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WWEEK.COM
VOL 37/12 01.26.2011
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
DRINK YOUR GUIDE TO PORTLAND’S BEST BARS, PUBS AND CLUBS.
M AT T D ’A N N U N Z I O
BACK COVER
NEWS TOP FED’S TAKE ON THE JTTF. DISH SOUP & SANDWICH SUPREMACY. SCREEN HAND-DRAWN TATI.
TRANSFORM
Transform lives. Transform yourself.
Accepting applications for Fall 2011
Join us on February 13th and See How to Expand Your Professional Horizons Attend A One-dAy dAy IntrOductIOn dA IntrOductIOn tO PAcIfIcA’s degree PrOgrAms
PAcIfIcA grAduAte InstItute is an accredited
This one-day program on February 13 gives prospective students a comprehensive introduction to Pacifica Graduate Institute’s unique resources and educational features.
graduate school offering M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Psychology, the Humanities and Mythological Studies that are informed by the Jungian tradition of Depth Psychology. This unique perspective and the programs’ interdisciplinary nature make them ideal for individuals who desire an engaging and academically rigorous degree program.
• Sit in on typical classroom presentations by core faculty and special guest lecturers • Learn more about Pacifica’s degree programs at program-specific information meetings • Explore the resources on both of Pacifica’s campuses near Santa Barbara, California • Interact with Pacifica students, alumni, faculty, and staff The $75 registration fee includes: • $25 Gift Certificate good at the bookstore • Continental breakfast & buffet lunch Two continuing education credits are available.
249 Lambert Rd., Carpinteria, CA 93013 www.pacifica.edu
Space is limited. Register for the February 13th Introduction now. Call 805.969.3626, ext. 103 or register online at www.pacifica.edu
2
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
Attend a FREE Admissions Seminar Upcoming Admissions Seminar dates:
February 18 – March 4 – April 15
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WW_4unit_012611.indd 1
1/20/2011 9:54:22 AM
CONTENT
Complimentary Exam and X-Rays for all New Patients! *Now through February 28th
Call today to reserve your time!
GROOMS WITH A VIEW: Why these two men make a good case for same-sex marriage rights in Oregon. Page 13.
NEWS
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MUSIC
23
CULTURE
16
SCREEN
37
HEADOUT
17
CLASSIFIEDS
43
DISH
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STAFF Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman EDITORIAL Managing News Editor Henry Stern Arts & Culture Editor Kelly Clarke Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, James Pitkin, Beth Slovic Copy Chief Kat Merck Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Peggy Perdue, Sarah Smith Special Sections Editor Ben Waterhouse Screen Editor Aaron Mesh Music Editor Casey Jarman Assistant Music Editor Michael Mannheimer Editorial Interns Stacy Brownhill, Leighton Cosseboom, Kevin Davis, Rachael DeWitt, Rebecca Jacobson, Jessica Lutjemeyer, Nikki Volpicelli CONTRIBUTORS Stage Ben Waterhouse Classical Brett Campbell Dance Heather Wisner Visual Arts Richard Speer
503 285 3620
Erik Bader, Ruth Brown, Nathan Carson, Shane Danaher, Robert Ham, Whitney Hawke, Jay Horton, AP Kryza, Nilina Mason-Campbell, John Minervini, Katrina Nattress, Rebecca Raber, Alistair Rockoff, Jeff Rosenberg, Anika Sabin, Matt Singer, Chris Stamm, Mark Stock PRODUCTION Production Manager Kendra Clune Art Director Ben Mollica Graphic Designers Soma Honkanen, Adam Krueger, Carolyn Richardson, Dylan Serkin Production Intern Christa Connelly ADVERTISING Director of Advertising Jane Smith Display Account Executives Sara Backus, Alisha Barnes, Maria Boyer, Carrie Hinton, Janet Norman, Kyle Owens Classifieds Account Executives Michael Donhowe, Jennifer Lee Advertising Assistant Ashley Grether Marketing and Events Manager Jess Sword Marketing and Promotions Coordinator Brittany McKeever
Our mission: Provide our audiences with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference. Circulation: 90,000 (except during holidays and school vacations.) Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law. Willamette Week is published weekly by City of Roses Newspaper Company 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 243-1115 Classifieds phone: (503) 223-1500 fax: (503) 223-0388
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Willamette Week welcomes freelance submissions. Send material to either News Editor or Arts Editor. Manuscripts will be returned if you include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. To be considered for calendar listings, notice of events must be received in writing by noon Wednesday, two weeks before publication. Send to Calendar Editor. Photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a selfaddressed, stamped envelope. Questions concerning circulation or subscription inquiries should be directed to Robert Lehrkind at Willamette Week. postmaster: Send all address changes to Willamette Week, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Subscription rates: One year $90, six months $45. Back issues $5 for walk-ins, $8 for mailed requests when available. Willamette Week is mailed at third-class rates.
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
3
INBOX KEEP THAT FUNNY COMING!
I truly enjoyed a hearty laugh at your acupuncture v. chiropractic article in last week’s issue [see “Fighting Over the Needle,” WW, Jan. 19, 2011]. Putting aside the fact that acupuncturists (acupuncture has been disproven wholesale as an efficacious means of viable health care and has shown to work no better than a placebo in the management of pain) and chiropractors (chiropractic is a potentially body paralyzing manipulation of ones spinal column in the name of something called “subluxation,” another unproven form of “life essence” hogwash) both practice a completely unscientific form of vitalism that for some reason the medical science board in this state takes seriously...but “puncture a lung”? With an acupuncture needle? Are you kidding me? Thanks, Willamette Week, for finally bringing humor to your generally serious rag. Next week perhaps you can run an article about how the elves are mad at the tree fairies for using the same charms in their invisibility incantations. Keep that funny coming. Adam Raitano Southeast 52nd Avenue
WWEEK.COM READERS COMMENT ON... “HAIL, HAIL PORTLANDIA”
“Lighten up, Portland. It’s funny because it’s true. If you don’t think it’s funny..well..that’s because it’s you. I am looking forward to skits about overly passive drivers, over-hopped beer and women who despite having finished their meal and paid their check will not leave because they know people are waiting (I think it’s called being “passive-aggressive”), children on wooden bicycles, hipsters living with rednecks, selling
I
NOTHING SAYS
bars of gold to shop at New Seasons, art that’s not art which makes it art, Apizza Scholls, Hawthorne’s multitude of guys who don’t know how to play guitar playing guitar on every corner, driving 100 miles in a Subaru to go bike riding, sun-breaks and ridiculously crappy service in restaurants and bars. Phew!! That should pretty much cover the second season. Good luck, Portlandia. ‘If we can’t laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?’” —BokChoy “Can we PLEASE stop saying ‘Lighten up Portlanders!!’ The fact that it’s not funny has nothing to do with the subject matter, or with anyone being offended. Unfunny is just unfunny.” —willis “Critiquing BokChoy.. ;-) “passive drivers”… check. You left out those who never learned the art of merging or those who never use their signals. “Over-hopped beer”: True, but hops are healthy and some of us like it. Women who won’t leave...so true and annoying. Never heard about selling gold to buy health food. Hey wait, Apizza Scholls is some of the best around. Can’t stand the lines and hype. I mean, it’s pizza. Street troubadors...yeah, some are horrible, but some are pretty good. “Crappy service” AMEN! I walked out of a few places that failed to even acknowledge my presence and did not pay for the beer that I eventually got after 20 minutes in other places. You left out overrated high-end restaurants.” —tTt 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
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
Anecdotal reports suggest adults are once again getting on the Oregon Health Plan, after several years of the plan only (or at least, mostly) being available to children and pregnant women. Given that the state is broke, how did the OHP make this comeback? —C.K. Dexter Haven I heard it was the combined Wonder Twin powers of Barack Obama and John Kitzhaber. Didn’t they touch their magic rings together and transform into an MRI machine made of ice and a marmoset with a medical degree, respectively, thereby solving our healthcare problems forever? Actually, the plan that saved OHP was hatched way back in 2008. Obama was just a gleam in the Nobel committee’s eye, and Kitzhaber was practically still governor. I won’t keep you in suspense—it’s a tax. “Thanks to a fee that hospitals agreed to pay
during the 2009 session and federal funding,” says Oregon DHS’s Patty Wentz, “we’re able to expand health care to some 35,000 adults.” That still leaves 105,000 uninsured, but it’s better than we were doing before. (Plus, three of them died while you were reading that sentence—universal coverage, here we come!) What’s unusual about this particular tax is that the folks it was levied on were largely for it: Since hospitals absorb most of the costs of providing care for the uninsured, it turns out to be cheaper for them to subsidize the OHP now than to eat the emergency room fees later. It’s sort of like if all the relatives you might move in with chipped in now to buy you a one-way ticket to Bolivia—it actually saves them money in the long run. Of course, the hospitals pass the extra 4 percent on to us. But we’re all insured, or else deadbeats, so nobody cares. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
SNOW BOARD SALE
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ALSO OUT THIS WEEK: Carolina Chocolate Drops • Deerhoof • Destroyer Fujiya & Miyagi • Get Up Kids • Lori McKenna Cold War Kids • Deathspell Omega • David Guetta LCD Soundsystem • Corinne Bailey Rae
new & used CDs, DVDs & vinyl DOWNTOWN • 1313 W. Burnside • 503.274.0961 EASTSIDE • 1931 NE Sandy Blvd. • 503.239.7610 BEAVERTON • 3290 SW Cedar Hills Blvd. • 503.350.0907
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
5
SCHOOLS: Blanchard site a skate park? ROGUE: One very grim reaper. GAY RIGHTS: A love story with political possibilities. HEALTH CARE: Single-payer’s prospects in Oregon.
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The Red and Black Cafe is trying to raise $50,000 by the end of the month so it can buy its current space in Southeast Portland. As of Jan. 24, the vegan, worker-owned coffee bar and restaurant had collected about $42,000 in cash and other pledges of money. If the cafe raises the $50,000 necessary for the down payment, it plans to convert the building’s second floor into low-income group housing for about a half-dozen people.
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The Oregon Board of Chiropractic Examiners shrugged off objections from acupuncturists and the Oregon Medical Board, voting unanimously last week to let chiropractors engage in “dry needling.” Opponents of the change claim dry needling is simply another name for acupuncture and an intrusion into that practice (see “Fighting Over the Needle,” WW, Jan. 19, 2011). Board director Dave McTeague says his group must now set training standards. Stephen Kafoury, acupuncturists’ lobbyist, says his group is evaluating options.
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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CAFE SOCIETY
Lori A. Meadows, former development director at 1000 Friends of Oregon, has managed to land another fundraising job, although multiple sources tell WW she is a suspect in an alleged theft from her previous employer. Meadows, who left the venerable land-use group in November, was hired last month as the development director at the Washington County Museum. Museum director Samuel Shogren says he was unaware of Meadows’ past, which includes two prior felony theft convictions. “We don’t do criminal background checks,” Shogren says, adding that nothing in Meadows’ performance so far has given him cause for concern. Meadows declined comment.
Coleman Snowshoes Snowshoe Deal of the Week by Coleman. Only $49.99
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Marijuana activist Paul Stanford has filed a new initiative aimed at the 2012 state ballot that would establish a seven-member Oregon Cannabis Commission to regulate the cultivation and sale of cannabis for adults. Stanford projects taxation on cannabis would bring in millions of dollars for the state general fund, as well as diminish underage abuse and drug crime. He is planning a fundraising concert July 2 in Portland with reggae band Toots & the Maytals and says he’s already got $50,000 lined up for the campaign, which needs 87,213 valid signatures STANFORD to make the ballot next year. The Portland Timbers’ home opener is April 14, and neighbors of the revamped PGE Park are worried about parking problems when expected large crowds start arriving for the team’s first season in Major League Soccer. The Northwest District Association is discussing recommendations for stricter parking limits and tougher residency checks for parking zones around the stadium, expanded zones and more parking enforcement. The city is taking suggestions for stadium-area parking at the NWDA’s website (northwestdistrictassociation.org). Check out our new website.
NEWS
GOT A GOOD TIP? CALL 503.445.1542, OR EMAIL NEWSHOUND@WWEEK.COM
DWIGHT HOLTON OREGON’S TOP FEDERAL PROSECUTOR ON THE JTTF, PORTLAND CITY COUNCIL AND THE IPAD. M I K E P E R R A U LT
WW: Portland doesn’t seem to have suffered from being outside the JTTF. Why does Portland need to rejoin? Dwight Holton: I know liberty requires a healthy skepticism of government power. I think you can carry your skepticism and still join without shedding that critical feature of democracy. There are law enforcement officers in the federal government, FBI and other agencies and local governments right now working on terrorism investigations. There are Portland police officers who are right now working on terrorism investigations. The goal and purpose of the task force is to put them in the same room, so the Portland officers are a part of the regular briefings we get, but also to provide local insight. We do this in almost every topic here. So, to oversimplify, the current protocol is, the JTTF can contact Portland police when there’s something going on. But on an ad-hoc basis, where you guys get and share information, that doesn’t happen? Correct. In a perfect world, we’d have a couple officers who come in and are there all the time.
BY N I G E L JAQ U ISS , M ARK Z US M AN
and
HENRY STERN
243-2122
The point man for those urging Portland to rejoin the Joint Terrorism Task Force is Dwight Holton. The 45-year-old interim U.S. attorney for Oregon, Holton has been making the rounds, arguing that the value of participation in the law enforcement partnership outweighs whatever concern skeptical Portlanders might have about the federal effort. Those with a short memory will be excused for forgetting that Portland was a member of the task force (which is, essentially, a collection of federal and local law enforcement officials who pool information about possible terrorist attacks) until 2005, when then-Mayor Tom Potter pulled the city’s police officers out of it. The city had been part of the JTTF since 1997 and was the only one of 100 member cities to withdraw. An ex-police chief, Potter was angry that even as the mayor overseeing the Police Bureau, he couldn’t get the highest-security clearance that would give him access to all JTTF files. No other mayor had that access, and the FBI offered to give top-secret clearance at the time to then-Chief Derrick Foxworth. Potter said he wanted to ensure there was no return to the city’s notorious “Red Squad” of yesteryear, when cops in the criminal-intelligence division spied on political activists and ferreted out “communists” behind every Benson Bubbler. (More recently, in 2008, City Pages in Minneapolis reported JTTF had tried to infiltrate vegan potlucks to learn more about protests planned for the Republican National Convention.) But after Nov. 26, 2010—when the FBI foiled an alleged plot to bomb the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Pioneer Courthouse Square— Commissioner Dan Saltzman urged the city to rejoin the task force. The Portland City Council will vote on the matter Feb. 24. Despite Saltzman’s support and the arrest of the alleged bomber, Holton has work to do. The other four members of the five-member City Council are wary about rejoining. And in this town, there are few political consequences for telling the feds to shove it. Nevertheless, the self-effacing Holton, whose brother-in-law is Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine, is willing to wade into the politics of this issue.
How would the investigation into the Christmas-tree bomb plot have gone differently if Portland police had been involved early on? I don’t think as much about that case as I do the next case where we have multiple targets, a couple of different targets identified as locations, a number of suspects where it’s not somebody with whom we have undercover contact. That’s where that deep and ongoing cooperation can be very important. What’s the most compelling argument you’ve heard from JTTF opponents? The best argument is also the worst—that if Portland police officers were to join, they would either be allowed or required to violate an Oregon statute that makes it illegal to gather information on someone on the basis of their religion, or political activities…. If it were true, it’d be awful. It’s the worst argument because it’s not true. The task force does not gather information on anyone based on their religion, on their political view, on their union membership, on their organizational membership, period. We don’t do it for five reasons: One, it’s immoral. Two, it’s unconstitutional. Three, it violates federal law and federal guidelines. Four, it violates state law. And five, it’s a waste of time. How do we know that, and what’s the check on that? There is substantial oversight of the JTTF from the national level as well as from us
locally. There’s an inspector general who keeps an eye on JTTF as well as a whole series of other oversight layers. Are there accommodations you’d be willing to make given Portland’s concerns? Put it in the agreement that they [officers] can’t violate the state law. And, if they see federal officers doing it, they have to report it. We want to make this work for Portland. Almost six years ago, when we got out, it was based at least in part on concerns about tactics on the war on terror—investigative techniques like unwarranted wiretaps or wiretaps without warrants, torture. I share these concerns. There were terrible, terrible things. They’re gone now. Do you have any realistic expectation that this City Council will change its mind? I think this is a city that cares about public policy…. I don’t have a political machine...but I think I’ve got the best public policy. And I think it matters in this town. So I’m hopeful we’ll bring folks back. If we don’t, that’s fine. We’ll keep doing all the stuff we’re doing. You’ve said before that there seem to be more terrorism investigations or prosecutions in Oregon than other parts of the country. Why do you think that is? I don’t have a good sense of that. I know I spend a disproportionate amount of my time on international terrorism and terrorismrelated cases. I spend about half of my time doing that kind of stuff. And that is more like the U.S. attorneys in Manhattan and Chicago than it is like Seattle. Is cybercrime on your radar? Sure. I got an email right before Christmas from the mother ship [U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder] saying, essentially, don’t use iPads, don’t forward email to iPads, don’t take notes using iPads because they’re a security risk. I didn’t tell my wife. And, unfortunately, she got me an iPad for Christmas, which is [now] a very lovely and expensive gaming platform for my 6-year-old. But the implication is the iPad is more of a security risk than a laptop? That’s what my security folks think. And they say quit whining. People can mine information off these things in a way…because they are so connected. In part it’s because it’s so tempting to put everything on there in a way that everything might not be on your laptop. To read an extended version of this interview in which Holder discusses the Bush administration, guns and gangs in rural Oregon, and The Oregonian’s reporting debunking “Pornland.”
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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SIX AND THE CITY THE BOLD AND THE BIZARRE AMONG THE CONCEPTS TO REDEVELOP A KEY SITE. BY B ETH SLOV IC
bslovic@wweek.com
The 10-acre site Portland Public Schools now occupies just north of the Rose Quarter could become a Costco, as The Oregonian reported earlier this month. Or the school district’s headquarters—known as the Blanchard Education Service Center—and the area around it could have a much more novel reincarnation as the new home to an “urban winery,” a world-class skateboard park, a culinary center, 400,000 square feet of hotel space or a 2,500-seat concert hall. On Monday night, the Portland School Board approved a new memo of understanding with city officials to explore all those redevelopment prospects for the $7.6 million parcel with the Portland Development Commission. Any drastic plans would require rezoning, fairly significant transportation changes and a lengthy public process. But in a wide-ranging October report, city officials and consultants from three architecture firms (SERA, Mithun and DAO) developed six general concepts for the site and its surroundings. Here are those six ideas and what they really mean. 1. Entertainment If Portlandia is right that we’re the city where young people go to retire, this concept could be our new Leisure World. Possible key elements: A public plaza and sculpture park overlooking the Willamette River; a 2,500-seat entertainment venue; a roller-derby arena; indoor fields for soccer, lacrosse and Frisbee; a rock-climbing gym and a skate park; local restaurants, breweries, vintners and coffee shops. City description: “A smaller-scale district that hosts a variety of local entertainment venues and attractions that appeal to the unique Portland demographic. The big idea for this district is to execute an entertainment district that celebrates ideas and activities that ‘keep Portland weird.’” 2. “Incremental Industrial” This may sound like a new Central Eastside Industrial neighborhood, but analysts say it could also resemble San Francisco’s South Park, which was home to several dot-com companies in the 1990s. Possible key elements: An “urban” winery; a culinary center; rooftop basketball courts; 8
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
20,000 square feet of communal shop spaces; 400 live-work units; an independent local film company like Laika. City description: “If [an] urban winery, vertical farm or other regional culinary center can be attracted to the locations shown, these amenities will draw from and support the Rose Quarter.” 3. Big Box Mixed-Use The original idea included two big-box stores. Unlike suburban sites, these retailers would have housing and open greenspace above them, plus bike and pedestrian bridges connecting the stores to city streets. Possible key elements: The basement at PPS’s headquarters could become one big-box store, potentially leaving space for PPS offices above; additional hotel space with ground-level restaurants; and short-term rental trucks for shoppers to haul purchases from retailers. City description: A “model of progressive urban Big Box mixed-use.” 4. Employment Incubator In a city with 10 percent unemployment, the idea is to grow jobs in keeping with Portland’s small-business credo. Possible key elements: Flexible office space for small businesses that don’t need or can’t afford Class A or Class B office space; shared parking, conference rooms and utilities. City description: “A compact employment district that supports a variety of business sizes and types.” 5. Research and Development Office and lab space for an unspecified R&D company or companies, along with a new, expanded hotel. Possible key elements: A central open-space zone and retail pavilion; 429,000 square feet of hotel rooms; 525,000 square feet of unspecified “laboratory” space; and 50,000 square feet of retail. City description: “A series of open spaces are linked together and to the larger community, defining a number of subneighborhoods within the development.” 6. Mixed-Use Residential A futuristic plan…only if a development idea introduced in the aughts is considered forward-looking. The proposal calls for commingling retail and residential space. Possible key elements: More than 1,200 residential units; lofts; and a mass-transit hub connecting light rail to the Portland Streetcar. City description: “A variety of residential types” with density and retail along Broadway.
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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NEWS
CONSUMERS C A R O LY N A N N . N E T
ROGUE OF THE WEEK
DAVID PERLMAN
SHEESH: SCREWING OVER PEOPLE PLANNING THEIR FUNERALS. David Perlman is what the funeral industry calls a “pre-need salesman.” That euphemism may obscure Perlman’s work selling something all of us will need someday—burial plots, cemetery furniture and funeral services. Perlman’s 18-year career in the death trade ended Jan. 13 when the Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board canceled his registration and slapped him with a $13,000 fine for “fraudulent and dishonest conduct.” The board’s file shows that Perlman’s treatment of customers—who are often either aged or in a fragile emotional state dealing with the prospect of their own deaths—would make a used-car salesman blush, and earns him this week’s Rogue honors. The first offense for which the Mortuary Board disciplined Perlman involved his dealings with an elderly couple in 2007 when they massively overpaid for the “opening and closing” of their burial plots in Medford. “[Perlman] told Keith and Betty T. that a change in state law required them to make the purchase,” according to the board’s final order disciplining Perlman. “Respondent also confirmed that the price for an opening and closing service was $495 per person with a processing fee of $75.” “[Perlman] knew that there was no change in state law that required Keith and Betty T. to make such a purchase,” the board said. “[He] also knew that Memory Gardens charged $95 per person for an opening and closing service in its Scatter Gardens, and that a processing fee was not charged for purchases totaling less than $500.” The board found that Perlman had charged the couple a total of $1,065 for services—a mark-up of more than 460 percent over the actual retail cost of $190. When a Mortuary Board investigator contacted Perlman, he denied knowledge of the contract. But colleagues who had joined him on the sales call admitted what happened. Perlman, a former Southeast Portland resident, is no stranger to the Mortuary Board. The board issued warnings to him in 2005, 2006 and 2008 for other alleged misbehavior. But it was Perlman’s sale of a burial plot and granite bench in June 2009 that appears to have killed his career in Oregon. (Perlman has relocated to California.) Perlman met two clients referred to in Mortuary Board documents as Doug and Linda W. at the Prayer Garden in Salem’s Restlawn cemetery.
