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It’s a font. It’s a love story. It’s a rogue professor’s quest to avenge her missing husband—and the lost art of ink on paper. Rick Caskey & Sue Horn-Caskey Richard & Marcy Schwartz 2
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
Michael E. Menashe
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DISTANT VOICES: Read what Oregonian Ahmed Raslan (far right) thinks about protests in his native Egypt. Page 8.
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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
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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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INBOX WWEEK.COM READERS COMMENT ON… “PORTLAND LEAF FEE: SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO?” JAN. 27, 2011 “The leaf fee and associated removal service makes sense in some neighborhoods and not in others. My own (SE 22nd and Pine) is a good example of where it doesn’t work. This neighborhood is populated by a higher-thannormal percentage of renters. As such, the leaves are not removed when compared with concentrations of owner-occupied homes. No matter how many hours I spend removing leaves, there are always more to pick up. Combine that with the inadequate stormwater removal grates in the intersection, the inevitable leaves covering them in a downpour and you have flooding...sometimes as deep as 2 1/2 feet.” —Harley Leiber “The streets are the city’s to maintain, and the property owner already pays for this and the leaf removal via property taxes. This is just another money-grab scheme from city hall. They find $20 million for bike paths, but then they nickel-and-dime us on leaf removal. What’s next, pothole repair fees? The city that works, doesn’t.” —Steve B “It’s funny, but not surprising, that in this prolonged controversy and discussion of the city’s leaf removal program, there’s been little mention of the fundamental inequity with the pre-fee situation. This is the fact that some neighborhoods (i.e., some residents) received special, concentrated leaf removal while others did not. Hence the fee approach, which turned out to be a PR disaster; low-hanging fruit for all the anti-government
People talk about Klamath River salmon, or Rogue River salmon, as though every river has its own unique species. But isn’t a salmon a salmon? So they die out in a particular river—it’s not like they’re extinct. Can’t we throw some new salmon in there and call it good? —Animal Logic Cut the salmon some slack; their love lives are among the dullest in the animal kingdom. Females lay their eggs in a hole. The males come along and fertilize them. It’s like swimming 900 miles upstream to masturbate over a used tampon. There are, in fact, scientific reasons for wanting to preserve individual runs of salmon besides “they’re salmon, and you’re an Oregonian.” (That said, in the future please employ the customary tone of hushed reverence when speaking of our mighty Fish-God.) “Because every river system is different, the salmon in those rivers are different,” says Sam 4
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
ranters, not to mention the dedicated legion of Adams-haters. There’s no easy answer that’s both effective and fair. To say ‘They’re the city’s trees’ is factually and legally inaccurate; to say ‘Let all residents deal with the leaves themselves’ ignores the very real problems masses of uncollected leaves would create with street flooding and in the stormwater system. Trying to enforce some sort of mandatory leaf removal requirement is not within the resources of the city, and who’d want a legion of leaf inspectors anyway? Ultimately this is just one of many civic issues whose solution relies on the simple sense of common responsibility for our common good, i.e., be a good citizen, pick up the leaves from the street in front of where you live, and dispose of them properly.” —Jim G “This program is problematic. There are people on my block who don’t have any trees but will be charged for this service. I would rather just rake them myself and put them in the yard waste bin, like I did this year. I am generally willing to pay for such services, but it becomes a lot harder when I feel like the city is blowing through cash on luxuries that I don’t think are necessary. Maybe if they were more responsible with their money they wouldn’t be constantly raising rates and fees. I would love to at least see them try.” —Schemes 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
Mace, Inland NW director of Save Our Wild Salmon. “Their genetics are special. You couldn’t throw Willamette River salmon in the Snake and expect them to make the journey.” It’s true that losing one particular run of salmon is not the same as losing a whole species, but their populations need as much genetic diversity as possible if they’re going to survive the rigors of a changing climate. Think of it as losing an arm in a world where someday, every car may be a stick shift. The loss of a particular salmon run doesn’t have to be permanent, though; Mace says there are cases of salmon returning to rivers once the stressors that drove them away (usually hydroelectric dams) are removed. Salmon claim this is why they favor nuclear power, though most observers believe they’re just looking for an excuse to mutate to enormous size and have the last laugh. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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IMMIGRATION: Politicians’ renewed focus on immigration. EGYPT: Reaction from the local Egyptian community. ROGUE: The “50s bikeway” haters. SPORTS: A troubling Super Bowl preview.
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NO TRICYCLES WERE USED IN THIS REPORT. Word in political circles is that longtime Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk is strongly considering stepping down before his current term expires in 2012—and that his strong-arm chief deputy, Norm Frink, may retire with him. Insiders say two contenders are lining up to replace Schrunk, who was first elected in 1980. One is Rod Underhill, Schrunk’s other SCHRUNK chief deputy. The other is Sean Riddell, a former gang-unit deputy in Schrunk’s office who moved to the Oregon Department of Justice in 2009 to head Attorney General John Kroger’s criminal unit. Schrunk said Tuesday that he hasn’t yet made a decision. “At the appropriate time,” he says, “I’ll announce my intentions.” Gov. John Kitzhaber’s plan to revamp state agencies is proceeding slower than the budget he proposed this week. Kitzhaber earlier requested 24 state agency heads’ resignations saying he’d rehire those who fit his philosophy. One high-profile rehire is George Pernsteiner, chancellor of the university system. But interestingly, one agency boss still hanging fire is Oregon Department of Transportation director Matt Garrett, a former colleague of Kitzhaber’s transition adviser, Tom Imeson. Garrett is a strong proponent of the Columbia Crossing Bridge Project on which he worked with Kitzhaber’s campaign manager, Patricia McCaig. Portland activist Jeff Bernards has donated $10,000 to start efforts to get an initiative on the 2012 state ballot that would ban studded tires in Oregon. Studded tires cause about $40 million in damage to Oregon highways each year, according to the state Department of Transportation, which pours $11 million into repairs annually. And with the state Legislature facing a $3.5 billion shortfall, Bernards thinks the millions spent on repairing damage from studded tires could go to better use. He’s hired Democracy Resources to help manage the campaign, which will need about 82,000 signatures to make the 2012 ballot. There’s a new leader at the Bus Project, the Oregon nonprofit that has registered young voters, thrown great parties and acted as a springboard for a number of progressive politicians. She’s Caitlin Baggott, whose longtime work at the Bus has most recently included being its strategic director and leader of the group’s leadership training program. Baggott takes the helm from Jefferson BAGGOTT Smith, the founding leader of the Bus Project and a Democrat currently in his second term representing east Portland in the Oregon House. P-Town’s presidential showdown? Supporters of bringing a presidential debate to Portland are not letting past quadrennial discouragements stop them from trying again. Project manager Mark Kirchmeier says debate organizers have met with officials at the Metropolitan Exposition Recreation Commission and Oregon Convention Center to discuss details on submitting an application for bringing a debate here in 2012. Check out our new website.
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WHY DOES A LIBERAL OREGON DEMOCRAT WANT TO CRACK DOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS? BY BE T H S LOV I C
bslovic@wweek.com
Advocates for undocumented immigrants accuse U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) of trying to drive illegal workers further underground with a new bill that would require employers to check applicants’ immigration status against a federal database. But DeFazio says House Bill 483, which he introduced Jan. 26, is a better version of a proposal he fears Republicans are pushing in the GOP-controlled House to deal with an estimated 10 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country. He also calls his bill to mandate the use of E-Verify (a federal system for checking workers’ Social Security numbers) a necessary first step before Congress can impose comprehensive immigration reform. DeFazio’s proposal, a reincarnation of a 2009 bill from former Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) to mandate the use of E-Verify, puts him squarely at the forefront of today’s immigration battle, which increasingly calls for compromise in a divided Congress. As the Lane County Democrat sees it, unless federal authorities can stem the flow of undocumented workers to the states (Oregon has an estimated 150,000 undocumented workers), Democrats can’t win support for legislation like the DREAM Act, a bill to give undocumented immigrants who have graduated from U.S. high schools a path to citizenship. “We need a system for employers who want to follow the law,” DeFazio says. “It’s time to break the cycle.” The rumored Republican bill DeFazio worries about would grant exemptions to agricultural employers, who wouldn’t have to check their workers’ status with E-Verify, a loophole DeFazio says might allow some workers to be exploited. He says his bill is less draconian because it would include protections for workers whose legal status might be flagged erroneously. But Oregon’s leading group for immigrant rights, CAUSA, cautions that any bill to mandate verification of workers’ immigrant status by fining employers $5,000 per illegal hire—what’s now proposed in DeFazio’s bill—would only push illegal workers deeper into the underground economy. If they can’t get jobs on the books, they’ll work under the table, and that means they probably won’t pay taxes, according to CAUSA.
J O N AT H A N H I L L
TRUST BUT VERIFY “They’ll move into the shadows,” says CAUSA Executive Director Francisco Lopez. “These people will be abused more.” Rather than compromise, CAUSA sees too many contradictions in DeFazio’s position. “He votes in favor of the DREAM Act, now he wants to introduce E-Verify,” Lopez says. “I don’t think he has a consistent view of immigration.” Lopez adds: “This will hurt the same kids who he wanted to help with the DREAM Act.” DeFazio says his position is consistent. But the subject of a recent cover story (see “Hiding in America,” WW, Jan. 19, 2011) illustrates one of Lopez’s objections. “Cecilia,” as she was called in the story, used a fake Social Security number to get a job at a fast-food restaurant. If E-Verify had been mandatory when she did that, her application would have been rejected. DeFazio says he hopes reforms like the DREAM Act might be in place by the time his bill takes effect so young people like Cecilia could remain in the United States. At least one of his Oregon colleagues, fellow Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer, won’t support his bill on the belief that E-Verify sometimes misidentifies workers as illegal and that it needs to be improved before federal authorities make it mandatory. Blumenauer does say he supports voluntary use of E-Verify. “He does not think the program is ready yet for broader implementation,” Blumenauer spokesman Derek Schlickeisen writes in an email. As DeFazio promotes his bill in Congress (so far he has two co-sponsors, neither of whom are from Oregon), there’s also activity in the Oregon Legislature on this controversial topic. State Reps. Mike Schaufler (D -Happy Valley), Kim Thatcher (R-Keizer) and Sen. Sal Esquivel (R-Medford) have all introduced or drafted bills to force Oregon employers to use E-Verify. Thatcher’s bill would make noncompliance after 2012 punishable with Oregon tax penalties. But they say their bills face slim chances of passage in an evenly divided Oregon House. “We always turn a blind eye to what helps a certain small segment of society,” Esquivel says. “I don’t think that’s appropriate.” But DeFazio is hopeful passage of his bill will drive the immigration debate in a positive direction. “That will help us move toward a comprehensive solution,” he says. “We’re no longer going to allow big-business folks to tap into an endless supply of exploitable, cheap labor.”
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STANDING FOR FREEDOM: Among the 100 demonstrators at a Jan. 29 Portland rally supporting protests in Egypt is Ahmed Raslan (far right, in front row).
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rjacobson@wweek.com
Abeer Sayed long ago gave up on the political process that passes for democracy in her native Egypt. Sayed, a 31-year-old Egyptian raised by political activists in Cairo, moved to Portland in 2004 with her husband so he could pursue neurosurgery here. She says her parents were active in student protests during the era of Egyptian leaders Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar El Sadat. Though their political fervor cooled after President Hosni Mubarak took power 30 years ago, they continued to vote, despite widespread election fraud. But they stopped voting in 1985, disillusioned by rigged elections and harassment from police at the polls. Sayed says she never bothered to vote. “We know it’s a fake process,” says Sayed, a stay-at-home mom and former financial analyst. “No matter what you do, they take the ballot boxes and fill them with the names they want, and it’s him [Mubarak]. It’s a state of despair. There’s no reason to be engaged in political life.” And yet Sayed and her husband, Ahmed Raslan, joined about 100 others at Pioneer Courthouse Square on Saturday, Jan. 29, to demonstrate against Mubarak’s regime. As popular protests continue to rack Egypt, supporters across the U.S. and the globe have held rallies in solidarity. Sayed and Raslan are optimistic democratic change will come to their homeland. Whether or not Mubarak is overthrown, Raslan says these protests have left an indelible mark on Egyptians’ psyches. Even if it’s not the end of the regime, he said, it’s the beginning of the end. “The people in the street say they’ll keep going until Mubarak’s out,” Raslan says. “Will they actually hold up their promise? I don’t know. It’s very hard.” Raslan, a 38-year-old neurosurgery resident at Oregon Health & Science University, had been politically inactive while in Egypt. “We knew all along this was wrong, but we isolated ourselves into our bubble,” he says, adding he would have joined the recent street
protests if he were back home, 7,000 miles away from local less-than-life-or-death debates over bike lanes and leaf fees. “I’m jealous,” he said. “I want to be there. We had fear for 30 years. Now we put our lives on the line. How many people will die? A hundred? A thousand? That’s a low price to pay for freedom.” Raslan and Sayed have been closely following the unfolding tumult from their Beaverton home, largely through Al Jazeera’s online live streams and Facebook. They have also managed to make contact with family still in Egypt—no easy task as a government-imposed communications blackout hit the country late last week. Sayed says her two brothers have joined the protests in Cairo, and one was wounded when a rubber bullet struck his knee. While she fears for their safety, she considers it their duty as Egyptians to participate. If she had grown sons, Sayed says, she would have sent them to protest. “As much as I love my brothers, I care about the country more,” Sayed said. “I’m afraid something is going to happen, but they’re Egyptians and they have to be out there.” As demonstrations have given way to looting, Sayed’s brothers have described a populist movement protecting neighborhoods and property. Egypt’s security police—a widely detested arm of Mubarak’s regime—have withdrawn from many cities. And Sayed says her brothers joined a human chain around the Egyptian Museum to fend off potential vandals (looters ripped the heads off two mummies before Egyptian army commandoes secured the building, according to news reports). As Pioneer Square protesters dispersed Saturday in Portland, Raslan and Sayed gathered their 6-year-old daughter, Alia, and 3-year-old son, Youssef. The children squirmed as their father drew them into an embrace, but consented when he draped an Egyptian flag over their shoulders. Sayed listed three conditions that might prompt her family’s return to Egypt: the lifting of martial law, free elections and constitutional reforms. “Whether the president leaves or not, these people will stand up again and fight for their rights again,” Sayed says. “People know they can make a change.”
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POLITICS CAMERONBROWNE.COM
NEWS
JOHN Q. PUBLIC RECORDS ISSUES PUT SPOTLIGHT ON KROGER. BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS
njaquiss@wweek.com
Attorney General John Kroger is pushing the most ambitious rewrite of Oregon’s Public Records Law in three decades. But one aspect of his legislation may get him crosswise with Treasurer Ted Wheeler, a fellow Democrat and political rival. In the legislative session that began in earnest this week, Kroger introduced Senate Bill 41. The measure aims to produce public records more quickly, more cheaply and with fewer exemptions. Since the original public records law in 1973, special interests have increased the number of exemptions more than sevenfold—from 55 to more than 400. Kroger’s proposed change that could cause a political dustup is bill language aimed at prying open the details of contracts the state treasury signs with private equity investment firms. In the wake of a mini-scandal over state investment officers’ travel expenses, Kroger wants Oregon’s Treasury Department to disclose “investment-related records of treasurer and [Oregon Investment Council]” because they should not be “exempt insofar as they contain information about any benefit received by a state employee or state agency.” That proposal puts Wheeler—Kroger’s potential rival in TRANSPARENTLY YOURS: John Kroger. the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial primary—in an interesting bind. Wheeler says the state’s investment agreements may contain proprietary information and that disclosing istrative leave related to the investigation. their details would take away Oregon’s information edge in On Jan. 26, DOJ attorney Donna Bennett wrote to ODOE those deals. employees’ attorneys, requesting they return the discs and But Wheeler is in a box. If he opposes Kroger’s proposals, “destroy any electronic or hard copies of those discs that have he hands his potential future gubernatorial rival an issue by been made.” appearing to oppose transparency. If he “It appears that the discs may contain inforgoes along with Kroger, he may be surrenmation that should not have been released,” FACT: Kroger will appear in front of dering valuable information. Bennett explained. the House Rules Committee to presFor now, Wheeler is taking a positive ent his public records bill at 3 pm on But Bill Gary and Dave Frohnmayer, ODOE approach toward the proposed guidelines Monday, Feb. 7. director Mark Long ’s former attorneys, drafted for his agency. blasted DOJ’s handling of the records by “We haven’t seen the final language yet,” says Wheeler’s Kroger’s department. spokesman, James Sinks. “But we are fully supportive of the “While we are sensitive to the interests of the many people attorney general’s efforts.” and businesses whose rights have been violated by the attorney Others are less supportive of Kroger’s current approach to general’s unlawful disclosure of confidential information, the public records, but in a separate context—the long-running responsibility for those violations rests entirely with the attorbattle over the Department of Justice investigation into con- ney general,” Gary and Frohmayer wrote Jan. 28. tracting practices at the Oregon Department of Energy. That Translation: The Oregonian has some or all of the records probe took a new turn last week. the AG still has not made public, and at least some of the lawOn Jan. 26, the same day The Oregonian published a yers who have them are refusing to give them back. front-page story about the role of Gov. John Kitzhaber’s Kroger spokesman Tony Green says regarding the Trealongtime companion, Cylvia Hayes, in an Oregon Depart- sury issue that Kroger’s only interest is to increase transparment of Energy contract, state officials demanded the return ency. And as for the ODOE files, Green says, “We are currently of nine discs filled with investigative material from attorneys working to ensure that sensitive information is not disclosed representing four ODOE employees who remain on admin- publicly.”
ROGUE OF THE WEEK “50S BIKEWAY” HATERS SEEING PROBLEMS WHERE THERE AREN’T ANY. About 150 Portlanders filled a gym last week in the Woodstock neighborhood to hear city officials pitch a new 4 1/2-mile bike route going through the neighborhood. The Rogue Desk notes the location for the city’s Jan. 26 open house— Our Lady of Sorrows Parish—couldn’t have been more apt. The sorrow on display by supposedly parking-starved residents at the city’s presentation for its “50s bikeway ” (so named because the proposed route runs from Northeast Thompson Street and 57th Avenue south to Southeast Woodstock Boulevard and 52nd Avenue) was of apocalyptic proportions. Blame the frigid winter temperatures for our crankiness, but the NIMBYish arguing over roadways means the Rogue Desk is naming the neighbors hating on Portland’s 50s bikeway Rogues of the Week. If they had a legitimate concern, we’d listen. But most of the whining last week had to do with what some Portlanders consider an inalienable right—free on-street parking. A map of the proposed bikeway filled an entire wall of the gym, and city officials invited attendees to write their comments on Post-it notes they could then stick to the map. “Don’t take away parking on 52nd,” one read. “This is a terrible idea!” “What about the elderly?” asked another, with no explanation for what that meant. “Nobody bikes here anyway,” asserted another. Actually, compared with elsewhere in the city, nobody parks on 52nd Avenue. The proposal would eliminate parking on one side of 52nd Ave. A study of the area showed a peak use of 30 percent for those spots. Our final note from the evening of the open house, at 6:30 pm: The Rogue Desk spotted one car parked on the 12-block stretch of Southeast 52nd Avenue between Holgate and Woodstock.
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NEWS
SPORTS
LOCAL NFL RETIREES FIGHT LEAGUE FOR DISABILITY BENEFITS. BY STACY BR OW N H I LL
sbrownhill@wweek.com
This Sunday, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers kick off Super Bowl XLV with superhuman feats probably from players like 28-year-old Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and 24-year-old Packers linebacker Clay Matthews. But what happens when NFL players descend back to mortality, after an average pro career of 3½ seasons? Thirteen spine surgeries, one artificial hip and 30 years of chronic pain were what followed Dave “The Bear” Pear’s 1981 Super Bowl win with the Oakland Raiders. And the 57-year-old former defensive tackle is still fighting from his Seattle home. He is one of several retired players in the Northwest and nationwide demanding that the NFL give appropriate disability and healthcare benefits to retired players. Pear has spent $600,000 of his own money on medical bills, more than he ever made playing, he says. When a doctor told Pear in 1995 he was 85 percent disabled, the NFL told him to find a sedentary job, and denied him disability benefits.
J I M F O LT S
ACHES AND GAMES “Looking back on it, it wasn’t worth it,” Pear says of his six-year career. If you’re visualizing retired millionaires with six-car garages and massage therapists, think again for most NFL retirees. For players whose careers ended before 1993—the year that a collective bargaining agreement changed things—benefit eligibility is narrow, convoluted and mostly nonexistent, says John Hogan, an Atlanta lawyer and longtime players’ advocate. And a report last week by the players union said the average number of injuries reported each week this season per team rose from 3.2 to 3.7. “Even today’s retired players may be uninsurable after their five years of health LESSON LEARNED: Ex-NFLer Michael Oriard, now an Oregon State insurance is up,” Hogan adds. University professor, carries painful reminders of his pro career. Just as the tobacco industry long knew retired players on the health risks they’re that cigarettes caused cancer, some ex-play- the regular season from 16 to 18 games. Oriard, now 62 and suffering from up against, including a relatively unstudied ers like Pear believe the NFL knows exactly what the sport’s risks are, but only this degenerative disc disease in his spine neurodegenerative disease called chronic season took some lawsuit-averting safety and occasional flare-ups in his sciatic and traumatic encephalopathy that hits former measures. Those include tougher fines for femur nerves, said a longer regular season football players and progresses to fullhelmet-to-helmet hits and explorations of will mean roughly 12 percent more hits, blown dementia. There is a huge element of shame, says and 12 percent more concussions. improved helmet technology. Oregon State University English Jon Arnett, 75, of Lake Oswego, just feels Jane Arnett, because players are trained to professor Michael Oriard, a Kansas City lucky he can walk as a five-time Pro Bowler ignore pain. But she says an “aha moment” Chiefs center from 1970 to 1973, notes all with the Los Angeles Rams and Chicago struck many of the 200 attendees when those steps by the league, but is pessimis- Bears from 1957 to 1966. He and his wife, “they realized they are not an individual tic about a turnabout in consciousness Jane, have held a conference for the past problem, they didn’t screw up, they are typiT:9.639” when the NFL is proposing to increase two years in Las Vegas aimed at educating cal cases of a much greater problem.”
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NEWS J E S S I C A S TA M B A C H
HOUSING
COLLECTIVE SOUL: The Red and Black’s John Langley (far right) approached Emily Kamm about using the cafe’s second floor for a housing co-op. Daniel Wilson (middle) plans to live in one of the newly created units.
HOUSE UNITED
director Margaret Van Vliet. “Can they run into challenges like any landlord? Sure. Owning real estate is a serious business, and it can be hard sometimes, but if they’ve got a good model of making decisions and sharing responsibility and doing it collaboratively without government interference, I don’t see any reason a group like this can’t have success.” Though the recession has driven up demand for affordable housing, Langley says the ecoBY R E B E CC A JACO B S O N rjacobson@wweek.com nomic climate didn’t drive this plan. Langley has lived since 2006 at a PCH-owned house on North In a city with an estimated shortage of 20,000 Mississippi Avenue (PCH also owns a house on affordable housing units, every new project in Southeast 25th Avenue). What distinguishes this Portland helps, even if it’s only a few units. cooperative model from other forms of afford“Affordable housing is really needed, and it’s able housing, Kamm says, is that residents livsomething a lot of people don’t have access to,” ing above the Red and Black will share cleaning says Emily Kamm, whose rent for a one-bedroom duties, hold regular meetings and make decisions apartment in Southeast Portland’s Buckman based on consensus. neighborhood eats up about 60 percent of her “People are already sharing housing in order $1,400 monthly income as a primary advocate at to save costs,” Kamm says. “But what is special a domestic violence shelter. about a collective housing model is that people Kamm has been working for months with are coming into it intentionally wanting to have Portland Collective Housing, a member-owned, processes in place for communication and for resident-controlled housing nonprofit, to locate decision-making.” a space to establish a new resident-managed Most affordable housing options in Portland housing cooperative. are rentals, which are subject to rent increases “In so many areas people can feel disempow- and ownership changes. PCH, as well as the ered—their job doesn’t give them autonomy new nonprofit that plans to form above the Red or their landlord doesn’t and Black, say their model respond to their concerns,” ensures sustainable, affordsays Kamm, 22. “Collectives FACT: Seventy-five percent of PCH able rents. Kamm expects rent residents must make 80 percent and organizations that give or less of the median income for to run $365 a month or less control back to the people are Portland, and at least 20 percent for a room, with a maximum must make 50 percent or less of the a really great model.” monthly contribution of $70 median income. That’s also the belief of the to cover utilities and houseRed and Black Cafe, a vegan, hold supplies, including bulk worker-owned coffee bar and restaurant. food staples for the shared kitchen. As reported in last week’s Murmurs, the Langley acknowledges the impact of collecRed and Black wants to buy its building at 400 tively owned housing co-ops in Portland remains SE 12th Ave. and convert the second floor, now small. Getting the capital to buy buildings occupied by offices, into low-income group hous- remains a significant barrier—particularly when ing for about a half-dozen people. The cafe will dealing with low-income residents, who can concontinue to occupy the first floor. tribute little to a start-up fund. Co-owner John Langley says this week Entrenched stereotypes are another obstacle, that the cafe has raised the $50,000 down pay- Langley says. The Red and Black attracted ment necessary to secure the purchase. In an national attention after kicking out a cop from its owner-financed deal, the Red and Black will pay cafe in May 2010, heightening perceptions of the $500,000 for the two-story, golden-yellow house, cafe as a collection of anarchist radicals. Kamm which was built in 1874 as a hotel. says others may hear the word “cooperative” and Langley approached Kamm in October about imagine “Kumbaya”-humming hippies. using the second floor for her collective. Kamm “We do run in a way that is anarchist, but leapt at the offer. With help from PCH, she and once you actually see how that works, it’s not other future residents will launch their own that weird,” Langley says. “People are doing this housing nonprofit to manage the upstairs space. anyway without labeling it that way. If they have “I think there is absolutely a role for that house meetings and make decisions together, kind of housing,” says Portland Housing Bureau that’s pretty much the same thing.”
