost very much. Imagine, if you will, a nonprofit that does nothing except support a volunteer service. They may actually have no program costs, and be 100 percent administrative, but that doesn’t mean what they are doing is less worthwhile than an organization that takes in large amounts of donations and gives all of it away in ways that are poorly targeted. The key is to understand what the organization is spending money on, and decide if they are getting good value for that money. A straight ratio tells you very little, and to call charities “flabby” based only on this metric is misleading. —Nick Macdonald, Portland Shame on you, Willamette Week! I was disappointed with your unflattering piece about p:ear [“Flabby Charities,” Dec. 22,
Given recent advances, it’s easy to assume there’s nothing modern medicine can’t do. However, a quick glance at Cher in good light should remind you that, even in 2010, there are limits to the power of the surgeon’s art. One problem is that knees suck in general. Humans have only been walking upright for about 6 million years, which makes your knees a rush job by evolutionary standards—if your skull were that recent, you’d probably have to tape your brain in place before going out in a high wind. The other problem, of course, is that Roy is missing his meniscus, the little cartilage shim that cushions the joint. There is a surgical intervention for this—it’s called microfracture 4
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
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Three pieces of cop news: 1) Portland’s police union has reached a tentative contract deal with the city. As reported last week at wweek.com/draftcontract, a leaked draft of the contract shows the Portland Police Association accepting a 2 percent pay raise in exchange for major concessions on police oversight, comp time and drug testing for officers. 2) Will Aitchison, who has represented the police union through contract negotiations and a nearly unbroken string of successful arbitration battles, is leaving after 31 years. Aitchison tells WW he will still represent the union through the end of these contract negotiations. In retirement, the 59-year-old Aitchison says he’ll write a novel. (He already has two nonfiction books finished.) Lawyers Mike Tedesco and Anil Karia will replace Aitchison. 3) Police shot 34-year-old Marcus Lagozzino outside his Southwest Portland home Dec. 27, the sixth officer-involved shooting of 2010. Cops said the man, who was in critical condition, was armed with a machete and reported to be suicidal. The board president for 1000 Friends of Oregon told the land-use group’s supporters in a recent letter that “a former staff member betrayed our trust and took money from our organization.” “Our financial reports were altered so even the due diligence of the Board and directors did not reveal the theft until now,” board president Charlie Swindells wrote in a letter dated Nov. 30, but mailed two weeks later. Swindells did not return WW calls seeking comment. In his letter, he didn’t identify the ex-employee nor did he disclose how much money is missing, but he did say an endowment and reserves mean the organization isn’t in financial jeopardy. Three sources say the person under investigation is Lori Meadows, a former development director at 1000 Friends. Meadows could not be reached for comment. To read more, go to wweek. com/1000Friends_theft. Navin Sharma, the former Vancouver cop who was the subject of a WW cover story (see “Good Cop, Mad Cop,” July 30, 2008), died on Christmas Eve at age 54. Friends of his family report the cause was cancer. Although Sharma’s law enforcement career ended in Vancouver in 2006, his subsequent federal lawsuit alleging racial discrimination and retaliation against the police department culminated sharma in a $1.65 million settlement. “In terms of my integrity and credibility, I feel completely vindicated,” he told WW in September 2008. “That is what mattered most to me.” Final push time for WW’s Give!Guide in its goal to reach $1 million in donations for 79 local nonprofits. You have already been so kind as of press time in contributing more than $763,000—about 22 percent ahead of where we were at this point last year when Give!Guide eventually topped $900,000. But please go to wweek.com/giveguide before midnight Dec. 31 and donate whatever you can toward our 2010 goal. We’ve got all kinds of cool incentives to say thanks.
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Down note: Harun Mustafa (right) went to prison for a Measure 11 crime.
THE LATEST WITH... WW CHECKS BACK ON STORIES FROM 2010 ABOUT A CELLIST, TAX INCREASES AND AN ADDICT. “A Stitch and Time,” May 12 Harun Mustafa, the talented cello player who went to prison in November 2009 on assault and weapon charges, will serve his full 18-month sentence through April 2011. This October, Gov. Ted Kulongoski rejected the clemency application for Mustafa, a 20-year-old Jefferson High graduate who went to prison for injuring another young man with a folding knife during a fight in a North Portland park. Earlier this year, Mustafa told WW he acted in selfdefense when he fought with an 18-year-old Roosevelt High grad in April 2009. His victim had a 1-inch stab wound in his side that required a single stitch to close. Mustafa’s supporters say the governor’s decision disappoints them tremendously, even if it didn’t shock them. “I expected [the governor] to say no,” says Stefana Berceanu, Mustafa’s music teacher. “To them, he’s just a number. To us, it’s everything.” Kulongoski, who leaves office in January after two terms, wrote in a letter to Mustafa that the governor reserves clemency for extraordinary cases. Since May, when Mustafa submitted his application, the governor has granted only one pardon and commuted one person’s prison sentence. Other events in recent months have tilted in Mustafa’s favor. Almost immediately after WW’s cover story about
Mustafa, Oregon’s Department of Corrections transferred him from a medium-security wing of the Snake River Correctional Institution in Eastern Oregon to a minimumsecurity facility in Portland. An added benefit of the transfer to the Columbia River Correctional Institution is Mustafa can now see visitors more frequently. Among his latest visitors are Berceanu and Jyothi Pulla, the mother of two musicians in his previous orchestra. Pulla helped Mustafa complete his clemency application. The corrections department also bent its rules to let Mustafa have a new cello in prison. Navin Sharma, the subject of another WW cover story (see “Good Cop, Mad Cop,” July 30, 2008), contributed much of the $1,600 to buy the instrument. (For a sad update on Sharma, see Murmurs, page 6.) Behind bars, Mustafa has about an hour each day to play his cello. He attends keyboarding classes and recently started exercising in a prison yoga class. He works in the prison cafeteria many days. Mustafa is also surprisingly well-connected to outside news, asking a recent visitor for opinions about the Somali-American teenager who allegedly tried to detonate a bomb Nov. 26 in Pioneer Courthouse Square. And Mustafa, who has caught glimpses of Portlandia previews from the Independent Film Channel on the prison TV, even asked whether the comedy series might harm Portland’s reputation. But any impression that prison life is comfortable is inaccurate, Mustafa says. “It’s horrible,” he says. “I try to stay humble and not give in to the pettiness.” —Beth Slovic
taxes: Measures 66 and 67 passed, but the fight continues over their fallout.
“Class Warfare,” Jan. 6 There may have been no bigger political story in Oregon this year than state voters’ passage in January of Measures 66 and 67. For Democrats, the surprisingly easy passage for the income-tax increases provided both the promise of about $750 million in new revenue for the biennium and optimism in what looked like a Republican year, even in January. But the vitriolic campaign deepened Oregon’s partisan divide, which was reflected in the final vote of about 53 percent to 47 percent for both measures. Notable funders of the anti-tax side, such as Nike Chairman Phil Knight and Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle, had traditionally supported Democratic candidates, at least in recent gubernatorial elections. Both men moved directly from the January tax measures to pouring money into the ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Republican Chris Dudley. State lawmakers last week got their first solid data on Measure 66, the personal tax increase. (Data from the corporate hike won’t be available until spring because corporations pay their taxes later.) The personal income tax, which was retroactive, brought in $130 million for 2009, or 72 percent of the $180 million forecast in May 2009. Predictably, advocates viewed those results differently. “That’s $130 million we wouldn’t have had otherwise,” says Chuck Sheketoff of the left-leaning Oregon Center for Public Policy. But the libertarian Cascade Policy Institute pointed to the fact that 10,000 fewer high-income Oregonians are paying the higher tax as evidence those people fled Oregon or otherwise engaged in tax avoidance strategies. Paul Warner, director of the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Office, says it’s highly unlikely a significant number of taxpayers left Oregon in 2009 anticipating a 2010 tax hike. Warner ascribes the results to a greater-thanexpected drop (almost half ) in capital gains. cont. on page 9 Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
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THE LATEST WITH...
“There are fewer higherincome earners, and they earned less because those taxpayers’ income is more cyclical,” Warner says. Wa r n e r ’s o f f i c e h a s decreased expectations for revenues from Measure 66. “We expect a much weaker than normal recovery,” Warner says. —Nigel Jaquiss
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“Saving Ryan,” Sept. 15 A cover story about how the breakdown in mental-health and addiction services is forcing Multnomah County judges to act as social work- STILL BATTLING: Ryan Santana. ers focused on the case of Ryan Santana. Our story about the 20-year-old heroin addict ended on an optimistic note—the former Portland State University business major who was kicked out of school and living on the street had finally been assigned a bed in a residential drug-treatment center after months of waiting. The state-funded program should have lasted several months. But on Oct. 12, this reporter spotted Santana being rousted from sleep in Northwest Portland and arrested on a sidewalk about 8 am on a bench warrant. Judge Eric Bloch had issued the warrant when the DePaul Treatment Center kicked Santana out five days earlier for using heroin. The setback was a disturbing sign of the power of narcotic addiction. Santana had spoken in interviews of his desperation to enter treatment and get his life back on track. And it marked a setback as well for the two judges who had worked hard to bring Santana back from the edge. Using drugs violated Santana’s terms of probation from a first-degree burglary conviction. Bloch ordered Santana jailed for 15 days. But a cost-saving measure by the Legislature severely limits the time many defendants can be held in jail on probation violations. Jail records indicate Santana was freed Oct. 19. Bloch issued another bench warrant Oct. 26 when Santana failed to appear in Bloch’s special drug court. Santana was arrested again Nov. 7. This time Bloch ordered him held in jail until a treatment bed opened. In late November, Santana entered treatment again, this time at Alpha House. Since then he has stayed clean, remained in treatment and seems to be doing well when he appears in Bloch’s drug court each Friday, says Michael McShane, the other judge who worked to help Santana. On Santana’s story so far, McShane says, “It’s not as sad as I was worried it was going to be.” —James Pitkin SOME SHORTER UPDATES TO STORIES FROM 2010: “The Crusaders,” Feb. 3: Profiles of local-issue crusaders included lead-poisoning activist Tamara Rubin. She has persuaded state Rep. Carolyn Tomei (D-Milwaukie) to craft new legislation that would fight lead poisoning in kids. The bill, if approved by the 2011 Legislature, would make K-12 schools and day-care centers perform annual tests to see whether lead dust from deteriorating paint poses health concerns. “Extra Credit,” March 17: WW reported about the sometimeseasy classes Portland Public Schools’ teachers take to move up the pay scale. A subsequent policy change at the school district means teachers must now obtain principals’ approval for those classes. “Judging Judy,” Sept. 1: The City of Portland was suing Old Town Lofts LLC, a defunct company set up by Multnomah County Commissioner Judy Shiprack, for $9,000 in unpaid property-management fees on a taxpayer-subsidized condo project built in 2002. Shiprack settled the case Sept. 5 for $4,405, which was all the remaining funds for the dissolved company, says deputy city attorney Robert Yamachika. “Pity for the Panty Thief,” Oct. 6: Two Portland lawyers had asked Gov. Ted Kulongoski to free Sung Koo Kim, who was sentenced in 2005 to more than 11 years in prison for stealing thousands of pairs of women’s underwear. Despite support for the application from the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon and the South Korean consul general in Seattle, Kulongoski denied the application Dec. 7. Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
9
NEWS
YEAR IN REVIEW
QUOTES OF THE YEAR THURSDAYS All You Can Eat
Spaghetti $6.95
Mon - Thurs 11am - Midnight Fri. & Sat. 11am - 1am Sun. 11am - 11pm
WHO SAID WHAT AND WHEN IN 2010. BY STACY B ROWN HIL L , REB ECCA JACOB SON A N D JESSICA LU TJ EMEY ER
243-2122
Before you pop the Champagne for 2011, test your memory of what happened locally in 2010 by matching the quote with the person who said it.* *Quotes compiled from reports in WW and The Oregonian and by the Associated Press.
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QUOTES JANUARY-MARCH 1. “Um, I’ve had better days.”
SCOOP
2. “Wow, you guys text too. You get kudos.” 3. “To see the president sign it is tremendous.” APRIL-JUNE 4. “The community has to move off the notion that drug use can be safe.”
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6. “You’re being a crazed sex poodle.” JULY-SEPTEMBER 7. “A lemonade stand is a classic iconic American kid thing to do. I don’t want to be in the business of shutting that down.” 8. “I think it’s absolutely great. It’s not every day you get to see the first flush of a toilet.” 9. “Bedbugs are not classist or racist. They’re everywhere.” OCTOBER-DECEMBER 10. “It was just young people having fun, doing their thing.” 11. “The challenges aren’t blue, the challenges aren’t red. Hell, they’re green.” 12. “We…designed something that will actually look like [a] blur on the field.”
a. Passerby Logan Kirk on the unveiling of Portland’s second public loo. b. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), after watching President Obama ink the healthcare reform bill. c. Tony Young, Kyron Horman’s stepfather. d. John Kitzhaber, after he won the governor’s race. e. Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury. f. Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen. g. Nike designer Todd Van Horne on the Ducks’ new uniforms for the BCS championship game. h. Greg Oden, Portland Trail Blazers center, after nude photos of him went online. i. U.S. Attorney for Oregon Dwight Holton, after a second Reed College student in two years died of a heroin overdose. j. Text response from Aaron Campbell to police shortly before an officer fatally shot him. k. George Touhouliotis, Satyricon owner from 1983 to 2003, on the nightclub’s closure. l. Masseuse Molly Hagerty to Al Gore, in a National Enquirer report on her allegations that the former vice president tried to assault her in 2006 at the Hotel Lucia.
ANSWERS 1-h, 2-j, 3-b, 4-i, 5-c, 6-l, 7-f, 8-a, 9-e, 10-k, 11-d, 12-g
GOSSIP SHOULD HAVE NO FRIENDS P18
5.. “We love you and we need you home right now.”
PEOPLE
rogue j O n At h A n h i l l
NEWS
ROGUES OF THE YEAR TRIMET AND ATU 757.
him allegedly reading a Kindle while driving. In October, an audit showed the price tag on TriMet’s post-employment benefits package had Portlanders hear constantly that their regional risen 29 percent since 2008. Then, on Election public transportation system is one of the Day, local voters rejected a $125 million bond for nation’s best. the transit service. “If it were a fighter, we’d say it punches above The lousy economy didn’t help TriMet. its weight,” U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), With unemployment stuck above 10 percent, a leading mass-transit advocate in Congress, told payroll taxes that contribute the most money WW earlier this year. to TriMet’s operating budget have stagnated. We at WW tend to think that’s true. TriMet has slashed routes, cut back on the freBut a combination of factors conspired to quency of its service and raised fares by a nickel make 2010 a memorable year for the transit starting Sept. 1. agency for all the wrong reasons. It’s not as though new general manager Neil If 2010 had been a fight, TriMet would have McFarlane, who replaced Fred Hansen in July, lost via TKO. hasn’t tried to punch back. He convened a safety In fact, the past 12 months have been so task force. He announced new wage freezes for brutal for TriMet, the agency operating our union employees and healthcare cost-sharing tri-county transportation system gets our 2010 measures, too. The transit union responded Rogue of the Year. And thanks with an unfair labor practice to its help driving TriMet there, complaint, further delaying a RECENT ROGUES OF THE YEAR: Amalgamated Transit Union contract settlement. 757, which represents about TriMet had some successes, 2009: Mayor Sam Adams 2008: Republican Party of Oregon 2,000 TriMet employees, gets supporters say. 2007: Multnomah County Sheriff co-billing. After months of con“Despite all the grief they’ve Bernie Giusto 2006: City Council candidate tentious (and so far unsuccesscaught for this and that, 2010 Emilie Boyles ful) contract talks, the union was the year TriMet finally still doesn’t seem to recognize approved a MAX line to inner that its members enjoy some of the most gener- Southeast Portland,” says Michael Andersen, ous benefits around. editor and publisher of Portland Afoot newsletTake a trip with us over the past 12 months. ter. “Ten years from now, nobody’s going to On Jan. 3, TriMet ended 35 years of free bus remember much else.” service downtown by restricting Fareless Square Yet longtime TriMet spokeswoman Mary to light rail and streetcars only. Fetsch, a consummate professional who can put In March, The Oregonian showed that a positive light on most anything, acknowledged TriMet’s 1-year-old, $160 million Westside in a September interview with WW that TriMet Express Service, a commuter rail line, had fallen had endured many negative headlines. Jon Hunt, far short of its ridership projections. (Although, ATU president, did not respond to a request for more recently, the numbers have shown comment by press time. improvement.) “It’s been a challenging couple of years,” On April 24, bus driver Sandi Day struck and Fetsch said more recently. “When times were killed two pedestrians in Old Town and injured good we had very little push back.” three others. TriMet fired Day. The union Tough economic times have brought greater appealed, and the incident is now the subject of focus to TriMet’s weaknesses, she said. three separate $10 million lawsuits. “We can’t wait to add service back,” Fetsch In September, another TriMet bus driver said. “We look forward to 2011.” made national news after a passenger videotaped So do we.
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PAGE 6
Plan your trip at trimet.org Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
15
FOOD: Food fit for a disturbed man clad only in his bathrobe. MUSIC: Dropping balls in 2010. BOOKS: Portland bike domination, according to its architect. MOVIES: It’s an end of the year Top Tenstravaganza!
