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WWEEK.COM
VOL 37/16 02.23.2011
NEWS TWO POWERFUL FAMILIES’ SITE FIGHT. FOOD & DRINK GIVE GREENS A CHANCE. MOVIES FRENCH ELVIS BLOWS UP. P. 22
P. 49
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
STRANGE
WU WHY DID CO N THINK STAFFGRESSMAN DAVID WU TO SHUT DO ERS “THREATENED WN HIS CAM PAIGN”? BY BETH SLOV IC | PAGE 13
P.7
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2
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
CONTENT
ROY’S RETURN: Wondering if the comeback of a three-time All-Star is a good thing? Us too. Page 10.
NEWS
4
FOOD & DRINK
22
LEAD STORY
13
MUSIC
27
CULTURE
20
MOVIES
45
HEADOUT
21
CLASSIFIEDS
51
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INBOX POST-SCRIPT
Your recent cover photo and headline on Sam Adams [“Sum of Sam,” WW, Feb. 16, 2011] made me wonder if I was reading WW or The National Enquirer. While the substance of the article was informative and professional on both sides, the marketing of the piece was strictly geared toward sensational innuendo and mocking criticism. Sam certainly has his personal problems— like we all do—but I found your presentation of the interview to be disturbingly Palinesque in its desire to discredit the man before I even turned the page. I know you need to sell your paper, but this is a sad example of how low media will go to appeal to readers. Are we really that pathetic? Or is it just you? David Langton Southwest Bertha Boulevard
WWEEK.COM READERS COMMENT ON “DOCUMENTS SHOW CONGRESSMAN DAVID WU’S STAFF ‘THREATENED TO SHUT DOWN HIS CAMPAIGN,’” FEB. 18, 2011 Ed. note: See page 13 for updates to this story. “Do you think it’s possible he’s a closeted furry fighting to come out?” —Purrgatory
Now open every day-- Mondays, too! 4
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
Ask…any of his staffers what they really think of him and then tell me what this says about his district re-electing him so many times. WW, thanks for telling everyone what a fool this man is once he is in place to vote for two more years. —Constituent “I recently ran into the Congressman at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters and my sincere hope is that Wu is getting the help he obviously needs in order to make sure that those he was elected to represent are well served.” —Rudy Soto “If there is more to the charges that his behavior has been unstable and erratic, I would like to see that evidence. A few goofy pictures with his kids and some angry outbursts sound like small potatoes compared to the behavior of some other Congressional leaders. (Did he do anything indecent? Is he corrupt? Or is he just too silly for his staff? Some Congressmen have been known for their antics. Why is he being singled out?) If there are more serious events or if stress has taken its toll, then Wu and his staff need to address this appropriately and not throw tantrums. Jumping ship is not a good response. In any case, Wu would be wise to adopt a more sedate demeanor and get on with his job. —EC
“Congressman Wu has been regarded as a complete joke in Washington by his Democratic colleagues for many years. He was laughed out of Leader Pelosi’s office for asking to chair a committee two years ago despite his seniority.
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
We all behave erratically once in a while. Whether it’s sending your ex-girlfriend 50 text messages in an hour or building a two-way radio to talk to God, sometimes you have to do a little fast talking to explain your way out of a jam. So this week, in honor of the 75th Dr. Know column, we’re having an explanation contest. Can you think on your feet? Prove it, in…The Great “Explain David Wu” Sweepstakes!
It looks like you just need to explain three things:
You report to your job as a janitor in a Congressional office building to find the place strangely deserted. A harried-looking man approaches you. “Congratulations,” he says, and pins a large badge on your coverall that reads “Press Secretary.” Handing you a sheaf of news clippings, the man grabs a suitcase and heads for the delivery entrance. “The press conference starts here in 15 minutes,” the round-faced man calls over his shoulder. “Good luck!” Looking over the documents, you realize that your liberal arts degree may come in handy after all.
1) Why did much of the Congressman’s staff quit en masse immediately after the election? 2) Why was he sending incomprehensible emails late at night? 3) Why was he wearing a tiger costume? (see photo, page 15.) Anyone who’s ever heard the crunch of Mom’s tires in the driveway while doing a kegstand understands the skill that’s needed here: You need to spin plausibly, and if possible, spin in a way that makes the subject of the spin look good. Tie it all together. Was it aliens? Russian spies? Maybe robots! First prize is a $50 gift certificate to Capt. Ankeny’s Well. Second prize is the press secretary job for a month.* Third prize is the job for life.* *No, it isn’t.
ANSWERS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
5
POLITICS: Powerful families fight over Morrison Bridgehead. 7 DRUGS: A different kind of bath salts face a state ban. 8 SPORTS: Brandon Roy’s return. 10 WWEEK.COM: Interview with food safety expert Vandana Shiva.
NEWS BITS AND SNOWFLAKES: NO TWO ARE ALIKE. Mayor Sam Adams made education a key component of his third annual State of the City address Friday, Feb. 18. He also wants to make schools a part of his upcoming 2011-12 City of Portland budget. In addition to another $500,000 for the mayor’s scholarship program at Portland Community College, Adams wants to give $250,000 to the Portland Schools Foundation, the private organization that’s been given the task of implementing Adams’ “cradle-to-career” strategy, a countywide initiative to align different educational groups around a common set of goals for schools. Speaking of Portland’s upcoming budget, other city commissioners also have submitted their new spending requests. Commissioner Dan Saltzman, for example, wants $117,000 to perform a feasibility study for a new one-stop center for youth in foster care. Commissioner Randy Leonard wants $325,000 to make and install four additional Portland Loos; $20,000 to provide toilets for the elderly, disabled and families with young children at the Portland Rose Festival; and $25,000 to support the day labor center that opened in 2007 on the inner SALTZMAN east side. The Portland City Council is set to vote Feb. 23 on paying $25,000 to settle a civil-rights lawsuit by a Northeast Portland man who says police unlawfully searched his home. Gregory Benton claims cops responding to a report of a shooting in September 2006 insisted on entering his apartment at Northeast 15th Avenue and Killingsworth Street. Benton, who is African-American, feared police would shoot him and initially denied them entry, says his attorney, Benjamin Haile. Haile says police searched 10 apartments, including his client’s, but never found a shooter. “How many homes are too many to search when you’re responding to an anonymous call?” Haile asks. Members of the Portland Police Association have nominated three very different cops to run for leadership in the 900member union. Sgt. Tom Perkins and Officer John Grable are running for secretary-treasurer, the union’s No. 2 job. Cops say Perkins is known for his mellow attitude and is not particularly confrontational toward bureau management. Grable, however, has penned diatribes against management in the union bulletin and is known for suggesting officers disobey contentious orders. Sgt. Jeff Niiya was the only nominee for an empty seat on the executive board after Sgt. Doug Justus retired last month (see “Missing Justus,” WW, Feb. 16, 2011). Niiya is known as one of the smartest cops on the force, but officers say he’s also not afraid to butt heads with management when it’s warranted. Ex-state Rep. Chuck Riley has one more campaign in him. The 71-year-old Hillsboro Democrat filed last week to run this May for a seat on the Portland Community College board representing a district that includes Hillsboro, Cornelius, Forest Grove and other parts of Washington County. Riley, who lost a state Senate race last November after three terms in the Oregon House, says he wants to put his legislative experience to use for PCC. There are no other candidates yet for the seat now held by Deanna Palm, who was appointed in 2009. 6
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
GOT A GOOD TIP? CALL 503.445.1542, OR EMAIL NEWSHOUND@WWEEK.COM
DEALMAKERS: Melvin “Pete” Mark and Greg Goodman both want control of the four-block Morrison Bridgehead property (shown inside the dotted lines).
HEAD TO HEAD TWO POWERFUL PORTLAND CLANS COMPETE TO DEVELOP A KEY DOWNTOWN SITE. BY JA M E S P I T K I N
jpit kin@wweek.com
Multnomah County’s drive to sell some prime downtown Portland real estate has pitted two of the city’s wealthiest and most influential families in competition to develop the landmark Morrison Bridgehead property. The four blocks owned by the county at the west end of the Morrison Bridge—currently occupied by surface parking lots—present a “unique opportunity to serve as a major, iconic gateway into downtown,” according to a request for proposals put out by the county and the Portland Development Commission in November. When the deadline passed Feb. 9, the county had two proposals backed by cash from two bigmoney clans. The Mark family, headed by prolific charitable fundraiser Melvin “Pete” Mark, has gained a fortune developing downtown Portland real estate for Hilton Hotels, Standard Insurance and the Schnitzer scrapmetal dynasty, among others. The Goodmans, with family scion Greg Goodman at the helm, built their wealth mainly by maintaining surface parking lots. They’ve only recently branched into development with projects like the windmilldecked Indigo condo tower near I-405. FACT: A five-person Both proposals envision committee will evaluate mixed-use development the two proposals and pass their analysis to aimed to attract offices, the County Board of retail stores and foot trafCommissioners in April. fic. But the Marks dangle an additional carrot by promising a home for the long-proposed James Beard Public Market, with former Portland restaurateur Ron Paul in charge. County Chairman Jeff Cogen says his goals are twofold: to develop the property with maximum benefit for downtown Portland, and to bring his cash-strapped county government as much money as possible. The proceeds are slated for outstanding county capital projects, such as building a new courthouse. The Melvin Mark Development Co. would develop the project under the Marks’ proposal. Well-connected development firm Gerding Edlen is the developer under the Goodman proposal, with ubiquitous local contractor Hoffman Construction as the builder. “We got some very solid proposals from some very rock-solid developers,” Cogen says. Here’s a breakdown of the proposals.
M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y FA C I L I T I E S & P R O P E R T Y M A N A G E M E N T D I V I S I O N
NEWS
GOODMAN FAMILY
MARK FAMILY
THE PLAN A high-rise office and retail tower between Southwest Alder and Washington streets, with a public market divided in halves inside the two looping bridge ramps.
An office building inside the south loop ramp, a rental-housing tower between Southwest Alder and Washington streets, and a “landscaped area” inside the north ramp.
THE PITCH “Combines an iconic public amenity—a thriving public market—with a signature tower announcing the gateway to the city.... [The development] will anchor the eastern boundary of the downtown retail core while catalyzing a ‘market district’ linking the Saturday Market and other recent developments.”
“The mix of uses will establish the bridgehead and adjacent properties as a 24/7 urban community that enhances the livability and safety of downtown.... Additionally, it will serve as a catalyst for development of adjacent [Goodman-owned] properties that will benefit from investment and infrastructure.”
THE PRICE $10 million
$8.1 million
THE FINE PRINT Deal would close in July 2014, but only if funding and tenants come together. Meantime, the county is likely to keep proceeds from the existing parking lots.
Deal would close after a 30-day due-diligence period, with full payment in cash. After that, it’s likely the Goodmans would take the money from the parking lots.
PUBLIC MONEY The site was included in a now-scrapped proposal for a new urban renewal area (see “Lobster Fest,” WW, Oct. 20, 2010). Ron Paul tells WW he’s uncertain whether the site would be included in a new urban renewal area around Portland State University proposed Feb. 18 by Mayor Sam Adams.
The site is currently part of the Downtown Waterfront Urban Renewal Area, which is out of money. “We are assuming there is no public money. We aren’t asking for one penny. That’s why we’re offering to close on the property immediately,” Greg Goodman tells WW.
THE POLITICS The proposal lists U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and City Commissioner Dan Saltzman as backers.
“We haven’t lobbied anybody,” Goodman tells WW.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
PULLING THE PLUG STATE REGULATORS SEEK TO DRAIN A FLOOD OF NEW DRUGS POSING AS HOUSEHOLD CHEMICALS.
The new drugs are impossible to detect by routine toxicology screens and, in many cases, even after comprehensive drug screening, according to Poison Press, a newsletter published this winter by the Oregon Poison Center. BY TIFFA N Y STU B B ERT tstubbert@wweek.com “The reason we’re [banning bath salts] now is, it has gotten here now,” says Gary Schnabel, The Oregon Board of Pharmacy will meet next executive director of the seven-member Oregon month to consider a statewide ban of several relat- Board of Pharmacy, which will meet March 23 to ed substances known collectively as “bath salts.” consider a ban. Bath salts are a relatively new designer drug According to the American Association of the American Association of Poison Control National Poison Centers, U.S. poison centers Centers says is moving across the nation. The have taken 469 calls nationwide since Jan. 1 drug first got noticed last fall when calls to poi- about “bath salts”—a 61 percent increase from son centers spiked. the 291 calls recorded in all of 2010. “We’ve been sort of lucky—we haven’t had the In Oregon, the Poison Center has received hundreds of calls like in Louisiana,” says Dr. Zane numerous phone calls with questions, but only Horowitz, medical director of the Oregon Poison two actual overdoses have been linked to bath Center at Oregon Health & Science University. salts—and that was only because the users admit“But it’s showing up.” ted to health officials they had used the salts. The “salts” are actually synthetic stimulants In April 2009, reports of teens using “Sunlikened to amphetamine, cocaine and meth. shine” began to surface in Bend. At the time, They’re sold online, in smoke shops and con- officers didn’t know what it was or what it could venience stores, with names do. In Portland last October, like Ivory Wave, Red Dove FACT: The Oregon Pharmacy Board will Lincoln High School princiand White Lightning. Sold meet March 23 at 10 am in its Portland pal Peyton Chapman warned 800 NE Oregon St., Suite 150, legally as chemical deriva- office, parents in a letter about a new to consider amending the list of statetives because they’re marked controlled substances to include MDPV drug being used by students “not for human consump- and mephedrone. also called “Sunshine.” tion,” the drugs are also In January, Louisiana Gov. falsely marketed as household products such Bobby Jindal placed an emergency ban on bath as stain cleaners, plant food or fertilizer, pond salts. Since then North Dakota and Florida have salts and insect repellent. followed suit. And legislators in Hawaii, KenAnd, just to be clear, the substances that tucky and Mississippi are introducing bills to regulators want to pull the plug on have noth- ban both MDPV and mephedrone in their states. ing in common with legitimate products sold to The salts have already been banned in the U.K., enhance your experience in the tub. Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Most are made up of methylenedioxypyrov“We know it’s happening in other states; let’s alerone, or MDPV; some include other drugs prevent it,” says Schnabel. such as mephedrone, known locally as “Oregon In order for Oregon’s Board of Pharmacy to Sunshine” or just “Sunshine.” ban substances like MDPV and mephedrone, the They can be inhaled, smoked, injected or board must prove the drugs are being used and snorted. The high of both drugs is likened to that that there is a pattern of abuse. of cocaine and meth, and side effects include Schnabel says the proof in Oregon is mostly seizures, extreme paranoia, hallucinations, agi- anecdotal, since emergency rooms focus on tation, chest pain, hypertension, rapid heartbeat treating individuals before confirming what suband suicidal thoughts. stance was ingested. Horowitz says just one hit can leave users “We’ve had cases where we’re pretty sure it’s profoundly depressed and suicidal. one or two of these drugs,” Schnabel says. “[But] “I honestly believe this should be an FDA there’s no test that I can do to say, ‘Aha! That’s Class I substance,” Horowitz says. what it is.’”
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
9
SPORTS M I K E P E R R A U LT
NEWS
BACK TO WORK: Brandon Roy says he’s bullish about playing. Should fans share that sentiment?
WAITING FOR BRANDON
AS ROY PREPARES HIS RETURN TO THE BLAZERS, FANS WONDER WHERE HE’LL FIT. BY CASEY JA RMA N
cjarman@wweek.com
Trail Blazer fans will probably see the return of Brandon Roy this week. Forgive them if they’re conflicted or can’t remember Roy playing—he’s been out with knee problems since Dec. 15, after averaging career lows in points, rebounds, assists and field-goal percentage. The three-time NBA All-Star was once the Blazers’ centerpiece. Then the team revealed early this season that the 26-year-old shooting guard had no meniscus left in either knee (and had experienced regular, significant swelling before surgery Jan. 17—a condition even the most optimistic reports say he will have to cope with for the rest of his career). And with the Blazers returning from the All-Star break with a six-game win streak that’s elevated them to a surprising 32-24 record, Blazer fans’ conversation has downgraded from “Will Roy ever be 100 percent?” to “Can he still help the team?” Last week, Roy seemed optimistic. He said he “felt pretty good” and sounded bullish about playing. But the question of what Roy can contribute is overshadowed by how the Blazers should use him. It’s not just a question of ability, but chemistry. Where the Blazers once relied on Roy’s quick cuts to the basket and late-game heroics, All-Star-caliber forward LaMarcus Aldridge is now the offensive focus, and Roy’s replacement is Wesley Matthews, a candidate for the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award. Trade rumors are swirling around several Blazers before the league’s Feb. 24 trading deadline. Since Roy’s huge fiveyear contract makes him untradeable, the iconic Blazer may be coming off the bench for instant offense in limited minutes. In December, he hinted that a permanent bench role would be hard to accept. But Roy said more recently he’d rather come off the bench for the time being in order to “get [his] legs back.” But while he has been consistently upbeat about his injury, the team must worry that a serious injury could damage the reputation of its already beleaguered medical staff and, eventually, fan and free-agent perception of the franchise itself. Despite the looming questions, Portland ranks fifth overall in the Western Conference heading into its Feb. 23 game against the Lakers. Roy’s absence has made Aldridge and veteran point guard Andre Miller more vocal on-court leaders and forced the Blazers to play scrappier ball. After the Blazers’ Feb. 16 win against New Orleans, the locker room was electric. Reporters surrounded a joking Aldridge while backup guard Patty Mills threw towels across the room and poured shampoo in a showering Rudy Fernandez’s underwear as a practical joke. It seemed like a team optimistic about its future and finally comfortable with one another. Roy was nowhere to be seen. 10
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
WHY DID CONGRESSMAN DAVID WU THINK STAFFERS “THREATENED TO SHUT DOWN HIS CAMPAIGN”? BY BETH SLOVIC
bslovic@wweek.com
W W S TA F F
Rep. David Wu says spasms of severe neck pain caused him to seek painkillers from a donor in a pre-election episode one week before he won re-election Nov. 2. The Oregon Democrat now acknowledges the incident disturbed his own staff. “I recognize that my action showed poor judgment at the time,” Wu said in a written statement to WW on Feb. 22. “I sincerely regret having put my staff in a difficult position.” That troubling moment marked just one example of Wu’s unpredictable behavior in the frantic last days of his seventh successful election campaign, close observers of the congressman say. As first reported by WW on wweek.com the afternoon of Feb. 18, a series of events caused political advisers to worry about Wu’s mental health and prompted staffers to stage two “interventions” to urge Wu to seek psychiatric help. CONT. on page 15
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CONT.
STRANGE WU
During that period four months ago, Wu played down his political team’s concerns about his condition and the possible root cause of his problems. He went on to win re-election against Republican challenger Rob Cornilles, with 55 percent of the vote. But seven staffers, three political consultants and his campaign treasurer severed ties with the congressman after the election in the wake of the confrontations. Last week, Wu denied a request from WW for a faceto-face interview in Washington, D.C., choosing instead to respond in writing to questions through his D.C. spokesman. “I freely admit that it was an intense campaign, and I was not always at my best with staff or constituents,” he said in a prepared statement Feb. 14. “For all those moments, I wish I’d been better and I apologize.” Wu has since acknowledged seeking medical care for his problems. In an interview Feb. 22 with ABC’s Good Morning America, Wu said last fall “was a very difficult time” for him and that he accepted both counseling and medication then. Wu said, “I sought appropriate help at the time and I continue to do that.” He denied WW’s further requests for comment about emails and photographs obtained by WW that were sent from his federally issued BlackBerry in the early-morning hours of Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010. But Wu told Good Morning America they were “very, very unprofessional.” The emails and phoI GOT STRIPES: This photo of U.S. Rep. David Wu landed in staffers’ inboxes after tos, including one of him in a tiger costume, reveal a bizarre 1 am on a Saturday morning as concerns about the Democratic congressman’s behavior grew. A spokesman for Wu called the photo “a moment with his kids.” portrait of Wu right before the Nov. 2 general election. Wu’s district, a Democratic stronghold, encompasses some of Oregon’s biggest economic engines, like Nike and Intel. The 1st Congressional District begins on the west side of Portland and stretches through Washington Coun- Wu’s increasingly odd behavior and communication fearsome tones,” calling parts of his speech “in poor ty to Astoria on the north coast, serving 700,000 residents typified by the set of emails WW has obtained so troubled taste.” She added: “If you are defeated, I believe you have with diverse interests, from microchip manufacturing to staff that sources say the employees deliberately hid Wu no one to blame but yourself.” fishing, that cross Oregon’s rural-urban divide. from public view during the last three days of his camThen, around midday on Thursday, Oct. 28, Wu was Wu, a 55-year-old former lawyer and graduate of Stan- paign. That unusual step came even as Wu’s Republican inside Central Drugs, a pharmacy on Southwest 4th Aveford University and Yale Law School, has represented the opponent furiously fought for votes. nue, running routine errands, sources say. Other Wu staffdistrict since 1999. The Taiwan-born politician may be best But it wasn’t just staff who noticed Wu’s bewildering ers wanted to speak with him about his behavior, which known for his public stance against China’s human-rights behavior. Members of the public also noticed that Wu struck them as bizarre. They confronted him at the store, abuses. But Wu’s record also includes funding for new high- appeared to be under stress in the final days before the but he refused to return to the office. tech training programs and efforts to hold down the costs of Nov. 2 election. According to multiple sources, Wu went instead to college textbooks, as well as traditional Democratic causes On Tuesday, Oct. 26, Wu had dinner at Aquariva on the Ping, a nearby restaurant, for lunch. Only after he left Ping like protecting abortion rights. He’s long been known as a South Waterfront with a donor named Paul O’Brien, an did those staffers stage the first “intervention,” an emogeeky, low-key and, at times, awkward politician. author and speaker on spiritual topics who contributed tional meeting that spanned several hours during which “That’s part of his charm,” says Jim Moore, a political the federal maximum of $4,800 to Wu in 2010. staffers told the congressman they were worried about his science professor at Pacific University in Wu’s district. “He was in fundraising mode, and the guy was dying of health. Wu insisted he was fine. “He’s basically a nerd. He admits fully that his social skills pain in his neck from being on the phone so much,” O’Brien The next day, Wu attended a small luncheon at Davis are not very well developed. He admits that he’s not that says. “He was on edge because the election was a week away.” Street Tavern hosted by the Democratic Party of Oregon. great at glad-handing, but O’Brien says he gave Wu U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebehe’s a hard worker.” tablets of ibuprofen to ease lius was the main guest. Staffers who have worked Wu’s pain, but that apparentMichele Stranger-Hunter, executive director of NARAL for Wu would recognize this ly upset a female aide accom- Pro-Choice Oregon, attended the lunch with about two side of Wu’s personality. But panying the congressman. dozen people. When asked to describe Wu’s behavior at -----Original Message----sources say the final weeks O’Brien recalls the exchange the lunch, Stranger-Hunter’s first words were “Oh, lord.” From: Wapiti <Wapiti@mail.house.gov> before the November elecbetween Wu and the staffer “He had a lot of energy he brought to that election,” she Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 1:03 AM tion marked a dramatic difwas a “conflict.” recalls. “He was feeling very stressed.” To: [REDACTED: Female Staffer] Subject: IMG00009-20101030-0400.jpg ference in Wu’s conduct; no “I gave him a couple In particular, Wu was upset about an internal dispute single event appears to have of ibuprofen and she was so in Congress involving some Democrats’ objections to lan-------------------------prompted staff to conduct weird,” O’Brien says. “She was guage in the federal healthcare reform bill related to aborSent from my BlackBerry Wireless the two interventions. trying to control him in a very tion. Wu’s agitation struck some onlookers as surprising. Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net) In the aftermath, politistrange way. I didn’t under“He was projecting his voice,” Stranger-Hunter says. cal observers are wondering stand that.... But no, no, noth- “He was definitely not yelling.” whether Wu—who had zero ing untoward happened.” That night at Portland International Airport, accordexperience in electoral poliWu’s full statement ing to a four-page incident report from the Port of Porttics when he rose to federal on the topic goes further, land, Wu sought special access to get through the security office through a combination although he declined to checkpoint in order to greet his children at the gate. The of luck and traditional hardanswer follow-up questions. report said he then began asking deplaning passengers for ball politics—can survive. “Last fall, I had occasional their votes. At one point, the report said Wu gave a “highThe congressman said in the spasms of severe neck pain five” to a transportation security officer. TV interview Feb. 22 he “emphatically can do” the work of for which I took medication that was prescribed by my Separate from these events, staffers discussed with a congressman and will stay on. Wu’s 2010 GOP challenger doctor. At a meeting last October with a campaign contrib- Wu his plans to attend a Halloween party with family says the question should matter to voters regardless of utor, I experienced a severe episode, but my prescription and friends, an event right before the Tuesday election. party affiliation. medicine was in Washington, D.C., at the time. The donor Sources tell WW that campaign aides had advised Wu not “District 1 is really the epicenter of Oregon economi- offered me an alternative painkiller, and I took two tablets. to dress in any costume that could potentially embarrass cally,” Cornilles says. “If we’re struggling or we’re being This was the only time that this has ever happened.” him. They worried that a goofy getup could provide fodneglected, the whole state suffers. Do we have to wait two The next day, Wednesday, Oct. 27, Wu appeared before der for last-minute campaign attacks from Cornilles, Wu’s more years? Or can he right himself before then?” Washington County Democrats. A Beaverton woman complained in a fax to Wu’s office about Wu’s “loud, CONT. on page 16 Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
15
STRANGE WU
CONT.