WHAT A WORKER-OWNED RESTAURANT IS DOING ABOUT THE HOUSING CRISIS.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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Elizabeth Ly MAY 12, 1961 — JAN. 16, 2011 More Than a Victim. BY N IGEL JAQU ISS
njaquiss@wweek.com
On Jan. 23, The Sunday Oregonian published an obituary for Elizabeth Dunham, who had died a week earlier at 49. Nothing in the five-paragraph obit indicated that when she died, Dunham took with her a troubling piece of Oregon history. CONT. on page 16
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
P H OTO S : Z O R N M AT S O N
ynn Dunham
SNAPSHOT IN TIME: Elizabeth Dunham when she was a young adult.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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ELIZABETH DUNHAM
CONT.
NE 19th Ave.
Although she has remained anonymous until now, the couple; others, including Dunham, say she did). When WW first reported the story, we referred to DunElizabeth Dunham was the victim whom former Gov. Neil When Dunham was a St. Mary’s freshman and class- ham by the pseudonym “Susan” and wrote that the sexual Goldschmidt raped in the mid-1970s, beginning when he mates were stressing over homework and dances with abuse started when she was 14 and continued for three years. was mayor of Portland and she was a young teenager. As boys from Jesuit and Central Catholic, Goldschmidt lured (That abuse would have constituted statutory rape, but long as she was alive, the media withheld her name. her into a sexual relationship. the statute of limitations expired before Goldschmidt’s We’re identifying her now—after much internal discusDunham confided to friends that she had met Gold- actions came to light.) sion—for two reasons. schmidt for sex dozens of times. The meeting places were That chronology of abuse came from court records First, the list of things Goldschmidt stole from Dun- many—in her basement, at the Hilton Hotel, at a down- related to a $350,000 settlement Dunham and her lawyer, ham should not include her identity. Second, the story of town apartment and at friends’ houses on Alameda Ridge. Jeff Foote, reached with Goldschmidt in 1994. In return this powerful man’s abuse can be more fully told now that Illicit sex with a political powerhouse would be a lot for the payment, Goldschmidt required Dunham to never his victim can no longer suffer from it. for anybody to process, let alone a young teen navigat- speak of his abuse. (For what others think of that decision, see “Naming ing adolescence. When WW broke the story, Goldschmidt tried to softNames” on page 18). pedal his conduct. He said the abuse, Dunham died Jan. 16 after spendwhich he called “an affair,” lasted “nearly ing most of the last month of her life at a year.” Hopewell House, a hospice in Southwest Mitru Ciarlante, director of the Teen Portland’s Hillsdale neighborhood. Her Victim Initiative at the National Center death came after decades of battling subfor Victims of Crime in Washington, D.C., stance abuse and mental illness. says the word “affair” is inappropriate. Dunham’s mother, who had worked “First of all, we’re talking about a for then-Portland Mayor Goldschmidt crime,” Ciarlante says. “But we are also in the mid-’70s, told WW she was at her talking about an imbalance of power and daughter’s side when she died. exploitation at a time in a child’s developThe tragic arc of Dunham’s life was ment when she is particularly vulnerable.” not preordained. Since that time, Dunham, in converA 1975 yearbook photo at Portland’s sations with WW and others, has said St. Mary’s Academy shows a ninth-gradthe abuse started not when she was 14, er with wavy chestnut hair, big glasses but rather 13. She also said the relationand the final traces of the pudginess that ship continued not for three years but in elementary school earned her the through Goldschmidt’s divorce in 1991, nickname “short and fat and curly toes.” until she was nearly 30 (although after But in high school, the onetime ugly she turned 18, legal issues would have duckling became a beautiful young girl. ceased to apply). Her transformation did not escape the Dunham’s account to WW is consisnotice of teenage boys, according to tent with what she had told close friends Anne Grgich, a Portland artist and Dunbefore and after the story became public. ham’s friend since fifth grade. A former boyfriend, Portland lawyer “She was very pretty and had so much Mark Smolak, with whom Dunham lived potential,” Grgich says. from 1989 to 1993, confirms that’s what She also captured the attention of Dunham told him as well. Goldschmidt, a family friend 21 years “Apparently it was a 14- or 15-year A LIFE IN PHOTOS: Dunham as a St. Mary’s freshman (top left) and with friends her senior. event,” Smolak says. (bottom left and bottom right). Goldschmidt when he was mayor (upper right). Goldschmidt, a handsome and charismatic married father of two young Another unanswered question is when children, was putting Portland on the map and becoming a People who knew Dunham well say she never came to Elizabeth Dunham’s troubles with substance abuse, mennational political player. terms with the impact Goldschmidt had on her life. tal illness and despair—a descent counter to Goldschmidt’s He transformed a downtown expressway into Tom “She wasn’t able to contend with issues of abuse she’d continued rise to influence and wealth—began. McCall Waterfront Park and a surface parking lot into Pio- suffered and still feel OK about herself,” says former boyClassmates say Dunham, who was born in Eugene, was neer Courthouse Square, and engineered the beginnings friend Zorn Matson, a Portland photographer who lived among the brightest in her class at All Saints Elementary of Portland’s light-rail system. with Dunham from about 1979, when she was 18, until 1982. in Northeast Portland. As mayor, Goldschmidt worked only five blocks from “She tried to ignore negatives in her life,” Matson says. “She was really charismatic and smart and had a lot of St. Mary’s, where Dunham went to high school, and his “But they eventually destroyed her.” savvy,” says Grgich. home was only six doors away from the Dunham family’s Dunham spent her eighth-grade year in Zaire, where in Northeast Portland’s Alameda neighborhood. Only snippets of Elizabeth Dunham’s story saw publica- her parents temporarily relocated. (After working at City He saw Elizabeth at political events—her mother was a tion during her lifetime (see “The 30-Year Secret,” WW, Hall, Dunham’s mother, Pamela, later served as a TriMet City Hall aide and campaign staffer—and she also served May 12, 2004). spokeswoman and then joined the Foreign Service, where as a City Hall intern and as his children’s baby-sitter One of the questions the previous coverage left unanCONT. on page 18 (Goldschmidt’s ex-wife disputes that Dunham baby-sat for swered was how long Goldschmidt’s abuse of her lasted.
PAST RESIDENCES: The houses where Neil Goldschmidt and the Dunham family once lived made them neighbors in Alameda.
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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ELIZABETH DUNHAM
CONT.
her postings included stints in Bangkok, the Bahamas, Rome and Ankara, Turkey). But by the time Dunham entered high school, she’d lost interest in academics. “She skipped a lot of school but skated on the homework because she was so smart,” Grgich says. At 15, Dunham dropped out of St. Mary’s. She later earned a GED and briefly enrolled at the University Oregon, but she was primarily self-taught. “She had books all over the place,” says Philip Sawyer, a Portland real-estate agent who says he first met Dunham in 1979. “She was extremely well-read and she knew so much.” In her late teen years, Dunham ratcheted up her consumption of booze, speed and cocaine, Grgich and others say. “It’s hard to put a date on when things went wrong,” says Matson, the Portland photographer. There were times during the 1980s when Dunham functioned well enough to hold a job. She waitressed at the now-defunct Pink’s, a bar on Southwest Jefferson Street near I-405, and at the Lovejoy Tavern on Northwest 21st Avenue, now Swagat, an Indian restaurant. “Pink’s was her best time,” says Sawyer. “She had a small French car and a nice apartment. She was happy and went to work on a regular basis.” Sawyer says that on good days, Dunham was “as charming as you can imagine.” “She was very polite, extremely funny and solicitous,” Sawyer says. “She knew everything about music and was a phenomenal cook.” On at least one occasion, Dunham tried to put Portland and her increasingly complicated entanglements behind her. She moved to New York in 1982, when she was 21, and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. That experiment did not last long. “I was good at improvisational comedy, but I could not sing,” Dunham told WW in 2004. Dunham’s inability to focus or follow through is typical of victims of teenage sexual abuse, says Ciarlante. “Teen sexual abuse victims are very likely to develop PTSD, depression and alcohol problems,” Ciarlante says. “All of those on top of the trauma of sexual abuse make it very difficult for teen victims to have goals and succeed in life.” Another attempt on Dunham’s part to break away from Portland ended in disaster. In 1988, in the middle of Goldschmidt’s term as Oregon governor, Dunham’s erratic behavior in Portland
NAMING NAMES There will be readers who ask, “Why name Elizabeth Dunham now?” Part of the answer is her death. The journalistic convention of protecting sex crime victims’ identities aims to spare them anguish while they are alive—not afterward. When murder victims are also raped, the latter crime is often disclosed and, of course, the victim is identified. During her life Dunham agreed not to talk about Goldschmidt in exchange for a $350,000 settlement. In effect, he
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
became increasingly threatening to his career. She was simply talking too much. Goldschmidt arranged a job at a Seattle law firm where a former colleague at the U.S. Department of Transportation (Goldschmidt was secretary of the department under President Jimmy Carter for two years) worked as a senior partner. In Seattle, on Dec. 13, 1988, a man named Jeffrey Jacobsen abducted Dunham at knifepoint, took her to her apartment and raped her. Jacobsen was convicted and sentenced to 53 years in prison. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condi-
coaster gal,” Smolak says. “She could be on top of the world one minute and in the depths of hell the next.” After her four-year relationship with Smolak ended in about 1993, Dunham entered an in-patient facility for substance abuse. But she was soon on the street hanging out with a rough crowd. A 1992 police report described her being found face down in a pool of blood on the South Park Blocks near the exclusive Arlington Club, the epicenter of Goldschmidt’s sprawling network of corporate and civic leaders. In 1992, Dunham pleaded guilty to cocaine distribution. She served five months at a federal penitentiary in California. The prison time and the monthly $1,500 check resulting from Dunham’s 1994 financial settlement with Goldschmidt prompted a stretch of relative stability. In 1996, she married Steven Cummings, a sometime taxi driver and air-conditioning contractor from California. The couple relocated to Las Vegas, where she stayed out of trouble. Living off the monthly settlement check and a monthly$400 Social Security stipend for PTSD, she helped Cummings raise his daughter, devoted herself to her dogs, Zoe and Harley, and rode horses. But Dunham and Cummings divorced in 2006 and she moved back to Portland, where she continued to struggle with alcohol until her death.
Whether Dunham’s parents knew about Goldschmidt’s abuse of their daughter while it was occurring remains a matter of speculation. People who knew the Dunhams say that when Goldschmidt “adopted” Elizabeth as his protégée, it was a point of pride for Pamela Dunham. Whether the Dunhams ignored WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY: Dunham (far right) at the coast, or overlooked the evidence that Goldand with her family (second from right) in Alameda. schmidt’s mentoring of their daughter went much further, only they know. tion for which she would receive monthly Social Security Barbara Bingham, Pamela Dunham’s niece, says payments, Dunham moved back to Portland, where her that based on conversations she had with Elizabeth and life continued to spiral downward. It was about this time, Elizabeth’s late maternal grandmother, and Bingham’s when she was in her late 20s, that her sexual relationship own observations, she believes Pamela Dunham knew with Goldschmidt ended. Goldschmidt was having sex with her daughter by the time Over the next four years, she would be arrested more than Elizabeth was 16. a dozen times, mostly for drug- or alcohol-related offenses. Bingham is less certain about Arlyss Dunham, ElizaFor part of that time, she lived with Smolak, a criminal beth’s father, who Bingham says was only sporadically defense lawyer. present during her teenage years. “She was curious about my work, and for a while she Bingham says she once witnessed Elizabeth sitting on tried working with my private investigator,” Smolak recalls. Goldschmidt’s lap and making out with him in the DunBut Dunham could not stay focused. “She was a roller- hams’ basement when Elizabeth was 15 or 16.
purchased her silence, her story and her right to use her own name. But there is ample evidence Dunham wanted her story told. After “The 30-Year Secret,” WW’s 2004 report of Goldschmidt’s sex abuse, Dunham gave lengthy interviews to WW and others. She also worked extensively with Hollywood screenwriter Bryce Zabel, a former Oregon television reporter. He wrote and sold a script for a TV movie that has never been produced. He met repeatedly with Dunham and spoke to her dozens of times. “She wanted to tell her story, fully and completely, to somebody,” Zabel
says. “She wanted to go on the record, almost as an act of cleansing.” Still, journalism ethics experts disagree on naming Dunham. “My personal opinion is that the story has been told. Goldschmidt has suffered the consequences,” says Tom Bivins, chairman in media ethics at University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. “I don’t see any justification for exposing her memory and her family and friends to further inquiry and potential embarrassment this far after the fact.” But professor Stephen Ward,
director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, says preserving Dunham’s anonymity beyond her death would be dishonest. “It is time to name the victim, to put a human (and specific) face on an anonymous victim,” Ward wrote in an email. “Putting a name on the victim adds strength to your story—it allows you to tell readers about a real, identifiable person. Specifics in stories of this kind can be very important.” On Tuesday, The Oregonian published its profile of Goldschmidt’s victim but did not name her.—NJ
She also talked about the impact Cry, the Beloved Country, a 1948 novel about pre-apartheid South Africa, had on her. Goldschmidt gave her the book when she was a teen, and she said it remained among her favorite books. Smolak says the relationship with Goldschmidt dominated Dunham’s life, and her unresolved feelings about him plagued her. “Neil Goldschmidt was her savior one moment and the devil incarnate the next,” Smolak says. “Goldschmidt had an enormous impact on her life,” adds Matson, a former boyfriend. “She was probably in love with him as a teenager and flattered by his attention. But she was very damaged, and she was a person who could not help herself.” Ciarlante, whose group works with victims all over the country, says predators manipulate teens to create a sort of psychological dependency. “What we’ve seen is that children can form very unhealthy attachments to their abusers,” Ciarlante says. “The THROUGH THE YEARS: Dunham circa 1980 (left) and after arrests in Portland (top, in 1992) and Florida (below, in 2004). abuser creates a dominance and may frame himself as a protector. The victim WW first interviewed Dunham in April 2004, when may have conflicting feelings and a resentment and shame she was prohibited by the terms of her legal settlement that they are never able to resolve.” from speaking honestly about her sexual abuse. Even so, One of the many medical professionals who treated Dunham referred to Goldschmidt as “a mentor” and “a Dunham over the past four decades says this of Goldvisionary” to whom she and all Oregonians owed “a debt schmidt: “He took everything from her except her life.” of gratitude” for his public service. And now, that is gone as well. V O L U S I A C O U N T Y, F L A . , S H E R I F F ’ S O F F I C E
Z O R N M AT S O N
She says she asked Pamela Dunham’s mother, who lived in the house, whether Pamela knew about Elizabeth and Goldschmidt spending so much time alone. “She [the grandmother] said, ‘I’ve told Pam, and nothing happens,’” Bingham recalls. Asked when she learned of the abuse, Pamela Dunham told WW, “That’s none of your business.” Asked what she did when she learned Goldschmidt abused her daughter, Dunham said, “I confronted him,” but declined to answer further questions about what she did. In 1986, when Elizabeth was 25, her mother took a paid position with Goldschmidt’s gubernatorial campaign. Bingham’s outspokenness on what she perceives as the Dunhams’ failure to protect Elizabeth has caused her estrangement from the family. “The way I see it, they let that girl down, and it got to the point where there was nothing left of her to save,” Bingham says.
ELIZABETH DUNHAM
M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y S H E R I F F ’ S O F F I C E
CONT.
Although her adult life was a chronicle of nearly uninterrupted misery, Dunham expressed a range of conflicting feelings about Goldschmidt. As a young girl, friends say, she was thrilled to be the object of a powerful leader’s attention. Later, she would come to blame him for her problems. But, according to friends, there was always a part of her that was lovestruck, a part that felt he was, in her words, “a savior.”
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SCOOP GOSSIP THAT SAYS CHEERS; GOODBYE TO A PDX LEGEND. NO. 1 CUP: Portland’s caffeine dealers reigned supreme at the Northwest Regional Barista Competition and Brewers Cup, held in Tacoma last weekend. In the Barista Competition, Coava Coffee’s Sam Purvis narrowly beat out Stumptown’s Ryan Wilbur by half a point in the finals, using Coava’s Guatemala Xeucalvitz. In the Brewers Cup—a new competition for brewed coffee based almost entirely on taste—it was another victory for Coava, with Devin Chapman using the company’s new Kone Funnel immersion brewer to best Seattle barista Mark Pfaff and Olympia’s Will Frith. Portland’s Matt Milletto from Water Avenue Coffee also made it into the finals. Both Purvis and Chapman will go on to compete in the U.S. Barista Championship and Brewers Cup in Houston in April. Suck it, Seattle.
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R.I.P. YOUNGER: Horse Brass Pub founder Don Younger died shortly after midnight Sunday, Jan. 27. The 69-year-old publican was one of the Oregon craft brewing industry’s earliest and most strident promoters. The Horse Brass, which he founded in 1976, counted among its regulars the Widmer Brothers and founders of Portland Brewing, BridgePort and Full Sail.
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IN THE BAGUETTE: NW Documentary founder Ian McCluskey’s tranquil skinny-dipping short film Summer Snapshot has been chosen to screen seven times at the Festival International du Court Métrage à Clermont-Ferrand, the second-largest film festival in France (behind Cannes). It is one of only five American films selected by the fest this year, and will show Feb. 5-11. SMASHED: Fallen celeb Gallagher—hammer swinger, melon ruiner, honky Cheech Marin—was set to perform for free at the label party for Portland’s One-Hour Pharmacy Records showcase at Sway Bar last Thursday night. Apparently Gallagher, in town to present at last Friday’s Portland Music Awards, agreed to appear as a bewildered favor to his Portland handler, PMA impresario Craig Marquardo. Later, Gallagher refused to perform. He was, according to his handler, too stoned, and so skipped his scheduled set to instead talk to strangers on the sidewalk for more than an hour and a half. Portland flame-breather Draydin the Damned was told to piss off after he told Gallagher he was Draydin’s inspiration at age 8 to be an entertainer. U-UPDATE: In last week’s review of U-Licious Smokehouse & Grill, author Chris Stamm wrote that he saw flies in the barbecue restaurant’s “dingy” dining room. U-Licious owner James Harris called to adamantly insist he runs a “clean establishment” and to clarify that he serves food on china plates in his dining room—not Styrofoam containers. The author confirms his original account, but U-Licious did score an 85 on its most recent Multnomah County health inspection April 8, 2010. A restaurant must receive at least a 70 to pass the inspection.
HEADOUT K E I T H WA R R E N G R E I M A N
WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY FEB. 2 [MUSIC] THE BLOW Khaela Maricich hasn’t released a new album as the Blow in almost five years, but her live show is still as heartfelt and hilarious as ever. Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+. [COMEDY] COMEDY IS OK The monthly comedy showcase returns from a three-month hiatus with new videos, stand-up by Ian Karmel and unnamed celebrities. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 238-8899, clintonsttheater.com. 9 pm. $5. All ages.
THURSDAY FEB. 3 [SCREEN, MUSIC, STAND-UP] LANCE BANGS PRESENTS A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS Along with his short films, Portland filmmaker (and Jackass cameraman) comes bearing four L.A. stand-up comedians, several art installations, two storytellers and Carrie Brownstein spinning vinyl. Holocene, 1011 SW Morrison St., 239-7639. 8 pm. $10. [STAGE] CHARLOTTE SALOMON’S LIFE? OR THEATRE? Jewish Theatre Collaborative presents an adaptation of a proto-graphic novel painted in 1941 by a 24-year-old refugee hiding from the Nazis in the south of France. Salomon was murdered in an Auschwitz gas chamber, but her work survives. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 512-9582, jewishtheatrecollaborative.org. 8 pm ThursdaysSaturdays, 2 pm Sundays. $15-$20.
FRIDAY FEB. 4 [SCREEN] BEYOND THE CALL A documentary about humanitarian missions to war zones, Adrian and Roko Belic’s film spotlights Walt Ratterman, the Washougal man killed in last year’s Haitian earthquake. 5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall St., 725-3551. 7 and 9:30 pm. $3. [MUSIC] THE SLABTOWN BENDER Portland’s best gritty rawk-’n’roll festival returns with rad locals (Pure Country Gold, Welcome Home Walker) and the incredible Paul Collins Beat. Slabtown, 1033 NW 16th Ave., 223-0099. 6 pm. $14. 21+.
SATURDAY FEB. 5 So, it’s one month into 2011 and you’ve already broken your New Year’s resolution. You’re smoking again; driving to work when you should be biking; losing patience with family members; watching the Blazers instead of going to the gym. Shame on you, human trash—this was supposed to be the year you got your life together. What if you had another shot at starting 2011 off right? What if you could do New Year’s Eve all over again—except better, with Champagne countdowns every hour instead of one lame countdown at midnight, and at Portland’s last great D.I.Y. basement club instead of some douchey ’80s night?
All this can be yours this Friday, Feb. 4, when Artistery (a club that is, sadly, slated to close in March) presents Re-New Year, a New Year’s Eve/Prom-themed dance party. Can’t you see, you disgusting slob? This is what you’ve been waiting for! Unless you’re a creep, because, as the evening’s promotional material suggests, “Creeps will be asked to leave. Not kidding.” And really, who wants creeps creeping in on their 2011? CASEY JARMAN. LIVE IT: The Re-New Year’s Prom takes place at Artistery, 4315 SE Division St., 803-5942. 8 pm Friday, Feb. 4. Music by DJ Bill Portland. Free ($3+ donation gets you prom pictures). All ages.
[CLASSICAL] APOLLO TRIO Chamber Music Northwest looks at Jewish themes in music in a program that includes the world premiere of Portlander David Schiff’s Borscht Belt Follies. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., 294-6400, cmnw.org. 7:30 pm. $12-$45. [MUSIC] THE TOASTERS Ska is alive! The Toasters return, proving that you don’t have to play folk music to make trombones cool again. Plan B, 1305 SE 8th Ave., 2309020. 8 pm. $10. 21+. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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CULTURE
STORAGE C H R I S T A C O N N E L LY
KEEPING IT ALL TOGETHER A WW REPORTER VISITS THE ORGANIZERS EXPO AND DECIDES TO BE A SLOB. BY M AT T H E W KO R F H AGE
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In Todd Haynes’ 1995 film Safe, a housewife played by Julianne Moore finds herself suddenly all too susceptible to the byproducts and complications of modern life; power lines buzz ominously outside, the air teems with unknown chemical threat and Moore is beset by nosebleeds, seizures and fears of societal breakdown. Unable to explain her ailments, Moore recedes farther and farther from her family and friends until, finally, she retreats entirely to a protected New Age compound where life cannot harm her. In a much more affable way, the bulk of presenters at this past Saturday’s Pacific NW Organizing Expo, held in the Montgomery Park building, likewise suggested that life had become in one way or another altogether unmanageable—and that help was not only available but necessary in a humming world of accumulated clutter and competing responsibilities. The expo was a function of the National Association of Professional Organizers, who have devoted themselves to the still-novel vocation of dividing life into more manageable, personable pieces. Of course, on the face of it, the Montgomery Park building is an unlikely place to look for such help. Architecturally it is modernism’s most impersonal face, wholly reminiscent of Soviet public housing except for the mammoth, steel-trussed Hollywood-style “MONTGOMERY PARK” sign that implausibly sits atop it. Nonetheless, I was there to sample the goods, with coffee and scone in hand. Immediately upon entering the mess of attendees and booths, however, I already felt like an interloper. This was not because I was made in any
EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE: Enthusiasts of order at the Pacific NW Organizing Expo last Saturday, Jan. 29.