21 22 33 34
SCOOP GOSSIP MORE ENGAGING THAN HUGH HEFNER. BOOZE BLURBS: PlayDate PDX, a large indoor playground in Slabtown, has applied for a limited liquor license, presumably to serve parents. This is an excellent idea. The recently deceased Krakow Koffeehouse on Interstate Avenue will shortly be taken over by Northeast Alberta Street’s Black Cat Cafe. NUT CRACKED: Good news for people who love ballet but hate magical toys and oversize rats: On the last night of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s new Holiday Revue, on Sunday, Dec. 19, at the Keller Auditorium, OBT Artistic Director Christopher Stowell made it official: The show was so popular, he announced on stage, the company was declaring it “a new annual OBT event.” Stowell’s gamble—creating and staging an original production in tandem with the company’s more traditional, The Nutcracker, a logistical challenge unto itself—seems to have paid off. According to WW dance critic Heather Wisner, the Revue’s a good-looking show with a sleek setting: hanging panels, a piano, a stack of gifts and a projection of a fire flickering on a TV screen. And its series of vignettes, inspired by the dancers’ own holiday memories, are set to hits spanning Vince Guaraldi to the Barenaked Ladies. Don’t worry, Sugar Plum Fairy fans, The Nutcracker will be back next year, too. JAZZMATAZZ: If there was any lingering doubt about Blue Cranes being the hippest jazz outfit in Portland, the forthcoming Oversea Orbits LP—a nine-track remix album featuring local artists like experimental composer Ethan Rose, electronic music producer Jesse Munro Johnson (Gulls) and singer/songwriter/producer Gavin Castleton—ought to seal the deal. The album—a reworking of the Cranes’ 2010 album Revised Observations—also includes three videos, one of which is a welcome addition to the popular “Shredz” YouTube meme. The disc drops on Friday, Jan. 21, at a Secret Society Ballroom show featuring many of the artists from the remix album. Then, in April, Blue Cranes will tour the entire country via train and blog their trip for wweek.com—at which point the Cranes will probably cash in their massive stash of cool points for some travel mugs and lava lamps. GIVE IT UP: Have you given your favorite local nonprofit some love yet in 2010? In the last three days of the year, WW’s Give!Guide wants to help you with that. Portlanders raised more than $900,000 for local nonprofits through the guide last year and have given nearly $700,000 since Nov. 17 this year. Visit wweek.com/giveguide to get the scoop on 79 of our favorite worthy groups. Donations close at midnight Friday, Dec. 31, so go donate your heart out. 18
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
headout
WILLAMETTE WEEK
What to do this week in arts & culture: Should you see Hair?
THURSDAY DEC. 30 [MUSIC] PROBLEMS?, CORPUS CALLOSUM, LIKE A VILLAIN One of Portland’s best new bands (hint, hint—WW’s Best New Band poll is just around the corner), the trippy/atmospheric duo Problems? has been sweeping the WW office by storm, en route to eventually conquering your heart. Let it in. Rotture, 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Were you alive in 1968?
FRIDAY DEC. 31
NO
YES
[COMEDY] COMEDY NIGHT AT THE BAGDAD Ring in the new year with local comedians Shawn Fleek, Jimmy Newstetter, Mark Kikel, Kyle Harbert, Christian Ricketts, Virginia Jones, Whitney Streed, Travis Jones and Arlo Stone, hosted by Tristan Spillman. Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. 10 pm. $10. 21+.
Do you just looove musicals? Do you remember it?
YES
NO YES
NO How about The 40-Year-Old Virgin? Do you looove it?
[DISH] EAT OYSTER BAR NEW YEAR’S DAY BRUNCH Get a free serving of black-eyed peas, cabbage and cornbread (with purchase) to ensure health, wealth and luck. Wear the clothes you passed out in while celebrating and receive a free oyster shooter. EaT: An Oyster Bar, 3808 N Williams Ave., 281-1222. $7 Bloody Mary bar and $15 big bottles of mimosas. Brunch served 9:30 am-2 pm. Football bowl games start at 10 am.
NO Do you spend an inordinate share of your time on Hawthorne Boulevard?
YES
SATURDAY JAN. 1 YES
Were you getting laid/high at the time?
NO
YES
NO Do you currently drive a BMW?
Are any of your clothes made of other clothes?
[MUSIC] RAMADANMAN, LINCOLNUP, BEN TACTIC While the rest of us catch up with dubstep—that wobbly cousin of jungle and dub—the best electronica producers and performers have moved well past that pit stop. Ramadanman is one of them, and the London-based producer/ DJ makes his first Portland stop tonight. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 9 pm. $5 advance, $7 day of show. 21+.
NO
YES
NO
YES Do you own any prayer flags?
YES Does being a sellout lame-o make you feel a little guilty?
Do you resent all the fun those goddamn hippies were having?
YES! Fuckin’ hippies.
MONDAY JAN. 3
Do you resent the way the baby boomers have betrayed the ideals of their own political movements and become the richest generation in history by passing the cost of their wars, welfare, McMansions and environmental irresponsibility to you and me?
Yeah, I Guess so.
YES
[MUSIC] TYPHOON, WAMPIRE, BREAKFAST MOUNTAIN, THE RESERVATIONS Typhoon had quite a good year in 2010—let’s hope for another big one (a second album is already well underway), and more big things for one of Portland’s best bands. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 2397639. 8:30 pm. $5. 21+.
NO
But would you enjoy watching them try to hold their own in a dance party with a bunch of hot young things? NO NO
Maybe skip this one, then.
YES
You should see Hair.
A dam K rueger
HELL NO!
NO
TUESDAY JAN. 4 [WORDS] MIA BIRK Local author and former City of Portland Bicycle Program manager Mia Birk takes us back 20 years to the origins of Portland’s bike domination. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free. All ages.
GO: Hair at the Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 241-1802. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, Dec. 29-Jan. 2. $23.50-$85.55. See page 30 for info. Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
19
DISH New Year’s Eve: Roost
PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: KELLY CLARKE. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
DISH EVENTS THIS WEEK
NW Broadway, 222-4458. 9 pm-1 am. Reservations required. $60. giltclub.com.
New Year’s Eve: Andina
New Year’s Eve: Lincoln
Prix fixe menu of Peruvian holiday fare, with music by the Tracy Kim and Danny Romero trios. Andina, 1314 NW Glisan St., 228-9535. Seatings every half hour from 5:30-9:30 pm. Reservations required. $60-$185 depending on wine choices, call for details. andinarestuarant.com
New Year’s Eve: Bar Avignon
Regular dinner menu plus prix fixe featuring salad of baby lettuce and smoked salmon, cucumber and ginger-lime dressing and roasted quail with pecan stuffing. Also: champagne, and Rose Gerber and her acoustic guitar. Bar Avignon, 2138 SE Division St., 517-0808. 4-11:30 pm Friday, Dec. 31. Semi-private table for up to 12 available for reservation ($200 food and drink minimum required). For information or to reserve a table, contact randy@baravignon.com. $45 for prix fixe menu.
New Year’s Eve: Biwa
Eight courses of Japanese New Year’s fare, including fried smelt, sashimi, grilled halibut and simmered duck. Biwa, 215 SE 9th Ave., 239-8830. Vegetarian dinner by reservation only. $55, $30 optional sake pairing. biwarestaurant.com.
New Year’s Eve: Castagna
Two prix fixe menus, one for vegetarians, one for omnivores, with local and seasonal ingredients, including dried roots, veal, crab, truffles and wild mushrooms. Castagna, 1752 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 2317373. 5:30 to 10 pm Friday, Dec. 31. Call for reservations. $85 per person. Wine pairings for $45 or $65 extra.
New Year’s Eve: East India Co.
A 12-dish buffet of north and west Indian favorites like butter chicken and mutton curry. East India Co., 821 SW 11th Ave., 227-8815. 5-9 pm. $25. Kids 3 and under free. eastindiacopdx.com
New Year’s Eve: Gilt Club
New Year’s Eve: Metrovino
Restaurant workers, sharpen everything from your knife-handling skills to your wine-pairing abilities with the Portland Restaurant Workers Association nine-part
EaT New Year’s Day Brunch
Recover from NYE with a N’awlinsstyle brunch at EaT. Get a free
serving of black-eyed peas, cabbage and cornbread (while supplies last) to ensure health, wealth and luck in the new year. Wear the clothes you passed out in while celebrating and receive a free oyster shooter. $7 Bloody Mary bar and $15 big bottles of mimosas. EaT: An Oyster Bar, 3808 N Williams Ave., 281-1222. Brunch 9:30 am-2 pm Saturday, Jan. 1. Football games start at 10 am. Regular menu 2 pm-midnight.
REVIEW
New Year’s Eve: Ned Ludd
A six-course prix fixe menu with sparkling wine pairings for each course. Ned Ludd, 3925 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 288-6900. Call for reservations. $75 per person. Seatings at 5, 7:30 and 10 pm.
New Year’s Eve: Nostrana
A Piemontese feast featuring a Prosecco and pomegranate aperitivo, followed by four more courses with options including egg-yolk pasta with white truffle, ravioli with sage butter, braised pork and Dungeness crab. Nostrana, 1401 SE Morrison St., 234-2427. Reservations recommended. $75.
New Year’s Eve: Paley’s Place
A menu featuring Oregon wild mushrooms, caviar and truffles “with a few festive surprises for late-night guests.” Paley’s Place, 1204 NW 21st Ave., 2432403. 5 pm until late close. Reservations available.
New Year’s Eve: Pix Pâtisserie
The first 100 customers to purchase a beverage at either Pix location after 11 pm get a free buffet of chocolate mousse, chocolate ice cream, chocolate ganache, chocolate meringue and chocolate beer at midnight. Pix Patisserie, 3402 SE Division St., 232-4407. Also at 3901 N Williams Ave., 282-6539.
A four-course vegan menu of Italian classics, sans the animal products. Includes many gluten-free dishes. Portobello, 1125 SE Division St., 7545993. 5:30-10 pm. $49.
K E LLY CLARK E & BE N WAT ER HOUSE
THINGS WE STUFFED OURSELVES WITH THIS YEAR (In no particular order) Coq au vin at Little Bird: Gabe Rucker has captured everything good and right about French food with a ridiculously satisfying chicken stew at his just-opened jewel box of a dining room downtown. His bird is so tender the flesh falls off the bone when you point your fork in its general direction. 219 SW 6th Ave., 688-5952. Peppery pork ball noodle soup at HA & VL: It’s the best soup in the world, and eating it is like sinking into a hot tub full of black pepper and pork fat and noodles and plump balls of mysterious pig meat. Add a spoonful each of chile paste and scorching-hot TNT vinegar and settle in for a long soak. 2738 SE 82nd Ave., No. 103, 772-0103. Shakshuka at Tasty n Sons: A molten breakfast slurry of peppery, sausage-and-tomatoey, baked-egg-topped perfection made even better when you scoop it atop a plank of Fleur de Lis toast, this Israeli dish is quite possibly the only thing the Middle East could ever agree on. 3808 N Williams Ave., Suite C, 621-1400. Duck wings at Ten 01: Cooked slowly in fat, then fried crisp and doused in a fishy hot sauce prepared by Ten 01 manager Damien Baker’s mom, Junko, these crunchy, sticky limbs are almost good enough to chase away the memory of Jack Yoss’ Thai pork ribs. 1001 NW Couch St., 226-3463. Rye rolls at Castagna: These crusty, buttery, golden lumps of heaven are complimentary, but it’s worth the whole $65, four-course dinner just to slather on the pork-fat-and-chive spread and gobble the thing down. 1752 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 231-7373. 20
Know Your Kitchen! Workshop Series
Know Your Kitchen! workshop series on Mondays, Jan. 3-March 7. Chef Andrew Garrett of Cafe Nell leads the workshops. Bargreen & Ellingson: Foodservice Supply & Design, 3232 NW Industrial St., 766-4489. Mondays Jan. 3-March 7. Registration required. $2 per course to cover the cost of supplies.
A luxurious five-course tasting menu featuring caviar, lobsters, truffles and foie gras. Whoa. Metrovino, 1139 NW 11th Ave., 517-7778. $70, $50 vegetarians. Reservations required. metrovinopdx.com.
New Year’s Eve: Portobello
Six-course prix fixe menu featuring pineapple upside-down cake and foie gras, grilled lamb steak and motherfuckin’ baked Alaska. Gilt Club, 306
TOP FIVE
A three-course menu with a choice of six appetizers and five entrees. Lincoln, 3808 N Williams Ave., 288-6200. Reservations required. $50. lincolnpdx.com.
A NYE crab feed, including two salads, chocolate cake and a whole Dungeness crab. Roost, 1403 SE Belmont St., 971-544-7136. 5:30-10 pm. Reservations required. $50.
C H R I S R YA N P H O T O . C O M
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
mEzzA mAjEsTy: TarBoush does veggie mezza right.
PITA POTENTIAL
a bright, astringent quality with a subtle nuttiness. It’s not unheard of for a restaurant to cut corners and serve canned stuffed grape leaves, but TarBoush definitely rolls its own, the little briny bundles steamed until tender, and the rice is creamy. A little under-seasoned but still solid. Nice and crispy, the falafel is at its best when BY B R IA N PA N GA N IB A N bpanganiban@wweek.com you assemble an ad-hoc sandwich with the other mezza accompaniments. Over on the hot side of the menu, TarBoush’s Certainly, there are far braver things to do than open a restaurant in a gorgeous Victorian home, skewers are a mixed bag. The grilled chicken but that fact is scant comfort for the three previ- ($14) is tender and succulent, with a lovely garous restaurants (Calendula, Chef Tucker’s Pâtis- licky finish, and the kafta kebab ($14) is easily serie and Belly Timber) that cooked for brief one of the best versions in town, substantial and stints in the space on the corner of Southeast filling while still moist, with no hint of the tough, 32nd Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard before leaden quality that denotes overworked ground calling it quits. TarBoush Bistro and Bar hopes to beef. On the other hand, both the beef ($14) and snap the location’s losing streak with an expan- lamb ($16) skewers were over-seasoned and sive Lebanese menu, recession-friendly prices, mealy, to the point that sometimes it was difficult to pick out which one was lunch and late-night hours. Sucwhich, no mean feat when one cess is doubly daunting, howev- Order this: The kafta kebab. er, because there is no shortage Best deal: The veggie mezza ($12). of the proteins is lamb. The makali ($7.50) exhibits of good, affordable Lebanese I’ll pass: The lamb (beef?) skewers. food in Portland. If TarBoush a more deft touch—the assortcan expand on the dishes it does well and find its ment of deep-fried vegetables is perfectly done. footing on some of its more mediocre offerings, They could easily make a dish of the fried zucchini alone, the slightly caramelized exterior and it may exorcise the home’s dining demons. Want to get a measure of a Lebanese restau- soft interior dressed perfectly by the garlic and rant? Order its veggie mezza ($12). The tradi- lemon juice. TarBoush’s version of okra stew, tional assortment of hummus, baba ghanouj, bamyeh, is a different beast from others around falafel, grape leaves and tabbouleh is as good a town, with a far greater tomato presence and metric as any in determining a kitchen’s acumen. firmer, more distinct okra pieces floating about. TarBoush’s accompanying pita bread, which It’s a unique take on the dish and a nice contrast. comes out of the kitchen hot and appropriately “Different” seems to be the takeaway of Tarpuffed, ably serves as a vessel for the spreads, but Boush as a whole. It may not be the best Lebanese lacks the slight yeasty tang of the best examples in town, but it is a solid entry in a neighborhood of this staple. Be sure to stir up the pool of oil that can maintain its own establishment if it and aromatics in the center of the hummus to gains a following. If the kitchen can up its game even out its very chickpea-forward flavor. The a touch, it can put any lingering thoughts of a baba is a winner, the puréed eggplant assertive cursed space safely to rest. and smoky without the overly charred flavor that is a common pitfall with the dish. TarBoush’s EAT: TarBoush Lebanese Bistro & Bar, 3257 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 235-3277, tarboushbistro.com. tabbouleh is great with everything, an unusu- Noon-midnight Monday-Saturday, noon-10 pm ally high parsley-to-bulgur ratio gives the salad Sunday. $$ Moderate.
TARBOUSH TRIES TO CARVE A NICHE FOR ITSELF ON HAWTHORNE.
DISH RAchELLE hAcMAc
REVIEW
get the party started
keep the party going
with an awesome 4-course NYE dinner specially created by Chef Nicholas Yanes H5Obistro.com
with a sweet NYE package at Hotel Fifty HotelFifty.com
PErfEcT PAir: Pizza and spring rolls from Ultimania.
PIZZA ULTIMANIA I’m at the Pizza Hut. I’m at the Taco Bell. I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell and Panda Express and Olive Garden and Long John Silver’s. I’m at Pizza Ultimania, yo, and my tummy, it doth ache. Actually, I’m not at Pizza Ultimania, because it does not offer a dine-in option. No, I am at home with approximately 10 pounds of P.U. leftovers and what feels a lot like a dime-sized tear in my heart growing larger by the second. My heartburn ain’t Ultimania’s fault, though. Not really. Just because this tiny takeout joint next door to Plaid Pantry offers pizza and chicken wings and pad Thai and pork spring rolls does not mean I had to have all of them at once. Oh, but I did, friends, I did! Finally, I thought, my pipe dream that I might one day order from every Lloyd Center food-court establishment simultaneously, without using a bullhorn, is a reality! This, I thought, is the American goddamn way writ large in special sauce, and if you don’t mind, I’d like extra cheddar on my taco pizza ($16.49$25.49), thank you very much, and here’s my next of kin’s telephone number in case my skeleton buckles beneath the weight of this thing on my way out to my car. So anyway, that’s how I ended up here with three-fourths of a taco pizza, wondering just how much I hate my dog. Essentially a gargantuan Taco Bell tostada with a bland crust carrying the beans and cheese, this is Ultimania’s only truly horrendous creation (and no, I don’t dislike my dog quite that much). The rest of its stoner-friendly fare is shockingly decent for a place that is willing to deliver both giant tiger prawns ($16) and lasagna ($7.50) to any addled man in a bathrobe (I had a rough day) within reasonable driving distance and for no extra charge. The orange brick of pad Thai ($9) with chicken, which by some impossible and possibly dangerous magic tastes just as fresh after three days in the fridge, is a bit on the dry side, but it is at least as good as the carbohydrate bombs dropped by the second-tier carts around town. Same goes for the stir-fry combination ($9), a sweet vegetable and grease medley that very nearly precludes chewing, which is rather convenient if you’ve been drinking—and if you’re ordering an Asian stir-fry from a place called Pizza Ultimania, odds are good that you’re one existential insult away from downing a fifth of cologne. Hot and spicy chicken wings ($6.99) are neither hot nor spicy, but they are warm and ripped from what appears to have been morbidly obese diabetic hens, and with enough ranch dressing they taste like something they might serve in the Kevorkian wing of a wisecracking hospital. Delicious, in other words, if you are hooked to a morphine drip and contemplating the edge of the abyss. Again, you just ordered chicken wings from a place with the initials P.U., so come on, let’s face it: What have you got to lose? CHRIS STAMM.