well-financed Republican opponent, in what had been expected to be a close contest. What follows here is a series of email messages sent to multiple staffers in the early-morning hours of Saturday, Oct. 30, from Wu’s BlackBerry. The emails do not offer a definitive account why Wu aides fled the congressman’s office in significant numbers. They do reveal that Wu’s staffers apparently had confronted the congressman about his drinking. They also suggest Wu faced accusations of harassment from his employees— and that Wu wasn’t eager to listen to any of their advice. At 1:03 am PST on Saturday, Oct. 30, an email from Wu’s congressional BlackBerry landed in the inbox of a female staffer. The congressman, who splits his time between Washington, D.C., and Oregon, was then in Portland. There was no message attached to the email, only a single image. That photo showed Wu in a plush tiger suit with orange- and black-striped mittens over his hands, a hood with tiger ears pulled over his head and a white fur chest split by a zipper stretched over his stomach. A seemingly red-faced Wu is sitting on a bench in what appears to be a bedroom, with his hands held in the air. A spokesman, Erik Dorey, last week called the photo a private moment among family members. He further described the photo as “David Wu joshing around with his kids the day before Halloween.” Nineteen minutes later, at 1:22 am PST, a second email from Wu’s official email address went out to multiple Wu staffers under the subject line “not funny.” The email read as if it had come from one of Wu’s two children; the name of his middle-school-aged daughter appeared at the end as a signature. After three days of refusing to answer WW’s questions about who sent the emails in the wee hours of the morning, Wu took responsibility during the Good Morning America interview on Feb. 22. The prospect that Wu was pretending to be his child had disturbed staffers. The email—“You’re the best, but my Dad made me say that, even though you threatened to shut down his campaign”— suggests Wu had been sparring with his staff. Ten minutes later a third email went to two female staffers. This time, it contained another photo and a similar “you’re the best” message. The name of Wu’s son appeared at the bottom of that email. Whether the photo depicts a staged or real event is uncertain. Someone, apparently Wu, is wearing the fullbody tiger costume, this time face-down on a made bed with his arms at his side, as if asleep or passed out. A wallet and headphones are strewn next to him on the bed. Behind him, a child who appears to be Wu’s 13-yearold son stands beside the bed dressed in a T-shirt and khaki pants with his hands on Wu’s shoulders. It is not clear whether the boy is trying to wake his father, give him a back rub or play along with a joke.
Six minutes later, at 1:38 am, a fourth email arrived in staffers’ inboxes. The content related to Wu’s drinking. The subject line contained one word: “wasted.” The email, with Wu’s son’s name at the end, said: “My Dad said you said he was wasted Wednesday night after just three sips of wine. It’s just that he hasn’t had a drink since July 1. Cut him some slack, man. What he does when he’s wasted is send emails, not harass people he works with. He works SO hard for you.… Cut the dude some slack, man. Just kidding.” (If it’s true that Wu had wine that week, that would contradict a Feb. 14 statement the congressman made in response to a written question from WW. “I, as part of a weight loss push, stopped drinking last year for five months,” Wu said through a spokesman, referring to a period beginning July 1 and lasting until Dec. 1. “I have had a drink on occasion since then.”) At 1:40 am, a fifth email from Wu’s BlackBerry arrived with both children’s names at the end of the message. It appears directed at one of Wu’s many longtime staffers, some of whom had worked for the congressman for about 12 years. “My Dad says you’re the best because not even my
Mom put up with him,” the email said. “[Y]ou have. We think you’re cool.” Until announcing their separation in 2009, Wu and his second wife, Michelle, 48, had been married for about 13 years. Wu maintained custody of their two children, which meant he was juggling a hectic congressional schedule as well as a busy life as a single parent. Almost immediately following the flurry of late-night emails, Wu’s staffers staged a second intervention to urge Wu to seek psychiatric help and voluntarily enter a hospital. A smaller group of aides attended the second meeting, which also spanned several hours. At the end of it, Wu’s staffers withdrew him from public view. They took him to a private home in Portland to wait out the election. On Feb. 18, after WW published its account at wweek. com of the final days of Wu’s re-election campaign, the congressman told reporters through a spokesman that his stress before the election was, in part, the result of his father’s death. However, his father passed away more than three weeks after the election from natural causes at the age of 87, according to published reports.
-----Original Message-----
From: Wapiti <Wapiti@mail.house.gov> Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 1:22 AM To: [REDACTED: Female Staffer] Cc: [REDACTED: Five other staffers] Subject: Not Funny
From: Wapiti <Wapiti@mail.house.gov> Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 1:32 AM To: [REDACTED: Female Staffer] Cc: [REDACTED: Female Staffer] Subject: IMG00010-20101030-0406.jpg
From: Wapiti <Wapiti@mail.house.gov> To: [REDACTED: Female Staffer] Cc: [REDACTED: Six other staffers] Sent: Sat Oct 30 01:38:12 2010 Subject: Wasted
From: Wapiti <Wapiti@mail.house.gov> To: [REDACTED: Female Staffer] Cc: [REDACTED: Three other staffers] Sent: Sat Oct 30 01:40:35 2010 Subject:
Aunt [REDACTED: Female Staffer],
Aunt [REDACTED: Female Staffer]
You’re the best, but my Dad made me say that, even though you threatened to shut down his campaign because he wouldn’t get in your car. My Dad likes Ferrari’s, man, not Chevys.
Your the best but he made me say that even though you threatened to shut down his campaign because he won’t get in your car. My dad likes fararis, not Chevy.
Aunt [REDACTED: Female Staffer], My Dad said you said he was wasted Wednesday night after just three sips of wine. It’s just that he hasn’t had a drink since July 1. Cut him some slack, man. What he does when he’s wasted is send emails, not harass people he works with. He works SO hard for you [REDACTED: detail]. Cut the dude some slack, man. Just kidding.
My Dad says you’re the best because not even my Mom put up with him for [REDACTED: #] years and you have. We think you’re cool.
Sarah Wu -------------------------Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
Your friend Matthew Wu -------------------------Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)
-----Original Message-----
CONT. on page 18
-----Original Message-----
Your Friend,
16
TIGER’S TALE: A second photo, sent from Wu’s Blackberry, went to staffers in the early hours of Oct. 30. WW has blacked out the face of the child, believed to be Wu’s son. It’s unclear what exactly this photo depicts.
You friend, Matthew Wu -------------------------Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)
----- Original Message -----
Your friends, Matthew and Sarah Wu -------------------------Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (www.BlackBerry.net)
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STRANGE WU
CONT.
The inevitable question is, what’s next for Wu? If he does survive politically, it would not be the first time Wu has overcome difficult public scrutiny. On Oct. 12, 2004—three days before ballots started arriving in mailboxes—The Oregonian revealed sexualassault allegations against Wu from 1976, when he was a Stanford undergraduate. Wu wasn’t prosecuted; no charges were ever filed. But the woman (whom the daily newspaper described as Wu’s ex-girlfriend) told counselors and professors that Wu had attempted to rape her, according to the newspaper’s secondhand sources. After declining to address the allegations with the daily, Wu finally issued a public statement. “Twenty-eight years ago, I had a two-year romantic relationship with a fellow college student that ended with inexcusable behavior on my part.… As a 21-year-old, I hurt someone I cared very much about. I take full responsibility for my actions and I am very sorry.” Wu, however, proved resilient. Weeks later, he declared victory over Republican Goli Ameri, winning 58 percent of the vote. Today, Wu stands out from his four Oregon colleagues in the House because his financial support in Oregon is
WU’S POLITICAL HISTORY When David Wu first won his congressional seat in 1998, he had zero elected experience. A onetime lawyer specializing in high tech and international trade, Wu served from 1986 to 1989 on Portland’s planning commission, an appointed position. In 1998, then-Rep. Elizabeth Furse declined to seek a fourth term, opening up a seat in the 1st Congressional District. Linda Peters, then Washington County chairwoman, appeared to be Democrats’ best chance of retaining the seat held by the party since 1975. But Peters bungled her frontrunner status in the Democratic primary when she failed to file a Voters’ Pamphlet statement, got caught paying her property taxes late and failed to realize the impropriety of taking a $3,500 loan from a developer who had business before Peters in Washington County. Wu, in the meantime, ran a series of nasty campaign ads that some fellow Democrats denounced as sexist; one showed credit cards spilling out of a woman’s purse following mild
not so deep as that of other Oregon members of the House; Wu gets the most out-of-state campaign funding by far— almost 60 percent compared with the next biggest recipient, Democrat Earl Blumenauer, who gets 47 percent of his cash from non-Oregonians, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The recent case of Rep. Chris Lee (R-N.Y.) offers a provocative counterpoint to Wu’s current situation. On Feb. 9, Gawker published a shirtless photo of Lee that the
“HE CANNOT SIMPLY HIRE NEW STAFF AND BE QUIET. HE HAS TO BE PUBLIC ABOUT DEALING WITH THIS.” —JIM MOORE, PACIFIC UNIVERSITY married congressman had sent to a woman via Craigslist personal ads. The Republican lawmaker represented himself in emails to the woman as a divorced lobbyist who was also a “fit fun classy guy.” Within three hours of the disclosure of his infidelity, Lee resigned from Congress. Some reports suggest Republican Speaker John Boehner pressured Lee to resign. If House Democratic leaders have exerted pressure on
revelations of questionable spending on Washington County taxpayers’ dime. “It was hard-fought, on the edges of impropriety,” says Marc Abrams, then chairman of Oregon’s Democratic Party. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say what David did was utterly unacceptable, but it was disappointing.” He won the primary by a healthy margin and caught a good break in the general election when he faced Republican Molly Bordonaro, a 29-year-old conservative with a thin résumé. Then, on Oct. 21, 1998, WW dealt Bordonaro a devastating blow by posting on its Web site the transcript of Bordonaro’s appearance on a Christian radio show two years prior. In that “K-Praise” radio appearance, Bordonaro struck a far more conservative note on, among other things, abortion rights. “She changed her positions more times than Mark Wahlberg and his porn partners in Boogie Nights,” WW wrote of her. Excerpts of the transcript appeared in Wu ads. Days later, Wu edged out Bordonaro, with just over 50 percent of the vote. The power of incumbency and name recognition have held off serious challengers to his seat ever since. —Beth Slovic
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Wu to resign, it’s happened behind closed doors. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not acknowledge WW’s repeated requests for comment on Wu’s status in the House. Wu serves on the House education and science committees. In important ways, however, Wu’s situation is unlike Lee’s and more like that of former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.). Kennedy learned in 1994 he suffered from bipolar disorder, and he remained in office for another eight terms.
Significantly, however, Kennedy showed a willingness to discuss his challenges openly, even when mental illness gave way to alcohol and prescription drug addiction. When news of Wu’s difficulties broke last week, it was unclear whether Wu had a mental illness, and he hardly enjoys the empathy Kennedy automatically engendered in the Northeast. But if Wu’s erratic behavior is the result of illness or other health concerns, Oregon voters are likely to respond to those circumstances differently as well. Through the weekend, potential Democratic rivals in the 2012 primary kept a low profile. State Sen. Mark Hass (D-Raleigh Hills), Sen. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Beaverton) and Rep. Tobias Read (D-Beaverton), three possible candidates to replace Wu, all demurred when asked whether they would consider a run. “I’m really focused on my work in the Senate,” Bonamici told WW. “And there’s no opening.” Yet Wu himself has acknowledged there are times when one’s personal decisions interfere with public life. In 1998, Wu won election in part because of questions that arose from his opponent’s choice to take a personal loan from a developer who had business before Washington County. The opponent in the Democratic primary, Linda Peters, was then county chairwoman. “Some things in life are strictly personal, and they should stay that way,’” Wu is quoted as saying in The Oregonian in 1998 in reference to Peters. “But there are other times when a person does things that cross over into their official capacity, into their official role, and there’s a whole different set of responsibilities there.” Jim Moore, the professor of political science at Pacific University in Wu’s district, says Wu’s career could survive this latest round of examination. But Moore also acknowledges that Wu’s private problems have crossed into an area where they may interfere with his official role. “Because of the staff leaving, he’s clearly getting into that area,” Moore says. “To get out of this he cannot simply hire new staff and be quiet. He has to be pretty public about dealing with this.”
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK: Give leaves a chance. MUSIC: Improv’s not just for oldsters. CLASSICAL: The king of choristers. MOVIES: Aaron Katz’s ice storm.
22 31 40 48
SCOOP FROM THE ASHES: Two bar spaces with miserable histories are set for revival this year. Frank Faillace, owner of Dante’s, Devil’s Point and Lucky Devil Lounge, is reopening Old Town’s Star Theater (formerly Level, Mystic Theatre, Five Star Theatre, Bliss, etc.) as a music venue. >> The building at 6526 SE Foster Road that has, in the past two years, been Brown’s Bar, Reno’s Bar and Knuckleheads, will be reincarnated as Gemini Lounge. Owner Seasons Koll, who also owns Hawthorne gift shop Presents of Mind, says Gemini will be a “cocktail lounge with a feel like Sapphire Lounge, Dots or Gold Dust Meridian with live music.” Also, “flocked wallpaper, vintage lighting, great retro art and other touches to make it date- and happyhour-friendly.” NEW YORK-BOUND: The Oregon Symphony hasn’t even completed its historic first performance at Carnegie Hall this May—but it’s already going again in 2013. The orchestra announced last week that it had been chosen to participate in the first and third Spring for Music gatherings that include other worthy North American orchestras from Baltimore, Albany, Cincinnati and elsewhere. “To be invited twice is clear proof we are in the artistic big leagues,” says music director Carlos Kalmar. GET ON THE BUS: Not busy enough with his two Northeast Portland Asian joints (Thai Noon and Thai Seasons), restaurateur Chip Rothenberger has just debuted Burgers or Bust Cafe, which serves free-range meat and vegan burgers in a converted 1992 school bus at the corner of Northeast 23rd Avenue and Alberta Street (updates at twitter.com/burgersorbust). He also promises “affordable country breakfasts” including eggs, bacon, home fries and hotcakes for weekend brunch and says he might step on the gas and motor around town for lunches in the future. R.I.P. (AGAIN): The blows just keep coming for the local music community. On Saturday, Feb. 19, Nick Christmas III, the drummer for the Norman Sylvester Band during the late ’80s and ’90s and the current time-keeper for Blues Train, died when he lost control of his vehicle on an icy roadway and crashed into an embankment off North Portland Road. Christmas, 63, had just retired from his job at the Bonneville Power Administration and was beginning to play the drums again after a few years away from live music. FREE OSCARS FOR EVERYONE: Possibly because all the people who attended fancy, expensive Oscar screenings are now unemployed (or dead), Portland’s big-screen Academy Awards events are free this year. The Academy, Bagdad and Hollywood theaters are all showing the Oscars gratis this Sunday, Feb. 25, with beer on sale.
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY FEB. 23 [MUSIC] TWISTA Nobody raps faster than Chicago MC Twista, who for years has matched up his hyper-quick flow with lots of sped-up soul samples and sex jams. Mount Tabor Theater, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 360-1450. 9 pm. $22 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
FRIDAY FEB. 25 [SCREEN] VENGEANCE Director Johnnie To’s operatic Hong Kong gun fu is a tropical remake of Death Wish, if Charles Bronson woke up halfway through with his memory suddenly wiped of whom he was targeting, and whom he was avenging. Laurelhurst Theater, 2735 E Burnside St., 232-5511. Multiple showtimes. $3.
SATURDAY FEB. 26 [DANCE] THE STRAVINSKY PROJECT Oregon Ballet Theatre’s ode to Stravinsky opens with artistic director Christopher Stowell’s stark, fascinating 2009 version of Rite of Spring, danced by, among others, Anne Mueller, whose retirement this June should be cause for a riot. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 800-745-3000. 7:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 26. 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, March 4-5. $10$140. Tickets at obt.org.
SUNDAY FEB. 27 [MUSIC] MACEO PARKER You know all those crazy saxophone lines that dotted James Brown’s hits in the 1960s? They were played by this guy. Now a certifiable funk and jazz legend, Parker hits town for what might be the most fun show of Jazz Fest. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 9:30 pm. $25 all-ages balcony, $30-$40 seated 21+ section.
POLITICAL CABLES AND SIDECARS AT RONTOMS. Following WikiLeaks’ release of diplomatic cables in November 2010, a media beast was born that’s still rearing its head in the national news. Now the WikiLeaks circus is coming to Portland, but it isn’t some NPR segment you’re about to hear. East Burnside watering hole Rontoms isn’t the first place you think to go for topical, thought-provoking discussion, but that’s where Oregon Humanities is hosting its Think & Drink WikiLeaks event Thursday, Feb. 24. University of Oregon journalism professor Peter Laufer takes a break from his research on butterfly trafficking and UC Berkeley African literature Ph.D. candidate Aaron Bady sets his dissertation aside to share with Portland all they know about the wild worlds of national security, transparency and new media. Journalist Laufer covered American soldiers
in Iraq before his recent turn to butterflies on the black market. He calls WikiLeaks “a fascinating manifestation of the kinds of tools journalists have been using since they started drawing on cave walls.” And when Bady’s not teaching, he’s posting his insight into current events on his blog zunguzungu.wordpress.com. His Nov. 29 post about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange went viral and Bady was deemed “The Unknown Blogger Who Changed WikiLeaks Coverage” by The Atlantic. Their interests are eclectic, but they’re ready to speak their mind about WikiLeaks and, with the help of the Rontoms’ bartenders, make your head spin. RACHAEL DEWITT.
[SCREEN] BARNEY’S VERSION Paul Giamatti plays Barney Panofsky, serial collector of whiskey and wives. The movie is based on Mordecai Richler’s singular conception of hustling Canadian Jewishness, and Giamatti offers a lusty, avid personification of it. Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10. 846 SW Park Ave., 221-3280. Multiple showtimes. $10.50.
TUESDAY MARCH 1 [MUSIC] WILD NOTHING, ABE VIGODA Nostalgia is back, kids! Wild Nothing and Age Vidoda don’t really sound alike (one is a twee indie-pop outfit, the other sounds like the Cure circa 1984) but they share a love of the ’80s, and that’s the important thing here. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
GO: Think & Drink at Rontoms, 600 E Burnside St., 236-4536. 6 pm Thursday, Feb. 24. Free. 21+. Info at oregonhum.org. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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CRAVINGS
GIVE LEAF A CHANCE: Petite Provence’s huge, tasty salmon salad with lentils.
BIG SALAD
MAKING A MEAL OUT OF LETTUCE. BY CA R IN MOON IN
dish@wweek.com
In Portland, it’s easy to find big-ass food. Six days’ worth of calories shoved between two loaves of cheesy garlic bread. Brain-sized meatballs. Baconwrapped bacon, double-fried. Portions that would topple the Flintstones’ car—and kill their pet dinosaurs. But where are some of PDX’s best big salads? You know, a salad that would make Elaine Benes proud: an abundance of lettuce as base, along with crisp vegetables, cheese, nuts and some sort of protein. Dressing on the side, please: A salad drowning in it is disgusting (and counterproductive). After all, doesn’t love mean never having to say, “Honey, maybe you should try the next size up?” PETITE PROVENCE DIVISION 4834 SE Division St., 233-1121, and other locations, provence-portland.com. French women don’t get fat. As I wait 25 minutes for my salmon salad ($11.95) to emerge from the kitchen, I develop my theory why: They harvest the lettuce while you clutch at your napkin in dire, pleading American hunger, looking longingly at the nearby bar that serves excellent nachos. When my salad finally arrives, however, I am ecstatic to discover (and quickly devour) a Wiffle bat-sized piece of salmon atop a huge bed of greens, along with perfectly cooked lentils and a tasty but somewhat incongruous raspberry vinaigrette tucked alongside. It’s a great deal—if you’re patient. JADE TEAHOUSE 7912 SE 13th Ave., 477-8985, jadeportland.com. I’m physically incapable of ordering anything but the spicy green papaya salad ($9) at Jade Teahouse. Shame, because so much looks delicious, including the enormous grilled-tofu salad (large $7), bricklike pieces of tofu stacked atop a mess of fresh greens. But the papaya salad—a julienned pile of carrots, tart papaya, tomatoes, shrimp and green beans—continually mesmerizes me. Also, it comes with sweet rice. How do you know your salad is big? When it gets its own side dish. 22
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PIZZICATO 1630 SE Bybee Blvd., 736-0174; 2811 E Burnside St., 236-6045, and other locations, pizzicatopizza.com. I’d been tipped to Pizzicato’s varied salad selections—everything from an arugula pear to a Chinese chopped, and went for the Greek salad. When I called ahead to order it, I was told a small could feed one or two, and a medium could handle three or four. I know my capacity; I got the medium ($8.25) for myself. This was the only salad I got to go, and was glad to be massacring it in the privacy of my own kitchen: The salad is crammed with excellent feta and olives, but its lettuce isn’t chopped into even remotely bite-sized portions. KENNY & ZUKE’S DELICATESSEN 1038 SW Stark St., 222-3354; kennyandzukes.com. Is the big salad an East or West Coast craving? Who knows, but K&Z’s offers a salad billed as “The Big Salad.” So can it bring the big? Yes and no. Yes in that it comes in a big bowl. Yes in that the accommodating server lets me swap the bagel crisps for avocado. Yes with a lox add-on feathered across the top. Yes in price, too, for what I got: $11.45. Sure, the lox is done perfectly and the salad is crisp, but I got fuller elsewhere. BLOSSOMING LOTUS 1713 NE 15th Ave., 228-0048, blpdx.com. Who knows salads better than vegans? Yet I was surprised to see just three on all-vegan Blossoming Lotus’ lunch menu, with only one more added at dinner. The roasted beet and curried cashew salad ($9) came prettily presented on a plate, the beets slick with sweetness but not overpowering, and cashew sour cream more delicious than the dairyfied version. If you’re really hungry, add on the generous sides of avocado ($2) and tofu ($3). ST. HONORÉ BAKERY 2335 NW Thurman St., 445-4342; 315 1st St., Lake Oswego, 445-1379; sainthonorebakery.com. I eye my Niçoise salad ($10.25) with delight. It looks like a big salad should—big hunk of tuna, non-mealy tomatoes, a scoop of Yukon gold potatoes, brilliant green haricots vert, a thorough base of greens. When it arrives, the bowl appears small, but that’s only an optical illusion. As I’m plowing through it, I’m wondering if it’s being continually refilled somehow and I’m part of a psychology experiment. St. Honoré, you salad minx. Who knew?