“Whoever invented the to-do list must be a millionaire,” said seminar presenter Megan Spears of Hood River’s Disorder 2 Order, who is also the expo’s organizer, “because everybody needs one.” She held up spiral-bound books with to-do lists and calendars separated into categories domestic and professional. She offered up an extended metaphor in which large life goals were rocks filled into a container, and trivial activities grains of sand, and lamented that too much of our space was taken up with the sand. She was a compact, efficient-seeming woman with boundless energy, someone I trusted to fill up her time with rocks—or to run a Red Cross relief effort, for that matter. There seemed to be two main schools at large, in the expo, about how best to manage one’s affairs. According to one, the clutter of objects paradoxically requires more and more objects in order to keep the other objects in line. A raffle offered baskets filled with desk organizers both rubber and leather, file folders, in-baskets, gear ties, cable
“I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CASUALLY DISORGANIZED—A FILER INTO AMORPHOUS STACKS OF PAPERS, A LOSER OF CAR KEYS....” way unwelcome by the well-coiffed, friendly people handing out the brochures and maps, but because the mass of booths offered services foreign to my sensibilities. I have always been casually disorganized—a filer into amorphous stacks of papers linked only by chronology, a loser of car keys, launched into propulsive action only by a sense of rapidly impending doom—but it turns out that the language of organization is scarier to me than the alternative.
ties, mobile-phone holders, “weekly grid-pads,” labeling systems and magnetic calendar pads. Catty-corner from the raffle table, Portland-based NW Organizing Solutions offered to simplify life by helping you get rid of your things altogether—seemingly problem and solution in the same line of sight. Meanwhile, a tremendously likable Portlander named Tracy Hafer was busy explaining, onstage, how to organize
The Gary Ogan Band CD Release Concert 7:30 pm • Wed. March 16 Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta
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one’s kitchen into the celiac-disease version of kosher and treif—to keep glutens clear of non-glutinous things, keep the grains unmixed, keep the different workstations of one’s kitchen separate. A woman from Vemma offered a line of energy drinks so segmented they amounted to a full-on lifestyle decision. Another woman in the Feng Shui Design booth explained that harsh angles and unbroken lines would clutter my headspace and make life unlivable, and that a small, shiny disc stuck to my cell phone would keep my brain safe from dangerous electromagnetism. (Almost everyone in the room was female, for reasons I refuse to speculate on.) The lady at Vancouver’s Life Success Counseling offered to help productively re-jigger my subconscious, as did the friendly people at Portland’s own Time for Success, in consultation of texts by self-help titans Napoleon Hill and Robert Maurer, respectively. Again and again my thoughts turned to Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore, to the underlying notion that life is a frightening surface phenomenon that must at all costs be managed into submission—that is, that it’s not precisely the messiness, constant unpredictability and downright unreasonableness of life that makes it interesting in the first place. However obviously competent the various life coaches and organizers were—however much I realize that people like me will always rely on people like them to make the world function smoothly when it needs to—this is the one point on which we will always disagree. MORE: Find local organizers at oregonchapterofnapo. pbworks.com.
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CLUBLIST PAGE 39
T u e s d ay 2 / 8 open Mic Night • WIN $50 Sign up @ 8:30 | Music @ 9pm Hosted by: Scott Gallegos 6835 SW Macadam Ave | John’s Landing
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Red Snapper Nigiri + Maki: Spicy Tuna, Sake, Avocado,
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
DISH REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
DISH EVENTS THIS WEEK
MONDAY, FEB. 7
THURSDAY, FEB. 3
Taste of Peru Benefit at Andina
Chinese New Year at Departure
Happy New Year to me, the Chinese, and all the other lucky rabbits out there. Departure features a tasting menu for Chinese New Year, with five courses to ring in the Year of the Rabbit. Each course has a purpose, from cured salmon and shrimp cracker for “luck” to lacquered pork and steamed bao buns for “wealth” and sticky cake with pears and pomelo sorbet for desert—for a “rich [and] abundant life,” naturally. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. Departure, 525 SW Morrison St., 802-5370. 4 pm-2 am Thursday-Saturday, Feb. 3-5. $50.
FRIDAY, FEB. 4 7-Eleven Grand Opening
Every wake-’n’-baker’s dream is to open their sleepy, bloodshot eyes and head down to the nearest convenience store for free grill items, Big Gulps and dessert. Usually, that’s stealing, but today the brand new 7-Eleven located downtown is OK with you walking away with their stuff; all of the above items will be free during lunchtime. Stick around for the ribboncutting ceremony, conducted by the Portland Business Alliance (as if you won’t loiter in the parking lot until the free shit is gone anyway). NV. 7-Eleven, 900 SW 4th Ave. 11 am-1 pm. Free.
Wine Tasting for the Super Plunge
You wouldn’t want any of your fellow Portlanders getting hypothermia for no reason, so pay them to do it. Streetcar Lofts is hosting a wine-tasting fundraiser to help sponsor those brave souls jumping into the Columbia River for the inaugural “Super Plunge,” which raises money for Oregon’s Special Olympics. All proceeds for the event go straight to the cause. NV. Streetcar Lofts, 1015 NW 11th Ave. 5:30 pm. $35. Info at superplunge.webs.com.
SATURDAY, FEB. 5 Operation Hotdish: Vegan Casserole Cook-off
People’s Co-Op hosts a vegan-only casserole cook-off. The event is open to anyone interested in tasting the soy concoctions baked into a one-dish meal that normally calls for meat, cheese and eggs. Be sure to sign up online (which the “Tuno”-weary can do up to an hour before the event). Guests are encouraged to bring cooked or raw casseroles, warmed if desired, as no cooking will take place during the cook-off. The whole tasty affair is a fundraiser for this June’s second annual Vegan Iron Chef competition. NV. People’s Co-op, 3029 SE 21st Ave., 232-9051. 5-7 pm. $5. Find info and sign up to compete at facebook.com/veganironchef.
SUNDAY, FEB. 6 White Bird Alpine Dinner at Grüner
If you’re interested in spending half a month’s rent on dinner (for a really good cause), you’ve got choices this week. Stylish Teutonic eatery Grüner hosts an “Alpine feast” Sunday on behalf of White Bird, the lauded dance presenter that aims to and pretty much succeeds in luring the best of the best to the city of Portland. Not only will Grüner’s Chris Israel cook, but Nostrana’s Cathy Whims, pastry whiz Kristen Murray and Nuvrei Pastries’ Marius Pop will also help out in the kitchen for this nine-course feast as well. Wow. NV. Grüner, 527 SW 12th Ave. 241-7163. 6-10 pm. $250. Call or visit grunderpdx.com for reservations. Visit whitebird.org for more info.
ALLISON E. JONES
PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: KELLY CLARKE. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
Continuing the spendy but tasty dinners theme: Andina hosts a pair of “Taste of Peru” dinner benefits in its private Tupai room to raise funds for Green Empowerment, a company that provides developing countries with access to renewable energy and watershed projects. What does green Peru taste like? Try hot ceviche, peppers stuffed with oxtail and “wild boar with stewed dried potatoes, seasoned wtih ají panca, Peruvian chocolate and peanuts,” among other dishes. NV. Taste of Peru at Andina, 1314 NW Glisan St., 228-9535. 6 pm Monday-Tuesday Feb. 7-8. $175. Call or visit andinarestaurant.com for reservations.
Dill Pickle Club’s Perfect Pickle Challenge
The Dill Pickle Club is no joke. The volunteer group arranges field trips for locals to help them learn about the ins and outs of Portland (2011 proposals include tours of TriMet, Multnomah County Elections and The Oregonian). The group also does fun things, like host the first ever Perfect Pickle Fundraiser and Membership Drive, where local chefs from big name eateries like Beast, Navarre and Olympic Provisions make magic out of cucumbers and vinegar. Other guests include ex-meth-dealer-turned-breadmaker Dave “Killer Bread” Dahl, who will help judge the event, and live music from Marisa Anderson, Orca Team and DJ Cuica (who will provide a beat for the evening’s “pickle dance off”). NV. Ace Hotel, 1022 SE Stark St. 7-11 pm. $5 at the door. Info at dillpickleclub.com.
TUESDAY, FEB. 8 Cole Danehower Wine and Chocolate Tasting and Book Signing
Wine is complex—from the climate needed to grow the grapes to the subtle notes of chocolate and dirt right down to the words used to describe the fermented fruit juice. Award-winning wine journalist Cole Danehower comes to Portland to read and sign his new book, Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest. A complimentary wine (Bergstrom Vineyards 2009 Pinot Noir, Chateau Ste. Michelle 2009 Dry Riesling) and chocolate tasting will accompany story time. Sorry, but you probably won’t hear the words “fermented fruit juice” or “dirt” during this discussion. Annie Bloom’s Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway, 246-0053. 7 pm. Free.
Van Havig Tribute Night
Ex-Rock Bottom Brewmaster Van Havig has no hard feelings after being released from the company after a new business merger, and he certainly has no shortage of fans either. Brewpublic, the sudsy online publication of the Northwest, hosts “Van Havig Night” to celebrate the 16 years Havig spent creating some of the best brews in Beervana. Ninkasi, Widmer Bros. and Oakshire have all created special beers dedicated to the dude, while Rock Bottom features a Scotch ale coincidentally named Courage. Grain & Gristle, 1473 NE Prescott Ave., 298-5007. 6 pm. Free. NV.
ONGOING EVENT City of Portland Urban Growth Bounty Class Series
If you’ve ever wanted to learn the art of cheesemaking, beekeeping, chickenand goat-rearing or edible landscaping, now’s the time. Brought to you by the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, these workshops run February through June. Ongoing registration is now open. More info at portlandonline.com/bps/ugb.
SPEND A NIGHT IN THE CUBE: A couple gets cozy with Roost’s unconventional burger.
HOME TO ROOST
a bun and a pile of watercress and beneath a crown of fried onion, with small jars of horseradish sauce and pan juices on the side. It requires a knife and fork, and winds up as a wet, sloppy pile. I heartily endorse it. Brunch teeters on excess. The “Kentucky Hot Brown” ($13) is a slight variation on the openBY B EN WATER HOU SE bwaterhouse@wweek.com faced pile of cheese and turkey that usually bears the name. Roost’s take is a stack of inch-thick, Maybe you’ve noticed Roost from the fogged crisp French toast and two poached eggs, capped window of the Line 15 bus—a bright white cave, with two large, thick slices of very smoky bacon gleaming in the night, a table or two of diners like and smothered in Mornay sauce—that’s béchaanimals on display. Maybe you’ve wondered what mel plus cheese—in a heart-quickening collibecame of Squeez, the slightly divey cocktail bar sion of eggs Benedict and Welsh rarebit. It was that occupied the corner until 2010. But you prob- very satisfying, but not nearly so much as the ably haven’t eaten at Roost; Chef Megan Henzel’s “omelet,” which was really more of a soft fritcasual American diner has been open since Sep- tata of ham, Gruyère and shallots, served with tember and received positive reviews in print and roasted potatoes and the same toast as the Hot online, but I’ve rarely seen more than a third of its Brown. It’s just as good as any dish at Zells, around the corner, but Roost has no lines, no wait. 10 tables occupied. Service at both meals is friendly but not intruWhere is everybody? You can’t blame the food. Henzel takes the near-cliché of simple American sive or cutesy. The short wine and beer list is fare, well prepared, and really delivers. You won’t entirely good, and not outlandishly priced. Everyfind any stunt food at Roost, and one at the restaurant seems genuinely determined to indeed there is nothing on the make diners feel welcome. menu I couldn’t prepare at home, Order this: The grilled hen. Mmm-mmm! deal: The “burger” ($14) is the most But this warmth doesn’t given a few hours and a trip to Best filling and cheapest entree. make it through Roost’s PastaWorks. But there’s no way it I’ll pass: “A simple chocolate trifle” would taste this good. uncurtained windows. From ($6.50), for dessert, was a little too simple. Take the shaved cabbage salad The layers of chocolate cake and cream the street, the restaurant reminded me of grade-school potlucks. with butter-toasted walnuts and looks like a bright, white apple ($10). I’ve made this, but box, cold and alienating. The Henzel’s rendition is flawless, not overly oily or vast, blank expanse of walls and ceiling is broken cabbagey. The same goes for the pork stew ($18), only by air ducts and a row of coat pegs halfway up with carrots, mushrooms and braised giant beans in each wall. There isn’t so much as single pillow to sweet broth, arranged around a giant lump of hog so offset the hard surfaces; on the rare occasion that tender it could be eaten with a spoon. It is the ideal the restaurant is full, the din is overpowering. At filling meal for a chilly winter evening. the back of the room, Henzel and crew cook behind More fussy but no less enjoyable was a grilled a sliding glass door, and my first impression was hen ($16.50), spatchcocked—the back and breast of a hospital hallway looking into an operating bone removed so the bird can lay flat—and sea- room. It cries out for curtains, and art. From the soned, I think, with thyme and sugar. It was juicy, street, Roost is sterile, a little frightening. But fear lightly charred and very chickeny, like a summer is a lousy way to pick your dinner; face it down. barbecue in Elysium. Because this is the friendliest vertiginous white Every dish at Roost is more or less exactly cube in town. what you expect, except for the “burger,” which is a wad of braised beef wrapped in caul fat—the lacy EAT: Roost, 1403 SE Belmont St., 971-544-7136, roostpdx.com. Dinner 5:30-10 pm Tuesday-Saturday membrane that surrounds the internal organs of and 5:30-9 pm Sunday. Brunch 10 am-2 pm cows, pigs and sheep—and seared, served on top of Saturday-Sunday. $$ Moderate.
WHY AREN’T YOU EATING HERE?
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MUSIC
FEB. 2 - 8 PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
M AT T H E W M O O R E
MUSIC
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 39, or online at blogs.wweek.com/music/clublist/ Editors: CASEY JARMAN, MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, enter show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitmusic. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: cjarman@wweek.com Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 2 Sarah McLachlan, Butterfly Boucher, Melissa McClelland
[LILITH FARE] What’s the opposite of adult contemporary? Sarah McLachlan’s recordings are adult, perhaps, in the dreariest of interpretations, though grown-up seems more appropriate: unaccountable ennui gloriously trilled shall ever delight soccer moms of all ages, frightening first boyfriends and third husbands alike as they take the passenger’s seat. We would, however, question “contemporary,” since so much of summer release Laws of Illusion directly reminds of her early-’90s triple-platinum ecstatic fumbles, but then oversugared, underspecified sentiments borne upon vocal range haven’t exactly left the airwaves, nor should they soon. Whenever La McLachlan finally phrases the last note, every other whitish female from the Americas shall start sobbing, enter the nearest vehicle, and sing along till the engine conks out. We will remember the carbon footprint. JAY HORTON. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. 8 pm. $46-$75. All ages.
The Blow, Sonny Smith
[ELECTRO-TWEE] It’s worth discussing what effect Jona Bechtolt’s 2007 departure (in favor of the equally awesome YACHT) has had on the Blow. Before that split, the Blow consisted of Bechtolt and Khaela Maricich, with Bechtolt contributing beats and Maricich topping them with nakedly personal lyrics. The pair’s 2006 LP was an electro-twee masterpiece, but the project has since lost some of that momentum. Maricich has been busy with a variety of artistic engagements, and what performances she does stage as the Blow (which involve as much talking and storytelling as singing, plus writing imaginary demos for Lindsay Lohan) have been noticeably lacking in Bechtolt’s irrepressible energy. Though there are no new albums on the horizon, Maricich (now going it solo) has been active in re-forming the ever-changing identity of the one of the past decade’s finest bands. SHANE DANAHER. Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
THURSDAY, FEB. 3 Jessica Stiles
[COUNTRY] “Having tired of both the hippies and the incessant rain of Portland, Oregon,” reads her bio, “Jessica [Stiles] now lives in sunny Nashville, TN.” And who can blame her? It seems the change in musical climate, too, has been good for the lady; her alto sounds smoother and sturdier than ever, and has taken on a mellifluous honky-tonk tone, with rich low notes. Her songwriting strikes a similar tone, both melodies and lyrics coming across simple, plainspoken and direct. No “alt-” in Stiles’ country, thank you very much. She’s performed on Nashvegas’ Music City Roots radio show alongside the estimable Jim Lauderdale and Ray Wylie Hubbard, as well as on Sirius XM. Yep, it seems that fleeing the freaks and floods of Stumptown was the right move for this twangy trouper. JEFF ROSENBERG. Beaterville Cafe. 7 pm. Free. All ages.
Awolnation, Climber
[RADIO DAZE] Bands like Awolnation are gonna be royally fucked once we’re paying six bucks plus the blood of our firstborn for a gallon of gas. Traffic will lighten, commutes will shorten, modern rock radio will prune playlists of all but the most essential drivetime diversions, and the Awolnations of the world—bands that only make
sense when you are trapped in car with a broken tape deck—will be swept up into Ned’s Atomic Dustbin of history. And that’s a shame, because Awolnation’s brand of hyperactive electro-pop, a Frankensteinian goulash that evokes a brain-damaged Beck beating James Murphy with Moby’s severed arm, is not totally lacking in charm, mostly due to the fact that the thought of a one-armed Moby spinning records is delightful. CHRIS STAMM. Crystal Ballroom, 9 pm. Sold out. All ages.
Grand Hallway, Thousands, Adam Sweeney
[THICK POP] Grand Hallway is a group effort, in every sense of the term. Eight Seattleites grind out meticulously orchestrated chamber pop on a crop of violins, guitars, horns, keys, drums and mics with reckless abandon. Highlighted by the silky-smooth tenor of frontman Tomo Nakayama, tracks on Grand Hallway’s 2009 release, Promenade, subtly weave ticklish Japanese string arrangements with the group’s layered compositions. Fans of local outfit Loch Lomond or Sufjan Stevens circa Illinoise will bust a nut for this band. Also a bonus for anyone hating on Seattle: Grand Hallway recorded its forthcoming full-length at Portland’s Type Foundry studios. The album will feature accompaniments by members of local bands Portland Cello Project, Nick Jaina, and Carcrashlander. WHITNEY HAWKE. Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Aan, Pwrfl Power, Matt Carlson
[BACK IN SEA-TAC] Kazutaka “Kaz” Nomura has been bouncing between his native Japan and his (also) native Seattle during the past year, slowing the once-plentiful appearances of Pwrfl Power to a mere trickle. Since 2006, Kaz’s one-man folk project has become a minor phenomenon in the Northwest, quickly springboarding Kaz from his demure, selftitled debut album to the main stage at the Capitol Hill Block Party. He’s currently splitting his time between booking bands in Japan and furthering the quiet proliferation of Pwrfl Power stateside, so check him out while he’s in town. Despite his laconic tunes, Kaz has never been one to stick around in one place for long. SHANE DANAHER. Ella Street Social Club. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
Against Me!, Cheap Girls, Fences
[PAST PUNK] “I Was a Teenage Anarchist,” the career-defining single from last summer’s Against Me! album, White Crosses, the band’s second (and, it seems, last, not that anyone cares—the contract and the damage done) major-label release, should be understood less as a mission statement or mea culpa than a brutally effective breakup song: bristling, venomous and, dare we say, reflective. Not that the Florida troupe has become a question mark sort of band, but...there’s a time to put away childish punctuation, yes? Exclamatory sentiments are a young band’s game, but rare the ex-lover as vindictive as a spurned punk fan base. Frontman Tom Gabel’s been steadily pissing off the devoted ever since he went electric, but the the recent maturation of songcraft and none-more-crisp Butch Vig production—it’s one thing to hang out with Springsteen, but in the blink of a young girl’s eye, Against Me! traded DIY drumkitted hack for the son of Max Weinberg—shan’t soon be forgiven. JAY HORTON. Hawthorne Theatre. 8 pm. $13.50 advance, $15 day of show. All ages.
CONT. on page 30
JUST A HOBBY
FERNANDO VICICONTE TRIED TO QUIT MUSIC. HIS FRIENDS WOULDN’T LET HIM. BY MATTHE W SIN GER
243-2122
When Fernando Viciconte’s friends found out what he’d been doing during his yearlong sabbatical from music, he could hear the shock and disgust in their voices. “Every time they’d run into me, they’d go, ‘Property taxes? Really?’” says the 41-year-old singer, musician and, yes, tax consultant. The reaction is understandable: After a decade-plus as one of Portland’s brightest songwriting talents, for Viciconte to retreat into what appeared to be an early retirement represented something of a defeat for the scene as a whole. He’d taken breaks before— usually for health reasons—but in this instance it seemed the mental hardships of living as an artist had finally broken him. In his defense, he had a good excuse for wanting some time off: Expenses from touring, recording and attempting to buy back the rights to his albums from his old label ended up putting him $20,000 in the hole. So in 2008, instead of putting out the new material he’d been working on as an official record, Viciconte opted to offer it exclusively through his Web site and spend the next year writing and focusing on his day job. But it’s hard to keep a guy who’s been playing and performing half his life shackled to a desk for very long. Thanks to some goading— and, perhaps, a bit of shaming—from the likes of musician-engineer Luther Russell and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, Viciconte decided not only to formally issue True Instigator, his seventh record, but to dedicate 2011 to touring behind it. “If it wasn’t for those guys pushing me along,” he says from the downtown Stumptown, a streak of gray hair shooting through his dark brown curls, “I probably wouldn’t have gotten back into it.” After a foray into Beatles-inflected pop on 2006’s Enter to Exit, True Instigator is a return to the eclectic Americana of Viciconte’s earlier work. (In fact, five of the songs date back to the late ’90s.) Inspired by his reunion with the band that recorded 1999’s rollicking Old Man Motel, the album alternates between stomping roots rock (“True Instigator,” “Wander”), downcast country
(“Strange Look”) and wounded acoustic balladry (“Selos,” “Remember Me”). Mostly recorded live in the studio with minimal overdubs, the record vibrates with warmth and immediacy— even with the specter of death looming over it. “A lot of the record thematically has to do with the loss of something,” he says. “The loss of love, the loss of faith in something—like society or human beings—or the loss of your self-control.” Although he says most of his songs contain only fragments of autobiography, the concept of loss is certainly something Viciconte knows personally— especially back in 1994, when he was living in Los Angeles and had everything crumbling around him. His band’s developmental deal with A&M had fallen through, his marriage was imploding and he was battling drug addiction. That’s when he decided to flee Southern California, his home since his family
“IT IS GOOD TO RUN AWAY FROM YOUR PROBLEMS SOMETIMES.” —FERNANDO VICICONTE emigrated from Argentina when he was 2 years old. “Contrary to what everyone says,” he says, “it is good to run away from your problems sometimes.” He moved to Portland at the suggestion of a friend, getting a job as a parking-lot attendant and busking on the side. He eventually transitioned from the streets to actual clubs, forming a folk duo with Dan Eccles of Richmond Fontaine (who plays guitar on True Instigator) and becoming a regular at Satyricon. In 1996 he released his first solo full-length, Season in Hell, a collection of depressed country-rock tunes. Each album since has been different from the last, weaving from ’50s-inspired garage rock to dreamy altcountry, all receiving widespread critical acclaim. Of course, respect from critics and peers can only go so far, and the returns of being a cult figure diminish exponentially the older you get. Now in his 40s, Viciconte admits he sometimes questions how long he can keep touring and playing live. But he says the healthiest way for him to approach music these days is to look at it as a hobby. And hobbies don’t have a retirement age. “People do crossword puzzles,” he says. “I write songs.” SEE IT: Fernando releases True Instigator at Dante’s on Saturday, Feb. 5. 9 pm. $10. 21+. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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The Portland Mobile Restaurant Group, in conjunction with the Food Cartel and Willamette Week Present:
Fill Your Mouth With Sunshine:
PDX Cartathlon I A mobile eatery themed combination of a scavenger hunt, eating competition and urban foot race.
Saturday, Feb. 26 • 11am • All Ages • $25 per four person team
Grand Prize: Free Food Cart Food for a Year!* *from participating carts
Participating carts include:
Big Ass Sandwiches Flavourspot Garden state Grilled Cheese Grill Koi Fusion Potato Champion and Whiffies
Go to wweek.com/promotions for more info Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC
THURSDAY - FRIDAY Yet I feel like, given my tastes, I really should enjoy this stuff. So neither do I quite trust the feeling that I can’t quite trust Greene’s music. JEFF ROSENBERG. Aladdin Theater. 8 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show.
A Few Of My Favorite Things: Mister Heavenly, DJ Carrie Brownstein, DJ Nightschool
[BEHIND THE LENS] Lance Bangs is one of the most important music video directors ever. Back in the early ’90s, Bangs helped to define and shape the medium with his innovative clips for bands like Sonic Youth and R.E.M. Since then, Bangs has also directed a few rock docs (including Pavement’s fantastic and geeky Slow Century) and also worked with Spike Jonze and other friends on all the Jackass movies. More than anything, the man has amazing taste, and tonight he curates a set of music (Sub Pop’s indie supergroup Mister Heavenly), famous DJs (Carrie Brownstein and Nathan Howdeshell of Gossip), and really funny comedians (Paul Scheer of The League and Brandon Johnson, among others) to join a screening of his Super 8 films. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Holocene, 8 pm. $10. 21+.