The American dream, with extra cheese.
EAT: Pizza Ultimania, 3508 SE 52nd Ave., 774-9929, pizzaultimania.com. Lunch and dinner 11 am-11 pm Monday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday and Saturday. Dinner 4-10 pm Sunday. Takeout and delivery only. $ Inexpensive.
Make sure to try our badass burgers & queso. Burnside open ‘til midnight every night.
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626 SW Park at Alder • 503-236-3036 • BrasseriePortland.com Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
21
DEC. 29 - JAN. 4 PRIMER
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. 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 27, 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. 29 Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons, Jenny Conlee, Blue Skies for Black Hearts
[HOMETOWN-VIA-HARLEM HERO] It’s been a productive 2010 for Northwest O.G. Jerry Joseph, the long-serving rocker having released a pair of albums this year: Civility, a collaboration with drummer Wally Ingram, and Badlandia, featuring his loyal band the Jackmormons. Recorded live in Montana, Badlandia finds Joseph and company in an expansive mood, comprising three tracks in the 6-to-8-minute range, three that clock in around nine or 10 minutes, and one weighing in at 13:33. A wicked, heavy cover of Gillian Welch’s “Revelator” is but one highlight. Guesting both on the record and tonight is Decemberists keyboardist Jenny Conlee, wife of Jackmormons drummer Steve Drizos, who will also perform solo. Well-traveled former Portlander Joseph currently calls Harlem, NYC, home, but for NYE, he’s booked a four-gig run here: Joseph and the Jackmormons also perform tomorrow night and New Year’s Eve at Mount Tabor Theater, and at a sureto-be-jam-packed (in more ways than one) White Eagle on New Year’s Day. JEFF ROSENBERG. Alberta Rose Theatre. 9 pm. $15. 21+.
Kasey Anderson, Lewi Longmire, Star Anna
[JUST ROCK, THANK YOU] Act Six: In Which Kasey Abandons His Roots. Portlander Anderson’s regularly performed as a solo artist, and his band work has most often been tagged “roots rock”—a label the singer-songwriter says he’s wearied of. So there’s nary an acoustic guitar audible on his forthcoming sixth album, even on the ballads. Heart of a Dog is both his first self-co-produced disc and the first co-credited to his band, the Honkies, which boasts an unimpeachable Northwest rock pedigree; Seattledwelling drummer Mike Musberger alone has played with the Fastbacks, Young Fresh Fellows, the Posies and the Supersuckers. Guests on the album include Decemberist Jenny Conlee and Richmond Fontaine bassist Dave
Harding. For his part, Anderson brings a brace of articulate, hook-laden tunes, and his slightly-sweeter-Steve-Earle voice is in its best shape yet. JEFF ROSENBERG. Mississippi Studios. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
The Martyrs, SexyWaterSpiders, The Hugs, Tiger House
[ROCK THERAPY] Does the future have you down? Take a trip back in time with this night of classic rockfueled acts. Straightforward, no-gimmicks blues rock is the name of the game for the Martyrs. The quartet, which formed in 2007, has spent the last few years trying to transcend the 2009 death of founding member Jonny Roe. The Martyrs seem to have finally made it out of that darkness and into the spotlight as the band finds itself in the headlining slot of a lineup with notable local cred. Past, present and future are never perfect, but we can always count on a few guitars and a drum kit to pick us right back up again. KEVIN DAVIS. Rotture. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
THURSDAY, DEC. 30 Bone Thugs-NHarmony, Tragedy
[HOLIDAY HIP-HOP] The last time I saw Bone Thugs, the famed Ohio hip-hop outfit was making a surprise appearance, alongside DJ Quick, at a SXSW showcase. Shit went bananas. Not only did the smoothsinging rappers make their way through the finer points of their own sparkly catalog in their brief cameo (“Wake Up,” “Tha Crossroads”), but they bounced through a 20-minute crash course in hip-hop history with a medley that gave shoutouts to Tupac, Biggie, Snoop and other founding fathers. Watching the twenty- and thirtysomethings around me react with startled, “oh-no-they-di’n’t” excitement was like watching old schoolmates coming together at a class reunion. Bone, at last count, was one member short (Flesh-N-Bone)—but the remaining members do their best not only to pay tribute to their own legacy, but
CONT. on page 23
TOP FIVE WW’S FAVORITE LOCAL HIP-HOP RELEASES, 2010 Taco Neck, Tutorial The name kind of says it all—this is how you make an original hip-hop record in 2010: You take chances, take your time and take over. V!rtu, The Shoe-In This album came out of left field and killed us with its lyricism, oldschool flavor and energy. V!rtu is awesome. Mic Crenshaw, Under The Sun One of the smartest lyricists in Portland music proves that being consistent doesn’t mean you stop taking chances. Cool Nutz, Incredible I’ll spare you the “return to form” hyperbole and just say that this was a really solid, cohesively produced album with some of Nutz’s most versatile rhyming to date on it. Cloudy October, The Aviator Is Dead EP If this were an awards show, we’d also give Cloudy October Best New Artist, Best Male Lead and maybe best single for “Vagabondage.” SEE IT: For more year-end picks, see last week’s paper or wweek. com/bestmusic2010. 22
DROPPING BALLS
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
C A R O LY N A N N . N E T
MUSIC
COUNTING DOWN THE 10 BEST NYE SHOWS. BY MICHA EL MA N N HEIMER
mmannheimer@wweek.com
New Year’s Eve is always a letdown. Somewhere along the way the perfect plan hits a snag—the show you desperately want to see sells out, or you leave your wallet at the sushi restaurant after one too many sake bombs (this never happened to me, I swear). Instead of looking for perfection, maybe we should all lower our guard a bit and enjoy New Year’s Eve for what it is: the last time to celebrate— or forget—the past year and embrace the future with a night of drunken debauchery, classic-rock singalongs, and one final can of Four Loko. In honor of the holiday, I present a list of my NYE picks and alternative options in case things get too crazy. 10. ANDRE NICKATINA AND PAUL WALL AT ROSELAND
I’ve never been a huge fan of the thick-drawling Nickatina or his brand of Bay Area coke rap, so the real endorsement here is for Houston rapper Paul Wall, an underrated veteran of trunk-rattling Southern rap with a true NYE party anthem in the ridiculous “I’m on Patron.” Alternative: Magic Garden is just around the corner. 9. THE SHAKY HANDS AT BACKSPACE
This one is for the kids, who deserve a rad show after a year when downtown’s other all-ages options (Satyricon and Berbati’s Pan) shut their doors. Boy Eats Drum Machine brings the dance party, and then Nick Delffs and the Shaky Hands ring in 2011 with new songs and a Dead Moon cover. Alternative: The Artistery also has a solid all-ages show. 8. PIERCED ARROWS AT ASH STREET SALOON
Speaking of Dead Moon, how about spending your night with Fred and Toody Cole and a few PBR tall boys? Pierced Arrows quietly released the excellent Descending Shadows in February, and Portland’s old-guard rock ’n’ roll power couple still shred better than your favorite band. Alternative: Stay in and watch the ball drop with Dead Moon on the turntable. 7. TWO BEERS VEIRS AT LAURELTHIRST PUBLIC HOUSE
You want star power? How about folk songstress Laura Veirs singing a set of traditional covers with three Decemberists (Chris Funk, Nate Query and John Moen) backing her up and special guest
singers like the Fruit Bats’ Eric Johnson and Rebecca Gates of the Spinanes. Alternative: Put the kids to bed, illegally download the new Decemberists album, The King is Dead, and rest up for a big day of college football. 6. CALEB KLAUDER AT THE SPARE ROOM
Nothing says New Year’s Eve better than a night of honky-tonk country songs, square dancing and cheap drinks at a converted bowling alley. The Spare Room has Champagne, but you won’t want to drink anything other than whiskey at this shindig. Alternative: Lana Rebel’s going-away show at the World Famous Kenton Club. 5. STRENGTH AT HOLOCENE
Anyone bummed that the Keith Sweat show sold out (I’m looking at you, cougars) will find comeuppance with Strength’s sweaty, totally straight-faced disco sex jams. Ladies, let Bailey Winters rub you down with brandy. Alternative: Slam a row of Jell-O shots at Scooters and try to sneak into the Crystal. 4. PURE COUNTRY GOLD AT SLABTOWN
Rowdy, beer-soaked, piss-talking garage punk and power pop at a real rock club. It’s almost like the aughts never existed. Alternative: The Dandy Warhols live around here, right? 3. THE HELIO SEQUENCE, RAMONA FALLS AND DIRTY MITTENS AT MISSISSIPPI STUDIOS
This is easily the smallest venue the Helio Sequence has played in years, plus Dirty Mittens’ new-school soul is just perfect for the occasion. Good luck getting a ticket. Alternative: Hop Bar Bar’s fence, stay for the opening bands, then head downtown. 2. WEINLAND’S NYE SUPERGROUP AT DOUG FIR
The ultimate party set by folk-rockers Weinland and all their friends. Last year’s show at the Mission Theater was epic, and this time out they’re doing “Dancing in the Dark.” It’s better than karaoke! Alternative: The Slammer has cheaper beer and an Internet jukebox. 1. FIVE FINGERS OF FUNK AT BERBATI’S PAN
Raise a glass and toast Berbati’s Pan, my favorite club in Portland and really the last vestige of the ’90s rock era in town. Alternative: Get ready to face the longest line you’ve ever seen to get a mediocre late-night doughnut.
thursday to hip-hop history as well. cASEY JARMAn. Berbati’s Pan. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
The Dwarves, Zeke, P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S.
[ScUM PUnK] As with all good shock-rock bands, the Dwarves’ shocks are far better known than any of their rock. tales of onstage sex acts, drug binges and faked deaths have become the stuff of underground legend, while the records of their tasteless hardcore thrash are mostly remembered for their cover art, à la 1990’s very appropriately named Blood Guts & Pussy. But unlike its guiding light, the late GG Allin, founding members Blag Dahlia and HeWhocannotBenamed have proven true careerists, keeping the act going for 20-plus years with a revolving supporting cast, contributing songs to Spongebob Squarepants and even offering George W. Bush the track “River city Rapist” for his 2000 presidential campaign. It was declined. MAttHEW SInGER. Dante’s. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
Lissie
[WEAtHER FoREcASt] Where do you go after Paste magazine names you no. 1 new solo artist of 2010? that’s the question facing Rock Island, Ill.-bred singer-songwriter Lissie (birth name Elisabeth Maurus) after a breakthrough year that concluded with major press recognition and an interactive video for her single “cuckoo” that threatens to crash your web browser. Lissie’s debut, Catching a Tiger, does showcase a fine talent, but too often it drowns out her nimble voice (which at times recalls neko case) with clichéd pop over-production and blankets of electric guitar. Lissie is better when she keeps things restrained, a trick that could keep her career on the right path, versus leading to life as another one-and-done folk-pop singer destined for the used bins. MIcHAEL MAnnHEIMER. Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
Oh Darling, Climber, Bryan Free
[PoP RocKS] Why not leave the debauchery for tomorrow night and spend the last full night of 2010 with a band that is practi-
MUSIC
cally the definition of sweetness? oh Darling, with its synth-inflected pop tunes and innocent-sounding, girlishly voiced singer, is the perfect antidote for the decadence and depravity of new Year’s Eve. tonight’s show, which also features locals climber and Bryan Free, would be a totally PDXcentric affair, except that the originally Portland-based oh Darling (whose latest album, Brave the Sound, is due in early 2011) left our town for the warmer climate of L.A. in 2009. We can hardly bear a grudge, though; with music this brightly hued, the group clearly needed a locale as sunny as its songs. REBEccA RABER. Mississippi Studios. 9 pm. $7 advance, $9 day of show. 21+.
Problems?, Corpus Callosum, Like a Villain, toyboat toyboat toyboat
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[tEnDER PoP] My associate, Michael Mannheimer, was right to include the debut EP from Problems? on his list of the year’s best albums. You Have to Hold On is a moody collection of synthed-out pop tunes that has (in spades) what so many contemporary releases lack: atmosphere. You know how Pulp and Depeche Mode records have an instantly identifiable sound before anyone even starts singing? Problems? has that. the band’s sound is stitched into the spindly, Afro-pop-influenced guitar lines and the duo’s slowburn song structures, but it’s in the production and arrangement departments—imagine the baroque pop of Joanna newsom’s Milk-Eyed Mender melded with the dark majesty of Joy Division’s Substance, all funneled through a basement four-track—that Problems? really shines. Whether the duo pulls it all off live, I can’t say—but I’m excited to find out. cASEY JARMAn. Rotture. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Reverend Horton Heat, I Can Lick Any S.O.B. in the House, Larry and His Flask
[HoRSEPoWER tRIo] Last year’s Laughin’ & Cryin’, the Reverend
PRIMER
cont. on page 24
BY c AS E Y JARMA n
FIVE FINGERS OF FUNK Formed: 1992 in Portland. For fans of: The Roots, James Brown, Funkadelic, Spearhead, Digable Planets, the Coup. Sounds like: Maceo Parker hanging out with Guru and deciding to...ah, shit, it sounds like lots and lots of marijuana. Latest release: Twisted and Lifted (2001), which highlighted DJ Chill’s turntablism as much as it did the band’s live horn section. Why you care: Five Fingers of Funk was making live, full-band hip-hop at a time when that was a completely novel thing to do. Before the Roots ever released an album, this Portland collective—fronted by MC Pete Miser, a rapper as at home writing about politics as he was writing about partying and girls—roamed the Northwest playing an amalgamation of funk, hip-hop, reggae, rock and whatever other influences grabbed them at the time. Though the band’s various incarnations were often overlooked or dismissed by the local press of the day (call it Floater syndrome, as the Fingers’ hard-partying hippie/hip-hop fan base may have scared critics away), it maintained a following throughout the latter half of the ’90s and into the early aughts before Miser moved to New York City, finding some success as a solo artist and producer. This show—the Fingers’ first gig since 2002—will be the last night ever for the Berbati’s venue. No word on whether Five Fingers will book future gigs. SEE IT: Five Fingers of Funk plays new Year’s Eve at Berbati’s Pan, with Philly’s Phunkestra and DJ Scott o. 9 pm. $25. 21+. Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
23
MUSIC
MAKE IT A NIGHT
thursday - friday FAc E B o o K .c o M
Present that night’s show ticket and get $3 off any menu item Sun - Thur in the dining room
DOUG FIR RESTAURANT + BAR OPEN 7AM - 2:30AM EVERYDAY
SERVING BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, LATE-NIGHT. FOOD SPECIALS 3-6 PM EVERYDAY COVERED SMOKING PATIO, FIREPLACE ROOM, LOTS OF LOG. LIVE SHOWS IN THE LOUNGE... IN MUSIC WE TRUST PRESENTS THEIR MONTHLY SHOWCASE
WEDNE DAY!
REVA DEVITO NEW YORK RIFLES
+BARRY BRUSSEAU WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 29 •$5 AT THE DOOR DOUG FIR PRESENTS A MIND-BLOWING NYE CELEBRATION WITH MAJOR PDX TALENTS
FRID DAY!
WEINLAND
DUSKY FOLK-POP FROM CALIFORNIA RISING STAR
THURSDAY! THURS
LISSIE
THURSDAY DECEMBER 30 • $13 ADVANCE IN MUSIC WE TRUST PRESENTS THEIR MONTHLY THROW-DOWN
GLASSBONES
my beautiful dark twisted fantasy: Crooked fingers plays bunk bar on friday.
NEW YEARS EVE SUPERGROUP BRAD MACKESON WEDNESDAY DAY JANUARY 5 • $5 AT THE DOOR A LOG LOVE EXTRAVAGANZA OF SERIOUS ROCK PROPORTIONS
DJ SAFI SPINNING ON THE COVERED PATIO FROM 9PM TILL LATE!
SALLIE FORD
+
SOUND OUTSIDE FRIDAY DECEMBER 31 • $15 ADVANCE AND THE
CLEVER SONGWRITING FROM PDX’S FAVORED SON
CASEY
+LINDSAY FULLER $10 ADVANCE FRIDAY DAY JANUARY 7 SUBLIME SYNTH-POP FROM SWEDISH BUZZ-BUILDERS
PAPER or PLASTIC
HUTSON +AM EXCHANGE THURSDAY JANUARY • $6 ADVANCE A HONKY-TONK EVENING WITH PDX RABBLE-ROUSERS
THE
TUMBLERS SATURDAY DAY JANUARY 8
Horton Heat’s first original collection since 2004, layered on the outlaw shtick too broadly through too many nashville-adjacent idioms (without a hint of former psychobilly freakouts) for lazily niche effect. It wasn’t so long ago the Reverend seemed to hit town every other month supporting new albums of blistering cow-punk instrumentals and barroom singalongs too clever by half, Jim Heath juggling West texas lounge patter and signature Gretsch licks while erstwhile sidekick Jimbo twirled upright bass as drum-majorette baton. During that late-’90s final flowering of FM eclecticism, even the gaudiest flourishes and most ornery whimsy— famously showcasing “Interracial cowboy Homo Kinda Love” as pinktriangle-projected setlist staple to thin the encroaching new country herds—could still nudge mainstream success through unending tours of schizo muse. that, sigh, was showbiz. JAY HoRton. Wonder Ballroom. 9 pm. $12. 21+.
A CO-HEADLINE EVENING OF FEROCIOUS ROCK ACTION
DEAD MEADOW
FRIDAY, DEC. 31 Pierced Arrows, The Estranged, Don’t, Hairspray Blues
See music feature, page 22.Ash Street Saloon. 9:30 pm. $8. 21+.
The Shaky Hands, Boy Eats Drum Machine, Vanimal
LITTLE
POP NUGGETS FROM RISING PDX SINGER/SONGWRITER
DON DIVISION STREET
DRAGON
+BILLYGOAT MONDAY JANUARY 10 •
OF
$13 ADVANCE
HAUNTINGLY ANGELIC LO-FI FOLK FROM MINNEAPOLIS DUO
PETER WOLF CRIER
+LITTLE HURRICANE FRIDAY DAY JANUARY 14 • $10 ADVANCE
OLD LIGHT
+MEYERCORD
THURSDAY JANUARY 13 •
$7 ADVANCE
JOEY PORTER’S TRIBUTE TO STEVIE WONDER 1/16
BOBBY LONG 1/31 THE BLOW 2/2 VERSUS 2/25 ASOBI SEKSU 3/6
JOEY PORTER’S TRIBUTE TO STEVIE WONDER 1/15 • CROCODILES 1/18 • THE HANDSOME FAMILY 1/21 ON THE STAIRS (CD RELEASE) 1/22 • FREE ENERGY 1/26 • HURTBIRD 1/27 • DERBY 1/28 THE PRIDS 1/29 • THE NELS CLINE SINGERS WITH YUKA C. HONDA 1/30 • BOBBY LONG 1/31 AADVANCE TICKETS AT TICKETSWEST 503-224-TIXX - www.ticketswest.com, MUSIC MILLENNIUM, JACKPOT RECORDS • SUBJECT TO SERVICE CHARGE &/OR USER FEE ALL SHOWS: 8PM DOORS / 9PM SHOW• 21+ UNLESS NOTED • BOX OFFICE OPENS 1/2 HOUR BEFORE DOORS • ROOM PACKAGES AVAILABLE AT www.jupiterhotel.com
24
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
[HURRIcAnE Jon] With a work rate just as frenetic as his sound, Jon Ragel turned out two more strong records this year in 20 Beats and Hoop and Wire. Portland’s resident poly-instrumentalist boasts a musical multitasking ability not seen since Dr. Seuss. only, Ragel’s abilities are not make-believe; he really is pounding on a tom-tom while scratching, singing and sneaking in a sax solo or two. BEDM probably won’t let up next year, which is wonderful news since his busy, sample-lovin’, trip-hop ways require unblinking eyes. Stick around to greet 2011 with the Shaky Hands. MARK StocK. Backspace. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. All ages.
Five Fingers of Funk, Philly’s Phunkestra, DJ Scott O
See primer, page 23. Berbati’s Pan. 9 pm. $25. 21+.
Lazer Sword, Eliot Lipp, Virtual Boy, Tyler Tastemaker
[EcLEctRonIcA] Appropriately for a pair of producers described with nonsense genre tags like “slaptop,” “blap” and “turbo crunk,” the selftitled debut from Lazer Sword sounds like a mixtape somebody loaded with c4 and exploded in the atmosphere. Shards of hip-hop, ’80s electro and dubstep float around in a hyperkinetic, neon-colored orbit, kept adrift by the duo’s quirky dance sensibilities and 8-bit fetishism. Even though a large chunk of the band’s influences go back two decades, this is a post-modern groove record that could’ve only come about in the Internet era. MAttHEW SInGER. Branx. 9 pm. $20. 21+.
Crooked Fingers, Heligoats
[LEt tHE LoSER MELt] With the ever-persistent rumors of Archers of Loaf finally reuniting, it’s about time we consider Eric Bachmann’s work as crooked Fingers for what it is: some of the finest folk rock produced in the past decade. While it may not be as hooky or catchy as early Archers work like Icky Mettle, Bachmann’s recent output embodies indie rock’s shift from the guitar crunch of the ’90s to a lush, orchestrated world colored with everything but a guitar. this year crooked Fingers released the vinylonly Reservoir Songs Volume II, a collection of covers from the likes of Merle Haggard and Billy Joe Shaver. Expect to hear some of those songs tonight, along with AoL classics like “Harnessed in Slums” and “Web in Front.” All Bachmann ever wanted was to be your spine. MIcHAEL MAnnHEIMER. Bunk Bar. 10 pm. $12 at the door. 21+.
Floater, Iceland
[cHRIStMAS RocK] Floater has too many regional hits to power through to play a set of holiday standards, and even if that weren’t the case, it’s hard to imagine these guys— thoughtfully agnostic and irreverent in the Portland tradition, even if their music stands at odds with much of the twee indie pop this city is known for—dressing up in Santa suits. And for Floater fans, that’s a good thing. Energetic versions of bouncy rock tunes like “Danny Boy” or “An Apology” are probably far more welcome than the band’s take on “Winter Wonderland” (a song with its merits, granted). And seeing Floater in an intimate space like Dante’s—intimate both in size and in the romantic sense, if you’re into
flames and shit—is a special treat for new Year’s Eve, especially with a little boozin’ and smokin’ beforehand. Portland upstart Iceland, opening things up tonight, sounds like Joy Division with some extra riffage. cASEY JARMAn. Dante’s. 9 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
Weinland’s New Year’s Eve Supergroup, Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside, DJ Safi
[coVER ME BADD] Did you manage to catch Weinland’s packed new Year’s Eve extravaganza last year at the Mission theater? If you answered no, then you missed a hell of a bash that included not only a set of Weinland’s own upbeat tunes, but also a raucous series of partystarting covers, for which the band’s numbers swelled up to 25! Weinland had so much fun, in fact, that this year it is going back for seconds. But with Sallie Ford & the Sound outside also on the bill, this show is guaranteed to be even more riotous and rowdy than the last—after all, 2010’s Best new Band winner really has something to celebrate as the year draws to a close. REBEccA RABER. Doug Fir Lounge. $15 advance, $17 day of show. 21+.
Shanghai Woolies
[GHoSt oF BEnnY GooDMAn] By the 1930s, America was ready for a resounding upswing, anything outside of the doldrums of the Great Depression. In 2010 we find ourselves in a similar place, sick of the slump and craving, say, the bright, jazzy, jitterbug sounds of Shanghai Woolies. the Portland band, led by Gavin Bondy (Pink Martini), is the stifled bliss of several long years, escaping in the form of shuffling bass lines, gingery brass and the muggy, piano-top vocals of Khilmony Downs. Put on your pillbox hats, find the gin and shuffle to the fact that the darkness is behind us. MARK StocK. Heathman Restaurant & Bar. 7 pm. $135 (includes five-course meal). 21+.
Strength, We Like Cats, Benoît Pioulard, DJ Beyondadoubt, DJ Copy, DJ Zac Eno, Sex Life DJs
[FUtURE SEX/LoVE SoUnDS] If you’re looking to celebrate new Year’s Eve by getting down on the dance floor, then this is the party
cont. on page 26
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
25
friday - tuesday
for you. Holocene has lined up a choice roster of local DJs—including Copy, who will step out from behind his keytar to hit the decks—and live acts to keep the crowd moving all night. Though Benoît Pioulard’s lovelyyet-contemplative experimental soundscapes will nicely set the mood early in the evening, the dub reggae of We Like Cats (which is playing only its second live show) and Strength’s disco-fueled sex jams will really get the party going. With so much sweat and sex appeal under one roof, if you don’t end up kissing anyone at midnight, you’ll have only yourself to blame. REBECCA RABER. Holocene. 8 pm. $12. 21+.
Two Beers Veirs’ New Year’s, Jackstraw See music feature, page 22. LaurelThirst. 9 pm. $20. 21+.
Helio Sequence, Ramona Falls, Dirty Mittens
See music feature, page 22. Mississippi Studios. 9 pm. $22 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
Andre Nickatina, Paul Wall, The Jacka, Smoov-E, Cool Nutz
See music feature, page 22. Roseland Theater. 8 pm. $55. All ages.
Richmond Fontaine, Jerry Joseph, Jesta
See Wednesday listing. Mount Tabor Theater. 9 pm. $35. 21+.
Pure Country Gold, The Pity Fucks, The Sons o’ Bitches
[PARTY PUNK] We like the Mean Jeans and Pure Country Gold so much that we almost forget there’s a whole living, breathing, beer-burping punkrock scene in Portland that often flies under the radar. Expect PCG’s performance to be way too loud, blisteringly fast and full of subtle-for-punk melodic maneuvering. But in addition, tonight’s special Slabtown New Year’s Eve features rock action from the down and dirty, organ-driven Pity Fucks (who’ll remind you of FEAR minus the saxophone and weird flag-waving if you give them a few songs) and country/ bar-rock punks the Sons o’ Bitches. All three bands share a good sense of humor, a taste for cheap beer and a love for playing free shows at Portland’s best pinball bar, Slabtown. CASEY JARMAN. Slabtown. 9 pm. Free. All ages.
Caleb Klauder Band with Betse Ellis and Josh Rabie
See music feature, page 22. The Spare Room. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Federale
[THE BAND WITH ONE NAME] Last New Year’s Eve, Federale held its own with the Builders & the Butchers at an increasingly rare Portland smallvenue set at Mississippi Studios. This year, the Portland posse headlines the Knife Shop, and what better way to send 2010, bloodied, down a dusty trail? Federale creates searing scores to nonexistent spaghetti western films, complete with steam-engine rhythms and screaming eagles. It sounds odd for the biggest party night of the year, but Federale’s mastery would make Ennio Morricone proud, and once the music starts, it’s hard to resist the urge to don a battered poncho, raise some hell and bring home the first prostitute in sight. AP KRYZA. The Knife Shop. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
The Parson Red Heads, Zoe Muth and the Lost High Rollers, The Lord’s Own Choir
[FOLK POP] Some bands move to Portland as an ill-advised business decision, and some move here because they find a spiritual connection to the place. I’d like to think the Parson Red Heads, who came to Portland this year after much flirting with the city, fit the latter descriptions. The band’s rich, sweet, harmony-laden pop certainly fits sleepy Portland better than one would imagine it fitting in let’sdo-lunch Los Angeles—and there are enough beards to get the collective through the wet Portland winter.
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They’ve even adopted a club, the White Eagle, as their own. And while I had us pegged as more of a Bob Dylan town than a Tom Petty town, tonight’s show—which finds the Red Heads covering Petty’s suitably resigned 1994 album Wildflowers in its entirety—is still a very special New Year’s Eve treat for the band’s growing local fanbase. We imagine widespread applause at Petty’s assorted references to getting high. CASEY JARMAN. White Eagle. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
SATURDAY, JAN. 1 And I Was Like, What?, Girlfriends, The Jezebel Spirit
[ODD FUTURE] It’s a lineup that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but this bill offers a peek at three examples of what might be the future of the Portland music scene. Despite its unfortunate name, And I Was Like, What? plays mature, indie poptinged Americana. Girlfriends, Jerry Joiner’s one-man project, match Afropop guitars with caterwauling cheers worthy of a snottier Go Team—and have a song called “Brobocop.” Finally, post-rockers the Jezebel Spirit roll through spindly, mathy instrumentals. None has much in common, other than being bands people could be talking about around here really soon. MATTHEW SINGER. Ash Street Saloon. 9:30 pm. $5. 21+.
And And And, Archers, Forest Park, The Ocean Floor, Seacats
[FOND FAREWELL] Operating for just over two years, local production company Potlatch Presents has been an influential player in the Portland music scene since day one. But sadly, all things must pass, and Potlatch is hosting one final show to ring in the new year and celebrate some of its favorite bands. Surely the headliners, And And And and Archers, shouldn’t be missed—they are easily my two favorite new Portland bands of the past year—but show up early to see Forest Park’s epic soundscapes, the Ocean Floor’s twinkling pop, and Seacats’ hand clap-led power pop. We’ll miss you, Potlatch. Thanks for the memories. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Backspace. 7 pm. Free. All ages.
Ramadanman, Lincolnup, Ben Tactic
[CRITICAL SOUNDS] While the rest of us are catching up with dubstep—that wobbly cousin of jungle and dub—the best electronica producers and performers have moved well past that pit stop. In fact, many are backtracking for pastures that have been considerably picked over but are still verdant. Ramadanman (David Kennedy to his mum) is one who is grazing through jungle’s skipping drum beats and bringing with him the blip and slap of electro and a bit of hip-hop’s underlying swagger. Tonight marks the young London-based producer-DJ’s first time in Portland. A warm welcome is much deserved. ROBERT HAM. Holocene. 9 pm. $5 advance, $7 day of show. 21+.
Ludicra, Christian Mistress, Atriarch
[MOVING ON UP] Ludicra has been one of those acts that is well respected by other metal bands, and those metal fans who know how to dig deep for the wheat hidden amid the chaff. Hopefully 2011 will be the year the San Francisco-based quintet finally gets its due. Hampered on its last tour by the burst appendix of guitarist John Cobbett and having to throw together a series of dates at the last minute after a lucrative opening slot fell through, 2010 was a little rough on Ludicra, even though it was also the year that saw the release of the band’s finest effort to date: the brutally beautiful The Tenant. ROBERT HAM. Mississippi Studios. 9 pm. $12. 21+.
X
[TRUE PUNK LEGENDS] At this point, calling Los Angeles punk band X “the best American band most Americans have never heard” isn’t really true—I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but this thing called the Internet makes listening to
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
even the most obscure tune pretty easy. Still, let’s not discount the influence that John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake had—and still have—on the landscape of American rock music. By combining oft-kilter vocal harmonies with dashes of rockabilly, country music and lyrics that read more like poetry than bad love clichés, X made it OK for punks to move beyond three-chord songs and embrace experimentation. It’s crazy to think the band’s landmark debut, Los Angeles, was released 30 years ago—and X is celebrating the occasion by playing the record track-fortrack, followed by a set of its other hits and holiday classics and a screening of 1986 documentary X: The Unheard Music. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Roseland. 8 pm. $20. All ages.
COLUMN M YS PAC E .CO M
MUSIC
Mahmoud Ahmed with Tezeta Band
[LIVING LEGEND] Mahmoud Ahmed started off in the Ethiopian music world as humbly as you can: shining shoes and running errands at a nightclub in Addis Ababa. One night when the evening’s singer didn’t show, Ahmed talked his way on stage. He eventually took over as the group’s singer, recording his first single in 1971. He has since become a legend in his home country and beloved by music fans worldwide for his soulful voice, which moves with the swing of a doo-wop singer while gently riding the wandering melodies that mark so much of East Africa’s best pop. Don’t miss your chance to see this icon in person. ROBERT HAM. T-A Event Center. 10 pm. $35. 21+.
MONDAY, JAN. 3 Typhoon, Wampire, Breakfast Mountain, The Reservations
[PORTLAND PASTICHE] Typhoon had quite a good year in 2010. From releasing the acclaimed full-length Hunger and Thirst to national fanfare, crowding the stage this month with a 16-piece Portland Cello Project, to opening for international superstars Belle & Sebastian at the Schnitz, it’s clear the local big-band folk outfit is on a meteoric trajectory. Sometimes playing with up to 12 people, this personnel-heavy project will continue to rise in 2011 by starting off the year headlining a diverse blend of local acts for Holocene booker Gina Altamura’s birthday. Whether you like woozy pop, expansive beats or R&B-inflected rock, you’ll find it on this microcosmic bill. KEVIN DAVIS. Holocene. 8:30 pm. $5. All ages.
TUESDAY, JAN. 4 Wolves in the Throne Room, thee.casualty.company, Wilderness, Druden
[NORTHWEST ECO-METAL] There are a lot of bands that mix furious black metal with ambient passages, but few do it with as much precision as Olympia outfit Wolves in the Throne Room. We’re talking about two sides of a coin here; Wolves in the Throne Room don’t so much fuse the ethereal with the cathartic as they blend ’em into one seamless, relentless whole. It’s Cascadian thinking people’s metal, best experienced live, where you can’t press fast forward on your CD player or laptop whenever a song drags on for a little too long. The band’s two 2009 EPs (Malevolent Grain and Black Cascade) hinted at something beyond the metal genre, and while not every song worked, it showed that being adventurous is usually a good thing. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Branx. 8 pm. $10. All ages.
BERBATI’S PAN, 1995-2010 Two weeks ago, the Florence, Ore., house I grew up in—which even in my fondest memories has a sagging, moss-covered roof; crooked floors and cracked windows—collapsed completely in what I’m told was “a mild windstorm.” The pictures of the wreckage were a bit of a shock (luckily, the current owners, who had been nobly attempting to remodel, were gone at the time), but I can’t say I shed a tear. That house, as the old cliché goes, was no longer home. I only bring up the wreck at 274 Harbor St. because it reminds me just how much I care about the club at 213 SW Ankeny St. Berbati’s Pan, the 15-year-old downtown venue that goes dark after New Year’s Eve, has often felt more like home to me than the six places I’ve lived in as many years since I moved to Portland. I’ve been to the club in many capacities—as a music critic, a show host, a performer and a fan. It’s not a perfect venue—the U-shaped room with support beams in the line of sight is chattier, dirtier and generally less convenient than a handful of younger Portland music clubs—but all of those things give it character that a new generation of pristine Portland venues don’t generally share…not yet, at least. Berbati’s also has what I consider to be the best sound in Portland. That’s a position some techies may take issue with—and I’m not savvy enough to speak to the system’s technical merits. But having seen at least a hundred shows there in the past six years—a list of my favorites would include the Hold Steady/Constantines date in 2005 and Spiritualized in 2008, as well as a handful of local hip-hop showcases and Best New Band celebrations over the years—I am convinced that Berbati’s gets it right more often than anyone else. For that, Portland owes a huge pat on the back to Dave Hite, the club’s primary soundman for over a decade. I called him up to thank him myself, thinking I might get a choked-up farewell quote and a few trade secrets. But Hite, composed and businesslike, didn’t crack— instead dropping a handful of technical specs. “I’ve brought it up from being a three-way mono system to being a four-way stereo system,” he said the way a proud father talks about teaching his kid to ride a bike. “We went from two monitor mixes to four monitor mixes.” But some lessons were clearer than others. “Trying to get a soundcheck in an empty room is a challenge, but I kinda developed a technique to do that. It’s always going to sound better at showtime,” he said. “And you try to instill that confidence in a band.” Hite—who used to play with the PA system at his church when he was a kid and admits he needs to study up a bit on digital equipment— hasn’t devoted much thought to where he’ll wind up after New Year’s Eve. The decidedly old-school soundman has spent so much time in his own club that he doesn’t have an ideal Portland club to wind up at. “I did a night at Doug Fir, and it’s a great room, but I don’t see it rocking the way I like to rock,” he said. “It’s a little more subtle in there.” I asked Hite what he’ll miss most about his time at Berbati’s. “It was fun,” he said. “I got a lot of props from bands onstage…I felt kinda like part of the family.” Not the choked-up farewell I had hoped for, perhaps—but what can you really say when your house collapses? CASEY JARMAN. Saying goodbye to Portland’s bestsounding venue.
SPOTLIGHT
CAMERONBROWNE.COM
MUSIC
LIVE MUSIC FULL BAR FOOD FUN
Thursday Dec 30th
Curtis Salgado / Alan Hager Duo 8pm NEW YEARS EVE
OFFBEAT BELLY DANCE 7pm BROTHERS OF BALADI 9pm Special January 1st new years day show
Devin Phillips Band 9pm KEEPING PORTLAND AWKWARD: For years, the Egyptian Room enjoyed consistent patronage from Portland’s lesbian community. But as is the case for any business catering to a single demographic, times are tough. Thus, under the same ownership, the E-Room transformed itself into a more accessible iteration now known as Weird Bar (3701 SE Division St., 236-8689, weirdbar.com). The oversized club boasts three bars in one building, but it struggles to get even one of them right. The bright coat of purple and green paint out front does look pretty “weird,” but blinding interior lighting, mediocre drink prices and seldom-used beer pong table will leave most casual visitors feeling a bit alienated. Draft pints of PBR for $1.50 are a nice touch, but they’re not enough to make up for the $12 drink specials (however massive they may be). Perhaps years of love and drinking (and love of drinking) will breathe charm and true oddity into this place, but for now, the only “weird” thing about this bar is just how awkward it feels to hang out there. KEVIN DAVIS.
ALADDIN THEATER 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694 ALBERTA ROSE THEATRE 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055 ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL 1037 SW Broadway., 248-4335 ARTISTERY 4315 SE Division St., 803-5942 ASH STREET SALOON 225 SW Ash St., 226-0430 BACKSPACE 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900 BEAUTY BAR 111 SW Ash Street., 224-0773 BERBATI’S PAN 231 SW Ankeny St., 248-4579 BLUE MONK 3341 SE Belmont St., 595-0575 BOSSANOVA BALLROOM 722 E Burnside St., 206-7630 BRANX 320 SE 2nd Ave., 234-5683 BUNK BAR 1028 SE Water Ave., CROWN ROOM 205 NW 4th Ave., 222-6655 CRYSTAL BALLROOM 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047 DANTE’S 1 SW 3rd Ave., 226-6630 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., 236-2876 EAST END 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056 ELEMENT RESTAURANT 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 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 KENNEDY SCHOOL 5736 NE 33rd Ave., 249-3983 KNOW 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729 LAURELTHIRST PUBLIC HOUSE 2958 NE Glisan St., 232-1504 MISSION THEATER 1624 NW Glisan St., 223-4527 MISSISSIPPI PIZZA 3552 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3231 MISSISSIPPI STUDIOS 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895
MOUNT TABOR THEATER 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd., PLAN B 1305 SE 8th Ave., 230-9020 PRESS CLUB 2621 SE Clinton St., 233-5656 RED ROOM 2530 NE 82nd Ave., 256-3399 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., T-A EVENT CENTER 300 NE Multnomah., THE KNIFE SHOP 426 SW Washington St., 228-3669 THE SARATOGA 6910 N Interstate Ave., 719-5924 THE SPARE ROOM 4830 NE 42nd Ave., 287-5800 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 TONY STARLIGHT’S 3728 NE Sandy Blvd., 517-8584 TUBE 18 NW 3rd Ave., 241-8823 VALENTINE’S 232 SW Ankeny St., 248-1600 WHITE EAGLE 836 N Russell St., 282-6810 WONDER BALLROOM 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686
Sunday Jan 3rd
Kevin Van Geem Quintet 7:30pm every tuesday - steel drum band 8pm every wed - Arabesque & Belly Dance 8 PM
music 6 nights a week Portland’s best happy hour 5-7 upstairs • 6-8 downstairs All day sunday 3341 SE Belmont thebluemonk.com 503-595-0575
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 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 22 | clublist 27 For more listings, check out blogs.wweek.com/music/calendar/
Alberta Rose Theatre Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons, Jenny Conlee, Blue Skies for Black Hearts
Alberta Street Public House
Suck My Open Mic With Tamara J. Brown
Ella Street Social Club
Holy Children, Downtown Tramps, The Singing Knives
Fire on the Mountain Joe McMurrian
Goodfoot
Susurrus, Wax Edison, Almost Dark
Hawthorne Theater Lounge
Aloft
Rockstar Karaoke
Andina
The Bumpin Nastys, Keel Over, Ol Devols, A Blinding Silence
The Andre St. James Trio Toshi Onizuka
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club Cubaneo
Ash Street Saloon
Sarah Billings Band, Aria, Sharaya Mikael
Beaterville Cafe
Lowell John Mitchell
Beauty Bar
Baby Ketten Karaoke
Biddy McGraw’s Little Sue
Hawthorne Theatre
Heathman Restaurant & Bar Key of Dreams
Jimmy Mak’s
The Mel Brown Quartet (8 pm); Tree Palmedo (6:30 pm)
Kells
Irish Sessions
Know
Bo Asian Bistro
Boom!, White Fang, DJ Ken Dirtnap
Brasserie Montmartre
LaurelThirst Public House
Jenna Ellefson
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Scott Law, Paul Benoit, Tony Furtado (9 pm); Scott Law (6 pm)
Camellia Lounge
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Kit Taylor
Buffalo Band Stand Tracy Brown
Dante’s
Jedi Mindf*ck
Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen
Laura Cunard and Guests
Doug Fir Lounge
Reva DeVito, New York Rifles, Barry Brusseau
Duff’s Garage
Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); Chris Miller Band (6 pm)
Dunes
Rank Xerox
Water Tower Bucket Boys
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Michael Dean Damron
Mississippi Pizza Mr. Ben
Mississippi Studios
Kasey Anderson, Lewi Longmire, Star Anna
Mount Tabor Theater Home for the Holidays
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge Gabby Holt and the Hedges
New Year’s Eve Party
[DEC. 29 - JAN. 4]
Plan B
“Northside to the Bridge” - Skate Video Premier!!!
Press Club
Swing Papillon
Pub at the End of the Universe
Biddy McGraw’s Morgan Grace
Brasserie Montmartre Mike Horsfall
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Acoustic Attic: Darren Johnson Effort
Pat Buckley
Know
Bird’s Mile Home
LaurelThirst Public House
Ridgerunner Summit: Jim Boyer, Billy Kennedy, Lynn Conover (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
Someday Lounge
Dookie Jam, Tony Ozier
The Country Inn Dub DeBrie Jam
The Spare Room Karaoke
Twilight Cafe & Bar The Kinky Brothers, Olivia’s Pool, Laura Ivancie
Vino Vixens 6bq9
The Dwarves, Zeke, P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S.
Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen
Ron Steen Invitational Jazz Jam Session
Doug Fir Lounge Lissie, Guests
Duff’s Garage
Arlie Conner & The Bathtub Toasters
The Crash Engine
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Tiger Bar
Gatekeeper, Soft Metals, Sick Jaggers
Tony Starlight’s
Ella Street Social Club
Twilight Cafe & Bar
Fire on the Mountain
Mexican Gunfight
Wilfs Restaurant
THURS. DEC. 30 Alberta Rose Theatre
The Everyone Orchestra
Andina
Na Mesa
Artichoke Community Music Songwriter Roundup
Ash Street Saloon
Yardarms, Animal R and R, Tiger House
Beaterville Cafe
D.C. Malone & the Jones
Berbati’s Pan
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Tragedy
Mississippi Studios Oh Darling, Climber, Bryan Free
Mock Crest Tavern
D.C. Malone Open Mic & Jammin’
Mount Tabor Theater
The Sale
Karaoke Kings
Wilfs Restaurant
Sean Holmes, Fred Stickley Lew Jones
Reverend Horton Heat, I Can Lick Any S.O.B. in the House, Larry and His Flask
Oak Grove Tavern Open Mic
Original Halibut’s Terry Robb
Funk-Jazz Jam Session Lily, Devil Riding Shotgun, Keel Over, Lamprey The Bangovers, Child Children, Mills Lane, Go F#%K Yerself, Junio Muere
Rotture
Problems?, Corpus Callosum, Like a Villain, toyboat toyboat toyboat
Sellwood Public House Open Mic Night
The Mel Brown B3 Organ Band
FRI. DEC. 31 Aladdin Theater Brandi Carlile
Alberta Rose Theatre
ADAM KRUEGER
Rockstar Karaoke
Heathman Restaurant & Bar Holocene
Strength, We Like Cats, Benoît Pioulard, DJ Beyondadoubt, DJ Copy, DJ Zac Eno, Sex Life DJs New Year’s Eve Celebration with Linda Hornbuckle New Year’s Eve Show
Kennedy School
Andina
LaurelThirst Public House
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall Pink Martini
Artistery
Japanther, White Fang, Boom!
Backspace
The Shaky Hands, Boy Eats Drum Machine, Vanimal
Beaterville Cafe
The Broken Meters
Beauty Bar
New Years Eve party!
Berbati’s Pan
Five Fingers of Funk, Philly’s Phunkestra, DJ Scott O
Biddy McGraw’s
Funk Shui NYE Party (9:30 pm); Billy Kennedy & Jimmy Boyer (6 pm)
Bossanova Ballroom MAST Clients
Branx
Lazer Sword, Eliot Lipp, Virtual Boy, Tyler Tastemaker
Brasserie Montmartre
Shelly Rudolph & Chance Hayden
Buffalo Gap Saloon
New Year’s Eve Party with Ill Lucid Onset, HEMA
Bunk Bar
Crooked Fingers, Heligoats
LEARNING TO FLY: Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside play Friday, Dec. 31, at Doug Fir.
The Barkers
Aloft
Pierced Arrows, The Estranged, Don’t, Hairspray Blues
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
Karaoke
The Breakfast Club, Freak Mountain Ramblers
Danny Romero Trio
Clyde’s Prime Rib Cool Breeze
Volifonix, Twisted Whistle, Doc Ocular, Mark Brut and Friends
O’Connor’s Vault
Dave Fleschner Trio
Oak Grove Tavern
Motorbreath, Excavator
Original Halibut’s
Jim Wallace and the House Cats
Plan B
Poison Idea, Antiworld, Noel Austin, All Out
Pub at the End of the Universe Fruition, The Bellboys, Robots on Crack, DJ kelbel
Red Room
Betrayed By Weakness, No Regard, The Ascendents, Aethyrium
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery Jon Davidson
Roseland
Gypsy Restaurant and Lounge
Kells
Tracy Kim Trio
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Pure Country Gold, The Pity Fucks, The Sons o’ Bitches
Tworivers Songwriters Showcase
Alberta Street Public House
Gordon Neal Herman Trio
Jerry Joseph, Richmond Fontaine, Jesta
Great Hall Restaurant
Jimmy Mak’s
Buster Blue, Left Coast Country
Mount Tabor Theater
Andre Nickatina, Paul Wall, The Jacka, Smoov-E, Cool Nutz
New Year’s Eve with Storm Large and Holcombe Waller (10:30 & 7:30 pm)
Ash Street Saloon
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Scott Pemberton Superband, Soul Stew DJs
Shanghai Woolies
Lauren Sheehan
Red Room
Jimmy Mak’s
Garcia Birthday Band (9:30 pm); Lincoln Crockett Electric Trio (5:30 pm)
Goodfoot
Hawthorne Theater Lounge
Hawthorne Theatre
Johnny Martin Trio
White Eagle
Scrafford Orser
Wonder Ballroom
Plan B
Heathman Restaurant & Bar
Vulpine Slips, Option B, The Smoking Mirrors, Hall Trash
New Years Eve Party!!!
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Hawthorne Theater Lounge
The Mustaches, Blue Reign, Land of Pines, Cancer Pinata, City Stars Foundation, Jack DeVore, DotCom, Ran dom Thoughts
Lisa Forkish
Hawthorne Hophouse
Paddy’s Bar & Grill
Savoir Faire Burlesque
Karaoke From Hell
East End
Wine Down East
Hawthorne Hophouse Runs With Banjo
Miller & Sasser
Jerry Joseph, Hillstomp
Muddy Rudder Public House
Gypsy Restaurant and Lounge
Ron Steen, Lauren Shusterich, Greg Goebel, Dennis Caiazza
Stumptown Jug Thumpers (9 pm); The Satisfied Minds (6 pm)
Goodfoot
White Eagle
Melville, Libbie Schrader
Renegade Minstrels
7th Planet Picture Show, Open Mic Comedy
The Quick and Easy Boys, Devin Phillips Band
Weinland’s New Year’s Eve Supergroup, Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside, DJ Safi
The World Famous Kenton Club
Ella Street Social Club Buoy LaRue, Jon Garcia
Datura Blues, Dana Buoy (feat. members of Akron/Family), Dave Lindenbaum
Jay Harris and the Moon By Night Trio
John Bunzow
Mississippi Pizza
The Martyrs, SexyWaterSpiders, The Hugs, Tiger House
The Knife Shop
Doug Fir Lounge
Papa Dynamite & the Jive, Meta Sound, Blue Iris
East Burn
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Chapel Pub Dante’s
Doc George’s Jazz Kitchen
DK Stewart Sextet, Steve Kerin
Camellia Lounge Steve Kerin
Slim’s
Jim Mesi and Ed Neumann
Red Room Rotture
Dante’s
The Spare Room
McMenamins-Grand Lodge
Open Mic
Keith Sweat and Mint Condition, Tracy Harris, Mike Phillips
Duff’s Garage
Byron & Shelly, Andrew Grade
Hikaru Okada
Crystal Ballroom
Floater, Iceland
Kells
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
WED. DEC. 29
Crown Room
Two Beers Veirs’ New Year’s, Jackstraw
Local Lounge
Noah Peterson Soul-Tet
McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse Stevi Marie & Jackson Road
McMenamins Edgefield The Strange Tones, Intervision, Tara Williamson Band
McMenamins Edgefield Winery Tara Williamson Band with guest James Faretheewell
McMenamins Hotel Oregon
Big Mama Gayle & Her Sugar Daddies, Dave Clarke & Jimmy Robb
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern The Brothers Jam
McMenamins-Grand Lodge
Slabtown
Slim’s
Rok Choy
Someday Lounge
Runaway Productions Presents... Prince Vs. Michael, DJ Dave Paul
The Knife Shop Federale
The Spare Room
The Caleb Klauder Country Band with Betse Ellis and Josh Rabie
The Twilight Room
Karaoke With the Captain
The World Famous Kenton Club
Thee Headliners, Lana Rebel, Guests
Tonic Lounge
New Year’s Eve: The Band Who Fell to Earth (David Bowie Tribute)
Tony Starlight’s
The Best of the Tony Starlight Show
Twilight Cafe & Bar The Proud and the Damned, Southpaw, Deathproof
White Eagle
The Parson Red Heads performing Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers,” Zoe Muth and the Lost High Rollers, The Lord’s Own Choir (9 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant
Tony Pacini Trio with Rebecca Kilgore
SAT. JAN. 1 Andina
Toshi Onizuka Trio
Ash Street Saloon
And I Was Like, What?, Girlfriends, The Jezebel Spirit
Augustana Lutheran Church
Augustana Jazz Quartet
Backspace
The Insomniacs, John Bunzow & Bobby Cole, Will West & The Friendly Strangers
And And And, Archers, Forest Park, The Ocean Floor, Seacats
Mission Theater
Beaterville Cafe
Langhorne Slim and the Law, Sassparilla, Jessi Adele
Mississippi Pizza
The Jim Jams (10 pm); Mo Phillips (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
Helio Sequence, Ramona Falls, Dirty Mittens
Mock Crest Tavern Donna and the Side Effects
Carolina Pump Station
Biddy McGraw’s
Rob Stroup & The Blame (9:30 pm); Twisted Whistle (5 pm)
Buffalo Gap Saloon Karaoke
Goodfoot
Devin Phillips Band
Gypsy Restaurant and Lounge Karaoke
Hawthorne Theatre
Tigress, The Welcome Home, She’s Not Dead, The Last Department
Holocene
Ramadanman, Lincolnup, Ben Tactic
Jolly Roger Will Bradley
Lola’s Room at the crystal Ballroom
Mimi’s Choice Birthday Bash: Fruition, The Bellboys, Hives Inquiry Squad, Laura Ivancie, Pocket, DJ Kelbel
McMenamins edgefield Winery Lisa Forkish Trio
McMenamins Hotel oregon Will West & The Friendly Strangers
McMenamins Rock creek Tavern
Garcia Birthday Band
McMenamins-Grand Lodge Renegade Minstrels
Mississippi Studios Ludicra, Christian Mistress, Atriarch
Mount Tabor Theater The Quick and Easy Boys
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge Dementia
Red Room
Perserverance, Perihelion X
Roseland
T-A event center
Mahmoud Ahmed with Tezeta Band
The Knife Shop
Keep Portland Funny
The Saratoga Besties
Twilight cafe & Bar Walter Mitty
White eagle
Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
Star Bar
Karaoke That Doesn’t Suck Presented by Down Under Rock
The Knife Shop
Swing Dance Night
Sun. JAn. 2 Alberta Rose Theatre Sultans of Slide
Andina
Danny Romero
Ash Street Saloon
Acidious Mutandis, Spear Induced Carnage, Deth Proof
Bishop creek cellars/ urban Wineworks east Noir Notes
Blue Monk
Kevin Van Geem Quintet
clyde’s Prime Rib
Ron Steen Jazz Jam
dante’s
Sinferno Cabaret
Hawthorne Theater Lounge Vanessa Rogers
Hawthorne Theatre
Buster Blue, Sharaya Mikael, Stephanie Selcza, Kent Anderson, Moos & Mike
LaurelThirst Public House Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott (9 pm); Freak Mountain Ramblers (6 pm)
McMenamins edgefield Winery Jon Koonce
McMenamins Rock creek Tavern
Kathryn Claire & Hanz Araki
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Rockabilly Lounge with Kyle Black
Muddy Rudder Public House Irish
White eagle
Open Mic/Songwriter Showcase
Muddy Rudder Public House
Ground Kontrol
Lloyd Jones
Rock Band Tuesdays: with MC Destructo
o’connor’s Vault
Jimmy Mak’s
Julie and the Boy
The Knife Shop
Leafeater, Reeds Mill Investigation, The Fictioneers
Andina
Scott Head
Ash Street Saloon Open Mic
Backspace
Eric Tonsfeldt
dante’s
Karaoke From Hell
duff’s Garage Lily Wilde
Goodfoot
Sonic Forum Open Mic
Holocene
Typhoon, Wampire, Breakfast Mountain, The Reservations
Jimmy Mak’s
The Dan Balmer Band (8 pm); Tree Palmedo (6:30 pm)
Know
Assimilated to Machines, Caulfield, In Desperation, DJ Just Dave
LaurelThirst Public House
Kung Pao Chickens (9 pm); Little Sue & Lynn Conover (6 pm)
Laurelwood nW Public House
Magical Musical Weekly
McMenamins edgefield Winery
Skip vonKuske’s “The Guest List” with Will West
McMenamins Rock creek Tavern Bob Shoemaker
Matador
DJ Donny Don’t
The Mel Brown Septet (8 pm); Javier Nero (6 pm)
Justa Pasta
Radio Room DJ Lo-Fi
Wed. dec. 29 crown Room
Eric John Kaiser Hosts The PDX Songwriter Showcase
LaurelThirst Public House
east end
White eagle
Living Room Theaters
Tiger House, Alex Arrowsmith & His Pugs, F. Scott
Jackstraw
Frightening Waves of Blue
Local Lounge
Battery Powered Music
Biddy McGraw’s
DJ Rainbow Pudding
Anson Wright & Tim Gilson
Thirsty Lion
Mon. JAn. 3
Ground Kontrol
TueS. JAn. 4 Andina
Neftali Rivera
Andrea’s cha cha club
Rumberos del Caribe
Crush Drum and Bass Last Wednesday On The Left, DJ Dennis Dread
Fame
Weekly DJs hosted by DJ Party Martyr
Pamela Jordan Band
Groove Suite
McMenamins edgefield Winery
Hall of Records
House Call
Caleb Klauder & Sammy Lind
Sknny Mrcls
Mission Theater
Highway To Hell
Matador
Tiga
Plaid Dudes
FRi. dec. 31 Groove Suite After Dark
Ground Kontrol
DJ Ghostdad, DJ Epor, DJ Capcom
Matador
S.I.N.: Gregarious, Flight Risk, Colin Sick
Mother’s Bar DJ Mumu
Saucebox
Video Disco with VJ Dantronix
Notes From The Underground featuring The Quadraphonnes
Saucebox
Mississippi Pizza
Slim’s
Wolves in the Throne Room, thee.casualty. company, Wilderness, Druden
Mock crest Tavern
Star Bar
DJ Gregarious
DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid’s New Year’s Eve Dance Party
Tiga
Tiga
camellia Lounge
Family Funktion Jam Night
Ash Street Saloon
The Sindicate, Item 9, Gerke
Branx
Weekly Jazz Jam
dante’s
The Ed Forman Show, DSL Open Mic Comedy
duff’s Garage
Dover Weinberg Quartet (9 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
dunes
Crazy Spirit
ella Street Social club
Tango Alpha Tango, Borneo, Lynnae Gryffin
Great Hall Restaurant Open Mic (6 pm); John “The Voice” English’s Frank Sinatra Tribute (3 pm)
Baby Ketten Karaoke Johnnie Ward & Eagle Ridin’ Papas
Mount Tabor Theater Mudai
Vox Populi Karaoke
Slim’s
Open Mic
The Twilight Room Karaoke with the captain White eagle Lincoln’s Beard
Video Vanguard With VJ Dantronix DJ DirtyNick
DJ Womb Service
Valentine’s
DJ vs. Nature
Star Bar
DJ Mattie Valentine
The Woods
Count Lips, Tiny Vinyl, Champagne Jam
Tube
Ronin Roc
THuRS. dec. 30 Beauty Bar
Thursdays Are Gay!
Blitz Ladd
Video Disco With VJ Dantronix
east end
DJ Grantichrist
Fez Ballroom Shadowplay
Valentine’s DJ E*Rock
Wonder Ballroom
Hosted by VJ Kittyrox
Yorgo’s Greeley Avenue Bar & Grill Eye Candy VJs
SAT. JAn. 1 Beauty Bar
Hall of Records
Girls Night Out
Railside Pub
Get Funky with DJ Nealie Neal
Someday Lounge
Fez Ballroom
DJ Victoria DJ Nate C
The Fix: Rev. Shines, KEZ, Dundiggy
da Hui
Twice As Nice
Tonic Lounge
DJ Freddie Fagula and Guests
Sun. JAn. 2 devils Point DJ Brooks
Ground Kontrol DJ Nate C
Plan B
DJ Owen
Mon. JAn. 3 element Restaurant & Lounge Mello Monday’s with DJ Mello Cee
Ground Kontrol DJ Tibin
Hall of Records Clarence Duffy
Star Bar
Amateur DJ night
The World Famous Kenton club
Old Country Night with Billy Lee
Tiger Bar
DJ Entropy
Twilight cafe & Bar SIN Night
TueS. JAn. 4 crown Room
See You Next Tuesday Weekly Dubstep Party
element Restaurant & Lounge Labworks
Shanghai Tunnel Mello Cee
Tube
Awesome Racket
Groove Suite Soulstice
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
29
PERFORMANCE HUGE DANCE FLOOR
dec. 29-jan. 4
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Tickets available now for
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.
RODEO ROSE
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.
New Year’s Eve featuring Special hotel packages available
Visit www.portlanderinn.com SATURDAY 1/1
RODEO ROSE 9PM
LOTS OF FREE PARKING
At Jubitz Travel Center 10350 N. Vancouver Way Portland OR, I-5,Exit 307
Willamette Week ad JRivers 5.727 x 9.152 runs 12/29
www.ponderosalounge.com
A N E V E N I N G O F L E G E N DA R Y S TA N D U P C O M E DY !
JOAN RIVERS
JOAN
RIVERS
Annie
the one and only, performed for your enjoyment by northwest Children’s theater. NW Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 NW Everett St., 222-4480. 2 and 7 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 2 pm Friday, 2 and 7 pm Sunday. Closes Jan. 2. $13-$22.
Hair
of the critically acclaimed new film documentary, Joan Rivers:
The Santaland Diaries
at 7:30 pm
The comedy legend and subject
A Piece of Work, comes to Portland for only one unforgettable live
performance this season.
SPONSORED BY
ONE
NIGHT ONLY!
Tickets start at $23
Call: 503-228-1353 | 1-800-228-7343 Click: OrSymphony.org
Groups of 10 or more save:
Ticket ofce: 923 SW Washington | 10 am – 6 pm Mon – Fri
503-416-6380
A R L E N E S C H N I T Z E R C O N C E R T H A L L SW MAIN & BROADWAY · PORTLAND CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
STAGE
the public theatre’s tonywinning revival of the 1967 freelove musical comes to town via Broadway Across America. Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times that director Diane paulus “does what Bartlett sher did for South Pacific last year, finding depths of character and feeling in what most people dismissed as dried corn. it’s not so much what Ms. paulus brings to Hair; it’s what she brings out of it, vital elements that were always waiting to be rediscovered.” Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 241-1802. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, Dec. 29-Jan. 2. $23.50-$85.55.
January 8
30
Hair At tHe Keller
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 and 10 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 5 pm Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Sunday. No show Jan. 1. Closes Jan. 2. $30$50, $23 youth.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
northwest Classical theatre presents shakespeare’s weakest comedy. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-244-3740. 7 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7 pm Sundays. Closes Jan. 9. $15-$18.
ZooZoo
imago pulls together favorite scenes from the company’s two puppet/pantomime/mask shows, Frogz and Biglittlethings, for a bundle of surprising visual delights that runs a little over an hour. Glowing eyes wobble in the darkness, polar bears molest the audience, 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. 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., 231-3959. 7 pm Wednesday, 2 pm Thursday, 2 and 7 pm Saturday, 2 pm Sunday. No show Jan. 31. Closes Jan. 2. $29, $25 students, $16 under age 16.
COMEDY Comedy Night at the Bagdad
lonnie Bruhn, shawn Fleek, Jimmy newstetter, Mark Kikel, Kyle harbert, Christian ricketts, Virginia Jones, Whitney streed, travis Jones and Arlo stone, hosted by tristan spillman. Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. 10 pm Friday, Dec. 31. $10. 21+.
ComedySportz
[iMproV] Fast-paced, competitive, family-friendly improv. ComedySportz, 1963 NW Kearney St., 236-8888. 7, 9 and 11 pm Friday, Dec. 31. $12.
A Very Brody New Year
Celebrate the new year extemporaneously with the Brody ensemble. The Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway., 224-2227. 8:30 pm Friday, Dec. 31. $12, $9 students.
JAZZ Kevin Van Geem Quintet
the drummer and composer, who’s played with Darrell Grant and the rainy states, inaugurates a new ensemble with saxophonist Mary-sue tobin and trombonist lars Campbell. Blue Monk, 3341 SE Belmont St., 595-0575. 7:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 2. $3-$7. 21+.
Quadraphonnes
Mieke Bruggeman, Mary-sue tobin, Chelsea luker and Michelle Medler, supported by bass and drums, bring new creations and all-sax arrangements to the Mission. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 223-4527. 8 pm Tuesday, Jan. 4. $5. 21+.
DANCE Do Jump!
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, all of which combine acrobatic athleticism, aerial manuevers and inventive, often comic, movement. Echo Theater, 1515 SE 37th Ave., 231-1232. 7:30 pm 7:30 pm Wednesday, 3 and 7:30 pm Thursday, 7:30 pm Saturday, noon and 3 pm Sunday, Dec. 29-Jan. 2. 7:30 pm Saturday and 3 pm Sunday, Jan. 8-9. $20-$32.
For more performance listings, visit
VISUAL ARTS
dec. 29-jan. 4
CURIOUS COMEDY THEATER
= 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
NEW YEAR’S EVE
REVIEW
SPECTACULAR!
Stu Levy, Sara Siestreem
With intuition and invention, photographer Stu Levy subdivides his images into multiple frames to create collagelike wholes. Whether in wallspanning 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.
Resonance
among the highlights in the group show Resonance are carole Meyer’s mazelike gold squiggles on gold background. in abstract paintings such as City of Light, the artist is onto a fertile conceit. in alexis Mollomo’s haunting Ted and His Brother, the narrative painter depicts convicted “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski as a child, standing alongside his brother, david, who in 1996 turned Kaczynski in to the FBi. in the painting, a ghostly female figure runs, terrified, from the children, her mouth open in a scream out of Munch. Nearby, the staircase of a bomb shelter descends into the ground, aglow with flames, as if leading into the pit of hell. To see two brothers in all their freckle-faced, gap-toothed insouciance juxtaposed with visions of how time and circumstance would affect their relationship, is an affecting demonstration of Mollomo’s gift for unnerving psychological insight. Finally, painter Tamara english moves beyond her messy vegetal weed gardens toward a more compositionally focused style. in Breath V, she juxtaposes floral patterns with decorative flourishes drawn from her travels to Turkey. it is refreshing to see her luxuriantly goopy surfaces tempered by compositional rigor. ANKA, 325 NW 6th Ave., 224-5721. Closes Dec. 26.
Torben Eskerod
For his series Campo Verano, danish photographer Torben eskerod traveled to Rome and hung out for weeks in the eternal city’s oldest cemetery. he was intrigued by the antique, glass-encased portraits on many of the gravestones, showing likenesses of those below, when they were in the primes of their lives. eskerod photographed these photographs, which are in varied states of preservation. Many are molded, wrinkled, cracked, sun-blanched and otherwise eaten away by the effects of time and exposure. intended as permanent remembrances of the deceased, the portraits have become poignant, borderline gruesome mirrors of the decay in progress in the coffins underground. This is a beautifully melancholy show not to be missed. Blue Sky, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210. Closes Jan. 2.
Corey Arnold
corey arnold owns a fishing boat and takes photos of his crew members catching and gutting fish, crabs and all manner of other marine life on the high seas. he’s at his strongest not as a documentarian but when he allows the human and ichthyological players to stand (or swim) in for the fearsome symbolisms of our common struggle against nature and death. in his latest body of work, Fish-Work Europe, he leaves the waters off alaska, where he normally works, to explore the fishing industry in eight european countries. Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, 134 NW 8th Ave., 287-3886. Closes Jan. 15.
For more Visual arts listings, visit
TICKET INCLUDES: COMEDY SHOW 8PM-12AM DANCE PARTY 12AM-2AM HORS D’OUERVES CHAMPAGNE TOAST NO CROWDS!
LAUGH IN THE NEW YEAR!
Best of improv, Sketch, Stand Up, Dance, Trapeze, and more! Stella JOHnSOn’S BaWaka kOi, CamerOOn, WeSt afriCa, 2001 at Blue Sky
$40 advance on-line, $50 door Limited Seats Available! Sold Out Last Year!
BEST OF 2010 The Portland art scene in 2010 had a Dickensian “best of times, worst of times” duality. Among the setbacks and sadnesses were veteran gallerist Laura Russo’s death in February from esophageal cancer at the age of 66 and, on Dec. 12, the death at 83 of philanthropist Ed Cauduro, one of the Northwest’s pre-eminent art collectors. Also this year, several notable galleries closed their doors: Beppu Wiarda in July, Ogle in October, and Fourteen30 Contemporary in November, although the latter gallery is restructuring and, according to director Jeanine Jablonski, will reincarnate in some fashion come springtime. Despite the rough patches, there were reasons for optimism. In May, artists Blair Saxon-Hill and John Brodie opened the heady and chic art-book store, Monograph Bookwerks (5005 NE 27th Ave., 284-5005), a big shot in the arm for Portland’s cultural credibility. Also in the spring, curators Arcy Douglass and Jeff Jahn mounted the world-class scholarly conference and exhibition Donald Judd: Delegated Fabrication at UO’s Portland campus in Old Town. And in November, the eminently promising YU Contemporary Art Center held a preview touting its cavernous exhibition space and big, if thus far ill-defined, ideas for programming. Then there were the gallery, nonprofit, institutional and museum shows that continue to make visual-arts offerings in Portland so consistently varied and vital. These were some of our favorites. RICHARD SPEER.
Our picks for the best locally exhibited visual art this year.
Best show of 2010: John Dempcy’s rapturous abstractions, Inner Fictions, at Augen in July.
CURIOUS COMEDY THEATER “A ceaselessly brilliant and often hilarious take HOW PORTLAND on The Sound of Music.” -The New York Times
DOES COMEDY
5225 NE MLK BLVD 503-477-9477 WWW.CURIOUSCOMEDY.ORG
DOUG ELKINS & FRIENDS’
FRÄULEIN MARIA
“Doug Elkins is a master mixer of hip hop and modern dance.” -Broadway Street Review
Set to the complete score of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.
Best painting: Adam Sorensen’s fantastical landscapes at PDX in September. Best sculpture: (tie) Cris Bruch’s eccentric bubble forms and architectonic wall sculptures at Elizabeth Leach in August, and Josh Smith’s wittily arcane Working With Doubt at PNCA’s Manuel Izquierdo Gallery in April. Best mixed media: Monica Lundy’s clay-slathered Obscure Histories at Ogle in August. Best photography: Stella Johnson’s sun-and-shadow reveries at Blue Sky in October. Best work on paper: Doron Fishman’s seepy, swirly ink studies in Pulliam’s August group show. Best collage: Eva Lake’s incisive feminist take on Tinseltown, Targets, at Augen in June. Best glass: Joanne Teasdale’s hauntingly elegiac Imprints at Bullseye in April.
Photo by Sara D. Davis American Dance Festival
Best installation: (tie) Bruce Conkle’s quirkily virtuosic Magic Chunks at Worksound in October, and Wid Chambers’ wall-spanning gestural arcs at Chambers @ 916 in June. Best group show: Curator Chris Moss’ lively Portland 2010: A Biennial of Contemporary Art at Disjecta in March. Best museum show: Curator Bruce Guenther’s calculatedly unsettling Disquieted at Portland Art Museum in March.
JANUARY 13-15
NEWMARK THEATRE 7:30PM
1-800-745-3000 Information & Groups 503-245-1600 ext. 201 www.whitebird.org
SPONSORED BY
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WORDS
dec. 29-jan. 4
= 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.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 29 Our Mutual Friend
Money can be your best friend or your worst enemy. The Powell’s Classics Book Group tackles Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, a tale about the social impact of a large inheritance that suddenly ends up in the hands of an unsuspecting working-class family instead of its intended “misanthropic” heir. The story follows the Boffin family as they decide what to do with the newly
acquired fortune and examines “the ingeniousness of the aspiring poor,” along with “the unfailing power of wealth to corrupt those who crave it.” Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651. 7 pm. Free.
MONDAY, JAN. 3 Wayne Thompson
If you’ve ever wondered why Portland is called Rip City, then
brush up on your town’s basketball history with Wayne Thompson’s Blazermania: This Is Our Story. The book gives an in-depth look at the Blazers’ chronicle, recounting the “magic moments,” including “the birth of ‘Rip City’ and the team’s rise to prominence” by claiming the 1977 NBA championship. Highlights include the coaching strategies of Dr. Jack Ramsay, the renowned leadership of Clyde Drexler and even a foreword from legendary Trail Blazer Bill Walton. Bonus: The book contains a compilation of Portland hoops photos from four decades. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
For more Words listings, visit
REVIEW
CALL US
with News
MIA BIRK JOYRIDE When one of the Netherlands’ major advocates for bicycling was asked this fall to what he attributed Portland’s success in becoming one of the world leaders in alternative transportation, he furrowed his brow. “Strong leadership,” he said finally. From whom? Another pause. “Mia Birk.” In Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet (Cadence Press, 225 pages, $19.95), Birk, the bike advocate Congressman Earl Blumenauer calls “pathologically optimistic,” artfully mixes personal history and facts to create a candid, compelling memoir. With help from city officials and advocates, this feisty visionary transformed Portland into the near-bike-vana so many of us happily pedal today. Newbie Portlanders who take for granted our wonderful Eastbank Esplanade and hundreds of miles of bikeways will learn just what a struggle they took to achieve, while others can take inspiration from the story of how an idealist with persistence and flexibility can change a city literally from How Portland reinvented (two) wheels. the ground up. During Birk’s ultimately triumphant tenure as Portland’s Bicycle Pro- “downsized” in 1999. Her firm still works with gram manager from 1993 to 1999, the erstwhile the city, including a major contract this year, so “car-addicted chubster” successfully battled maybe it’s unrealistic to expect a full accounting. After her city service, Birk joined a private institutional ignorance— including her conservative Dallas family, the Oregonian editorial board, planning firm, Alta, a major player in making indifferent city and federal bureaucrats, inebri- cities more livable. Joyride recounts how, in a ated school district representatives, greedy build- decade of consulting from its Portland office, ing management lobbyists and other recalcitrant, she finds hope and makes progress even in small often male-dominated, institutions. Telling this towns like Government Camp and otherwise potent story via anecdotes (tense public hearings, benighted suburbs—including in her hometown “wheel and pony shows” and, of course, bike rides) of Dallas. Birk remains one of Portland cycling’s provides a much livelier read than a polemic or most influential figures. The book provides clear lessons for anyone wonky policy paper, although the reconstructed dialogue often sounds more expository than the who wants to foment change, including a handy, way real people talk. Birk isn’t a professional step-by-step postscript. The ride appropriately journalist—as the occasional cliche or editing ends at Portland’s Sunday Parkways, a microlapse demonstrates—but her humor, determina- cosmic but tangible realization of the powerful, ever-spreading vision that Birk and her allies tion and idealism shine through. Birk isn’t afraid to call out opponents, nor to have spent two decades turning into reality. admit her defeats and failings (poor event plan- BRETT CAMPBELL. ning, impatience), but her refreshing candor recedes a bit when we don’t learn exactly what GO: Mia Birk talks about Joyride at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. happened when Portland’s bike program was 7:30 pm Tuesday, Jan. 4. Free. Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
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SCREEN
dates dec. 29-Jan. here 4
IFC FIlms
FEATURE
AP Kryza’s Top 10 Oedipal complexes, child murder, crumbling marriages, bumbling terrorists, billionaire sociopaths…2010 was pretty grim. At least we had Toy Story 3, although the scene in which Ned Beatty’s Lots-o-Huggin’ Bear made Woody squeal like a pig seemed a bit much.
valhalla rising: Mads Mikkelsen and our critics.
AGREE TO DISAGREE CHOOSING THE TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2010, OUR CRITICS COULDN’T UNITE ON ANYTHING. EXCEPT MAYBE VALHALLA RISING. BY ww sc r e e n sta FF
screen@wweek.com
Aaron Mesh’s Top 10 The conventional wisdom says 2010 was a bad year for good movies, and the clever retort is it was a good year for movies that made us feel bad—but really, the year’s best films offered the deep satisfaction of watching other people having the bad times we knew they deserved. Call it comeuppance cinema. There was hostility at the root of even our glossiest entertainments, an intramural antagonism to replace last year’s battlefield release. Everything is wrong, somebody is to blame, and that somebody is very near. We have met the enemy, and he is us. But fuck him. 1. Four Lions Chris Morris’ mujahideen slapstick succeeded at two things nobody else would dare attempt: It treated Islamic suicide bombers as clowns, then forced us to see the wasted humanity under the ridiculous costumes. 2. The Social Network While Four Lions laughed at sympathetic destroyers, the Mark Zuckerberg advent calendar snarled with unlovable creators. The mystery embedded in the computer code that created Facebook: Why are these young men so angry? 3. Valhalla Rising Imagine Terrence Malick’s The New World performed by Led Zeppelin in a fjord. Not the most violent thing Nicolas Winding Refn has ever done—though a chap’s intestines are removed by hand—but the craziest and best. 4. Sweetgrass Another movie in which men scurry like distressed ants across a colossal landscape, this time in a documentary, chaperon34
Willamette Week DECEMBER 29, 2010 wweek.com
ing bleating sheep. The great joke is how they’re surrounded by majesty, and they can’t stand it. 5. Carlos Why would anybody watch five more hours of bungled terrorism? Because Olivier Assayas’ marathon globe-hopper—the first of two films on this list to originate on European television—is a spellbinding portrait of narcissism masquerading as history. 6. Greenberg Noah Baumbach’s dissection of unappreciated beauty and compulsive self-sabotage placed us squarely inside the resentments of Ben Stiller’s entitled kvetcher—but let us escape his ride long enough to embrace the people he threw away. 7. True Grit A very Coen Christmas present: A frontier vignette that’s delicate and deathly, like a cameo brooch engraved with a murder scene. 8. Red Riding Trilogy Everything those Stieg Larsson Tattoo snoozes should have been, and everything James Ellroy could hope for his “Underworld USA” books to become: a sickening plunge into a police-sponsored dunk tank of innocent blood. 9. Winter’s Bone In a great year for noir (see above), the one figure who remained unsullied and shatterproof was Jennifer Lawrence as a teenager with her own true Ozark grit. 10. Flooding With Love for the Kid A giddily sincere one-man staging of First Blood, made for $96. But it could stand in for the entire year in movies: a solitary guy, face twisted in rage, running through his apartment shooting at himself. Best Disreputable Entertainment: Unstoppable was a chugging engine of perfectly engineered kinetic energy. Oh, you thought it was stupid? I’m sorry you don’t enjoy movies.
10. Cyrus Jay and Mark Duplass bring mumblecore to the masses with the sweet and twisted tale of a lonely man (John C. Reilly) facing off against his girlfriend’s New Age Norman Bates of a son (Jonah Hill). The Kids Are All Right got more attention. Cyrus gets dysfunction right.
1. Mother Bong Joon-ho combines Hitchcock, Lynch and his own twisted vision into the eerie and darkly comic tale of a morally imbalanced and overprotective matron playing gumshoe. Kim Hye-ja nails a complex lead performance in a film that blurs the line between innocence and guilt and sticks with you long after its haunting conclusion.
Best Reason to Suspend Disbelief: Machete. With adrenaline pumping, it seems perfectly plausible when Danny Trejo uses a man’s intestines to rappel from a building—and Steven Seagal is somehow a feasible Mexican, despite neither sounding nor looking Mexican.
2. The Social Network David Fincher’s tale of torn friendships and digital dictatorship is both a celebration and indictment of digital self-absorption, a film on par with The Graduate for its relevance to its time.
If there is a theme here, then it is chaos. The best films of 2010 survey collapse in various forms: minds caught between life and death, bodies dancing on the edge of reason, cities eaten away by crime, the whole damned world unspooling. Each of these movies is a tiny apocalypse, a necessary act of creation through destruction.
3. Blue Valentine Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams turn in career-best performances in a torturous autopsy of a failed marriage, a devastating film where sweet moments only serve to make the rest more bitter. It has yet to open in Portland, but the year’s most terrible film is also among the best. 4. Toy Story 3 After a 10-year absence, Pixar resurrects the Toy Story team with a sharp, triumphantly sweet prison-break flick tailored for the generation that grew up with its characters as much as for tykes. It’s pure cinematic magic. 5. Four Lions Rubber dinghy rapids, bro. 6. Red Riding Trilogy Based loosely on the true story of the Yorkshire Ripper, the glum, three-part Brit horror show is a ghastly stew of mangled bodies and incomprehensible accents, a searing exercise in procedural suspense and small-town corruption. 7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Edgar Wright circumnavigates an irritating combination of comic book geeks, gamers and hipsters to craft the year’s most creative and hyperkinetic film—one where you actually believe in Michael Cera as a man of action. 8. Restrepo Documentarians Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger emerge from a year embedded with soldiers in Afghanistan with something once thought a casualty of Vietnam: wartime docu-journalism at its most intimate, where the camera—and the viewer—seem like part of the squadron rather than intruders. 9. Valhalla Rising To date, the best broodingly psychological and psychedelic film about Christian Vikings prone to disemboweling and raping one another while accidently landing in the Americas.
Chris Stamm’s Top 10
1. Enter the Void A beautiful drug: mesmerizing, sort of dumb, transcendent, sexy, violently unsexy, maddeningly addictive, and something you will ramble on and on about to friends who are justifiably fed up with your descriptions of a trip they’ll just have to take to understand. 2. Carlos Olivier Assayas finally finds a towering subject worthy of his talent as a polyglot interpreter of global maladies, while Edgar Martinez delivers the performance of the year as the titular terrorist playboy. Carlos is a sprawling electric sketch of Cold War conflict and confusion, and far too few people saw it. 3. Valhalla Rising The best black metal album of the year that was not a black metal album, Nicolas Winding Refn’s muddy and bloody nightmare of primal violence recalls the crazier moments from the Herzog-Kinski canon and the most despairing stretches of Bergman’s protracted argument with God. Like the best harsh music, it made me want to beat up my couch and run naked through the streets. 4. Wild Grass This loopy, elusive ode to obsessive senescence and movie madness is the best thing Resnais has made in ages, and it joins the recent work of Philip Roth in the pantheon of great art about old dudes with impossible boners. 5. Jackass 3-D It’s tamer than the first two installments, but the Jackasses, idiot heirs to Abramovic and Burden, are older now, and time is taking its toll. Wherever shit and pathos meet, there I will be, giggling through my tears. 6. White Material Claire Denis, perhaps the most consistently brilliant filmmaker working today,
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The Social NeTwork: Brenda Song and Jesse eisenberg.
7. A Town Called Panic What I want but will never get from the Toy Story franchise: animated whimsy and wonder with more anarchy and less sappy Hallmark sentiment. 8. Life During Wartime Todd Solondz revisits Happiness to find out what happens after the worst has already happened. And shit—sometimes life finds a way to be even more unbelievably sad. A shattering and moving glimpse of psychic hell. 9. Bluebeard A glinting dagger of a film and a welcome return to form by Catherine Breillat, this expertly deconstructed fairy tale rips the chintz from Bresson’s Lancelot of the Lake and manages to sustain an otherworldy Renaissance Faire vibe (creepy, trust me) through to a cruel and perfect climax. 10. Red Riding Trilogy Three directors tackle three books from David Peace’s outstanding Red Riding quartet, and the result is one epic tumble in the muck—five hours of unrelenting doom and gloom about the perversity of power. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
Alistair Rockoff’s Top 10 I had a wonderful time at the movies in 2010. I laughed, I cried, I learned about other people and myself. I find the challenge is resisting the hype, what Manny Farber called “white elephant art” and what I think of as “sugar mama art.” Long before you say “I do,” you’re drawn in by advertising, all the fancy money being thrown around. But when you finally get to the bedroom, you have to keep your eyes on the chandelier if you want to fulfill your expectations. The feeling doesn’t last. Until Mama offers you some new expensive thing. Or you grow up. I’m trying to grow up.
2. Wild Grass That pubic title is the first Freudian slip in Alain Resnais’ psycho-romance: Your mind is the scene of the sublime. 3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Generation Y gets a roundhouse kick in the pants. Charlie Brown vs. King Arthur, Round One: Fight!
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4. The Yellow Handkerchief William Hurt takes that same generation on a road trip to romantic redemption, in Udayan Prasad’s Southern reverie. 5. I Love You Phillip Morris Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor are here, they’re queer, and they will not get used to it. Neither will you. 6. Nowhere Boy John Lennon has two mommies: Isn’t he a bit like you and me? 7. The Fighter Some of the year’s best male casting: Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale as modern America’s Castor and Pollux. 8. Mother and Child Some of the year’s best female casting: Annette Bening, Naomi Watts and Kerry Washington, as modern America’s Lady of Sorrows. 9. Despicable Me Steve Carell and Jason Segel put Pixar to shame in this brilliant slapstick cartoon about the joys of parenthood and shooting the moon.
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Most Essential Revival: Hausu. Watching it for the first time is like discovering a new species, some monstrous missing link between Godard and Miike. Please see it.
1. Vincere Marco Bellocchio’s Passion of Mussolini captures the danger of falling in love with the Leader.
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conjures a lucid dream of sublime beauty and terror. White Material somehow unravels and coheres simultaneously, tightens its grip as everything falls apart.
10. Jonah Hex Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor show how Americans face death. In their comic-book screenplay, Josh Brolin’s gunslinger rises to the occasion. Most Overpromoted Hits: Inception and The Social Network sound like the inventions of business majors, and they are. As overprescribed as Prozac and Ritalin, both films sold young moviegoers on the inevitability of selfishness. More: Find bonus categories and a podcast at wweek.com.
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
77 Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) must get all Frodo on Lord Voldemort. To do so, he and BFFs Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) go on the road, abandoning Hogwarts and all the fine British thespians who reside there. PG-13. AP KRYZA. 99 Indoor Twin, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Division, Evergreen, Forest, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
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127 Hours
James Franco is very good at communicating not merely pain but annoyance—his wilderness crisis has all the frustrations of locking your keys in the car, except instead of his keys it’s his arm. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. 73
new 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Two programs from Michigan’s prestigious indie film festival. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. Program I screens at 7 pm Wednesday and 9 pm Thursday, Dec. 29-30. Program II screens at 9 pm Wednesday and 7 pm Thursday, Dec. 29-30.
Black Swan
53 Darren Aronofsky opens the Christmas movie season with a clammy, upscale horror flick starring 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. Aronofsky is the Absent-Minded Sadist, and Black Swan—with its flayed skin and ominous doppelgängers—is Fight Club with feathers. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV. new
Change of Plans
In a new comedy from Danièle Thompson (Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train), everyone at a dinner party is eager for a second course in their love lives. Look for a review on wweek.com. Hollywood Theatre.
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. PG. AARON MESH. 3-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville. 2-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Wilsonville. new
Do It Again
[ONE WEEK ONLY] Boston Globe music critic Geoff Edgers wants to reunite legendary Brit rock pioneers the Kinks, a formidable task, given lead singer Ray 34
Davies and his brother, guitarist Dave, have sibling rivalry issues that make Noel and Liam Gallagher look like the Brady Bunch. But with Do It Again, his actual mission appears to be playing bad acoustic versions of Kinks songs with famous people. During fleeting interviews with Sting, Robyn Hitchcock, Zooey Deschanel, Peter Buck and others, Edgers ropes his subjects into playing Kinks covers with him, all the while trying to coordinate— via email—an impossible reunion. Edgers claims he’s making the film to expose more young listeners to the Kinks, yet the story focuses on Edgers himself, who is dealing with a midlife crisis and budget cuts at The Globe. All we learn about the band is that the brothers Davies fought a lot and Sting loves “You Really Got Me.” Yet we learn all about Edgers’ family, career, even his high-school days. During the masturbatory documentary, The Kinks become an afterthought. Edgers is so concerned with his own boring story that his ego—despite pangs of self-loathing—and sense of entitlement rival those of Ray Davies himself. AP KRYZA. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm Saturday-Thursday, Jan. 1-6.
The Fighter
The true story of Lowell, Mass., boxing half-brothers Micky and Dicky, played by Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale—no, no, c’mon, pick the paper back up! Fleeing formula like Bale’s Dicky runs from cops, David O. Russell’s movie is messy and darting and alive. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, CineMagic, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville. 89
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. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
Gulliver’s Travels
Jack Black is bigger than other people. Not screened for critics. PG. 3-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, Evergreen, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd Mall. 2-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cornelius, Division, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
34 Cut from USA Softball, Reese Witherspoon goes to a shrink (Tony Shalhoub), who advises: “Figure out what you want, and learn how to ask for it.” James L. Brooks wants to remake his Broadcast News without the pesky workplace, and after you win enough Oscars, you always get what you ask for. It really is the same love triangle, but disastrous: Witherspoon has been instructed to impersonate Holly Hunter, Owen Wilson is humiliated in the dimwit beefcake role given poignancy by William Hurt, and Paul Rudd gets drunk on cocktails and sings to his furniture. Not since Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown has a respected director floundered so publicly, and at such length. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Division, Evergreen, Forest, Lake Twin, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
I Love You Phillip Morris
Jim Carrey is very good as the compulsively recidivist Texas con man Steven Russell, who romances (and tries to spring) a fellow prison inmate. It’s the tale of a man who comes out of the closet, only to discover he’s only functional in confined spaces he can escape from. He is born to jailbreak. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. 69
The King’s Speech
The King’s Speech is the sort of awards-season tinsel that opens with a speaking engagement going mortifyingly awry—the youngest son of the House of Windsor, exquisitely played by Colin Firth, cannot make it through a sentence without breaking down in heaving gulps—and ends with a heart-swelling proclamation of war. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Lloyd Center, Bridgeport, Fox Tower. 73
Little Fockers
13 Appropriately for a movie with a dumbass near-pun for a title (which doesn’t even make sense— the little fuckers in question are tangential to the plot), nobody in Little Fockers escapes with their dignity intact. It’s a parade of shame from actors willing to debase themselves for a franchise that’s proven inexplicably popular. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Moreland, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville. new
Made in Dagenham
A question worthy of Henry Higgins: Why do the English make earnest period dramas so much more entertainingly than the Yanks? Another: Why can’t a woman be paid more like a man? Made in Dagenham doesn’t fully resolve either predicament, but it suggests one answer to both problems: Saying “fuck” enough times will improve everything. An enjoyably salty spoonful of sugar from director Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls), the movie covers the 1968 equalpay battle of the upholstery machinists in a Ford assembly plant on the Thames. Sally Hawkins remains happy-go-plucky in the Norma Rae role—the tremor in her voice when she gives her speeches is so 70
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True Grit
The Coen Brothers’ new rendering of Charles Portis’ novel of Arkansas frontier retribution is remarkable for its lack of perversity—one character voices a slightly unseemly interest in the 14-yearold heroine, and another is graphically relieved of some fingers but, by Coen standards, everybody behaves with relative civility. But it maintains something sorrowful in the story of young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfield), who seeks retribution for her dead father and talks like Laura Ingalls Wilder with a law degree. Jeff Bridges’ drunken lawman is essentially a comic turn, a sharpshooting grandpa who just wants to tell campfire stories, and it leaves the movie’s emotions to Carter Burwell’s elegiac piano settings of the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” PG-13. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, Tigard, Wilsonville. 90
TINY FURNITURE goddamn touching it hurts—and isn’t it nice to see Bob Hoskins again as a union steward? The picture gets a jolt from the arrival of the criminally underused Richard Schiff as Ford’s hatchet man. Meanwhile, I can’t really tell if the smooth sheen of safe nostalgia hurts or harms the message delivery. Watching these women fight for equality in closeknit communities of pretty poverty, I can’t emphasize enough how fully I support them, and how much I envy them. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
The New Year’s Day Grindhouse Movie Marathon new
[ONE DAY ONLY, REVIVAL TRIPLE BILL] Dan Halsted starts 2011 off right with back-to-back-to-back 35 mm guts and glory: monkey-style Master of the Flying Guillotine (3:30 pm), Lucio Fulci’s disembowelmentheavy Gates of Hell (5:30 pm), and of course the beloved woman-withan-eel-in-her-vagina picture Lady Terminator (7:30 pm). Hollywood Theatre. Saturday, Jan. 1.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
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. 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. R. AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre. 86
The Social Network
Say what you will about 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 be have-nots. PG-13. AARON MESH. Clackamas, Hollywood Theatre, Lake Twin, Living Room Theaters. 94
Tangled
60 Once you accept that the film appears built from a box of Playmobil toys, Tangled is moderately enchanting. PG. AARON MESH. 3-D: Cinetopia, Lloyd Center. 2-D: 99 Indoor Twin, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
The Tempest
65 In her Tempest, which sets Shakespeare’s tale of shipwrecks and double-crossing nobles on a volcanic isle lorded over by a gender-bending, magic-staff-wielding Prospero (Helen Mirren as “Prospera”), Julie Taymor ups the interest with a panoply of amazing creatures, from fiery-eyed lava dogs and a naked, androgynous butoh sprite to a goo-mouthed harpy that bedevils Prospera’s evil brother and his compatriots, looking like the world’s most terrifying seagull after an oil spill disaster. PG-13. KELLY CLARKE. Living Room Theaters.
new
Tiny Furniture
Tribeca twentysomething Lena Dunham’s comedy of Tribeca twentysomething malaise has been endlessly scrutinized by Five Boroughs critics—Glenn Kenny deliciously dubbed it “the Cinema of Unexamined Privilege”—but be honest: You’re far too busy offering advance opinions on Portlandia to care about the tempest in some other city’s miniature teapot. Anyway, with all respect to Kenny, who has written more on this movie than I have written on the collected works of Orson Welles, Tiny Furniture seems to examine privilege a bit too much: Like many micro-indies, it knows its own hermetic world very well, and can show why it’s funny, but has nothing to compare. (For contrast, look at Kicking & Screaming, also about the end of college, or any movie directed by Nicole Holofcener.) Dunham, who stars and films herself from unflattering angles that border on self-hatred, writes wickedly revealing dialogue for her characters—she’s especially clinical on mooching, lazily predatory men, and after seeing such slackers glorified in every indie this year, it’s satisfying to see their tiny balls pinned to the wall. Other than that, let’s say the director has more promise than most people I knew at age 24, and maybe someday she’ll make something larger than her apartment. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. 58
The Tourist
45 It’s official: Johnny Depp has lost his grasp on reality—or, at least, his grasp on real people. Even as he finds himself being chased by gangsters for reasons we don’t think he understands, Depp doesn’t seem upset, confused or even inconvenienced. He just looks bored. And, thus, so do the rest of us. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Broadway, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Sandy, Sherwood, Tigard.
Tron: Legacy
73 Video games have come a long way since Tron hit screens in 1982, and Tron: Legacy has evolved with them. It’s eye-poppingly gorgeous, ludicrous and swollen with enough pure adrenaline to make Raoul Duke trip balls for decades. Legacy finds computer wunderkind Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) sucked into a digitized world of violent Ultimate Frisbee and glow sticks to retrieve his long-lost father, Kevin (Jeff Bridges). The fallen Apollo of the neon realm, Kevin’s now hiding from the maniacally dictatorial Clu (Bridges again, age digitally reduced 30 years to resemble Patrick Swayze by way of The Polar Express). Aesthetically, Tron is a wonder, maybe the best use of 3-D to date. But the film is packed with enough broody exposition and religious allegory to give both Wachowskis migraines. PG. AP KRYZA. 3-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Division,
Undertow
A Peruvian man comes out of the closet. Living Room Theaters. Living Room Theaters.
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Waste Land
A 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. 81
White Material
It takes time to get your bearings in a Claire Denis film. White Material, the remarkable new movie by this French master responsible for three nearly perfect films already (Beau Travail, Trouble Every Day, The Intruder), begins with a succession of unsettling fragments. It ends where it begins—a figure in limbo, running—and there are still people left alive to follow their loved ones into death, yet I did not want this horrible story to end, not as long as Denis was acting as guide. CHRIS STAMM. Living Room Theaters. 95
Yogi Bear
32 Torture is a relative term. I’ve not been waterboarded or stripped naked and thrown in a pyramid of other naked men. Still, watching Yogi Bear was a humiliating experience, from sliding a pair of 3-D glasses awkwardly on top of my existing glasses to seeing Yogi—one of my closest childhood friends— stripped of his stylized ’50s dignity and forced to repeat a single catchphrase ad nauseam: “I’m smarter than the average bear!” If there’s any style to be salvaged from this wreck, it’s in the inspired design of Yogi’s various pic-a-nic basketsnatching devices and the animated closing credits, both of which look pretty sweet in 3-D. Please don’t mistake that for a recommendation. PG. CASEY JARMAN. 3-D: Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Cinetopia, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sandy, Sherwood. 2-D: Broadway, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, Cornelius, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Tigard, Wilsonville.
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a year that brought us Cop Out, Sex & the City 2, Grown Ups and The Girl Who Played With Herself. But antipathy begins at home, and none of those abortions made me want to throw beer at the screen quite like Beaverton scripter Mike Rich’s Secretariat, or as it is known in my household, Jesus Horse. (Or by its British title, Christ on a Seabiscuit.) With its strange blend of piety and cynicism, this galloping hack job petitioned God to keep the poor...far away from us. OK, maybe Grown Ups was worse. By a nose. AARON MESH. Academy, Kennedy School, Mission, Valley. Best paired with: Bud Light. Also showing: Four Lions (Academy, Bagdad, Laurelhurst, Mission).
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IN THEATERS JANUARY 14
1000 SW Broadway, 800-326-3264 HOW DO YOU KNOW 2:15, 4:45, 7:30 Fri-Sat 10 LITTLE FOCKERS 2, 4:30, 7 Fri-Sat 9:30 THE TOURIST 2:30, 5:15, 7:45 Fri-Sat 10:15 YOGI BEAR 2:45, 5, 7:15 Fri-Sat 9:45
Fox Tower Stadium 10
846 SW Park Ave., 800-326-3264 127 HOURS 12:05, 2:15, 4:30, 7:10, 9:45 BLACK SWAN 11:55am, 12:30, 1, 2:25, 3:05, 4:25, 5, 5:30, 7, 7:35, 8, 9:30, 9:55, 10:20 I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS 12:15, 2:35, 5:25, 7:45, 10 MADE IN DAGENHAM 12:10, 2:45, 5:15, 7:40, 10:10 THE FIGHTER 12, 12:45, 2:30, 4:15, 5:20, 7:05, 7:50, 9:35, 10:15 THE KING’S SPEECH 11:45am, 12:40, 2:20, 3:30, 4:55, 6:45, 7:30, 9:25, 10:05
Living Room Theaters
341 SW 10th Ave., 971-222-2010 GULLIVER’S TRAVELS 3D 11:40am, 12:30, 2:40, 4:20, 5:10, 7:30, 9:30 THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST 2, 5:20, 8:30 THE SOCIAL NETWORK 1:50, 7, 9:40 THE TEMPEST 12, 2:20, 4:45, 7:15, 9:45 UNDERTOW 12:10, 5, 7:40 WASTE LAND 2:30, 9:50 WHITE MATERIAL 11:50am, 2:10, 4:30, 6:50, 9
Pioneer Place Stadium 6
340 SW Morrison St., 800-326-3264 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 12, 7:40, 10:40 HOW DO YOU KNOW 1:10, 4:30, 7:30, 10:20 LITTLE FOCKERS 1:15, 4:10, 7:20, 10 TANGLED 3, 5:20 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 3D 12:30, 4:05, 7:05, 10:05 TRON: LEGACY 3D 12:45, 4:15, 7:15, 10:25 TRUE GRIT 1, 4, 7, 10:15
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SOUTHEAST Academy Theater
REGAL FOX TOWER STADIUM 10 846 SW Park Avenue, Portland (800) FANDANGO
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3.825" X 2"
Wed-Thu 5:30 RED SatMon, Wed-Thu 9:55 SECRETARIAT Sat-Mon, Wed-Thu 7:35 Sat-Sun 2:30
Whitsell Auditorium 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-221-1156 Call for showtimes.
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 MEGAMIND Fri, Sun-Thu 6 Sun 1 THE NEXT THREE DAYS Fri, Sun-Thu 8:45 Wed 1
St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub
8704 N Lombard St., 503-286-1768 TRON: LEGACY Fri-Tue 5:20, 7:55 Sat-Tue 10:20 Sat 2:30 Sun 2:30 TRUE GRIT Fri-Tue 5, 7:20 Sat-Tue 9:40 Sat 2:40 Sun 2:40
NORTHEAST Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-281-4215 CHANGE OF PLANS SunThu 7:20 Sat 2, 6:50 Sun 3:20, 5:20 NEW YEAR’S DAY GRINDHOUSE MARATHON Sat 3:30 RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE Sat-Thu 9:30 SatSun 1:40 THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST Sun-Thu 8 Sat 4, 9 Sun 2, 5 THE SOCIAL NETWORK Sat-Thu 7, 9:20 Sat-Sun 2:10, 4:40
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-249-7474 MEGAMIND Sat-Thu 5:30 RED Sat-Thu 7:35 SECRETARIAT Sun-Mon 2:30 UNSTOPPABLE SatThu 9:55 Tue-Thu 2:30
Laurelhurst Theater
2735 E Burnside St., 232-5511 Closed Friday, Dec. 31. UNSTOPPABLE Sat-Thurs 9:40 IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY Sat-Sun 1:30, 4:30, 7:20 Mon-Thurs 7:20 4 LIONS Sat-Sun 1:10,
7:10 Mon-Thurs 7:10 THE TOWN Sat-Sun 4, 9:15 Mon-Thurs 9:15 RED SatSun 4:10, 6:40 Mon-Thurs 6:40 INCEPTION Sat-Sun 1, 9 Mon-Thurs 9 EASY A SatSun 4:40, 9:30 Mon-Thurs 9:30 GET LOW Sat-Sun 1:40, 6:50 Mon-Thurs 6:50
Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema
1510 NE Multnomah Blvd., 800-326-3264 BLACK SWAN 11:50am, 2:30, 5:10, 7:50, 10:30 HOW DO YOU KNOW 12:55 Fri-Tue 4:30, 7:25, 10:15 LITTLE FOCKERS 11:35am, 2:15, 5, 7:40, 10:25 TANGLED 3D 11:30am, 2:05, 4:45 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 3D 12:20, 3:45, 6:50, 9:40 THE FIGHTER 1, 4:15, 7:05, 9:55 THE KING’S SPEECH 12:10, 3:20, 7:10, 10:10 THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: DON CARLO ENCORE Wed 6:30 THE TOURIST 11:45am, 2:20, 4:55, 7:35, 10:05 TRON: LEGACY 3D 12, 3:35, 6:40, 7:20, 9:50, 10:20 TRUE GRIT 12:40, 3:55, 6:55, 9:45
Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema
2320 Lloyd Center Mall, 800-326-3264 GULLIVER’S TRAVELS 3D 11:55am, 3, 6, 9 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 12:10, 3:15, 6:15, 9:20 LITTLE FOCKERS 12:35, 3:35, 6:25, 8:55 TANGLED 3:30 Fri-Wed 6:20, 9:25 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 12:25, 3:25, 6:25, 9:30 TRON: LEGACY 12:05, 3:10, 6:05, 9:10 TRUE GRIT 11:50am, 3:20, 6:30, 9:05 YOGI BEAR 12:30 YOGI BEAR 3D 12, 3:05, 6:10, 9:15
Roseway Theatre 7229 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-282-2898 Call for showtimes.
7818 SE Stark St., 503-252-0500 DESPICABLE ME Fri-Sun 2:20 Sat-Sun 12:15 FOUR LIONS 5 Sat-Thu 9:35 INCEPTION Sat-Thu 9:10 MEGAMIND 4:40, 6:45 Fri-Sun 2:30 Sat 12:25 Sun 12:25 RED 7:15 FriSun 2:40 Sat 2:20 Sun 2:20 SECRETARIAT 4:25 THE TOWN Sat-Thu 9 UNSTOPPABLE 7
Avalon Theatre
3451 SE Belmont St., 503-238-1617 DESPICABLE ME 1:15, 5 LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE 1:30, 5:25 RED 3:20, 7:15 THE TOWN 9:20 UNSTOPPABLE 3, 7, 8:50
Bagdad Theater and Pub
3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-249-7474 FOUR LIONS Sun, TueThu 8:50 Sat 10:10am MEGAMIND Sat-Sun 2 Sat 5:15 THE NEXT THREE DAYS Fri, Sun, Tue-Thu 6 Sat 7:30
Century at Clackamas Town Center
12000 SE 82nd Ave., 800-326-3264 BLACK SWAN 11:25am, 2:10, 4:55, 7:40, 10:25am DUE DATE 11am Fri-Tue 4:40, 10:20am GULLIVER’S TRAVELS 11:55am, 2:15, 6:55 Mon-Thu 4:35, 9:10 Fri 4:40, 9:15 Sat 4:40, 9:15 Sun 4:40, 9:15 GULLIVER’S TRAVELS 3D 1:05, 3:20, 5:40, 7:55 Mon-Thu 10:15 Fri 10:45am, 10:15am Sat 10:45am, 10:15am Sun 10:45am, 10:15am HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 1:20 Fri-Tue 7 HOW DO YOU KNOW 1:25, 4:20 Mon-Thu 7:10, 10:05 Fri 10:30am, 7:15, 10:05am Sat 10:30am, 7:15, 10:05am Sun 10:30am, 7:15, 10:05am LITTLE FOCKERS 11:10am, 12:30, 1:45, 3, 4:15, 5:30, 6:50, 8, 9:25, 10:30 MEGAMIND Mon-Thu 11:05am Fri-Sun 10:40am TANGLED 4:25, 7, 9:40 Mon-Thu 11:20am, 1:55 Fri 11:15am, 1:50 Sat 11:15am, 1:50 Sun 11:15am, 1:50 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 12:10, 3:05, 6:05, 8:55 THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 3D 1:35, 4:30, 7:20 Mon-Thu 10:05 Fri 10:50am, 10:05am Sat 10:50am, 10:05am Sun 10:50am, 10:05am THE FIGHTER 10:15am Mon-Thu 11:15am, 2, 4:45, 7:30 Fri 11am, 1:45, 4:35, 7:25 Sat 11am, 1:45, 4:35, 7:25 Sun 11am, 1:45, 4:35, 7:25 THE KING’S SPEECH 10am MonThu 11am, 1:45, 4:30, 7:15 Fri 10:40am, 1:30, 4:20, 7:10 Sat 10:40am, 1:30, 4:20, 7:10 Sun 10:40am, 1:30, 4:20, 7:10 THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: DON CARLO ENCORE Wed 6:30 THE SOCIAL NETWORK 6:30, 9:30 THE TOURIST 11:35am, 2:20, 5, 7:35, 10:10am
NORTHWEST Cinema 21
616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515 TINY FURNITURE 7, 9 FriSun 4:45 Sat 2:30 Sun 2:30
Mission Theater & Pub 1624 NW Glisan St., 503-249-7474 FOUR LIONS Sat-Mon,
SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, DEC. 31-JAN. 6, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED
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