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
LEAF US ALONE HOW MANY PORTLANDERS HAVE PAID THE NEW LEAF REMOVAL FEE. BY B ET H SLOV IC
“Mr. W. wanted to be buried near his mother in the Prayer Garden,” the Mortuary Board final order states. “Doug and Linda W. decided to purchase a granite bench with burial rights in the Prayer Garden across from Doug W.’s mother.” Perlman sold them the spot and an “emerald green” granite bench for $6,115. There were two problems with that deal. Another salesman had previously sold the spot in 2003. And Restlawn granite benches, the board found, do not come in emerald green. The Mortuary Board found Perlman’s actions lacking integrity, canceled his registration and fined him $13,000 for those and other misdeeds. Perlman says he will appeal. He says both situations have been fully resolved to customers’ satisfaction and he is innocent. “There was no deception,” Perlman says. We’ll reserve judgment whether there’s any afterlife of hellish punishment for those who lie to people on transactions that transition their mortal souls. But there is a name for them in this life: Rogue.
bslovic@wweek.com
More than a month after street sweepers passed through Portland’s “leaf districts” to clear fallen foliage, only 37 percent of assessed property owners have paid the new removal fee. By comparison, almost the same percentage—35 percent—of the 30,000 assessed property owners have withheld their payments, ranging from $15 to $65, under an opt-out provision. And 28 percent of billed residents have simply ignored requests for payment, according to the latest figures from the city. That all means Portland’s Bureau of Transportation has raised $335,000 from the new program—less than half of its $800,000 goal. But residents peeved about the new charge for about 15 percent of the city’s households say they’re surprised the city has collected even that much. Julie Poust, one such resident, owns a bungalow in the Colonial Heights neighborhood of Southeast Portland. She says she’s not opposed to paying for services like leaf removal. But she “ranted and raved” when she got a $30 bill last year because her block has no street trees. She then opted out of the program, along with 10,499 others. Officials with the city’s Transportation Bureau caution these numbers are preliminary. They expect a more complete breakdown late next month. However, preliminary bureau budgets are due Jan. 31, and staffers have drafted financial scenarios for fiscal year 2011 that include lower revenue estimates for leaf-removal services. Even Portlanders who paid the fee are grumbling. Eastmoreland resident Robert McCullough owns one house on Reed College Place divided by a median strip with city-owned trees, and a second house with no street trees. “I had to pay twice,” he says, “once for leaves that weren’t there and once for leaves that weren’t mine.”
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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NEWS DARRYL JAMES
GAY RIGHTS
PICKING UP SLACK: Darold Slack and Jim Stephens under the St. Johns Bridge with their 2-year-old chocolate Lab, Maya.
THE RITE STUFF HERE’S A CATHOLIC PRIEST-TO-GAY GROOM STORY THAT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ADVOCATES OUGHT TO TELL. BY STACY BR OW N H I LL
sbrownhill@wweek.com
Jim Stephens first spotted Darold Slack on June 16, 2008, standing in the crowd at the Portland Pride Parade. “I kept looking back at him, and he kept grinning at me, and I knew it was love at first sight,” says Stephens, blushing behind a dark goatee, wiry glasses and boyish smile. “He was h-o-t-t-t.” More than two years later, the two men in their mid-40s will have a ceremony with all the feel of a marriage rite at Cathedral Park in North Portland this September. It’s a rite Stephens is familiar with—he was once a priest who performed 300 marriages. Oregon voters banned same-sex marriage by approving Measure 36 in 2004, but the 2007 Legislature enacted domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples. Stephens and Slack hope their ceremony will do more than make them domestic partners, a status that lets them buy joint health insurance but still leaves them without a married couple’s federal right to avoid estate taxes after a partner dies. They say the ceremony will give them a sense of validity and, they hope, contribute to the larger same-sex marriage movement. Basic Rights Oregon is working toward that same goal collecting stories of same-sex couples in a “Cards From the Heart” campaign, probably in anticipation of a 2012 ballot measure aiming to reverse Measure 36. BRO hadn’t yet heard the story of Stephens and Slack, but here’s why we think it should be part of its campaign. Stephens and Slack’s love story would make even the most cynical smile, and it’s intriguing because Stephens once was a Catholic priest. Stephens was 5 years old and living in Eastern Oregon as the youngest of six children when he knew he wanted to be a priest. He realized in his early 20s that he was gay, but he felt that
the “calling” for the priesthood was so strong he went on to become ordained in 1997. In 2004, he decided if he couldn’t be out of the closet, he wasn’t being true to himself or his congregation, which was by then the Central Oregon parish of St. Patrick in Madras. Very few statistics exist on how many of the country’s 40,000-plus priests leave each year. But the married priest support group Corpus estimates about 25,000 priests have left the active ministry since the 1960s, though their reasons aren’t broken down into separate statistics. “I would still be a Catholic priest today if I could be openly gay,” says Stephens. Instead, Stephens, 45, is a housing specialist at the Portland nonprofit Outside In. He worships at St. Andrew Parish, a church on Northeast Alberta Street that welcomes gay and lesbian parishioners despite Vatican teachings that homosexuality is wrong. And it was as a member of St. Andrew that Stephens marched in the 2008 Pride Parade and saw Slack, an athletic 46-year-old dental service technician. The two men wouldn’t actually meet until a month later, when Slack was visiting a sick friend at Providence Medical Center, where Stephens was the resident hospital chaplain on duty. Stephens describes a “vibe” that compelled the two men to shyly get coffee together. Slack laughs as he tells the story of that first coffee date. “I was actually getting ready to leave because he was late, and then he comes walking up all nonchalant,” Slack says. “Seven minutes or an hour late, it’s all the same to me. He almost messed the whole thing up!” Just two months later, Slack stood up in front of the couple’s friends and serenaded Stephens with one of their favorite Michael Bublé songs— “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes).” Slack wore an old costume that was half dress and half suit stitched together, and swiveled his profile to sing both the female and male voices. The performance ended with Slack getting down on one knee and asking for Stephens’ hand in marriage. Stephens accepted, saying he had been planning to ask Slack the next day atop Angel’s Rest near the Columbia Gorge. Their nickname for each other? “Yobo,” the Korean word for sweetheart, since Slack is Korean-American. Backward, Stephens likes to joke, it spells, “O boy!” Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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HEALTH CARE ADAM KRUEGER
NEWS
ONE MAN’S PRESCRIPTION: State Rep. Michael Dembrow wants single-payer health care in Oregon.
COVERAGE FOR ALL IS SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE THE CURE FOR OREGON? BY STACY B ROWN HI L L
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sbrownhill@wweek.com
State Rep. Michael Dembrow wants to establish in Oregon what the White House and Congress couldn’t do in last year’s healthcare reform effort: single-payer health care. And a bunch of like-minded folks are coming to Portland to pitch the same idea—at the Oregon Single Payer Conference this Saturday, Jan. 29, at First Unitarian Church. For those needing a refresher, single-payer would create universal health care, funded from a single insurance pool. It’s a “monopsony” (buzzword for your next cocktail party), meaning that several money streams—like progressive income tax, corporate tax and state funds—would all go into one pot that covers everybody’s healthcare costs in Oregon. “In a nutshell, it’s Medicare for everyone,” says Dembrow. Dembrow and his fellow Portland Democrat, state Sen. Chip Shields, face an uphill battle in the Legislature, which is focused on dealing with a $3.5 billion budget hole. Even if the bill to establish single-payer in Oregon succeeds, it will have to jump through a second hoop in 2014 and win a three-fifths legislative vote to get funded—because that’s the year reform advocates hope states can begin experimenting with health care. “It’s going to be tricky,” admits Dembrow. Among the bigwig national healthcare speakers lending support for single-payer at the Jan. 29 conference is Dr. Margaret Flowers, the congressional fellow of Physicians for a National Health Program. She lists four benefits for single-payer. The average Oregonian would pay less in premiums and deductibles out of pocket—despite an increase in taxes to fund single-payer—because it would lower administrative costs and distribute overall costs more widely, Flowers says. Secondly, she says, young people would have better career prospects because people in their 50s wouldn’t feel obligated to stay with jobs just to keep their health benefits. The average primary care physician would spend $60,000 less per year dealing with insurance companies, she estimates. And a fourth benefit she lists is that small businesses would be revitalized because they wouldn’t be carrying the weight of employees’ healthcare costs. The keynote speaker will be 23-term U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a single-payer advocate who gets healthcare advice from activist Joel Segal. “There’s a perfect storm brewing for single-payer,” says Segal. “Unemployment is high, states are cutting their Medicaid programs, employers are dropping health coverage, and union people are getting angry. The government will either cut more programs, or people will demand change. “Single-payer health care is going to take a movement where people say, ‘We’re not going to take this anymore,’” says Segal. “Viva la revolution.” ATTEND: The conference is Saturday, Jan. 29, from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm at First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 13th Ave. Pre-register at singlepayeroregon.org or call 262-4970. Free-$20 sliding scale.
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RUBBER HITS THE PIFF: The most intriguing addition to the 34th Portland International Film Festival: Grindhouse Film Festival curator Dan Halsted has been tapped to present four “PIFF After Dark” midnight movies at the Hollywood Theatre and Cinema 21 at 11:30 pm on weekends during the fest. Halsted, who is best known for his archival preservation of old RUBBER genre film, is branching out into new genre film—though it’s hard to be sure what genre classifies Rubber, his first selection for PIFF: It’s an experimental French horror film about a telepathic killer tire that falls in love. The other PIFF After Dark films are slightly (but only slightly) more recognizable types: Outrage is a yakuza symphony of violence from director Takeshi Kitano; Mutant Girls Squad is a collaboration between the directors of The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, so naturally it’s about Japanese schoolgirls who grow tentacles and chainsaws out of their appendages; and The Revenant is a zombie-vampire comedy where the main zombie-vampire is a U.S. Army soldier killed in Iraq. Undead freedom isn’t free. CLASSICS ON FOOD STAMPS: The city of Portland wants to expose you to classical music and art. That is, if you’re a low-income Portlander. The city’s new “Music for All” program is a six-month deal that offers $5 symphony, opera and ballet tickets to anyone with an Oregon Trail card. Say thanks to the Regional Arts & Culture Council, Work for Art and All Classical 89.9 FM. Oregon Trail cardholders can find info on the ticket deal by visiting goclassicalpdx.org. PORTLANDIA IS FOR THE DOGS: The Jan. 14 preview of Portlandia at the Hollywood Theatre did more than just give the city a sneak preview of how Carrie Brownstein would make fun of it for six weeks. The event, organized by Beer and Movie and Film Action Oregon, also raised $6,000 for the Oregon Humane Society, and another $6,000 for the Film Action Oregon and the Hollywood Theatre. That Brownstein is such a do-gooder.
BEARD BASH: Full-grown men with full-grown facial hair came from far and wide—from Florida to Eugene to right down the street—to participate in the West Coast Beard and Mustache Championships Sunday at Portland’s Crystal Ballroom. Some even wore flair to accompany their hair—one man dressed as Honest Abe, another in a gnome hat with a portable grass patch—as they competed in six different categories including Freestyle Mustache and Partial Beard. Justin Cate, of event organizer Stumptown Stash & Beard Collective, noted that the PDX competition was not affiliated with either the National or World Beard and Mustache Championships, but many of the participants will be traveling to compete in both of those events as well. Congrats to Redmond, Ore.’s, Paul De Leone, who won for his large “natural mustache.”
HEADOUT M AT T W O N G
WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY JAN. 26 [STANDUP] THE BEARDS OF COMEDY Four good young comedians from the South (Andy Sandford, Joe Zimmerman, TJ Young and Dave Stone) do a free show at the Beauty Bar. Good deal! Beauty Bar, 224-0773, thebeautybar.com. 8 pm. Free. 21+.
IF IT’S NOT SCOTTISH, IT’S...YOU KNOW. BY AP KRYZ A
243-2122
Oy, Portland! Ya call yerself Beervana? Ya might as well drink yer grandmother’s piss. India pale ales an’ high-’n’-mighty organic ales? More like fock-off ales. Ef it’s not Scottish, it’s piss. Fer anyone thirstin’ for the dark, strong ales of the highlands, the Cascade Brewing Barrel House is launching the Scottish Ale Fest, with nine Scottish ales from Fearless, Lucky Lab, Black Raven, Cascade and others. With ale flowing, bagpipers wailin’ an’ Stone Porridge providin’ a soundtrack, it’s enough to make yer caber stand at attention. This isn’t a fest fer Portland sissies lookin’ ta wet their tight pants. Luckily, Portland’s rife with enough Scottish wares and events to turn Courtney TaylorTaylors into Sean Connerys. GO: The First Annual Scottish Ale Fest takes place at Cascade Brewing Barrel House, 939 SE Belmont St., 265-8603, cascadebrewingbarrelhouse.com. 3-11 pm Saturday, Jan. 29. Free entry but must buy mug to taste ales: Cascade Brewing mugs $3, recycled Oregon Brewers Fest and Holiday Ale Fest mugs $1, bring your own Oregon Brewers Fest and Holiday Ale Fest and pay no mug fee. Beer tasters $1, full mugs $4-$5. 21+.
FEAST OF ST. ANDREW
Proper diets are essential to liver health, an’ Portland offers the finest Scottish foods this side of Aberdeen. Essential is the shepherd’s delight. Haggis is rare, but Scottish bar Rose & Thistle (2314 NE Broadway, 2878582) cranks out delicious sheep’s stomach stuffed with heart, lungs and liver. Cringin’? Gag all the way to the nearest hot dog stand, ya fat Yank fock. For a starter, the Scotch egg at Horse Brass Pub (4534 SE Belmont St., 232-2202, horsebrass.com) is king—a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage, breaded and deep fried. Yer heart will thank ya during the winter.
PIPE DREAMS
Aside from the occasional unicycle-bound musician, bagpipes don’t git much love—wankers think they sound like a sack o’ rats tossed in the pond. To Scots, they sound like baby angels serenadin’ the heavens. Northwest Bagpipes (7160
SW Ventura Drive, Tigard, 987-0774, nwbagpipes.com) offers all the equipment needed ta play “Scotland the Brave” fer the neighbors.
DRESSED TO KILT
No Scotsman (nor Scotslass) is worth shite without proper attire. The Scottish Country Shop (1450 SE Powell Blvd., 238-2528) is the Pictish Macy’s. Along with canned haggis, kilts are available for purchase and rental. Ef anyone calls it a skirt, it’s yer right ta smash a pint on the focker’s head.
SCOTCH SPORTS
July’s Portland Highland Games (phga.org) separates the highlanders from the lowlanders in feats such as the legendary caber toss, in which brawny men chuck gigantic logs into the fog. If the Scottish Ale Fest becomes the tradition it fockin’ should be, you’ll need those muscles fer next year’s go ’round. Here’s ta ye.
THURSDAY JAN. 27 [MUSIC] BLACK THOUGHT Expect straightforward, politically driven lyrics delivered with East Coast speed from the Roots’ lead MC tonight. Despite the absence of his famous band, Thought should deliver the classic jazz undertones that put the Roots on the map and into Jimmy Fallon’s late night home. Refuge, 115 SE Yamhill St. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
FRIDAY JAN. 28 [MUSIC] THE THERMALS Portland’s premiere pop-punk-partytime trio rocks all-ages Branx. Branx, 320 SE 2nd Ave., rotture.com. 8 pm. $12 advance, $15 day of show. All ages. [SCREEN] IP MAN 2 Everybody Wing Chun tonight! Because Dan Halsted is presenting a brand-new Hong Kong martial arts movie about a master of the Wing Chun school, you see. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 493-1128. Multiple showtimes. $7.
SATURDAY JAN. 29 [PUSSIES] INTERNATIONAL CAT SHOW Come meet Stewie, the Oregonbred Maine Coon that holds the Guinness World Record as the longest domestic cat. He’s more than 4 feet long. Portland Airport Holiday Inn, 8439 NE Columbia Blvd. 9 am-5 pm Saturday-Sunday, Jan. 29-30. $6, $4 (with 2 cans of human food for the Oregon Food Bank); kids under 12 free.
SUNDAY JAN. 30 CRYSTAL BALLROOM BIRTHDAY FREE-FOR-ALL [MUSIC] The Crystal Ballroom Birthday Free-for-all continues this year with a largely rootsy lineup of McMenamins regulars (including WW Best New Band winners Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside). Happy 97th birthday, Crystal! Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., mcmenamins.com. 4 pm. Free. All ages. [STAGE] A GHOST IN THE ROOM WITH US Poet David Biespiel, pianist/singer Joshua Pearl and ballet dancer Gavin Larsen have collaborated on some sort of multidisciplinary piece. Cool! Conduit Dance, 918 SW Yamhill St., Suite 401. 6 pm. $15 at boxofficetickets.com.
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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2011 ILLAHEE LECTURES
INNOVATION for PUBLIC GOOD Q: How to solve the looming climate shitstorm? A: Focus on energy. ROGER PIELKE, JR.
CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY RESEARCH FIXING CLIMATE THROUGH ENERGY INNOVATION Forget unworkable treaties. Energy innovation is our best path to a climate solution. Roger Pielke is author, co-author or co-editor of seven books, including The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming. Thursday, Feb 3, 7PM First Congregational Church 1126 SW Park, Portland, OR Coming speakers on sustainability, open source, food, the commons, governance.
www.illahee.org (503) 222-2719 CASINO
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UPCOMING EVENTS
WILLIAMS & REE THE INDIAN AND THE WHITE GUY
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Tickets available at kahneeta.com or call 541.553.1112
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DINING
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STABLES
CULTURE
INTERVIEW
MARC MARON SETH OLENICK
A VETERAN COMIC TURNS TO PODCASTING FOR SHOCK THERAPY AND BITING LAUGHS.
BY M AT T HE W SI N GE R
243-2122
Marc Maron is twice-divorced, a recovering addict, a three-time failure as a liberal radio pundit and a veteran comic who over the past 20-plus years has watched many of his peers rise to household-name status while he’s remained mired in obscurity. He’s not complaining, though. Not as much as he used to, at least. And with good reason: His podcast, WTF (it stands for what you think it does), has been recently deemed a must-hear by both Rolling Stone and The New York Times. Ostensibly an interview show featuring Maron’s comedy-world colleagues, it often morphs into a public therapy session through the host’s uncanny ability to pry astonishing candor out of his guests. Think of it as what NPR’s Fresh Air would be like if Terry Gross had started her career cutting lines of coke for Sam Kinison. It’s not surprising that Maron is so adept at that kind of emotional spelunking. Once described as the neurosis of Woody Allen communicated with the fury of Iggy Pop, his stand-up is marked by almost uncomfortable levels of unvarnished honesty. Thanks largely to WTF, more people are now coming out to see him live. Could it be that this most caustic of comedians is finally feeling...satisfied? “My lamentations are still there, but they’re not the same,” says Maron, 47, from his home in Los Angeles. “At some point, you have to accept, ‘Well, this is going good. Why not be happy with this?’”
WW: What was the impetus for starting the podcast? Marc Maron: The impetus was really desperation and unemployment. When I got fired from a job at Air America for the third time, I was there with my partner who’d been my radio producer for years, and I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do. I was pretty close to broke, I was just getting done with a nasty divorce, and we were like, “Let’s try this podcast thing.” In the beginning, [Air America] hadn’t taken our security cards away from us, so we were kind of breaking into the studios after hours and bringing guests up in freight
apologies to people I thought I had offended, and that became the show: reintegrating myself into the community and the world in general.
“WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU REALLY SAT DOWN AND TALKED TO SOMEBODY FOR AN HOUR?” —MARC MARON
What do you gain personally from these interviews? The actual act of conversation is something that just doesn’t happen anymore, and it’s important. When was the last time you really sat down and talked to somebody for an hour? That’s this great human thing, and it’s a rarity, dude. What I get out of it is that great human satisfaction of just engaging. And then also, when someone is telling you heavy shit, to actually be present for that stuff—it’s a very risky feeling in an age when people would rather text than call out of fear of dealing with even minor heavy shit. When you’re sitting there face-to-face and someone is telling you they have HIV or their stepdad beat them, for you to own your seat as an engaged listener, how can you not grow from that?
elevators. To not have segments, to not have to throw to a commercial break, and the fact that there was no agenda allowed me to get away from politics and embrace more existential themes and also have complete freedom of mind and language. Why did you decide to interview other comics? Over the years I had alienated myself from a lot of people—in my own mind, anyway. I’d become paranoid and jaded and bitter and made assumptions that people either didn’t know who I was or thought I was an asshole. We started using guests, people I knew from comedy, and I just tapped back into something I’d lost touch with. I was the kind of teenager who would hang out and talk to homeless people for hours. I was just one of those curious people who liked engaging with odd individuals. That opened back up again, and I started making
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Did you consciously develop your interviewing style? A lot of times, depending on who it is, I just want conversations to happen. I don’t necessarily care what we talk about, as long as it’s a genuine conversation. I just follow my own curiosity. It’s not about plugging projects. A lot of times I won’t even know what my guests have done, and I don’t do that kind of homework.
GO: Marc Maron performs at Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888643-8669. 8 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 7:30 pm and 10 pm Friday-Saturday Jan. 26-29. $10 general, $15 reserved seating. Tickets at heliumcomedy.com/portland. Maron’s podcast, WTF, is available through iTunes and at wtfpod.com.
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3500 SW River Parkway,Portland OR 97329 (Near OHSU Tram Station. Meriwether Condo) Lunch 11:30 - 2:00, Dinner 4:30 - 9:00 503 - 467 - 7533 www.lehana.com Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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DISH
FOOD
CRAVINGS: GRILLED CHEESE AND TOMATO SOUP BY R U T H BR OW N
rbrown@wweek.com
The grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup combo is a cheap and easy DeLorean ride back to childhood. Combine plastic cheese, white supermarket bread and a can of Campbell’s and you’re 8 years old again. Faced with crappy weather and a city full of overgrown children, plenty of Portland eateries are cashing in by offering their own spin on a dish most Americans can make themselves before they can spell, gussying it up with some fancy cheese and a few fresh herbs, then slapping on a gourmet price tag. But is anywhere actually turning out a meal for which it’s worth parting with the warmth of your own house—not to mention your cold hard cash? I bravely faced the winter chills to find out. GRILLED CHEESE GRILL 113 SE 28th Ave. and 1027 NE Alberta St., 206-8959, grilledcheesegrill.com.
and a mug of steaming tomato soup. The latter is pretty solid—rich and chunky and pleasingly heavy on the herbs—but the grilled cheese is as dull as a butter knife (ironically, it could have done with more butter). No one visits a soda fountain for a simple, healthy meal. Blueplate’s epic frosted glasses overflowing with ice cream, syrup, soda and whipped cream deserve to be matched with something far more artery-clogging. Rating: 2.5
THE COUNTRY CAT 7937 SE Stark St., 408-1414, thecountrycat.net.