Dead Prez, Tyree Harris, Aaron OB Smith, Urban Truth, Speaker Minds, Luck-One
[RIOT RAP] Quickly rising above the cloud of obscurity (and pot smoke) that is socially conscious rap with the party-approved single “Hip-Hop” way back in 2000, Dead Prez has more recently collaborated with the likes of Drake and Bun B, while largely avoiding the spotlight of an industry they lambaste at every opportunity. Some call Dead Prez living legends, a claim that’s not entirely unfounded for a politically charged group who can boast a cop-car-flipping riot at Evergreen University as part of its mythos. Lauded for highly energized shows where neither legal U.S. currency or “them crackers in city hall” are safe from the duo’s flame, it’s certainly curious why Stic.Man and M1—who have been known to pack much larger venues—are playing a benefit show inside the more intimate walls of Backspace. Nonetheless, this is Portland’s best chance to get in with “urban culture” since wearing an Obama T-shirt was still fly. Which is to say, please leave that T-shirt safely in your bottom drawer—having a black president doesn’t end the struggle. KEVIN DAVIS. Backspace. 8 pm. $15. All ages.
Mike Coykendall & The Golden Shag, Whalebones, Pearly Gate Musico
Meat Beat Manifesto, Not Breathing, Natasha Kmeto
[AUDIO WARFARE] Meat Beat Manifesto never scaled the commercial heights of the artists it influenced (the Prodigy took the group along on its big stadium tour; Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor released some of MBM’s work on his Nothing imprint), probably due to the fact that MBM’s music was always much more subtle and thoughtful than that of the rest of the pseudo-industrial/ electronica gang. Bandleader Jack Dangers embraced the sonic possibilities of hip-hop, and paid heed to his sharp political sensibilities, resulting in dense and potent work that still resonates to this day. The band comes to town on the heels of Answers Come in Dreams, an album whose acronymed title easily explains the psychedelic music found within. ROBERT HAM. Peter’s Room. 9 pm. $17. 21+.
FRIDAY, FEB. 4 Jackie Greene, Lauren Shera
[SINGER-SONGWRITER] I can’t shake the strange feeling that I don’t quite trust Jackie Greene’s music. Perhaps it’s that his facility with the musical signifiers and lyrical tropes of classic rock is so uncanny that his songs seem like they could just as well have been created by the next generation of those computer programs that can map a song’s every musical component and characteristic. Not for nothing is a song on his new album, Till the Light Comes, titled “Take Me Back in Time.” It’ll take a few more modifications until those computers can conjure a convincing human voice, but Greene isn’t the most emotionally invested singer, anyway.
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Soft Tags, Massive Moth, Sustenacula, Monoplane, Julian Snow & The Murmuring Pines
[ALBUM-RELEASE PARTY] Usually, we’re lucky to get one band releasing a new record. But how about every act on the goddamn bill? From Warble Records standouts Massive Moth, Sustentacula and Julian Snow to Salem buddies Monoplane and the always-pro-
KOENBAUTERS.BE
[BACK-TO-NATURE PUNK] I don’t think there’s been a more appropriate protest song for my generation than Whalebones’ “I Don’t Wanna Live in the City No More,” from the band’s forthcoming self-titled debut. The tune protests...well, just about everything, actually. “I don’t wanna have a fuckin’ job no more,” frontman Justin Deary sings over a pounding country-punk beat and jangly guitars, later adding lines like “I don’t wanna ever take your pills no more” and “I want everyone to see the mountaintop.” There’s a bit of the Ramones’ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” in the song, but it’s tempered by a healthy dose of beardy Northwest Americana and a fuzzy slice of psychedelic garage rock. That the Seattle trio can split the difference between a handful of oft-segregated sounds—and still come off feeling thoroughly Northwestern—is a feat that took the band three years to accomplish. It was worth the wait. CASEY JARMAN. Mississippi Studios. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
lific Soft Tags, who are dropping not one but three limited-edition live albums tonight, this is a show you should save your money for. Soft Tags leader Richard Shirk also promises to debut two new songs at this show, which will probably be recorded for a future live release. These guys just don’t stop, and we’re all the better for it. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Doug Fir Lounge. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
James Angell, 1776, Tod Morrisey
[PROG POP] James Angell’s press materials would lead us to believe the longtime Portland singer-songwriter-tinkerer (and frontman for ’90s Portland psych-grunge outfit Neros Rome) has been lauded by Paul McCartney and came a hair away from signing to David Bowie’s record label. All of which may be true, but the desperate starfucking distracts from the music on Angell’s latest full-length, The Pandemic Symphony, which is a pretty impressive collection of tripped-out production experiments. Each song almost feels more like a tribute to an individual band or artist (Pink Floyd on “James of the Trees,” Leonard Cohen on “The Cost of Art,” Nick Cave and Tom Waits on “The Horse No One Can Ride”) than part of a larger whole, and Angell’s overdramatic vocal delivery will turn some folks off—but the musicianship and production values here are hard to argue with. Fans of Gary Numan and Peter Gabriel should find something to love between the bars of Angell’s thick, operatic tunes. CASEY JARMAN. Mississippi Studios. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Bender: The Paul Collins Beat, Head, The Tranzmitors, Apache, Mean Jeans, The Blind Shake, Pure Country Gold, The Wrong Words and more
See profile, page 33. Slabtown. 6 pm. $14. 21+.
PRIMER
CONT. on page 33
BY JEFF ROSENBERG
DANIEL LANOIS Born: 1951 in Hull, Quebec. Sounds like: One cubic yard of Delta swampland—mud, crickets, humid air and all—encased in a Plexiglas shell. For fans of: U2, Bob Dylan, Eno, gumbo, mojo. Latest release: His band Black Dub’s self-titled debut (2010). Why you care: When U2 hired Brian Eno to help mature its sound on The Unforgettable Fire, Eno brought along his coproducer, guitarist Daniel Lanois. The two have collaborated on every subsequent U2 album (except Pop). Lanois’ swampybut-smooth ambience has been in demand ever since, yielding career-transforming, Grammy-garnering discs like Peter Gabriel’s So, Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball, and the Neville Brothers’ Yellow Moon. On Bono’s initial recommendation, Bob Dylan hired Lanois to produce 1989’s Oh Mercy and, later, 1997’s Time Out of Mind. Dylan devotes a chapter of his book, Chronicles, to his contentious but fruitful working relationship with Lanois, calling the producer’s soundscape “texturally rich, jet lagged and loaded—Quaaludes, misty...cooked in a pot like a gumbo... dreamy and ambiguous.” Neil Young even titled his and Lanois’ recent collaboration, Le Noise, in tribute. Lanois appears Feb. 3 with his moody Black Dub project, featuring impossibly dextrous drummer Brian Blade, N’awlins bassist Daryl Johnson and the powerful pipes of Tricia Whitley (daughter of Lanois’ discovery, doomed bluesman Chris Whitley). While the band lacks the transcendent songwriting of Lanois’ clientele, his signature sound is unmistakable. Future musicologists will need to coin the term “Lanoisian.” Wait a minute—I just did. SEE IT: Daniel Lanois’ Black Dub plays the Aladdin Theater on Thursday, Feb. 3, with Rocco Deluca. 8 pm. $22 advance, $25 day of show. All ages (minors must be accompanied by a parent).
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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A RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY for people with SCHIZOPHRENIA and their FAMILIES
LIVE MUSIC FULL BAR FOOD FUN
Thursday Feb 3rd
Alan Jones 8pm 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
GREGG ALLMAN
LOW COUNTRY BLUES
ON SALE $13.99 CD LP ALSO AVAILABLE
Gregg Allman’s first solo album in 14 years was produced by T Bone Burnett and features 11 covers of songs from legendary bluesmen Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, B.B. King, Bobby Bland, Sleepy John Estes, and many more, plus an original song written by Gregg and the Allman Brothers’ Warren Haynes. Gregg’s backing band on the album includes Dr. John on piano, Doyle Bramhall II on guitar, and the rhythm section of bassist Dennis Crouch and drummer Jay Bellerose (from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s multiple Grammy-winning `Raising Sand’ album).
ON SALE $10.99 CD Bitches Brew Live’ offers 3 previously un-issued tracks recorded July 5, 1969 at Newport Jazz Festival just over a month before Miles went into the studio to record what would become his fastest selling album of all time, ‘Bitches Brew.’ Fast-forward one year ... August 1970, Isle Of Wight Festival in the U.K. where Miles is playing with a much more electric, rock-oriented sound in front of 600,000 people! This incredible full set is played by Davis’s remarkable all-star group captured live at the peak of its powers- Gary Bartz (alto sax, soprano sax), Chick Corea (electric piano), Keith Jarrett(organ), Dave Holland (bass), Jack DeJohnette (drums), Airto Moreira (percussion).
CAKE
ON SALE $11.99 CD
ON SALE $12.99 CD LP ALSO AVAILABLE
CITY OF REFUGE ‘City of Refuge’ is a sublime marriage of old-time and indie-pop. Washburn pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, and the results feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody’s ever heard before. The album features My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel, The Decemberists’ Chris Funk, Turtle Island Quartet’s Jeremy Kittell, Bill Frisell, Kenny Malone, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor and Morgan Jahnig, Wu Fei, master of the guzheng, and the Mongolian stringband Hanggai, who managed to contribute ambient throat-singing from halfway around the world.
MILES DAVIS
BITCHES BREW LIVE
ABIGAIL WASHBURN
TEDDY THOMPSON BELLA
AVAILABLE 2/8 ON SALE $11.99 CD ALL UMGD TITLES BY TEDDY ARE ON SALE! Recorded in New York City and produced by David Kahne (Regina Spektor, Paul McCartney, the Strokes), ‘Bella’ combines lean rock and roll with lush string arrangements on material that is both disarmingly catchy and often startlingly frank. Since 2008’s ‘A Piece Of What You Need’ this has become something of a Thompson trademark, teasing the listener with immediately addictive melodies then pulling the rug out from under them with unsparingly confessional or darkly amusing lyrics.
SHOWROOM OF COMPASSION
‘Showroom Of Compassion’ Cake’s first album of new material since 2004’s ‘Pressure Chief.’ The album was recorded over the last two & a half years and was produced and engineered by the band at Cake’s own solar electric powered studio in Sacramento, CA.
WAILIN’ JENNYS BRIGHT MORNING STARS
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
Eddie Martinez 9pm
Saturday Feb 5th
Saloon Ensemble 9pm Sunday Feb 6th
Weber Iago, David Valdez and Eddie Parente 730pm Monday Feb 7th
Renato Caranto’s Funk Band 8pm
Thursday Feb 10th
Curtis Salgado / Alan Hager duo 8pm every wed - Arabesque & Belly Dance 8pm
Now serving home made NY pizza!
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
GANG OF FOUR
BRUTAL BEAUTY
ON SALE $12.99 CD $39.99 DELUXE EDITION BOX SET LP ALSO AVAILABLE
AVAILABLE 2/22 ON SALE $14.99 DVD
CONTENT
SEE THEM LIVE THURSDAY 2/17 @ WONDER BALLROOM It’s been more than 15 years since Gang of Four released a new album, but ‘Content’ is as angular and questioning as the band was when schoolmates Jon King (lead vocals) and Andy Gill (guitar) first formed Gang of Four in 1977. Gill’s biting bursts of funk and dub helped inspire Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Red Hot Chili Peppers and R.E.M.. Even Kurt Cobain said that Nirvana started as a Gang of Four ripoff.
DANNY SCHMIDT MAN OF MANY MOONS
AVAILABLE 2/8 ON SALE $13.99 CD
AVAILABLE 2/8 ON SALE $13.99 CD
The Wailin’ Jennys continue their roll as one of the most popular acts in modern folk. On ‘Bright Morning Stars,’ Nicky Mehta, Ruth Moody and Heather Masse have enlisted the support of award-winning producer/engineer Mark Howard (Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, U2, Daniel Lanois, Emmylou Harris, Marianne Faithful, Willie Nelson) to add extra sizzle to the project.
A profound songwriter and master guitarist, Danny Schmidt has become one of the most critically acclaimed new performers to emerge in recent memory. ‘Man Of Many Moons’ includes 11 classics-to-be stripped down to their basics and recorded at famed Blue Rock Studio in the Texas Hill Country. Joining him are local Austin music heroes Will Sexton and Ray Bonneville, as well as up-and-coming songstresses Carrie Elkin and Raina Rose.
OFFER GOOD THRU: 2/28/11
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Friday Feb 4th
TALES OF THE ROSE CITY ROLLERS
Roller derby is an American contact sport that has seen a nationwide revival in recent years. ‘Brutal Beauty: Tales Of The Rose City Rollers’ tells the story of Portland, Oregon’s league, The Rose City Rollers. For more than a year and a half, an embedded film crew documented the thrills and spills of derby life. The Rollers tell how derby saved their souls and changed their lives. Rollicking fun from beginning to end, Brutal Beauty plants you in an exotic, rapidly growing, and oddly empowering world of librarians and regular girls embracing their feminine power.
CARRIE ELKIN CALL IT MY GARDEN ON SALE $13.99 CD A dynamic Americana, alt-folk troubadour in the classic sense, Carrie Elkin has ridden a Gypsy breeze of serendipity momentarily landing in Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado and Boston, before finally settling into the fertile Austin, TX music scene. Carrie’s galvanizing vocals and songwriting talent are on full display on ‘Call It My Garden,’ backed up by some of Austin’s finest: Colin Brooks (Band of Heathens), Sam Baker, Danny Schmidt and John Hermanson (Storyhill).
FRIDAY - SATURDAY
Bridgetown Sextet with Devin Phillips [N’AWLINS JASS] Just as New Orleans, the wellspring of American jazz, exported many of its greatest pioneers like Louis Armstrong to northern climes in the 1920s and beyond, a femme fatale named Katrina recently scattered many of the Big Easy’s finest musicians— including the superb jazz saxophonist Devin Phillips, who landed in Portland in the hurricane’s wake and has enriched our jazz scene ever since. He’s teaming up with one of the Portland’s finest retro jazz ensembles in a tribute to the phenomenal New Orleans-born soprano saxman Sidney Bechet, whose brilliant solos still elicit gasps of wonder. BRETT CAMPBELL. Tony Starlight’s. 8 pm. $12.
the 21st century. MATTHEW SINGER. Plan B. 8 pm. $10. 21+.
Motörhead, Clutch, Valient Thor
[HOLY MOLY] Last year, genome scientists sequenced Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA to determine how in the world he is still alive. Seems to me that being alive and cognizant is a meaner feat, and I’d be curious to know what chrome Terminator skeleton is functioning beneath Lemmy’s leathery skin. He cut his teeth in Hawkwind, and
MUSIC
he’s been grinding them away in Motörhead ever since. The man is the subject of an eponymous 2010 documentary, and just released his 20th Motörhead album at the close of the group’s 35th anniversary. The Wörld Is Yours purposefully keeps the tempos in check, underscoring Lemmy’s longtime emphatic mantra that Motörhead is a rock-’n’roll group, not a heavy metal band. Regardless, the band carries on, loud and proud, with guitarist Phil Campbell strumming since 1984 and
CONT. on page 35
PROFILE
SATURDAY, FEB. 5 Fernando, Casey Neill & The Norway Rats, The Welfare State
See music feature, page 27. Dante’s. 9:30 pm. $10, 21+
Rick Bain & The Genius Position, Slutty Hearts, Buzzyshyface
[NEO-PSYCH] It has been over a decade since Rick Bain released his seriously underrated psych-pop odyssey Crooked Autumn Sun and went tripping around the country with slightly more radio-friendly counterparts the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre. There was a rockier follow-up album in 2004, but in recent years his Stone Roses-meet-Beach Boys jams have been available only as live performances. Allegedly, there is a new album in the works, and the one track leaked online so far, “Keep It Glowing,” is a promising neopsychedelic nugget full of dreamy vocals and Floydian guitars. RUTH BROWN. East End. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
Finn Riggins, Apex Manor, World’s Greatest Ghosts
[DAD ROCK] Ross Flournoy thanks his dad—alongside Big Star and the Beatles—of his band Apex Manor’s debut record, The Year of Magical Drinking. There’s been evidence of that fatherly influence throughout the career of a frontman who has played gigs with contemporary dad-rockers like the National and Fountains of Wayne. Flournoy was once the leader of defunct powerpop group Broken West; his new group has a sound more reminiscent of Wilco, polished enough to sound right at home alongside labelmates Spoon and Teenage Fanclub. Apex Manor’s candid songs about friendships and memories also pair up nicely with the bright and honest rock sounds of Portland’s World’s Greatest Ghost and the up-tempo eccentricities of might-as-well-bePortland-rockers Finn Riggins. You and {ops should totally go to this one, and have a great night on the town—he deserves it. KEVIN DAVIS. Mississippi Studios. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
The Toasters, MDC, The Disliked, Faithless Saints
[SKANKY] After the brief late-’90s ska explosion fizzled out, a lot of bands put down their trombones and porkpie hats and tried to get as far away from the genre as possible. Not New York’s the Toasters. The band was making ska lined with traces of soul and punk as far back as 1982, as one of the only legitimate American descendants of the British Two-Tone movement; it continued to do so through the music’s mainstream high point (during which the group peaked with Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down), and it’ll be damned if it’s going to reinvent itself as a “rock band with horns” like so many of its peers attempted to do in the wake of the revival’s demise, waving the checkered flag as late as 2007 on its last studio release, One More Bullet. Even if just hearing the word “ska” makes you want to dry-heave, you have to respect this band’s determination to keep on skanking into
PAUL COLLINS’ BEAT FRIDAY, FEB. 4 [POWER-POP ROYALTY] Paul Collins could act like an angry, bitter asshole and nobody would hold it against him. Fate has been particularly dickish to the 57-year-old songwriter. His debut as a frontman, in 1979’s the Beat, was obscured by the success of L.A. rival the Knack, who made it big playing a similar but toothless brand of guitar-driven power-pop. The same year, Collins was forced to alter the name of his band (from the Beat to Paul Collins’ Beat) to avoid confusion with the emerging English ska group. And to this day, when he performs “Hanging on the Telephone,” even his own fans think he’s covering Blondie—only record geeks know his first band, the Nerves, did the original. After smacking that hard against a wall, most musicians would quit. Many of Collins’ peers did. But he’s still recording and touring. Not only that, he’s happy. In fact, speaking via telephone from his home in New York, he sounds more content than just about anyone else playing for crowds of 100 people more than three decades into their career. He called his last album The King of Power Pop! and he probably deserves the title for perseverance alone. “I’m one of the last guys from my era still doing it,” he says. “I’m not on the glory road, I’m not playing stadiums. I’m busting my ass. But I’m gonna go to town to champion this music.” It’s ironic Collins even wants to be associated with the powerpop genre, much less be a crusader for it. When journalists first began using the term to describe the revved-up, girl-crazy music coming mostly out of L.A. in the late ’70s, “we hated it,” he says. “It sounded wimpy, not like the kick-ass rock ’n’ roll we thought we were playing.” After the Nerves broke up, Collins moved from behind the drum kit to form the Beat. Its self-titled first album, full of vintage Beatles melodies delivered at Ramones tempos, was praised by critics. But then the Knack’s “My Sharona” happened, and Collins became an also-ran. He went solo in the ’90s, dabbling in alt-country, then relocated to Spain and started producing. In recent years, however, Collins returned to the states and to his original music. As he’s seen numerous young bands define themselves by the sound he helped create, he’s come around to the power-pop label. As his adolescent desire to write a hit has faded, he’s grown satisfied with his status as a cult figure—a king to a tiny group of admirers, but royalty all the same. “With age, you redefine what your concept of success is,” he says. “I make music, I have a beautiful son, I have a great place in New York, and I don’t have to do a stupid job.” MATTHEW SINGER. Meet Paul Collins: a founding father of power pop who never got his due.
SEE IT: The Paul Collins Beat plays Slabtown on Friday, Feb. 4, for the Slabtown Bender. 6 pm. $14 or $30 for three-day wristband. 21+. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC ALBUM REVIEWS
SUSTENTACULA SALEM: CITY OF PEACE (WARBLE RECORDS) [SALEM ROCK CITY] When people speak about Portland’s vibrant music scene, they talk about community and friendship, house shows and DIY record labels, James Mercer and No. 1 records (congrats, Colin Meloy!). And for good reason: The amount of quality music coming out of this city is staggering. But inside every scene is a subculture that really deserves more ink and attention, and the past few years have also been particularly kind to all sorts of weird and wonderful sounds originating in our state capital. Knock Salem all you want, but it’s where chamber-folk outfit Typhoon got its start, and it’s the former home of experimental electropop duo Sustentacula. The band—singer David Rafn and drummer Ryan Stuewe—creates a sort of skewed, horizontal take of the bouncy electronic rock created by so many local acts. Its second record, Salem: City of Peace, is one of the more interesting things I’ve heard in 2011, combining synthesizers and dancey beats with tribal percussion and a strong set of songs. Sustentacula has a deft understanding of rhythm and melody, and Salem: City of Peace never pushes too far in the realm of pop, grounding itself in odd lyrical left turns and looped acoustic instruments that are more Xiu Xiu than Junior Boys. Its songs like “It Is Our Wish”—which features Rafn singing “It is our wish to run wild like mascara”—beat with a real human pulse. The whole record is rewarding, and despite a few questionable song titles (I could do without a track called “Totalitarian Love,” thanks), it proves we really should make sure the conversation about Portland music gets extended by an extra 50 miles or so. When is Salem going to get its own Best New Band issue? MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.
PIKARA CONSTELLATIONS (AIO RECORDS) [SOUNDSCAPES] Is the “sophomore slump” an American concept? Because Pikara godhead Sara Johanne isn’t from our country—she’s from Sweden, though she has spent the past three years in Portland, where both her band (Dead Cinema) and label (AIO Records) also reside—and she might not have been dodging expectations with her second album, Constellations, an entirely improvised, near-ambient collection ripe with plucked violin and warm fuzz. Either way, Johanne’s first effort as Pikara took a more formal approach to songwriting—songs like “Few Hit Wonder” and “Over and Out” were flush with classical and experimental influences, but they maintained a healthy dose of form and structure. The improv fare of Constellations tends toward wandering, string-heavy space-jams—with a lazy, dark tone that has more in common with indie film scores than underground pop albums. A minimal, eight-minute instrumental opening tune would usually be a cue for me to fall asleep or turn off the stereo (patience, sadly, is not my strong suit), and improvisational music is generally best left to be appreciated…well, by other improvisational musicians. But Johanne is as adept at constructing these sparse, trippy and largely instrumental compositions from scratch as she was at writing the slow, dark, pretty pop of her previous disc. That’s because these songs, however off-thecuff, have personality. The five-minute “Tucana” dabbles in tango before disintegrating into tape-loop hell; “Svanen” finds ghosts of Delta blues in its slides and vocal moans. I know where Sara Johanne literally came from (Sweden, remember?), but I don’t know where she came from. And how I ever missed her. Now that I’ve spent some time with Pikara, I just know I’m not letting her out of my sight. CASEY JARMAN. SEE IT: Sustenacula plays at Doug Fir Lounge on Friday, Feb. 4, with Soft Tags, Massive Moth, Monoplane, and Julian Snow & Murmuring Pines. 9 pm. $5. 21+. Pikara plays at Valentine’s on Tuesday, Feb. 8, with Double U and Empty Seas. 9 pm. Cover. 21+. 34
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
SATURDAY - TUESDAY ex-King Diamond veteran Mikkey Dee drumming since 1992. That old “born to lose” motto ain’t quite workin’ out. NATHAN CARSON. Roseland Theater. 8 pm. $28.50. All ages.
Tiger House, Adventures With Might, The Rainy States
[FRANKENFUNK] Tiger House is like some indie-pop-rock-dancefunk Frankenstein, switching from disco falsetto to garage guitar break with the flick of a shaggy fringe. The band’s upcoming release, The Doom Pop EP, is five tracks of genre-bending good times. Kicking off with upbeat synth-pop opener “Gender Steady,” the album covers ’80s power pop (“Doom Pop”), ’70s blueeyed soul (“Video Vamp”) and ’90s alt-rock (“Sun Smoke”) in under 20 minutes. It sounds like a hot mess, but it’s all sewn together seamlessly with catchy beats and a refreshing sense of irony-free fun. RUTH BROWN. The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian. 10 pm. $5. 21+.
Pat Todd & the Rankoutsiders, Nobunny, Liquorball, Hank IV, James Arthur’s Manhunt, Unnatural Helpers and more
[GARAGE ROCK] Plenty of worthy garage-rock acts from near and far swamp this weekend’s three-daylong Slabtown Bender festival, but Nobunny stands out. Maybe that’s because Justin Champlin—who goes by Nobunny when he’s playing his fucked-up mix of ’50s radio rock and current-day fuzz-punk—is mostly naked and wearing a big rabbit mask. Or maybe it’s because his music, as evidenced by this year’s nine-song fuzz-blast First Blood, is so annoyingly catchy that one can’t really help but nod (or dance spastically, as would seem most appropriate) along. Either way, Champlin is making a name for himself on the national stage, and his appearance tonight is kind of a big deal. As is the Bender as a whole. CASEY JARMAN. Slabtown. 6 pm. $14. 21+.