Chef spotlight: Philippe Boulot executive chef at Multnomah Athletic Club
One of only two French master chefs living and cooking in the Pacific Northwest, Philippe Boulot has received many international accolades such as the prestigious 2001 James Beard Best Chef in the Pacific Northwest award. Boulot is a local culinary star who focuses on cooking with sustainable and local ingredients.
The James Beard Foundation recognizes and encourages talent at the forefront of the culinary world, culminating in the annual awards. James Beard in Oregon: A Celebration of Superstars and Master Chefs
Sunday, March 20, 2011 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. Multnomah Athletic Club 1849 SW Salmon St. Portland, OR 97205 General Admission tickets sold out
VIP Tickets still available: Email - BeardinOregon@lanepr.com
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GOOD SPIRITS: Beaker & Flask’s Ben Bettinger
NEWS Portland Chefs Vie for Food & Wine Award
Portland beat the checkered kitchen pants off of other Northwest cities with five nominees for the “People’s Best New Chef” Northwest award, sponsored by CNN and Food & Wine magazine. Top chefs from Departure (Gregory Gourdet), Beaker & Flask (Ben Bettinger), Clyde Common (Chris DiMinno), Lincoln (Jenn Louis) and Fenouil (Jake Martin) are competing to be named the country’s best new chef (voter-chosen) and to win a featured spot in the July issue of Food & Wine. Chef Martin is sweetening the deal by offering Fenouil Facebook fans a free chunk of pork cheek to celebrate his nomination. Mention you’re a fan of Fenouil and a plate of pork cheek pot au feu with glazed root vegetables, pearl onions and thyme is yours. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. Vote for your favorite chef at eatocracy.cnn.com/ foodandwine.
DISH EVENTS THIS WEEK THURSDAY, FEB. 24 Fra’ Mani Salumi Tasting at PastaWorks
The handcrafting pros from Berkeley salami mecca Fra’ Mani offer free samples of their hormone-free hog products this Thursday. Gobble free bits of a variety of dry salami (soppressata, salametto) pancetta and pâtés—all of which go well with the artisan cheeses and pastas that also just happen to grace the gourmet grocer’s shelves. NV. PastaWorks Hawthorne/Evoe, 3735 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 232-1010. 4-6 pm. Free.
Cristom Vineyards at the Heathman
Salem’s Cristom Vineyards invades the Heathman for a four-course dinner created by executive chef Michael Stanton featuring poached grouper and seared pork belly alongside pinot gris and reserve bottles from the vineyard. NV. The Heathman Restaurant and Bar, 1001 SW Broadway, 790-7752. 6:30 pm. $99. Call for reservations.
Oyster Happy Hour at Whole Foods in the Pearl
Watch the shucking situation while sipping $4 wine and slurping $1 Puget Sound oysters. All proceeds from the Half Shell Happy Hour go to the Whole Planet Foundation, a micro-credit lending institution that provides micro-loans for women in developing countries. Better yet, the Pearl Whole Foods will match the total raised during the event. NV. Whole Foods (Pearl District), 1210 NW Couch St., 525-4343. 6-7 pm. 99 cents per oyster.
Flash Kitchen “Salad Brigade” at Jefferson High School
Local chefs join the Whole Foods Market “Health Starts Here” program to promote healthy eating with a Flash Kitchen cooking class. The quickie workshop features salad recipes that call for close-tohome greens, veggies and cheeses. Whole Foods will donate a buck per attendee to the homeless youth program P:ear. NV. Jefferson High School-Center for the Performing Arts, 5210 N Kerby Ave., 916-5180. 10 am-1 pm. Free.
SUNDAY, FEB. 27
Make sure to try our badass burgers & queso.
Beast’s Recession Session
A temple for Portland’s thriving cult of pig, Beast is offering a meal for more constrained budgets. In addition to the six-course prix fixe menu, Beast now offers a scaledback version of its over-the-top dinners one night a month. Three courses of bacon-wrapped fill-inthe-blank plates might appeal to those affected by the recession, or just looking for a less-debilitating meal. RACHAEL DEWITT. Beast, 5425 NE 30th Ave., 841-6968. 6-8 pm. $30. Reservations or walk-ins accepted.
Burnside open ‘til midnight every night.
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Clyde Common ’80s Throwback Dinner Party
It’s hard to remember that there were chefs paving the way for gourmet cuisine in a decade memorialized by late-night coke parties and spandex tights. Clyde Common starts its series of “throwback” dinner parties (held the last Sunday of every month) with a tribute to the finest foods of the ’80s; think foie-gras ravioli, chicken terrine and “Death by Chocolate” cake paired with a Kopke Colheita Port (1987). NV. Clyde Common, 1014 SW Stark St., 228-3333. 6:30 pm the last Sunday of each month. $50-$65. Call for reservations or email info@clydecommon.com.
MONDAY, FEB. 28 Taste Walla Walla Classic Wines Auction
What began as an intimate wineswapping soiree has now, 27 years later, turned into a popular Portland fundraiser with over $23 million donated to five local charities benefiting at-risk children and families. This year, the Wine Alliance hopes to raise up to $2 million more. The auction will feature wines from Tamarack Cellars, Reininger and 40 more Walla Walla wineries. NV. Venue Pearl, 323 NW 13th Ave. 517-2573. 5:30- 7:30pm. $50 per person or $90 per couple online at classicwinesauction.com. $65 at the door. Tickets can be purchased online or at the door.
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC
FEB. 23 - MARCH 1 PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
MARTIN MÖLL
MUSIC
Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and socalled convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editors: CASEY JARMAN, MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, go to wweek.com/submitevents and follow submission directions. All shows should be submitted two weeks or more in advance of event. 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, mmannheimer@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 23 Hollywood Tans, Problems?, Age Sex Occupation
[SWEATY JUMP AROUND] Hollywood Tans plays guitar rock that revives its worn format (guitar, synthesizer, bass, drums, beards) with a near-lethal infusion of enthusiasm. Stylistically, I’d lump the band in the same category with Swim Swam Swum, though whereas the latter Portland guitarrock institution distinguishes itself with technical ability, Hollywood Tans attains its uniqueness through a healthy regimen of mania. As I write this I am listening to the quartet’s cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” for the fourth time straight. Hollywood Tans puts such love into that cheeseball standard it becomes epic. This band’s live show is going to be a workout. SHANE DANAHER. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900. 8 pm. $5. All ages.
Josh Ritter & the Royal City Band, Scott Hutchison
[SINGER-SONGWRITER] Josh Ritter’s literate songs are accompanied by a goofy grin and one of the hottest backing groups around. That longserving ensemble, newly dubbed the Royal City Band, highlights keyboardist Sam Kassirer, whose textbook folk-rock licks do much to put the music across; he understands singer-songwriters, where to leave space for their words and when to color them in. Perhaps sensing, though, that “textbook folk rock” and that aw-shucks image were wells bound to run dry, Ritter has admirably broadened his sonic palette, especially on last year’s So Runs the World Away. A just-released EP, To the Yet Unknowing World, expands greatly on the eclecticism of Runs. JEFF ROSENBERG. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 8 pm. $22 advance, $25 day of show. All ages.
Twista, Meezilini, 456, 20Below
[SPEEDY RAPS] Most MCs with a commercially proven track record as long as Twista’s have some pretty embarrassing naked baby photos to live down before they can reinvent themselves. But Chicago’s Twista, who broke through in the late ’90s with his Adrenaline Rush record, has pretty much stuck to his formula for the past 15 years. His success is due largely to a devilishly fast tongue and an equal taste for gritty street anthems and raw but romantic sex jams. When his gifts are paired with amped-up and interesting production—as they were on 2004’s fast-paced Kamikaze, for example—it proves an irresistibly sweetand-sour formula reminiscent of Bone Thug’s toughest material. Last year’s The Perfect Storm is a little lost in the production department, but still manages some appealing tracks here— hard to resist the goth-gone-dummy lyrical showcase “3 Minute Murder,” and even the shallow, topical hit “Let’s Make a Movie” has its charm. CASEY JARMAN. Mount Tabor Theater, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 9 pm. $22 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
Youthbitch, Midnight Callers, DJ Ken Dirtnap
[ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!] Call me a bit of a rock purist, but nothing would please me more than to have the next big thing to come out of Portland be a band of lovesick dudes who churn out barre chords aplenty and snotty, angsty tunes about the females that done ’em wrong. For this new success story, I nominate the young men who play under the name Youthbitch. The band’s debut release, No Coast (cassette only, natch), is an 11-song wonder of garage-punk brilliance, tempered
with a power-pop edge that lets you know getting your shimmy on to these tunes is entirely appropriate. Hell, it’s damn near a requirement. ROBERT HAM. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
THURSDAY, FEB. 24 Nodzzz, Nucular Aminals, Therapists, No Tomorrow Boys
[SHORT ATTENTION SPAN SCUZZ] San Fran’s Nodzzz bashes out jambling, rambling lo-fi art-punk nuggets, nailing late-’70s snotty punk, postpunk and New Wave onto a very 21st-century attitude of irony and indifference. The trio’s self-titled 2008 EP crammed 10 scuzzy tracks into about 15 minutes, and pricked up plenty of ears with the lovably moronic “I Don’t Wanna (Smoke Marijuana).” The band just signed to NYC label Woodsist to release its upcoming LP, Innings. The first cut, “Time (What’s It Going to Do?),” dropped online only a few weeks ago; a nice jangly jam that sounds like the Feelies fronted by a neurotic teenager from New Jersey and clocks in at just 1:39. That’s mighty appealing to the Gen-Y’ers among us who are afflicted with the attention span of a 6-year-old with ADD. RUTH BROWN. East End, 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
Arbouretum, Endless Boogie, Eternal Tapestry
[MESCALINE ROCK] With four excellent records to its name, Baltimore’s Arbouretum is already a deserving member of the current psychrock revival that includes the likes of Oneida, Earl Greyhound and Portland’s Wax Fingers. Recent release The Gathering, based somewhat on Freudian-era psychiatrist Carl Jung’s The Red Book, is trippy without entering black-light poster territory, held fast by heavy blues riffs and tightly wound classic-rock intensity. Frontman Dave Heumann has a Paul Banks-like delivery—prettier but equally haunting and unceasing. He plays axman as well as capable tour guide, leading listeners into his noisy and nuanced interpretation of the subconscious. MARK STOCK. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Don Byron
[SWEET AND GENTLE] In case you missed it, this year’s Portland Jazz Festival presides under the theme “Bridges and Boundaries,” with an aim at tightening the connections between African-American and Jewish jazz artists. It’s a lofty and laudable rubric, and the artists organizers have brought in this year are capturing that spirit grandly. Case in point: Don Byron, the master clarinetist who is bringing his tribute to klezmer legend and comic Mickey Katz to Portland. Byron celebrated this icon with an album he released back in 1993, and he revisits those songs with his crack backing band and his own masterful playing of the licorice stick. ROBERT HAM. Newmark Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm. $29.25$63.30. All ages.
FRIDAY, FEB. 25 Ron Rogers
[STEEL THIS ALBUM] Man, I’m a sucker for twang, and Dave Grafe, steel-guitar player for local singersongwriter Ron Rogers, knows how to make that thang sang with twang. Rogers ain’t bad, either: The opening
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SAMURAI JAZZ
SWISS PIANIST NIK BÄRTSCH’S RONIN GIVES EXPERIMENTAL JAZZ ITS GROOVE BACK. BY B R ETT CA MPB ELL
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His inspirations transcend music. A teenage encounter with Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Ran triggered a lifelong attraction to Japanese aesthetics, and he’s a black belt in aikido. The spareness of much Japanese art permeates his less-is-more piano parts. Trained in both jazz and classical music, Bärtsch has evolved a gripping, groove-oriented sound that’s partly composed, partly improvised yet smoothly cohesive. “We are interested in social and musical coherence with a maximum of individual and group freedom,” he says of his group. “We are interested in the musical strategy [in which] as a listener, you often don’t know what is composed, arranged, improvised or instantaneously composed in a performance.” While all Bärtsch’s influences seem complex and esoteric, Ronin’s spacious, mesmerizing “Zenfunk” actually sounds smooth and atmospheric
Nik Bärtsch named his band Ronin after the premodern Japanese freelance warriors affiliated with no master, and his sixth and latest album, Llyria, after a recently discovered deep-sea creature so strange that biologists can’t classify it. Likewise, the 39-year-old Swiss pianist-composer resists pigeonholing. Though his “ritual groove music” appears on what’s primarily a jazz label (ECM), and his concert Saturday is part of the Portland Jazz Festival, Bärtsch’s Ronin performs regularly in dance “THE MUSIC SHOULD NATURALLY DEVELOP and rock clubs. “We have a great mix OUT OF OUR LIVES, NOT OUT OF THEORY.” in our audience and in —NIK BÄRTSCH our [Zurich] club EXIL every week,” he told WW. “Sometimes even teens come with their parents. in the best ECM tradition, with Reichian pulses Our concert is the only place where they go out floating over a sizzling, polyrhythmic groove pritogether.” In its double bill with Portland’s similar- marily concocted by Rast, a childhood friend ly widely appealing Blue Cranes, Ronin (drummer Bärtsch has been performing with for 30 years. Kaspar Rast, bassist Thomy Jordi, percussionist It’s often pretty, easily graspable, with obvious Andi Pupato, and Sha on clarinets and sax) should appeal to the Medeski, Martin & Wood/Bad Plus demonstrate that truly improvised music isn’t just crowd, yet repays deeper, repeated exploration. for old people. “I like it when you are seduced by the direct Bärtsch acknowledges his inspiration from sensual surface of the music—often the groove jazz legends: Thelonious Monk’s pithy rhythmic and sound—but underneath is a subtle and transformations; Count Basie and Duke Ellington’s complex structure that creates relaxed tensmart, spare yet colorful orchestrations; Lennie sion,” Bärtsch says. “I am not interested in Tristano’s cool phrasing and interlocking figures; naive simplicity but in smart clearness.” and Ran Blake. But he also cites non-jazz influAs its broad audiences suggest, Ronin’s seduction ences: drum-’n’-bass master Photek; modernist transcends category, genre or age. “Young audiences composers Igor Stravinsky and Morton Feldman; can feel if you are alive or already mummified by bass lines indebted to soul godfather James Brown tradition,” Bärtsch insists. “Of course, the tradition and Prince-style funk; drum parts straight out of should nourish today’s music—but as a humus, not new Orleans legends the Meters; repetitive, evolv- as a power-abusing museum with no connections to ing figures à la minimalist pioneer Steve Reich; and the street. The music should naturally develop out various folk music styles, including Romanian and of our lives, not out of theory.” Japanese. “I like rhythms, instruments and groove balanc- SEE IT: Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin plays the Alberta Rose Theatre on Friday, Feb. 25, with Blue es—intelligent meditative music and strong ritual Cranes. 8:30 pm. $27.50-$35. All ages (minors groove music,” Bärtsch explains. must be accompanied by a parent). Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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FRIDAY - SATURDAY
number off his new disc, Country & Eastern (I tore the package open excitedly in hopes of some honkytonk with a Bollywood twist, but I’ll take what I got instead) combines Tom Waits’ lyrical blaspheming with Neil Young’s aching, stretchedout vocal lines. You can tell Rogers has been around, despite the fact he’s something less than a household name around Portland. CASEY JARMAN. Hawthorne Theatre Lounge, 1503 SE 39th Ave., 2337100. 6 pm. Free. 21+.
The Karen Lovely Band, The Ty Curtis Band
[BLUES ROCK] It’s a little unsettling to see Ty Curtis sing. The Salem-based guitarist, vocalist and bandleader delivers his songs of heartbreak and disappointment (the kind of stuff that makes up the canon of straight-ahead blues rock) with the vocal control and soulful, world-weary delivery of a much older bluesman. His guitar chops are also quite substantial, but chops are easy to come by. Soul is a much rarer commodity, and it’s easy to see why Curtis and his band have been collecting awards in their native Oregon and beyond. New disc Cross That Line demonstrates some growth on the songwriting front as well, with partially acoustic tunes like “I Want You With Me” and the title track showcasing a Huey Lewis-style crossover appeal. CASEY JARMAN. Jimmy Mak’s, 221 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542. 8 pm. $15 GA, $17 reserved seating. All ages.
SATURDAY, FEB. 26 Ted Leo, Forbidden Friends
[RX BANDIT] If Ted Leo decided to quit music, he could easily enter a second career as a host on the Travel Channel. He’s already written some fine travelogues, the best being “Bottled In Cork,” from 2010’s The Brutalist Bricks, which is essentially a guide to getting drunk in foreign countries. It’s hard to imagine the 40-year-old punk lifer ever retiring from the road. He’s just too damn good at it: Across six records with his band the Pharmacists, the dude has proven to be astonishingly consistent both lyrically and melodically, absorbing and reinterpreting everything from Elvis Costello’s barbed cool and the folksy proselytizing of Billy Bragg to the intensity of ’80s hardcore and the super-charged R&B rhythms of the Who and the Jam. Tonight, he performs sans the Pharmacists. Similarly, this show also marks the live debut of Forbidden Friends, the solo project from the Thermals’ Hutch Harris. MATTHEW SINGER. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 2482900. 8 pm. $10. All ages.
The 3 Cohens, Afro-Semitic Experience
[JAZZ IN THE FAMILY] They may not yet have won the acclaim of the Brecker Brothers, the Heaths (Jimmy, Percy, Tootie) or the Joneses (Thad, Hank, Elvin, who rarely joined forces), but the Israeliborn, Berklee-trained, New Yorkbased sibling trio prove that the jazz family that stays together plays together. Clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has accumulated the most plaudits, but her brothers Yuval (sax) and trumpeter Avishai (not the unrelated bass player who performed here recently) contribute to the relaxed, straight-ahead composing and playing. Together, they’re more than the sum of their parts. BRETT CAMPBELL. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 2 pm. $25 all-ages balcony, $30-$40 floor (21+). All ages.
Regina Carter
[JAZZ FIDDLES WITH AFRICA] As a fan of jazz violin going back to Venuti and Grappelli, I’ve long wanted to like the Detroit-born fiddler Regina Carter more than I do. But after years of superficiality, she’s grown by challenging herself, performing pieces by contemporary
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
non-jazz composers (including our own David Schiff), playing classical music with orchestras, and most recently—thanks to a MacArthur Foundation genius grant—studying African music at the source, adding kora and accordion to her band, and crafting a credible, often compelling conversation between jazz and African sounds that ranks as the most inventive and appealing work of her career to date. BRETT CAMPBELL. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 9:30 pm. $25 balcony (all-ages), $30 tier 2 (21+), $40 tier 1 (21+). All ages.
I Can Lick Any SOB In The House, My Life In Black & White, Red Hills
[BRAWL ROCK] What, were you expecting a sensitive singer-songwriter? With a name like I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House, it’s pretty clear what you’re getting into. Mike Damron and his bluesy hardrock cohorts have been soundtracking bar fights across Portland for years now, never deviating much from the bottle-smashing, rednecked country rock that is practically
CONT. on page 33
PROFILE BOOGIECREEKRECORDS.COM
MUSIC
WELCOME HOME WALKER FRIDAY, FEB. 25 [BOOGIE-DOWN ROCK] When Devin Clark of doo-wop pop-rock band Welcome Home Walker got a call in December about playing an early gig at the Oregon State Hospital’s psychiatric clinic in Northeast Portland on New Year’s Eve, he had no idea it would be one of the best (and most upbeat) shows his band has ever played in town. “We set up at 2 in the afternoon, and we did a couple songs and a Stones cover that they recognized,” Clark says. “There was one guy that looked like the neighbor who is shoveling snow in Home Alone and he was dancing around with his shoes and socks off the whole time. It was definitely the wildest show we’ve ever played.” Coming without a hint of irony from Clark, you know that has to mean something. Since moving to Portland from Colorado in the early 2000s, he has been the centerpiece of two of the most fun bands in the Northwest, first as the guitar player and secondary singer in bubblegum punk quintet the Soda Pop Kids, and now as the leader of Welcome Home Walker. His current band comes complete with a name inspired by a Sam Cook song and a catalog of rollicking, sugar-rush tunes that owe more to Phil Spector and an immense love of girl-group pop than anything ever dubbed punk. Clark started Welcome Home Walker with the Soda Pop Kids’ drummer, Alan Torres, after completing a draining month-long U.S. tour in 2007 and realizing that he wanted to write a set of “real simple R&B dance songs.” The band kicked around for a few years before settling on the current lineup—Clark and Torres with bassist Colin Jarrell (formerly of the Nice Boys) and second guitarist Kerby Krinkles—and releasing a number of 7-inch records that are collected on the new eight-song compilation Suds! Though it’s hard to pin down one dominant sound on the record, everything on Suds!—from the infectious strut of the title track to the classic Brill Building pop of “Second Hand Store”—is drenched in three-part harmonies and a bouncy energy that’s rare for anyone who makes a home at gritty rock clubs like East End and Slabtown. And though Clark is quick to praise Portland’s underground rock scene, he also wants to branch out from it as much as possible—by playing shows in Europe, where WHW is much bigger (German label Taken By Surprise is releasing the band’s debut full-length later this year) and also venturing into any weird space, even a mental clinic, to get the music out. “I think a lot of us fall victim to our own circle of friends,” he says. “The New Year’s Eve show was so fun because it was like, ‘Hey, we’re not just playing to a sea of people in other bands!’” MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Soda Pop punks turn to doo-wop to keep the beat alive.
SEE IT: Welcome Home Walker plays Friday, Feb. 25, at Plan B, with Boats!, the Bloodtypes and the Midnight Callers. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Music Listings
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC
Live Music, Music, Cabaret, Cabaret, Burlesque Burlesque && Rock-n-Roll Rock-n-Roll Live
Live Music, Music, Cabaret, Cabaret, Burlesque Burlesque & & Rock-n-Roll Rock-n-Roll Live Live Music, Cabaret, Burlesque & Rock-n-Roll
ALBUM REVIEWS
RADIATION CITY THE HANDS THAT TAKE YOU (APES TAPES)
Tel. 503-226-6630 • Open Daily 11am-2:30am •
SCOTT H. BIRAM
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the upsidedown
lookbook sexy water spiders
TICKETSWEST $7 Adv
w w w. da n tes l i ve. c o m
DNESDAAYY WE23 B 23 FE B
WITH REED MCCLINTOCK
RSDAY THU 24 B 24 FE B
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SCOTT H. BIRAM
RALPH WHITE & THE BROTHERS COMATOSE
the upsidedown
AY FRID 25
lookbook sexy water spiders
FEB
TICKETSWEST $7 Adv
LICK SAT26URDAY I CAN ANY SOB FEB IN THE HOUSE TICKETSWEST $7 Adv
MY LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE THE RED HILLS
TICKETSWEST $7 Adv
SINFERNO
Karaoke FromHellHell Karaoke From Hell
ERSREESRRSS UTURTREURR T R O R T I O R GEGNEENNIIITTTOORTU
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S R E R S U ERRRSS RTTTU O R E T E U R I R U N R E GENNNIIITTTOOORRT GRETYL G E RON EL UNADGSTORM USTIT LOCH LOMOND LITTLE MEG WILL SSTART GGEN
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3/6 Big John Bates + Sinferno 3/8 Peter Murphy 3/11 Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons 3/12 Polerotica Finals 3/18 Red Elvises 3/19 Hillstomp 3/20 Sinferno+Robert Wynia 3/24 LA Guns 3/25 She Wants Revenge 3/26 The Slants 3/27 Electric Six 3/30 Steel Tigers Of Death 4/8 Zepparella 4/9 Death Angel 4/12 WIRE 4/22 Dengue Fever 4/23 Hell’s Belles 4/30 J Mascis & Black Heart Procession 5/5 Eddie & The Hot Rods 5/6 Cash’d Out 5/8 Sinferno + Mark Growden 5/13 Pimps & Ho’s Ball 5/18 The Greenhornes 5/21 Captured! By Robots 5/28 The Undertones 6/6 Detroit Cobras 6/9 Orange Goblin 6/25 Mudhoney
[WEIRDO OPERA] In the eyes of those haggard, cynical souls who DAY been out to a RShaven’t U TH local show in the past 3 decade or so, Portland’s MAR From P-Funk music scene has grown entirely toothless, precious and twee. And they have their talking points, this lot: PlentyDon of say-nothing folk& The Quixotes pop bands popped up in the Decemberists’ wake. But don’t be so quick to lump Loch Lomond in with them. Y SUN6DAwho Loch Lomond—led by RitchieMYoung, keeps the pace AR with guitar and dares his band to follow his vocal high-wire acts—has made largely acoustic music in the eight years since Young began playing solo material under the moniker. But Loch FOLLOWEDBY BYSINFERNO SINFERNOCABARET CABARETAT AT11PM 11PM FOLLOWED Lomond’s knack for hooks means the band’s fare rarely bores SONICANGEL TOUR 2011 FRIDHAY listeners, and Young’s songs—peyote-trip folk rock meditations MARC 4 informed by the darker elements of Celtic music and the druggier side of Americana—are too bizarre to really be considered twee. Loch Lomond’s latest, Little Me WillANGELSPIT Start a Storm, is theG + SAUCY YODA & SISTAFIST & RADICAL burliest and least twee entry in the band’s catalog to date. With ESDAY the exception of “Egg Song”—a TU guitar-and-vocals track that RCH 8 MA sounds like a Thom Yorke demo covered by Donovan—each O MTalking BAUHAUS tune indulges in its own peculiar wall of sound, beFitRthe Heads funk-pop grind of “Blue Lead Fences” or the pissed-off sneaker wave-swells of “Blood Bank.” Even on the less-raucous tracks, like the Magnetic Fields-meets-Enya slow-burner “Earth Has Moved Again,” Loch Lomond gives listeners something new IDAY BETTER THAN SEX... to grab onto each time out. At theFR end 18 the day though, it’s not RCH of MA about whether a band is acoustic or electric, or whether it’s smart or dumb (there’s Ramones-dumb and Ke$ha dumb—I’m talking about the former). What matters is whether a band has vision and IDAY talent. Loch Lomond has both andFR the band is at the height of its MARCH 25 game right now. CASEY JARMAN. TICKETSWEST $8 Adv
ERIC MCFADDEN
TICKETSWEST $8 Adv 9pm Showtime
TICKETSWEST $17 Adv
BIG JOHN BATES’
GRINDSHOW
TICKETS AVAILABLE @ DANTE’S, SAFEWAY, MUSIC MILLENNIUM 800-992-8499 AND TICKETSWEST.COM
LORDS OF ACID
Burlesque, Firedancers Best &Show DJs, Magic Debauchery! AY “The In Town!” SUNFED B 27
SINFERNO ••• CABARET & VAUDEVILLE•••
TICKETSWEST $12 Adv
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RED ELVISES she wants revenge
GO: Radiation City releases The Hands That Take You on Monday, Feb. 28, at Mississippi Studios, with the Woolen Men NDAY SULoch and Support Force. 9 pm. Free. 21+. MARCH 27 Lomond releases WEST TICKETSFeb. Little Me Will Start a Storm on Saturday, 26, at the $12 Adv 8pm Alberta Rose Theatre, with Ramona Falls. 9 pm. $10 advance, & THE CONSTELLATIONS Showtime $12 day of show. 21+.
ELECTRIC SIX
RDAY SATU R 30 AP R
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J Mascis + BLACK HEART PROCESSION
DAY MON FEB 28
Karaoke FromHellHell Karaoke From
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So You Wanna Be A ROCK STAR ?
KARAOKE WITH A LIVE BAND
TUE1SDAY
COMING SOON
RERERERRSERSSRSS TUTUTU RR O R T O I E ERES RSS T T N I R R E R N GGEITNOIRTTOUTUTUR TUURRER GGEENNGNIETIOTOORR
MAR
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HA
& DIS
THU3RSDAY MAR TICKETSWEST $8 Adv
2/23 Jedi Mindf#uck 2/24 Scott H. Biram 2/25 The Upsidedown 2/26 I Can Lick Any SOB In The House 2/27 Sinferno Cabaret 2/28 Karaoke From Hell 3/1 Genitorturers & Hanzel Und Gretyl 3/2 Jedi Mindf#ck + Ed Forman Show 3/3 Eric McFadden 3/4 Lords Of Acid 3/5 Delhi 2 Dublin 3/6 Big John Bates + Sinferno 3/8 Peter Murphy 3/11 Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons 3/12 Polerotica Finals 3/18 Red Elvises 3/19 Hillstomp 3/20 Sinferno+Robert Wynia 3/24 LA Guns 3/25 She Wants Revenge 3/26 The Slants 3/27 Electric Six 3/30 Steel Tigers Of Death 4/8 Zepparella 4/9 Death Angel 4/12 WIRE 4/22 Dengue Fever 4/23 Hell’s Belles 4/30 J Mascis & Black Heart Procession 5/5 Eddie & The Hot Rods 5/6 Cash’d Out 5/8 Sinferno + Mark Growden 5/13 Pimps & Ho’s Ball 5/18 The Greenhornes 5/21 Captured! By Robots 5/28 The Undertones 6/6 Detroit Cobras 6/9 Orange Goblin 6/25 Mudhoney
E IT R GGGEENNITOURERSS
RSSS ER RTTTU O R E R T E R I R U U N R E GEENNNIIITTTOOORRT GRETYL G E G NSEL UNDGUSTITRON From P-Funk
ERIC MCFADDEN Don & The Quixotes
SUN6DAY MAR
TICKETSWEST $8 Adv 9pm Showtime
BIG JOHN BATES’
GRINDSHOW FOLLOWEDBY BYSINFERNO SINFERNOCABARET CABARETAT AT11PM 11PM FOLLOWED
MA
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TICKETS AVAILABLE @ DANTE’S, SAFEWAY, MUSIC MILLENNIUM 800-992-8499 AND TICKETSWEST.COM
SONICANGEL TOUR 2011
LORDS OF ACID
FRIDHAY RC 4
ANGELSPIT & RADICAL G + SAUCY YODA
&
SISTAFIST
DAY TUES H8 MARC H
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FROM BAUHAUS
PETER MURPHY
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PETER MURPHY
BURNSIDE HYPNOTIC SOCIETY PRESENTS
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FRIDHAY RC 25 MA
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RED ELVISES she wants revenge
AY SUND RCH 27 MA
BETTER THAN SEX...
TICKETSWEST $12 Adv 8pm Showtime
ELECTRIC SIX & THE CONSTELLATIONS
RDAY SATU R 30 AP R
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from dinosaur jr.
J Mascis
NOW STREAMING VIDEO LIVE ONSTAGE EVERY NIGHT AT DANTESLIVE.COM
[POST-WHATEVER] Moody, trip-hopTel. 503-226-6630 • Open Daily 11am-2:30am • w wwhat w . dI’d a ncall t ethe s l i ve. c o m inspired indie pop. That’s BURNSIDE HYPNOTIC SOCIETY PRESENTS music on Radiation City’s new full-length, Y Y SDAAThe DNEYou. WE23 The Hands That Take local trio, FEB which includes members of genre-bendingWITH REED MCCLINTOCK atmospheric pop outfits Spesus Christ and Soap Collectors, is working its way from Portland’s basement AY D HURSredefine scene to surface-level clubs andT helping the Portland FEB 24 sound in the process. Or making it harder to define. RALPH WHITE & THE BROTHERS COMATOSE Hands sounds familiar in slices—one can almost make out a little Jarvis-less Pulp on opener IDAY “Salsaness” bears FR“Babies”; a strange resemblance to the Cardigans’ FEB 25 “Lovefool”; “Park” is a trippy vocal-exercise pop track reminiscent of early Shins—and one gets the feeling that the band purposefully indulges its own breadth. When Cameron Spies slips into his best lounge-singer voice and tumbles out the words “I am yours but II amCAN not your LICK RDAYfeeling TUdistinct SAthe man” on “Phantom Lady,” one gets that he’s SOB ANY FEB 26 playing Jim Morrison for a verse—and lovingIN everyTHE second ofHOUSE it. Despite all the fun Radiation City has, though, it’s an album MY LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE you have to take seriously. The disc is beautifully produced: THEItsRED HILLS blips and bleeps blend seamlessly with foggy vocal filters and Burlesque, Firedancers “The Best &Show DJs, Magic Debauchery! AY creepy DAY In Town!”and affecting reverb-drenched guitar to make something SUNFED MON B 27 FEB 28 in the same moment. The clarity of tone is especially striking on “Construction,” the album’s spiritual closer (only a brief instrumental buffers it from ending the •••disc) and a fine showcase forSo You Wanna Be A ROCK STAR ? CABARET & VAUDEVILLE••• KARAOKE WITH A LIVE BAND some of Lizzy Ellison’s more straightforward crooning. 9PM JACK 9PM -- HOPELESS HOPELESS JACK When taken alone, Radiation City is one of Portland’s more COMING polished and promising young acts. AYband also repreSDthe SOON UEBut T 2/23 Jedi Mindf#uck sents a larger, encouraging shift inMlocal AR 1 music: It’s one in a new S R S 2/24 Scott H. Biram E R R E UURUERRSERS 2/25 The Upsidedown generation of local acts—and labels like Apes Tapes—that IITOTIORTORORTTRUTdon’t 2/26 I Can Lick Any SOB In The House T NNIacoustic E G E T G 2/27 Sinferno Cabaret N care much for the longstanding walls between slow pop, N GE GE 2/28 Karaoke From Hell 3/1 Genitorturers dance music, experimental electronic music and distortion& Hanzel Und Gretyl 3/2 Jedi Mindf#ck + Ed Forman Show fueled rock. And, really, it’s about time those walls fell down. 3/3 Eric McFadden 3/4 Lords Of Acid CASEY JARMAN. 3/5 Delhi 2 Dublin
+ BLACK HEART PROCESSION
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
SATURDAY required to come with its moniker. It’s the kind of unpretentious gut punch this city’s music scene needs every once in a while, and Damron is always willing to swing the sledgehammer. Its most recent record, 2010’s The Sounds of Dying, is the group’s first in six years, and it picks up right where it left off, with a sound that’s drunk, celebratory and fun as fuck. MATTHEW SINGER. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9:30 pm. $7 advance, $8 day of show . 21+.
The Concretes, Millionyoung
[ABBATOIR] Either beloved or tolerated, depending upon how arctic your circle, for a decade of harmonious shoegaze haze, there is a decidedly Swedish dependability about the Concretes—more than a whiff of the achingly slow thaw about the indie stalwarts’ deceptively simple fuzzings—but whenever the drummer takes over a band, one should expect more cowbell. While Lisa Milberg technically replaced Victoria Bergsman as vocalist five years and one album back, the recent WYWH marks a decisive (and rhythmic) step forward. It’s not, to be certain, a dance album, much as the digitized beats often overpower Milberg, but the notion that one could dance at all to a Concretes track seems as deliciously alien as disco balls and lit floors reshaping IKEA. JAY HORTON. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 2319663. 9 pm. 21+.
Goodfoot 10-Year Anniversary with the Goodfoot All-Stars
[DECADE OF DEBAUCHERY] Rotating art displays. Pepper jack cheese sticks. Sweaty makeout sessions while grinding during soul nights. Quiet jazz and bluegrass shows. Pool and pinball. Afrobeat orchestras and tribute bands. Hippies. Fuckin’ pepper jack cheese sticks. The Goodfoot has survived 10 years of business—and transformed into one of the best basement venues in Portland. To commemorate a decade of sweaty throwdowns, the Buckman oasis is featuring the Goodfoot Allstars, featuring members of Leftover
MUSIC
Salmon, the Headhunters and other jam band mainstays. Raise a glass to another 10 years of getting down with zero inhibition. AP KRYZA. Goodfoot Lounge, 2845 SE Stark St.,239-9292. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
Hellogoodbye, Jukebox The Ghost, Gold Motel, Now, Now Every Children
[OLD GROWTH] After Hellogoodbye saw its debut single, “Here (in Your Arms),” go platinum, few imagined the Huntington Beach band’s name would be taken quite so literally. Waiting four long years for the release last autumn of second album Would It Kill You?, the original fan base may have become actual sophomores, but frontman Forrest Kline used the time productively: sacking all original members, parting ways with his record company, building a home studio, and learning how to play real instruments. Bereft of AutoTune and candy synths, the new record features a baffling array of sounds—lead ukulele a special delight—and, even more bewilderingly, a wide-ranging power-pop songcraft that employs them all (and a still adolescent lyrical sensibility) to compelling effect. JAY HORTON. Hawthorne Theatre, 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 233-7100. 7 pm. $15 advance, $17 day of show. All ages.
Deerhoof, Neal Morgan
[PANDA, PANDA, PANDA] Is Deerhoof a nutso, experimental art-rock band or a set of cute and catchy pop merchants? The band has been grappling with that question every since 2003’s landmark Apple O’, constantly veering from bouncy childlike wonder (Offend Maggie’s “Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back” is just one silly example) to tracks that display a guitar interplay that rivals that of weirder guitar bands like Polvo or Sonic Youth. The band’s new record, Deerhoof vs. Evil, adds some new splashes (flamenco guitar on “No One Asked to Dance,” glitzy synthe-
PRIMER
CONT. on page 34
NATH AN C ARS O N
MAN OR ASTROMAN? Formed: Auburn, Ala., in 1992. Sounds like: The Ventures on a steady diet of Space Ghost and Hawkwind. For fans of: Surf rock, Link Wray, Dead Moon, Estrus Records, Mystery Science Theater 3000. Why you care: Man or Astroman? launched from its pad in the Deep South and became one of the most successful and militantly independent surf-punk bands of the ’90s. In its prolific early days, the group unleashed a series of instrumental albums loaded with twangy riffs and samples from every B-grade science-fiction movie imaginable. Even more stratospheric were the live shows—these events featured elaborate props and high-energy moves. From motorcycle helmets lit afire, movie projections on satellite dishes and giant computer mainframes that performed absolutely no function whatsoever, fans were always in for a treat. The Astromen took their gimmicks to great heights: Laundry lint was packaged and sold at the merch table as “space dust”; two additional bands of “Clone” Astromen were trained and sent on tour simultaneously, alarming clubs and bewildered fans. As the stage act grew, so did the band’s creative drive—by the time the majors came calling (and were promptly hung up on), Man or Astroman? had found the edge of its musical universe. The group went out on a creative high note in 2001, and ultimately re-formed in 2006 for an appearance at the Touch & Go 25th-anniversary festival. Could this be the band’s final mission? SEE IT: Man or Astroman? plays Doug Fir on Wednesday, Feb. 23, with the Octopus Project. 9 pm. $15 advance, $16 day of show. 21+.
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC LIVE MUSIC FULL BAR FOOD FUN
Thursday Feb 24th
Alan Hager / Mary Flower / Katie Angel 8pm
• Live Music •
• Great Food • NO COVER
Legendary Great Late-Night Dining! Lunch • Dinner • “Happy” Menu
626 SW Park Ave. at Alder • 503-236-3036 br asserieportl and.com • myspace.com/brasserieportland
UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES
ORAN ETKIN
FRIDAY 2/25 @ 6PM
Oran built his foundations studying with George Garzone starting at age 14 and later with Yusef Lateef. He studied classical clarinet and composition as an undergraduate and received a Masters in Jazz Performance at the Manhattan School of Music. His latest album ‘Kelenia’ fuses traditional Malian and Jewish music with modern jazz creating a hypnotic balance between straight-ahead jazz and world music. Oran also has a new CD for children called ‘Wake Up, Clarinet!’
RECORD RELEASE EVENT!
THE BUILDERS AND THE BUTCHERS FRIDAY 2/25 @ 7:30PM
Joining up with Adam Selzer (The Decemberists, M. Ward, She & Him) and engineer Dylan Magierek (Mark Kozelek, Starfucker, Thao Nguyen) the band created their third album ‘Dead Reckoning’ using the recording style of the 1950s and 1960s, where the magic of a song was captured by the band playing together live and with minimal overdubbing. The Builders went into the studio with the idea of peeling back layers to where the essence of the song lies, and to try and finally fully encapsulate their raucous, impassioned live show.
Friday Feb 25th Z’ Bumba 9pm Saturday Feb 26th
Left Coast Country 9pm
Sunday Feb 27th
Portland Jazz Festival Showcase: Paxselin Quartet and Why I Must Be Careful Monday Feb 28th
Renato Caranto’s Funk Band 8pm Thursday March 3rd Alan Jones 8pm every wed - Arabesque & Belly Dance 8pm
Now serving home made NY pizza!
THE RED RIVER SUNDAY 2/27 @ 3PM
On The Red River’s debut album ‘Little Songs About The Big Picture’ this Long Beach, CA band of brothers and sisters led by songwriter and main vocalist Bill Roberts, write beautiful little picture box dioramas of songs. Snapshots of great moments of everyday life, they start small and swell into an easy grandiosity like the tide coming in.
THE MEMORIALS WEDNESDAY 3/2 @ 6PM
SUNDAY, FEB. 27
Portland’s best happy hour 5 - 7 pm and all day sunday
Maceo Parker
3341 SE Belmont thebluemonk.com 503-595-0575 Since 1974
Never a cover!
Buffalo gap We d n e s d ay 2 / 2 3 • 9 : 0 0 p m
Buffalo Band Stand T h u r s d ay 2 / 2 4 • 9 : 0 0 p m
pheasant w/Sam Densmore f r i d ay 2 / 2 5 • 9 : 0 0 p m
Carley Bear, Celeste astara & folk and Spoon S at u r d ay 2 / 2 6 • 9 : 0 0 p m
Tyler fortier 10:00pm
Ken Hanson Band T u e s d ay 3 / 1 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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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
[JAZZ AS POP] Like the old Jazz Messengers, SFJC’s lineup evolves, but the quality persists. The current roster may lack the renown of former members Joshua Redman and Joe Lovano, but jazz mavens know them to be at the pinnacle of today’s rising (and at least with the brilliant vibist Stefon Harris and well-known trombonist Robin Eubanks, already risen) stars, and the octet’s often-dazzling collective interplay can outshine bigger names. Each year, SFJC explores the music of a single iconic composer, and for the first time, instead of a jazz luminary like Coltrane (2005) or Monk (2007), it’s done what earlier jazzers always did: channeled popular tunes. But instead of now-historic figures like Gershwin or Berlin, the group is taking on a living legend in Stevie Wonder. BRETT CAMPBELL. Newmark Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm. $29.25-$63.30. All ages.
music 7 nights a week
SATURDAY 2/26 @ 3PM
Frustrated with the cuts to music education in schools, local Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Geoff Byrd developed the Kids Record Hits scholarship program. The program is designed to create and foster a new generation of young singer-songwriters. Geoff will perform 3 songs, and several kids that go to special classes for recording their music will perform. Kids will also be encouraged to submit Kids Record Hits audition YouTube videos for a chance to perform at Music Millennium on Saturday, April 2nd.
sizers and dance beats on “Super Duper Rescue Heads!”), but the end results still sound inventive, silly and vibrant. So, basically it’s a Deerhoof record, which is always a good thing. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. Two shows! 6 pm (all ages with Neal Morgan) and 9 pm (21+ with Ben Butler and Mousepad). Both shows $15.
SF Jazz Collective
KIDS RECORD HITS Saturday, February 26th will be “Bring Your Kids to Music Millennium Day”. In an effort to expose more kids to the kind of music community only found in record stores, we have created this special day.
SATURDAY - TUESDAY
[FUNK GOD] When an artist as big as Maceo Parker swings into town, folks seldom ask what he’s been up to lately—it’s really more about what he’s accomplished in his career. Parker, of course, rose to fame as one of James Brown’s favorite side men (and, from what I understand, his less favored side men rarely survived to tell the tale) and went on to play with Parliament Funkadelic, Prince and— maybe a tad less memorably—the Dave Matthews Band. But even if it’s a less popular topic of conversation, Parker has stayed remarkably hip well into his 60s. His 2007 collaboration with Germany’s WDR Band, Roots & Grooves, sounds as funky and sharp as much of the material he played in his younger days, and his live show is...well, lively. Tonight he closes out the Portland Jazz Festival. CASEY JARMAN. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 7:30 pm. $25-$40. All ages.
How to Dress Well, Grouper, Golden Retriever
[CHOPPED AND SCREWED] Since when did Keith Sweat become an inspiration to every bedroom producer in Brooklyn? It’s hard to label Tom Krell’s How to Dress Well project as any form of contemporary R&B, but his ethereal, ghostly compositions twist the rhythm and the blues into odd and affecting new territories. HTDW’s music is by no means catchy—it’s too blown out, too achingly weird—but the better material on debut full-length Love Remains (“Ready for the World,” “My Body”) still manages to get stuck in your head, swirling his falsetto-lite vocals atop walls of reverb and lo-fi pop. It’s not music you can dance to, but it sure works well over headphones. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $10. 21+.
Swans, Wooden Wand
[TORTURE PORN] Legend has it that back in the day, New York gutter-dwellers Swans would play so loud it made audiences vomit. Even if that’s just an urban myth, it might as well be true. Listening to the band isn’t an entertaining experience; it’s a punishment. And that’s meant to be a compliment, by the way. In the way horror film directors use gore to
explore the shadowed corners of human depravity, the group does the same with the elements that make up its music: brutal volume, grindingly slow tempos and singer Michael Gira’s wrenching vocals, howled like a sinner in the midst of self-flagellation. As nasty as that sounds, it’s not all ugly. In fact, much of their discography is marked by an uneasy beauty, including 2010’s remarkable My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, the band’s first studio album in 14 years. MATTHEW SINGER. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 219-9929 (Grill), 224-2038 (Theater). 8 pm. $20 floor, $30 reserved balcony. 21+.
The Red River, Wild Ones
[WILD LIFE] Normally the return of sometimes Portland residents the Red River to town would be enough to warrant a gushing listing from me, but let’s save that for another time, because I’m about to see Danielle Sullivan sing again. Yeah, you heard me right: The former frontwoman for beloved local indie-pop band Eskimo & Sons is back with a new project, Wild Ones, and tonight marks the band’s first venture outside its own home. And though Wild Ones bills itself as a synth-pop group, debut EP You’re a Winner sounds an awful lot like Eskimo & Sons, with Sullivan’s gorgeous and airy vocals finding the perfect niche between Thomas Himes’ keys and bassistproducer Clayton Knapp’s steady low-end. It’s time to put those winter doldrums to rest and get ready for a killer summer. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. The Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
MONDAY, FEB. 28 Thrones, Witch Mountain, Lord Dying, DJ Nate C
[FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK] For months, Nate Carson (full disclosure: a fellow music scribe here at WW) has been presiding over a carefully curated Monday night celebration of all things metal at Tube. Dubbed Heavy Metal Ladies Night, this doyen of the rock community was able to use his thick book of connections to pull in an impressive array of bands from Portland and around the world to fill the tiny bar space with tar-dripping riffs and throat-scarring vocals. Now, you can find Carson presiding over a new domain at East End, and he’s already lining up some killer acts like tonight’s bill with one-man doom maven Thrones, the mighty Lord Dying, and his own band Witch Mountain. ROBERT HAM. East End, 203 SE Grand Ave., 2320056. 10 pm. Free. 21+.
TUESDAY, MARCH 1 Wild Nothing, Abe Vigoda
[VIRGINIA REEL AROUND THE FOUNTAIN] Despite what any chillwave naysayers have said the past year, it is possible to go straight from the bedroom to the big time. In the summer of 2009, Virginia’s Jack Tatum began posting a few self-recorded songs—including a jangly, aching cover of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbursting”—under the name Wild Nothing, and just a few months later he was the toast of the blogosphere, garnering praise from both Pitchfork and The New York Times. And though Tatum’s songs ooze with a nostalgia for a specific time period (think C86 cassettes and John Hughes coming-of-age films) the best ones like “Chinatown” and “Summer Holiday” display a timeless sense of indiepop range and dynamics. Both his 2010 releases (debut Gemini and its follow-up EP, Golden Haze) would sound amazing in 1986 or 2011, in a record store or Amazon checkout bin. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC CALENDAR Editor: Michael Mannheimer. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitevents or (if you book a specific venue) enter your events at dbmonkey.com/wweek. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. lease include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: mmannheimer@wweek.com. Find more music: reviews 27 For more listings, check out wweek.com/music_calendar
WED. FEB. 23
Crystal Ballroom
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Al Di Meola World Sinofia
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Pete Krebs
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Hunter Valentine, Vanity Theft, Autry
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Hollywood Tans, Problems?, Age Sex Occupation
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Lowell John Mitchell
Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash Street Baby Ketten Karaoke
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St Little Sue
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Kit Taylor, Thea Enos, Anthony Jones
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Buffalo Bandstand
1332 W Burnside St. Josh Ritter & the Royal City Band, Scott Hutchison
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Man or Astroman?, The Octopus Project
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); Chris Olson’s High Flyers (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place ValerMusicHD, Acre, Rene Hell
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. The Henhouse Prowlers, Kory Quinn
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave Laura Ivancie
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Rockstar Karaoke
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
M AT T H E W AV I G N O N E
Someday Lounge
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Aladdin Theater
[FEB. 23 - MARCH 1] 125 NW 5th Ave. Dookie Jam
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Danny Chavez, Rock’n Raymond and You
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
Tall as Rasputin, Heaven Generation, Blue in the Face, Hellokopter
Fanno Creek (9:30 pm); Quizissippi Trivia (7 pm)
Holocene
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Trace Bundy, Josh Garrels
Mississippi Studios
1001 SE Morrison St. Mouse Ghost: Ladycop, Evan B. Harris and the Afterlife Revival, Duover
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Twista, Meezilini, 456, 20Below
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Quartet
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave Pat Buckley
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd Hairy Apes BMX, Aloke Dutta (Tool)
LaurelThirst
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2958 NE Glisan St. Physical Hearts
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Tin Silver, Wendy and the Lost Boys
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Reficul, Caliph of Tacet, Myself Destruct, Curien
Portland Prime
Mission Theater
2621 SE Clinton St. Swing Papillon
1624 NW Glisan St. Notes From The Underground: The Damian Erskine Project
121 SW 3rd Ave. Randy Porter
Press Club
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave.
426 SW Washington St. Heal
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Youthbitch, Midnight Callers, DJ Ken Dirtnap
PANDA DANCE: Deerhoof plays Saturday, Feb. 26, at Holocene. Blue Monk
Andrews Ave, Wil Koehnke
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Bang a Rang: Doc Adam, Munchi
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Chervona
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
1314 NW Glisan St. Borikuas
626 SW Park Ave. Haley and Mike Horsfall
225 SW Ash St. The Secret Whistle, Deklun and Pace
Wilf’s Restaurant
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Backspace
800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen, Nola Bogle, Dennis Caizza, Phil Goldberg
115 NW 5th Ave. My Dads, The Brave Chandeliers, Mal De Mer
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Gams
Alberta Rose Theatre
Biddy McGraw’s
3000 NE Alberta St. Bob Schneider
6000 NE Glisan St Redwood Son and Fairweather (9 pm); Morgan Grace (6 pm)
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St.
Branx
Brasserie Montmartre
Ash Street Saloon
836 N Russell St. The Defendants, Jawbone Flats
3341 SE Belmont St Alan Hager Duo 320 SE 2nd Ave. A Loss for Words, In Bloom, Hand for Battle
Andina
2929 SE Powell Blvd. 6bq9
THURS. FEB. 24
Pub at the End of the Universe 4107 SE 28th Ave. Vantage, Robots on Crack
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
White Eagle Saloon
2314 SE Division St. Billy Kennedy
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road Redwood Son, Break as We Fall
1001 SW Broadway Shirley Nanette
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Pheasant with Sam Densmoore
Chapel Pub
430 N Killingsworth St. Steve Kerin
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Scott Biram, Ralph White, The Brothers Comatose
Doug Fir Lounge
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Backyard Blues Boys (9 pm); Portland Playboys (6 pm)
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Nodzzz, Nucular Aminals, Therapists, No Tomorrow Boys
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place Wishyunu, The Pharmacy, Ozarks
Fire on the Mountain East 1706 E Burnside St. Stefan Andrews
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. The Bell Boys, Spoonshine
830 E Burnside St. Pete International Airport, SexyWaterSpiders, New York Rifles
CONT. on page 38
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NaturalFurniurePDX.com SATURDAY 2/26 10AM – 10PM MUSIC FOR CREATIVE KIDS, VOL. 1
MAGGIE G- AROUND THE HOUSE • ON SALE $9.99 CD
Music for Creative Kids is a series designed to stimulate the creative development of a child’s mind by introducing them to fun original music that entertains, educates and inspires creativity. The first release in the series is ‘Around The House’ performed by Maggie G. The album’s songs encourage safe play, teamwork, helping Mom, and fun activities to do at home. Some songs convey simple messages while others provide subtle non-academic life lessons using music as the messenger.
SECRET AGENT 23 SKIDOO
UNDERGROUND PLAYGROUND • ON SALE $9.99 CD
Secret Agent 23 Skidoo the king of “kindie” hip-hop returns with his sophomore album, ‘Underground Playground’ pulling family music into tomorrow. This is real hip hop, from the drum sounds and loops to the wordplay and delivery, but with roots planted deep in the realm of childhood. These songs help kids believe in themselves, get through hard times, and learn to love life, plus just entertain with wild stories, complex music and bumping beats.
FEATURING GEOFF BYRD & STUDENTS
FROM KIDS RECORD HITS
@ 3PM FREE GIFT BAGS WITH MUSIC, COUPONS & OTHER FUN GOODIES FOR ALL KIDS 16 & UNDER!
CLASSICAL KIDS
BEETHOVEN LIVES UPSTAIRS • ON SALE $10.99 CD
The award-winning Classical Kids series introduces children -- and adults -- to the joys of classical music. The arrival of an eccentric boarder turns a young boy`s life upside down. Ludwig van Beethoven has moved in upstairs! At first Christoph resents their new tenant but slowly he comes to understand the genius of the man, the torment of his deafness and the beauty of his music. The music, all originally produced, includes excerpts of more than 35 of Beethoven`s best-loved works.
GUSTAFER YELLOWGOLD
GUSTAFER YELLOWGOLD’S INFINITY SOCK • ON SALE $14.99 DVD
Morgan Taylor developed the “musical moving storybook” Gustafer Yellowgold experience as equal parts pop rock concert and minimally animated movie. Featuring guest artists John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of WILCO, along with John Munson (bassist for Semisonic and late ‘80s cult favorite Trip Shakespeare), Gustafer Yellowgold’s Infinity Sock is the first Gustafer Yellowgold DVD/CD package to have a storyline, unfolding in graphic novel fashion and weaving together ten thought provoking, melodic soft-rock music videos in the inimitable Gustafer Yellowgold style, ranging from sublime alt-pop to gentle acoustic.
OFFER GOOD THRU: 3/22/11 Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
37
JOHN CLARK
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Mood Area 52
Proper Eats Market and Cafe 8638 N Lombard St. Jackalope Saints
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Truculence, Necryptic, Exuviate, Acidious Mutandis, Set to Burn
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave. Balkan Beat Box, Soulico, DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid
Secret Society Lounge
116 NE Russell St. Ashia Grzesik (9 pm); The Stolen Sweets (6 pm)
Slabtown
1033 NW 16th Ave. Grandtours
The Artistery
MILES AWAY: The Corin Tucker Band plays Friday, Feb. 25, at Doug Fir. Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave Eric John Kaiser
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Moving Mountains, Nickel Arcade, The Brightest
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave Pat Buckley
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Lewi Longmire Band
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Lynn Conover & Billy Kennedy Band
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom
Swim Swam Swum, No More Parachutes, AM Exchange
Secret Society Lounge 116 NE Russell St. Caleb Klauder Country Band, Joel Savoy, Jesse Lege
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
8635 N Lombard St. Susurrus Station, Wax Edison
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Spare Room Jam hosted by Francine West and the High Speed Wooblers
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Johnny Martin Trio
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
1332 W Burnside St. Y La Bamba
426 SW Washington St. The Verner Pantons, The Whole Wide World, Midnight Sun
Mississippi Pizza
The Know
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Will Coca Trio (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Arbouretum, Endless Boogie, Eternal Tapestry
Mock Crest Tavern
2026 NE Alberta St. The Estranged, Soft Tags, DJ Wednesday
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Baby Ketten Karaoke
Tonic Lounge
3435 N Lombard St. Air Show
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Rafael, Elevated, Token Folk, DJ Weatherman
Mount Tabor Theater
Tony Starlight’s
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Sauce Policy, Vivid Curve
Muddy Rudder Public House
8105 SE 7th Ave. Lauren Sheehan with Jim Bruneis
Nel Centro
1408 SW 6th Ave. Mike Pardew with Andre St. James
Newmark Theatre
Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway Don Byron
Original Halibut’s
2525 NE Alberta St. Terry Robb
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Andrew Orr, Jen Howard
Peter’s Room
8 NW 6th Ave. John Popper & The Duskray Troubadours, Lisa Bouchelle
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. From the Depths, Plague Mass, Squalora, Honduran, Chasma
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Final Offense, Razorhoos, Beringia, Ergot
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave.
38
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Mia Nicholson and the Two Daves
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd The Portland Grove Collective, Trio Flux, Pocket
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Garcia Birthday Band (9 pm); Will West and the Friendly Cover Up (5:30 pm)
Wilf’s Restaurant
800 NW 6th Ave. Tony Pacini and Alyssa Schwary
FRI. FEB. 25 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Too Slim and the Taildraggers, John Hammond
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, Blue Cranes
Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Nathaniel Talbot, Garett Brennan
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Sambafeat
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Gimme Shelter: A Benefit for Animal Aid Inc. with Blown, Swamp Surfer, Liquid Kings, Soul Distraction
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Music In The Schools Battle of the Bands: Brainstorm, KITTIN, Sloths, Stand Back! It’s Reaching Critical Mass, Color Crash
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Lorna B. Band
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St Funk Shui (9 pm); Billy Kennedy & Jimmy Boyer (6 pm)
Bipartisan Cafe 7901 SE Stark St. Barnum Jack
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St Z’Bumba
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Gary Hobbs Trio
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Carley Bear, Celeste Astara, Folk and Spoon
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Ron Rogers
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. SOJA, Mambo Sauce, Chris Boomer
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Karen Lovely Band, The Ty Curtis Band
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave Cul an Ti
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Riviera, Little Beirut, The Lord’s Own Choir
Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St. On The Stairs (as part of the Portlandia screening)
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. The People’s Meat, Brownish Black (9 pm); Christine Havrilla (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. JJ Grey, Sunny War
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. The Upsidedown, Lookbook, Sexy Water Spiders
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Versus, The Corin Tucker Band, Hungry Ghost
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Shark Skin Revue (9 pm); Joy and Her Sentimental Gentlemen (6 pm)
East Burn
1800 E. Burnside Kung Pao Chickens
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Benefit for Portland Skate Parks: Guantanamo Baywatch, Fast Takers, Doom Patrol
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Held Up Hands, The Bad Mitten Orchestre, Scrimshander
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave Karyn Partridge
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Rockstar Karaoke
801 NE Broadway Diminished Men, Lickity, Trawler Bycatch
Muddy Rudder Public House
8105 SE 7th Ave. Bob Soper & Kory Quinn
Music Millennium
3158 E Burnside St. The Builders and the Butchers
Nel Centro
1408 SW 6th Ave. Mike Pardew with Dave Captein, Carlton Jackson
Newmark Theatre
Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway Esperanza Spalding
Oak Grove Tavern
2099 SE Oak Grove Blvd. Karaoke
Original Halibut’s
2525 NE Alberta St. Norman Sylvester
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Lynn Conover
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Boats!, Welcome Home Walker, The Bloodtypes, The Midnight Callers
Portland Prime 121 SW 3rd Ave. Mia Nicholson
115 NW 5th Ave. Ted Leo, Forbidden Friends
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Kode Bluuz Band
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St Twisted Whistle
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St Left Coast Country
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Bobby Torres Trio
426 SW Washington St. Kickassers, Lordy Lords, Primitive Idols, 48 Thrills
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Wow & Flutter, Follow That Bird, Cat Stalks Bird
The World Famous Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Thee Headliners, Flash Flood and the Dikes, Dusty Satamaria
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Spirit Lake, Bruhn, Crazy Dumbsaint
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. The Tony Starlight Show
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd Minty Rosa, Broken Bodies, Thundering Asteroids
Twilight Room
836 N Russell St. Quality Shine, Hillfork Noir (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Wilf’s Restaurant
800 NW 6th Ave. Michael Allen Harrison
SAT. FEB. 26 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Gary Myrick and the Figures, Thinman
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Loch Lomond CD Release, Ramona Falls
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Justin Klump, Dustin Erhardt
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Betty and the Boy, Brandon Decker, Jason Simms
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Thomas Lauderdale plays Grieg
Artichoke Community Music 3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Fernando, Richmond Fontaine, Massy Ferguson
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St. Blueprints
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Meezilini, KARMA, F-IF, Lil’ Face, 20 Below, Ani@no, Scrills, Portland George
Mudai
801 NE Broadway Nasalrod, Crypt of the Grave, Old Junior
Newmark Theatre
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. Regina Carter
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. I Can Lick Any SOB In The House, My Life In Black & White, Red Hills
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. The Concretes, Millionyoung, Scars On 45
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
Eagles Lodge, Southeast
4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Marisa Anderson, Larry Yes, Tangled Mess
East Burn
1800 E. Burnside The Oh My My’s
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Fake Drugs, Prescription Pills, The Crow
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Goodfoot 10 Year Anniversary with the Goodfoot All-Stars
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
1503 SE 39th Ave. Lloyd Mitchel Canyon
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Hellogoodbye, Jukebox The Ghost, Gold Motel, Now, Now Every Children
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Deerhoof, Neal Morgan
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Deerhoof, Ben Butler and Mousepad
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Alan Jones Sextet
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave Cul an Ti
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Tree Frogs
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Emma Hill and Her Gentleman Callers, Leeroy Stagger, Truckstop Darlin’
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Pete Krebs Trio, Jenny Finn Orchestra (9 pm); The Big Ideas (6 pm); The Alphabeticians (3:30 pm)
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Nicole Berke, Kinder Bison (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
Wilf’s Restaurant
800 NW 6th Ave. Valerie Day, Mike Horsfall, Phil Baker, Mark Griffith
SUN. FEB. 27
Andina
Original Halibut’s
Crystal Ballroom
1420 SE Powell Blvd Fallen Intent, The Mercury Tree, Seahearse, Holy Tentacles
Oak Grove Tavern
Carefree Bar & Grill
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Elite
Twilight Cafe and Bar
Alberta Rose Theatre
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Tyler Fortier, Ken Hanson Band 10209 SE Division Eight53, King Green, Last Prick Standing
Gerald Clayton
Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway SF Jazz Collective
2099 SE Oak Grove Blvd. Live Music - Bryan Minus & The Disconnect, Last Prick Standing, King Green, Eight53
Buffalo Gap Saloon
1332 W Burnside St. The 3 Cohens, AfroSemitic Experience
White Eagle Saloon
Mudai
1332 W Burnside St. Poncho Sanchez
Backspace
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
1001 SW Broadway Johnny Martin
Mount Tabor Theater
Crystal Ballroom
225 SW Ash St. 7th Annual Johnny Cash Tribute: Joshua James and the Runaway Trains
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
5242 N Lombard St. The Terry Robb Electric Band
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. AK1200, Sponge Park, Treyzilla
Ash Street Saloon
Clyde’s Prime Rib
3435 N Lombard St. Otis Heat
Mock Crest Tavern
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. La Rhonda Steele
4315 SE Division St. Arrington de Dionyso’s Malaikat Dan Singa, Ozarks, Shapes, Media Them
Dan Compton and Mark Roberts
2525 NE Alberta St. Linda Hornbuckle, Janice Scroggins
3000 NE Alberta St. Joe Craven, David Jacobs-Strain 1314 NW Glisan St. Danny Romero
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Thomas Lauderdale plays Grieg
Ash Street Saloon
8 NW 6th Ave. Mann & DJ Warrior
225 SW Ash St. Terwilliger Curves, Apache Trail, The Small Arms
Plan B
Blue Monk
Peter’s Room
1305 SE 8th Ave. The Hollowbodies, Bloody Mess, The Atom Age, The Viggs, Idol Threats
Portland Prime
121 SW 3rd Ave. Mel Brown with Tony Pacini
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Lara Michelle, James Low and Into November
Proper Eats Market and Cafe 8638 N Lombard St. The Disappointments
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Perserverance, American Roulette, Sinfix, Alien Parachute Man, Lyckwyd
Secret Society Lounge 116 NE Russell St. Melao de Cuba (9 pm); AnnaPaul and the Bearded Lady (6 pm)
Sellwood Public House 8132 SE 13th Ave. Dick Lappe & Friends
Slabtown
1033 NW 16th Ave. Cellar Door, Kentucky Darby, Russel Bruners Burlesque Show, DJ Sugar
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Pagan Jug Band
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Jake Oken-Berg, Pilar French, Debra Arlyn
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. The Buckels
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
1001 SW Broadway Bre Gregg, Vince Frates, Dennis Caiazza
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Beyond Veronica, Black Market Sunday, Bright Faces
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Pyroklast, Raw Nerves
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Nathaniel Talbot and Garett Brennan, Lincoln Crockett
The World Famous Kenton Club 2025 N Kilpatrick St. Dramady, Rollerball
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Mental Hygiene, The Elicitors
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd.
3341 SE Belmont St Paxselin Quartet, Why I Must Be Careful
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Emilie Autumn
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Ramsey Embick
Crow Bar
3954 N Mississippi Ave. The Ocular Concern
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. Maceo Parker
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Sinferno Cabaret, Hopeless Jack and the Handsome Devils
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Future Historians, The Lower 48, Mike Midlo
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Archeology, The Devil Whale, Syran
Fire on the Mountain East
1706 E Burnside St. Mimi Naja and Jay Cobb
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Jake Salcone
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. How to Dress Well, Grouper, Golden Retriever
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave Eric Tonsfeldt (9 pm); Irish Sessions (6 pm)
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Freaks & Geeks
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Don and the Quixotes (9 pm); Cow Paddy Stompers (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Jared Mees and the Grown Children, Monarques, Rocky and the Proms
Mudai
801 NE Broadway Zmoke, The Hunter Becomes the Hunted
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Irish
Nel Centro
1408 SW 6th Ave. Mike Pardew with Brooklyn Street Jazz
New Copper Penny
5932 SE 92nd Ave. Positively Entertaining
Newmark Theatre
Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway Joshua Redman Quartet
Newmark Theatre
Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway Joshua Redman
Proper Eats Market and Cafe 8638 N Lombard St. Liv Carrow
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave. Swans, Wooden Wand
Secret Society Lounge
116 NE Russell St. Hanz Araki, Cary Novotny
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
8635 N Lombard St. Johnny Ward Sharktet
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Classical Revolution PDX, Electric Opera Company
Star Bar
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Alameda, Porches, Steve Taylor
MON. FEB. 28 Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Becky Miller
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Scott Head
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Thomas Lauderdale plays Grieg
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Da’ Movement - Zig Zag, L City, BSMoove, H2O, 919 ENT, Sleep Bandana, Meat Gutta, Komazing
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St Eric Tonsfeldt
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St Renato Caranto’s Funk Band
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. D.K. Stewart
Dante’s
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
830 E Burnside St. The Prids, Charmparticles, Altisonus Deseign, Dropa
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. The Red River, Wild Ones
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Painted Face, Tunnels, Paradise Island, DJ Christina Files
1503 SE 39th Ave. Rockstar Karaoke
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Sunbeam, The Parson Red Heads, Old Light
Jimmy Mak’s
639 SE Morrison St. Karaoke That Doesn’t Suck Presented by Down Under Rock
426 SW Washington St. Twisted Whistle, Camping in a Cadillac, Quinn Allan
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
350 W Burnside St. Karaoke From Hell
Doug Fir Lounge
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Big D Jamboree (8:30 pm); James Sasser Band (6 pm)
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Thrones, Witch Mountain, Lord Dying, DJ Nate C
221 NW 10th Ave. The Dan Balmer Band
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave Cary Novotny
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Little Sue & Lynn Conover
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Kung Pao Chickens
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Jami Lynn, Lincoln Crockett, Kory Quinn (8 pm); The Portland Spelling Bee (6:30 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Radiation City, The Woolen Men, Support Force
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Larsen Vegas Starr: Free Rock N Roll Show
Rose Garden
1401 N Wheeler Ave. Eric Clapton
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Basketball Jones, Genevieve Maull
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd SIN Night
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. House of Wolves, E.B. Harris and the Afterlife Revival
TUES. MARCH 1 Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Neftali Rivera
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Imagination Movers
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St. Random Diversity, Dogtooth
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Sick of Sarah, The Angry Orts
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Genitorturers, Hanzel Und Gretyl, Disgustitron
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club
Mission Theater
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Baby Ketten Karaoke
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Priory, Tango Alpha Tango, Sara Jackson Holman
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St. Johnnie Ward, Eagle Ridin’ Papa
Mount Tabor Theater 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Family Funktion featuring Average Leftovers
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Paul Brainard’s Fun Machine
Peter’s Room
8 NW 6th Ave. Supervillains, Lionize, Medium Troy
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Riverpool, Oden, Fall From Zero
Fire on the Mountain East
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Danny Chavez Karaoke Show
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Scott PembertonTrio
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Wild Nothing, Abe Vigoda, Ghost Animal
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Septet
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Jackstraw
Crown Room
205 NW 4th Ave. Massive
Mississippi Pizza
714 SW 20th Place I Promote Good Bands Presents: Sun Mar, House of Wolves
1706 E Burnside St. Brad Parsons 900pm
SAT. FEB. 26
1624 NW Glisan St. Notes From The Underground: Ezra Weiss Quartet
Fez Ballroom
WED. FEB. 23 Crown Room
205 NW 4th Ave. Crush Drum and Bass
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Last Wednesday on the Left with DJ Dennis Dread
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. TRONix: Mixed Signals with Popcorn
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Sean Moder, DJ Over Cole
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Alex Hall
Yes and No
20 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Ikon
THURS. FEB. 24 Beauty Bar
Spare Room
111 SW Ash Street DJ Sad Panda
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
316 SW 11th Ave. Shadowplay with DJ Horrid, DJ Ghoulunatic, DJ Paradox
Fez Ballroom
426 SW Washington St. Gabriel Blue, Michael the Blind, Fulero and Day’s Elliot Smith Tribute
Holocene
The Woods
125 NW 5th Ave. The Fix: Rev. Shines, KEZ, Dundiggy
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Rachel Robinson, The Brendan Hines, Kristen Toedtman
1001 SE Morrison St. Sorted: Jimmy Edgar, Lincolnup, Ben Tactic
Someday Lounge
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Northern Soul Night: DJ Isaiah Summers, DJ A Train
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Magic Beans
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Tender, Love ‘n Care Country Night with Josh and Mike
FRI. FEB. 25
316 SW 11th Ave. Twice As Nice
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. Roxy Epoxy
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Blow Pony: DJ Airick, DJ Kinetic, DJ Yer Momm, DJ Trans Fat, DJ Ill Camino, Roy G Biv
Crown Room
Star Bar
Fez Ballroom
Tiga
Goodfoot Lounge
Valentine’s
205 NW 4th Ave. Blown: Spekt1, Tony G, D.Poetica 316 SW 11th Ave. Decadent 80s 2845 SE Stark St. DJ Aquaman’s Soul Stew
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Snap! 90s Dance Party: Dr. Adam, Colin Jones
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Cosmo Baker, Rev. Shines, Club Crooks
639 SE Morrison St. British Backlash: DJ Tiny Corrupter 1465 NE Prescott St. City Baby 232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Knife Hits
SUN. FEB. 27 East End
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Alex
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Hive: DJ Owen
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Dj Anjali & The Incredible Kid, DJ E3
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Ikon
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Dareck Fansler
Yes and No
20 NW 3rd Ave. Synthicide: DJ Maxx Bass, DDDJJJ666, Musique Plastique
MON. FEB. 28 Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. Service Industrial: DJ Tibin
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Sweet Relish
TUES. MAR. 01 Crown Room
205 NW 4th Ave. See You Next Tuesday
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
39
PERFORMANCE
FEB. 23-MARCH 1
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead.
B R I A N W E AV E R
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.
NO SOUL: Nikki Weaver in The Scene.
THEATER Ana en el Trópico
Miracle Theatre Group presents the Spanish version of Nilo Cruz’s 2002 drama, Anna in the Tropics, about the lives of the employees of a mom-andpop cigar factory in 1929 Tampa. The factory employs a lector, or reader, whose job it is to read to the workers while they roll tobacco, and the play begins when a new lector arrives from Cuba with a copy of Anna Karenina in hand. The novel serves as a metaphor for the obvious, facile conflicts going on in the factory. BEN WATERHOUSE. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7:30 pm Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays through March 5. $14-$25.
Bloody Poetry
Northwest Classical Theatre Company presents Howard Brenton’s dramatization of the historical meeting of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont, at a Swiss manse. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-2443740. 7 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes March 20. $15-$18.
The Comedy of Errors
Twenty-five-year-old Portland Actors Conservatory pulls off its first Shakespeare with tremendous humor and poesy. Directed by Philip Cuomo, the slapstick comedy tells the tale of two sets of identical twins with the same set of names, accidentally separated at birth, who find themselves unknowingly in the same town after 33 years. What do you do when a wife you’ve never seen demands you come home for dinner and a jeweler hounds you for gold you don’t have? Craigslist’s missed connections and Social Security numbers were moot back in 1594, so the townsfolk of Ephesus do the best they can with wrongful beatings and accusations of demonic possession. Jeff Gilpin and other guest actors contribute to the Conservatory’s already impressive talent. “Isn’t life a comedy of errors?” implores PAC Artistic Director Beth Harper. It sure is, and this capable crew makes us remember why it’s funny. STACY BROWNHILL. 1436 SW Montgomery St., 274-1717. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes March 6. $13-$25.
A Company of Wayward Saints
Lunacy Stageworks presents a commedia-style comedy by George Herman, about a band of aging actors, who are offered a sum large enough to allow them all to quit the road for good if they can give their best performance ever. Sellwood Masonic Lodge, 7126 SE Milwaukie Ave., 541-301-0193. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sunday, March 13. No shows March 12 or 17. Closes March 19. $15.
40
Futura
In Jordan Harrison’s dystopic sci-fi drama, a future where the flow of information is controlled by corporations begins with a lecture on the history of typography, delivered with the aid of beautiful slides (designed by Luke Norby) by an acerbic professor (Lori Larsen) to a class of students who have never beheld paper. The lesson was greeted with smug giggles by the audience of design snobs, who grew quiet abruptly at the beginning of the second act, as the play takes a violent and disquieting turn when the professor encounters a terrorist group bent on restoring to humanity its literary birthright. BEN WATERHOUSE. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturdays-Sundays, noon Thursdays, except March 17 and 24. $20-$40.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Broadway Rose kicks off its 20th season with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s second big hit. Broadway Rose New Stage Theatre, 12850 SW Grant Ave., Tigard, 6205262. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays through March 13. $28, $20 for viewers 25 or younger.
King Lear
Third Rail Rep screens a recording of Derek Jacobi’s celebrated turn as King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 235-1101. 2 and 7 pm SaturdaySunday, Feb. 26-27. $20, $15 students.
Kid Simple
Auditory intricacies take center stage in Jordan Harrison’s alternately whimsical and schmaltzy play about a plucky girl genius who invents a machine that plays impossible-to-hear sounds (such as—cue the groans— a breaking heart). As descriptions of noises are projected onto a screen, a Foley artist standing above the set provides corresponding sound effects (shaking a pompom as the words “sound like moving through tall grass” flash below, and strumming a tennis racket for “sound of a content kitty”). It’s one of the defter fanciful touches in a production that heaves with implausible plot turns and cutesy invented words. The cast is good-natured, but it’s cramped by the script’s too-brief exposition and tedious, sappy conclusion. It’s a shame—the boisterous medley of sound effects is delightful, and the twisting, fantastical plot should make for a meaty theatrical experience, but the show ultimately becomes too convoluted and precious for its own good. REBECCA JACOBSON. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 2050715. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes March 26. $20-$25.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
The Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s bloodlust is in full display in this scathing satire of Irish nationalism—it has a total of six onstage murder victims, two of whom are cats. It’s a hilariously funny script, but most of the laughs come in response to its characters’ blasé reactions to the carnage. Thomas Stroppel stars as Padraic, an unhinged second lieutenant for a splinter group of the IRA who becomes even more deranged than usual when he hears that his only friend in the world, his cat, Wee Thomas, is ill. Wee Thomas is in fact dead, but Padraic’s father (Todd Van Voris) and teenage neighbor (Nathan Crosby) are desperate to conceal the fact. They are the fools to this tragedy, incompetently daubing shoe polish on a Wee Thomas stand-in, tormented by the neighbor’s psychotic teenage sister and an assortment of bumbling terrorists, and they are excellent. Director Jon Kretzu has not neglected the gore. Blood spurts, limbs are shattered and bodies pile up with a perverse attention to detail. I have never laughed so hard at the sight of a bloodied cat corpse, and suspect I never shall again. BEN WATERHOUSE. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays through March 13. $26-$42, $20 students.
On the Eve of Friday Morning
Oregon Children’s Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of a tale of ancient Persia: When young Iranian girl Nassrin’s father is arrested for smuggling banned books, her mother tells her a story. A thousand years earlier, an orphan boy is told the same tale by a wandering storyteller. Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 228-9571. 2 and 5 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes March 20. $16-$26.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Portland Center Stage presents Dale Wasserman’s adaptation of Ken Kesey’s classic novel. Kesey reportedly liked this version, which was not used as the basis for Milos Forman’s film. Rose Riordan directs. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 pm SaturdaysSundays. Closes March 27. $33-$58.
Sherman: A Jazz Opera
A new musical by Thara Memory and S. Renee Mitchell about the life of legendary Portland saxman Sherman Thomas and the ’50s jazz scene on North Williams Avenue. Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, 5340 N Interstate Ave. 7 pm Friday-Sunday Feb. 25-27. $10-$15.
The Scene
“It’s fantastic!” Says the fallen man to the means of his ruination. “You look like that, you screw like a bunny and you have no soul! Seriously. It is aweinspiring.” Yeah, it is. He’s speaking to Clea, a 22-year-old faux-naive succubus busily fucking her way up the ladder of the New York TV business. She’s the greatest creation of Theresa Rebeck, a playwright I had previously considered more fun than frighteningly talented, and she burns a horrid swath across the lives of everyone else she encounters in this savage show-biz comedy. In Portland Playhouse’s production, directed by Tamara Fisch, Leif Norby, Ty Hewitt and Laura Faye-Smith are all turn in strong performances, but Nikki Weaver’s Clea commands the stage, seeming to absorb all the light in the room. Her speech is a highvelocity mess of misused adjectives, her inflection a abominable mating of Valley girl and Ira Glass, and she moves with a calculated looseness that hold the gaze even as her personality repulses. Aging actor Charlie (Leif Norby) is especially repelled, but winds up drawn in anyway, sabotaging his career and successful marriage to a competent, affectionate professional in a nightmarish tryst. It isn’t really Clea’s fault, of course. Rebeck has a keen insight into why happily married men self-destruct—it’s all about power and pride—and a creature like Clea can only facilitate the disaster. But still—wow, is she awful. Weaver’s is
the most demanding performance I’ve seen this season; you cannot look away. BEN WATERHOUSE. Portland Playhouse, 602 NE Prescott St., portlandplayhouse.org, 205-0715. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes March 13. $16-$21.
Thief River
The latest installment of Profile Theatre’s ongoing project to bring nine Lee Blessing plays to life, Thief River, set in a small Midwestern town, is about two men’s love for each other as they are pulled apart and brought together over the course of their lives. The audience is shuttled back and forth between young Gil and Ray’s initial separation in 1948 and two subsequent meetings, in 1973 and 2001. RACHAEL DEWITT. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 242-0080. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 23-27. $28, $15 students.
COMEDY Comedy Night at the Bagdad
Ron Osborne headlines. Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. 8 pm Friday, Feb. 25. $5.
Rob Delaney
Delaney is a filthy, nasty comic, in the best way. Kasey Anderson opens. The Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 8900408. 8 pm Friday, Feb. 25. $13.
Mice-tro
Sixteen improv actors do the bidding with a voice-of-God maestro. STACY BROWNHILL. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Fridays. $10, $7 students.
Lawful Order: Special Puppets Unit
Improv comedy inspired by police procedurals, with puppets. The Unscriptables Studio, 1121 N Loring St. 8 pm Friday-Saturday Feb. 25-26. All shows are “pay what you want.”
CLASSICAL Manuel Barrueco, Cuarteto Latinoamericano
One of today’s finest classical guitarists, the Cuban-born Barrueco’s partnership with the fine Mexican ensemble that has revived the toorarely-heard string quartet repertoire (Villa Lobos, Ginastera, Chavez) is one of the best things to happen to classical chamber music in years. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., 224-9842. 7:30 pm Monday, Feb. 28. $27-$40.
Bravo! Vancouver Chorale, Washington Chamber Orchestra
Dave Brubeck’s 90th birthday has occasioned a long-overdue look back at the jazz piano deity’s other considerable musical accomplishments, including his classical-meetsjazz choral Mass setting To Hope! A Celebration. St. Joseph Church, 400 S Andresen Road, Vancouver, 360-9060441. 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. $20.
Al Di Meola
The jazz-guitar virtuoso brings his World Sinfonia project to town. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm Wednesday, Feb. 23. $32.50-$35.
Electric Opera Company, Classical Revolution
The alt-classical groups get all Satanic with a rockish (15 electric guitars!) concert of devilish tunes by Vivaldi, Chopin, Lennon & McCartney, and Jagger & Richards. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030. 9 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. $8 donation.
Steve Gorn and Benjy Wertheimer
The bansuri flutist and tabla wallah perform Hindustani classical music and North Indian folk tunes. The Movement Center, 1025 NE 33rd Ave., 231-0994. 8 pm Friday, Feb. 25. $15-$20.
Ashia Grzesik
For this release concert of her enticing new EP, Bison Rouge, the singer-cel-
list has enlisted assistance from both of those bands. The Secret Society Ballroom, 116 NE Russell St., 702-3558379. 9 pm Friday, Feb. 25. $8-$20.
The Julians
The exuberant women’s vocal quartet runs the seven-stage gamut of deadly sinful poetry, theatrical monologues, and music from classical to rock, including Sondheim, Palestrina, Björk, Tom Waits, Poulenc, Abba, Brahms, Queen, Lassus, Fleet Foxes…you get the idea. First Presbyterian Church, 1200 SW Alder St., 971-212-8034. 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. $10-$12.
Portland Vocal Consort
New music by Joan Szymko (Do Jump!, Aurora Chorus), UO music prof Robert Kyr (his sparkling 2010 Santa Fe Vespers), PSU’s Bryan Johanson, David Miller, Timothy Stephens, Edward Henderson, veteran Portland conductor Keith Clark and the winner of PVC’s Young Composer contest. First Presbyterian Church, 1200 SW Alder St., 209-7539. 7:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 26. $10-$20.
DANCE Oregon Ballet Theatre’s The Stravinsky Project
There are so many good reasons to see The Stravinsky Project, the new show from Oregon Ballet Theatre, that it’s hard to know where to start. Most obviously, it’s the music that will unite the dances on the program, created by the Russian composer known as much for scandal as genius: As legend has it, rightly or wrongly, his Rite of Spring caused a riot at its 1913 debut. OBT Artistic Director Christopher Stowell’s stark, fascinating 2009 version of the ballet returns here, danced by, among others, Anne Mueller. Yuri Possokhov, a colleague from Stowell’s San Francisco Ballet days and a skilled dancemaker in his own right, contributes a contemporary revamp of the classic Russian folk tale Firebird. And then there’s the show’s title piece, The Stravinsky Project, a world-premiere collaboration of four Portland-based choreographers: Mueller, BodyVox’s Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, and the Rumpus Room’s Rachel Tess, all styled by costume designer Morgan Walker and set to Stravinsky and electronic music from WaterDog Studio composer Heather Perkins. A note: Tess’ piece actually begins in the Keller lobby during the show’s intermission, so make sure to get up and check it out. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 800-745-3000. 7:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 26; 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 27; 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, March 4-5. $10$140. Tickets at obt.org.
Rumi’s Moving Prayer
“Whirling dervish” isn’t just an expression—there really is such a thing, and the Mevlevi Order of America would like to demonstrate. The group, whose adherents admire the 13th century Islamist poet and spiritual leader Rumi, are hosting a public event that begins with live Turkish music and concludes with what the Mevlevi call “prayer in motion,” which is where the whirling comes in. Trillium Charter School, 5420 N Interstate Ave., Portland, 735-3120. 7 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. $10.
Winner’s Circle
A b-boy battle with a twist. Here’s how it works: Everyone who attends the event gets a number from 1 to 100 and will be allowed to jump into open circles for breaking and all-styles dance (house, krumping, etc.); each circle lasts an hour or two. Anonymous judges will roam the room, then pluck their four favorite dancers in each category to face off in one-on-one bouts. Battles will be separated by category and each category winner will receive $75 in cash and prizes. New Day Center for the Arts, 5516 SE Foster Road. 4 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. $10-$15. Tickets at brownpapertickets.com/event/153129.
For more Performance listings, visit
FEB. 23-MARCH 1
PERFORMANCE
PREVIEW
MORTEN LAURIDSEN
MORTEN LAURIDSEN (PORTLAND STATE CHOIRS) When Morten Lauridsen was growing up in Beaverton in the 1950s, students commonly headed out to the Tillamook Burn to plant trees. A few years ago, the composer returned to the oncebarren site to see it now covered by towering firs. Lauridsen’s musical career has sprouted proportionately over that half century. Now the dean of American choral composers, his works are performed by choirs all over the world. He received the 2007 National Medal of Arts at the White House, and his works have appeared on more than 100 CDs. This weekend, he returns to his hometown for two concerts of his music with Portland State University’s choirs and symphony. Although he’s lived in Southern California since the ’60s, in a sense Lauridsen has never left the Northwest. One set of ancestors helped settle Bainbridge Island, while another pioneered eastern Washington, where he was born in 1943. Lauridsen graduated in the first class at Sunset High (’61), played in the band and sang in choirs, and considers himself a native Portlander. Each summer, he escapes L.A. sprawl to return to a primitive cabin he built in 1975 on Waldron Island, Wash. There, by light from kerosene lanterns, he completed some of the most beautiful choral music of the last century on a battered $50 piano. “The Northwest has drawn out of me some of my finest music,” Lauridsen says. “You can hear that its serenity, calmness and beauty have crept into my music.” He’s returned often to lecture at local universities, hear and participate in performances of his music. The first of 11 all-Lauridsen CDs was recorded by Portland’s Choral Cross-Ties, who premiered his major cycle Les Chansons des Roses, inspired by the City of Roses. Another recent CD is titled Northwest Journey. Listeners cherish the lush, often soothing harmonies and rich inner lines of Lauridsen’s music. Choirs admire it because “he really does understand the voice,” says Ethan Sperry, PSU music professor. Sperry studied under Lauridsen at the University of Southern California, and created this weekend’s programs with him. Sperry cites Lauridsen’s deft use of jazz harmonies and fresh treatment of seemingly simple classical music devices as key to his music’s appeal. Both weekend concerts, with Lauridsen and other pianists accompanying the PSU orchestra and choirs, feature his enduring O Magnum Mysterium and Sure on This Shining Night. Friday’s program includes selections from several of Lauridsen’s classic choral cycles, plus his abstract Lorca settings, Cuatro Canciones. Sunday’s show, which adds three church choirs and soloists including Paul Sperry and the Oregon Guitar Quartet, features his luminous Lux Aeterna, A Winter Come for voice and piano, and both the solo and quartet versions of “Dirait-On,” the enchanting lullaby from the Rose songs. It’s a wide-ranging tribute to and homecoming for one of the Northwest’s finest composers. BRETT CAMPBELL. A Northwest homecoming.
SEE IT: First United Methodist Church, 1838 SW Jefferson St., 725-3307. 8 pm Friday and 3 pm Sunday, Feb. 25 and 27. $12-$17. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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VISUAL ARTS
FEB. 23-MARCH 1
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RICHARD SPEER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show information—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: rspeer@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115. Emailed press releases must be backed up by a faxed or printed copy.
STEPHEN O’DONNELL’S PLUS FÉROCE QUE CE QU’ON POURRAIT CROIRE AT FROELICK
NOW SHOWING Mosa Musi
“Soul-stirring... Haunting... Full of breathtaking moments.” Grant Butler, The Oregonian “A daring fusion of musical styles... A moving story of characters on both sides of a cultural divide.” Marty Hughley, The Oregonian
JANE a theater company presents A Marv Ross Production
In the exhibition, Mosa Musi, Nicholas Knapton invigoratingly fills an entire wall with a grid of paintings built around the motif of rectilinear abstraction. The geometric rigor of Construction Collage Series is counterbalanced by the sensuality of the beeswaxdipped paper upon which the compositions were painted. ANKA, 325 Northwest 6th Ave., 224-5721. Closes Feb. 25.
Daido Moriyama
A MYSTERY. A LOVE STORY. A MUSICAL LIKE NO OTHER.
Winner of 8 PAMTA Awards including Best Production
March 4 - March 12 9 performances PCPA Newmark Theatre Directed by Greg Tamblyn
On sale now at the PCPA Box Office and all Ticketmaster outlets. Call Ticketmaster at
800.745.3000 or online at Photo: David Straub
www.ticketmaster.com.
To see the trailer for The Ghosts of Celilo visit www.ghostsofcelilo.com Generously supported by The Spirit Mountain Community Fund, The Portland Center for the Performing Arts, Roundhouse Foundation, and The Marie Lamfrom Foundation 42
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
Clad only in a flimsy skirt or negligee, a young woman runs barefoot up a dingy alleyway. Is the girl in Tokyo-based photographer Daido Moriyama’s print, Yokosuka, running to someone or from someone? The undercurrent of danger and the unknown permeating the piece extends into many other works in the well-curated Photographs from Five Decades. Charles A. Hartman, 134 NW 8th Ave., 287-3886. Closes Feb. 26.
Martha Wallulis
When she paints figuratively, painter Martha Wallulis often incorporates archetypal imagery, sometimes borrowing from the ancient mythology of her Greek heritage. Her gifts for color and miasmic atmospherics, however, shine most brightly in her abstract compositions. In an untitled acrylic house-paint painting on panel, she overlays a chartreuse background with counterintuitive horizontal drips and a central nucleus in vivid maroon. Darras, 625 NW Everett St., No. 115. Closes Feb. 28.
Winter Group Exhibit
Stephen O’Donnell’s oil painting Plus Féroce que ce qu’on Pourrait Croire numbers among the highlights in the gallery’s annual winter group show. The subject of O’Donnell’s portrait, dressed in Baroque finery and elaborate wig, dares the viewer to quibble with the piece’s title, which, translated from the French, means “tougher than he looks.” Meanwhile, Laura
Ross-Paul’s Night Light portrays a female figure seemingly juggling fire. Well-composed and imaginative in Ross-Paul’s classic mythmeets-mysticism style, the painting glints and shimmers with metallic paint embedded in a waxy finish. Froelick, 714 NW Davis St., 2221142. Closes Feb. 26.
Christine Clark
When you look at the bric-a-brac collecting dust at your pad do you wonder: “Why do I have this crap?” Artist Christine Clark poses that question, in a fashion, in her elegant installation, Collective Object. Clark has fashioned 62 objects out of powder-coated steel wire, welded into shapes resembling vases, decanters, sculptures, gourds and masks. Each of Clark’s objects—immaculately white and lined up side by side on white, wall-mounted shelves—looks similar to the object to its right and left, but there’s enough variation between the pieces such that, once you get 10 or 11 objects in either direction, each shape has transmogrified into something unrecognizable from its original reference point. Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210. Closes Feb. 27.
Jay Steensma
Impermanence is also a theme in the work of the late Jay Steensma (1941-1994). Steensma often painted on paper bags, turning this highly disposable material into timeless reflections on landscape, animal life and nature itself. Steensma’s paintings of birds exude eerie charm, rendered iconically in a crude but effective neo-primitivist style. His mountainscape, Love Butte, speaks to the simultaneous reverence for, and fear of, nature. Confident, mysterious and sinister, these works demonstrate why Steensma earned a place in the pantheon of historic Northwest artists. Pulliam Gallery, 929 NW Flanders St., 228-6665. Closes Feb. 26.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
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FEB
23 DEBORAH HARKNESS / A Discovery of Witches (Viking) Richly inventive debut, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. WED / 23RD / 7PM CEDAR HILLS
MATTHEW MILLER / Fortunate Sons (W. W. Norton)
A tale of the boys China sent in the late 19th century to Ivy League schools to learn the ways of the West.
WED / 23RD / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
BARBARA ALMOND / The Monster Within (University of California) The authorís extensive clinical experience brings to light the issue of womenís feelings about motherhood.
is you r l ife too pla sti c?
march 4-10
hollywood theatre, 7pm
grand premiere march 4
THU / 24TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
LAURA O. FOSTER / The Portland Stairs Book (Timber) The author of Portland Hill Walks returns with a handy pocket-sized guide to Portlandís 196 public staircases. THU / 24TH / 7:30P
HAWTHORNE
POETRY FROM THE EDGE OF EUROPE Join Paulann Petersen, Oregonís Poet Laureate, Paul Merchant, and Kelly Lenox for an evening of poetry from Slovenia, Greece, and Turkey. FRI / 25TH / 7P CEDAR HILLS
SUSAN JACOBY / Never Say Die (Pantheon)
An impassioned critique of the myth that a radically new, unmarred old age awaits the huge Baby Boom generation. FRI / 25TH / 7:30P
DOWNTOWN
SPECIAL APPEARANCE FROM THE CAT IN THE HAT Come meet the costume character The Cat in the Hat and OPBís April Baer to celebrate Read Across America Day. SUN / 27TH / 1PM
CEDAR HILLS
ARDEN BUCKLIN-SPORER AND RACHEL KATHLEEN PRINGLE / How to Grow a School Garden (Timber) Everything everyone needs to know about building school gardens. MON / 28TH / 7PM CEDAR HILLS
Food & drink: reviews, events & gut reactions Page 22 JEAN LOUIS in “COMMUNICATOS” a sketch comedy show that will make you laugh. hard.
SUSAN CONLEY / The Foremost Good Fortune (Knopf) Wry and poignant memoir of the author grappling with a cancer diagnosis after her familyís move to Beijing.
MON / 28TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
SUMMER WOOD / Wrecker (Bloomsbury) A novel of an abandoned child for whom life turns around in most unexpected ways. MON / 28TH / 7:30P HAWTHORNE
ADRIAN PHOENIX / Etched in Bone (Pocket)
The 4th urban fantasy in Adrian Phoenixís acclaimed Makerís Song series. TUE / 1ST / 7P
CEDAR HILLS
CHELSEA CAIN / The Night Season (Minotaur)
The new thriller from bestselling Portland suspense writer starring detective Archie Sheridan. TUE / 1ST / 7:30
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PATRICK ROTHFUSS / The Wise Man’s Fear (Daw) The 2nd installment in the best- selling Kingkiller Chronicle saga. WED / 2ND / 7P
CLOSING WEEKEND! FRI & SAT - 8:00 PM
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T. C. BOYLE / When the Killing’s Done
(Viking)
Combines pulse-pounding adventure with a socially conscious tale about endangered animals. WED / 2ND / 7:30P
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BOOKS
FEB. 23-MARCH 1
= 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.
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Robert Battle
Linda Celeste Sims. Body art by Dante Baylor. Photo by Andrew Eccles
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR DESIGNATE
Two Exciting Programs both featuring Revelations
TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY
MARCH 15 & 16 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 7:30pm www.whitebird.org
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CORDIALLY INVITE YOU AND A GUEST TO A SPECIAL ADVANCE SCREENING
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 23
SUNDAY, FEB. 27
Rough Copy
Avel Louise Gordly
On the third Thursday of each month, the creative-writing online magazine Rough Copy hosts a reading at Canvas Art Bar. This week, enjoy food, drink and a craft project while listening to local writers Kerry Cohen (currently up for an Oregon Book Award), Crystal Williams and Nora Robertson explore the assigned theme— ”home”—on the page. Canvas Art Bar & Bistro, 1800 NW Upshur St., 206-6964. 7 pm. Free.
At the end of the 19th century, China sent a group of boys overseas to learn the ways of the West in America. Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller have constructed a memoir of the boys’ experiences by sifting through old letters and diary entries. Fortunate Sons weaves together a dramatic personal voyage with a largely unknown chapter of Chinese history. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
Loggernaut at Ristretto
A trio of Portland authors convenes for the latest installment of the Loggernaut Reading Series. Carl Adamshick’s debut collection, Curses and Wishes, was selected for the 2010 Walt Whitman Award. Debra Gwartney is the author of the memoir Live Through This, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Mary Rechner is the author of the story collection Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women, and a contributor to The Believer and New England Review. Every other month Loggernaut brings a poet, a fiction writer and a nonfiction writer together to read works around a single theme. This month they take on “wild.” Ristretto Williams, 3808 N Williams Ave., 288-8667. 7:30 pm. $2 donation.
THURSDAY, FEB. 24 Brian Greene
FRIDAY, FEB. 25 Daniel Duford
ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY MARCH 4. PLEASE INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE FILM AND YOUR CITY IN THE SUBJECT LINE OF YOUR EMAIL. BATTLE: LOS ANGELES is rated PG-13 for sustained and intense sequences of war violence and destruction 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 MARCH 11 44
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
Matthew Stadler
Publication Studio head honcho Matthew Stadler celebrates the release of his new novel, Chloe Jarren’s La Cucaracha—which he describes as a “cover song” of John Le Carré’s A Murder of Quality—with a wild blowout that includes live tunes from Ian Luxton (recently of Starfucker), a puppet show, taco bar, booze and “sugary sodas.” Publication Studio, 717 SW Ankeny St., 360-4702. 6 pm. Free.
For more Words listings, visit
Fortunate Sons
“Recent discoveries in physics and cosmology have led some scientists to conclude that our universe may be one among many,” reads the press release. This science nonfiction, which sounds a bit more like an episode of the Twilight Zone than the latest in physics research, is outlined in Brian Greene’s new book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. What could be better than a scientifically grounded and widely respected search for aliens? Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7 pm. Call 232-2300 or go to ticketmaster.com for tickets. $36. All ages.
For a chance to win a pass for you and a guest, email us at JWMovieClub@gmail.com
Though Portland was off the beaten path of the civil-rights movement, it saw its fair share of outrage and struggle in the ’50s and ’60s. Avel Louise Gordly shares what it was like to grow up in Portland as an African-American in the middle of the 20th century in her new book Remembering the Power of Words: The Life of an Oregon Activist, Legislator, and Community Leader. The former state senator and community organizer is now an asso-
When we last saw our hero, the naked boy, his legs had been eaten by a giant turtle and replaced with a bear’s legs. Wait, what!? Yeah, Portland cartoonist Daniel Duford’s The Naked Boy is a strange narrative, and in the brand new second volume of his surrealist adventure book—which finds Duford’s titular winged half-man further mutilated and fighting alongside time-displaced civil rights freedom fighters— doesn’t get any more conventional as the plot thickens. It may feel like a madman’s sketchbook at times, but Duford’s loose, dreamlike drawings, combined with his haphazardly hand-pencilled dialogue, has a way of making the whole story weirdly feasible. CASEY JARMAN. Bridge City Comics, 3725 N Mississippi Ave., 282-5484. 6 pm. Free.
PREVIEW SABINA SAMIEE
JUDITH JAMISON
ciate professor of black studies at PSU. Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave., 306-5270. 2:30 pm. Free.
POETRY FROM THE EDGE OF EUROPE When one thinks of things associated with the politically unstable Balkans region, modern poetry isn’t exactly at the top of the list, although the region has been blessed with many notable poets since the days of Euripides. At “Poetry from the Edge of Europe” this Friday, Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen is joined by local translators to share works Fascinating words fight from their favorite poets from Balkan stereotypes. Turkey, Greece and Slovenia. One thing that can be said of the violent conflict between Greece and Turkey, which erupted in four different wars between 1897 and 1922, is that it’s made for some good reading. The most well-known poet from the area, George Seferis, once wrote, “For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men.” Seferis’ own life validates the statement— the Greek poet was from what is now Turkish Izmir—as does the life of Turkish poet Nazin Hikmet. Hikmet was born at the start of the 20th century in what is now the Greek city of Thessaloniki and is the source of inspiration for Paulann Petersen’s book of poems Blood Silk. Across the Aegean, Hikmet’s Greek contemporary Yannis Ritsos contributed invaluably to the canon of modern Greek poetry—often unjustly overshadowed by the country’s classical renaissance. Paul Merchant, director of the William Stafford Archives at Lewis & Clark College, has published two books of Ritsos translations, from which he will read on Friday. Kelly Lenox will steer the conversation Northwest to Slovenia with her Maja Vidmar translations. There have been a total of four Slovene poets published in the States and Vidmar’s name will someday rank among them if Lenox has anything to do with it. Through centuries of imperial rule, Slovenia formed its national identity around the poets who valued the language in times of foreign domination. Twenty years after Slovenia’s independence, poetry remains an institution, with the statue of a poet in the main square of the capital. “I came across a claim by the Slovenian government that they had more poets per capita than any other country,” notes Lenox. “Whether or not that’s true, it’s fascinating they’re proud of it. I can’t see that happening in this country, where saying you’re a poet is a good way to kill a conversation. When we read literature from other places we form a connection to that little pocket of humanity. It’s like world peace through translations.” The international literary circuit often sidesteps Portland. At this event, Portlanders get the chance to hear from a handful of local poets working tirelessly to present their international counterparts to American readers. RACHAEL DEWITT. GO: Poetry from the Edge of Europe at Powell’s at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651. 7 pm Friday, Feb. 25. Free.
MOVIES
FEB. 23-MARCH 1
COURTESY OF PIFF
FEATURE
Photocaption: tktktk
THE LAST CIRCUS
NOT DARK YET BUT PIFF’S GETTING THERE. BY WW M OV I E STA F F
screen@wweek.com
This is the way the world cinema showcase ends: not with a whimper, but with mutilated clowns and schoolgirls with robotic claws. The Portland International Film Festival doesn’t let its foot off the gas in its last five days: It offers two more entries in the gore-spewing PIFF After Dark series (one good, one undead), and another standout local film (Aaron Katz’s Cold Weather, reviewed on page 48). There’s some draggy baggage, too, but what do you expect after a global journey? We cherish the memories—look for WW’s picks for best and worst of PIFF on wweek.com.
Carancho
[ARGENTINA] Ricardo Darin’s majestically sad face (you might remember it from The Aura or The Secret in Their Eyes) appears to be filled with wet sand instead of bone and muscle; it is a beaten pup of a mug in search of a film worthy of its beauty. Carancho, a noirish night prowl down hospital corridors populated by ambulance-chasing lawyers, bedraggled doctors and the wounded poor, while far from the close-up this face has been waiting for, is a fine fluorescent-lit excuse to gaze upon its contours for two hours. Darin looks like some magical hybrid of Sam Waterston and George Clooney, which is rather convenient, because Carancho basically splits the difference between Law & Order and ER. CHRIS STAMM. BW, 6 pm Wednesday, 2:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 23 and 25. C21, 9 pm Thursday, Feb. 24. 53
Short Cuts V: Made in Portland
80 Portland’s future animation king, Noah Dorsey, returns (in collaboration with Ellen Gines) to the festival circuit with Peeved, an adorable diptych of Seinfeldian complaint humor that further confirms a belief I expressed in these pages two years ago: This Dorsey dude has the stuff. Now someone give him money so that he can make his masterpiece. I was also quite impressed by Kurtis Hough’s Stumble Then Rise on Some Awkward Morning, a hypnotic downward spiral through a world of floral forms soundtracked by the incomparable A Silver Mount Zion. Bring good drugs and a clean hanky. CHRIS STAMM. WH, 6 pm Wednesday, Feb. 23.
Hermano
85 [VENEZUELA] No way I should like this: It’s a rough-and-tumble movie about two brothers trying to escape the barrio via their mad soccer skills,
complete with fast-paced, triumphal, last-minute scoring sequences. Nonetheless, the film—a debut feature by director Marcel Rasquin—shares much more with the heartbreaking City of God than with Rudy or The Bad News Bears: The young actors’ style is naturalistic and intimate, and tragedy is not so much contrived plot device as an organic extension of circumstance, family, character and place. So if something is finally won, know that it won’t come cheaply, or feel cheap. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. BW, 7:15 pm Wednesday, 9 pm Thursday, Feb. 23-24. WH, 3 pm Saturday, Feb. 26.
A War in Hollywood
60 [SPAIN] If Hollywood excels at anything, it is retrospective triumphalism; one does not, however, expect the Spanish to step in and help them. This documentary exists largely as an ode to the American writers, actors and directors who saddled up to fight Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War; the film, indeed, might have you believe that Hollywood contained the only American volunteers. In any case, some of these expat freedom fighters were later tarred as communists and blacklisted, and their vindication and lionization becomes the film’s belated goal. It succeeds, of course, but only in the bland fashion of the Public Broadcasting Service. It’s hard not to care about the subject matter, but Homage to Catalonia this ain’t. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. BW, 8:30 pm Wednesday, 3:45 pm Friday, Feb. 23 and 25.
When We Leave
51 [GERMANY] A stark condemnation of modern gender equality clashing with oppressive traditions in immigrant families, When We Leave has lofty ambitions and very important statements to make. Following a beautiful Turkish-German girl who flees to her family to escape her abusive relationship, director Feo Aladag’s film
is a tearjerker that recalls a multiethnic Stella Dallas, with the protagonist constantly persecuted by a society that sees her independence as whorish and a family whose shame at having spawned a single mother results in violent rejection. The result is a somber, reflective indictment of inequality marred by an overreliance on melodrama. AP KRYZA. WH, 8:30 pm Wednesday, 8 pm Saturday, Feb. 23 and 26.
Brother and Sister
70 [ARGENTINA] Wildly popular in its native land, Brother and Sister is nonetheless a quiet film, with ambitions as modest as its protagonist, the aging Marcos (Antonio Gasalla). Marcos humbly lives out his life first for his mother and then at the mercy of his disappointed, manipulative sister Susanna (Graciela Borges, onetime love of Paul McCartney), whose fits of hysterical narcissism drive the film through its repetitious set pieces. That the film still largely succeeds is a testament to the grace of the actors; one suffers with Gasalla as easily as one sinks into a nice, old chair, and Borges plays the soured beauty Susanna with a light hauteur that lets you know that something went truly lost with time. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. BW, 8:45 pm Wednesday, 6:15 pm Thursday, 7:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 23-24 and 26.
Eastern Plays
67 [BULGARIA] Georgi is a teenage skinhead asshole. His distant brother Isto is a somewhat older asshole, non-skinhead edition: He’s a woodcarver, not so into racism, but he’s fighting a methadone addiction, selfhatred and an ex-girlfriend who won’t leave. The brothers meet cute at a hate crime: Georgi uses a baseball bat on a Turkish family, while Isto gets a bloody nose breaking up the attack. What follows is a cross between Before Sunrise and Bulgarian History X, anchored by an authentically trou-
bled performance as Isto by an artist named Christo Christov, who fatally OD’d not long after filming wrapped. It’s better to know that fact going in: The movie becomes a poignant tribute to Christov and his thwarted desire to be a better man. AARON MESH. CM, 9 pm Wednesday, Feb. 23.
The Double Hour
61 [ITALY] A double hour is when the minute and hour hands line up—a cheap coincidence, really. The “doubling” that occurs in this film is equally cheap. Though it’s easy to want to read the psychologies of Hitchcock or Buñuel into the film’s M. Night Shyamalan cocktease of a structure, the film’s axis-twist is less revelation than betrayal of what came before, with zero payoff. And it’s too bad, really, because the first part of the movie is one of those lovely, postKieslowski, European mournful-woman things—a young couple’s incipient love cut off by a brutal robbery-murder, with hints that the woman who survived (Kseniya Rappaport, in a beautifully complex performance) was involved in the crime. What that movie might have been, I would rather have known. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. BW, 9:15 pm Wednesday, Feb. 23.
The Colors of the Mountain
76 [COLOMBIA] When people praise the acting of children, they usually mean the children display an adult subtlety and fluidity of emotion on a tiny face. But this film’s kids? Something else. There is a refreshing awkwardness and suddenness to the kids in this movie, as if they were trying on expressions that are not yet theirs. In their poor town at the foot of mountains filled with guerrillas— trapped between sides of a violent civil war, with the film’s dominant metaphor a soccer ball stuck in a minefield rather than over a neighbor’s fence— the emotions they’re stuck
CONT. on page 47
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FEB. 23-MARCH 1
MOVIES COURTESY OF PIFF
FEATURE CONT.
MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD with should, indeed, probably not be theirs, even as the film remains very much so. Touching and accurate to childhood, without landing a heavy hand. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. BW, 6:45 pm Thursday, 9 pm Friday, Feb. 24-25.
Even the Rain
63 [SPAIN] Icíar Bollaín’s barbed making-of-a-movie movie opens with a giant wooden cross towed by helicopter into the Bolivian mountains—a cadge from La Dolce Vita and its airborne Christ fleeing Rome, but this time signifying the return of rapacious Europeans. The imperialists are back in town! A parable of colonizers re-enacting colonization (Gael García Bernal is shooting a Christopher Columbus picture), only to enable further exploitation of every natural resource, including the one in the title, the Howard Zinndedicated drama scores geopolitical points before devolving into a sub-Haggis thing where people with poor motives unaccountably do heroic things in a pinch. “You don’t understand, white face!” shouts an actor/water-rights demonstrator (Juan Carlos Aduviri), and yeah, that about sums it up. AARON MESH. WH, 9:15 pm Thursday, Feb. 24. BW, 8 pm Saturday, Feb. 26.
The Man Next Door
81 [ARGENTINA] A film about how appearances are deceiving, The Man Next Door is itself interested in audience deception. Following the story of a stuck-up yuppie furniture designer in conflict with a quirky neighbor who insists on installing an invasive window in the adjoining house, directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat set the sleek and stylish film up to be a look into paranoia and voyeurism à la Rear Window. Instead, the film becomes an often hysterical look at selfish-
ness and an argument that good fences actually make shitty neighbors. AP KRYZA. WH, 6 pm Friday, 5:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 25-26.
The Last Circus
71 [SPAIN] Like the best big-top sideshows, Alex de la Iglesia’s The Last Circus is utterly shameless and untoward, intent only on delivering cheap thrills and naughty glimpses of gross behavior. It begins with a machete-wielding clown mowing down Fascist troops and ends with two mutilated clowns maniacally laughing until they cry. What happens in between borrows heavily from the Browning-Chaney canon of emotional cruelty, and while Iglesia is not quite capable of tapping into the eerie melancholy of something like The Unknown, he is rather adept at building set pieces that celebrate abjection and bodily harm, and he’s willing to go the distance to make you squirm. CHRIS STAMM. WH, 8:45 pm Friday, Feb. 25. BW, 5:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 26.
Of Love and Other Demons
38 [COSTA RICA] And so the horny Spanish priest who looked like Rudy Fernandez by way of a romance-novel illustration and the sexy Costa Rican ginger teen with rabies spent their nights in dark confinement at the oppressive convent, talking of dreams and butterflies. Gabriel García Márquez’s writing has never translated cinematically—without the author’s gifted prose, his stories of longing and isolation simply meander as visual expressions. With Of Love and Other Demons, Hilda Hidalgo has created some interesting ocular poetry, but its story and pace leaves the audience with a worse case of blue balls than its troubled protagonist. AP KRYZA. C21, 9 pm Friday, 2:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 25-26.
Mutant Girls Squad
76 [JAPAN] “My belly sword’s got a hard-on,” says a man with an erect belly sword in this sick-fuck gorefest helmed by Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Tak Sakaguchi. If you’re familiar with the surreal bloodletting perpetrated by Iguchi and Nishimura in Tokyo Gore Police, Machine Girl and Robogeisha, you know what you’re in for: exploding noggins, ass chainsaws, suppurating man-boob efflorescences, and various other ludicrous body modifications indebted to Mortal Kombat and Garbage Pail Kids. If you’re not already hip to this twisted universe, well, how do you feel about a man showing his bloody vaginal growth to his daughter? You like? See this. You don’t? What’s wrong with you? CHRIS STAMM. C21, 11:30 pm Friday, Feb. 25.
The Revenant
37 [UNITED STATES] The Revenant mostly wastes an interesting premise—dead soldier reanimates as a ravenous yet scrupulous zombie-vampire with an appetite for criminals—on crushingly unfunny and profoundly grating buddy humor, and for approximately 80 minutes it is one of the worst films I have seen in this young year. Pick a shrill sitcom at random and decorate its set with crimson vomit and you’ll get the gist. The final act isn’t quite worth the slog through thug caricatures and obnoxious male bonding, but the balls-out body horror and gross-out comedy of those last 20 minutes bode well for writer-director D. Kerry Prior’s future. CHRIS STAMM. C21, 11:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 26.
Wag the Dog, Inc. chooses to advertise in Willamette Week because it works. As a small business in the dog service industry in SE Portland, there are other publications which could reach our customers effectively, particularly those that focus on pet care, but our WW ad gives us validity and authenticity as a company, which we have not found in any other publication. As for advertising results, they are clear. We have (by accident) stopped running our WW ads which resulted in a trickle of new customers where a rapid river of new clients had been before. We mitigated this problem by running ads as soon as possible! I appreciate the way WW’s staff treats me. I am a very small fish, but they have never made me feel that way.
Christine Anderson Owner Wag the Dog
Portland International Film Festival Ticket Outlet: Portland Art Museum Mark Building, 1119 SW Park Ave., 276-4310, nwfilm.org. General admission $10, PAM members, students and seniors $9, children 12 and under $7, Silver Screen Club memberships from $300. BW—Regal Broadway Cinemas, 1000 SW Broadway C21—Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave. CM—CineMagic, 2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd. HW—Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd. WH—Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave. Showtimes listed are for Feb. 23-27 only. WW was unable to screen nine films by press deadlines and reviewed five films showing this week in previous coverage; visit wweek.com for full listings.
THE MAN NEXT DOOR Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
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FEB. 23-MARCH 1
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. 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.
10th Annual Bicycle Film Festival
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Bike flicks from across the country. Clinton Street Theater. Friday-Saturday, Feb. 25-26.
48 Go Green
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Environmentally conscious films made in 48 hours. Hollywood Theatre.
Academy Awards Telecast
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, THE KING’S SPEECH IS GOING TO WIN, ZZZZ] Why liveblog the Oscars in your bedroom, when you can liveblog the Oscars in a barroom? Academy, Bagdad, Hollywood, Living Room Theaters, EastBurn. 5 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. Free.
Barney’s Version
70 Director Richard J. Lewis’ version
of Mordecai Richler’s novel is a stylistic nullity, not so far removed from the cheapo television its hero produces in a Montreal warehouse, but I can’t hold this defect against it. I’m too fond of Richler’s singular conception of hustling Canadian Jewishness, and of Paul Giamatti’s lusty, avid personification of it. Giamatti is Barney Panofsky, serial collector of whiskey and wives, who as the movie opens is losing his past to Alzheimer’s, and tries to piece together his side of the story. His performance has surface similarities to Sideways—both Barney and Miles are blotto a lot of the time, and Giamatti instinctively understands the proud man perpetually subject to indignities—but Barney just skips past the part where he’s supposed to be mortified, too eager to see what satisfactions could arrive next. The film is no match for the character’s energy, and early on it threatens to succumb to some pungent stereotypes, but it manages to cohere for two great set pieces: a lavish wedding, where Barney marries his second wife (Minnie Driver) and meets his third (an angelic Rosamund Pike), and a very misguided weekend retreat to a lake cottage, where Barney’s closest friendship goes up in flames. Every so often, there’s an appearance by Dustin Hoffman as Panofsky Sr.; for a change, he seems invested in the role. The movie, with its promiscuous, liquored-up, loyal men of the tribe, is candy for me— halva, let’s say. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Hollywood Theatre, City Center, Bridgeport.
Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
Yes, these things are still being made. Not screened by WW press deadlines. PG-13. Lloyd Mall, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport.
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. 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
48
accompanied by madness and molting. Aronofsky is a dom of a director, getting his jollies by brutalizing his characters. Unfortunately for Portman, she met Darren Aronofsky at a very typical time in his life. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Fox Tower, City Center, Bridgeport.
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. R. AP KRYZA. Fox Tower.
Cascade Festival of African Films
73 [THREE NIGHTS ONLY] 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 overly earnest, but the homeless young men themselves are at the absolute center of the film. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus, Moriarty Building. 7:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 24. Director Demetrius Wren will attend the screening. For full listings, visit africanfilmfestival.org.
Cedar Rapids
50 Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl, Youth
are good scenes—everything with ex-exec Affleck humbling himself to labor on brother-in-law Kevin Costner’s construction site has real atmosphere— but it is hard to forgive a film for wasting Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper, just as it is very difficult to engage with the self-pity of a picture that considers it a significant humiliation when a man is forced to sell his sports car. Americans made this movie. We are so going to lose to China. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
The Eagle
REVIEW
Drive Angry
65 Rome’s lost Legio IX Hispana,
maybe massacred in Britain around 117 A.D., is suddenly a hot commodity: The Eagle is the second movie in six months about the legion’s shrouded fate, following Neil Marshall’s visceraspattered Centurion. This one plays like Apocalypse Now: Redux for Kids. It is a far less frank or credible movie than Centurion, but I found I liked it more: Its ideas of honor and thrill are almost exactly what I fantasized about when I was 12 years old, although I was rescuing a naked girl and not a golden bird. Anyway, the movie’s final 30 minutes constitute an especially rousing chase scene, with red ferns and men painted gray. As the officer who ventures into uncharted glens to find that metal standard and redeem his father’s legacy, Channing Tatum is characteristically stalwart, though the picture belongs to Jamie Bell (almost every picture Jamie Bell is in belongs to Jamie Bell), as a kind of live-action Tintin. He plays an enslaved tribesman whose conflicted loyalties and resourceful tracking make him The Eagle’s obvious if unacknowledged lead. It’s a funny confirmation of Hollywood tropes that the indigenous guy has to play the sidekick, even when the indigenous guy is white. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
Every Day
Liev Schreiber in a midlife crisis. WW was unable to screen it by press deadlines. R. Living Room Theaters.
The Company Men
Hood to Coast
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2011 wweek.com
29 After Hollywood director Tom
Undead Nicolas Cage saves a baby from Satan. (How’d it get burned?) Not screened by WW press deadlines. Look for a review on wweek.com. R. Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport.
The Fighter
ories of Americans making and buying things—specifically, he recalls when NBC was making ER, and audiences were watching it. So he has made a big-screen episode of ER in which nobody actually has to go in to work, because their upper-management jobs were eliminated by greedy CEOs. There
I Am
Shadyac developed suicidal leanings while suffering from “post concussion syndrome,” he set out to heal himself and simultaneously figure out the fundamental problems of the entire world. That would seem a tall order for the man who directed Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty and The Nutty Professor. But being responsible for Patch Adams apparently garnered him access to a lot of respected brains, yielding an unfocused documentary featuring
in Revolt) hosts a Midwestern potluck of current indie-comedy talent, which means Cedar Rapids is not very ambitious, and only superficially funny. Daily Show alum and Office a cappella specialist Ed Helms plays Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman for a Wisconsin firm called Brown Star—that’s an early sign of the movie’s insistently blue material. Tim leaves his hamlet for the first time to attend a business convention in the titular metropolis; the hotel, with its shabby atrium, chipped woodwork and azure indoor pool, is a marvel of production design by Doug J. Meerdink, who showed similar heartland retro flair for The Informant! Here, it’s wasted on a script that regurgitates the archetypes of The Big Kahuna (John C. Reilly and an excellent Isiah Whitlock Jr. play the loudmouth cynic and the quiet sage), the wistful mood of the convention idyll in Up in the Air, and the terror of adulthood from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Then there are a lot of jokes about how flyover-country folks sure do love talking about God before boinking. The idea of a business conference as a grown-up sleep-away camp is a rich one—Anne Heche’s performance best captures that mood of fleeting hallway romance—and Cedar Rapids could have explored it without condescension and derivation. But then it wouldn’t be a Miguel Arteta movie. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Bridgeport.
60 Director John Wells has fond mem-
ently 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. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
89 Director David O. Russell (Three
Kings, I Heart Huckabees) announces his intention from the opening bell to out-Scorsese Scorsese with sprinting cameras, Stones songs and charismatic fuck-ups. Fleeing formula like Christian Bale’s Dicky runs from cops, the movie is messy and darting and alive. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Pioneer Place, City Center, Bridgeport.
Franklin Wunder
[ONE DAY ONLY] The first screening of a locally made heartwarmer about an old man and a little girl. Hollywood Theatre. 12:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 26.
Gnomeo and Juliet
The Shakespeare tragedy, interpreted by cartoon garden gnomes. WW did not attend the screening. G. 3-D: Lloyd Mall, Cinema 99, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV. 2-D: Lloyd Center, City Center, Tigard, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
Hall Pass
Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis get a freebie, but probably don’t get laid. Not screened by WW press deadlines. Look for a review on wweek.com. R. Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Clackamas, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
55 While Oregon’s 197-mile Hood to Coast Relay race is run every year, this isthe 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 appar-
an epic parade of talking heads from Noam Chomsky and Thom Hartmann to Howard Zinn and Desmond Tutu. The doc flits from decrying man’s separation from the natural world and our obsession with stuff (cue fat Wal-Mart shoppers) and competition to heartening encounters with experiments involving democratic herds of deer, human hearts that can tell the future and Argon atoms. The high point is watching Shadyac control the energy field of a petri dish full of yogurt with his feelings about his lawyer. As uplifting as the doc aims to be, it’s as if Shadyac packed a rifle full of New Age ideologies and sprayed the shot directly at a movie screen. Now will he please get back to making Jim Carrey talk through his ass cheeks again? KELLY CLARKE. Fox Tower.
A A R O N K AT Z
MOVIES
PORTLAND WHEN IT DRIZZLES: Cris Lankenau and Robyn Rikoon at Multnomah Falls.
COLD WEATHER He’s in love with Sherlock Holmes.
Doug, the drowsy and feckless hero of Aaron Katz’s vivid and sly movie Cold Weather, is a young man new to Portland, which means he could really use a job. He has an education in forensic science, but no degree, and he settles for a night shift at an ice factory. “I didn’t even know they had ice factories,” remarks his sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn) skeptically. “Where do you think they get those bags of ice that you buy?” asks Doug (Cris Lankenau). “I don’t know, I never thought about it,” she admits. Cold Weather, an unusually observant picture, thinks about details. You might say Katz and his protagonist share an affinity for clues: About midway through the movie, Doug learns his ex-girlfriend (Robyn Rikoon) has flown her motel room, and puts his detective skills to work. Katz, meanwhile, patiently feeds us information about Doug, who typifies the Portland resident sketched by a fresh tide of indie projects (this film, Portlandia and Some Days Are Better Than Others) as somebody whose ambition got lost by the airline on the flight out here. The private-eye-as-slacker is no new archetype—think of Elliott Gould shambling through Altman’s The Long Goodbye, or Jeff Bridges in several iterations—but Doug is the first case of a slacker mesmerized by the image of gumshoeing, and its accouterments: A Sherlock Holmes buff, he even buys a pipe to puff on while the game is afoot. This description makes him sound fairly insufferable, but as played by Lankenau, his scattershot enthusiasm is in fact endearing. Watch, early on, how he persuades Gail to abandon her office desk for a road trip along the Oregon coast: “It’s whale-watching week!” Watching is a Katz speciality: His first two features, Dance Party, USA and Quiet City, got him pinned under the “mumblecore” label, but notice how fluidly his camera moves through a scene, picking up speed and momentum to build tension. Cold Weather congeals into something very close to a potboiler—the characters stake out a pornographer with a briefcase, track him through storage towers, and fool him with disguises—but all the while, the director is looking in the opposite direction. He’s studying the stirrings of empathy, as Doug starts to realize that Gail, though fathoms more mature and poised than he is, may also be a little lonely, and enjoying the company as much as the case. The movie, a small-scale triumph of humor and feeling, is the first to understand how, in an era when social supports come easily unglued, siblings are the family you get to choose. It’s no mystery, Sherlock: Who needs Watson when you have a sister? AARON MESH. 88 SEE IT: Cold Weather premieres as part of the Portland International Film Festival at Cinema 21, 6:30 pm Friday and 8 pm Saturday, Feb. 25-26. It also plays at Cinema 21 on Sunday-Thursday, Feb. 27-March 3.
FEB. 23-MARCH 1
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 women asked to do more than serve as objects of
Justin Bieber: Never Say Never 3-D
The Donny Osmond of our time gets his own concert film. Not screened for critics. G. Lloyd Center, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
The King’s Speech
73 If it is the task of the movie psy-
chologist 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, and ends with a heart-swelling proclamation of war. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, Fox Tower, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
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). It’s drooling, Cro-Magnon machismo from start to finish—
BEST ACTOR PAUL GIAMATTI
©HFPA
“ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST!”
Academy Award nominated short films don’t begin with The Confession. If it does, the audience might slip into an incurable funk for the other nine pictures. A tale of Catholic guilt as experi-
-David Germain, ASSOCIATED PRESS
PAUL ROSAMUND MINNIE RACHELLE SCOTT GIAMATTI PIKE DRIVER LEFEVRE SPEEDMAN
CONT. on page 50
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About halfway through Vengeance, we find ourselves in an empty field. Via an overhead shot we see a dozen or so gigantic, cubical blocks being shoved forward like chess pieces. These blocks are actually giant bundles of compacted garbage from a dump we’ve never seen before. Their origin doesn’t matter. What matters is that our heroes are behind some of the blocks. Thugs are behind the others. They all have guns. And before we know it, a ballet of gunfire ensues, sending arterial sprays into the atmosphere as bodies are felled with cartoonish repetition. We never return to this field. When the Coen brothers accepted their long-overdue Oscar for No Country for Old Men, they thanked their audience and the Academy for allowing them to play in their own part of the sandbox. Nutso Hong Kong director Johnnie To plays in a sandbox entirely his own, one where broken glass and bullets peek through the grains, and where logic is as unwelcome as piss from a neighborhood cat. If John Woo is the godfather of gun-fu cinema and bullet operas, To is his bastard grandchild who refuses to take his Ritalin, an unhinged filmmaker who transitions from focused gangster noir like Election and campy psychedelic freakouts such as Heroic Trio with gleeful abandon. Vengeance finds itself somewhere between the grit of the former and the insanity of the latter. It finds geriatric crooner Johnny Hallyday—the French Elvis, as many know him—teaming up with ruthless hit men to lay waste to the mobsters responsible for maiming his daughter (Sylvie Testud, whose presence is befuddling) and killing her family. Of course, this being a To film, there’s a twist—a bullet lodged in Hallyday’s brain, which erases his memory. He has no recollection of what he’s doing or why he’s doing it, so he simply lets his guns and scowls do the talking. The ensuing carnage is incredible, with gouts of bright magenta blood filling the air like macabre clouds, and bodies flying like confetti. To, not impervious to the derivative nature of his age-old plot device, amps up the style to Soderberghian levels, with enough throbbing music and slow-motion shots of sharp-dressed badasses being badass to give Danny Ocean pause. To may not have a lot to say, but he certainly says it loudly, and in doing so offers the kind of whiz-bang sleaze Hollywood so often forgets we crave. AP KRYZA.
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82 SEE IT: Vengeance screens at the Laurelhurst Theater at 9:30 pm Friday-Thursday, Feb. 25-March 3. Presented by Beer and Movie. $3.
PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK
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Confirmation #:
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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 Sylvain 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. PG. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Living Room Theaters.
Adam Sandler flick to add to a pile that is growing longer and more rapidly than his jowls. In this one, Sandler plays Danny, a womanizing plastic surgeon with a wisecracking assistant (nailed by Jennifer Aniston); he picks up women by pretending to be in a loveless marriage. Aniston is definitely one of the strongest female leads in his laundry list of goofy-guy-gets-thegirl films, and the pair trade barbs and banter with believable chemistry. But casting isn’t the culprit here (there are also nice appearances from Nicole Kidman, singer Dave Matthews and Kevin Nealon); it’s the tortuous, tedious plot and hackneyed script wot did it. PG-13. Pioneer Place, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
®
72 Let’s hope screenings of 2011’s
The Illusionist
32 Another eminently forgettable
WINNER GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD
Oscar Nominated Short Films 2011
78 The movie follows an aging
Just Go With It
® ®
COMEDY
Alex Pettyfer), displaced from the planet Lorien, hones his superhuman powers while posing as a disaffected Ohio teen. He plays the rebellious 15-year-old to Timothy Olyphant’s impossibly cool mentor figure, with the dialogue occasionally rising above clichéd “parents just don’t understand” territory. The rest of the film devolves into rankand-file growing pain/intergalactic colonization drama: the popular kids will always heave footballs at the nerds, the ugly-as-sin enemy intruders (in this case, the Mogadorians) will manage to decimate entire planets, but still insist on waging battle on campus. In front of the hero’s requisite artsy girlfriend. PG13. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE
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. R. AARON MESH. Evergreen, Bridgeport, Movies on TV.
THA – SF
65 John Smith (newcomer Brit
FIRST HE GOT MARRIED. THEN HE GOT MARRIED AGAIN. THEN HE METTHE LOVE OF HIS LIFE.
IFC FILMS
I Am Number Four
in other words, perfect Stathamflavored popcorn. R. AP KRYZA. Movies on TV.
MOVIES
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WILLAMETTE WEEK
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WED 2.23
invite you and your mom to a special 3D advance screening!
Saturday, March 5 @ 11:00 AM ~ Tigard For your chance to win a mobile pass good for two admissions, text “MOMMY” and your zip code to 43549
PRESENTED IN
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(Ex. MOMMY 97239) No phone calls please. No purchase necessary. Texting services provided by 43KIX and are free. Standard text message rates from your wireless provider may apply. Check your plan. One entry per cell phone #. Late and/or duplicate entries will not be considered. 30 (thirty) winners will be chosen at random on or about 3pm on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 and will receive a text good for two admissions. Limit one admit-two pass per person. THEATRE IS OVERBOOKED TO ENSURE A FULL HOUSE. A winning text does NOT guarantee a seat. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. This film is rated PG. Void where prohibited by law. Must enter by 12 p.m. on Wednesday, March 2!
LANDS IN THEATRES IN 3D MARCH 11 Disney.com/MarsNeedsMoms Like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/MarsNeedsMomsMovie • Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/disneypictures
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Initial
From the director of BRUCE ALMIGHTY, THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE
MOVIES
BREW VIEWS
A PASSIONATE FILM. It’s what Shadyac was saying all along in his comedies,
“
True Grit
90 The Coen Brothers’ new ren-
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. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Fox Tower, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Clackamas, Movies on TV.
but this time he’s saying it with feeling.” -Tad Friend, THE NEW YORKER
What if the solution to the world’s problems was right in front of us all along?
A Film By Tom Shadyac
the shift is about to hit the fan featuring
DESMOND TUTU • HOWARD ZINN • NOAM CHOMSKY COLEMAN BARKS • LYNNE MCTAGGART and THOM HARTMANN FLYING EYE PRODUCTIONS in association with a HOMEMADE CANVAS PRODUCTION presents a SHADY ACRES FILM Associate Producer NICOLE PRITCHETT Co-Producer JACQUELYN ZAMPELLA Director of Photography ROKO BELIC Executive Producers JENNIFER ABBOTT JONATHAN WATSON Producer DAGAN HANDY Edited by JENNIFER ABBOTT Written and Directed by TOM SHADYAC
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Unknown
75 Jaume Collet-Serra makes movies
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THE BLUEBIRD OF HAPPINESS: Many of the things I loved most as a child have turned out to be terrible. The Kansas City Royals. The Kingston Trio. The Republican Party. Happily, Follow That Bird is not on that list. Sure, it’s the Muppet picaresque formula made palatable for ’80s tots. But from its opening scenes, it maintains a thread of loss and melancholy—the songs, co-written by Van Dyke Parks, help a lot here—that warns maybe the suburban American Dream is going to be a little disappointing. “I should be happy,” Big Bird writes his Sesame Street friends. “What’s wrong with me?” Nothing this movie can’t salve. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst, 9:40 pm nightly, 1:30 pm Saturday-Sunday. Best paired with: New Belgium Blue Paddle Pilsener. Also showing: 127 Hours (Hollywood, Laurelhurst).
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Paladin
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WILLAMETTE WEEK BY DENNIS DUGAN COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS A HAPPY MADISON PRODUCTION A FILM MUSIC MUSIC J “ UST GO WI T H I T ” DILBECK BROOKS ARTHUR KEVIN GRADY BY RUPERT GREGSON-WILLIAMS SUPERVISIONWED: BY MICHAEL02/23 EXECUTIVE BASED ON “CACTUS FLOWER” STAGE PLAY PRODUCERS BARRY BERNARDI ALLEN COVERT TIM HERLIHY STEVE KOREN SCREENPLAY BY I.A.L. DIAMOND BY ABE BURROWS BASED UPON SCREENPLAY PRODUCED A FRENCH PLAY BY BARILLET AND GREDY BY ALLAN LOEB AND TIMOTHY DOWLING BY ADAM SANDLER JACK GIARRAPUTO HEATHER PARRY DIRECTED BY DENNIS DUGAN ALL.IAM-A1.0223.WI JL
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enced by a pair of British schoolchildren, it packs a lot of soul-crushing misery into 26 minutes. Thankfully, not all the live-action nominees are so overwhelmingly dour, even when dealing with similarly heavy themes. Na Wewe, set amid the civil war between the Tutsis and Hutus in mid-’90s Burundi, manages to find subtle, absurd humor in the insanity of ethnic cleansing. And in Wish 143, the most deserving of the Oscar, director Ian Barnes gives his story (about a teenage cancer patient desperately trying to lose his virginity) a randy heart, not to mention more character development than most movies three times its length. On the animated end, all the nominees—with the exception of the one-note Let’s Pollute, which is ugly on purpose—look great, but the one that sticks is The Lost Thing, a delightfully weird (and weirdly touching) rumination on the alienation of modern life involving a bottle cap-collecting nerd and the bizarre half-machine, halfbeast creature he discovers on a beach and decides to bring home. MATTHEW SINGER. Hollywood Theatre. The live-action and animated shorts programs screen separately.
Portlandia, Episode 6
[ONE NIGHT LEFT] And so we bid a fond farewell to Fred, Carrie and the self-serving debates about whether this show is the great white hope of Portland TV production, or the worst thing ever made by human hands. Until next year! Mission Theater. 10:30 pm Friday, Feb. 25. 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. PG-13. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Living Room Theaters.
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The Roommate
Single White Female: The College Years. Not screened for critics. PG13. Movies on TV.
Sanctum 3-D
45 It comes popping right out at
you, what made James Cameron want to put his executive-producer imprimatur on this Australian spelunking thriller: He likes abysses, and he doesn’t care about acting. Win-win. Sanctum has remarkably shallow performances and impressively deep crevasses, though Cameron’s cherished 3-D does the latter no favors: It makes even real rocks look like the manufactured boulders on Big Thunder Mountain. In fact, the movie continues Avatar’s campaign to make cinema feel more like the motion-simulator attractions at theme parks. I like theme-park rides: I like them five minutes long, with the emergency exits clearly marked. For Sanctum’s 109 minutes, I mostly felt stuck or sick. R. AARON MESH. 3-D: Bridgeport, Movies on TV. 2-D: Clackamas.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Sergei Parajanov’s 1964 Carpathian Mountain sorcery epic. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 and 9:30 pm FridaySaturday, 3 pm Sunday, Feb. 25-27.
Trailermania Marathon
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Film archivist Greg Hamilton unspools more than six hours of previews. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 10 pm Sunday-Monday, Feb. 27-28.
Troubadors
48 Taking its name from Doug
Weston’s West Hollywood club that gave many famous singersongwriters their first gig in the early ‘70s, Troubadours outlines the young careers James Taylor, Carole King and Joni Mitchell in typical boomer fashion: Everyone talks about smoking “grass” and playing the Newport Folk Festival and how life was so groovy back in the day. There are some moments here—any archival footage or photo from the Brill Building days will get me going—but Troubadours mostly exists as fodder for complaining that things just aren’t the same anymore. Laurel Canyon sure seems nice, but haven’t we been down this road too many times? MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Living Room Theaters.
that are not what they seem. In 2009, he directed Orphan, a killerchild movie that was not really a killer-child movie, and now he returns with Unknown, a Liam Neeson righteous-vengeance picture that does not quite feature Liam Neeson gaining righteous vengeance. Billed as a spiritual sequel to Neeson’s previous Euro-romp Taken (and ably assisted in that marketing by the critics), this movie is actually a rejoinder to the last film’s paranoid xenophobia, with Neeson’s fury undermined by constant uncertainty about anything that happened before his taxi cab slipped off a Berlin bridge. Suitably, most of the best performances are from German actors—Bruno Ganz, Diane Kruger— though Frank Langella’s arrival gives the film a kick of gravitas. (He and Ganz have a brilliant duet where they confirm each other’s darkest suspicions.) Like Orphan, Unknown is a silly exercise that delights in its own absurdity without overtly winking; it’s as if Collet-Serra has tapped into the tiny sliver of M. Night Shyamalan’s brain that hasn’t been deadened by self-importance. This new talent is content to make juicy genre pictures and keep his name off the marquee. Let’s hope he stays reasonably unknown. PG13. Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, City Center, Cinema 99, Tigard, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Clackamas, Movies on TV.
Veritable Portraits by Ariella Ben-Dov
65 [TWO NIGHTS ONLY, CURATOR
ATTENDING] If there’s a thematic link connecting the documentaries presented in Cinema Project’s Veritable Portraits series, it’s probably “demystifying the American Dream.” In Liane Brandon’s Betty Tells Her Story, one of three femaledirected cinéma vérité shorts from the 1970s chosen for screening by curator Ariella J. Ben-Dov, a woman tells a simple anecdote from her past, of the time she bought and subsequently lost an exquisite dress she never had the chance to actually wear. She recounts the story twice, the second time confessing to feeling as if she didn’t deserve the glamour the dress afforded her. All Brandon does is point the camera at her face, but that’s all she needs to do: Betty’s subtly pained expressions say everything about how our society’s standards of beauty can rob women of their self-worth. The second night’s film, 1988’s Pericles in America, uses the hypnotic folk music of northern Greece as a vessel for examining issues of cultural identity among Greek immigrants. Its focus is accomplished clarinetist Pericles Halkias, but the most fascinating character is George, a sort of “Greek supremacist” living in New York who looks at America not as a symbol of freedom and opportunity but simply as a place for him to make better money. MATTHEW SINGER. Clinton Street Theater. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Wednesday, March 1-2. Ariella Ben-Dov will attend the screenings.