Among rib-sticking, Southern-style goodies like chicken-fried steak and whiskey custard French toast on this Montavilla neighborhood favorite’s brunch menu, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually ordering the humble-sounding grilled cheese and smoked tomato soup ($9), but anyone who does is in for a happy, hearty surprise. The generous ramekin of soup is super savory, with a real, rustic smoky flavor. Bonus points for a nice plop of sour cream floating in the middle. It’s matched with an equally impressive sandwich, composed of two huge slabs of buttery, dense, housemade potato bread held together with a mild, creamy ooze of cheese. Possibly a bit too mild—it completely disappears against such a bold soup—but on its own, it will make even your fried-baconordering dining companions envious.
This school-bus-cum-food-cart is probably best known for serving up calorific grilled cheese/hamburger hybrids to latenight revelers, but it also offers myriad variations on the classic soup-and-sand- Rating: 4 wich combination and is apparently open in daylight hours for sober consumption, BUNK BAR too. Huh. I hit the newly opened Southeast 1028 SE Water Ave., 894-9708. location—this one has a double-decker It’s already well established that Bunk bus—and ordered up “The Gabby” ($4.75), Sandwiches—and its nocturnal offspring, which comes with cheddar, Swiss, mozza- Bunk Bar—serves up some of the best rella and Colby Jack on Portland French sandwiches in Portland, but its reputaBakery white. This sandwich is so much tion is built on gut-busting hunks of saucy, more than the sum of its parts—a big, sloppy meat. What happens when there’s stretchy, gooey, multino animal protein to hide layered melted mess, Ruth’s ranking system: behind? The soup ($2) is, o o z i n g o u t b e t w e e n 1 – Takes me back to college days, ironically, the best part: slices of obscenely but- drunkenly assembling moldy thick, creamy, slightly on stale discount bread. tery bread. God I wished leftovers sweet and served with a 2 – Takes me back to my childhood. I’d been drunk, and I Mom would be proud. good garnish of Parmesan mean that in the nicest 3 – Takes me back to my fantasy and black pepper (it also possible way. This is childhood, where my mom’s pairs brilliantly with the cooking doesn’t involve can openwhat I want waiting at ers or coupons. bar’s riff on a Michelada; home when I stumble in 4 – Takes me to a new plane of just FYI). The bread the door at 3 am. I wish I fatty, starchy bliss. is, as always, perfectly 5 – Cheesus Christ. could say the same about selected—big, thick, soft the soup—a small cup of and well-toasted. But the canned with some onion and fresh tomato sandwich itself ($5) is pretty underwhelmadded in. It’s too hot, too thin and no way ing compared with Bunk’s more notable creations—that plastic, orange glob of chedworth the additional $2.50. Even drunk. dar is starting to feel depressingly familiar Rating: 3.5 by now. The soup is available as a side for BLUEPLATE any of the far more interesting sandwiches, 308 SW Washington St., 295-2583, so, y’know, do that. eatatblueplate.com.
This downtown diner makes its own sodas and proclaims itself to be “salt-of-theearth,” so I was expecting something huge and comforting, dripping with delicious dairy fattiness. But Blueplate’s soupand-sandwich pairing ($6) is a far more modest proposal—a fairly uninspiring sandwich, made with flat-tasting cheddar, 20
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
VIVIANJOHNSON.COM
CHEESE + BREAD + SOUP + HEAT. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Rating: 3.5
50 PLATES 333 NW 13th Ave., 228-5050, 50plates.com.
As far as I can tell, this is the most expensive version in the whole city. This Pearl District concept restaurant is a realnapkin-and-silverware kinda joint, and the “50/50” plate on its lunch menu will
DYNAMIC DUO: It’s time to devour the Country Cat’s smoky tomato soup and creamy grilled cheese.
set you back a cool $10. The bread came with grilled cheese on the outside as well as inside, coating my entire face and hands in enough oil to endanger small penguins. Thank God for that fancy napkin. The cheese is a great aged cheddar, scattered with sun-dried tomatoes, but mine coagulated before I’d even hit the halfway mark, quickly turning from indulgently soft and gooey to greasy and blobby. The oversized mug of soup was incredibly unevenly heated—as if it had been reheated in a microwave—but the bits that weren’t scoldingly hot were weirdly acidic. Rating: 3
SAVOR SOUP HOUSE 1003 SW Alder St., 750-5634, savorsouphouse.com.
At $5.50 for a cup of soup and half a sandwich (plus extra bread and butter), this must be the best value combo in town. The housemade tomato soup from this tiny cart is so flavorful—full of fennel and orange and topped with Parmesan and herby croutons— it puts almost every sit-down establishment to shame. The standard grilled cheese features more of my old friend Tillamook cheddar (though you can add in everything from truffle oil to smoked bacon. I would humbly suggest some Gruyère), but it comes on Grand Central’s fantastic, chewy
Italian-style Como bread, which elevates it from just a dipping device into—dare I say it—an adult dish. The bigger problem is the lack of seating in or around this downtown cart pod. By the time I could sit down, the croutons had turned to mush and the sandwich was already getting cold. And that was on a dry day. Rating: 3.5 (4 if you add Gruyère)
ELEPHANTS DELI Multiple locations including 1812 SW Park Ave., 546-3166, elephantsdeli.com.
This long-standing lunchtime standby is already well-known for its excellent tomato orange soup—full of butter and cream with a subtle citrus tang, it’s a thick, comforting winter bisque and my cup ($3 for a half-pint) was served up in seconds (with free crackers!) on my visit to the small downtown Fox Tower store. The grilled cheese was a different story. After several minutes, I was presented with a sad-looking sandwich squashed flat as cardboard, and with similar flavor and texture. Bland, butterless white bread cemented around a modest serving of cheddar, its sole redeeming quality was as a conduit for getting the soup into my gob, but I still threw it out after a few bites and just slurped straight from the cup instead. Rating: 2
DISH
Since 1974
Never a cover!
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Est. 1991
PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: KELLY CLARKE. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
Now Lompoc’s Hedge House is stirring up some literary competition to get the creative juices flowing. It’s begun a monthly story contest where one of the old photographs adorning its walls has been selected as an inspiration for pub-going writers. Contestants who compose a fictional backstory for the image (100 words or less) are invited to read their works on the last Wednesday of each month. RACHAEL DEWITT. Hedge House, 3412 SE Division St., 235-2215. 7 pm Wednesday, Jan. 26. Free. Info at newoldlompoc.com.
Beast’s Recession Session
Vegetarian & non-vegetarian Indian & Pakistani entrees plus sizzling Tandori dishes
BUffAlO GAp We d n e s d ay 1 / 2 6
“Buffalo Bandstand”
Sponsored by: Live Artist Network 9pm T h u r s d ay 1 / 2 7
UPCOMING EVENTS
Quinn Allan, Margo May & Jon Garcia
James Beard Dinner; Michael Pollan tickets
f r i d ay 1 / 2 8
Australia Day in the Attic
Aussie food & beer Live Music w/Mr. Fisk.
Doors at 6pm. Hosted by Portland Power AFC S at u r d ay 1 / 2 9
T u e s d ay 2 / 1 Open Mic Contest • WIN $50 Sign Up @ 8:30 Music @ 9pm Hosted by: Scott Gallegos S u n d ay 2 / 6
Super Bowl party packers vs. Steelers
C H R I S T A C O N N E L LY
EAT MOBILE
U-LICIOUS PULLED PORK
U-LICIOUS SMOKEHOUSE AND GRILL U-Licious Smokehouse and Grill has a problem. Many tiny problems, in fact: flies. A sunny December afternoon found this barbecue trailer’s dingy dining room hosting a small orgy of the pests; by week’s end, two dead flies locked in a copulatory arrangement decorated the cash register. A bit gross, granted, but what you came here for—piles of meat cooked within spitting distance of heavy traffic and served in Styrofoam containers— would seem somehow alien in an environment burnished of such rib-shack blemishes. Once you try owner-chef James Best bite: Pulled pork. Harris’ barbecue sauce, a I’ll pass: The mess of greens. vinegar-heavy concoction that flirts with sweetness without becoming too cloying, you’d happily brave another swarm to have it again. The sauce’s tastiest carrier is the pulled-pork sandwich ($5), a slop of smoky meat on a gloriously cheap bun that exists only to keep your hands relatively clean, which is all one should ask of barbecue bread. Hot links ($2) are rubbery and unremarkable, and the greens ($1.50) are mushy non-entities, so I advise sticking to the sandwich side of the menu, where you will also find perfectly charred ribs ($6) swimming in more of that sauce (and paired with more wraithlike bread), and a beef brisket sandwich ($5) that is a bit on the dry side until the meat soaks up enough of that which makes U-Licious so great. CHRIS STAMM. EAT: U-Licious Smokehouse and Grill, 1505 NE Killingsworth St., 477-3958. 11 am-10 pm Monday-Thursday, 11 am-11 pm FridaySaturday, noon-7 pm Sunday. $ Inexpensive. Cash and check only.
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We’ve got two golden foodie opportunities coming up this spring and tickets are on sale for both soon: Locavore celebrity and foodwriting demigod Michael Pollan chats up locals at University of Portland on April 16. Tix go on sale Tuesday, Feb. 1. ($20, available at ticketmaster.com or through Chiles Center box office, 943-7525.) Before that, the James Beard Foundation hosts a big benefit bash for Oregon Culinary Institute’s education program on March 20 starring 20 of Oregon’s top chefs. Tix for the March event are available now. ($60, info at ticketweb.com).
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Oink-lite: In addition to the sixcourse prix fixe menu, Beast now offers a scaled-back version of its over-the-top dinners one night a month. RD. Beast, 5425 NE 30th Ave., 841-6968. 6-8 pm Sunday, Jan. 30. $30. Reservations or walkins accepted.
Enjoy Authentic Indian Cuisine
Mochi, the addictive sweet rice cake, is a traditional Japanese New Year’s delicacy. It’ll be in abundance at the Mochitsuki New Year’s festival. Festival-goers can try out ikebana (flower arranging), sip sake, and hear taiko. RD. Scottish Rite Center, 1512 SW Morrison St., 226-7827. 11 am-4 pm Sunday, Jan. 30. $7 in advance, $9 day of. Info at mochipdx.org.
Varieties of Gourmet Tamales
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Hedge House Pub Tales
INDIA HOUSE
Japanese New Year Festival
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DISH EVENTS THIS WEEK
Vegan & vegetarian tamales
R R E S TAU 10605503.654.4423 SE Main St.
Look for our weekly specials
Milwaukie, Or
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for Super Sushi Lovers! Traditional Delicacy • Revolutionary Value Fine Asian beers & wines
Grand Opening Celebrate with us! Free ginger salad or miso soup (just mention this ad)
11 am to 10 pm daily • 503-719-6185 • 8535 SE Powell Blvd. Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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James Beard in Oregon:
A Celebration of Superstars and Master Chefs
Sunday, March 20, 2011 4p.m.-7p.m. Multnomah Athletic Club 1849 SW Salmon St. Portland, OR 97205
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Experience a once in a lifetime opportunity to taste signature bites from all five of Oregon’s James Beard Foundation Award winners and all 14 James Beard Foundation Award nominees, along with Oregon’s finest food and beverage, under one roof, on the same night.
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Almost Sold Out
Tickets: General Admission: $60 Tickets available at www.ticketweb.com
For additional information, call 866.448.1420 or email BeardinOregon@lanepr.com
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC
MUSIC
JAN. 26 - FEB. 1 PROFILE
= 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 32, or online at blogs.wweek.com/music/clublist/
23-second Bob Seger impersonation “Old Man Thunder.” Ween becomes an alternative to the alternative movement.
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, JAN. 26 Free Energy, The Postelles, Mackintosh Braun
[PHILADELPHIA ROCK CITY] It’s too bad the image of classic rock that a majority of young Americans (at least those who have a television) have these days comes from two places: Glee and American Idol. But as Steven Tyler teases the hearts of millions of suburban moms with his rubber-faced screams, there’s another, quieter force that would serve as a much better indicator of the AOR days of yore, a group of Philadelphia boys who love a killer riff and a good keg stand. Free Energy is not a gimmick, so let go of the pretensions and enjoy Stuck on Nothing for what it is: a fun, carefree, cowbell-heavy set of Thin Lizzy homages from a bunch of boys who used to worship at Stephen Malkmus’ gold-plated Scrabble board and now hang out with James Murphy watching Freaks and Geeks and listening to “The Blue Album.” Put down the bong, bro, and relive all your teenage highs and lows with the best modern classic rock band around. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Doug Fir Lounge, 9 pm, $10 advance, $12 day of show, 21+.
Rabbit
Ra Ra Riot, Givers, Pepper
[CHAMBER ROCK] Listening to Syracuse chamber-pop quintet Ra Ra Riot can make you feel like a child running through a field: Swelling strings pair with peppy melodies and somber interludes, stirring emotions from the past in a driving manner that builds into fiery peaks. Actually, attendees of the show will definitely see what it’s like for teenagers to hear the band—Ra Ra Riot is playing the allages Hawthorne Theatre. It’s a strange venue choice for a band gaining steady momentum following last year’s blazing The Orchid, but we’ll take Ra
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Ra Riot in whatever midsized venue we can before the group blasts into the stratosphere. AP KRYZA. Hawthorne Theatre, 8 pm, $13.50 advance, $15 day of show. All ages.
Darwin Deez, Fol Chen
[WE ARE DANCING SILHOUETTES] Masked and many, Los Angeles’ Fol Chen feels like the cryptic and mortal realization that the world will soon end but we might as well dance our way out the door. Signed to Asthmatic Kitty records—the label co-founded by Sufjan Stevens—the sextet, led by Melissa Thorne, opened for Liars last year in between the construction of sophomore release Part II: The New December. Funky, artsy, esoteric, enthralling and coated in secrecy, Fol Chen is the Banksy of computer pop, fusing eclectic instrumentation with bulletproof, almost algebraic composition and leaving its growing fan base equal parts content and confused. MARK STOCK. Holocene, 8:30 pm, $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Ghost to Falco, EMA, The Greys, Tara & Brian
[FORLORN FUSION] Ghost to Falco is a band that makes music for sad people. This concept shouldn’t be new to anyone (you went to middle school and listened to music on the bus, right?), yet GTF exudes a myopic air that is not as stale as many of its contemporaries’. An array of instrumentation, deep lulls of minor tones and jaded vocals swirl into heavy crashes of cymbals and distortion that can be surprisingly dynamic at times. Refusing to lose itself entirely in the misery, Ghost to Falco agrees with my inner 16-year-old and remembers that good music is ultimately what will save us all. KEVIN DAVIS. Rotture, 9 pm, $5, 21+.
TOP FIVE
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BY M Y- G
ARTISTS HIP-HOP HEADS SHOULD BE PRIVY TO. Das EFX and Fu-Schnickens Same era and they’re similar, but definitely came with their own style of music with crazy cadences and melodic flow. Freestyle Fellowship Mikah 9, Aceyalone, P.E.A.C.E., Self Jupiter, Project Blowed/ATU and Abstract Rude, to name a few, were some of the bricklayers of melodic and harmonious flow. DITC (Diggin in the Crates) Crew Representin’ the NYC with a rugged eloquence and the serendipitous synergy of dope sampled beats and in-pocket flows with ill metaphors. Roots Crew The Roots planted the seed and erected an organic sound with live instruments and Dope MCing. Pick up the Do You Want More?!!!??! record. Straight classic, like Illmatic and Reasonable Doubt. NWA/Beastie Boys/Run-D.M.C. Had to put all in one because these are the groups who came in hot in their era; they snowballed hip-hop in an industry that tried to shut down the whole genre and say it wasn’t real music. Yet, to their dismay, hip-hop is not only a culture and a way of life, but now an enormous global revenue stream that made many urban millionaire moguls. SEE IT: My-G plays Thursday, Jan. 27, at Refuge with Black Thought of the Roots. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show.
AN ABBREVIATED HISTORY
TRACING THE ASCENT OF MUSIC’S MOST GLEEFULLY UNCLASSIFIABLE PSYCHOPATHS. BY A P KRYZA
243-2122
Those not in the cult of Ween cannot name any Ween songs. But you like Ween. You just don’t know it. Not since the Butthole Surfers has a band so adeptly churned out goofball experimental noise. But, unlike the Surfers, Ween is also skilled with soulful and intricate songwriting, highlighted by Gene Ween’s Curtis Mayfield falsettos and Tom Waits growls. Anyone annoyed with the meandering fuck-about that is “Poop Ship Destroyer” would be captivated by the Philly soul of “Freedom of 76” or butt-rocking “Captain Fantasy.” There are sea chanteys, Irish drinking songs, punk anthems, Mexican murder ballads, pop tarts, odes to Zoloft, and everything in between in the Ween catalog. The Pennsylvania duo’s latest album, 2007’s La Cucaracha, never rose above 69 (appropriately) on Billboard album charts, and early single “Push th’ Little Daisies” hit top 10 charts—in Australia. Yet Ween has become a mainstay of rock festivals and sold-out performances, including Wednesday’s Crystal Ballroom fiasco. Ween’s story is remarkable…a weird, deconstructionist journey through early alternative rock and fledgling indie DIY values. Below is an abbreviated history of the band’s ascent from basement jackoffs to underground heroes. 1984: Middle schoolers Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman form Ween in New Hope, Pa., adopting the names Dean and Gene Ween, respectively. Songs about boobs ensue.
1992: Ween signs with Elektra for Pure Guava. “Push th’ Little Daisies” becomes one of only two Ween songs to chart on Billboard after getting the Beavis and Butt-Head seal of approval. 1994: The band cameos in It’s Pat: The Movie, the Citizen Kane of one-note SNL spinoffs. Julia Sweeney’s androgynous hero(ine) joins the band and shrieks “I’m in Weeeeeeeeeeeeen.” 1994: Chocolate and Cheese becomes Ween’s most accessible album, a fully realized dynamo that includes “AIDS,” “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down),” and “Voodoo Lady,” which peaks at No. 32 on Billboard charts. Hippies discover correlation between nitrous oxide and Ween. 1996: 12 Golden Country Greats, a collection of 10 hillbilly anthems, is recorded in Nashville. Honkytonk gets a Ween spin with songs like “Piss Up a Rope” and “Mr. Richard Smoker.” 1997: The band returns to the home studio for The Mollusk, its most grown-up album—a stretch, given the eerie supernatural ballad “Cold Blows the Wind” is paired with the hectic “Waving My Dick in the Wind.” 2002: Pizza Hut commissions Ween to write a jingle. The conglomerate receives “Where’d the Cheese Go?,” a nutso ditty recalling the early days. The song is rejected. Ween reformats with Gene growling, in a fauxghetto cadence, “Bitch, where’d the motherfuckin’ cheese go to?” It, too, is rejected. 2004: “Ocean Man” appears in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie. At least one parent is shocked to learn the band also writes Caribbeanstyle songs about the joys of cocaine. 2007: La Cucaracha is released. Fans pretend it wasn’t. 2009: Dean launches the Brownie Troop Fishing Show, a Web series combining his love of fishing, drinking and hanging out with fellow rockers. Fans are invited to apply for voyages.
1987: Ween releases The Crucial Squeegie Lip, the first of six self-produced goof-offs likely fueled by psilocybin and huffing. Its 40 tracks include “Boobs” parts I through III and “You Fucked Up.” 1990: Minneapolis indie label Twin/Tone releases God/ Ween/Satan: The Oneness. The album’s 29 tracks range from the nine-minute Prince clone “L.M.L.Y.P.” (Let Me Lick Your Pussy) to the
2013(?): Ween fan dies on fishing trip with Dean. Autopsy shows huge traces of Zoloft. SEE IT: Ween plays the Crystal Ballroom on Wednesday, Jan. 26. 9 pm. SOLD OUT. All ages. Look for a full review at wweek.com. Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC
THURSDAY - FRIDAY
THURSDAY, JAN. 27 The Ex-Girlfriends Club, The Shivas, Sexy Water Spiders, Holy Children
[THROWBACK THURSDAY] Tonight, Backspace plays host to a veritable smorgasbord of local acts which, despite their best intentions, seem to have never made it out of the rock section at Jackpot Records. Showcasing an amalgamation of odd rock history—from the eccentrically blended sounds of protopunk-era acts like the Ex-Girlfriends Club and SexyWaterSpiders to the Shivas’ more classic melding of jangly and psychedelic rock, and the sledgehammer whiskey rock of Holy Children—all dials will be firmly set at 11, so get ready for a face-melter, man. KEVIN DAVIS. Backspace, 8 pm, $5, All ages.
Pink Snowflakes, Donovan Breakwater, Hopeless Jack & The Handsome Devils
[MESCALITO ROCK] Portland’s Pink Snowflakes understand psychedelic rock should be presented like a good mescaline high. The band has a mellow, rocking vibe that can blast into insane, almost frighteningly intense tirades before dipping into trippy sections, mellowing out, firing back on all cylinders, then bringing it all down to a mellow, safe finish. Utilizing British rock influences from the Kinks to Velvet Underground to Pink Floyd, the band punches hard into the modern era with teeth-gritting rock and ultra chill melodies with equal skill. It’s powerful, poppy, batshit and hectic all at once. Strap in and enjoy the ride. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Dante’s, 9 pm, $5, 21+.
Tu Fawning, Skeletron, Guantanamo Baywatch, And And And
[THIS IS YOUR SCENE] Leave it to the guys behind Into the Woods to celebrate its one-year anniversary by putting together an all-star lineup of local talent. After all, a lot of bands in Portland owe the Web performance series for flattering them with beautifully shot live clips over the past 12 months. Seriously, this bill reads like a primer on the breadth of our city’s current music scene, spanning the unbridled indie-rock exuberance of Best New Band shoo-in And And And to the trippy noir pop of Tu Fawning. This show also represents the start of Into the Woods’ Kickstarter fundraising campaign. Come forth and donate. MATTHEW SINGER. Holocene, 8:30 pm, $5, 21+.