Apathy Towards Flies, Palo Verde, Valkyrie Rodeo, Timmy the Terror & the Winter Coats
[BACK IN THE SADDLE] When Valkyrie Rodeo is in action, it does not fuck around. This week’s gig is part of a series of comeback shows after an extended hiatus of regrouping, re-writing, and general equipment upgrades. That can only mean great things since the core duo of bassist Jake Thomas and drummer/ sweetheart/wild man Tuviya “Toby” Edelhart was already on fire before the break. There’s no doubt that some better gear was the only thing standing between goodness and greatness for these lo-fi sludge merchants. Now if only their friends could learn how to spell Valkyrie….. NATHAN CARSON. The Know. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
MONDAY, FEB. 7 Priory, Goldenboy, Sarah Jackson-Holman
[SOUNDTRACK TO SLEEPWALKING] You’ll have plenty of chances to catch Goldenboy when the band visits our fair city this week, and by golly, you need to make sure to see it at least once before it goes back home to California. The group’s gentle folkbased pop is right in line with— and often much better than—the music coming out of Portland of late. Instead of focusing on the connection Goldenboy has with Elliott Smith (the late singer guested on the band’s first LP), let’s stick the spotlight instead on the gentle hum of Goldenboy’s late summer’s eve sound. ROBERT HAM. East End. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
Perfect Pickle: Marisa Anderson, Orca Team, DJ Guica
MUSIC
that help us understand this great city we live in. Did you just move to Portland and have no idea about the Northwest’s rich rock ‘n’ roll history? Dill Pickle has you covered. Need a walking architecture tour of downtown? It’s got your back. So this benefit show is important for people who care about supporting our city and our culture. Pony up a five-spot and you’ll get music from Marisa Anderson and Orca Team, along with bites from Beast, DOC and Le Happy and a special appearance from Dave “Killer Bread” Dahl. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. The Cleaners, 7 pm, $5 All ages.
TUESDAY, FEB. 8 An Evening with Tom Russell
[TEX-MEX, TRIED AND TRUE] The long and celebrated filmstrip that is Tom Russell’s musical life began in skid row, where the American Ranchero sang Hank Williams with all his heart. His sterling, ragged vocals shake like those of Johnny Cash, born of grit and Beat generation dissent. As much an embedded reporter as a songwriter, Russell reflects the political charge of his hometown El Paso in his latest release, Blood and Candle Smoke. But instead of scaring us away with a bullhorn and hyperbole, the 57-year-old cowboy hires his go-to Tex-Mex sound—a scramble of down-home, sylvan country with Mexican folk leanings. MARK STOCK. Alberta Rose Theatre. 8 pm. $25. All ages (minors OK with parent or guardian).
Archers, And And And
[DRUNK, YELLING GUITAR] It seems a matter of formal procedure in Portland music circles to mention Archers in tandem with Matador Records recording legends/legendary drunks Guided by Voices. So here you go: Archers sound an awful lot like GBV. However, the dueling, drunken and disastrous guitars of brothers Chris and Mike Cantino are a cause for celebration in their own right. On last year’s debut 7-inch (check out the fantastic “Brussels Truffles” for a good primer), the duo approached slacker guitar madness with an energy that seemed like it had completely missed the past 15 years’ strip-mining of that genre. The brothers Cantino are a brash reminder that loose and chaotic guitars, when applied with the proper enthusiasm, can still best just about everything out there. SHANE DANAHER. Bunk Bar. 10 pm. Free. 21+.
Social Distortion, The Aggrolites, Chuck Ragan
[POMADE PUNK] In 1990’s nostalgic “Story of My Life,” Social Distortion singer Mike Ness recalls sitting in class as a bored teenager and dreaming of a “rock-’n’-roll weekend.” It sounds like a line out of a 1950s Eddie Cochran song, and it exemplifies why the band never totally fit in with its peers. While the other hardcore knuckleheads in Orange County were disavowing all music made before the first Ramones album came out, Ness was romanticizing the old-school rebellion of the Rolling Stones and Johnny Cash. After its typically fast-and-furious 1983 debut, Mommy’s Little Monster, the group began to lean more heavily on its blues and country influences and ended up outlasting just about all of its contemporaries. Although Ness’ down-and-out ballads sometimes veer close to bar-band parody, by being stingy with its albums—seven years separate its last record and the new Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes—the band has managed to not yet overstay its welcome. MATTHEW SINGER. Crystal Ballroom. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.
[KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD] The Dill Pickle Club is a creative culture club that organizes educational projects
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 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 27 | clublist 39 For more listings, check out blogs.wweek.com/music/calendar/.
MON. FEB. 2
Ella Street Social Club
Aladdin Theater
Tigress, Wester Daywick, Problems?
Alberta Rose Theatre
Good Neighbor Pizzeria
David Garrett
Bryan Greenberg
Alberta Street Public House
Suck My Open Mic with Tamara J. Brown
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Sarah McLachlan, Butterfly Boucher, Melissa McClelland
Ash Street Saloon Doughboy, Nineside Movement, JLew, Ryder Records, Partyboination.com
Backspace
Fools Rush, Ports Will Call, Danger Death Ray
Open Mic
Goodfoot Lounge
When the Broken Bow, Jack O’The Clock
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge Rockstar Karaoke
Hawthorne Theatre
Eight 53, The White Woods, Tyrannosaurus Grace, Junio Muere
Jade Lounge
John Anthony Black and Andrew Grade
Jimmy Mak’s
The Mel Brown Quartet
Laurelthirst
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Arielle Doll, Gabby Holt Band
The Old Church Mixed Melody
Thirsty Lion Merrill Lite
Tiger Bar
Hedley Grange
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 6bq9
Aladdin Theater
Beauty Bar
Laurelthirst
Biddy McGraw’s
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Jonah, Water and Bodies, NIAYH, The Angry Orts, The Shivas, John Craig and the Weekend
Shug Mauldin & Riders in the Round Baby Ketten Karaoke Colleen Raney Trio (9 pm); Little Sue Happy Hour (6 pm)
Nathaniel Talbot Trio
Warren Floyd
Brasserie Montmartre
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Portland Prime
Dante’s
Pub at the End of the Universe
Kit Taylor
Buffalo Bandstand Jedi Mindf*ck
Doug Fir Lounge
The Blow, Sonny Smith
Duff’s Garage
Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9 pm); Chris Olson’s High Flyers (6 pm)
Midnight Expressions Randy Porter
Alberta Rose Theatre
Alberta Street Public House Charlie Loesel
Alberta Street Public House Jack O’Clock and Walkfast (9:30 pm); Charlie Loessel (7 pm)
Gil Paradise, Melissa Mazoros, Karyn Patridge, Ashley Lowe
Ash Street Saloon
Red Room
Beaterville Cafe
Susurrus Station, Last Prick Standing, Moodring
Open Mic
Jessica Stiles
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
Biddy McGraw’s
Lynn Conover and Gravel
Mississippi Pizza
Mississippi Studios
Loose Change
Crystal Ballroom
Mike Coykendall and the Golden Shag, Whale Bones, Pearly Gate Music
Dante’s
Mock Crest Tavern
Doug Fir Lounge
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Steve Kerin
Awolnation, Climber Dante’s 11th Anniversary: Dan Reed Band
Chris Lay with David Gerow
7th Planet Picture Show
Mt. Tabor Theater
Miss Kennedy’s Cabaret
Ella Street Social Club
Muddy Rudder Public House
Goodfoot Lounge
Muddy Rudder Public House
Portland Playboys Aan, Pwrfl Power, Matt Carlson Fruition String Band, Pocket Family
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge Karaoke Kings
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
Savoir Faire Burlesque
Hawthorne Theatre
Against Me!, Cheap Girls, Fences
Holocene
A Few Of My Favorite Things: Mister Heavenly, DJ Carrie Brownstein, DJ Nightschool
Jimmy Mak’s
Lauren Sheehan
An evening With PDX Songmeisters: Krist Krueger, Jared Mees, Ryan Barber and Martha Mosqueda of Pony Village
The Woods
Sean Flinn & The Royal We, Greylag, M. Billy
Tonic Lounge
Coco Cobra And The Killers, Thundering Asteroids, The Food
Tony Starlight’s
Sing For Your Supperclub: Tony’s Variety Show
Twilight Cafe and Bar Sent in Stone, *.U.C.K.
White Eagle Saloon
Bad Assets (8:30 pm); Will West and the Friendly Cover Up (5:30 pm)
Wilf’s Restaurant
Mike Horsfall, Karla Harris, Todd Strait
Original Halibut’s
Aladdin Theater
Open Mic
Terry Robb
Peter’s Room
Jackie Greene, Lauren Shera
Alberta Rose Theatre
Mudai
Fernando, Casey Neill & The Norway Rats, The Welfare State
Fist Fite, Gone to Croatoan, Antikythera, Fugue, The Phags
Muddy Rudder Public House Never Strangers
Nel Centro
Original Halibut’s
Open Mic Night
The Artistery
Saucy Yoda, Grrl Friend, Boom!, Nucular Aminals, Mythological Horses
Beaterville Cafe
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge
Proper Eats Market and Cafe
Hawthorne Theatre
Todd Samusson
Red Room
Clackamas Baby Killers, Ramblin Rods Bastard Children, Chase The Shakes, Gun Party
Roseland Theater
Bassnectar, Filastine, Super Dre
Secret Society Lounge The Celtic Conspiracy
Sellwood Public House Adrian Martin, Bre Gregg
Slabtown
Bender: The Paul Collins Beat, Head, The Tranzmitors, Apache, Mean Jeans, The Blind Shake, Pure Country Gold, The Wrong Words, W
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
Blue Skies for Black Hearts, The Winebirds, Beyond Veronica, Age Sex Occupation
The Globe
Trio Flux CD Release Party
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar Pete Krebs Trio
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Hawkeye, Sexy Water Spiders, Holy Children
Biddy McGraw’s
The Know
Eternal Tapestry, Pacific City Nightlife Vision, Fences
The World Famous Kenton Club
Karaoke
Gaia, Move the Earth, From Ashes to Grace, Run Bitch Run, Nihilist Youth
Jade Lounge
Padam Padam, Sons Of Lovers
Jimmy Mak’s
The Bobby Torres Ensemble
Laurelthirst Tree Frogs
Laurelthirst
Neural Sturgeon, Mike Coykendall Band
Ledding Library
Al-Andalus Ensemble
Lucky Labrador Public House
Marylhurst Music Therapy Showcase
McMenamins Grand Lodge Pilar French Duo
McMenamins Hotel Oregon Billy D
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern The Brothers Jam
Mississippi Pizza
Tap Handles, Poeina Suddarth (9 pm); Dapper Cadavers (6 pm); Professor Banjo (4 pm)
Mississippi Studios
Finn Riggins, Apex Manor, World’s Greatest Ghosts
Mock Crest Tavern Donna and the Side Effects
Mt. Tabor Theater
Bob Marley’s Birthday: Sashamon, Chronicle, Alcyon Massive, The Escort Service Band
Toni Lincoln Duo
Smoking Mirrors, Vulpine Slips
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Thirsty Lion
Miriams Well
Big City Smile
Muddy Rudder Public House
Camellia Lounge
Tiger Bar
Nel Centro
Tonic Lounge
Oak Grove Tavern
Brasserie Montmartre
John Taubman Trio
Dante’s
Super Diamond
Doug Fir Lounge
Soft Tags, Massive Moth, Sustenacula, Monoplane, Julian Snow & The Murmuring Pines
Duff’s Garage
Ape Machine, Dark Country, Sons Of Bitches Vintage Time Machines, Unicorn Domination
Tony Starlight’s
Bridgetown Sextet with Devin Phillips
White Eagle Saloon
The Knuckleheads (9 pm); Joy and Her Sentimental Gentlemen (6 pm)
Chris Robley, A Simple Colony (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Hawthorne Theatre
Kelly Shannon Quartet with special guest John Stowell
Haste the Day, Mychildren Mybride, The Chariot, A Plea for Purging, Ashlynn
Jade Lounge
David Griggs, Jake Kelly, Caitlyn Olds, Annie Vergnetti and Blacque Butterfly
Jimmy Mak’s
Philly’s Phunkestra, The Damian Erskine Project
McMenamins Grand Lodge Jack McMahon
Wilf’s Restaurant
SAT. FEB. 5 Aladdin Theater Winterfolk XXIII
Alberta Rose Theatre LeRoy Bell & His Only Friends
Ash Street Saloon
Swift Adikt, Fireface Loc, String Bean, Basic Shapes, Dread-Eye
McMenamins Hotel Oregon
Beaterville Cafe
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Beauty Bar
Sonny Hess, Lisa Mann
Jon Koonce and One More Mile
Mississippi Pizza Jenny Sizzler
Mississippi Studios
EVEN CARROT TOP WOULD BE SCARED: Nobunny plays Saturday, Feb. 5, at Slabtown.
East End
Mia Nicholson
Carolina Pump Station Lewi Longmire Band (9:30 pm); Billy Kennedy, Jimmy Boyer
The Strangetones
Portland Prime
Bellicose Minds, Raider
Ash Street Saloon
Sellwood Public House
Karaoke From Hell
Plan B
Mikey’s Irish Jam Session
Rotture
Atomic Tom, Chris Robley and the Fear of Heights, John Craig and the Weekend
Rick Bain & The Genius Position, Slutty Hearts, Buzzyshyface
Lloyd Allen
Red Room
Journey to Freedom Launch Party: Dead Prez, Tyree Harris, Aaron OB Smith, Urban Truth, Speaker Minds, Luck-One, Tony Ozier
Doug Fir Lounge
Duff’s Garage
Karaoke
Tony Pacini
Backspace
Dante’s
Oak Grove Tavern
Portland Prime
Throwback Suburbia, Shotty, Honey Wars
Black Mercies
Dublin Pub
Someday Lounge
Bad At Best, Secnd Best, Endanger This, The Warshers, Fools Rush
Rhythm Dogs
Mike Pardew with John Stowell
Alberta Street Public House
Shicky Gnarowitz
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Underscore Orkestra, Picoso, Erev Rav
The Paperboys
Bipartisan Cafe
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Mt. Tabor Theater
The Dirty Words, Tall as Rasputin
Meat Beat Manifesto, Not Breathing, Natasha Kmeto
Laurelthirst
Jimmy Boyer Band
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
FRI. FEB. 4
The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Laurelthirst
De La Warr and Vanessa Rogers
Oak Grove Tavern
C47, Spekt1, 486 Kid, Starchild, Darkcloud, Bones
Lewi Longmire Band
The Globe
JD Dawson
ADAM KRUEGER
Bre Gregg
John Ross (9:30 pm); Morgan Grace (6 pm)
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Chapel Pub
Acoustic Attic
Duff’s Garage
Daniel Lanois Black Dub, Rocco Deluca
Lauren Sheehan, Greg Clarke
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Wilf’s Restaurant
THURS. FEB. 3
McMenamins Grand Lodge
Mississippi Pizza
Mars Retrieval Unit
Ron Steen Trio with Shirley Nanette
Laura Ivancie
Singers & Stompers with Mr. Ben
Grand Hallway, Thousands, Adam Sweeney
White Eagle Saloon
Michael Dean Damron, Kris Deelane, Alexander Hudjohn
Beaterville Cafe
[FEB. 2 - 8]
JB Butler
Brasserie Montmartre
Brasserie Montmartre
NoPo Mojo
Living Room Theaters
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Mock Crest Tavern
James Angell, Tod Morrisey, 1776
Arthur Moore’s Harmonica Party Girls Night Out!
Biddy McGraw’s
Rob Stroup and the Blame
Branx
Old School Edition: ERS1, Ryan Lee, Jon AD, Monkeytek, Ryan Organ
Will Scrivens
Mike Pardew with Tim Gilson The Tumblers
Original Halibut’s Sonny Hess
Plan B
The Toasters, MDC, The Disliked, Faithless Saints
Portland Prime
Mel Brown, Tony Pacini, Ed Bennett
Press Club
Ezza Rose, Boy and Bean, Cabin Project
Red Room
Perihelion, Godenied, Acidious Mutandis, Wild Boar Cannery
Roseland Theater
Motörhead, Clutch, Valient Thor
Saratoga
Cat Fancy, Old Wars, The Happening
Slabtown
Bender: Nobunny, Patt Todd and the Rankoutsiders, Liquorball, Hank IV, James Arthur’s Manhunt, The Unnatural Helpers, Spencey D
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
Blue Iris, Olina, The Meta Sound
Someday Lounge
PDX Songwriter Happy Hour
The Globe
Western Family and Robert Johnston
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
Hawthorne Theatre Half Way There, Sam Wegman, Kent Anderson, Travis Petersen
Key Of Dreams
Jade Lounge
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Laurelthirst
Tiger House, Adventures With Might, The Rainy States
The Know
Apathy Towards Flies, Palo Verde, Valkyrie Rodeo, Timmy The Terror & The Winter Coats
The Woods
Girlyman, Coyote Grace
The World Famous Kenton Club
Breezin’, Why I Must Be Careful, Trawler Bycatch
Thirsty Lion
Awesomer Music
Tiger Bar
The Heroine
Tony Starlight’s
Neil Diamond Belated Birthday Party
Twilight Cafe and Bar The Punctuals, The Smoking Mirrors, Dastarly, Jared Bartman
White Eagle Saloon
Wy’East (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
Wilf’s Restaurant
Devin Phillips Quartet
SUN. FEB. 6 Ash Street Saloon
Vulpine Slips, The Smoking Mirrors, Damn Dirty Apes, Downtown Tramps
Dante’s
Sinferno Cabaret, Goldenboy
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge Whitney Nicole
Ares
Freak Mountain Ramblers
Laurelthirst
Urban Grind East
AMP Benefit: Pigeons, Tiger House, The White Woods, Old Highway, DJ Anjali, DJ Adamnation, DJ Sugar Plum
White Eagle Saloon Open Mic/Songwriter Showcase
MON. FEB. 7
Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott, Gwynteth and Monko
Aladdin Theater
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Alberta Rose Theatre
Hanz Araki
Mississippi Pizza Domino Trauma
Mt. Tabor Theater
Mykal Rose of Black Uhuru, Joseph Shepard, I-Chele and the Circle of Light, Jagga, Small Axe
Mudai
Led Zeppelin 2
JT Nero featuring Alison Russell, Chris Kokesh
Ash Street Saloon Open Mic
Ash Street Saloon System and Station, Audio Syndicate
Backspace
Gabriel Mintz, Adam Klein, Jason Simms
Battery Powered Music
Muddy Rudder Public House
Eric Tonsfeldt
Irish
Slabtown
Bender: Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, The Rantouls, The Royal Baths, The Courtney Crusher, Thee Headliners, Chemicals, More
Slim’s Cocktail Bar Suburban Slim
Star Bar
Karaoke That Doesn’t Suck Presented by Down Under Rock
The Blue Monk
Weber Iago, David Valdez, Eddie Parente
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Sunday Sunday Sunday Swing Swing Swing
Tube
Fist Fite, The Family Curse, DJ Starbird
Biddy McGraw’s
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Ground Kontrol
Bob Shoemaker
Rock Band 2 with MC Destructo
Mississippi Studios
Holocene
Sugar and Gold, Yip Deceiver, Vanimal, DJ Maxx Bass
Music Millennium Goldenboy
Plan B
Junio Muere, The Last Years, Raw Dog and the Close Calls
The Blue Monk
Renato Caranto’s Funk Band
The Cleaners
Perfect Pickle: Marisa Anderson, Orca Team, DJ Guica
White Eagle Saloon
Sunbeam, Josh White, Great Wilderness
TUE. FEB. 8 Alberta Rose Theatre
The Rumble Portland: Harlowe and the Great North Woods, Pigeons, Letting Up Despite Great Faults
Jimmy Mak’s
Ground Kontrol
Jackstraw
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Open Bluegrass Jam
Mississippi Pizza
Baby Ketten Karaoke (9 pm; McDougal (6 pm)
Mock Crest Tavern Jeff Jensen Band
Mt. Tabor Theater
Family Funktion Jam Night
Roseland Theater
Dante’s
Ash Street Saloon Backspace
Open Mic with host Derek W
Doug Fir Lounge
We’re From Japan, Southerly, Yeah Great Fine
Duff’s Garage
Angelo Spencer, Ramona Cordova, Lougow, Fabi Reyna
Lily Wilde Orchestra (8 pm); James Sasser Band (6 pm)
Brasserie Montmartre
East End
Open Mic Night
Matt Tabor
Buffalo Gap Saloon Bunk Bar
Priory, Goldenboy, Sarah Jackson-Holman
Archers, And And And
Goodfoot Lounge
Crystal Ballroom
Sonic Forum Open Mic Night
Jimmy Mak’s
The Terry Robb Electric Band
Laurelthirst
Little Sue, Lynn Conover
Laurelthirst
Kung Pao Chickens
Social Distortion, The Aggrolites, Chuck Ragan
Duff’s Garage
Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club Growler, Bitterroot, Whistlepunk!
Goodfoot Lounge
Crown Room
Laurelthirst
Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Los Amigos Invisibles
Problems With Dragons, Fjord
MON. FEB. 7 MON. FEB. 2 Crush Drum and Bass
An Evening with Tom Russell
Karaoke From Hell
Hive: DJ Owen
The Mel Brown Septet (8 pm); The Supraphonics (6:30 pm)
Brasserie Montmartre D.K. Stewart
SUN. FEB. 6 Plan B
Slim’s Cocktail Bar The Blue Monk
Steel Drum Band
East End
DJ Nightmare & Total Fucker Tronix: Bryan Zentz
Slim’s Cocktail Bar DJ DirtyNick
Tiga
KM Fizzy
Yes and No DJ Har1 Z
THURS. FEB. 3 Fez Ballroom
Shadowplay with DJ Horrid, DJ Ghoulunatic, DJ Paradox
Ground Kontrol
Fiasco vs. Variety Pac: DJ Brokenwindow, Strategy
Someday Lounge
The Fix: Rev. Shines, KEZ, Dundiggy
Crystal Ballroom
East End
Fez Ballroom
Ground Kontrol
‘80s Video Dance Attack Decadent 80s
Goodfoot Lounge DJ Magneto
Holocene
Girl Trouble: An AllFemale Powerhaus Dance Party: DJ KM Fizzy, DJ Magic Beans, DJ Womb Service, DJ Cuica, DJ Honey O, DJ Pashly
Press Club DJ Miles
Rotture
DJ Ill Camino, DJ Trans Fat, DJ Lunchlady
Star Bar
DJ Paultimore
Tiga
DJ Black Sandwich
SAT. FEB. 5 Crown Room
Star Bar
DJ Wreckuiem
Ante Up Crew Presents R.A.W. - Ronin Roc, Doc Adam, DJ Nature
The Mermaid Problem, Golden Boy, The Vicious Kisses
Tiga
Fez Ballroom
The Woods
Yes and No
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
Jarrod Gorbel, Mansions, Emma Hill
Thirsty Lion
Singer/Songwriter Night with Eric John Kaiser
White Eagle Saloon The Shook Twins
DJ Pickle Barrel, DJ Gordon Organ DJ Vibecop, DJ Scott Greene
FRI. FEB. 4 Beauty Bar
First Fridays With DJ Sacrilicious!
Crown Room
Daft Hunks: Legacy tribute to Daft Punk with DJ Remy the Restless, Lions Den, Lamar Leroy
Heavy Metal Ladies Night With DJ Nate C Service Industrial: DJ Tibin
Star Bar
Into the Void: DJ Blackhawk
Tiga
DJ Valkyrie
Tube
DJ Smooth Hopperator
TUES. FEB. 8 Crown Room
See You Next Tuesday Weekly Dubstep Party
Star Bar DjjD
Tiga
DJ La’Monjello
Tiger Bar
Good Music for Bad People
Tube
Tubesday: Doc Adam, Ronin Roc
Yes and No
DJ Black Dog
Twice As Nice
Ground Kontrol
Reaganomix: DJ Rainbow Pudding
Holocene
Booty Basement: Ryan & Dimitri, Maxx Bass
Rotture
Andaz: Anjali and the Incredible Kid
Star Bar
DJ Mattie Valentine, DJ Chazz Madrigal
Tiga
DJ vs. Nature
Scott Pemberton Trio
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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DOUBLETEE.COM / ROSELANDPDX.COM
NEXT WEEK!
TOMORROW NITE!
NOT BREATHING NATASHA KMETO feb 3rd • 9pm • 21+ peter’s room @ roseland
Smoov-E aka
fri feb 18th • peter’s room @ roseland • 8pm • all ages
MARC +
MOVED TO ROSELAND DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND!
DJ SANTO february 8th • roseland • 9pm • 21+
ARON OF
F RAQ & HETTI O PNUMA IC M IS F R O F E AT. C H L A N E S H AW
Feb 9th • RoselAnD • 8:30pM • All Ages double tee & soul’d out present
The SilenT Comedy • liam Gerner
sat feb 19th • wonder ballroom • 8pm • 21+
balkan beat box
y la bamba
friday feb 25th • roseland • 9pm •all ages
march 3rd • roseland • 8:30pm • all ages
MARch 1st • peteR’s RooM@RoselAnD • 8pM • All Ages
DJ PRASHANT sAtuRDAY MARch 5th • DAnte’s • 9pM • 21+
Soulico • DJ Anjali & The Incredible Kid
SWANS w o o d e n
w a n d
feb 27th • 8pm • 21+ roseland
SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO march 10th • 9pm roseland • all ages
38
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
ROBIN TROWER Ty CurTis Band
FRIDAY MARch 11th RoselAnD • 8pM • 21+
(503) 224-TIXX
MARch 21st • RoselAnD • 8pM • All Ages
SAFEWAY-MUSIC MILLENNIUM
MUSIC
SPOTLIGHT
HOT COPS: Motörhead plays Sunday, Feb. 6, at Roseland.
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 DUCKETTS PUBLIC HOUSE 825 N Killingsworth St., 289-1869 DUFF’S GARAGE 1635 SE 7th Ave., 234-2337 DUNES 1905 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 493-8637 EAST BURN 1800 E. Burnside., 236-2876 EAST END 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056 ELEMENT RESTAURANT & LOUNGE 1135 SW Morrison St., 224-0442 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
GYPSY RESTAURANT & LOUNGE 625 NW 21st Ave, 796-1859 HALL OF RECORDS 3342 SE Belmont St., 546-0892 HAWTHORNE HOPHOUSE 4111 SE Hawthorne, 477-9619 HAWTHORNE THEATRE 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 233-7100 HAWTHORNE THEATRE LOUNGE 1507 SE 39th Ave., 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 LOCAL LOUNGE 3536 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 282-1833 LOLA’S ROOM AT THE CRYSTAL BALLROOM 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047 MCMENAMINS GRAND LODGE 3505 Pacific Ave., 992-9533 MCMENAMINS HOTEL OREGON 310 Northeast Evans St., 472-8427 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 REFUGE 116 SE Yamhill St. 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 SARATOGA 6910 N Interstate Ave., 719-5924 SHANGHAI TUNNEL 211 SW Ankeny St, 220-4001 SLABTOWN 1033 NW 16th Ave., 223-0099 SOMEDAY LOUNGE 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030 STAR BAR 639 SE Morrison St., THE KNIFE SHOP 426 SW Washington St., 228-3669 THE SARATOGA 6910 N Interstate Ave., 719-5924 THE TWILIGHT ROOM 5242 N Lombard St., 283-5091 THE WOODS 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408 THE WORLD FAMOUS KENTON CLUB 2025 N Kilpatrick St., 285-3718 TIGA 1465 NE Prescott St., 288-5534 TIGER BAR 317 NW Broadway, 222-7297 TONIC LOUNGE 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543 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 WILF’S RESTAURANT 800 NW 6th Ave., 223-0070 WONDER BALLROOM 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686 WORKSOUND 820 SE Alder St. YES AND NO 20 NW 3rd Ave. YORGO’S GREELEY AVENUE BAR & GRILL 5421 N. Greeley Ave.
UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES TOMORROW NIGHT!!
JAMES ANGELL - THURSDAY 2/3 @ 7PM GOLDENBOY - MONDAY 2/7 @ 6PM
You can’t blame Goldenboy’s Shon Sullivan for taking a little breather. Since the release of his band’s 2003 debut, ‘Blue Swan Orchestra,’ Goldenboy has trekked near forever on the road, supporting the likes of Bright Eyes, Neil Finn, Stephen Malkmus and Grandaddy. The new album, ‘Sleepwalker,’ dovetails nicely with the understated charms of Goldenboy’s first two albums. Jarad Miles is an indie folk singer-songwriter and the front man for BirdCloud. He has released two separate solo recording projects: ‘One Million Years’ EP and ‘Rocketship.’ Jaimason Berkheimer had spent the better part of a decade playing guitar in blues bands, drums in rock bands, bass in metal bands and recording punk bands before turning his talent towards singing and songwriting. After developing as a solo artist for the past 3 years, he now prepares to make his debut public offering while searching for other multi-instrumentalists to play with in Portland. Barry Brusseau has spent the better part of the last 20 years playing in the underbelly of the Portland Punk scene (The Jimmies, Legend Of Dutch Savage). His new solo album is called ‘A Night Goes Through.’ His sound rests somewhere between Nick Drake and Bill Callahan instead of Johnny Rotten and Joey Ramone.
SONGWRITERS CIRCLE FEATURING:
JARAD MILES JAIMASON BERKHEIMER BARRY BRUSSEAU
MONDAY 2/7 @ 7PM
THE AGGROLITES TUESDAY 2/8 @ 6PM
The Aggrolites are more than a band they are a movement unto themselves. They carry a banner - one created with their own hands. This banner reads, “Dirty Reggae,” and represents their signature fusion of reggae, soul, grit and determination. The band’s newest release is titled ‘Rugged Road.’
JAMES FARETHEEWELL - THURSDAY 2/10 @ 6PM
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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FEB. 2-8
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: BEN WATERHOUSE. Stage: BEN WATERHOUSE (bwaterhouse@wweek. com). Classical: BRETT CAMPBELL (bcampbell@wweek.com). Dance: HEATHER WISNER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
STAGE 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. 306-0870. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays. Closes Feb. 12. $15. Thursdays are pay-what-you-will.
Bridge of the Gods
Tears of Joy Theatre presents a puppety tale of Coyote, created in collaboration with four Native American artists. Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway. 284-0557. 7:30 pm Friday, Feb 4; 11 am Saturdays, 2 and 4 pm Sundays through Feb. 13. $15 children, $18 adults.
Captured by Aliens
On the heels of its madly popular Fall of the House, the Action/Adventure ensemble presents another live, semiscripted serial. This time, six wannabe reality contestants find themselves on an alien-operated spaceship, where they vie for the title of “best human ever.” The cast manages to turn the conceit into something clever, visiting reality TV tropes with shiny enthusiasm, videotaped confessionals, ruthless double-crossing, tearful breakdowns and “strategic advantage challenges” (week two featured an empathy test, as contestants administered electric shocks to their teammates). The show’s semi-improvised approach means some lines flop, but when a cast member nails a joke, it carries unanticipated punch. The serial runs for four weeks, and one contestant is eliminated each episode. Who will prevail—the prim librarian with a saucy side? The bumbling dweeb with unexpected hip-hop skills? Or perhaps the conniving, Sarah Palin-idolizing backstabber? Better tune in to find out. REBECCA JACOBSON. Theater! Theatre!. 3430 SE Belmont St. actionadventuretheater@gmail.com. 10:30 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 8 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 13. $12 per episode, $30 for all four.
Charlotte Salomon’s Life? or Theatre?
Jewish Theatre Collaborative presents a adaptation by Sacha Reich of a 700-page proto-graphic novel, painted in 1941 by Charlotte Salomon, a 24-year-old refugee hiding from the Nazis in the south of France. Her hundreds of painting tell the story of a young artists amid the rise of the Third Reich; Salomon was eventually murdered in an Auschwitz gas chamber, but her work survives. Disjecta. 8371 N Interstate Ave., 512-9582. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 20. $15-$20.
Clamlump
A new play by the Missoula Oblongata, a nationally touring theater troupe whose productions combine a roughedged, Etsyesque visual aesthetic with live music and surrealist comedy. Eff Space. 333 NE Hancock St. Studio 14. theworkingtheatrecollective.com. 8 pm Sunday, Feb. 6. $5-$10.
Diary of a Worm, a Spider and a Fly
Portlandia script-writers, take note:
40
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 world-premiere 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. 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. 2 and 5 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. No 5 pm shows Feb. 12 and 19, no show Feb. 6. 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. 312-6789. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 3-6. $15, $10 students and seniors.
Elsewhere
Portland playwright Ellen Margolis penned this collection of a dozen short plays on the subject of the afterlife and other liminal states for The Forgery, a highly physical, apparently fun-loving group of performers who have been staging very short runs of their work since 2009. Most of the pieces are comedic and, while a few are unfortunately mushy, all share an appealing wit and insight: The opening and closing pieces, about World Trade Center jumpers and terra-cotta soldiers, respectively, are the evening’s most enjoyable, but a dance-heavy exploration of the fate of lost socks got the most laughs. The performers (Beth Thompson, Rollin Carlson, Paul Susi, Diana Shultz and Sara Scott Dyrhaug) are an energetic bunch, who make good use of minimal props. They nail most of these pieces; I look forward to seeing more from the company soon. BEN WATERHOUSE. Shaking the Tree Studio. 1407 SE Stark St. 708-9141. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Feb. 4-5. $12
FELA!
The National Theatre London recorded a performance of the smash hit musical about Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti in high-def. Third Rail screens it. World Trade Center Theater. 121 SW Salmon St. 235-1101. 2 pm Saturday, 7 pm Sunday, Feb. 5-6. $15-$20.
Futura
Portland Center Stage premieres sci-fi mystery bu Jordan Harrison about a type face, fascism, vengeance and the death of print. Gerding Theater. 128 NW 11th Ave. 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturdays-Sundays, noon Thursdays. Closes March 12. $20-$40.
The Hollow
Lakewood Theatre returns to Agatha Christie in this murder mystery with all the fixin’s. Lakewood Center for the Arts. 368 S State St. Lake Oswego. 635-3901. 7:30 pm ThursdaysSaturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 20. $24-$27.
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
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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. 4453700. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, Feb. 5-6. $33-$58 adults, $18 students.
My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow
[EXTENDED RUN] 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. 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 ThursdaySaturday, Feb. 3-5. $12-$15.
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 tragedy. BEN WATERHOUSE. Artists Repertory Theatre. 1515 SW Morrison St. 241-1278. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 12. $20-$42.
Thief River
Profile Theatre continues its survey of the works of Lee Blessing with the playwright’s story of a perennially frustrating, lifelong love story between two men. Theater! Theatre!. 3430 SE Belmont St. 242-0080. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 27. $28, $15 students.
Threads
Tonya Jone Miller knew her American mother and Vietnamese father
embarked for Vietnam around the same time as American troops, but she never knew why. After videotaping her mother tell her stories, Miller stitched the anecdotes together into a one-woman show about her mother maneuvering between two cultures in a moment of political hostility. With heavy-handed tone setting, Threads begins with gunshots sounding over Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” and Miller acting as her mother, fearfully running across the stage. When the shooting subsides, she tells of her journey from Indiana to California to Vietnam in 1968, where she taught English and had many gut wrenching experiences helping desperate people. With no scenes or set changes, and in a continuous address to the audience, Threads feels more like an hour of storytelling than a play. Though personally significant for both Miller and her mother, Threads is neither cogent nor novel to the objective observer.
REVIEW OWEN CAREY
PERFORMANCE
Noir(ish)
A detective story by Evan GuilfordBlake, presented by The Pulp Stage reading series. Brody Theater. 16 NW Broadway. thepulpstage.weebly.com. 7:30 pm Sunday, Feb. 6. $10.
Porn Shop!
Third Eye Theatre has transformed the Back Door Theatre into a low-rent adult shop for this world premiere by John Heller. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. The Back Door Theater. 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd. thirdeyetheatre.org. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays. Closes Feb. 12. $12-$15.
Robin Hood
Northwest Children’s Theatre premieres a new take on the Hood. NW Neighborhood Cultural Center. 1819 NW Everett St. 222-4480. 7 pm Fridays, 2 and 7 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 20. $18-$22.
The Shape of Things
The Public House Theatre production of this Neil LaBute play begins with 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 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. JESSICA LUTJEMEYER. The CoHo Theater. 2257 NW Raleigh St. 922-0532. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Feb. 3-5. $24, $19 students, $14 Thursdays.
Superior Donuts
The latest from Tracy Letts is an oddcouple comedy of familiar form: Arthur Przybyszewski, a burnt-out, emotionally stunted former radical and draftdodger 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
MAUREEN PORTER AND ISAAC LAMB
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA (THIRD RAIL) Maureen Porter in the realms of the unreal.
To call this bizarre comedy by English playwright Anthony Neilson a departure from Third Rail Rep’s usual fare is inadequate. The first act of The Wonderful World of Dissocia contains, among other oddities: a musical dance number featuring soft-shoe, hip-hop and high kicks; a flying car, a speaking goat and polar bear and an accordion-playing hotdog. For a company with a penchant for witty, slightly maudlin black comedies and dramas, this isn’t the same planet. Maureen Porter stars as Lisa, an English musician who is visited by a creepy Swiss gent who tells her the reason she’s been feeling out of sorts: During an international flight, she somehow lost an hour. To get it back, she must travel to Dissocia, a land made up of puns and sight gags, under siege by the sinister forces of the Black Dog King. Her manic adventures over the following hour share an obsession with puns and a childish delight in violence. While many are enjoyable, most of these scenes, which Neilson created with the help of a troupe of improvising actors, are far too long and loud. I don’t know if Neilson was intentionally triple-underlining the madness or whether he’s just incapable of killing his darlings and left in every cockamamie idea that came out of scene work. Either way, it’s annoying. At intermission I told my wife I thought it would take a sharp tonal shift to save the evening from being a total waste. That shift came more abruptly than I’d imagined: I won’t spoil the surprise, but suffice it to say that my suspicions that Dissocia was just too nutty to be serious were not baseless, and that Dissocia has more in common with the company’s usual tastes than it seemed. The show mostly justifies its mania. This is the largest show Third Rail’s attempted, employing seven of its 12 acting members, and probably the most technically demanding. Their accomplishments, from the set to the dance routine, are impressive, no matter one’s opinion of the material. The set, lighting and sound design are excellent; the cast seems tireless. Porter, who spends two exhausting hours without leaving the stage, deserves a medal. BEN WATERHOUSE.
SEE IT: World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 241-5410. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. $15-$32.
PERFORMANCE APOLLOTRIO.COM
FEB. 2-8 RACHAEL DEWITT. The Headwaters. 55 NE Farragut St. No. 9. 289-3499. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 6 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 12. $15 at the door or through hulahub.com.
COMEDY Antiques Improv Show
Thurs • Fri • Sat 8 pm Sundays 2 pm
Bring your antiques, collectibles or white elephants to the Brody Theater, where the crew will pretend to appraise them. Brody Theater. 16 NW Broadway. 224-2227. 8 pm Saturdays through Feb. 5. $7-$10
Disjecta 8371 N. Interstate
Ty Barnett
Barnett’s riffs on religion, politics and culture aren’t terribly original, but he delivers them really well. Harvey’s Comedy Club. 436 NW 6th Ave. 241-0338. 7:30 pm Thursday, 7:30 and 10 pm Friday, 5, 7:30 and 10 pm Saturday, 7:30 pm Sunday Feb. 3-6. $15
Comedy Is OK
The monthly comedy showcase returns from a three-month hiatus with new videos, stand-up by Ian Karmel and unnamed celebrities. Clinton Street Theater 2522 SE Clinton St. 238-8899. 9 pm Wednesday, Feb. 2. $5
jewishtheatercollaborative.org APOLLO TRIO Bloch’s 1924 From Jewish Life. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College. 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd. 294-6400. Cmnw.org. 7:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 5. $12-$45
Bach Cantata Choir
This week: “250th Show EDstravaganza” with Tres Shannon and Cat Daddy of Voodoo Doughnut. Dante’s. 350 W Burnside St. 226-6630. 9 pm Tuesday. $3
The 60-voice choir continues its traversal of J.S. Bach’s great series of sacred choral orchestra works with Cantata No. 191, along with a Vivaldi double trumpet concerto, a Handel anthem and a contemporary work by Lithuanian composer Vytautas Miskinis. Rose City Park Presbyterian Church. 1907 NE 45th Ave. 702-1973. 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 6. Free.
Lawful Order: Special Puppets Unit
Jennifer Forni
The Ed Forman Show
Improv comedy inspired by police procedurals, with puppets. The Unscriptables Studio. 1121 N Loring St. 8 pm Saturdays and Friday, Feb 25. Closes Feb. 26. All shows are “pay what you want.”
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.
CLASSSICAL Apollo Trio
Oy, Chamber Music Northwest looks at Jewish themes in music in a program that includes a world premiere by one of the West’s finest composers, Portlander David Schiff. Despite the title, the Reed College prof’s new Borscht Belt Follies is a fun and serious, nostalgic and melancholy examination of an emotionally complex setting: Cold War America and the place of American Jews in it. New York City-born and -raised Schiff told WW he was inspired by 1950s memories of the so-called Borscht Belt comedians at Catskills resorts. The comedians helped Jews find solace in music and humor, as they have throughout the centuries, despite some distinctly unfunny realities—in this case, the Red Scare execution of the atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, which terrified many Jews of Schiff’s generation, and the specter of atomic holocaust. Schiff will play a Mort Sahl sort of role by introducing each section with readings from periodicals of the period concerning Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, the McCarthy hearings and the Rosenbergs. Schiff drew inspiration from the bandleader Mickey Katz and Maurice Ravel’s settings of Jewish themes. His music will be played by a superb sextet led by the great neo-klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, who also contributes three klezmer arrangements. The concert also includes two major 20th-century works influenced by Jewish music: Shostakovich’s 1944 Piano Trio No. 2 and Ernest
Feb. 3 - 20
The soprano, a Portland Opera studio artist, sings a fabulous program: Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs, based on writings from ancient Celtic monks; the classic Knoxville: Summer of 1915; three songs by Richard Strauss; and two beauties from Claude Debussy. Whitsell Auditorium. 1219 SW Park Ave. 241-1407. 7 pm Tuesday, Feb. 8. Free. Reserve your seat at spotlightboxoffice.com.
Resonance Ensemble
The excellent new chorus mixes art (paintings by Thérèse Murdza), poetry (readings by Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen and other Northwest versifiers) and music: settings of W.B. Yeats’ “Down by the Sally Gardens,” the Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez’s “A Thousand Regrets,” Lewis & Clark College music prof Michael Johanson’s setting of William Stafford’s “Earth Dweller.” Also represented are Stephen Sondheim, Lee Hoiby, John Adams and the centerpiece—contemporary composer John Corigliano’s hauntingly nostalgic setting of Dylan Thomas’ poem “Fern Hill,” with the fine mezzo-soprano Hannah Penn as soloist. Lewis & Clark College. 0615 SW Palatine Road. 467-4975. 8 pm Friday, Feb. 4. First Presbyterian Church. 1200 SW Alder St., 467-4975. 8 pm Saturday, Feb. 5. Resonancechoral.org. $11-$22
The Mitch Show
Portland Piano International specializes in introducing the city to keyboard stars on the rise, but this time, they’ve brought one who’s already reached his zenith: the great Canadian pianist Louis Lortie, performing Years of Pilgrimage, Franz Liszt’s three-hour musical travelogue of his peregrinations through Switzerland and Italy with his countess paramour. Newmark Theatre. Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway. 228-1388. 4 pm Sunday, Feb. 6. $28-$54
Oregon Symphony, Yuja Wang
Homomentum: Love Potions
The acclaimed 23-year-old Chinese pianist who isn’t Yundi or Lang Lang steps into the daunting spotlight of the famous “Rach 3,” Sergei Rachmaninoff’s long, ultraRomantic 1909 piano concerto. The concert also includes Nielsen’s Symphony No. 6 and Brahms’ Tragic Overture. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. 1037 SW Broadway. 228-1353. 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, 8 pm Monday, Feb. 5-7. $20-$90
Portland Opera
Aretha Franklin’s impromptu rendition of the Nessun Dorma from Turandot made Pavarotti famous beyond the opera world and showed the staying power and broad appeal of Puccini’s melodies. Portland Opera has scored the American premiere of a new production of the 1926 operatic staple created by Christopher Alden (who’ll direct here), which garnered raves in Britain. Soprano Lori Phillips returns to the Opera to sing the ice maiden title role, while tenor Philip Webb takes on the role of her suitor, Calaf. Keller Auditorium. 222 SW Clay St. 241-1802. 7:30 pm Feb. 4, 10 and 12; 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 6. $20-$155
PG. 25
DANCE The cinematic genius behind BodyVox’s comic dance films is Mitchell Rose, who was a New York performance artist before he became a filmmaker. Rose’s The Mitch Show offers a retrospective of his funny film shorts as well as various comedic performance pieces critics have favorably compared to the work of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati. Take your seat and prepare to be amused. BodyVox Dance Center. 1201 NW 17th Ave. 229-0627. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday, Feb. 3-5. $15. Info and tickets at bodyvox.com.
Louis Lortie
503-512-0582
Portland’s genderfuck cabaret Homomentum gets all sexy-sappy for V-Day with a “Love Potions” line up featuring dragsters and glitter queens from Chi Chi & Chonga and Pidgeon Von Tramp to Blossoming Implosion and the Little Beavers Destroyer Squadron. Really, your guess as to what all these gayfriendly groups will actually do up onstage is as good as mine, but, come on, “Beavers Destroyer Squadron” performed a tribute to Xena: Warrior Princess soundtracked by Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” at a past edition of Homomentum. Shit like that’s gotta be worth $5. KELLY CLARKE. Fez Ballroom. 316 SW 11th Ave. 221-7262. 8 pm Friday, Feb. 4. $5-$10 sliding scale. Info at pantsoffpdx.com
Tease Time: A Naughty Valentine Show
One of Portland’s finest burlesque showcases returns for an evening of naughty Valentine’s hotness. Tonic Lounge. 3100 NE Sandy Blvd. 238-0543. 9 pm Saturday, Feb. 5. $7 advance, $10 door. Info at girlpartiespdx.com, tickets at brownpapertickets.com/event/152205.
For more Performance listings, visit Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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FEB. 2-8
NOW SHOWING Yoko Hara and Seiichi Hiroshima
Following a bizarrely beautiful exhibition of intaglio prints by Japanese artist Yuji Hiratsuka, Augen shows prints from Japanese printmakers Yoko Hara and Seiichi Hiroshima. Hara’s works are ethereal and abstract, while Hiroshima’s prints incorporate animals such as frogs, dragonflies and crickets, superimposing the creatures’ forms atop elegant vertical columns. Augen DeSoto. 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056. Closes Feb. 26.
Junk to Funk: Transformation
After five years of environmentally and sartorially forward-thinking fabulousness, the Junk to Funk Trashion Collective is transitioning from runway shows and the Recycled Fashion Show Contest to a more comprehensive mission. To celebrate this change, the group is mounting a gallery installation called Transformation. A party will kick off the show and the collective’s new direction. Boothster, 521 NE Davis St. 7-11 pm Saturday, Feb. 5. Suggested donation $10-$50. For info visit junktofunk.org.
inFORM
Six recent graduates from art programs in Chicago, Canberra and London use kiln-formed glass to create diverse aesthetic visions in inFORM. The schools—Art Institute of Chicago, Australian National University and the Royal College of Art—are renowned for their programs across a variety of media, including glass. One notable inclusion is longtime Portlander Abi Spring, who has returned to the Northwest after a multi-year sojourn to Australia to study at A.N.U.’s world-class glass workshop. Before she left, Spring was known for her minimalist works in crushed marble and other materials, which she exhibited most prominently at Chambers. It will be intriguing to see how she has translated her vision into the medium of glass. Bullseye, 300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222. Closes April 9.
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.
Bruce Conkle
Bruce Conkle is one of the Northwest’s true originals: an artist of rare vision and a fondness for quirkily counterintuitive materials: Reynold’s Wrap, fresh snow, computer screen freezes, and Pepto-Bismol, to name a few. Conkle’s drawings, gilded tree burls, and other installations will be included in Bruce Conkle: Who the Hell Is Piet Mondrian, an exhibition titled after one of Conkle’s darkly whimsical but ever-earnest drawings. The Gallery at Port City, 2156 N Williams Ave., 236-9515. Show runs Feb. 4-28.
Dave Mead
As if Portland weren’t already in the running for honors as the Beard Capital of the U.S., Texas-based photographer Dave Mead brings his ode to the beard, Magnificent Specimens, to Land Gallery. Irreverent, borderline disturbing and at times downright bizarre, these photographs—featuring some of the World Beard and Mustache Championship contestants—sport more hair than most grizzly bears. Land Gallery, 3925 N Mississippi Ave., 477-5704. Closes Feb. 13.
René Rickabaugh
Three years ago, reviewing René Rickabaugh’s show at Froelick, I called the artist’s hyper-detailed paintings of flowers and birds “cringe-worthy” works that “wouldn’t pass muster on the sale rack at Pier 1.” When viewing them, I continued, you the viewer might imagine “you’re at the worst pan-American craft fair ever.” Today, looking at works included in a new solo show at Laura Russo, I find myself really liking the stuff. What the hell happened? Has the work changed? Did the world change? Or am I going soft, senile or sappy? Heaven forbid any of the above! Call my shrink, then check out the show—it looks like a winner! Laura Russo, 805 NW 21st Ave., 226-2754. Closes Feb. 26.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
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PULLIAM GALLERY
NEWS
= 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.