X-Ray Press, Microtia, Jezebel Spirit
[CHORDS AND MUMBLES] The first full-length album by Seattle’s X-Ray Press, UVB-76, is named after a Russian shortwave radio station that’s been transmitting an intermittent buzzing sound for decades. It’s an odd source of inspiration, but one that the quartet has turned into a suite of 18 songs that rage and twist with the complexity of vintage math rock injected with the piercing sting of an analog keyboard and guitar lines that refuse to sit still. The band’s live shows, too, are a study in how to maintain complete control of your instruments while simultaneously losing your collective shit. ROBERT HAM. Plan B, 8 pm, $5, 21+.
Black Thought, Tony Ozier and the DooDoo Funk All-Stars, Mic Crenshaw, Haez 1, My-G
[REPPIN’ THE EAST COAST] I’m from Philly, home to some of the most opinionated sports fans and hip-hop acts—and Will Smith. And while Black Thought never saved the world from alien invasion or let his little girl whip her hair back and forth, his local celebrity is hard to match (our hip-hop fans are opinionated, too). The Roots’ lead MC performs at Refuge tonight with Mic Crenshaw and Portland’s own My-G. Expect straightforward, politically driven lyrics delivered with East Coast speed. Expect to hear the classic jazz undertones that put the Roots on the map and into Jimmy
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
Fallon’s late-night home (Black Thought rarely leaves the band at home, and it’s been over a decade since his last single—so there may be a few surprises up his sleeve, as well). I’ll expect to be homesick, just like when the Phillies cross the country next fall. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. Refuge, 9 pm, $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Stankhouse Records 2-Year Anniversary Show: Big Black Cloud, Hornet Leg, Drunk Dad
[STANKY LEG] The name “Stankhouse Records” kind of implies a bunch of lazy punk rockers releasing scratched CD-Rs out of the trunk of a sticker-covered ‘70s station wagon. But Stankhouse, over the course of the past two years, has become one of Portland’s most consistent (and, believe it or not, professional) indie labels. That point was underscored this year with the release of ex-K Records basement pop-punk-psych act Hornet Leg, whose lovably lo-fi eight-song EP/ album for Stankhouse, Still Life, was one of the better local releases of the year. Playing tonight with the label’s founding act, Big Black Cloud, the Leg celebrates the Stankhouse’s second anniversary tonight. CASEY JARMAN. The Know, 8 pm, Cover, 21+.
FRIDAY, JAN. 28 The Thermals, White Fang, Guidance Counselor, Wampire
[MAJESTY SHREDDING] Are people getting bored of the Thermals? A lot of folks ho-hummed last year’s Personal Life even though it’s as solid as anything the band has ever released, brimming with the trio’s usual hooky, power-pop goodness and smart, unfussy songwriting. It’s a sign that after seven years the band is approaching a troubling paradox particular to groups of its ilk, in which the formula is starting to feel tired yet no one wants you to try anything different. Maybe they should follow the
trail of punk forebears Superchunk and put horns and strings on the next album, then go on hiatus for a few years before making a back-tobasics record critics will declare “a glorious return to form.” Wait. Fuck that. The Thermals should just continue playing small local shows like this one and keep reminding fans why they’re one of the most popular bands to ever come out of Portland. MATTHEW SINGER. Branx, 8 pm, $12 advance, $15 day of show, All ages.
2011 Portland Music Awards
[THAT TIME OF THE YEAR] Despite all odds and an ever-bloating crowd of detractors, the PMAs are cycling around for a fourth run-through, and the Crystal Ballroom’s set to host all the legends of Portland music: Smash Mouth (what, Smash Mouth cancelled?)! Tommy Tutone! Michael Jackson’s former guitarist! (And, time permitting, some artists that have previously visited the city.) It’s easy—really, really easy—to poke fun at Craig Marquado and the unashamedly glitz-heavy boosterism thrust upon an indie industry that prides itself still on a shambling community ethos equally distant from current realities, but for most of the honorees (jazz, classical and country, especially), it’s the bands’ only chance to receive some recognition for their achievements. And, relevance be damned, Tom “Viper” Skerritt is set to co-host. JAY HORTON. Crystal Ballroom, 7 pm, $20. All ages.
Derby, Crosstide, Ravishers
[PRISTINE POWER-POP] My knock on Derby has always been that the Portland quintet’s rock is just a little too squeaky clean. And it’s kind of a shitty complaint, when you think about it (kinda like saying “You did these dishes too well!” or “Try for an A-minus next time!”). The new four-song Madeline EP—available for free download for those who buy the band’s new 7-inch of the same
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ALBUM REVIEW
HIVES INQUIRY SQUAD EDIFICE (SELF-RELEASED) [ELECTRO -HIP-HOP] The most prevalent lyrical themes in mainstream rap are (in order of descending popularity): “Money is awesome”; “My crew and I are awesome”; “Bitches and weed are awesome (but also troublesome).” So it’s refreshing to hear Hives Inquiry Squad’s less-conventional recurring theme committed to tape: “Big, often antiquated words strung together at odd angles…are awesome.” There is simply no other crew in Portland that would attempt to string together a verse like this one, from the druggy, Disney-esque Edifice opener, “Enire”: “Charismatic caricatures carry the herds to the meadows/ Where we buried the ’burbs, nature returned—now that’s retro/ Asbestos to vessel/ Lay low below potential/ Eventual celestial sentient intellectuals.” While not a clearly navigable narrative, that passage sweeps colorful post-apocalyptic imagery in through the listener’s ears whether they catch each twist or not. It’s psychedelic rap, and in tandem with a pair of earbuds and Gavin Theory’s woozy, drum-’n’-bass-inspired beats, there’s enough here to trip you the fuck out. Now, not everyone wants their hip-hop to trip them the fuck out, and they’ll be annoyed on a few fronts here: Theory and fellow MC Lucas Dix’s bubbly voices tend to blur together, and their verbal assault is so unrelenting that the disc might have worked better as two EPs than as an overwhelming full-length disc. Still, Hives Inquiry Squad is onto something, as evidenced by a growing cult following that kind of looks like it’s about to board the Further bus and interest from more traditional local hip-hop artists taking note of Hives’ infectious live energy. Hives Inquiry Squad may indeed be (as Dix rhymes on “Toxic Algae Bloom”) “lost on a tangent, lamping into Xanadu”—but there are sure a lot of folks along for the ride. CASEY JARMAN. SEE IT: Hives Inquiry Squad plays the Mount Tabor Theater on Thursday, Jan. 27. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
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friday - saturday
t err o rbird . c o m
MUSIC
Laid back coed leagues for everyday players 21 & over
here’s staring at you, kid: The Get Up Kids play Hawthorne Theatre on Tuesday, Feb. 1.
Underdog Indoor Volleyball is
Coed format 6 on the court (3 women/3 men) Up to 12 on a roster
Multiple locations Choose from leagues at Hillside Community Center or Fernwood / Beverly Cleary Middle School
Trawler Bycatch, The Get Hustle, Elfin Elephant
First time volleyballers, casual players, and savvy veterans all welcome!
Low key atmosphere Competition is secondary to having fun with friends and good sportsmanship.
6 week season
Winter 2011 Sunday Evening League
Starts February 20th @ Hillside Community Center Bowling, Flag Football, Dodgeball, Kickball, Indoor Mini Golf, and Indoor Volleyball
Now Open Teams, Small Groups, and Individuals are all welcome. Sign up with a friend or two, and we’ll put you on the same team!
www.underdogportland.com (503) 282-1155 Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, Laura Gibson
[PRODIGAL SON RETURNS] The albums Sean Lennon made in the ’90s left me decidedly cold. As much as I appreciated the thick production and the songwriting skills he exhibited, something in the execution didn’t sit well with me. Not that he needs to worry about my opinion of him, but he might be happy to hear that his new project, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, has finally won me over. The collaboration between Lennon and his girlfriend, model Charlotte Kemp Muhl, is a gorgeous one. The two twist their sticky-sweet voices together like taffy, and the stripped-down acoustic arrangements leave nothing in the way to trip over. ROBERT HAM. The Woods, 9 pm, $15. 21+.
Multiple skill levels
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name—does nothing to dirty up Derby’s formula, but it does crystallize the group’s Posies-esque, twoheaded rock steez and takes a few sonic chances in the process. The EP’s last two songs, in particular— the twisting “Creeping Climbing” and the pretty, acoustic “One’s a Lonely One”—feel a lot less radiorock and more heartfelt than some of the band’s previous output. CASEY JARMAN. Doug Fir Lounge, 9 pm, $8 advance, $10 day of show, 21+.
[RECORD RELEASE WITH RELEASE] On the back cover of the new Trawler Bycatch LP, Schlep’m, there’s a morass of colored line art that looks like the Magic Marker work of a kindergarten class. For those who can “dance about architecture,” it’s a fair warning—Trawler Bycatch’s music is a melting pot of high concepts and below-the-belt musical offerings. This is new-millennium prog rock that ingests Beefheart and shits out lightning bolts. Voices echo like brown acid, and guitars and violins skid out on rainy pavements. Some inevitable Danava-isms creep in to the mix as well, thanks to TB’s leader, Zach Dellorto-Blackwell, who forgoes the four-string in order to bellow and shred in an array of unapologetic dimensions. NATHAN CARSON. Worksound, 9 pm, Cover.
Saturday, Jan. 29 Jim Page, Alice Di Micele, Brian Cutean[
GOOD OL’ PROTEST FOLK] Did you catch that Phil Ochs doc at Reel Music? If so, you might wonder whether anyone today wields a fascist-killin’ guitar à la Ochs (and Woody Guthrie before him). The answer, luckily for the Northwest, is yes: Jim Page. Witty, sharp and never didactic, the long-serving Seattle bard stole the show—from Peter Yarrow, no less—at the Portland Cello Project’s Guthrie tribute, part of last August’s Portland Folk Fest, with his biting update of “This Land Is Your Land” (hint: It isn’t). Di Micele
is a ’90s Earth First!er folkie fave absent from Portland stages for years. That this is the first time she, Page and fellow Oregon Country Fair mainstay Brian Cutean have shared a bill strains credulity, but guarantees frivolity—an essential accompaniment to music with a message. JEFF ROSENBERG. Alberta Rose Theatre, 8 pm (minors OK when accompanied by a parent or guardian), $15. All ages.
Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, Oh Captain My Captain, Archeology
[MAD ORCHESTRA] Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground has a song called “You Motherfucker,” and it’s a testament to this orchestral collective that it doesn’t hesitate to imbue the tune with Cee-Lo Green levels of gleeful profanity. The Seattle-based group, which has a shifting membership somewhere between three and 11 musicians, takes the kitchen-sink brass of Neutral Milk Hotel and adds to it a laconic tendency to thumb its nose at…well, an awful lot of things. Born in 2006 from the arguably less-interesting Gatsbys American Dream, Kay Kay has put out one album to date, with a second, Introducing Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, mere inches from release. Further evidence that the group is pretty rad: Its label is called Bombs Over Bellevue. SHANE DANAHER. Backspace, 9 pm, $12 advance, $15 day of show. All ages.
Forgetters, Street Eaters, Social Graces
[CONDITION OAKLAND] All you Jawbreaker fans who went to college and grew beards and beer guts and pretended to like Jets of Brazil can exhale now: Blake Schwarzenbach’s new caps-hating concern, forgetters, is the nostalgia trip you’ve been waiting for. Brooklyn-based the band may be, but forgetters’ debut 7-inch is a gorgeously drunken stumble through the East Bay’s fog and smog. Were it not for Schwarzenbach’s ravaged voice, which seems to have been beaten into a coma by a pack of unfiltered Luckies, you might even mistake forgetters for a trio of upstart punks who just discovered Crimpshrine and Jawbreaker and decided to make something that sounded like the missing link between them. CHRIS STAMM. Branx, 8 pm, $8. All ages.
Dan Lurie
[COLLEGE ROCK] Sometimes an album endears itself to you in such a personal way that you’re sort of embarrassed to play it for friends, in fear they might not get it. Dan Lurie’s Spirit of ‘98 is fast becoming one of those albums for me. The 10-song collection—a self-recorded concept album of sorts about Lurie’s college days in Ohio—is ridiculously sentimental and naively straightforward, describing college in vignettes about drinking Carlo Rossi and eating fast food (the lyric “If you’re gonna eat chicken sand-
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SATURDAY - TUESDAY
Tennis, Dirty Mittens, Air Waves
[SEX AND THE SEA CHANTEYS] If there are musical equivalents to chick flicks—and let’s be honest, there totally are—then Cape Dory, the debut from Colorado duo Tennis, is the album every dude is going to be forced by his girlfriend to listen to ad nauseam this year if he ever hopes to have sex again. (Well, dudes in relationships with record-store clerks, at least.) Its backstory could be the plot of an Amanda Seyfried-Zac Efron movie: A few years ago, college sweethearts Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore celebrated their marriage by jumping in a boat and sailing around the Eastern seaboard for seven months, and their conversations while alone at sea inspired the couple’s simple, romantic, indie-pop tunes. While the band’s lo-fi singles charmed bloggers, the fulllength smooths the edges and dilutes much of the appeal. Still, it’ll probably end up being 2011’s Crazy for You, if not the aural version of The Notebook for sentimental alts. MATTHEW SINGER. Mississippi Studios, 9 pm, $12. 21+.
Interpol, School of Seven Bells
[DIMMER SWITCH] Recorded by jumped-up DUMBO boys who always knew their place, Interpol’s 2002 debut, Turn on the Bright Lights, suddenly sauntered its way into the CD changer of every single girl to swoon before a nascent hipsterdom and preening self-obsession. Borrowing wholesale Johnny Marr riffage, Richard Butler gravitas, and Crispin Glover aesthetics, the none-more-louche postpunkers luxuriated in a hummably bloodless dissipation. Wringing a bristling tension from world-weary ennui wasn’t ever the easiest of gambits, though, and from the spiraling emptiness of last fall’s self-titled release (the band’s first without iconic bassist Carlos D), the aggressive boredom’s become all too convincing. JAY HORTON. Roseland Theater, 9 pm, $29. All ages.
Hauksness, Ratufa, Spirit Lake, Crazy Dumbsaint, DJ Adam Mullett
[METAL FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS] For all the bad rap that moms and senators tried to give metal in the ’80s, it sure does bring people together. Tonight’s show is a benefit for Scott Notley, best known for his stalwart and chugging local metal act, Facepilot. Notley is a sometime glassblower from Ohio who now slings bass for Ratufa (yes, named after a breed of giant black Oriental squirrels). Notley also has a tumor and no health insurance. Luckily, he’s got friends. And you. Do the right thing—come to this show, rock out, and donate a little something. There are people with worse problems than you and this is a loud reminder. NATHAN CARSON. Someday Lounge, 9 pm, $7, 21+.
SUNDAY, JAN. 30 Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, The Parson Red Heads, Elizabeth Cook, Pancake Breakfast and more
[DOLLY GOLIGHTLY] Blessed with blond pulchritude to shame the cotillion, wed to a guitarist free to unfurl his rockier tendencies, and born to an honest-to-goodness jailbird daddy whose federal penitentiaryinstructed second career (after no! yes! moonshining) informs the title of her recently released fifth album, Welder, the sprawling starlet plantations outside Nashville couldn’t have grown a more likely candidate for New Country dominion than Elizabeth Cook. With a bio perfectly pitched to thrill Grand Ole Opry stalwarts and comfort KWJJ drive-time hosts alike,
with tunes effortlessly cascading between Appalachian hootenanny and twang-to-taste AOR. Cook might yet turn those red states blue. She appears tonight alongside a host of local acts for an all-day celebration of the Crystal’s 97th birthday. JAY HORTON. Crystal Ballroom, 4 pm, Free. All ages.
The Nels Cline Singers with Yuka C. Honda
PROFILE CAMPELLSALGADO.COM
wiches all week long/ You deserve much more than a Burger King crown” may not be timeless, but it strikes a bit close to home). My brain tells me that Spirit of ‘98, which sounds kind of like a demo tape from the Rentals’ Matt Sharp, is something less than transcendent genius. But my heart just can’t get enough of it. It’s a sweet, heartfelt disc, and its spirit conquers any of Lurie’s musical shortcomings. CASEY JARMAN. Mississippi Pizza, 8 pm, Free, 21+.
MUSIC
[GUITAR HERO] If all you know of Nels Cline is his admittedly brilliant work as Wilco’s lead guitar player, friend, you only have a sliver of the story. The six-string dynamo has led a long career fronting his own blazing jazz trio and collaborating with an ever-rotating cast of equally brilliant artists with his group, the Nels Cline Singers. On display at the Portland stop of his quick West Coast jaunt will be the lineup (including former Cibo Matton member Yuka Honda on keyboards) that created last year’s Initiate, a knotty and emotional collection of studio jam sessions. ROBERT HAM. Doug Fir Lounge, 9 pm, $14 advance, $15 day of show, 21+.
MONDAY, JAN. 31 Bobby Long, Nathaniel Talbot
[TWI-FOLK] Bobby Long co-wrote a song that super-celebrity Robert Pattinson sung on the Twilight movie soundtrack. Consequently, Twi-moms packed the Tonic Lounge to eye-rape the bejesus out of the British folk troubadour at his Portland show two years ago. It would be easy to write off the husky-voiced crooner as a trite trinket of the Twilight phenomenon, but Long’s debut studio album, A Winter Tale (slated for release Feb. 1, 2011), stands on its own two feet musically. In the past, Long’s music has simply consisted of Long and his acoustic guitar. But on A Winter Tale, Long is supported by a full backing band that adds muscle to the songwriter’s toetapping folk pop. The end product is a hybrid breed of a John Mayer/ Dave Matthews-style music that gives women lady-wood. WHITNEY HAWKE. Doug Fir Lounge, 9 pm, $12 advance, $14 day of show, 21+.
TUESDAY, FEB. 1 The Get Up Kids, Steel Train, River City Extension
[EMO EMINENCE] Finally tired of sticking pins into Pete Wentz dolls, the Get Up Kids did the math and realized a fresh crop of misshapen teens needed some lukewarm tunes to soundtrack that brief stretch of quiet virginity between the onset of puberty and the discovery of drugs. The band is nearly as safe and sexless as it was in the late ’90, but on There Are Rules, the Kids’ first album in seven years, these erstwhile suburban saviors stop whinging and find something like a groove on “Shatter Your Lungs,” which wiggles out of the emo straitjacket with nervous synths and Costelloworthy hooks—you could even say it’s something to write home about. CHRIS STAMM. Hawthorne Theatre, 8 pm, $20 advance, $23 day of show, All Ages
Notes From the Underground: Douglas Detrick’s AnyWhen Ensemble, Ben Darwish
[JAZZ HOMECOMING] After a stellar career at the University of Oregon, trumpeter/composer Douglas Detrick, who grew up in Portland, moved to New York last year. Abetted by stellar Portland pianist Ben Darwish, Detrick returns from the Bronx with his chamber jazz group (sax, trumpet bassoon, cello, drums) for the CD release and performance of his spacious new Rivers Music and other works. With its placid stretches, spare, pensive solo passages, and emphasis on texture and atmosphere, the partly improvised, six-movement suite, inspired by the movement of water, will appeal to fans of the old Third Stream classical-jazz hybrids as well as contemporary “classical” music. BRETT CAMPBELL. Mission Theater, 8:30 pm, $5. 21+.
TEZETA BAND SATURDAY, JAN. 29 [ETHIOPIAN FUNK] They don’t look like revivalists of the grooveheavy sound of vintage Ethiopian funk and soul. To the outside observer, the three slightly geeky, buttoned-down white dudes sitting around a table at Sengatera on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on a wet January evening would most likely be trading tips on software upgrades or relaying parenting woes. Instead, Tim Cook, Ted Hille and John Teagle, the core members of Tezeta Band, one of Portland’s best-kept secrets, are dropping names like Mulatu Astatke and Alemayehu Eshete and trying desperately to put into words what the music is like. “When you meet someone who’s never heard any of this stuff, you think, ‘How do you explain this?’” says Hille, Tezeta’s saxophone player. “Well, it’s Ethiopian, but it’s not world music...there are elements of Motown and James Brown in there... it’s American and un-American at the same time... it’s hypnotic and sweet and seductive. I can’t put my finger on what makes it so personal. It almost feels like you grew up with it.” Hille’s last sentence strikes at the core of what makes the sound of Ethiopian popular music so engaging. It’s a rich, complex sound that stirs together soul, funk and jazz from the U.S. and Europe; Arabic melodies that have survived in the region for centuries; and the African rhythms that leaked from regions surrounding the land-locked country. On their own, the pieces don’t seem like they’d fit. But when put together by the right hands, it sounds like they’ve been enmeshed for centuries. “I was over at a friend’s house, and she put on this tape of this music for me,” says Cook, the band’s keyboardist. “Immediately, I was like, ‘What is this?!’ It was the most incredible stuff I’d ever heard. I begged her to make me a copy, and when my wife and I were repainting the house we bought, we just listened to that on repeat for days.” The tape featured the first volumes of The Ethiopiques, a peerless series of compilations of both the “golden years” of Ethiopian pop in the ’60s and ’70s and modern versions of the same. For many, like director Jim Jarmusch, who featured some tracks by Astatke in his 2005 film Broken Flowers, it was their entree into this hypnotic world of sound. It also served as a wellspring of inspiration for Cook. He and four other members of Tezeta Band (Hille, trombonist Curt Bieker, trumpet player Josh Prewitt, and drummer Talbott Guthrie) spent six Five Fingers of Funk members come out of retirement to play Ethiopian funk and soul.
years backing up rapper Pete Miser in the Five Fingers of Funk. When that band split up in 1998, Cook concentrated on running a construction company and stopped playing music for a decade. But after that first hit of the Ethiopian sound, Cook needed more and more. “I would go to Merkato, the Ethiopian market on Northeast Russell, every two months and buy a new CD from them. And this became so infectious that I sat down and started playing all the time, trying to figure these songs out.” Soon thereafter, Cook had spread the music around to anyone who would listen, including his old Five Fingers bandmates, eliciting a similar epiphanic reaction. Soon enough, they were huddling around a stereo, working out the parts. “It’s ironic all of those bands were listening to old Motown records and emulating what they heard,” says Hille, “and now here’s this group of Americans trying to do the same thing to their songs.” Their sets these days are now made up almost entirely of instrumental covers of some of their favorite Ethiopian songs, capturing the raw energy of the source material and surprising plenty of émigrés from the African nation, like Sengatera owner Yonnas Yilma. “I went with another friend from Ethiopia to see them play for the first time,” Yilma says. “And we were saying, ‘What?! What am I hearing?!’” Yilma has since become the band’s biggest benefactor, allowing them to take the stage at his restaurant once a month, and providing them with the biggest thrill of their still-young career: opening for two rare Portland appearances by legendary Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed. Ahmed fell quickly in love with Tezeta Band (“Tezeta”—properly pronounced Tiz-ee-tah— roughly translates to “longing” or “nostalgia,” and is a catch-all phrase for slow Ethiopian songs that speak to those feelings), even inviting it to play a few songs with him during both of his shows here. But, remembers Cook, their pale skin tone did take him by surprise. “When he got picked up in Seattle to come down here, Yonnas played him our CD, but didn’t tell him anything about what we looked like. So, when I came here to meet him, he was told, ‘Tim is in the band opening up for you,’ and he went, ‘How can this be?’” ROBERT HAM. SEE IT: The Tezeta Band plays the Woods on Saturday, Jan. 29, with Brownish Black and DJ E3. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+. Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 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 23 | clublist 32 For more listings, check out blogs.wweek.com/music/calendar/
[JAN. 26 - FEB. 1] Lost Creek Bluegrass
Mississippi Pizza Mandarin Dynasty
Mississippi Studios
Led to Sea, Solvents, Nick Caceres
Mt. Tabor Theater
Hives Inquiry Squad
Muddy Rudder Public House
WED. JAN .26 Alberta Street Public House Suck My Open Mic with Tamara J. Brown
Andina
Toshi Onizuka
Ash Street Saloon
Austin Jenckes, Rayllway
Backspace
Towering Trees, Pocketknife, Padraic Finbar HagertyHammond
Beauty Bar
Baby Ketten Karaoke
Buffalo Gap Saloon Buffalo Band Stand
Camellia Lounge Tree Top Tribe
Crystal Ballroom
Ween
Doug Fir Lounge
Free Energy, The Postelles, Mackintosh Braun
Duff’s Garage Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam
East End
Last Wednesday on the Left with DJ Dennis Dread
Ella Street Social Club
Monoplane, Mouth, Devil’s Punchbowl
Heathman Hotel Halie Loren
Holocene
Darwin Deez, Fol Chen
Jimmy Mak’s
The Mel Brown Quartet
Kells
Cary Novotny
Laurelthirst Scott Law
McMenamins Edgefield Winery Kris Deelane
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Redwood Song, Break as We Fall
Mississippi Pizza
The We Shared Milk
Mississippi Studios
Taylor Locke & the Roughs, Bleu, Lindsey Ray
Mt. Tabor Theater
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge Rockstar Karaoke
Hawthorne Theatre
The Blue Monk Bellydance
The Know
Thee Headliners, DJ Ken Dirtnap, Loose Values
THURS. JAN. 27 Alberta Rose Theatre
Celilo, John Heart Jackie, Duover
OMSI
OMSI Dark: AWOL Dance Collective, Keph Sherin
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli Billy Kennedy
Plan B
Interlopers, Feral Pigs, Ton of Bricks
Portland Prime Press Club
Pub at the End of the Universe
Monkey Puzzle, Eastern Sunz, The Jackalope Saints, Poeina Suddarth, Colin Quaterman
Rotture
Ghost to Falco, EMA, The Greys, Tara & Brian
Ra Ra Riot, Givers, Pepper Rabbit
East End
Monorail: Remy the Restless, Lamar Leroy, Patricia Furpurse
Ella Street Social Club Blind Bartimaeus, Autopilot Is for Lovers, Honeybear
Fenouil
Laura Cunard with Sir Dick Berk
Goodfoot Lounge
Scott Law, Tye North and Friends
Gypsy Restaurant AMP Lounge
Lauren Sheehan
Andrew Orr, Jen Howard
Plan B
X-Ray Press, Microtia, Jezebel Spirit
Portland Prime Tony Pacini
Refuge
Black Thought, Tony Ozier and The Doo Do Funk All Stars, Mic Crenshaw, My-G
Rotture
Andina
Hawthorne Theatre
Sellwood Public House
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club
La Descarga Cubana with Dina & Bamba Veio, Drain, King Ghidora The Ex-Girlfriends Club, The Shivas, Sexy Water Spiders, Holy Children
Ask You in Gray, Tribe of the Outcast, Monody, The Incapacitators, Flight 19
Holocene
Into the Woods OneYear Anniversary Party: Tu Fawning, Skeletron, Guantanamo Baywatch, And And And
Jimmy Mak’s
Beaterville Cafe
The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Beauty Bar
Kells
Loose Change Trio Thursdays (Are Gay) Dance Party
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Margo May, Quinn Allan, Jon Garcia
Cary Novotny
Kennedy School
Elizabeth Cook, Tim Carroll
Laurelthirst
Chapel Pub
Lewi Longmire Band
Dante’s
King Grand Blues Band, Low Bones
Steve Kerin
Pink Snowflakes, Donovan Breakwater, Hopeless Jack & The Handsome Devils
Doug Fir Lounge
Hurtbird, Empty Space Orchestra, Mosley Wotta
Duff’s Garage
Elisabeth Ames and the Countrypolitans
Laurelthirst
McMenamins Edgefield Winery Ryan Vandordrecht
McMenamins Grand Lodge Brian Copeland Duo
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern Mexican Gunfight
Alberta Street Public House Mikey’s Irish Jam
Alberta Street Public House Lloyd Mitchell Canyon, Riveria
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
1776, Boo Frog, Hairspray Blues
Borikuas
Asylum Street Spankers Farewell Tour
Ash Street Saloon
Open Mic
Hawthorne Hophouse Sons of Malarkey
Alberta Rose Theatre
Oak Grove Tavern
Karaoke Kings
Chervona
FRI. JAN. 28
Andina
Alberta Street Public House
Backspace
Swing Papillon
Laura Ivancie
DJ DirtyNick
Suzy Skarulis
Music Millennium
Ground Kontrol
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
Fruition
Randy Porter
TRONix: Mixed Signals
Bender Wristband and Listening Party
Ash Street Saloon
Goodfoot Lounge
Aranya, Fugue, Lickity
Slabtown
Open Mic Night
Slabtown
Gravelroad, Cicada Omega, DJ Highway 7, Right on John
Someday Lounge
The Fix: Rev. Shines, KEZ, Dundiggy
Star Bar
DJ Isaiah Summers, DJ A Train
The Blue Monk
Curtis Salgado, Alan Hager
Sambafeat The Shatterbrains, Black Haze, Gordon Avenue, Sally Tomato and Her Pidgin
Backspace
Sons of Huns, Monoplane, Paint and Copter, Office Diving
Beaterville Cafe Mean Satisfaction
Beauty Bar
Nathaniel Knows
Bipartisan Cafe Penny Furthings
Branx
The Thermals, White Fang, Guidance Counselor, Wampire
Camellia Lounge
Goodfoot Lounge
The Love Loungers, Kimosabe, Notes
Mt. Tabor Theater Midnite
Muddy Rudder Public House Kinzel and Hyde
Music Millennium Victoria Vox
Oak Grove Tavern Karaoke
Portland Prime
Mia Nicholson Trio with Randy Porter
Press Club
Reiko and the Poolside Slippers
Someday Lounge
Whiskey Party and Songwriter Showcase: Ezza Rose, Nate Clark, Ed from Ed & the Red Reds, TS Brooks, James McFarland, Shawn Lawso
Star Bar DJ Ikon
The Blue Monk
Terry Robb’s Electric Band
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar Johnny Martin
Fist Fite, Aerial Ruin, Midnight Sun
Derby, Ravishers, Curtains for You
The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, Laura Gibson
The Woods
Twilight Café and Bar
Johnny Martin Trio
East Burn
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Goodfoot Lounge
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
Future Historians, Eggplant, Trevor Dickson
The Know
Stankhouse Records 2 Year Anniversary Show: Big Black Cloud, Hornet Leg, Drunk Dad
Twilight Café and Bar Rayllway, Stagger and Sway, Cousin Curtiss
Yes and No
Trouble Loves Me Smiths/ Morrissey Tribute: DJ Rad
The Oh My My’s DJ Aquaman’s Soul Stew
Ground Kontrol
Journeys By DJ: Levels with DJ Ghostdad, DJ Avery (The Cool Cat)
Gypsy Restaurant AMP Lounge
Winner from Open Mic Competition
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge Karaoke
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
Ron Rogers
Hawthorne Theatre
School of Rock: The Cure vs. The Smiths
Holocene
Doc Adam, Colin Jones, DJ Vize
Jimmy Mak’s
Lisa Mann and Her Really Good Band
Jolly Roger
Rhythm Culture
Hawthorne Hophouse Robert Richter Band
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge Katie Roberts
Rick Welter, Jim Wallace
Worksound
Trawler Bycatch, The Get Hustle, Elfin Elephant
Yes and No
DJ Maxx Bass
Wheels in the Sky
Jolly Roger
Who Stole the Boat?
Kells
Tom May
Laurelthirst Tree Frogs
Laurelthirst
Kinder Bison, Olina
McMenamins Edgefield Winery Chris Robley Duo
McMenamins Grand Lodge John Bunzow
McMenamins Grand Lodge Elizabeth Cook, Tim Carroll
McMenamins Hotel Oregon My Three Travellers
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern Pagan Jug Band
Mississippi Pizza Dan Lurie
Mississippi Pizza Brian Rozendal
Mississippi Studios
Tennis, Dirty Mittens, Air Waves
Mississippi Studios Mike Midlo
Mock Crest Tavern
Johnnie Ward Sharkskin Review
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge Dementia
Mt. Tabor Theater
Everyday Prophets, Five Alarm Funk
Muddy Rudder Public House Terry Robb
Oak Grove Tavern
SAT. JAN. 29 Alberta Rose Theatre
Jim Page, Alice Di Micele, Brian CuteanJeff Rosenberg
Alberta Street Public House Whiskey Puppy
Andina
Danny Romero Trio
Ash Street Saloon Shotgun Overdose, Motorbreath
Backspace
Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, Oh Captain My Captain, Archeology
Beaterville Cafe
Item 9, The Illuminucci, Downtown Tramps, Adam Loewen
Plan B
Fever, Walk of Shames, The No Tommorow Boys, The Reservations
Portland Prime Mel Brown Trio
Press Club
Duover, Matt Brown, Rob Stroup
Proper Eats Market and Cafe Alfie Jimenez
Roseland Theater
Interpol, School of Seven BellsJ
Saratoga
Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Emeraldss, The Guild
Kells
Kode Bluuz Band
Laurelthirst
Girls Night Out!
Laurelthirst
forgetters, Street Eaters, Social Graces
The Ken Hanson Band
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Hauksness, Ratufa, Spirit Lake, Crazy Dumbsaint, DJ Adam Mullett
Tom May Alice Stuart
Freak Mountain Ramblers
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Beauty Bar Branx
North Head
Alison Rice Trio
Camellia Lounge
McMenamins Grand Lodge
Dante’s
Chris Robley Duo
McMenamins Hotel Oregon Jon Koonce
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Jack McMahon Band
Mississippi Pizza
The Backyard Blues Boys
Mississippi Pizza Beautiful Lies
Mississippi Studios
HEY NOW, YOU’RE AN ALL-STAR: The Portland Music Awards (without Smash Mouth) on Friday, Jan. 28.
Karaoke
Jimmy Mak’s
Excruciator, Nuclear Wasteland, Revolution Overdue, Mazaroth
The Born Again Heathens, Order of the Crimson Wizard, Gender Roles
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge
Plan B
Led Zepagain, Dinner for Wolves
The Lonesomes, Truckstop Darlin’s
Reaganomix: Landau Boyz
Paul Green’s School of Rock performs Queen
Why I Must Be Careful, Raider, Swahili
Duff’s Garage
Ground Kontrol
Lynn Conover
Dante’s
Doug Fir Lounge
Jujuba
Hawthorne Theatre
The Know
2011 Portland Music Awards
Dennis Moss
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Crystal Ballroom
Hikaru Okada
Rockstar Karaoke
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Fenouil
The Student Loan
Mississippi Pizza
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Mock Crest Tavern
Pimps of Joytime, The Staxx Brothers
Blake Lyman Trio
Show Devils Freak Show, Professor Gall, The Enigma
Doug Fir Lounge
The Prids, The Upsidedown
Slabtown
Pierced Arrows, Chemicals
Slim’s Cocktail Bar Someday Lounge
Star Bar
DJ Tiny Corrupter
The Blue Monk 3 Leg Torso
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar Shirley Nanette
Duff’s Garage
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Dunes
The Know
Becky Sue and Her Big Rockin’ Daddies Welcome Home Walker, Tensions 1
East Burn
Folk N Spoon
Don’t, Problems, Iron Lords Rolling Through the Universe, Squalora
The Woods
The Tezeta Band, Brownish Black, DJ E3
Backspace
Battery Powered Music
Dante’s
Karaoke From Hell
Doug Fir Lounge
Bobby Long, Nathaniel Talbot
East End
Heavy Metal Ladies Night with DJ Nate C
Element Restaurant & Lounge Mello Mondays with DJ Mello Cee
Laurelthirst
Little Sue & Lynn Conover
Laurelthirst
Kung Pao Chickens
Mean Satisfaction, Killingsworth, Sonic Ice Box
SUN. JAN. 30 Andina
Danny Romero
Ash Street Saloon
Granada, Echo Candy, The Autumn Electric
Beulahland
Eye Candy VJs
Crystal Ballroom
Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, The Parson Red Heads, Elizabeth Cook, Pancake Breakfast, Pagan Jug Band, Celilo, Tango Alpha
Dante’s
Sinferno Cabaret
The Nels Cline Singers with Yuka C. Honda
Ella Street Social Club
DJ Eclecto, DJ Bramble
Ground Kontrol
Black Sunday: Metal Inquisition with DJ Hellion, DJ Sacrifyx
Hawthorne Theatre
Of Former Fame, Skies Above Reason, Shadow of Apollo, Rewrite the Ending, Everyone Disappear
Darrin Craig
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
The Blue Monk
Lather, Rinse and Repeat; Squid Attack
Mississippi Pizza
Don & the Quixotes
Mississippi Studios Shoeshine Blue
Mt. Tabor Theater
Laurelthirst
Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott
Light for Fire, Smile Brigade, El Rey
Mississippi Pizza
Muddy Rudder Public House
Laurelthirst
Rotture
Star Bar
Kells
Freak Mountain Ramblers
Hive: DJ Owen, Guests
Elizabeth Nicholson, Rob Soper
Grind Time Now MC Battle
Irish Sessions
Plan B
Irish
Peter’s Room
Wallpaper, K. Flay, The Dance Party
Karaoke
Ezra Weiss Quartet
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian Find Your Smile, Brianne Kathleen
MON. JAN. 31 Alberta Rose Theatre Peter Eldridge
Andina
Scott Head
Ash Street Saloon Open Mic
Ground Kontrol
Rock Band 2 with MC Destructo
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge Open Mic
Hawthorne Theatre
Ground Kontrol The Dan Balmer Band
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Scott PembertonTrio
Jimmy Mak’s
Jimmy Mak’s
Doug Fir Lounge
Goodfoot Lounge
The Get Up Kids, Steel Train, River City Extension
DJ Tibin
Twilight Café and Bar
Your Canvas, Charts, Sarcastic Dharma Society
Goodfoot Lounge
Sonic Forum Open Mic Night
Interpol plays Saturday, Jan. 29, at Roseland Theater.
Ella Street Social Club
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Skip vonKuske’s “The Guest List” with guest Susie Blue
Mississippi Studios
Ocean Age, Lord Huron, Sea Bell
Muddy Rudder Public House Lloyd Jones
Star Bar
Into the Void with DJ Blackhawk
Twilight Café and Bar SIN Night
TUES. FEB. 1 Ash Street Saloon
Welsh Bowmen, The We Shared Milk, The Indigo Art Tribe
Dante’s
The Ed Forman Show, DSL Open Mic Comedy
East End
The Mel Brown Septet (8 pm); Kit Taylor (6:30 pm)
Laurelthirst Jackstraw
Mission Theater
Notes From the Underground: Douglas Detrick’s AnyWhen Ensemble, Ben Darwish
Mississippi Pizza
Baby Ketten Karaoke
Mt. Tabor Theater
Family Funktion Jam Night
WED. JAN. 26 East End
Last Wednesday on the Left with DJ Dennis Dread
Ground Kontrol
TRONix: Mixed Signals
Slim’s Cocktail Bar DJ DirtyNick
THURS. JAN. 27 Beauty Bar
Thursdays (Are Gay) Dance Party
East End
Monorail: Remy the Restless, Lamar Leroy, Patricia Furpurse
Someday Lounge
The Fix: Rev. Shines, KEZ, Dundiggy
Yes and No
Trouble Loves Me Smiths/Morrissey Tribute: DJ RAD!
Plan B
After Nothings End, Animal R&R, The Dirty Words, Defeating the Purpopse
Roseland Theater
Underoath, Thursday, Animals as Leaders, A Skylit Drive
The Woods
Rebecca Gates, The Black Swans, Alina Hardin
Yes and No
DJ Black Dog
FRI. JAN. 28 Beauty Bar
Nathaniel Knows
Goodfoot Lounge
DJ Aquaman’s Soul Stew
Holocene
Doc Adam, Colin Jones, DJ Vize
Star Bar DJ Ikon
Yes and No
DJ Maxx Bass
Ground Kontrol
Reaganomix: Landau Boyz
Star Bar
DJ Tiny Corrupter
SUN. JAN. 30 Beulahland
Eye Candy VJs
Ella Street Social Club DJ Eclecto, DJ Bramble
Ground Kontrol
Black Sunday: Metal Inquisition with DJ Hellion, DJ Sacrifyx
Plan B
Hive: DJ Owen, Guests
MON. JAN. 31 East End
Heavy Metal Ladies Night with DJ Nate C
Element Restaurant AMP Lounge
Mello Mondays with DJ Mello Cee
Ground Kontrol DJ Tibin
Star Bar
Into the Void with DJ Blackhawk
TUES. FEB. 01 East End
DJ Adam Mullet
Yes and No
DJ Black Dog
SAT. JAN. 29 Beauty Bar
Girls Night Out!
DJ Adam Mullet
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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SPOTLIGHT
CAMERONBROWNE.COM
MUSIC
LITTLE BIG BAR: It’s hard to get past the logo for the Burnside Brewing Company (701 E Burnside St., burnsidebrewco. com): a silhouetted World of Warcraft-looking tiger lady bent in a suggestive pose and holding a pitcher. Luckily, the new brewpub showed more vision concocting its signature brews than it did designing its logo. The housemade IPA has some zing; the Gratzer tastes like citrus and campfire smoke. Both are excellent. These are the first two in what is slated to become an adventurous fleet of BBC beers, and they’re accompanied by nice outside drafts and a small menu that’s half classy (the special on our visit was an $8 slab of pork belly; the $10 house burger is cooked in duck fat) and half crass (the $8 Coney dog is best served with $3 shoestring fries). BBC’s decor feels a bit like an intimate, upscale restaurant plopped into a warehouse, but the drink specials ($3 imperial pints Wednesdays; $10 mega-pitchers Sundays) should give the locals a reason to fill the extra space. CASEY JARMAN.
LIVE MUSIC FULL BAR FOOD FUN
Thursday Jan 27th
Curtis Salgado / Alan Hager dou 8pm Friday Jan 28th
Terry Robb Electric Band 9pm Saturday Jan 29th
3 - Leg Torso 9pm Sunday Jan 30th
Ezra Weiss Quartet 7:30pm
Monday Jan 31st
Renato Caranto’s funk band 8pm
Thursday Feb 3rd
Alan Jones 8pm
Friday Feb 4th
Eddie Martinez 9pm every tuesday - steel drum band 8pm every wed - Arabesque & Belly Dance 8pm
music 7 nights a week Portland’s best happy hour 5 - 7 pm and all day sunday 3341 SE Belmont thebluemonk.com 503-595-0575 32
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
ALADDIN THEATER 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694 ALBERTA ROSE THEATRE 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055 ALBERTA STREET PUBLIC HOUSE 1036 NE Alberta St., 284-7665 ASH STREET SALOON 225 SW Ash St., 226-0430 BACKSPACE 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900 BEAUTY BAR 111 SW Ash Street., 224-0773 BLUE MONK 3341 SE Belmont St., 595-0575 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 DUBLIN PUB 6821 SW BeavertonHillsdale Highway., 297-2889 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 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 HAWTHORNE THEATRE 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 233-7100 HOLOCENE 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639 JIMMY MAK’S 221 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542 KENNEDY SCHOOL 5736 NE 33rd Ave., 249-3983 THE KNOW 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729 LAGANO LOUNGE 1435 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 664-6140 LAURELTHIRST PUBLIC HOUSE 2958 NE Glisan St., 232-1504 LOLA’S ROOM AT THE CRYSTAL BALLROOM 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047 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., MUDAI 801 NE Broadway., 287-5433 PETER’S ROOM 8 NW 6th Ave., 219-9929 PLAN B 1305 SE 8th Ave., 230-9020 PORTLAND PRIME 121 SW Third Ave., 223-6200
PRESS CLUB 2621 SE Clinton St., 233-5656 RED ROOM 2530 NE 82nd Ave., 256-3399 RONTOMS 600 E Burnside St., 236-4536 ROSELAND 8 NW 6th Ave., 219-9929 (Grill), 224-2038 (Theater) ROTTURE 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683 SLABTOWN 1033 NW 16th Ave., 223-0099 SOMEDAY LOUNGE 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030 STAR BAR 639 SE Morrison St., THE KNIFE SHOP 426 SW Washington St., 228-3669 THE SARATOGA 6910 N Interstate Ave., 719-5924 THE TWILIGHT ROOM 5242 N Lombard St., 283-5091 THE WOODS 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408 THE WORLD FAMOUS KENTON CLUB 2025 N Kilpatrick St., 285-3718 TIGA 1465 NE Prescott St., 288-5534 TONIC LOUNGE 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543 TUBE 18 NW 3rd Ave., 241-8823 TWILIGHT CAFE & BAR 1420 SE Powell Blvd., 232-3576 VALENTINE’S 232 SW Ankeny St., 248-1600 WHITE EAGLE 836 N Russell St., 282-6810 WONDER BALLROOM 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686 WORKSOUND 820 SE Alder St.
JAN. 26-FEB. 1
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: BEN WATERHOUSE. Stage: BEN WATERHOUSE (bwaterhouse@wweek. com). Classical: BRETT CAMPBELL (bcampbell@wweek.com). Dance: HEATHER WISNER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
THEATER Fertile Ground Festival
Portland’s third annual uncurated festival of locally conceived performance continues through Jan. 30. All shows marked [FERTILE GROUND] are included in the $50 pass. Fertilegroundpdx.org.
#smarter_than_phones
[FERTILE GROUND] Fuse Theatre Ensemble presents a new performance/installation exploring human communication in the age of the smartphone. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 800-494-8497, fusepdx.com. 10:30 pm Thursday and Sunday, Jan. 27 and 30. $10.
99 Ways to Fuck a Swan
A lot goes on in Kim Rosenstock’s survey of sexual deviance, directed in its world premiere production by Megan Kate Ward. Not, as the title suggests, a swan sutra, the show crosses centuries and continents to examine a great catalog of kinks. Mario Calcagno plays Dave, a professional photoshopper who takes a freshman fiction course in hopes of working out some of his many issues on paper. The teacher, Fiona (Brooker Fletcher), assigns him to write about Leda’s seduction by swan-shaped Zeus. The subject suits him, since he’s got a thing about women and cats, and he pens an epic while we watch. BEN WATERHOUSE. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., theatrevertigo. org. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays. Closes Feb. 12. $15.
Antarktikos
[FERTILE GROUND] Artists Rep presents a reading of a new play by Andrea Stolowitz about Robert Scott, a writer-in-residence at the South Pole, her daughter and an insomniac EMT. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278, artistsrep.org. 7:30 pm Monday, Jan. 31. $8 suggested donation.
Bitch
[FERTILE GROUND] A “crime tragicomedy” by Sean Pomposello. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, thepulpstage.weebly.com. 7:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 30. $10.
Bridgetown, a Musical
[FERTILE GROUND] A workshop performance of new musical about Portland by Karen Alexander-Brown and Fred Stickley. Conduit Dance, 918 SW Yamhill St., No. 401, 221-5857. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Jan. 27-29. $12.
Captured by Aliens
[FERTILE GROUND] Action Adventure Theatre, the minds behind the excellent live sitcom Fall of the House, turns to reality TV and sci-fi in a new semiimprovised serial, in which a bunch of would-be reality stars discover they have been abducted by beings from another world. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., actionadventuretheater@gmail.com. 10:30 pm FridaysSaturdays, 8 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 13. $12 per episode, $30 for all four.
Diary of a Worm, a Spider and a Fly
Portlandia script-writers, take note: Youngsters arriving early for this enviro-friendly Oregon Children’s Theatre musical can spend time in the lobby fashioning objects out of foam, cardboard tubes and old DVDs. Yes, the setting has a greener-than-thou, spoof-friendly vibe. But the worldpremiere musical itself is a charming tale with clever staging and colorful costuming that gets giggles from kids (the ideal age range is somewhere between 4 and 10) by playing to the punny over the preachy and the sight gag over the serious. As with most musicals there’s the thinnest of
plots connecting story lines and providing an excuse for catchy tunes— in this instance the separate stories of, well, a worm, a spider and a fly, each with their own worries as they go to school. Along the way, the audience learns cool stuff like the fact that a worm is a hermaphrodite and flies eat with their feet. BEN AND HENRY STERN. Newmark Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 228-9571, octc.org. 2 and 5 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. No show Feb. 6, no 5 pm shows Feb. 12 and 19. Closes Feb. 20. $13-$26.
The Doctor Despite Himself
Twilight Rep stages Molière’s madcap farce about doctors. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-244-3740. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 6. $10-$15
Elsewhere
[FERTILE GROUND] Subtitled “Short Explorations of In-Between, Afterwards and Not Here,” this collection of scenes by Ellen Margolis, written for newish company the Forgery, covers 9/11 jumpers, terracotta soldiers and lost socks. Shaking the Tree Studio, 1407 SE Stark St., 2350635. 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 4 pm Sundays through Feb. 5. $12.
Fela!
The National Theatre London recorded a performance of the smash hit musical about Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti in high-def, which Third Rail will screen over two weekends. World Trade Center, 121 SW Salmon St., 2415410. 2 pm Saturdays, 7 pm Sundays Jan. 29-Feb. 6. $15-$20.
I Was a Fat Kid…a Really Fat Kid
[FERTILE GROUND] Nathaniel Boggess premieres his solo comedy about the experiences of a fat city kid exiled to Appalachia. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 10 pm Saturday-Sunday, Jan. 29-30. $10-$12.
The Imaginary Invalid
Why has Molière endured? Maybe we just like potty humor. Constance Congdon, whose liberal adaptation of The Imaginary Invalid plays this month at PCS, sure does. Chris Coleman’s production puts a lot of impressive talent onstage in service of a hundred fart gags. Coleman’s invalid, David Margulies, brings to the role of Argan a befuddled, doddering disposition and Walken-esque cadence that makes the flatulent, selfish coot—who attempts to marry his daughter off to a preening doctor to save on the unnecessary medical care he delights in receiving— more likeable than he has any right to be. But why does one character have a thick French accent, and another speak like a gay George W. Bush? Why does the set employ the severe forced perspective of a cardboard theater diorama? And how long can we reasonably be expected to laugh at diarrhea jokes before they just get gross? BEN WATERHOUSE. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturdays-Sundays, noon Thursdays. Closes Feb. 6. $33-$58 adults, $18 students and youth.
The Missing Pieces
[FERTILE GROUND] I’m hesitant to call any performance a train wreck, but in the instance of this comedy by Nick Zagone, currently enjoying a short workshop run at Portland Playhouse, I think the metaphor is appropriate. The story of Timmy, a screwed-up 12-year-old who decides, in the wake of the eruption of Mount St. Helens and his discovery of a neighbor’s enormous collection of Playboys, to leave his home and live with Hugh Hefner, The Missing Pieces zips cheerily along through the first act. Zagone has a good grasp of the pubescent mind,
but saves the best material for Bobby, Timmy’s 20-something brother, a high-school dropout and failed rocker played with gleeful obnoxiousness by Casey McFeron. His banter with Timmy (played on alternating nights by a pair of real, live 12-year-olds, Ethan Jamieson and Daylen Chipps) is delightful, but you’d be well advised to leave at intermission, because 20 minutes into the second half the show careens into an Osho-shaped ravine when the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh walks onstage and chases Timmy’s mom around the kitchen table. The ridiculous scene has next to no connection to the rest of the show, but nonetheless sucks the energy out of the room for good. Mr. Zagone: Cut the Bhagwan! BEN WATERHOUSE. Portland Playhouse, 918 SW Yamhill St., No. 401, 221-5857. 8 pm ThursdaySaturday, 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 27-30. $15.
Mr. Darcy Dream Boat
[FERTILE GROUND] Camille Cettina offers an excerpt of her upcoming literary smashup piece. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., theatrevertigo. org. 7:15 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through Jan. 29. $5, $20 with 99 Ways.
My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow
[FERTILE GROUND] Memory, old age and the importance of living life to the fullest are the themes of this solo performance by Hand2Mouth Theatre member Erin Leddy. The show’s something of a duet, actually, between Leddy and sampled recordings that her now-91-year-old grandmother, Sarah Braveman, made in 2001 and 2010, cleverly edited to create a convincing illusion of live conversation. Braveman serves as narrator, critic and subject, reading poems, critiquing her granddaughter’s lovely, Death Cab-esque songs and recalling painful memories of her childhood. As with most of Hand2Mouth’s projects, the show contains plenty to both appeal to and alienate all comers—a dance sequence that borders on the ridiculous, gratuitous pantlessness—but its good moments are very good. Braveman’s struggle to remember the names of long-dead cats is heartbreaking, and the soundscape created by Ash Black Buffalo, John Berenzen and Holcombe Waller is as immersive and compelling as anything I’ve experienced. Leddy’s performance is physically strenuous and emotionally draining, her best work to date. BEN WATERHOUSE. The Mouth, inside Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont St., hand2mouththeatre.org. 8 pm ThursdaysSaturdays, 2 pm Sundays. $12-$15.
The Nursing Virgin
[FERTILE GROUND] Portland Theatre Works reads Hunt Holman’s new comedy. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., theatrevertigo.org. 7 pm Tuesday-Wednesday, Jan. 25-26. Free.
Polar Opposites
[FERTILE GROUND] Lawrence Howard tells the story of Amundsen and Scott’s race for the South Pole. Hipbone Studio, 1847 E Burnside St., 793-5484. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Jan. 28-29. $15.
Porn Shop!
[FERTILE GROUND] Third Eye Theatre has transformed the Back Door Theatre into a low-rent adult shop for this world premiere by John Heller. The stage is set with a tall register and a bright red sign that warrants “no refunds”; everything else is a sex toy. When the manager catches two clerks stuffing battery-powered toys in their pants she scolds them like a schoolmarm. When John, the protagonist, gets drunk off bourbon he spits a lovesick monologue that’s both wise and vaguely familiar. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 8 pm ThursdaysSaturdays. Closes Feb. 12. $12-$15.
The Pulp Sampler
[FERTILE GROUND] An evening of pulp-inspired 10-minute plays by Tina Connolly, Ralph Greco Jr. Bill Ratner, Jeremiah Benjamin, Vincent Kovar, Brian Allard, Robin Pond and Liz Argall. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 10:30 pm FridaySaturday, Jan. 28-29. $10.
Robin Hood
[FERTILE GROUND] Portland World Theatre premieres a play about a crime committed in God’s name. Performance Works NW, 4625 SE 67th Ave., 367-2650. 8 pm ThursdaySaturday, Jan. 27-29, $10.
with contacts—all because Evelyn asked. He even goes so far as to get a nose job. The tension of the characters grows as the relationships further complicate. Phil and Jenny’s deteriorating engagement leads Adam and Jenny to have an affair they’d both been wanting for years. The performance, overall well-acted and engaging, poses to the audience the question that if all art is subjective, who’s to say Adam wasn’t beautiful all along? JESSICA LUTJEMEYER. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 922-0532. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 5. $24, $19 students, $14 Thursdays.
The Shape of Things
Stories From the Streets
Northwest Children’s Theatre premieres a new take on the Hood, penned by James Moore. NW Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 NW Everett St., 222-2190. 7 pm Fridays, 2 and 7 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 20, $18-$22.
Shadow Testament
The Public House Theatre production of this Neil LaBute play begins with the unsurprising scenario of Adam, a dumpy square who works two jobs, asking the uninhibited grad school art student, Evelyn, on a date. He falls hard for her, and his affianced friends Phil and Jenny notice obvious changes— he is losing weight, has a new hairstyle and clothes, and replaced his glasses
[FERTILE GROUND] Lunacy Stageworks and Street Roots present an evening of music, poetry and fiction written by the newspaper’s vendors and contributors. Sellwood Masonic Lodge, 7126 SE Milwaukie Ave. 6:30 pm Friday, 8:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 28-29. $12 suggested donation.
CONT. on page 34
PREVIEW A A R O N W H E E L E R K AY
PERFORMANCE
AARON WHEELER-KAY
GROOVIN’ GREENHOUSE A primer to Portland’s unheralded dance scene.
Portland loves to talk about its diverse art scene, says choreographer Robert Guitron, but when he challenges locals to name more than five Portland dance groups, they tend to trail off after White Bird, Oregon Ballet Theatre and BodyVox. Guitron thinks Portland’s varied disciplines and lesser-known dancers deserve better. “Ballroom, East Indian, tap, Bollywood, highland dance—it boggles my mind how much is going on in this relatively small community,” he said. Which is why he and his own company, Polaris Dance Theatre, are hosting the Groovin’ Greenhouse at the Fertile Ground festival. The Greenhouse will spotlight a half-dozen local companies and soloists: The Dance Coalition of Oregon will present a dance sampler with Mythobolus Mask Theatre, cabaret group the Dolly Pops, Ann Marie Hathaway’s Botanical Ballroom Madness and a new modern piece by Agnieszka Laska. Jefferson Dance alumnus and Do Jump! member Aaron Wheeler-Kay pays homage to his instructors in We Carry Our Teachers Within Us, a contemporary solo infused with West African, ballet, hip-hop, tap and aerial dance. The pre-professional company NW Fusion Dance stages works by pro choreographers, among them its director, Brad Hampton, and the Trey McIntyre Project’s Lauren Edson. The Portland Festival Ballet performs Les Watanabe’s I Wish, an ensemble piece inspired by They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Legacy Dance will be there too, along with Polaris dancers Cerrin Lathrop and Carlyn Hudson presenting solo works. Polaris itself is on the bill, offering a sneak preview of its Motown-inspired spring show Lil’ Mo, part of an ongoing series of works inspired by popular music. Guitron said he invited everyone he could think of to participate in the Groovin’ Greenhouse. While he didn’t get the diversity he had hoped for in this first installment, he hopes the Greenhouse will become an annual event as more people grasp its potential. “Maybe we’ll be inspired if we get our asses off the couch and see what’s happening in the crevasses, not just in the big spaces,” he said. HEATHER WISNER.
SEE IT: Polaris Dance Center, 1501 SW Taylor, 800-494-8497. 7:30 pm Friday, 5 and 8 pm Saturday, Jan. 28-29. $10. Info at polarisdance.org. Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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JEAN LOUIS in “COMMUNICATOS” a sketch comedy show
PERFORMANCE
JAN. 26-FEB. 1
Suburban Tribe
P O R T L A N D P L AY H O U S E
bob ladewig & stacey hallal are
[FERTILE GROUND] Kate Mura premieres her mask theater piece about suburbanites rallying around a family during catastrophe. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., fusepdx.com. 2 pm Wednesday, 8 pm Friday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 26-30. $10.
Superior Donuts
FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS 8:00pm/7:30pm doors JAN 28 - FEB 26 no show feb 5 or 11 $10 adv. on-line, $12 door FULL BAR - GREAT FOOD
The latest from Tracy Letts is an odd-couple comedy of familiar form: Arthur Przybyszewski, a burntout, emotionally stunted former radical and draft-dodger who now runs the Chicago donut shop his father founded, hires Franco Wicks, an exuberant, uninhibited black 21-year-old with dreams of literary stardom, to work the counter. They banter, hilariously, as Franco tries to draw his reticent boss out of his shell. The first act is comfortable and entertaining. Vin Shambry is immediately likeable as Franco, constantly in motion and endlessly curious, part grifter, part eager student. We love him as soon as we see him. Letts knows this and, because he’s an emotional terrorist, abruptly saddles Wicks with implausible gambling debts, collected by a pair of anachronistic Irish thugs borrowed straight from 1970s Mamet, and sends the plot spinning off into unearned tragedy. BEN WATERHOUSE. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 2411278. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays, 11 am Wednesday, Jan. 26. Closes Feb. 6. $20-$42.
That Was the River, This Is the Sea
[FERTILE GROUND] Icaro Compania de Teatro presents a reading of a play by Claire Willett and Gilberto Martin del Campo in which a woman goes with her Mexican boyfriend to his sister’s wedding, only to find herself entwined in an ugly family history. The Art Department, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., curiouscomedy.org. 6 pm WednesdayThursday, 7 pm Friday, Jan. 26-28. $10-$12.
Threads
[FERTILE GROUND] In 1968, Tonya Jone Miller’s mother traveled to Saigon to teach English in a war zone, and stayed there through the war’s end. Miller created this solo show about the distance one woman was willing to go to promote understanding in wartime. The Headwaters, 55 NE Farragut St., No. 9, 289-3499. 8 pm ThursdaysSaturdays, 6 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 12, $15 at the door or through hulahub.com.
Triskaidekaphilia (Just My Luck)
[FERTILE GROUND] Jimmy Radosta revives the solo show he premiered at last year’s Fertile Ground Festival about his run of lousy luck. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., curiouscomedy.org. 8 pm Thursday, Jan. 27. $10-$13.
The Whole Entire Package
[FERTILE GROUND] Contagious Theatre presents three short comedies by Wally Jones, Will Lund and Tristian Spillman. The Hostess, 538 SE Ash St., 1-800-494-8497. 8 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 27-30. $10.
The Wonderful World of Dissocia
Third Rail Rep returns to the work of British playwright Anthony Neilson, who wrote last season’s The Lying Kind. This time it’s a fantasy of mental illness in which an unlucky woman travels to the bizarre realm of Dissocia to retrieve a lost hour. World Trade Center, 121 SW Salmon St., 241-5410. 7:30 pm ThursdaysSaturdays, 2 pm Sundays. $15-$32.
COMEDY/IMPROV The Beards of Comedy
Four good young comedians from the South (Andy Sandford, Joe Zimmerman, TJ Young and Dave Stone) do a free show at the Beauty
34
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
THE MISSING PIECES Bar. Good deal! Beauty Bar, 111 SW Ash St., 224-0773. 8 pm Wednesday, Jan. 26. Free.
Communicatos
[FERTILE GROUND] A new sketch comedy show created by the duo Jean Louis, otherwise known as Stacey Hallal, and Bob Ladewig. Curious Comedy, 1963 NW Kearney St., 236-8888. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Jan. 28-29. $10-$12.
Mice-tro
Put 16 improv actors onstage with a voice-of-God maestro pitting them against each other and an audience voting them off, and what do you get? A raw and clever Portland show that’s so disgustingly full of talent it reminds you why you never took theater, but love watching it. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Fridays through Feb. 11, $10, $7 students.
Paula Poundstone
The frequent Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me! panelist brings her stand-up act to town in a benefit for the Friends of the Multnomah County Library. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 7 pm Saturday, Jan. 29. $30.
Brian Regan
Regan can squeeze a lot of humor out of the deplanetification of Pluto, which is no mean feat. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 8 pm Friday, Jan. 28. $39.75.
CLASSICAL AnyWhen Ensemble
After a stellar career at the University of Oregon, trumpeter/ composer Douglas Detrick, who grew up in Portland, made a bold and apparently inevitable move east last year. He’s returning from the Bronx with his chamber jazz group, augmented by Portland pianist Ben Darwish, for a performance of Detrick’s new extended work, Rivers Music, and other works. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 2234527. 8:30 pm Tuesday, Feb. 1. $5.
Chanticleer
One of the world’s most popular and accomplished vocal ensembles returns with its most intriguing program in years, featuring new works by the hot young San Francisco composer/DJ Mason Bates and Erika Lloyd, along with classics spanning half a millennium, from Renaissance master Palestrina to Baroque pioneers Gabrieli and Monteverdi to 20thcentury works by Benjamin Britten, Kurt Weill and Gustav Mahler. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., 777-7755. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Jan. 26. $27-$40.
Oregon Symphony
The orchestra brings in Scottish percussionist extraordinaire Colin Currie to solo in Jennifer Higdon’s rollicking, Grammy Awardwinning Percussion Concerto. Currie deploys marimba, vibes, brake drums, gongs, and a thrilling drum
solo. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 29 and 8 pm Monday, Jan. 31. $20-$90.
3 Leg Torso
Still basking in the rosy glow of its splendid 2010 CD, Animals & Cannibals, the cheerfully uncategorizable “world chamber pop” quintet returns for its usual quirky yet tasty blend of jazz, pop, classical and what have you. The Blue Monk, 3341 SE Belmont St., 595-0575. 9 pm Saturday, Jan. 29. $10.
DANCE ...ballet?
[FERTILE GROUND] Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers Candace Bouchard, Christian Squires and Gavin Larsen step outside their home studio during the Fertile Ground Festival, where they’ll share their three-part work …ballet? in two venues. At the Art Department, Squires and Bouchard riff on life’s vulnerable and ephemeral moments; Squires considers the things one might like to say to a loved one but doesn’t; Bouchard, working with composer Sean Flinn, attempts to recapture fleeting memories using all the tools of her art. Over at Conduit, Larsen and her collaborators—poet David Biespiel and musician Joshua Pearl— examine the ways art speaks to us, even as they blur the boundaries of their respective genres, in A Ghost in the Room With Us. Larsen 6 pm Wednesday, Jan. 26 and 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 30 at Conduit, 918 SW Yamhill St., No. 401, 221-5857. Squires and Bouchard 8:30 pm Thursday, 7 pm Friday Jan. 27-28 at The Art Department, 417 SE 11th Ave. $10-$20.
Bellydance Superstars
Celtic fusion? So last decade. These days, it’s all about belly dance fusion, or so the Bellydance Superstars would have you believe. In its touring show Bombay Bellywood, the American troupe mashes up traditional and tribal belly dance with Bollywood and bhangra Indian dance styles. The Bellydance Superstars are an attractive, decadently costumed lot with plenty of performance experience— more than 700 shows in 22 countries since forming in 2002. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 2250047. 8 pm Monday, Jan. 31. $30.
BodyVox 2
[FERTILE GROUND] BodyVox training company BodyVox 2 gets its very own show this weekend at Fertile Ground, where it will perform contemporary pieces from the BodyVox rep as well as new works created specifically for it. The program will feature the world premiere of works by Éowyn Barrett and BodyVox founders Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland. BodyVox Dance Center, 1201 NW 17th Ave., 229-0627. 7:30 pm Thursday-Friday, Jan. 27-28, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 29. $15.
For more Performance listings, visit
VISUAL ARTS
JAN. 26-FEB. 1
= 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.
Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions!
They’re Good Ones!
hand knit & felted
BUNNY SLIPPERS • for your Valentine • Because you only had ONE chance to notice her new haircut—and you blew it.
Hap Tivey’s KELLY ARC at Elizabeth Leach
NOW SHOWING Resonance
In this sprawling group show, Lawrence Morrell’s mesmerizing glass sculpture, Chameleon I, stands out. Morrell’s abstracted plant-cell structures are illuminated via LED lights that shift between green, pink and electric blue. The artist is at an interesting point in his career, as his work is at the crossroads of geeky, gee-whiz romanticism and the equally gee-whiz but more academically rarefied California lightand-space school, as exemplified by Robert Irwin, James Turrell and, more locally, Hap Tivey (see listing, this page). In pieces like this, Morrell proves he has the chops to rise above the curb appeal of “Ooh!” and “Ahh!” without rejecting the visceral thrills of sheer optical pleasure. Anka, 325 NW 6th Ave., 224-5721. Closes Jan. 28.
Yuji Hiratsuka
Printmaker Yuji Hiratsuka integrates the traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodcut style with contemporary intaglio printmaking techniques. The figures who populate his compositions are bushy-banged caricatures whose eyes are wholly obscured by hair or headdresses, giving them vacant countenances that are disturbing, if not outright weird. Their bizarre appearances are mitigated by the sensuality of the artist’s palette and highly textural Japanese mulberry papers. Augen DeSoto, 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056. Closes Jan. 29.
Jeff Faerber, Steve Matthews, Bret Hostetler, Amigo
Portlander Steve Matthews makes the strongest showing in this group show, with his retro-cool paintings of vintage sports cars in an impish, lowbrow style. Matthews displays a different side of his talent in semiabstract compositions such as Dandelions, with its intuitive gestures and spurts and splatters of paint. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900. Closes Feb. 1.
Yoonhee Choi
Choi’s mixed-media compositions feature symbols and topographical forms joined by dots and lines. The contrast between wiry, thin connectors and fatter, amoebalike forms is reminiscent of Alexander Calder and Joan Miró. Immaculately matted and framed, the works whisper with elegant finesse. Blackfish, 420 NW 9th Ave., 224-2634. Closes Jan. 29.
Shai Kremer, Natan Dvir
In Infected Landscape, photographer Shai Kremer records the residue of military conflict within Israeli cityscapes and landscapes. While more photojournalistic than aesthetic in feel, the show nevertheless makes for a thought-provoking contrast to the back-gallery exhibition, Natan Dvir’s Eighteen, a suite of portraits
$85 while supplies last
of 18-year-old Arabs who live in Israel. While Kremer’s work homes in on the aftermath of a specific conflict, Dvir’s photos illustrate a universal phenomenon: the mixture of bravado and insecurity endemic to teenagers on the precipice of young adulthood. Blue Sky, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210. Closes Jan. 30.
Blazer Mania
Love the Portland Trail Blazers? Love art? Then curator Nathan Tabor has the show for you. Blazer Mania is dedicated to all things Blazerlicious. If you’re not an active fan, you’ll likely be underwhelmed by the artwork, which is populist to a fault. Local graphic designer Thomas Bradley rises above the fray, however, with his elegant, Native American-style screenprint, Warranted to Be, in eye-catching black, white, red and silver. Compound, 107 NW 5th Ave., 7962733. Closes Jan. 31.
Hap Tivey, Anna Von Mertens
Anna Von Mertens’ hand-dyed, handstitched cotton rectangles are like quilts made by somebody’s LSDaddled grandma. With their tie-dyelike seepages of eye-boggling color and their blurry, blobby organic forms, they radiate an insistent presence that recalls the glowy concentric circles of the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The most asymmetrical piece, Arrangement in Grey and Black’s Aura (Whistler’s Mother), is perhaps the show’s most invigorating. In the back gallery, Hap Tivey’s illusionistic rhomboids, with their shadow-casting sculptural elements, painted borders and projected colors, recall the disorienting, “What exactly am I looking at?” light play of James Turrell. Elizabeth Leach, 417 NW 9th Ave., 224-0521. Closes Feb. 12.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
In the two-person show The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Scott Chase paints realistic black-and-white portraits of pop-culture icons such as Hunter Thompson, Fidel Castro and Elvis Presley. Meanwhile, Chris Haberman paints the same icons in his own, easily recognizable style of combining portraiture with text. Haberman has a unique sensibility, is tirelessly involved in the Portland art community, and continues to make a significant contribution to our collective visual ethos, yet he seems to be slipping into a rut. In many of his pieces, the text is arbitrary and pat. The Elvis portrait, for example, uses phrases such as “King of Rock & Roll,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Jumpsuit,” “Sex Symbol” and “Drug Use”—hardly original observations. Haberman also needs to reinvigorate his style with fresh tactics in surface and theme. Launch Pad, 534 SE Oak St., 427-8704. Closes Jan. 29.
For more Performance listings, visit
Stumptown Coffee • Delicious baked goods • Unusual magazines • Inspired gifts
1740 SE Hawthorne • Portland, OR • 503-384-2160
See Wellness pg. 43
(in the same building as Castagna restaurant)
A RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY for people with SCHIZOPHRENIA and their FAMILIES VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED FOR A STUDY
that examines whether reduced skin sensitivity to methyl nicotinate (a niacin derivative) is a heritable condition among patients with schizophrenia or their family members. This is for a research study. It does not involve any treatment.
You may be eligible to qualify if you have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and have a brother, sister or parent who may also be interested in participating. Volunteers should be in good physical health, and should not be taking medications for high blood pressure, aspirin, or other pain medications.
The study involves being interviewed, and then measuring the skin’s blood flow response to a skin-permeable drug derived from niacin. The niacin derivative solution will be dissolved in water and will be placed on the forearms for five minutes. The skin’s blood flow will then be measured painlessly, using reflected light. Volunteers will have the option of donating a small blood sample for genetic analysis. The study will require
two visits to the Portland VA Medical Center. The first visit will last about four hours. The second visit will last about one hour.
If you are interested or have questions, please contact Dr. Erik Messamore at (503) 220-8262, extension 51864. Participants will be paid $40 for each visit, and $40 for donating a blood sample. Aside from these payments, there are no other benefits to you for participating in this study. You may participate even if you are not a veteran.
This study is being conducted by Dr. Erik Messamore at the Portland VA Medical Center 3710 SW Veterans Hospital Road, Portland, OR 97239 Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
35
2
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS
®
WORDS
BEST ACTOR • Javier Bardem BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
JAN. 26-FEB. 1
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By LEIGHTON COSSEBOOM. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 26 Kim Edwards
“A
MODERN MASTERPIECE .” -Matt Holzman, NPR
“ BRAVO
BARDEM!
Javier Bardem gives a remarkable performance.” -Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
Every family has its secrets, but the Jarrett family is chock-full of them. In her second novel, The Lake of Dreams, Kim Edwards (The Memory Keeper’s Daughter) has meticulously crafted a complex family history. The story follows Lucy Jarrett, who is still “haunted by her father’s mysterious death” 10 years later. While contemplating her own rootless adult life during a visit to her family’s lakeside home, Lucy discovers a collection of objects hidden in a window seat that reveals the truth about her lineage. What she finds turns her longstanding feelings of regret into aspirations for redemption. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 2284651. 7:30 pm. Free.
THURSDAY, JAN. 27 Kurt Timmermeister
“Bardem gives a performance of staggering depth,
UNQUESTIONABLY ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST.” -Betsy Sharkey, LOS ANGELES TIMES
“JAVIER
BARDEM IS AMAZING.” -Mary Pols, TIME
WINNER BEST ACTOR JAVIER BARDEM CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
After years of serving “frozen chicken breasts and packaged pork” in his eateries, successful Seattle restaurateur Kurt Timmermeister began contemplating the connection between what he ate and where it came from. Growing a Farmer, is his true story about the events that lead to his founding of the famous Kurtwood Farms on Vashon Island in Puget Sound. The book examines how the farm became Timmermeister’s new (and more profitable) source of fresh ingredients for his restaurants. It also recasts the way we relate to the food we consume. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 2284651. 7:30 pm. Free.
FRIDAY, JAN. 28 Siobhan Fallon
“When you leave Fort Hood, the sign above the gate warns, ‘You’ve Survived the War, Now Survive the Homecoming,’” Siobhan Fallon writes in her debut novel, You Know When the Men Are Gone. It’s a collection of interconnected stories that follows the soldiers and spouses stationed on the large military base of Fort Hood, Texas. Fallon paints a picture of a place “where the women are linked by [the feeling of] absence and a pervading fear that they’ll become war widows.” Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651. 7 pm. Free.
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Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
The terms “terrorist” and “freedom fighter” can often be interchangeable, depending on your perspective. In his new book, Conversations with Terrorists, U.S. foreign policy expert Reese Erlich (Dateline Havana) brings readers face to face with six Middle Eastern leaders sometimes labeled as terrorists, lets them describe their positions, and “subjects those explanations to critical scrutiny.” The book uses firsthand interviews and extensive research to analyze American involvement in the Middle East. It also aims to show us that “yesterday’s terrorist is often today’s national leader.” Portland State University Smith Memorial Student Union, Multicultural Center, 1825 SW Broadway, 725-3000. 7 pm. Free.
SUNDAY, JAN. 30 Nick Galifianakis
“If you can’t laugh at yourself, Nick Galifianakis will do it for you.” Galifianakis is the uncle of comedian Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), and a Washington Post cartoonist. His new book, If You Loved Me, You’d Think This Was Cute,
represents “a collection of highbrow pen-and-ink cartoons” from Carolyn Hax’s syndicated column, Tell Me About It. Poking fun at our most common flaws and insecurities, the cartoons are satirical, and offer “observations on life, love, relationships and pet camaraderie.” Galifianakis’ book contains more than 200 funny-because-they’retrue cartoon panels, and a foreword from his famous nephew. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 4 pm. Free.
MONDAY, JAN. 31
Joseph McElroy
Usually known for his “complex and beautiful novels,” Joseph McElroy (A Smuggler’s Bible) ventures into the realm of short stories with a new anthology, Night Soul and Other Stories. The book features several strange fictional odysseys, including an urban planner’s journey to an acupuncturist after his encounter with a helpful stranger in the middle of the night. The collection also examines the experiences of an Arab boy in Brooklyn, and the idea that “we are all nomads.” Publishers Weekly describes McElroy’s stories as “intricate puzzles to be patiently pieced through. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 2284651. 7:30 pm. Free.
For more Words listings, visit
REVIEW
LONELY CHRISTOPHER THE MECHANICS OF HOMOSEXUAL INTERCOURSE Damn straight I judge books by their covers, and I judged the hell out of Lonely Christopher’s The Mechanics of Hom osexual In tercourse (Akashic Books, 200 pages, $15.95): The cheeky nom de Love, hate and other fundamental procedures. plume, drily academic title and bloodied prepubescent doll-boy had me anticipating some unholy union of Tao Lin’s preciousness, Ben Marcus’ experimental airlessness and Dennis Cooper’s deadpan depravity. To be clear, I would not have enjoyed such a mélange. But when I rallied to actually read the book, I found sharp and shimmering constructions inside, stories that sparked like burning bugs. What I found was a vicious debut collection by a young writer not on the verge of great things, but a young writer already doing great things. Guided by the black light of Kafka’s “The Judgement,” perhaps literature’s supreme domestic nightmare, Lonely Christopher worries at the wounds made by family and at the odd cancers quickened by desire. The strongest (and longest) story here, “Nobody Understands Thorny When,” is also the most superficially traditional. Darting back and forth on the mine-ridden timeline between a boy’s abduction and eventual return home, Lonely Christopher uses a rather familiar story arc to upset notions of tragedy and redemption. What emerges is an unsettling and haunting study of what it means to love people who love to hurt us, to hurt people who hurt with love for us. Things do get structurally strange, as in “That Which,” an Oulipo-esque experiment consisting only of one-syllable words, and the narratives do flirt with outlandishness—“Milk” concerns a horse trapped between a fridge and a microwave—but the limpidity of Lonely Christopher’s language and his startlingly keen eye for common (but no less damaging) emotional cracks keeps the stories moored to a world that is recognizably ours. “White Dog,” the final story in The Mechanics of Sexual Intercourse, introduces us to a woman who has just woken up in a grocery store’s parking lot. She does not know how she got there, but she decides to shop, because although the nature of her arrival might be a mystery, the fact of that grocery store and its stocked shelves is not. Lonely Christopher is, in his subtle way, describing his own work, a push-pull of sense and transcendence that commands us to keep moving, keep searching for ways to understand why we are this way. CHRIS STAMM. GO: Lonely Christopher reads from The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 228-4651. 7:30 pm Monday, Jan. 31. Free.
JAN. 26-FEB. 1 REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
SCREEN
Editor: AARON MESH. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: amesh@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
127 Hours
Danny Boyle’s help-I’m-stuckunder-this-rock movie is a reminder that no matter how many other hobbies he undertakes, James Franco is primarily one hell of an actor. R. AARON MESH. Regal Fox Tower. 73
NEW
9000 Needles
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary follows a Kentucky man, paralyzed by a stroke, traveling to China to try a blend of Western medicine and acupuncture. Hollywood Theatre. 5 pm Sunday, Jan. 30. NEW
Animate It! Advanced Workshop
A four day stop-motion animation class for students who have taken at least one animation class before. Hollywood Theatre. 10 am-1 pm Saturday-Sunday, Jan. 29-30 and Feb. 5-6. $200.
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 a dom of a director, getting his jollies by brutalizing his characters. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, Fox Tower, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, City Center, Eastport, Division, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
Blue Valentine
A film more than a decade in the making, Blue Valentine could well have been torture porn for the heart. Instead, director Derek Cianfrance has crafted a small miracle, a film that reminds us that movies are designed not just to stimulate, but to make us feel—even if those feelings are devastating. It’s a triumph that stings to the core. R. AP KRYZA. Lloyd Center, Fox Tower, City Center, Cedar Hills, Tigard. 96
Casino Jack
48 Former promising actor Kevin Spacey stars as infamous, hat-wearing scumbag Jack Abramoff, whose wheelings and dealings give Spacey an opportunity to do what Spacey does best, only this time purposefully: be profoundly unlikable while trying very hard to be dryly charming. R. CHRIS STAMM. Fox Tower.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 3-D
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. PG. AARON MESH. 3-D: Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Evergreen. 2-D: Movies on TV. 20
Country Strong
37 Worst rehab ever: Country crooner Gwyneth Paltrow is whisked out of wooded seclusion by manager/ husband Tim McGraw, who can arrange a stadium tour of Texas but cannot keep a Smirnoff bottle out of his wife’s dressing room. “They think I’m better,” Paltrow murmurs to her lover Garrett Hedlund. “Better than what?” he asks. Better than this script. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
The Dilemma
47 Here’s the dilemma with The Dilemma: It’s a relationship comedy that forgets about its own relationships. Oh, it’s also not very funny (disappointingly so, coming from the producers of Arrested Development), can’t decide on a tone and suffers from a light strain of misogyny, but
the biggest problem with the film is that it betrays itself. What’s supposed to be the story of two couples is diluted until it becomes about just one individual: Vince Vaughn, in his usual charming alpha-douche persona. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Lloyd Mall, Broadway, City Center, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
Empty Quarter
NEW
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTORS ATTENDING] Empty Quarter is, at its core, an act of film preservation. Now, you see those words and imagine a man with a loupe running a Hitchcock film through a bubble bath before storing it away in some climate controlled crypt. Me too. But Empty Quarter, a locally produced documentary eight years in the making, seems to have been conceived by directors Pam Minty and Alain Le Tourneau with a more expansive definition in mind, with filmmaking itself as the necessary act of preservation. What is being preserved then? A time and a place, for sure—this unassuming observational doc pins southeastern Oregon to the cork in a series of postcard-worthy long takes accompanied by vivid audio field recordings—but Empty Quarter is also rescuing a cinematic method haunted by French theorist Andre Bazin, for whom photography was essentially a spiritual practice of embalming and mummification. So what we have here, I suppose, is preservation of a method of preservation, with Minty and Le Tourneau guarding that vital impulse at the center of cinema that beseeches us to stop time before it stops us. Could be Empty Quarter is just a very pretty film documenting the beauty and industry of rural Oregon, but past those shots of rodeos and laundromats and cornfields I saw the flickering of something bigger, brighter. CHRIS STAMM. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Friday, Jan. 28. Co-presented by Cinema Project. Directors Pam Minty and Alain Le Tourneau will attend the screening. 81
Enemies of the People
For obvious reasons, most documentaries of atrocity concentrate on the victims, but Enemies of the People attempts something far more courageous: It confronts the perpetrators of the Cambodian Killing Fields. In sweltering Cambodian marshes, reporter Thet Sambath patiently prods frail, shriveled Khmer Rouge conscripts to tell how they slaughtered their countrymen. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. 85
NEW Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance
The first installment in this anime series about cyborg pilots was gorgeous, if incomprehensible. Expect more of the same, but maybe with bigger cyborg battles. Living Room Theaters. NEW
An Evening of Short Film Gems
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Screenwriting instructor Roger Margolis of the NW Film Center’s School of Film introduces a bundle of his favorite shorts. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 30.
The Fighter
89 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! The Fighter deserves its shot: Fleeing formula like Bale’s Dicky runs from cops, the movie is messy and darting and alive. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Pioneer Place, City Center, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
CONT. on page 38
SOFT SOAP: Acrobatic advertising in The Illusionist.
GRAND ILLUMINATION THE ILLUSIONIST ISN’T GENUINE TATI. BUT IT’S LOVELY. BY A LISTA IR R OCKOFF
243-2122
As a child, it can be a little traumatic to see a magician make a mistake and drop his thumb. I mean his false thumb, from which he might produce a silk scarf, as if out of thin air. I did not cry back then, but at age 25, I did cry watching the lustrous cartoon The Illusionist, about a fatherly gent who stops pulling a rabbit out of his hat, and starts pulling a young girl out of her childhood. Merely a week after My Dog Tulip played the NW Film Center, Cinema 21 answers the call by screening this, another decent new work of hand-drawn animation. Director Sylvain Chomet employs a team of craftsmen to animate The Illusionist, an unproduced screenplay by the late French comedian Jacques Tati. The movie follows an aging sleight-of-hand artist as he plies his trade through postwar Europe. Sad, wordless comedy results from this vaudeville circuit, which is giving way to television and rock ’n’ roll. It’s all in Chomet’s talent for caricature, each character defined by a single, unchanging facial expression. There is an alcoholic ventriloquist, whose lips never move from a happy smile. There is a depressive clown with—what else?—a perpetual frown. There is a beaming, effeminate boy band that is putting them all out of business. Facing rows of empty seats, the magician himself exudes deadpan nobility, like an undertaker at his own funeral. But when the magician stays at a rural Scottish inn, the girl who cleans his room is sheltered enough to believe in his tricks. When he leaves for the city of Edinburgh, he brings her along, and she discovers more adult kinds of enchantment, like the fancy clothes in a shop window. It’s a gentler version of the story told in Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard and the Coen Brothers’ True Grit. Like those live-action films, The Illusionist creates luminous scenes of spiritual innocence. The one that broke my heart shows a teenage boy and girl, taking shelter from the night in the tempting glow of that department store window.
Shadowed by Adam and Eve mannequins, this couple is the baby boom in all its vulnerability. Chomet’s previous cartoon, The Triplets of Belleville, was pretty and nostalgic for its own sake. But here, his painterly vision of Scotland’s city lights and natural colors takes on the pathos of the performer’s spotlight, a sacred flame that will go out if a new generation does not believe in beauty. Chomet has also re-created the patient silentcomedy rhythm of Jacques Tati’s own movies, and drawn the magician to look and move like Jacques Tati did onscreen, all wrists and ankles and lower back. (Some may recognize the bumbling character as the inspiration for England’s Mr. Bean.) Chomet’s
THE MAGICIAN EXUDES DEADPAN NOBILITY, LIKE AN UNDERTAKER AT HIS OWN FUNERAL. homage has been protested by Tati’s grandson as a betrayal of the man’s real life and artistic intentions. It has also been protested by film critics as a betrayal of Tati’s cinema, which spoofed the modern excess of commerce and technology. Those critics have a point. First conceived in the 1950s, The Illusionist does not carry Tati’s social burlesque into the 21st century. Perhaps abandoned by Tati for painful personal reasons, it offers none of the hilarity of Tati’s slapstick designs. The true heir to Tati’s grand absurdism is filmmaker Roy Andersson. But Chomet does have Tati’s poetic ear for music and for the peculiar sounds of modern life, and his landscapes are gorgeous. Even if he violated Tati’s wishes, Chomet has found some true sentiment as he skirts sentimentality. Tati imagined himself as an overgrown schoolboy, charmingly oblivious to social pressure. By giving this character a taste of surrogate fatherhood, Chomet tells a different kind of romance. As a girl loses her faith in rabbits out of hats, her faith in human kindness blossoms, and so does ours. 78 SEE IT: The Illusionist is rated PG. It opens Friday at Cinema 21.
Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
37
her
CHICAGO FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION NOMINEE • GOLDEN GLOBE® AWARD NOMINEE
THE NEW FILM BY SYLVAIN CHOMET FROM AN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY JACQUES TATI
WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM
CINEMA 21 THEATRE 616 NW 21ST Avenue, Portland (503) 223-4515
VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.THEILLUSIONISTMOVIE.COM
PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK
WED 1/26
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[ONE WEEK ONLY] The Western diet makes us fat and sick. And pills make things worse. This utilitarian documentary gets its point across, most effectively with a handful of success stories from people who ditched medication for a whole-foods diet, as well as a litany of goofy animated charts and graphics, from arteries clogged like sewer pipes to visions of cancer cells crawling over our insides like noxious gray spiders. KELLY CLARKE. Fox Tower. 66
–Joe Morgenstern, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
3.825" X 2"
JAN. 26-FEB. 1
Forks Over Knives
“A SENSE OF HAVING WATCHED GENUINE MAGIC.”
STARTS FRIDAY, JANUARY 28TH
SCREEN
The Green Hornet
65 Call it a flattening of genre, or maybe just expectations: With Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet, the superhero movie and the movie about a regular guy pretending to be a superhero have become indistinguishable. The caper, from a script by Seth Rogen and Superbad buddy Evan Goldberg, chronicles insouciant layabouts (Rogen and Jay Chou) becoming casual crimefighters; appropriately, the movie is endearingly amateurish. In fact, it feels like nothing so much as a “swede,” one of the backyard VHS remakes cobbled together by videostore employees in Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. I can’t recommend this with any seriousness. But I enjoyed most of it. PG-13. AARON MESH. 3-D: Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, City Center, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV. 2-D: Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Bridgeport.
ART APPROVED AE APPROVED CLIENT APPROVED
does a bang-up job of telling stuttering George VI (Colin Firth) that it’s not his fault he is the King of England. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, Fox Tower, City Center, Roseway, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
Kings of Pastry
61 Hell is blown sugar and tempered chocolate. At least, it is for the obsessive French pastry chefs who aspire to attain the rank of Meilleurs Ouvriers de France— “Best Craftsmen in France” of pastries. Co-directed by cinéma vérité titan D.A. Pennebaker (with Chris Hegedus), the film is oddly flat; the digital video washes out both the chefs’ faces and their creations while the irritatingly cheerful score recalls a Rick Steves travel video. KELLY CLARKE. Living Room Theaters.
Lemmy
[HELD OVER] “They drop a nuclear bomb on this planet, Lemmy and cockroaches is all that’s gonna survive,” gushes a fan of Motörhead bassist Lemmy Kilmister, he of the distinctive muttonchops and “Ace of Spades.” Dave Grohl is even more succinct: “He is the baddest motherfucker in the world.” The music documentary Lemmy is overcrowded with such character witnesses; it’s better when it lounges in Lemmy’s L.A. apartment, which also seems likely to support cockroaches. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 9 pm Friday-Thursday, Jan. 28-Feb. 3. 68
Little Fockers
13 As if the sight of Robert De Niro with a raging hard-on poking
REVIEW JOSE HARO
mett
• BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM WINNER NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE • EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS • CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARD NOMINEE
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
77 Everybody has tough teenage years, but damn does Harry Potter have issues. Sure, we’ve all dealt with shifty relatives and hormonally imbalanced friends with mean streaks. But we didn’t have the lord of all that is evil breathing down our necks, gigantic snakes trying to eat us, or a crazed government hunting us down in the midst of a genocide attempt on wizard-human lovechildren. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Lloyd Mall, Division, Bridgeport, Movies on TV. NEW
Heavy Metal
[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] John Candy meets the Loch’nar, all over again. R. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Friday-Thursday, Jan. 28-Feb. 3.
I Love You Phillip Morris
69 Jim Carrey is at his most interesting when he explores a worrisome cavity inside his mania—think of his everyman in The Truman Show suspecting his entire life was as empty as his good-morning waves—so he’s very good as the compulsively recidivist Texas con man Steven Russell, who romances (and tries to spring) a fellow prison inmate. R. Living Room Theaters.
Inspector Bellamy
65 New Wave rider Claude Chabrol’s final picture before his death last year at 80 begins with the sound of somebody whistling past a graveyard. Then the camera plunges over a seaside cliff to find an artfully burned and decapitated body lying beside a car. Turns out the poor fellow wanted to die, so no worries. This blithe dismissal of mortality extends to the whole of Inspector Bellamy, a mystery movie that contains almost no mystery, and a family drama that hinges on a final revelation that vaguely confirms what we already suspected. Gerard Depardieu stars as the titular policeman. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.
The King’s Speech
If it is the task of the movie psychologist to tell his patient, à la Robin Williams, that distress is “not your fault”—and to convince us that, yes, that fellow’s problems are not his fault and, by golly, our problems are not our fault—then speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), despite lacking medical qualifications, 73
DOA: Javier Bardem.
BIUTIFUL In the decade since making his sizzling debut with Amores Perros, director Alejandro González Iñárritu has been trapped with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga in a feedback loop of increasingly far-flung and outlandish coincidences. (In their most recent partnership, 2006’s Babel, a rifle purchased in Japan was inexorably destined to make Brad Pitt cry in Morocco.) Biutiful is Iñárritu’s first film after his split with Arriaga, and the best that can be said for it is that at least all the coincidences are packed into one character. The guy’s name is Uxbal, and he is played by a goateed Javier Bardem. Living in a squalid corner of Barcelona, Uxbal is a caring single father of two children, who were abandoned by their desperate and appalling bipolar mother. He is dying of advanced-stage prostate cancer; his doctor gives him two months. He runs a blackmarket goods and labor ring with gay Chinese gangsters. Oh, and he can talk to the souls of the dead. It was around the time of this last revelation that I threw up my hands and abandoned all hope for Biutiful. Seeing dead people might actually come in pretty handy when you’ve only two months to live—I can think of a number of questions you would want to ask—but Iñárritu only coats this talent on Uxbal as another flourish of spiritually profound suffering. (It is not a good sign when a movie has a less coherent approach to the afterlife than Jonah Hex.) The director seems to cherish intimately hellish sights; this could be a result of compassion toward the dispossessed, but it feels more like an insistent morbidity. Bardem’s Oscar-nominated anguish—it’s an intense but strangely monotonous performance— recalls a blend of Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro’s wailings and gnashings in Iñárritu’s 21 Grams, even down to bits in which the hero goes outside and gazes mournfully upon flocks of birds silhouetted against the evening sky. 21 Grams, however, did not feature a sequence set inside a strip club where the dancers’ ass cheeks are decorated with nipples. You can’t say the filmmaker isn’t innovating new kinds of degradation. By the end of Biutiful, Uxbal and his youngest child have both developed bladder-control problems: The movie winds up with father and son both pissing themselves in the night. It’s another meaningful connection, you see. But I can’t imagine anyone seeing this film by choice. R. AARON MESH. Javier Bardem is dying here!
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SEE IT: Biutiful opens Friday at Fox Tower.
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The Mechanic through his pajamas isn’t sad enough, the creators of Little Fockers have to go and make it worse. 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. Ben Stiller spends the entire film looking like he can’t wait for it to end—and that’s before his son projectile-vomits in his face. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Division, Cinema 99, Clackamas, Bridgeport.
Marwencol
Mark Hogancamp was the town drunk of Kingston, N.Y., until the night 10 years ago he had his head stoved in by a pack of local thugs and woke up with his thirst for liquor replaced by a hankering to play with dolls. His memory almost completely wiped, Hogencamp began building a World War II-era Belgian village in his backyard, populating it with Barbies and G.I. Joes representing himself, his friends and his would-be lovers. His photographs of these miniatures look like Saving Private Ryan performed by the cast of Team America: World Police. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. 78
NEW
The Mechanic
Jason Statham is pissed (again) and out for bloody revenge (again), eviscerating bad guys and automobiles (again) in a quest to murder the shit out of his backstabbing boss (again). Repetition be damned. Statham is official king of ultraviolent throwbacks to vintage action trash—a badass Brit with a Bruce Willis swagger (and hairline) who shoots first and asks questions never. He will never play the tooth fairy or pander for an Oscar—but he will put holes in every human being in the room, then have sweaty sex with a impossibly hot hooker. While The Mechanic—a remake of the 1972 Charlie Bronson revenge throwaway—never attempts the lunacy of the Crank films, it’s a pleasant adrenaline shot. Statham plays a hit man training the son of his slain mentor, mangling his way up the dirtbag food chain and—well, that’s it. Director Simon West, who has yet to see a luxury sedan he didn’t want to incinerate, offers his most gleefully violent effort since his trashtastic debut, Con Air. For 90 short minutes, Statham and sidekick Ben Foster make inventive use of garbage disposals and fire pokers, slaying enough faceless lackeys to populate a small country. It’s drooling, Cro-Magnon machismo from start to finish— in other words, perfect Stathamflavored popcorn. R. AP KRYZA. Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, City Center, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV. 70
NEW Mel Blanc Project Screening Series
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Film archivists Dennis Nyback and Anne Richardson, founders of the Oregon Cartoon Institute, present “Mel Blanc Sings,” the first in a series of presentations about the Oregon-born voice actor best known as Porky Pig. (When Blanc sings, he sings in character.) The Waypost, 3120 N Williams Ave. 7 pm Tuesday, Feb. 1. $6 suggested donation.
My Dog Tulip
A burst of jazz announces the place as 1950s London, where elderly author J.R. Ackerley begins typing a memoir. From his cozy apartment, he introduces his best friend: “My dog is an Alsatian bitch. Her name is Tulip.” Out on the balcony, Tulip squats and produces a dark trickle of urine. Indeed, bodily function becomes the central mystery here, as Tulip’s owner commits himself to “finding a husband for her.” Animators Paul and Sandra Fierlinger drew and painted every frame of Ackerley’s story by hand. Created using a computerized pen and easel, the pictures look like they were sketched on a cocktail napkin and filled in with watercolors. Remember “Teeny Little Super Guy” on Sesame Street? Small fellow? Gravelly voice? Dispensed common sense from within a drinking glass? “Teeny Little Super Guy” was animated by Paul Fierlinger. After honing his craft for six decades, the man has a feature film in theaters for the first time. Don’t miss it. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Hollywood Theatre. 87
No Strings Attached
In what is basically a fulllength enlargement of the “We love you, Natalie!” “I wanna fuck you, too!” exchange from Saturday Night Live, Ashton Kutcher plays Adam, the besotted penis filling Natalie Portman’s Emma on a casual schedule. Directed by Ivan Reitman, No Strings Attached is a little bit granddad’s fantasy of hook-up culture (Kevin Kline even gets it on the regular), but it’s also the first feature script for screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether, and so contains actual women asked to do more than serve as objects of desire. In fact, it’s Kutcher who’s the ogled beefcake here, and the movie offers the welcome twist of smart indie girls—Greta Gerwig, Olivia Thrilby, Mindy Kaling—taking advantage of puppy-eyed boys. The picture starts out listlessly bawdy, but it grows surprisingly affecting as the lead couple moves toward admitting the feelings they find too obviously sentimental to confess. My feeling about No Strings Attached is too obviously contrar70
CONT. on page 40
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ian to utter, but I’ll just go ahead and say it: It’s better than Black Swan. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, City Center, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV. NEW
Portlandia, Episode 2
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, TV SERIES] This one’s about the mayor (Kyle MacLachlan) looking for a city theme song that doesn’t sound like it came from Seattle. Mission Theater. 10:30 pm Friday, Jan. 28. Presented by Beer and Movie. Free.
Rabbit Hole
85 Uh-oh. A drama of parental bereavement, starring Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as the unlucky couple? From that premise, you might expect a strident dirge, but no. Rabbit Hole is a sensitive movie about coping, about how loss can be a badge of honor that drives people away, and a horrible private joke that brings people close. Sometimes it’s the same people. It’s American Bergman. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Regal Fox Tower. NEW
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. Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
Somewhere
A plot summary of Somewhere reads like a People puff piece about some gilded dickhead’s forged redemption journey. But here goes: Famous actor Johnny Marco (played by sorta-still-famous actor Stephen Dorff ) is living in the Chateau Marmont while promoting his new film and sleepwalking through what appears to be a charmed life. Money can’t buy happiness, etc. Enter Cleo (Elle Fanning), Johnny Ennui’s 11-year-old daughter, a part-time responsibility who becomes a full-time suitemate when 87
Johnny’s ex-wife skips town on a vague mission of self-improvement. But disregard—or forgive—the predictable arc and sentimental revelations, because Sofia Coppola’s only using them as girders for a weightier project: rendering emotional vacancy and existential exhaustion as it is actually experienced. R. CHRIS STAMM. Fox Tower.
Tangled
60 Alan Menken has been brought back by Disney to pen the songs, and while none of his compositions is as catchy as his collaborations with Alan Sherman on The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast, he has apparently instructed the directors, Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, what hits to beat. PG. AARON MESH. 3-D: Lloyd Mall, Cedar Hills. 2-D: Eastport, Cinema 99, Division, Clackamas, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
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Revenge of the Electric Car
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Chris Paine, the director of Who Killed the Electric Car?, returns with a sequel. Apparently, the electric car, it ain’t dead. Portland State University’s Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave. 6 pm Thursday, Jan. 27. Director Chris Paine will attend. Preceded by a screening of Who Killed the Electric Car? at 4 pm.
The Room
WWEEKDOTCOM UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES TONIGHT!!
SUZY SKARULIS
WEDNESDAY 1/26 @ 6PM Before moving to the north shore of Oahu at the age of seventeen, Suzy grew up a wave-starved surfer on the gulf coast of Florida. Influenced by her father’s passion for jazz and blues, Suzy has managed to create a sound comprised of laidback surfing acoustic elements, as well as soulful blues, folk, and rock.
VICTORIA VOX FRIDAY 1/28 @ 6PM
Victoria Vox began appearing in clubs as a ukulele musician 4 years after receiving a degree in songwriting from the prestigious Berklee College of Music. Her new album ‘Exact Change’ is produced by Mike Tarantino, with accompanying musicians from the Boulder Acoustic Society, who contribute a blend of traditional roots and blues to Vox’s ultimately pop-rock sensibility.
RECORD RELEASE EVENT! JAMES ANGELL
THURSDAY 2/3 @ 7PM James Angell is an American pianist, singer and songwriter who is not easily forgotten. James is legendary for his early work in Portland with Nero’s Rome in the 1990s. His latest album ‘The Pandemic Symphony’ explores the musical inner workings of his mind.
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The Room is more than just a movie. It is like an object in space with a density greater than the center of the sun. KEVIN BURKE. Cinema 21. 10:30 pm Friday, Jan. 28. NEW
Say My Name
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] There’s a white rapper named Invincible from Detroit who could pass for Justin Bieber if she weren’t so lyrically inclined. Brit-hop artist Monie Love started her live career after Queen Latifah locked her in a bathroom with a practice recording (and a nervous urge to take a preshow crap). Roxanne Shante, one of the first female MCs to get air time, thought she was carrying a gas bubble until her water broke (when she was 14). I cringe to think anyone might lump Nirit Peled’s documentary in with other inspirational women’s pictures, because it lacks the soft stuff that makes that genre so cringe-inducing in the first place. Still, these women show what it takes to gain respect in a male-dominated rap industry (which includes dressing the part and being open about your bowel movements). They voice their opinions on pregnancy, writing your own rhymes, drugs and whether it’s hard to be a woman in hip-hop (most women say yes, except the one who keeps a switchblade in her purse). NIKKI VOLPICELLI. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 pm Friday, Jan. 28. Presented by POW Fest. NEW Shaolin Cinema: Hong Kong Films of the Late 1970s and Early ’80s
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] After The 36th Chamber of Shaolin successfully packed the Art Museum, Dan Halsted keeps the fu kunging with 1978’s The Avenging Eagle (7 pm Friday, Jan. 28) and 1984’s Opium and the Kung Fu Master (7 pm Saturday, Jan. 29). NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
Season of the Witch
Nicolas Cage does battle with the devil’s minions, again—this time with less bees and more swords. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Clackamas, Movies on TV.
The Social Network
Say what you will about Aaron Sorkin, who seemingly hits the “like”
KUNG-FU MUSCLE: Donnie Yen in a donnybrook.
IP MAN 2 Ip, Ip, hooray! Ip, Ip, hooray!
In his fourth screen outing, Rocky Balboa double-fistedly defeated communism by conquering a gigantic Russian super boxer in the name of the U.S. of Fuckin’ A. In Ip Man 2, the titular Hong Kong kung fu master—mentor of Bruce Lee and pioneer of a close-combat style called Wing Chung—double-fistedly defeats British colonial rule by pounding on an evil cockney pugilist. Rocky IV has a bloated Italian stereotype romancing a robot. But Ip Man 2 has one thing no Rocky film possessed: amazing fight sequences. Anyone looking for a realistic historical biopic probably hasn’t found 2008’s Ip Man, which focused on the gentle martial arts master (an effective Donnie Yen) fighting Japanese tyrants during World War II—usually 10 at a time—and training garment workers to defend themselves against rape-crazy soldiers and marauders. Like American tall tales, Ip Man is based loosely on a real man, but on screen his legend comes alive with rampant hyperbole. Yes, Ip Man really trained garment workers. No, he couldn’t hover in the air or move in slow motion. This time around, Ip starts a martial arts school in 1950s Hong Kong, only to draw the ire of kung fu crook Hong (martial arts legend Sammo Hung, also the film’s fight coordinator). Ip, a kindly man who doles out free lessons while his pregnant wife lives in squalor, soon finds himself knee-deep in elaborate fight scenes with rival schools. Barely five minutes pass between melees during the first half, including one pitting Ip against dozens of knifewielding thugs, and an eye-popper in which Yen and Hung battle atop a small desk. Eventually, Ip is thrust into an East vs. West boxing match, and unfortunately, the film loses steam in the lead-up. With fight scenes slowing down, it becomes obvious that director Wilson Yip is so dependent on kung fu that he forgot to make us care about anything else. Then Ip beats the shit out of the bad guy and delivers the standard “can’t we all just get along” speech to the onlooking Brits, and all is forgiven. Like Rocky 4, Ip Man 2 is a ham-fisted piece of nationalist propaganda with a thin plot and little character development. Unlike Rocky 4, Ip Man 2 is actually kind of fucking awesome despite its bloated goofiness. R. AP KRYZA.
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SEE IT: Ip Man 2 opens Friday at the Hollywood Theatre.
JAN. 26-FEB. 1
The Tourist
45 It’s official: Johnny Depp has lost his grasp on reality—or, at least, his grasp on real people. After years of inhabiting fantastical characters with personalities that place no limit on how bizarrely he can play them, in The Tourist he portrays a simple American rube—a Wisconsin community college math professor named Frank—and decides to devoid him of any personality at all. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Broadway, Bridgeport. NEW
journey with a destination that is perpetually denied, should be rejected by festivals (it was turned down by Cannes and New York), but I plead that the dismissal not become an ironic fate: You should see this movie, and as soon as possible. Based on Slawomir Rawicz’s probably-not-true memoir of flight from the Siberian gulag and attempted passage to India, the movie allows Weir to return to the heroic adventuring of The Year of Living Dangerously and the uncanny outdoor danger of Picnic at Hanging Rock. It is one of the best long-distance walking movies ever made, an equal to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but without the orcs. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Broadway, City Center, Division,
Cinema 99, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
Yogi Bear 3-D
32 This time out, the talking bears—the film’s human characters seem underwhelmed by the prospect of bears who speak English; they are, however, impressed by bears who can water-ski—are voiced ably enough by Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake and forced to amble through adventure after joylessly clichéd adventure with nary a nod to the cartoon’s heritage. PG. CASEY JARMAN. 3-D: Eastport, Clackamas, Bridgeport. 2-D: Movies on TV.
REVIEW
The Toxic Agenger
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] In 1984, George W. Bush was chairing a floundering oil company. Meanwhile, his former Yale classmate Lloyd Kaufman was releasing a movie called The Toxic Avenger. Time makes fools of us all. The hippie’s answer to Mel Brooks, Kaufman has become a tireless spokesman for Internet neutrality and independent filmmaking. But The Toxic Avenger? Not so great. Bullied by health club bimbos, Melvin the mop boy is transformed by chemical pollution into a mutant superhero, who decapitates a drug dealer with fitness equipment and makes love to his blind girlfriend. As the fascist mayor declares, “It must be some sort of political statement.” A comic book burlesque about the revenge of a nerd, Kaufman’s film predicts the playful sleaze of South Park and Crank. But it is so desperate for a gruesome gag that it never conveys its emotional outrage with Reagan’s America. In this respect it pales next to the violent Passion of Robocop, a truly heartfelt satire. Certainly more fun than today’s pretentious Iron Men and Dark Knights, The Toxic Avenger is a swift work of no-budget camp, its highlight being the finest non-professional actors in the state of New Jersey. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. 5th Avenue Cinema. 9:30 pm Friday, 7 and 9:30 pm Saturday, and 3 pm Sunday, Jan. 28-30. 41
Tron: Legacy
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. PG. AP KRYZA. 3-D: Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV. 2-D: Clackamas. 73
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. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Pioneer Place, Moreland, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub, City Center, Eastport, Division, Cinema 99, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV. 90
The Way Back
It is fitting that Peter Weir’s The Way Back, a movie about a 92
STARTS FRIDAY, JANUARY 28 AT A THEATER NEAR YOU CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR SHOWTIMES
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ANOTHER YEAR
THA – SF
THE HOSTS: Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent. Publication
WILLAMETTE WEEK
“You know me. I’m very much a glasshalf-full kind of girl,” burbles Mary (Lesley Manville) at a summer picnic midway through Mike Leigh’s troubling drama Another Year. By this point, oh, we surely know Mary: We know she’s the kind of girl who cannot leave a glass half-full for long. A prodigious bibber of white wine, Mary has reached an age when another smash-up of her life doesn’t feel salvageable, so she clings to her glass as if to keep from drowning—or, more to the point, like she’s trying to drown. Anybody who’s ever promised to stick to two glasses, then poured those glasses extra high and pulled at them in terror that the alcohol might disappear, will find her behavior (and that of several of her mates in Another Year) horrifyingly familiar. So the coping mechanism is convincing, but I’m not so sure about the larger performance. Manville’s Mary, perhaps not the central character in Another Year’s ensemble but certainly the most memorable, is a blur of fidgets, fiddle-de-de gestures of false bravado and abashed glances. As with Christian Bale’s performance as a dissembling addict in The Fighter, it’s hard to determine if Manville’s character is begging for sympathy because she’s a pushy drunk, or if the actor is begging for sympathy because she’s a pushy actress. At any rate, Mary doesn’t get much real compassion from her best friends, married couple Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and Tom (Jim Broadbent), who give her refills, a guest room in which to pass out, and so many surreptitious, knowing glances of pity that any selfrespecting human being would eventually be ground into a shiny pebble of shame. (Mary is, though it takes a while.) Leigh’s own sorrow is never much in doubt, though it starts to look a little more like condescension with each miserable person the lead couple encounters. The movie’s title and structure suggest nothing of import happens, but they belie the movie’s undercurrent: This may be the year when Tom and Gerri begin disengaging from their most needy (and exhausting) friends. Another Year opens with Gerri (who is, natch, a therapist) counseling an agonized insomniac (Imelda Staunton) with the bromide, “Change is hard, isn’t it?” “Nothing ever changes,” Staunton snaps back. The movie explores the chasm between smug comfort and self-fulfilling despair: It’s not a perfect film, and not a perfectly empathetic one, but it knows the melancholy of realizing that not everyone you love is going to be all right. PG-13. AARON MESH. There’s something alcoholic about Mary.
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SEE IT: Another Year opens Friday at Fox Tower.
WWEEK.COM Portland Willamette Wk Run Date(s) Wed 1/26 • 2x5’’ 3.772 X 6.052 WED 1.26 Size
Initial
Time
JobID#: 481563 Name: 0126_Mec_Will.pdf #100 1/24/11 1:54 PM pt
*481563*
WHEREFORE ART THOU...GNOMEO? invite you and a guest to the biggest little comedy of the year!
©Touchstone Pictures
Stage and opera staple Julie Taymor sets Shakespeare’s tale of shipwrecks and double-crossing nobles on a volcanic isle lorded over by a gender-bending, magic-staffwielding Prospero (Helen Mirren as “Prospera”). These stormy waters don’t run nearly deep enough. PG-13. KELLY CLARKE. Living Room Theaters. 65
SIMON MEIN
The Tempest
SCREEN
Saturday, February 5 @ 11:00 AM ~ Tigard For your chance to win a mobile pass good for two admissions to the 3D screening, text FEUD and your zip code to 43549 (Ex. FEUD 97232) No phone calls please. No purchase necessary. Texting services provided by 43KIX and are free. Standard text message rates from your wireless provider may apply. Check your plan. One entry per cell phone #. Late and/or duplicate entries will not be considered. 30 (thirty) winners will be chosen at random on or about 3pm on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 and will receive a text good for two admissions. Limit one admit-two pass per person. THEATRE IS OVERBOOKED TO ENSURE A FULL HOUSE. A winning text does NOT guarantee a seat. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. This film is rated G. Void where prohibited by law. Must enter by 12 p.m. on Wednesday, February 2!
IN THEATRES IN 3D ON FEBRUARY 11!
GnomeoAndJuliet.com • Like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/GnomeoAndJulietMovie Willamette Week JANUARY 26, 2011 wweek.com
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THE BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR
MOVIES
BREWVIEWS
–Peter Rainer, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
WINNER BEST ACTRESS Lesley Manville NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW
ONENATIONAL OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOARD OF REVIEW Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“IN THE HANDS OF MASTER FILMMAKER MIKE LEIGH, THE EVERYDAY BECOMES EXTRAORDINARY. LESLEY MANVILLE IS INDESCRIBABLE.” -Kenneth Turan, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
jim broadbent
lesley manville
ruth sheen
another year
From the director of SECRETS AND LIES and HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
a film by mike leigh WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM
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“...Explosive action...”
“Smashing fun.”
IT’S GONNA LAST YOU FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE: Yes, it does feel like Bill Murray was in this space before, doesn’t it? But it’s hard to object to déjà vu when the subject is Groundhog Day, which ranks with Rushmore and Quick Change in the pantheon of Murray performances—and uses its metaphysical gimmick as a commentary on the Sisyphean ordeal of rising and shining each morning, even though you’re the same person in the same place you were yesterday. A personal anec-
dote: One summer I taught a class on filmmaking with this movie as an exhibit, and so I watched it week after week after week. I’m not tired of it. Not bad for a quadruped. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst. Best paired with: Woodchuck Hard Cider. Also showing: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Academy, Laurelhurst), Waiting for Superman (Laurelhurst, Kennedy School). Check wweek.com for full, up-to-the-minute movie times.
Rene Rodriguez, MIAMI HERALD
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