ELIZABETH LEACH GALLERY
VISUAL ARTS
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
EMBER BY SEAN HEALY
CONTEMPORARY NORTHWEST ART AWARD FINALISTS
HENRY PITTOCK BY ANNA FIDLER
What would you do with $10,000? That’s a ques- struggling artist. Multi-talented mixed-media artist tion 29 artists are asking themselves after being Sean Healy would hire an assistant for his artwork named finalists in the Portland Art Museum’s or use the money to pay for his wedding next year. Contemporary Northwest Art Awards. This will be Jaq Chartier, whose pseudoscientific stain-based the second go-round for the awards, introduced in paintings are shown at Elizabeth Leach, would love 2007 by former PAM curator Jennifer Gately as an to travel to Berlin, London or Japan, “but more alternative to the longstanding Oregon Biennial. likely I’d just hoard it like a miser to buy more time This year’s finalists, chosen by Gately’s successor, in the studio.” Narrative photographer Holly Andres Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, were would buy new photography gear whittled down from a field of 241 and travel across the country with NORTHWEST nominees and will be further dis- CONTEMPORARY friends, while photorealist painter ART AWARD 2011 FINALISTS: Holly tilled into five to seven winners. Andres, Chris Antemann, John Buck, Sherrie Wolf would make a pilThose winners will be featured in Jaq Chartier, Glenn L. Clevenger, grimage to see the Prado Museum James Coupe, Tannaz Farsi, Anna a June exhibition, and one artist Fidler, Justin Gibbons, Charles Gill, in Madrid, the Rijksmuseum in will be singled out for the $10,000 John Grade, Robert Hanson, Sean Amsterdam, and others across Healy, Jerry Iverson, Arnold Kemp, Arlene Schnitzer Prize. Of the Scott Kolbo, Cynthia Lahti, Isaac Europe. Anna Fidler, known for her finalists, 16 are from Oregon, eight Layman, Lead Pencil Studio (Annie trippy mixed-media collages, wants and Daniel Mihalyo), Susie from Washington, and two apiece Han to sock the money away into a colLee, Megan Murphy, Jenene Nagy, Ryan Pierce, Michelle Ross, Heidi from Montana and Idaho. lege fund for the baby she’s expectSusan Seubert, Eric Stotik Naturally, many of the finalists Schwegler, ing in March. And while abstract and Sherrie Wolf. are daydreaming about how they painter G. Lewis Clevenger yearns would spend the cash. Jenene Nagy, to visit Argentina and Brazil, he known for her ambitious sculptural installations, says that “realistically, my conservative side tells me would love to take “a long trip for two someplace to put enough aside to cover studio expenses for a warm and sexy like Bora Bora,” although she con- year and supplement my health insurance.” cedes that if she did win the money, she’d probably Whatever their pipe dreams and practical just pay off debt and take business trips to promote realities, we wish the finalists good luck and conher art career. Arnold Kemp, whose paintings on gratulate Laing-Malcolmson on her diverse and paper made a big splash last year at PDX Contem- thoughtful selection. See this space for more inforporary, would like to buy some property, see the mation about the CNWAA as the summer grows Venice Biennale this summer, or help out a fellow nigh. RICHARD SPEER.
BREW VIEWS (the best movies to watch in theater pubs)
paGe 49
WORDS
FEB. 2-8
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RACHAEL DEWITT. 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.
THURSDAY, FEB. 3 Ida Hattemer-Higgins
Grappling with World War II history through the eyes of a modernday protagonist is a bit of a trend in fiction these days (The Reader and The Book Thief). In The History of History, Margaret Taub, an American tour guide in modern Berlin, is haunted by Nazi ghosts and their victims as she tries to recover her own memory. Powell’s on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne, 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
Sarah Oleksyk
Local graphic novelist Sarah Oleksyk’s latest book, Ivy, is a sprawling breakthrough work that establishes Oleksyk as a terribly stylish artist and topnotch writer. The former shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed her illustration career, but Oleksyk’s knack for writing painfully spot-on teenage dialogue and her patience for complex characters gives Ivy an emotional authenticity that should make her the rookie of the year as a creator in the crowded field of graphic quasimemoirs. CASEY JARMAN. Floating World Comics, 20 NW 5th Ave., Suite 101, 241-0227. 6 pm. Free.
SATURDAY, FEB. 5 “Game On” Zine Release Party
Zinesters and gamers unite to celebrate Stumptown Underground’s latest anthology, Game On! The video-game-themed literary anthology features comics, writing and illustrations from Everett Patterson, Christina “Blue” Crow, Hopskotch Sunday, and others. The release party boasts Dance Dance Revolution and Street Fighter II competitions. Winners will receive a free copy of the zine, which will be sold for $5. Ground Kontrol, 511 NW Couch St., 796-9364. 1-4 pm. Free.
Patton Oswalt Book Signing
Assumption No. 1: Showbiz memoirs generally fall into two equally despicable categories—the salacious tellall and the self-congratulatory ego booster. Assumption No. 2: The funnier a comedian is onstage, the less funny they will be in print—see Stewart, John. Conclusion: There is no way a memoir by Patton Oswalt, the bizarre, ingenious comic best known for his film appearances (Ratatouille) and the legion of idiots who routinely plagiarize his work, could be any good. My assumptions must be flawed, because Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (Simon & Schuster, 208 pages, $24) is great. Oswalt’s series of thematically connected anecdotes are anything but self-regarding. In between absurdist humor pieces—his parody of overwrought wine lists is particularly good—Oswalt recounts, without a bit of self-pity, teenage adventures working at a lousy movie theater in a lifeless D.C. suburb, the story of his mentally ill uncle, his love of bad sci-fi and misery on the road as an unknown touring comic. It’s an unexpectedly sad and perceptive examination of the making of a genius—not that self-effacing Oswalt would ever call himself such. BEN WATERHOUSE. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 2284651. 7:30 pm. Free.
MONDAY, FEB. 7 Jane McGonigal
A video game a day keeps the doctor away? Contrary to conventional wisdom, Jane McGonigal argues in her new book, Reality is Broken, that gaming could solve the world’s problems. Contrary to the popular view that gaming is
escapist entertainment, the game developer claims that some games are designed with psychology and sociology in mind to challenge and stimulate players. Maybe if we play enough of her game World Without Oil, we will know how to save the polar ice caps. Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 467-7521. 7 pm. $3 suggested cover.
The First Rule of Book Club
On a mission to combine night-
life, lit life and movies, “The First Rule of Book Club” will meet each month at Backstage Bar, chat about the month’s selected reading and head to the Bagdad for a screening of the book’s film adaptation. With PDX native Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club in one hand and a beer in the other, participants will mull over themes like anarchy and schizophrenia before watching Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter devolve on screen. McMenamins Backstage Bar, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. 7 pm. Free. Info at mischiefmayhembooks.com.
For more Words listings, visit
REVIEW
KAREN ABBOTT AMERICAN ROSE You are not going to believe this, but not everything you see in Gypsy (the musical or the movie) is strictly true. Thank the goddess of burlesque we have no less a luminary than Karen Abbott (she of the bestselling Sin in the Second City) to set the Broadway/Hollywood version of history straight. American Rose (Random House, 422 pages, $26) tells the story of iconic striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, based not on the outEvery Gypsy Rose Lee has her thorns. right lies of stage and screen but from the unimpeachable perspective of Gypsy’s sister, movie actress June Havoc, and Gypsy’s son by film director Otto Preminger, Erik. If it appears in quotes in the book, you can take it to the bank that Abbott drew it from documentary sources (all at least as credible as the tabloid press) or “interviews” (mostly with Havoc, who was pushing 95 when Abbott first met her, or Erik Preminger, who knew his mother for less than half her life). And when Abbott “occasionally” slips into the mind of her subject to divine for readers what Gypsy must have been thinking, she solemnly pinkie swears that “I do so using the most careful consideration of my research, and with the tantalizing, agonizing knowledge that there is certainly more to the story.” (Whew, for a minute there I thought she might be totally making this stuff up.) To be fair, Abbott could be forgiven if she took the odd liberty with the truth. Gypsy Rose Lee was, after all, a tissue of lies and half-truths crafted by Rose Louise Hovick, an ugly-duckling child performer on the vaudeville circuit, and her Mother of All Stage Mothers, Rose Thompson Hovick, who once pushed a hotel manager out a window (the police ruled it self-defense) and may have once fatally shot a lesbian admirer for making a pass at Gypsy in the late ’30s. On top of the usual vagaries of mother-daughter relations, so much of Gypsy’s early stage career was lifted from her younger, more conventionally talented sister June we may never know the truth. The appeal of American Rose (for readers who relish this sort of thing) lies not in Abbott’s dubious research but in the book’s clever organization and the author’s evident flair for retelling a sensational story (even if it is only a story). Instead of starting at the beginning of Gypsy’s career and perhaps losing most of her readers halfway through a bleak narrative of a vaudeville performer’s life on the road with a sociopathic mother, Abbott interweaves chapters of Gypsy’s grueling rise with chapters that trace her from the peak of her fame, starting with the World’s Fair in 1940. American Rose ultimately fails, however, because it never quite captures for 21st-century readers what made this “Dorothy Parker in a G-string,” as Abbott describes her, so compelling for 20thcentury audiences. Like Gypsy, Abbott leaves us wanting more. MATT BUCKINGHAM. GO: Karen Abbott reads from American Rose at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 226-4651. 7:30 pm Friday, Feb. 4. Free. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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DATES FEB. 2-8 HERE REVIEWS
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
A F R I C A N F I L M F E S T I VA L . O R G
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
73 Danny Boyle’s new movie is based
on the true story of Aron Ralston (James Franco), a rock climber who in 2003 got his right arm pinned beneath a boulder, was stuck in a Utah canyon for five days, and ultimately survived by amputating his own limb with a dull utility tool. However appealing or appalling that premise sounds to you, the one thing that must be said for the movie is that it is never dull. The one thing that must be said against the movie is that it is never dull. The amputation is about as harrowing as you’d expect, but it’s over reasonably quickly—though not before Boyle deploys his inside-the-arm cam, which somehow isn’t quite so upsetting as the outside-the-arm cam, or the insidethe-Nalgene-bottle-of-urine cam. There are a lot of cams. R. AARON MESH. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.. NEW And Everything Is Going Fine
80 [THREE NIGHTS ONLY] Spalding Gray sits at a table, with a glass of water and a spiral notebook, telling a story about his fraught childhood. But wait: Now he is at another table, with another glass and another notebook, telling a different story. Or maybe it is another piece of the same story. Steven Soderbergh and editor Susan Littenberg have spliced together more than a dozen of the late performer’s famed monologues, and the VHS collage is steeped in a mood of anticipatory regret—the filmmakers know, as we know, that Gray’s body will eventually be hauled out of the East River—but also colored with their determination that he be understood as more than a suicide waiting to happen. In this 89-minute condensation of 90-minute shows, Gray actually seems like nothing so much as a non-singing Loudon Wainwright III: a long-maned WASP patrician with a unique ability (and manic need) to take his worst wounds and cruelest failings and whittle them to a glistening nugget of rueful laughter. The movie shows Gray progressing toward something like hope and acceptance, until a 2001 automobile mauling robs him of both. In the movie’s most poignant moment, he briefly becomes a musical showman, dancing across a stage to Chumbawamba in a reenactment of his family’s impromptu living-room parties. Is joy more precious when it doesn’t come naturally? AARON MESH. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Friday, 9 pm Saturday and 4:45 pm Sunday, Feb. 4-6.
Another Year
77 “You know me. I’m very much a
glass-half-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 smashup 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. 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 self-respecting 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
44
needy (and exhausting) friends. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower. NEW
Beyond the Call
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] A documentary about humanitarian missions to war zones, Adrian and Roko Belic’s film spotlights Walt Ratterman, the Washougal man killed in last year’s Haitian earthquake. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 and 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 3 pm Sunday, Feb. 4-6. Adrian Belic will answer questions at some screenings.
Biutiful
25 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. 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 black-market goods and labor ring with gay Chinese gangsters. Oh, and he can talk to the souls of the dead. 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. Fox Tower.
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. So it’s a literalization of Swan Lake, yeah. But previous stagings didn’t include the Black Swan performing hallucinatory cunnilingus on the White Swan. Every one of Aronofsky’s previous works torments a hero who sacrifices him- or herself on the altar of an obsession—usually a lust for the spotlight. Portman’s travails in Black Swan—which include, but are not limited to, bulimia, erotic repression by an overweening stage mother (Barbara Hershey) and the sudden onset of webbed feet—most obviously recall Ellen Burstyn abusing diet pills in delirious preparation for a gameshow appearance in Requiem for a Dream. Aronofsky is a dom of a director, getting his jollies by brutalizing his characters. So it is a natural progression that in Black Swan he explicitly denies Portman sexual release. It’s a movie about a girl who will go crazy if she doesn’t come. Cruelty in pop directors is nothing new—Hitchcock abused his actresses, and a nasty streak fuels David Fincher—but Aronofsky delivers pummelings while exhorting us to think on higher things. He’s the Absent-Minded Sadist, and Black Swan—with its flayed skin and ominous doppelgängers—is Fight Club
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
CONT. on page 45
Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes)
MEET ME IN SENEGAL
THE CASCADE FESTIVAL OF AFRICAN FILMS EXPANDS OUR CINEMATIC HORIZONS. BY MATTHEW KORFHAGE 243-2122
Africa is not a continent terrifically well known for its cinema: The money isn’t really there, and many of its countries are constantly in violent flux. But that very instability and unfamiliarity is also precisely what makes African film vital and interesting and perhaps necessary; it provides documentation of a place changing so rapidly that yesterday is almost always foreign to today. Portland’s upcoming Cascade Festival of African Films, now in its 21st year, is the oldest African film festival in the nation, and also one of the largest. It has become a festival with terrific depth and breadth, from a well-meaning outsider documentary to locally made portraiture, from political avant-auteurism to an Algerian marriage farce (Masquerades) that seems like it was lifted straight from the B-list screwball romances of MGM, circa 1938. Consistent with its educational goals— it was founded by four instructors at Portland Community College—some of the films are more edifying than strictly entertaining, but the best of the films showing through the month of February offer both interest and import. Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes) 69 [SENEGAL] This is likely to be the most polarizing film of the festival, given that it opens with a 10-minute, super-explicit sex dance atop a prone old man, jump-cut edited in dim light. Jean-Pierre Békolo’s film is a sort of post-Godard, girl-positive sci-fi political satire in which high-class prostitutes achieve political goals by working a sort of sex magic on corrupt dignitaries. It’s a pretty grueling experience, at times, less funny than absurd and pointedly glacial, but also single-mindedly its own strange, strange beast—sort of like a politically minded African Guy Maddin flick. Moriarty Arts and Humanities Building, Room 104, PCC Cascade Campus. 1:45 pm Thursday and 7:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 10 & 12. St. Louis Blues 76 [SENEGAL] Screened with a couple other
flicks, including a beautifully Tarkovskyesque science-fiction film called Pumzi, St. Louis Blues is an amateurish musical that seems all the more sincere and affecting for being amateur—it is easy to trust people who sing about their lives out of tune, who dance out of sync in large groups. Everybody is meeting in St. Louis, Senegal, for a wrestling match, and some of them are in love. I sort of felt like I was, too; closer to a summer-stock School Daze or the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer than to the hypercalculated horrors of TV’s Glee, it left me in a wonderful mood. Moriarty Building. Noon Thursday, Feb. 17. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Friday, Feb. 18. Streetball 73 [SOUTH AFRICA] Just after the FIFA World Cup proper, Streetball depicts South Africa’s entry in the Homeless World Cup; the film follows two years’ worth of teams sent off to compete against other homeless youth around the world. Peripheral characters are occasionally shifty or overearnest, but the homeless young men themselves are at the absolute center of the film. Moriarty Building. 7:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 24. Director Demetrius Wren will attend the screening. In My Genes 88 [KENYA] Director Lupita Nyong’o seems to have an odd hold over her subjects, because they tell her everything—not in the way one speaks to a camera, nor in the coded, veiled way one speaks to true friends. I mean that they tell her everything, seemingly without reservation. In My Genes, a documentary about Kenyan albinos, is bracingly intimate. While the racial issues it depicts are more than interesting all by themselves, what emerges is a hilarious and often heartbreaking humanity. An older albino farmwoman explains that she believes the color was beaten out of her skin by her father, so that the blood will no longer come to the surface. “I have heard,” she says, upon first attempting to buy sunscreen, “about a lotion called ‘sun.’” One of the best documentaries I expect to see all year. Moriarty Building. 7:30 pm Thursday, March 3. SEE IT: The Cascade Festival of African Films runs from Friday, Feb. 4, to Saturday, March 5. Full schedule and additional information available at africanfilmfestival.org, or 971-722-6111, ext. 3630.
JAN. 2-8 REVIEW
RAGETHEMOVIE.NET
with feathers. Unfortunately for Portman, she met Darren Aronofsky at a very typical time in his life. R. AARON MESH . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes..
SCREEN
Blue Valentine
96 In Blue Valentine’s most iconic
sequence, a love-struck Ryan Gosling positions Michelle Williams underneath a heart-shaped wreath outside a florist shop and croons the Mills Brothers’ “You Always Hurt the One You Love” while plucking a ukulele as she tap dances. It’s their first date. You see the longing, curiosity and affection in their eyes. You want it to last forever. You wish you hadn’t seen the hour that preceded it. You know you’ll soon return to the claustrophobic sex hotel where Gosling’s Dean is trying to re-spark his marriage to Williams’ Cindy. You, and they, know their love is all but dead. 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. Seldom has a film had such an overwhelming sense of reality—aided by a searing soundtrack by Grizzly Bear, and by Cianfrance’s choice to film early encounters with vibrancy and the hotel scenes with frigidity and claustrophobia. It shows us how sometimes the things we love become our own Achilles’ heels, that sweetness can ultimately make the bitter sting even more. From the opening sequence to the beautifully rendered closing-credits montage, it clamps on the heart like an industrial vise, and keeps squeezing long after viewing. It’s a triumph that stings to the core. R. AP KRYZA . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 3-D
SPLATTER MATTERS: M.L. Maltz in Rage.
RAGE VS. LANCE BANGS Portland filmmaking may induce vomiting.
Rage 45 [ONE NIGHT ONLY] With eye-popping cinematography and a searing score, Rage ranks among the most richly produced local films in recent memory, but also among the most disappointing. Early on, director Christopher R. Witherspoon revs up the Hitchcockian paranoia as a down-on-his luck author (do they make them any other way?), played by Rick Crawford, is pursued by a faceless biker presumed to be the vengeful boyfriend of the French minx he’s diddling behind his sweet wife’s back. During road chases and nightmare interludes in catacomb-like garages, Witherspoon shows a flair for tension. Then, shifting on a dime, the film transforms into a slasher flick teetering on the brink of torture porn, and Rage loses its footing to the director’s urges to make things almost unbearably icky. Subtlety is tossed out the window in favor of chainsaw murders, a sadistically prolonged sexual assault and arterial blood sprays that compromise an otherwise slick exercise in dread. By the time the final twist comes completely out of the blue, it’s easier to mourn the death of the film’s minimalist tension than the fates of its characters. AP KRYZA. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Thursday, Feb. 3. LANCEBANGS.COM
20 The third Walden Media attempt at a C.S. Lewis epic (get ready for Shadowlands: 3-D!) is not quite so soul-smothering as the second, but it feels less like a movie than a velvet painting, or one of those Magic Eye posters you find in malls. PG. AARON MESH . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
Jaguar
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 . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
The Dilemma
BESTIES: Fred Armisen (left) and Lance Bangs.
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, and ends up saying nothing much about the nature of male friendship, offering a resolution that amounts to “punch it out, bitch.” Then everyone gets their Disney ending. Except for the cheating whore, of course. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
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.
An Evening With Deborah Stratman NEW
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] The Chicago filmmaker brings some wild-sounding work,
CONT. on page 46
Laughter in the Breeze 1990-2010: A Selection of Films by Lance Bangs 70 [ONE NIGHT ONLY] Lance Bangs is most recognizable to a certain audience (here I am thinking of me, and possibly you) as the first cinematographer to vomit into a three-dimensional movie camera—repeatedly, throughout the filming of Jackass 3-D. This aspect of his career will probably be represented by some clip during the evening’s retrospective, though you should expect more of Bangs’ contributions as a music-video DP for now-iconic work from Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. The Portlander’s own directorial output tends toward the tangible and DIY (Look! It’s the Shins, screenprinting!), with an unmistakable weakness for small, cute things. (A short doc about the children peopling the set of Where the Wild Things Are is redeemed by the revelation, so hopeful for future generations, that Catherine Keener has a daughter who looks like a tiny Catherine Keener, with braces.) At its best, Bangs’ work is a catalog of every motor scooter and trampoline that has constituted a certain type of skateboard masculinity for the past two decades. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Friday, Feb. 4.
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Thanks, John Miller Executive Director HOST Development, Inc. 503.331.1752 www.hostdevelopment.com Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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®
chEap Eats 2011
2
SCREEN
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS
BEST ACTOR • Javier Bardem BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
“A
MODERN MASTERPIECE .” -Matt Holzman, NPR
“ BRAVO
BARDEM!
Javier Bardem gives a remarkable, Oscar -worthy performance.” ®
-Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
“Bardem gives a performance of staggering depth,
UNQUESTIONABLY ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST.” -Betsy Sharkey, LOS ANGELES TIMES
WINNER BEST ACTOR JAVIER BARDEM CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
Portland’s best food on a budget. Look for it March 9th biutiful-themovie.com MOBILE USERS: For Showtimes - Text BIUTIFUL With Your ZIP CODE To 43KIX (43549)
Regal Cinemas FOX TOWER STADIUM 10 Portland 800/FANDANGO 327#
SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT CHECK THEATRE DIRECTORY OR CALL FOR SOUND INFORMATION NO PASSES OR DISCOUNT COUPONS ACCEPTED AND SHOWTIMES
Area Codes: (360), (503), (530), (541), (803), (971)
Portland Willamette Wk • Thu 2/3 • 1x7’’
JobID#: 483046 Name: 0203_Biu_Will.pdf #100 1/31/11 5:49 PM pt
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JAN. 2-8
Ip Man 2
76 Anyone looking for a realis-
AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE including one movie about comets and another about gun control “and the possibility of personal transcendence.” NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Sunday, Feb. 6. NEW
The Fighter
89 Mark Wahlberg plays boxer
Micky Ward as intriguingly passive and speechless—though it’s hard to imagine any man getting a word in around his bevy of chain-smoking sisters and an exploitativemanager mother played by Melissa Leo. (As his girlfriend, Amy Adams goes downmarket and fierce—and somehow manages to emerge even more adorable.) But the movie belongs to Bale: I had come to suspect he could no longer attempt any role without the Batman scowl as a crutch, but as The Fighter’s drug-addict older sibling, he hops like a wallaby, breaks into off-key crooning, and generally suggests Anthony Perkins on crack. R. AARON MESH. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes..
Forks Over Knives
66 [ONE WEEK ONLY] The
Western diet makes us fat and sick. And pills make things worse. That’s the basic message of this utilitarian documentary. But we can combat or even reverse the effects of many of the diseases that kill us most often, from cancer to diabetes, by eating our colorful veggies and whole grains and steering clear of meat, dairy and processed grub. It’s an important concept, no doubt, but a common-sense one that has already been shoved down our throats by everybody from Michael Pollan to Jamie Oliver. Ultimately, the doc is a mixed bag: It’s great to stress that we can combat horrific diseases by simply heading to the salad bar. On the other hand? Mmmmm…cheeseburgers. KELLY CLARKE. Fox Tower. Fox Tower.
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. The look on Rogen’s face throughout is that of a man who can’t fully believe he’s starring in a real action picture. This is pedestrian filmmaking—but it is a cheekily jaywalking pedestrian. PG-13. AARON MESH. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
page 53 46
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
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. . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes..
Hood to Coast
55 While Oregon’s 197-mile Hood
to Coast Relay race is run every year, this is the only wide-release documentary anybody is likely to make about it, and so contributing to the poignant mood is some regret that the movie isn’t a little better. German TV producer Christoph Baaden has brought his best HD cameramen (and apparently some helicopters) to chronicle the descent from Mount Hood to Seaside; the result is some fluidly shot and edited footage that is going to look very nice in a national park visitor’s center someday. Baaden tracks stories from four teams, including one from Laika (Lucky Lab beer is quaffed; friendly resentment toward Nike is voiced) and another group running in memory of a fallen son and husband—this latter arc is the most affecting and revealing, a reminder that physical strain can become a conduit for catharsis. But Hood to Coast isn’t really structured as a dramatic vehicle so much as an inspirational sporting record; the late Bud Greenspan used to do this sort of thing much better, and in 20-minute segments. No need for a marathon. . AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
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 (Ewan McGregor). R. Living Room Theaters.
The Illusionist
78 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. As a girl loses her faith in rabbits pulled out of hats, her faith in human kindness blossoms, and so does ours. PG. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Cinema 21, City Center.
tic 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. 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 knife-wielding thugs, and an eyepopper 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. Hollywood Theatre.
73
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, does a bang-up job of telling stuttering George VI (Colin Firth) that it’s not his fault he is the King of England. The King’s Speech is the sort of awards-season tinsel that opens with a speaking engagement going mortifyingly awry—the youngest son of the House of Windsor, known to his few intimates as Bertie, cannot make it through a sentence without breaking down in heaving gulps—and ends with a heart-swelling proclamation of war. It is presented by the Weinstein Company, which means the movie and its royal dramatic society will be shoved down our throats for the rest of the winter. Yet that is not really the picture’s fault, is it? As Bertie’s tongue loosened, I felt much of my hostility melting away. The film is directed by Tom Hooper, who is just about peerless at period pieces: The Damned United was spellbinding even if you didn’t care about soccer, and The King’s Speech is compelling even if you don’t give a toss about monarchs. “What are friends for?” Lionel asks Bertie. “I wouldn’t know,” says the lonesome heir. C’mon, how are you going to resist that sort of thing?. R. AARON MESH. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
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.
Lance Bangs Presents A Few of My Favorite Things
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, BENEFIT] Golly,
JAN. 2-8
SCREEN
the Portland filmmaker (and Jackass cameraman) has a lot of favorite things: Along with his short films, he comes to this Film Action Oregon fundraiser bearing four L.A. standup comedians, several art installations, two storytellers and Carrie Brownstein spinning vinyl. Holocene. 8 pm Thursday, Feb. 3. $10.
CORDIALLY INVITE YOU AND A GUEST TO A SPECIAL ADVANCE SCREENING
Little Fockers
13 All this installment has going for
it is a few brief minutes of Jessica Alba in her underwear. Otherwise, it’s a lazily written cash grab that offers at least one embarrassing moment for everyone involved: Alba gets drunk, strips down and swandives into a mud pit; Laura Dern pulls a kid’s finger and he farts; Owen Wilson pole-dances. 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 . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes..
Marwencol
78 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. AARON MESH . Living Room Theaters.
The Mechanic
70 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 Statham-flavored popcorn. R. AP KRYZA . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
NEW Mel Blanc Project Screening Series
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Film archivists Denis Nyback and Anne Richardson present “Supressed Mel Blanc, or Bad Bugs Bunny,” a presentation about the censored work of the Oregon-born voice actor best known as Porky Pig. The Waypost, 3120 N Williams Ave. 7 pm Tuesday, Feb. 8. $6 suggested donation.
No Strings Attached
70 In what is basically a full-length
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
WILD TARGET 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. For the first time in recent memory, the luminous Portman plays a human being I would want to encounter. 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 contrarian to utter, but I’ll just go ahead and say it: It’s better than Black Swan. R. AARON MESH . Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes. NEW
Portlandia, Episode 3
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, TV] Aimee Mann guest-stars on Carrie Brownstein’s sketch satire of everything you value. Mission Theater. 10:30 pm Friday, Feb. 4. Preceded by live music from the Dirty Mittens at 8:30. 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. Like Christian Bale in The Fighter, Nicole Kidman is perfectly cast in a role that transcends a habit of on-screen masochism. As Becca, she plays a proud middleclass mother, whose son was killed in an accident, and who cannot let go of her pride. Eckhart plays her husband, Howie, who cannot let go of their son. Becca and Howie raise their voices only once, as they discover this conflict. Director John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus) and his cinematographer find haunting sterility in cold light, pretty houses, and anguished faces. You’d never know you’re watching a stage play by David Lindsay-Abaire, though you are. It’s American Bergman, the kind of movie Woody Allen likes to think he makes. Unlike Allen, Rabbit Hole accepts the modern hunger for faith, in the form of group therapy, home movies, and the art project that gives the film its title. . PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Regal Fox Tower.
The Rite
Anthony Hopkins beats the devil. Or doesn’t, maybe: WW missed the screening. PG-13. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes. NEW
The Roommate
Single White Female: The College Years. Not screened for critics. PG13. Multiple locations. Visit wweek. com for showtimes. NEW
Sanctum 3-D
James Cameron goes cave-div-
ing. Spoiler warning: There are no telepathic dragons. Not screened for critics by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. R. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
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. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes. NEW Shaolin Cinema: Hong Kong Films of the Late 1970s and Early ’80s
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Grindhouse guru Dan Halsted keeps the fu kunging with 1983’s Bastard Swordsman (9 pm Friday, Feb. 4) and 1978’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (7 pm Saturday, Feb. 5), the breakthrough picture for a kid named Jackie Chan. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. NEW
Shepherds of Helmand
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary about Oregon National Guardsmen training the Afghan militia. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Thursday, Feb. 3.
The Social Network
94 Say what you will about Aaron Sorkin, who seemingly hits the “like” button on himself daily, but his script recognizes that rage is our culture’s prevailing mood. Even the haves feel themselves to be havenots. Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
For a chance to win a pass for you and a guest, email us at JWMovieClub@gmail.com ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY JANUARY 28
JUST GO WITH IT is rated PG-13 for frequent crude and sexual content, partial nudity, brief drug references and language. Seats are first-come, first-served basis. One pass per person. Each pass admits two. No phone calls. W hile supplies last. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Employees of all promotional partners and their agencies are not eligible.
IN THEATRES FEBRUARY 11
HEADOUT
Somewhere
87 OK, this is where I explain what the movie is ostensibly about and you gag a little bit, because 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—Belushi died there, Lindsay Lohan lived there, many beautiful people have enjoyed cocaine there—while promoting his new film and sleepwalking through what appears to be a charmed life. He drinks, he smokes, he drives his Ferrari in circles, he conks out with his tongue inside a gorgeous woman. 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 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. AARON MESH . Fox Tower.
Tangled
60 Alan Menken has been brought back by Disney to pen the songs,
CONT. on page 48
page 21 Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
47
mett
her
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE ®
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE “A SENSE OF HAVING WATCHED GENUINE MAGIC.”
SCREEN
JAN. 2-8 continent, and the poignancy of human values (like forgiveness, of all things) struggling to escape its grasp. . PG-13. AARON MESH. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
–Joe Morgenstern, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
NEW
THE NEW FILM BY SYLVAIN CHOMET FROM AN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY JACQUES TATI
NOW PLAYING!
CINEMA 21 THEATRE 616 NW 21ST Avenue, Portland (503) 223-4515
STARTS FRIDAY
REGAL CITY CENTER 12 801 C Street, Vancouver (800) FANDANGO #432
VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.THEILLUSIONISTMOVIE.COM
3.825" X 2"
PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK
Artist: (circle one:) Jay Trevor Freelance 2 Staci
Steve
Freelance 3
AE: (circle one:) Angela Maria Josh Tim
McCool
WED 2/2 SANCTUM 3-D and while none of his compositions
ART APPROVED is as catchy as his collaborations with Alan Sherman on The Little AE APPROVED Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast, he has apparently instructed the CLIENT APPROVED directors, Nathan Greno and Byron
Deadline:
tion #:
Howard, what hits to beat. PG. AARON MESH. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
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. His flat performance tanks a film banking its success completely on the natural fireworks that should exist between Depp and co-star Angelina Jolie. Critics have justifiably bemoaned the shocking lack of chemistry between them, blaming a tepid script that aspires to be a witty romantic thriller in the mold of To Catch a Thief and falls well short. But there is enough there for the actors to salvage if they really wanted to. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
Tron: Legacy
wweek.com
73 Video games have come a long way since Tron hit screens in 1982, and Tron: Legacy has evolved with them. It’s eye-poppingly gorgeous, ludicrous and swollen with enough pure adrenaline to make Raoul Duke trip balls for decades. Legacy finds computer wunderkind Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) sucked into a digitized world of violent Ultimate Frisbee and glow sticks to retrieve his long-lost father, Kevin (Jeff Bridges). The fallen Apollo of the neon realm, Kevin’s now hiding from the maniacally dictatorial Clu (Bridges again, age digitally reduced 30 years to resemble Patrick Swayze by way of The Polar Express). They must escape with the world’s hottest computer program (Olivia Wilde) in order to save the Tron world and our own. Aesthetically, Tron is a wonder, maybe the best use of 3-D to date. Set to a pulsing Daft Punk score, action scenes sear the retina, from gladiatorial battles to a kung-fu melee in a Eurotrash bar and the requisite Light Cycle throwdown. Neon dominates the film, with glowing lights augmenting women’s curves and men’s muscles with ample ooh-la-la and phosphorescence permeating each shot. With so much style, who gives a shit about substance? Director Joseph Kosinski, for one. The film is packed with enough broody exposition and religious allegory to give both Wachowskis migraines. Too much time is spent on a story that should be relegated to secondplayer status. Tron: Legacy misses only one thing that gives video games endless replay value: When Call of Duty gets dull, at least you can press a button to skip the plot and jump right to blowing shit up. PG. AP KRYZA. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
True Grit
90 The Coen Brothers’ new ren-
48
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
Wild Target
32 Jonathan Lynn, director of
WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM
dering of Charles Portis’ novel of Arkansas frontier retribution is remarkable for its lack of perversity—one character voices a slightly unseemly interest in the 14-yearold heroine, and another is graphically relieved of some fingers but, by Coen standards, everybody behaves with relative civility. But it maintains something sorrowful in the story of young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfield), who seeks retribution for her dead father and talks like Laura Ingalls Wilder with a law degree. Jeff Bridges’ drunken lawman is essentially a comic turn, a sharpshooting grandpa who just wants to tell campfire stories, and it leaves the movie’s emotions to Steinfeld and Matt Damon, whose Texas Ranger is painfully aware of his own ridiculousness, and is all the more hurt that everyone else notices it too. The last time True Grit was made into a film was in 1969, as an Oscar vehicle for John Wayne—an inexplicably chipper affair, almost a children’s movie. Glen Campbell played the Ranger role, and sang a gooey title ballad with the lyric, “One day, little girl, the sadness will leave your face.” The Coens’ picture flatly contradicts that prediction, and its music is Carter Burwell’s elegiac piano settings of the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” In the movie’s culmination, Mattie is herself cradled in great arms, and the shot recalls Wayne at the end of another movie, The Searchers, where his mercy only compensates so much. To appreciate the bleak but not hopeless world the Coens are mapping, you have to recognize both how Mattie is saved, and how much she has lost. . PG-13. AARON MESH. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes.
The Way Back
92 It is fitting that Peter Weir’s
The Way Back, a movie about a 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. Instead, there are urkas: the ornately tattooed, finger-removing criminals that effectively ran the Soviet labor camps. In a counterintuitive casting coup, one of the Russian thugs is played by Colin Ferrell; he is authentically bestial, a pack dog without a master. (He latches onto the hero, played by Jim Sturgess, for his navigational skills: “You earn my respect with your sticks and pine cones.”) Weir, whose sensitivity to the physical has never been better, fills the screen with foggy forests and massive sand dunes—this is filmmaking that David Lean or John Ford would recognize, but the epic style is used to convey the vast scope of totalitarianism across a
Nuns on the Run, The Distinguished Gentleman, Sgt. Bilko, Trial and Error and The Fighting Temptations, has clearly cornered the market on PG-13 mediocrities aimed at pasteeating children just sprouting pubic hair and disturbed adults who think Father of the Bride was Steve Martin’s shining moment, and I don’t think it’s by accident: Something tells me this dude invested all of his Clue money in the company that makes signs for $1 DVD bins. Either that or British people just don’t know what is funny, which is entirely possible. Whatever Lynn’s motivation or congenital defect, he is back after a seven-year hiatus with Wild Target, yet another lukewarm comedy destined to serve as soporific white noise in cheap hotel rooms and expensive psych wards. Bill Nighy stars as priggish assassin Victor Maynard, who can’t bring himself to off current target Rose (Emily Blunt, ravishing as ever), a free spirit with sticky fingers and joie de vivre up the yin-yang who crossed the wrong people and now must hide out with her would-be assassin until whoever is watching this movie at whatever low point in their lives finally passes out and dreams about frenching Emily Blunt beneath a waterfall. PG-13. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre.
Yogi Bear 3-D
32 Torture is a relative term. I’ve not been waterboarded or stripped naked and thrown in a pyramid of other naked men. Still, watching Yogi Bear was a humiliating experience, from sliding a pair of 3-D glasses awkwardly on top of my existing glasses to seeing Yogi—one of my closest childhood friends—stripped of his stylized ’50s dignity and forced to repeat a single catchphrase ad nauseam: “I’m smarter than the average bear!” 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. There’s no angular Hanna-Barbera design aesthetic, no Huckleberry Hound cameo and no endless loop of repeating background scenery during chase scenes. Just bad casting, predictable plot twists and a couple of fart jokes. PG. CASEY JARMAN. Multiple locations. Visit wweek.com for showtimes..
NEW 39
Zenith
[ONE WEEK ONLY] Clearly indebted to the millennial surge of Brad Pitt Dystopia (Twelve Monkeys, Fight Club) and possibly a skimming of Huxley, director Vladan Nikolic’s low-budget future-shock chiller Zenith shuffles through time frames like a deck of steampunkthemed playing cards. The jolting shifts between present day and 2044, along with some bitterly meta narration, provide a thin disguise for acting so unprofessional it recalls a Billy Graham evangelical film. (I seriously thought Zenith, officially directed by “Anonymous,” might be a cover for some religious propaganda. But then there was a graphic sex scene.) So it’s amateurish and derivative, but at least not boring, and it achieves some of its intended effects: A combination of strong location scouting and claustrophobic camerawork left me extremely anxious to get out of these damn hallways. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm FridayThursday, Feb. 4-10.
MOVIES
BREWVIEWS - 02:20 - 05:00 - 07:30 - 09:50. Thu 12:00 - 02:20 - 05:00 - 07:30 - 09:50. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST Tue 01:40 - 08:40. Wed 01:40 - 08:40. Thu 01:40 - 08:40. THE SOCIAL NETWORK Tue 11:40 - 01:50 - 04:20 07:00 - 09:25. Wed 11:40 - 01:50 - 04:20 - 07:00 - 09:25. Thu 11:40 - 01:50 - 04:20 - 07:00 - 09:25. THE TEMPEST Tue 02:10 07:15. Wed 02:10 - 07:15. Thu 02:10.
P G .6
Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St. 503-249-7474 ALL GOOD THINGS Thu 07:55. DUE DATE Wed 09:30. Thu 10:00.
BED, BATH & BEYOND! FUCK YEAH!: Beer and Movie opens a threemonth revival showcase at the Laurelhurst with Team America: World Police, which is only 7 years old, but already looks like a relic from an obsolete political era. Maybe a better era. Sure, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s puppetry-of-the-penis-joke picture tries to have it both ways, filleting bumpkin jingoism (nobody does a better faux-Toby Keith) and lefty-celeb grandstanding. But it climaxes, shall we say, with a sincere soliloquy—the “pussies, dicks and assholes” speech—that argues for a principled American interventionism that has since been cynically dismissed: We know our leaders didn’t really believe in those ideals, so why should we be any more gullible? Anyway, the movie’s filthy innocence is hard to fathom now. Also, it has a retarded Matt Damon menaced by house cats. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst. Best paired with: Ninkasi Total Domination IPA. Also showing: How Do You Know (Bagdad, Kennedy School, Mission, St. Johns). Hollywood Theatre
Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St. 503-252-0500 BURLESQUE Tue 04:45. Wed 04:45. Thu 04:45. DUE DATE Tue 10:00. Wed 10:00. Thu 10:00. FOUR LIONS Tue 09:35. Wed 09:35. Thu 09:35. MEGAMIND Tue 04:35. Wed 04:35. Thu 04:35. MORNING GLORY Tue 07:15. Wed 07:15. Thu 07:15. RED Tue 06:45 09:15. Wed 06:45 - 09:15. Thu 06:45 - 09:15. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST Tue 07:00. Wed 07:00. Thu 07:00.
Avalon Theatre
3451 SE Belmont St. 503-238-1617 BURLESQUE Tue 04:20 - 08:05. Wed 04:20 08:05. Thu 04:20 - 08:05. DUE DATE Tue 09:35. Wed 09:35. Thu 09:35. LIFE AS WE KNOW IT Tue 01:45 - 07:30. Wed 01:45 - 07:30. Thu 01:45 - 07:30. MEGAMIND Tue 12:05 - 05:45. Wed 12:05 05:45. Thu 12:05 - 05:45. MORNING GLORY Tue 03:50. Wed 03:50. Thu 03:50.
Bagdad Theater
3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 503-249-7474 BURLESQUE Tue 06:00. Thu 06:00. DUE DATE Tue 08:45. Wed 08:45. Thu 08:45.
Cinema 21
616 NW 21st Ave. 503-223-4515 THE ILLUSIONIST Tue 01:00 - 03:00 - 05:00 - 07:00 08:45. Wed 01:00 - 03:00 - 05:00 - 07:00 - 08:45. Thu 01:00 - 03:00 - 05:00 - 07:00 - 08:45.
CineMagic Theatre
2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 503-231-7919 BLACK SWAN Tue 05:30 07:40 - 09:50. Wed 05:30 - 07:40 - 09:50. Thu 05:30 - 07:40 - 09:50.
Cinetopia
11700 SE 7th St. 877-608-2800 BLACK SWAN Tue 12:20 - 03:00 - 06:00 - 09:00. Wed 12:20 - 03:00 - 06:00 - 09:00. Thu 12:20 - 03:00 - 06:00 - 09:00. NO STRINGS ATTACHED Tue 01:00 - 04:00 - 07:00 10:00. Wed 01:00 - 04:00 - 07:00 - 10:00. Thu 01:00 - 04:00 - 07:00 - 10:00. THE KING’S SPEECH Tue 12:30 - 03:20 - 06:20 09:15. Wed 12:30 - 03:20 - 06:20 - 09:15. Thu 12:30 - 03:20 - 06:20 - 09:15. THE MECHANIC Tue 12:10 - 02:45 - 05:15 - 07:50 10:30. Wed 12:10 - 02:45 - 05:15 - 07:50 - 10:30. Thu 12:10 - 02:45 - 05:15 - 07:50 - 10:30. TRON: LEGACY 3D Tue 12:50 04:00 - 07:00 - 09:55. Wed 12:50 - 04:00 - 07:00 - 09:55. Thu 12:50 - 04:00 - 07:00 - 09:55. TRUE GRIT Tue 12:00 - 02:40 - 05:20 - 08:00 - 10:40. Wed 12:00 - 02:40 - 05:20 - 08:00 10:40. Thu 12:00 - 02:40 05:20 - 08:00 - 10:40.
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St. 503-238-8899 REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA Fri 11:30.
Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10
846 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97205 Biutiful Fri-Tue 12:50, 4:00, 7:00, 10:00 Forks Over Knives Fri-Tue 12:10, 2:40, 5:00, 7:20, 9:40 Another Year Fri-Tue 12:30, 4:10, 6:50, 9:30 Blue Valentine Fri-Tue 11:45, 2:15, 4:45, 7:15, 9:50 Somewhere Fri-Tue 12:00, 2:30, 4:40, 7:40, 10:05 Rabbit Hole Fri-Tue 12:15, 2:45, 5:05, 7:25, 9:35 Black Swan Fri-Tue 11:55, 2:25, 4:50, 7:35, 9:55 The King’s Speech Fri-Tue 11:50, 12:40, 2:20, 4:05, 4:55, 6:45, 7:30, 9:25, 10:00 127 Hours 12:05, 2:10, 4:30, 7:10, 9:45
4122 NE Sandy Blvd. 503-281-4215 CASINO JACK Tue 09:00. Wed 09:00. Thu 09:00. INSPECTOR BELLAMY Tue 07:00. Wed 07:00. Thu 07:00. IP MAN 2 Tue 07:20 - 09:30. Wed 07:20 - 09:30. Thu 07:20 - 09:30. MY DOG TULIP Tue 07:10. Wed 07:10. Thu 07:10. THE SOCIAL NETWORK Tue 09:15. Wed 09:15. Thu 09:15.
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. 503-249-7474 BURLESQUE Tue 09:35. Wed 09:35. Thu 09:35. DUE DATE Tue 07:30. Wed 07:30. Thu 07:30. WAITING FOR SUPERMAN Tue 02:30. Wed 02:30. Thu 02:30.
Lake Twin Cinema
106 N State St. 503-635-5956 BLACK SWAN Tue 05:00 07:10. Wed 05:00 - 07:10. Thu 05:00 - 07:10. THE KING’S SPEECH Tue 05:20 07:40. Wed 05:20 - 07:40. Thu 05:20 - 07:40.
Laurelhurst Theatre
2735 E Burnside St. 503-232-5511 DUE DATE Tue 09:20. Wed 09:20. Thu 09:20. FOUR LIONS Tue 07:00. Wed 07:00. Thu 07:00. RESTREPO Tue 07:30. Wed 07:30. Thu 07:30. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST Tue 09:00. Wed 09:00. Thu 09:00. THE TOWN Tue 06:45. Wed 06:45. Thu 06:45.
Living Room Theaters
341 SW 10th Ave. 971-222-2010 ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE Tue 04:30 - 09:30. Wed 04:30 - 09:30. I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS Tue 12:10 - 02:40 - 06:50. Wed 12:10 - 02:40 - 06:50. Thu 12:10 - 02:40 - 06:50. KINGS OF PASTRY Tue 11:50 - 04:40 - 06:40. Wed 11:50 - 04:40 - 06:40. Thu 11:50 - 04:40 - 06:40. MARWENCOL Tue 04:50 09:00. Wed 04:50 - 09:00. Thu 04:50 - 09:00. NO STRINGS ATTACHED Tue 12:00 - 02:20 - 05:00 07:30 - 09:50. Wed 12:00
Pioneer Place Stadium 6
340 SW Morrison St. 800-326-3264 SANCTUM 3D Fri 12:50 - 04:25 - 07:20 - 10:05. Sat 12:50 - 04:25 - 07:20 - 10:05. Sun 12:50 - 04:25 - 07:20 - 10:05. THE FIGHTER Tue 01:15 - 04:30 - 07:30 - 10:20. Wed 01:15 - 04:30 - 07:30 - 10:20. Thu 01:15 - 04:30 - 07:30 - 10:20. THE MECHANIC Tue 01:20 - 04:15 - 07:40 - 10:10. Wed 01:20 - 04:15 - 07:40 - 10:10. Thu 01:20 - 04:15 - 07:40 - 10:10. TRON: LEGACY 3D Tue 12:50 - 04:25 - 07:20 10:05. Wed 04:25 - 07:20 - 10:05. Thu 12:50 - 04:25 - 07:20 - 10:05. TRUE GRIT Tue 01:00 - 04:00 - 07:00 - 10:00. Wed 01:00 - 04:00 - 07:00 - 10:00. Thu 01:00 - 04:00 - 07:00 - 10:00.
Regal Broadway Metro 4 Theatres
1000 SW Broadway 800-326-3264 INSIDE JOB Tue 02:15 - 04:45 - 07:15. Wed 02:15 - 04:45 - 07:15. Thu 02:15 - 04:45 - 07:15. THE DILEMMA Tue 01:45 - 04:30 - 07:30. Wed 01:45 - 04:30 - 07:30. Thu 01:45 - 04:30 - 07:30. THE TOURIST Tue 02:30 05:15 - 07:45. Wed 02:30 - 05:15 - 07:45. Thu 02:30 - 05:15 - 07:45. THE WAY BACK Tue 02:00 - 05:00 08:00. Wed 02:00 - 05:00 - 08:00. Thu 02:00 - 05:00 - 08:00.
Regal Hilltop 9 Cinema
325 Beavercreek Road 800-326-3264 BLACK SWAN Tue 01:30 - 04:40 - 07:35 - 10:00. Wed 01:30 - 04:40 07:35 - 10:00. Thu 01:30 - 04:40 - 07:35 - 10:00. NO STRINGS ATTACHED Tue 01:35 - 04:15 - 07:15 09:40. Wed 01:35 - 04:15 - 07:15 - 09:40. Thu 01:35 - 04:15 - 07:15 - 09:40. THE DILEMMA Tue 01:25 - 04:25 - 07:05 - 09:45. Wed 01:25 - 04:25 - 07:05 - 09:45. Thu 01:25 - 04:25 - 07:05 09:45. THE KING’S SPEECH Tue 01:05 - 04:00 - 06:45 - 09:35. Wed 01:05 - 04:00 - 06:45 - 09:35. Thu 01:05 - 04:00 - 06:45 - 09:35. THE MECHANIC Tue 01:40 - 04:35 - 07:00 - 09:25. Wed 01:40 - 04:35 - 07:00 - 09:25. Thu 01:40 - 04:35 - 07:00 - 09:25. TRON: LEGACY 3D Tue 01:00 04:00 - 06:55 - 09:40. Wed 01:00 - 04:00 - 06:55 - 09:40. Thu 01:00 - 04:00 - 06:55 - 09:40. TRUE GRIT Tue 01:10 - 04:05 - 06:50 - 09:20. Wed 01:10 - 04:05 - 06:50 - 09:20. Thu 01:10 04:05 - 06:50 - 09:20. SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION
SCREEN GEMS PRESENTS A VERTIGO ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTION “THE ROOMMATE” ALY MICHALKA AND BILLY ZANE SUPERVISIONMUSICBY MICHAEL FRIEDMAN MUSICBY JOHN FRIZZELL DANNEEL HARRIS FRANCES FISHER PRODUCED EXECUTIVE WRITTEN BY DOUG DAVISON AND ROY LEE PRODUCERS BEAU MARKS SONNY MALLHI BY SONNY MALLHI DIRECTED BY CHRISTIAN E. CHRISTIANSEN
STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4
CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 2, 2011 wweek.com
49
2 COL. (3.825") X 10" = 20" WED 2/3 PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK