40 02 willamette week, november 13, 2013 by Willamette Week Newspaper

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NEWS THE CRIMINALS NEXT DOOR. food ROMAN CANDLE AT DAWN AND DUSK. books A SHORT HISTORY OF OREGON WINE. P. 7

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VOL 40/02 11.13.2013

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

PHYLLIS SINGER

CONTENT

TELEMARK

NORDIC TOURING

ALPINE TOURING

NORDIC SKATING

SKI BINDINGS

BACKPACKS

BOOTS / POLES

SLEEPING BAGS

CLIMBING SKINS

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M’S & W’S APPAREL

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AVALANCHE

SOCKS

SAFETY EQUIPMENT

GLOVES

WWeek Specials

SKINNY PUPPY: Matthew Singer to his 12-year-old self: Why are you so obsessed with Nine Inch Nails? Page 29.

NEWS

MUSIC

LEAD STORY

PERFORMANCE 40

CULTURE

MOVIES

FOOD & DRINK

CLASSIFIEDS

EDITORIAL Managing Editor for News Brent Walth Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Andrea Damewood, Nigel Jaquiss, Aaron Mesh Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Jessica Pedrosa Stage & Screen Editor Rebecca Jacobson Music Editor Matthew Singer Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage Books Penelope Bass Classical Brett Campbell Dance Aaron Spencer Theater Rebecca Jacobson Visual Arts Richard Speer Editorial Interns Ravleen Kaur, Alex Tomchak Scott

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

SUNDAY NOV. 17TH Portland Meadows hosts our

INBOX IS HALES GOOFUS OR GALLANT? After Sam Adams, Charlie Hales is a godsend [“Goofus & Gallant Go to City Hall,” WW, Nov. 6, 2013]. I don’t care if he never does anything but balance the city’s budget. Adams became a maniac after announcing his intention not to seek re-election, and the subsequent pace of new, needless government intrusions in the city became very frustrating until he left office. So, the radical slowing of new government measures under Hales is simply lovely from my perspective. I say eight or more years like this one, especially if the mayor truly has dropped his plan to double the tax on our utility bills and increase gasoline taxes. The city could slow the streetcar binge, and throw those monies to sidewalks and road maintenance. We don’t want a more active mayor and City Council. We’ll be living with the baggage left behind by the last mayor for a decade or more as it is. —“Bob Clark” Hales hasn’t done crap, and in fact this is our fault because he ran as the “I’m not the outgoing guy.” Portland has only Portland to blame for electing this guy. —“hotstuffpdx” I judge Hales by the results I see in my neighborhood. Major road repairs/repaving have taken place in East Portland. Thanks, Charlie, for delivering results that matter to ordinary people. —“Skepti-Cal”

i recall that when i lived in Baltimore, there used to be a poster in City hall that listed all the things that originated there (the refrigerator, the ouija board, the dredger, Bromo-seltzer, etc.). does Portland lay claim to any big inventions? —Chris Y.

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

I’m gonna give it to you straight, Chris. Aside from our obvious contributions (running shoes, urban planning and trench foot), our region is pretty lean in the cute-invention-factoid department. According to my research, we can take credit for the following: maraschino cherries, Hacky Sack and the Erector Set. Alert the Nobel committee. I’m sure I’ve missed a few. But it’s not like we invented Velcro or handjobs or happy hour or something that really changed the world. Moreover, even these slender claims to fame aren’t 100 percent made in Oregon. Maraschino cherries already existed when an Oregon State

It would appear that Portland got what it deserved—a great bullsh** artist who does nothing but talk a good game. Hales is an idiot, and everyone knew it but elected him anyway. —“FAAQ2”

COP FACES ALLEGATIONS

The Portland Police Association and its president, Daryl Turner, are a disgrace to the community [“One Cop’s Exes and Uh-Ohs,” WW, Nov. 6, 2013]. Oh, really, [Jason Lobaugh] didn’t break the law, Mr. Turner? I thought speaking to jurors is against the law. I know domestic abuse is against the law. I guess since Lobaugh is a Portland cop he has different rules from what is considered breaking the law. —“Anthony Blake” The Portland Police Association is a huge part of the problem. Its first and only instinct is to point the finger at everyone except a bad cop in these kinds of situations. —“Mister Viddy” “He doesn’t have an anger problem,” Daryl Turner says. “He has a problem picking wives.” It’s a blame-the-victim attitude from the PPA. Sound anything like what we are seeing with the Miami Dolphins? —“John Retzlaff ” 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.

University researcher discovered a better way to preserve them in 1931. Hacky Sack-like games had been known for ages when two Oregon City jocks started marketing them in the 1970s. And the Erector Set was invented by an Oregonian who had long since relocated to the East Coast— sort of like the way Herbert Hoover was raised here but moved back East to invent the Great Depression. Even our name is a retread. Most folks know that Portland, Ore., was named after Portland, Maine—the guy who wanted to call us Boston lost the coin toss. It’s less well-known, though, that Portland, Maine, stole its moniker from the Isle of Portland, off the coast of Dorset, in England. To this day, there is a hereditary English peer attached to that island whose official title is—I shit you not—the “Earl of Portland.” Apparently, he’s an actor whose family fortune was squandered generations ago, which sounds about right. QuEstions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

REAL ESTATE: Squatters take over a foreclosed home. TRANSPORTATION: More troubles for the proposed CRC. CITY HALL: Visiting Charlie Hales’ sounding board. COVER STORY: Portland’s high-school graduation crisis.

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The lesson from the Oregon Department of Justice investigation of former Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen: If Cogen had resigned when the story of his affair broke in July, there probably would not have been an investigation, and his former mistress, Sonia Manhas, would not have told investigators of seeing Cogen toting “some kind of marijuana tincture” on one of their Atlanta getaways or of walking into his home and seeing “marijuana smoking pipes and marijuana in Cogen’s den.” Now, after revelations in the report have sullied his reputation as a politician and husband, Cogen is on to a new challenge—working for Democracy Resources, the signature-gathering firm working to put marijuana legalization on the 2014 ballot. In 2004, then-mayoral candidate Jim Francesconi raised more than $1 million and voters punished him for it, flocking to his low-dollar challenger Tom Potter. So far, Francesconi and his opponent for Multnomah County chair, former County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury, are competing to be the WalMart candidate—neither has reported francesconi raising a penny yet. Candidates have 30 days to report contributions, so both are probably playing possum. In the race to replace Kafoury, state Rep. Jules Bailey (D-Portland) has taken the opposite approach, disclosing $101,000 in contributions so far. His opponent, businessman Brian Wilson, has reported $9,000.

KURT ARMSTRONg

One of the key planks of Gov. John Kitzhaber’s higher-education reforms—independent boards for Portland State, Oregon State and the University of Oregon—will be on the agenda at next week’s interim legislative session. Senators failed to approve Kitzhaber’s appointees to those boards in September, and next week’s vote is also likely to include significant dissent over the presence of faculty members on the boards. The Legislature may soon face a tougher question: Sources say OHSU is considering asking lawmakers for $200 million to partially match Nike Chairman Phil Knight’s $500 million challenge grant. OHSU spokesman Tim Kringen says no decisions have been made. “Everything is on the table,” he says.

panhandlers

Mayor Charlie Hales spent the summer sweeping homeless camps from city sidewalks. He wants more control over those sidewalks, though—and he’s looking to Salem. Draft copies of the city’s state legislative agenda show Portland will lobby at the February special session for authority to “manage sidewalk use and safety”—code words for a revival of sit-lie laws. A similar bill died in a Senate committee last May. Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt. 6

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

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misha ashton moore

NEWS

HOUSE PARTY: Justin Dollard complained about squatters living in this Piedmont neighborhood house to Champion Mortgage and city officials, including Commissioner Amanda Fritz. “As you note,” Fritz wrote back, “legal processes can be very frustrating and time-consuming.”

HAUNTED HOUSE A PROPERTY IN FORECLOSURE ATTRACTS A TRIO OF CONVICTED FELONS—WHO JUST WON’T LEAVE. By A A r o n m e s h

amesh@wweek .com

Justin Dollard really started to worry about the house next door when the convicted murderer moved in. Dollard, a 48-year-old project manager, knows most of his neighbors on North Vancouver Avenue, three blocks east of Peninsula Park. Each Thursday night, he hosts a community-supported agriculture pick-up in his garage, where neighbors stop by for their weekly haul of squash, kale and sweet red Jimmy Nardello peppers. He used to know Elizabeth Fettig, who lived next door in the two-story 1925 home with circular front stairs. She was a friend, even giving pajama sets to Dollard’s children. But Fettig died in November 2011 at age 86. In June, Multnomah County court records show the lender foreclosed on Fettig’s house. In September, Dollard noticed new residents had moved in. This was strange,

he says, because the house had no gas, garbage or water service. The newcomers’ behavior was even odder. The three men entertained visitors early in the morning and late at night. Dollard says he saw guests arrive with wheeled suitcases, then roll new suitcases out. Often the men stood on the lawn, arguing over money. Through a series of phone calls and Web searches, Dollard learned that the house next door had become a flop for three squatters with extensive criminal histories. His new neighbors were Ronny Scott Medinger, a prolific identity thief; James Ramone Lewis, a convicted sex offender; and paroled murderer Solomon Omar Osiris. Two weeks ago, Multnomah County parole officers cleared the trio out of the house. But neither the lending company, Champion Mortgage, nor the city has locked or boarded up the property, despite Dollard’s repeated written pleas to both. “The only thing keeping these guys from coming back is that one of them is in jail,” Dollard says. “It’s like living in a David Lynch movie.” The case on Vancouver Avenue is u nu su a l— on ly bec au se Dol la rd got

authorities to do anything so quickly. Across Portland, hundreds of homes— one expert says it could be as many as 1,000—sit vacant in foreclosure limbo. In many cases, the absentee lender doesn’t maintain them, the city isn’t monitoring them, and squatters are moving in. It’s a strange problem to plague a city where vacancy rates are at all-time lows and home prices are soaring. But the phenomenon, known as “bank blight,” continues unabated. “We identified early on that this was going to be the fallout from a massive foreclosure crisis,” says Angela Martin, executive director of Economic Fairness Oregon. “The city wouldn’t have to police it if the owners were taking responsibility. But that hasn’t happened.” State Rep. Lew Frederick (D-Portland) got the Oregon Legislature to pass a bill last session giving local governments authority to secure a property in foreclosure 30 days after giving the owner notice. And last fall, former Mayor Sam Adams drafted a plan to force lenders to register vacant properties and pay annual fees on them. But the Portland Business Alliance objected, and the City Council never passed the vacant-property registry. The problem of banks leaving properties in limbo became so bad last year it was the first question the Oregon Working Families Party asked mayoral candidate Charlie Hales on its questionnaire for the May primary. “Bank blight leaves holes in communities,” Hales wrote in January 2012, “and I

will support blight ordinances that make it easier to identify who owns blighted properties, that levy fines on banks for neglected homes and properties under their ownership, and that contain seizure provisions for banks that let houses and other properties deteriorate.” That hasn’t happened either. “He has not yet addressed that issue,” says Hales’ spokesman, Dana Haynes. Dollard contacted Champion Mortgage on Sept. 30, when a man stumbled across his yard and passed out in the kitchen of the vacant home. “Considering the person who used to live there was a sweet old Catholic lady,” Dollard says now, “that was a pretty strong sign.” The man identified himself as “Ronnie Smith,” and said he was a tenant of Elizabeth Fettig’s son, Tony. Dollard says police later told him that name was an alias—he was actually Ronny Scott Medinger, 42, who had prior convictions, including identity fraud, and an arrest for methamphetamine possession. Dollard w rote the city ’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement and Champion, asking them to declare Medinger was trespassing. “Activity seems to start after 11 pm,” Dollard wrote, “with folks coming in and out of house and a lot of yelling of obscenities, discussion of money and standing outside in the driveway drinking. We’re feeling a lot less safe than we did when the house was basically abandoned.” Tracy Frazier, the lender’s attorney, Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

REAL ESTATE

didn’t offer much help. “Given that we do not own the property yet,” she wrote, “there is very little we can do.” Emails show that Dollard and several neighbors continued to press the city for a month. Dollard confirmed with the city that the property had no water, gas or garbage service. But Dollard couldn’t persuade city officials to evict the squatters, even though they were living in a building that didn’t meet safe occupancy standards. “If you’re going to run for mayor or commissioner and talk about livability,” Dollard says, “why won’t you use the actual city code?” Mike Liefeld, enforcement program manager for the Bureau of Development Services, says the city sent a warning letter Oct. 16—and can put the house on its case list after 30 days. “We’re not going to make the final judgement on who’s allowed to stay there,” Liefeld says. “We just want to make sure that the people living there meet minimum standards of safety.” Dollard reported a number of strange behaviors by Medinger and the two men staying with him in the house. “[Medinger] and his associates [are] standing around on their mobile phones,” Dollard wrote to a Multnomah County parole officer Oct. 28. “Women show up, usually with hand luggage. Then men show up, and are at the house generally from 10 pm-3 am and leave.” Dollard told officials he had asked Med-

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

C O U R T E S Y M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y S H E R I F F D E PA R T M E N T

NEWS

RONNY SCOTT MEDINGER

inger what he was doing in the house—and says Medinger replied that he owned the house through a religious organization called Nation of Israel Ministries. But the parole officers told Dollard a different story. In emails, they identified Medinger’s two houseguests as James Lewis, 36—whose most recent conviction was in 2011 for not registering as a sex offender—and Solomon Osiris, 67. Osiris was convicted of murder in 1991, court records show, after he and his son Paris Taylor went to Portland’s Old Town to get their money back from a cocaine deal. Witnesses testified that Osiris slapped the victim across the face—then

JAMES RAMONE LEWIS

handed a gun to Taylor, who shot the man point-blank in the chest. During his trial, Osiris began yelling that police had paid off witnesses and were manipulating his lawyer. “While the jury was out of the room,” an appeal document says, “Osiris continued his tirade and hit his attorney in the face.” Neither Tony Fettig nor Champion Mortgage’s attorney responded to WW’s requests for comment. On Oct. 29, parole officers arrested Medinger on an outstanding warrant, and warned Lewis and Osiris to stay away from the house. Dollard says no city official has visited since, though he notified

SOLOM0N OMAR OSIRIS

them that rats are living in the piled bags of garbage behind the house. Liefeld says the city is dealing with other vacant homes. “We have more urgent cases that are taking our resources right now,” he says. “We currently have a list of over 15 properties that need actions.” Dollard says he feels lucky he found a parole officer willing to help him when the lender and the city failed in their responsibilities. “It became like another job,” Dollard says. “And even then, it’s not really secured. It takes almost an act of God for the city to crack down.”

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

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BRIDGE COLLAPSE THE LATEST NEWS FOR THE COLUMBIA RIVER CROSSING IS ALL BAD. BY AN D R E A DA M E WOO D and

NIG E L JAQ UI SS

adamewood@wweek.com

njaquiss@wweek.com

November is the cruelest month for the Columbia River Crossing project. After warding off a series of potentially fatal blows, the proposed $2.8 billion Oregon-only project took two headshots last week. As The Oregonian first reported, Oregon Department of Transportation director Matt Garrett penned a remarkable admission to State Treasurer Ted Wheeler: Oregon has no legal way to force Washington residents to pay tolls. “ODOT is pursuing a pathway with the state of Washington that would engage both states’ authorities in mutual toll violation enforcement,” Garrett wrote on Nov. 4. “This pathway, or iterations of it, may require legislative action by one or both states.” In last week’s election in Washington, voters in Pierce and Kitsap counties handed a key state Senate seat to Republicans, who’ve already killed the CRC once this year—and are itching to do so again. Here are four reasons the Columbia River Crossing’s days could be numbered: 1. Oregon’s inability to enforce tolls on Washington may kill the project’s funding. It’s certainly the worst blow to the CRC since revelations in 2012 that the bridge was designed too low for marine traffic. The CRC finance plan depends on selling more than $1 billion in toll-backed bonds. The tolls would be assessed by electronic transponders or cameras, primarily on Washington drivers, the biggest users of the Interstate Bridge. Last week’s memo lays bare an enormous risk nobody had considered: ODOT has no mechanism to assure bond buyers that Washington drivers would pay their tolls. Without such an assurance, Wheeler cannot approve the deal. “You can’t even get to a conversation about

whether investment-grade bonds can be issued until you have confidence that the tolls will indeed be collected and enforced,” says Wheeler’s spokesman, James Sinks. 2. The Washington Senate is doing everything it can to kill the project. On Nov. 8, Republican Jan Angel beat Democratic incumbent state Sen. Nathan Schlicher in a $3 million special election—the most expensive state senate race in Washington history. Her victory increases the Republican Senate Majority Coalition Caucus, which includes two rural Democrats. That caucus defeated a transportation bill that included Washington’s CRC contribution. “I don’t see the majority coalition caucus allowing tolling on a project that is so fatally flawed,” Sen. Ann Rivers (R-La Center) tells WW. “I feel like this project has to be put out of its misery once and for all so we can get a solution that works.” 3. The Oregon-only plan depends on a legal opinion critics say is flimsy. In a Sept. 12 memo to ODOT, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum wrote that officials could spend state highway money on portions of the CRC entirely within Washington’s borders although Oregon’s constitution requires such money to be spent “in this state.” Building I-5 interchanges in Washington facilitates travel on Oregon highways, Rosenblum argues. Critics disagree. Former legislative counsel Gregory Chaimov says if anyone challenges Rosenblum’s argument in court, the state could lose. “[The attorney general] interprets this as anything that facilitates the state highway system,” says Bill Funk, a professor of constitutional law at Lewis & Clark Law School. “That’s not exactly what the constitution says.” Adds Chaimov, “The constitution is supposed to be very narrowly construed to not allow the state very much leeway.” 4. Oregon legislators are abandoning the CRC. After his success in the October special session, Gov. John Kitzhaber pushed for November hearings on the CRC in hopes of reviving flagging support from lawmakers. But Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem) pushed back, voicing the objections of lawmakers who supported the CRC in February but no longer do. Kitzhaber has scrapped the hearings. “He just doesn’t have the support,” says state Rep. Julie Parrish (R-West Linn). “Nobody wants to take that vote.” Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

NOV. 26 DEC. 29 StarRing

Darius PieRCe

subsection city Hall

b e t h l ay n e h a n s e n

127TH AND HALES

NEWS

THE MAYOR SAYS HE MAKES HIS DECISIONS THINKING ABOUT ONE INTERSECTION. WE WENT THERE. IT NEEDS PAVING. by r av l e e n k au r 2 4 3 -2 1 2 2

Charlotte Hurt says she didn’t choose to move to Southeast 127th Avenue and Mill Court. And she hasn’t heard of Portland Mayor Charlie Hales. Hurt moved last year to a turquoise cottage four blocks south of David Douglas High School, after her husband, Joe, learned he had Parkinson’s disease and worried he couldn’t make mortgage payments on their house on nearby Division Street. A preschool teacher, Hurt says she hasn’t voted for more than a decade. What does she think of Hales? “I don’t even know who he is,” Hurt says. But Hales says he’s made Hurt’s East Portland neighborhood the litmus test for how he makes his decisions. In a Nov. 4 interview, Hales said he created his firstyear agenda—stabilizing the city budget, supporting schools and reforming police—by asking himself what’s best for people living in the Mill Park neighborhood. “ I hold myself a lot of the time to what I call the 127th-and-Mill test,” Hales said. “If I knocked on all four doors of that intersection and asked, ‘Is this what you’d like your mayor to do? Manage the budget?’ I think most people would say yes.” It’s not uncommon for a mayor to cite average citizens as examples. Former Mayor Sam Adams famously namedchecked “Mike and Jean,” two possibly apocryphal struggling Portlanders. But Hales chose a real and specific location—one eight miles east of City Hall, in a section of the city that elected officials are perpetually criticized for ignoring. Hales challenged WW to go to 127th and Mill and ask people what they thought of his first year in office. So we did.

“If we could get out, we would be gone. thIs neIghborhood sucks.” —carlena bond Southeast 127th Avenue intersects twice with streets called Mill—once at Mill Court, then a block south at Mill Street. But 127th looks the same at both corners: It’s unpaved. Hurt and the nine other people we talked to agreed almost unanimously on what Hales should make his first priority: paving 127th, one of the city’s 59 miles of dirt roads. “Everybody uses this road,” says Sean Lavallee. “Something needs to be done about it.” Between Mill Court and Mill Street, traffic has worn a winding ridge into the middle of 127th and pockmarked it with craters. When it rains, the craters turn into murky little lakes. Lavallee navigates the gravel street in a motorized

crossroads: Mayor charlie Hales says he canvassed southeast 127th avenue and Mill street for the david douglas school district bond measure—and the neighborhood has stuck in his mind.

wheelchair that flies a towering American flag. “I broke my wheelchair many times on this road,” says Lavallee, who lives in a foster home for disabled men near the corner of 127th and Mill Court. Recently, his chair tipped over on this road as he made his way home. Charlotte Hurt has one advantage over her neighbors: She lives in one of the few houses near a sidewalk. “I like knowing that, when my son walks to school, he’s walking on sidewalks,” she said. She’s more concerned about what happens once her son, 13-year-old Ronnie, arrives at Ron Russell Middle School. “You don’t want to go to Ron Russell,” Ronnie says. “There’s fights, like, every day.” Carlena Bond, who lives nearby on Mill Street, says the David Douglas School District has deteriorated in the past 10 years. She’s now homeschooling her two kids. Bond says she voted for Hales, but feels the city is in decline. Her property taxes have doubled, she says. Her water bill is going up drastically. And she keeps hearing about crimes committed by transients and drug addicts. “If we could get out, we would be gone,” Bond says. “This neighborhood sucks.” Lynn and Jim Hughes, who run the state-funded foster home where Lavallee lives, also say neighborhood crime is getting worse. They voted for Hales’ opponent, Jefferson Smith—hoping he’d bring more attention to Mill Park. “There’s been a decline in the whole area,” Jim Hughes says.

k ay l a n g u y e n

a n d a l e X to M c H a k s c ot t

Hands off: charlotte Hurt is skeptical of reforming the Portland Police Bureau. “Leave our police department alone,” she says. “Whenever I’ve had a problem, they’ve always been right here.”

They are less interested in Hales’ police reforms than in getting better pay for cops patrolling the neighborhood—which they say is crime-ridden. Jim Hughes blames crime partly on the MAX line extending into outer East Portland: He says where the train goes, crime follows. Lynn Hughes says lawbreaking has been sparked by a glut of low-income housing pushed into the neighborhood. “We get the brunt end of everything,” Lynn Hughes says. “It’s landed in our neighborhood. They’re shipping too many people here. It’s out of balance.” Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

By nigel jaquiss

On a balmy, nearly full-moon August evening, only a few people showed up at a Portland Public Schools board meeting. That was fortunate for board members and Superintendent Carole Smith, because district auditor Richard Tracy showed up with a briefcase full of bad news. In the matter-of-fact tone of a man reading a phone book, Tracy walked Smith and board members through a report of the district’s most important function—graduating students. His findings were appalling. It’s no secret PPS has struggled to get diplomas in students’ hands, even as it has retained a reputation as one of the last urban districts in the nation able to hold onto middle-class families. But Tracy’s comparative study of Oregon’s next three largest districts and the school districts in Seattle and Long Beach, Calif., revealed just how terribly Portland is failing. Portland’s four-year high-school graduation rate of 63 percent is 14 points lower than Beaverton’s, 12 points lower than Hillsboro’s and six points lower than Salem’s. That puts Portland at the bottom of the barrel in a state that has the fourth-lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation. Portland’s rate of graduating minority and lowincome students is also worse when compared with other districts. The problem is not a lack of money. Portland’s per-pupil spending is, on average, 19 percent higher than the three other aforementioned Oregon districts’ and 24 percent higher than Long Beach’s. “That was shocking to me,” says third-term PPS board member Bobbie Regan. “We are spending a whole lot more money per student than other districts.” How can Portland, which has long prided itself on public schools, be performing so poorly? Answers are elusive, but in his 61-page audit, Tracy offered some clues: Other districts have “rigorous accountability” and “leadership from the superin-

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njaquiss@wweek.com

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

tendent,” he wrote. The implication was that Portland does not. The auditor also pointed to another difference between Portland and the other districts, which have all moved away from the once-popular practice of farming out struggling high-schoolers to privately run community-based alternative schools. In Long Beach, for example, Tracy wrote, “The district has taken over several alternative schools because they found the option expensive and ineffective.” Portland has bucked that trend. Under the leadership of Smith, the district has maintained a strong commitment to community-based alternative schools. That commitment seems odd given that the graduation rate at Portland’s alternative schools is far worse than the district’s at large: For 2011-12, the four-year graduation rate at community-based alternative high schools was 9 percent. The graduation crisis has consequences for families with kids in Portland Public Schools, but also for current and future taxpayers. Given those stakes, it might seem that alternative schools would be the subject of vigorous debate in the corridors of education policy. Not so. In fact, conversations with educators, experts and activists suggest that the School Board and the superintendent are as wedded to alternative schools as Portland is to light rail. That’s because, many observers say, Portland was a pioneer in alternative education and because Smith spent 23 years running a community-based alternative school. Two board members have connections to private, community-based programs. And, critics suggest, in a city fueled by liberal guilt, it’s easier to give community groups public contracts than fix problems at the district’s high schools. Whatever the explanation, Tracy’s audit is a warning the School Board cannot ignore. “We have an abysmal graduation rate and a much higher rate of students enrolled in alternative programs than other districts,” says former PPS

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The Native American Youth and Family Center’s 10-acre campus is an oasis along a gritty stretch of industrial Northeast Portland. The proper t y, which borders traditiona l native f ishing spots on the Columbia Slough, is today surrounded by metal-bending shops, heavy-equipment yards and the sooty exhaust of diesel rigs roaring up and down Northeast Columbia Boulevard. Inside the nonprofit’s 60,000-squarefoot community center is one of Portland’s most disenfranchised groups. Brightly colored artwork and somber photographs tell the story of what the Pacific Northwest tribes lost when the West was won. Donors drop off boxes of bread and canned goods for struggling families; kids peer at computers. There’s a catering operation, family counseling and 12-step groups—along with a NAYA-run high school that last year served 95 students. The typical Portland high school is a big brick box like Grant or Madison. The Portland district operates seven such brick boxes, ranging in enrollment from 915 at Roosevelt in North Portland to 1,563 at Lincoln in Southwest. (The district no longer considers Jefferson and Benson Tech comprehensive high schools.) Less well known are the communitybased alternative high schools that PPS hires to handle students who have failed in conventional settings. Those 13 schools are scattered across the city, from NAYA to Outside In, the downtown refuge for homeless kids, to Portland YouthBuilders in Lents.

In all, community-based alternative high schools served 1,131 students as of last month. That’s about 10 percent of the students who attend PPS high schools. (The district also runs its own alternative high schools, which are fully staffed with district personnel and union teachers. Those schools include A lliance, which focuses on dropout recovery, and Metropolitan Learning Center, which serves higher achievers. Finally, there are also charter schools, which have the same reporting requirements as conventional public schools but have independent boards and are required to employ only 50 percent union teachers.) In his audit, however, Tracy focused on community-based alternative high schools, which employ mostly non-union teachers and are subject to far less oversight and fewer reporting requirements than district schools. For example, all PPS high schools, district-run alternatives and charter schools submit graduation and a variety of other statistics to the state, which produces publicly available school report cards. Community-based alternatives do not. Such schools serve different niches across t he cit y. Yout h Bu i lder s, for example, teaches students carpentry and basic construction skills; nearby Mt. Scott Learning Center serves kids who have left PPS schools as early as sixth grade. Some schools, such as NAYA, offer culturally specific instruction, and others, such as De Paul Treatment Centers, serve students dealing with substance abuse. Historically, the purpose of community-based alternative schools was to offer dropouts more personalized attention, counseling and remedial instruction to help them catch up. The quality of such cont. on page 16

GRADUATION RATE VERSUS SPENDING

Portland’s four-year graduation rate is far lower than those of comparable districts in Oregon, Washington and California.

63%

PORTLAND

68%

69%

Oregon

Salem-Keizer

74%

75%

Seattle

Hillsboro

77%

80%

Beaverton

Long Beach

Portland also does a worse job than comparable districts of graduating minority students.

52%

PORTLAND

58%

Beaverton

58%

62%

Oregon

Salem-Keizer

67%

Hillsboro

67%

77%

Seattle

Long Beach

s o u r c e : o r e g o n , Wa s h i n g to n a n d c a l i f o r n i a d e pa r t m e n t s o f e d u c at i o n

board member Trudy Sargent, who served from 2005 until July. “Why?”

Portland spends far more per student than all but one betterperforming district.

$11,860

$9,768

$8,460

$8,313

$7,852

$7,791

Seattle

PORTLAND

SalemKeizer

Hillsboro

Long Beach

Beaverton

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

CONT.

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

programs varied widely from accredited, diploma-granting operations to dropout warehouses. Interviews with five students at Mt. Scott Learning Center, one of the district’s more highly regarded contractors, yielded a consistent story: They’d dropped out of Cleveland, Franklin and Madison high schools, feeling as if nobody cared. “It was really easy to skip [school],” says Steven, who dropped out of Cleveland 2½ years ago. “You just write your own cellphone number on the [information] sheet, so if somebody tries to check on why you’re not at school, they get you instead of your parents.” Steven says he gets individual attention and the help of social services within the cheery former Methodist church that is now his school. Whatever their focus, community-based alternative schools have one thing in common— they are trying to rescue kids who have failed at the big-box high schools. “For the most part, our alternative schools are a dropout recovery system,” says Carla Gay, PPS’s manager of community-based programs. The numbers suggest the recovery isn’t going well. Gay says PPS has no graduation statistics for individual alternative schools. But on aggregate, the numbers the district does make available for contracted alternative schools are woeful. In 2011, the four-year graduation rate for contracted alternative schools was 15 percent. Last year, it sunk to 9 percent. That means only 9 percent of students who enter such schools as freshmen graduate four years later. That compares with 63 percent districtwide and 78 percent nationally. Still, Portland remains heavily committed to such programs. Supporters say the single-digit graduation rate is a reflection of community alternative schools having to deal with a challenging population. District observers, however, say Superintendent Smith is the reason PPS contracts with such schools. “The board follows Carole Smith and rubberstamps whatever she wants because they think

she’s the expert,” says Teresa McGuire, a former teacher who is part of the group Restore Education Before Buildings. “But she’s blinded by not having experience in a traditional classroom setting.” Carole Smith spent nearly 30 years working in private alterative education before joining PPS’s central administration in 2005. Smith grew up in Beaverton. After graduating from Ohio’s Oberlin College in 1976, she moved to Boston, working at an alternative school and earning a master’s degree in education at Harvard. Smith returned to Oregon 1982, and for the next 23 years served as executive director of Open Meadow, a community-based alternative school in North Portland. Open Meadow, located in a vintage Victorian on three grassy acres overlooking the Wil-

“the board follows carole smith and rubber-stamps whatever she wants because they think she’s the expert.” —Teresa McGuire lamette River, is one the Pacific Northwest’s oldest community-based alternative schools and holds one of the largest contracts of any such PPS program—$1.2 million last year. Smith left Open Meadow in 2005 to oversee alternative education for PPS, and in October 2007 she succeeded her boss, Vicki Phillips, as Portland’s superintendent. At a personal level, it’s easy to see why Smith is PPS’s longest-serving superintendent since Matthew Prophet, who retired in 1992. In contrast to her hyperkinetic successor, whom W W nicknamed “Hurricane Vicki,” Smith is warm, self-effacing and drama-free. cont. on page 18

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

My heart cries for...?

MUSIC

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FLUNK FACTORIES

CONT.

In a position that attracts big personalities who chase paychecks from city to city, Smith is a minimalist. She favors muted colors, short hair and has refused the board’s repeated efforts to increase her $190,000 annual salary. During her tenure, Smith has brought about change. In 2010, she closed Marshall High School in the outer east side and, as a way to force students to attend Jefferson, sharply reduced and capped enrollment at the district’s top magnet high school, Benson Tech. But what Smith has more difficulty doing is convincingly defending PPS’s commitment to community-based alternative schools. In 2011, the district did decrease from 18 to 13 the number of community-based alternative schools with which it contracts. Smith says cutting ties with long-term partners was difficult and that she has assigned her advisory High School Action Team to ensure that community-based alternatives “are aligned more tightly with district standards.” But while Smith cut some providers, the percentage of Portland students served in community-based alternatives has not changed on her watch. “We’ve retained that option when other districts haven’t,” Smith argues. Her reaction to Tracy’s audit was “holy schmoly!” and she

“FOR 40 YEARS, WE’VE HAD A GRASSROOTS RESPONSE TO HOW TO MEET THE NEEDS OF KIDS WHO ARE STRUGGLING.” —CAROLE SMITH says it showed that Portland’s graduation rate is “completely unacceptable,” but adds Tracy’s audit also contains some positives. For example, Portland’s overall four-year graduation rate has risen 10 percentage points from 53 percent to 63 percent since 2008, the biggest increase among Oregon’s large districts. “We’re trending in the right direction,” Smith says. Smith also notes that by a different measure, high-school completion (which includes getting a GED or finishing in more than four years) in Portland is only a couple of points below the state average. Her defense of community-based alternatives is less persuasive. “For 40 years, we’ve had a grassroots response to how to meet the needs of kids who are struggling,” she says. Critics say that PPS’s attachment to community alternative schools comes at the expense of conventional high schools. Community-based alternatives are expensive, ranging between $7,175 and $14,700 per student per year. That’s substantially more than PPS spends on students at big-box high schools. Last year, per-student spending at the district’s three largest high schools—Lincoln, Cleveland and Grant—averaged $4,817. “The bias toward alternative education and special-interest groups is actually cutting the programs that are working for diverse populations,” says Lainie Block Wilker, a Northeast Portland activist who has tried to reverse the district’s effort to drive students away from Benson. Oregon Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Rob Saxton says placing struggling students in community-based alternative schools is an abrogation of a district’s responsibility to provide a rigorous education to all students. “It’s more effective to keep kids inside the district,” Saxton says. “If they need particular services, it is our duty to deliver them where they stand rather than labeling and sending them to a special program.” In Tracy’s audit, the most stark contrast examined was the Long Beach, Calif., district, which serves far more low-income and minority students and spends far less per student than Portland. In the 2011-12 school year, Long Beach’s graduation rate was 80 percent, 17 points higher than Portland’s. The Los Angeles County district achieved those results with a completely different approach than Portland’s. “The district has taken over several alternative schools,” 18

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

FLUNK FACTORIES a n n a j ay e g o e l l n e r

CONT. Tracy wrote. “Because they found the option expensive and ineffective.” The Salem-Keizer School District looks a lot like Portland’s. It has almost as many students (41,800 to Portland’s 48,000) and six big-box high schools compared to Portland’s seven. Salem serves a higher percentage of minority students, low-income students and students for whom English is a second language than Portland. And yet Salem’s overall graduation rate is six percentage points higher than Portland’s, including 10 percentage points higher for minority students. Tracy found another striking difference: Salem does not contract with any alternative high-school programs. Instead, Salem employs “graduation coaches” who bird-dog truants, the district foundation assigns mentors to each school to help struggling kids, and every school works from the district’s tightly focused strategic plan. Sandy Husk, Salem’s superintendent, has been on the job about the same length of time as Smith. Unlike Smith, who came to PPS from a communitybased alternative school, Husk had taught at a public school for a decade, then served as a district superintendent in two other states. “When I came here, what I found was that kids who are at risk of dropping out often move around a lot within the system,” Husk says. “If the students experience different approaches at different schools, it can feel like starting all over again.” Husk says parents entrust their children to the school district expecting it to educate them, and that is the district’s, not a contractor’s, responsibility. “We have no outside providers,” Husk says. “We own all the kids. They are all our kids. It is our job to respond to what they need.” Tracy singled out Husk’s role in Salem’s success. “Leadership from the superintendent is the essential feature of management,” Tracy wrote. “A sense of urgency is communicated to principals and teachers for student success measured by graduation rates, dropout prevention, and academic success.” It did not take a genius to see that Tracy’s audit was an implied critique of Smith’s tenure. That’s a departure from conventional wisdom, because since Smith became PPS’s superintendent in 2007, she has received rave reviews from her board. Last year, board co-chairman Greg Belisle complimented Smith on an “extraordinary” job. Some critics think the board is largely a rubber stamp for Smith, in part because of the professional background of two of its members.

STILL SMILING: PPS Superintendent Carole Smtih says there’s no quick fix for her district’s. graduation woes. “I’m working on stuff that takes a long time and is messy,” she says..

Board policy prohibits PPS employees from serving on the board, because that would be a conflict of interest. There is no such policy for district contractors. Belisle works for Impact Northwest, which PPS has paid $1.8 million over the past five years to run afterschool programs for at-risk kids at nine PPS schools. Another board member, Matt Morton, is executive director of NAYA, the Native American group that runs a community-based alternative school for PPS. NAYA also has a parent outreach contract and is currently negotiating to run a PPS childhood education program in Lents. “I don’t understand how a board member can draw a paycheck from an entity that gets money from PPS,” says McGuire of Restore Education Before Buildings. Belisle says PPS contracts are a small part of his employer’s revenue and don’t affect his thinking or compensation. He says he and other board members are pushing Smith to accelerate improvements, but he notes the district is implementing major changes amid large budget cuts. Belisle is wary of placing blame on communitybased alternative schools. “That feels a little simplistic,” he says. For his part, Morton says he has regularly disclosed

COMMUNITY-BASED ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION

the potential conflicts between his NAYA and board roles. Like Belisle, he says his dual roles have not caused him to favor community-based alternatives. “I’ve managed my position with integrity,” Morton says. “As a board member, my job is to support and invest in programs that work, and that’s what I’ve done.” After last year’s board elections, members are beginning to question the status quo. Steve Buel, a retired teacher who is rejoining the board after a 32-year absence, has been critical of the board’s unwillingness to debate issues publicly. Tom Koehler, the other new board member, peppered Tracy with questions about the audit at the August board meeting. “It was alarming,” Koehler says of the audit. “We are spending more and getting less. That is not acceptable.” Koehler, a co-founder of Pacific Ethanol, says after five months on the board he believes the district’s approach to evaluating management is too slack. “Going forward,” he says, “I think we need to be much more specific in our expectations of how we define success and where we need improvement.”

The names and addresses of Portland’s community-based alternative high schools:

De Paul Treatment Centers 4310 N Killingsworth St.

Pathfinder Academy 7528 N Charleston Ave.

SE Works 7916 SE Foster Road, Suite 104

Mt. Scott High School 6148 SE Holgate Blvd.

Portland Community College (Three programs, multiple locations)

Youth Employment Institute & YEI Teen Parent Program 1704 NE 26th Ave.

Portland YouthBuilders 4816 SE 92nd Ave.

Youth Progress Association 2020 SE Powell Blvd.

NAYA Early College Academy 5135 NE Columbia Blvd. New Avenues for Youth 314 SW 9th Ave. Open Meadow High School 7654 N Crawford St. Outside In 1132 SW 13th Ave.

Rosemary Anderson High School/Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center 717 N Killingsworth Court

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

FOOD: Roman Candle by day and by night. MUSIC: Thundercat is go! STAGE: Margaret Cho’s mother talks twerking. MOVIES: Harry Potter plays Allen Ginsberg.

The Annual Oliver lecture proudly presents

25 27 40 45

Susan Emmons

Executive Director of Northwest Pilot Project and one of our community’s leading advocates for preserving and building housing for low-income people.

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST • PORTLAND

GOSSIP DESTROYS THE BEST MINDS OF ITS GENERATION. OLD FRUIT: Fruit Bats, the Portland-via-Chicago indiefolk band, is calling it quits. Like, right now. On Nov. 11, frontman Eric D. Johnson told the online magazine Paste that the band would end its 13-year run following a series of shows celebrating the 10th anniversary of its fan-favorite sophomore album, Mouthfuls, the last of which is Saturday, Nov. 16, at Aladdin Theater. “There is no major or dramatic reason,” Johnson wrote in a press statement. “I’m not gonna launch into one of those ‘the changing face of the music landscape in the digital age,’ things.” Johnson, who started Fruit Bats as a solo project in 2000 and has kept a revolving membership, says he’s drifted more toward producing bands and writing movie scores lately (the last Fruit Bats album, Tripper, came out in 2011) but adds he will continue to make records in some capacity. “[T]his is just the start of chapter two, really,” he wrote.

Free & open to the public

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SCOOP

“Portland’s Housing Crisis and How to Solve It” Sunday, November 17 3 p.m.

SPRUCE NOT GOOSED: Despite news reported by The Oregonian on Nov. 8 that Evergreen International Aviation may close at the end of this month, Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum spokeswoman Melissa Grace says Spruce Goose fans need not fret. “Obviously they’ve supported us in the past,” she says of the airline, “but the museum is able to fi nancially sustain itself.” In 2011, the last year for which there are public records available, the McMinnville museum ended the year with a surplus of over $1 million, mostly from revenues. However, the Oregon Department of Justice is investigating money transfers between the nonprofit and the airline. UNION-MADE: The folks at West End shopping arcade Union Way—home to Boxer Ramen, a littler Little T Baker and boutiques with $335 blue jeans—have managed to get a glowing write-up in The New York Times travel magazine. The piece contains the now-obligatory quote from a Portlandia star to help readers understand the significance of it all. “Union Way both comments on and embodies all of Portland’s lifestyle and aesthetic aspirations,” says Carrie Brownstein, referred to as our “de facto mayor” in the piece. “It says, ‘This is Portland,’ but at the same time it asks the very same thing: ‘This is Portland?’” In October, The New York Times ran a 650-word piece about a New York couple who spent almost a half-million dollars remodeling their $300,000 Portland home. OPEN ROOM: Record Room, the North Portland record store, music venue and bar, is closing at the end of November. According to owner Rachel Rhymes, the plan was to close for remodeling in December, but a deal with an investor fell through. Record Room’s final show, featuring an auction of remaining merchandise, will take place Nov. 22. >> Meanwhile, Ramzy Hattar—a financial backer of Oven and Shaker, Lardo and the forthcoming Kachka restaurant—will open a bar called the River Pig Saloon at 529 NW 13th Ave., in the space vacated by the Ready Paint Fire! ceramic painting spot. According to the bar’s Facebook page, it will “add some grit back to the Pearl District.”

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

HEADOUT CRACKING THE CODE: NIGHT TRAIN EXPRESS Oregonian wine writer Katherine Cole has a new book out that demystifies the often confusing information on wine bottles from Italy, France and Portugal. We enjoyed her Complete Wine Selector but discovered, to our shock, that it’s not actually complete. Even as Cole explains that the “RM” on Champagne bottles means récoltant-manipulant (“grower-producer”) and the elongated shape of a riesling bottle is called a “hock,” other wines remain mysterious. For example, Night Train Express. E & J Gallo Winery no longer publicly acknowledges its connection to the fabled fortified wine, and has ignored our requests for information. But we’ve done our best to help you crack the code. Staple this page to the back of Cole’s Complete Wine Selector, and you’ll have a guide that’s actually complete. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

1989 This is not the vintage of the wine. It is the copyright for the wine label. And it is, indeed, a beautiful wine label, emblematic of how the wine feels while you’re drinking it: a speeding train, right through your head. For some, a non-vintage wine is a sign of low quality and steeply discounted off-year grapes. But not in this case. Night Train Express is timeless. It is forever.

Serve very cold This is an important part of the Night Train experience. When wine is allowed to reach room temperature, it is much easier to taste. You do not want to do this. Serve very cold.

17.5 percent Damn right it’s 17.5 percent ABV—12-percent wine is for pinky-lifters and Europeans.

Citrus wine Grapes are cheap, sure. But what if other fruits are cheaper? Best to leave yourself a little wiggle room.

Night Train Express Consumption of Night Train Express has been described, alternately, as: being loaded like a freight train, flyin’ like an airplane, feelin’ like a space brain and drinkin’ gasoline. It might float you home. But you might never return. Only one thing is certain: You must be ready to crash and burn.

B R I D G E , E VA N J O H N S O N ; N I G H T T R A I N , E & J G A L L O

WILLAMETTE WEEK

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE

THURSDAY NOV. 14 COMPETITIVE EROTIC FAN FICTION [COMEDY] The Nerdist-approved event returns to Portland for another delightfully weird and raucous night of comics writing and performing original erotic stories. Audience suggestions are encouraged, so bring your biggest Darcy and Hermione fantasies. You’ll never read Steinbeck the same. The Blue Monk, 3341 SE Belmont St., 5950575. 8 pm. $10.

SATURDAY NOV. 16 JESSIE WARE [MUSIC] While her contemporaries climb all over one another to test the limits of their vocal prowess, this 29-year-old U.K. soul chanteuse has won an increasingly ardent fan base for her commitment to restraint. Devotion, Ware’s atmospheric, alluring and occasionally playful debut, proved her more than capable of belting to the rafters if needed, but such moments appear all the more powerful when surrounded by measured grace. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 9 pm. $17. All ages.

MONDAY NOV. 18 Natural flavors The Gallo brothers could have used artificial flavors to improve the taste of Night Train. But they did not. Night Train is all natural.

Night Train Limited Night Train (along with its cousin, Thunderbird), is produced by E & J Gallo, the world’s largest wine producer and maker of wines as diverse as Carlo Rossi Founder’s Reserve and Barefoot Bubbly. But E & J Gallo of Modesto, Calif., does not place its name on Night Train bottles. Instead, it humbly attributes the wine to a company called Night Train Limited, which is also located in Modesto.

GO: Katherine Cole will appear at Pastaworks on Hawthorne, 3735 SE Hawthorne Blvd., on Saturday, Nov. 16. 2 pm. Free. Night Train Express is available at Tobacco Town and Albertsons.

NINE INCH NAILS [MUSIC] Did anyone actually believe Trent Reznor when he said he was done with Nine Inch Nails? How does one break up a project that’s basically just yourself, anyway? So don’t call this tour a comeback. This year’s acclaimed Hesitation Marks conﬁrms Reznor as one of rock’s great sound architects, but that’s been true since the ’80s. And his new midlife-crisis physique means that instead of breaking keyboards with mic stands like he used to, he does it with his bare hands. We presume. Moda Center, 1401 N Wheeler Ave., 235-8771. 7:30 pm. $29.50-$75.50. All ages.

TUESDAY NOV. 19 CASCADIA GREAT EARTHQUAKES: RIDDLE OF THE SANDS [SCIENCE] Portland transplants: Heard of the Cascadia subduction zone? Basically, there are two tectonic plates colliding in the Pacific Ocean, and we might get a giant— like genuinely cataclysmic—earthquake sometime in our lifetimes. Chris Goldfinger tells us (maybe) how to prepare. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 797-4677. 7 pm. $5 suggested. BILL CALLAHAN [MUSIC] On his latest album, the sublime Dream River, the 47-yearold Austinite unfurls his famously deadpan baritone over music that eschews traditional structure, delicately weaving shimmering guitars and brushed percussion among his glacial drawl. Now with more flute! Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $20. Under 21 permitted with legal guardian.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

FOOD & DRINK

Exotic Dishes of Lamb, Chicken, Goat Gluten-Free, Vegetarian, Vegan Options

= WW Pick. Highly recommended.

OPEN HOUSE! Thanksgiving Weekend Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11AM-5PM Discover the wines that Wine Spectator calls “Outstanding” at Portland’s largest urban winery 2621 NW 30th Avenue, Portland, OR

Antoinette Estate Jewelry

By JORDAN GREEN. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.

FRIDAY, NOV. 15 Cheap Pizza

For its fourth birthday, Pyro Pizza is serving up $4 pizzas all weekend. We admire the pricing technique—it’s the same one used by our grandmother to determine how much birthday money we got—because it nets us a $10 wood-ﬁ red puttanesca for less than half that, at 2 am, in case we’re wandering around blearyeyed. But we worry about the future. If Pyro Pizza lasts 11 years, will we have to pay a dollar extra when its birthday rolls around? Pyro Pizza, Southeast 12th Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard, 9291404. 11:30 am-3:30 am FridaySunday, Nov. 15-17. $4 per pizza.

SATURDAY, NOV. 16 BelgianFest

Namaste

Parkrose since 2009 8303 NE Sandy Blvd 503-257-5059 Vancouver since 2001 6300 NE 117th Ave 360-891-5857

NamasteIndianCuisine.com

2328 NW Westover Road AntoinetteJewelry.com

Denver has the Great American Beer Festival, the nation’s largest and most respected event of its kind. Portland has the Great American Distillers Festival and, now, something called the Great American Wine Festival. Details are thin, but there will be winemakers from Ohio, Missouri and Idaho, which means you should be able to get both pink and regular Catawba and maybe Norton or Niagara. DoubleTree Inn, Lloyd Center, 1000 NE Multnomah St., 281-6111. 4-8 pm. $35-$115.

I get HAPPY 4-6pm Tues-Fri $3 menu

Tuesdstaryy: Fun Indu Night!

Dragon Lounge

Chinese-American Restaurant

2610 SE 82nd at Division 503-774-1135 Ho Ti

Oregon, that least French and most Oktoberfesty of states, has nonetheless taken madly to the Belgian beer styles much more than the German. Case in point, the fourth annual BelgianFest at Bailey’s Taproom, featuring more than 20 breweries, off ers up its wilds, wits, saisons and sours. It fi lls up (and taps out) so madly that the Taproom off ers $25 VIP tickets for fi ve 4-ounce taster pours and early admission. Bailey’s Taproom, 213 SW Broadway, 2951004. 2 pm. $15 admission and fi ve drink tokens, $1 additional tokens; cash only.

Great American Wine Festival

Karaoke 9pm nightly Hydro Pong Saturday night

Read our story: canton-grill.com

Katherine Cole

Oregonian wine writer Katherine Cole has a new book that aims to decode all them fancy foreign words on your hooch. Complete Wine Selector doesn’t cover Thunderbird, Night Train or MD 20/20, but it will answer most of your questions about Burgundian peculiarities. PastaWorks Hawthorne/Evoe, 3735 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 232-1010. 2 pm. Free.

SUNDAY, NOV. 17 Old Timer’s Week

To celebrate 30 years of slices, Escape From New York Pizza owner Phil Geﬀ ner is taking every current employee on a trip to Hawaii. The shop will still be open and under the care of former employees taking time oﬀ from their white-collar gigs to toss dough and remember what life was like before they were worn down by tedium, responsibility and having to pay for pizza. It continues all week. Escape From New York Pizza, 622 NW 23rd Ave., 2275423. 11:30 am-11 pm. Prices vary.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

EAT MOBILE B E T H L AY N E H A N S E N

Lavish Buffets of Indian Cuisine

BIEN ANDALUSIA: Chef Kenez Mata, with mushrooms.

DUENDE In flamenco, duende is the thing that makes you cry, or dance, or play at all—sort of the gypsy version of what James Brown meant when he said “soul.” It’s this spirit that inspired Andalusian food cart Duende, which offers up the recipes Kenez “Thorne” Mata was served, while growing up, by his Spanish grandmother. The selection is small but diverse—though olive oil is dominant in everything served—with tortilla de papa ($8) buttressed on the menu by a pleasant spinach salad ($8) with pine nuts and oil-swollen raisins, and a terrific salteado de rebozuelos dish ($8) consisting of chanterelles on fried bread with a runny softOrder this: Go with a friend and fried egg. What made the latter split the spinach salad, plus the dish pop was the lovely balance prawns or salteado. of acids and fats, as well as the I’ll pass: Migas. freshness of spicing: herbs, lemon and Spanish paprika. The healthy-sized prawns ($9) were cooked in sherry and oil and spiced with a gobsmack of roasted garlic and arbol chilies that had me sopping all of the sauce with the bread side. In the Spanish-menu casual standby migas ($8), however—a hash of fry-bread chunks and chorizo—the combination of sausage fat and frying oil created a Gulf spill in the mouth. But while the cart may look like a set piece for a soused-up Gogol Bordello show, the mood in the cart’s covered seating area is Old World gentility. Mata and his wife, Jennifer, might come out of the cart to serve orange-and-cardamom-spiced coffee brewed on the stovetop, or share photos of their last visit to Granada. Duende is a little bit of warm Spanish soul, out there on the side of Hawthorne Boulevard. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. EAT: Duende, 3207 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 208-1288. Noon-8 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

DRANK

RIGEL SPARKLING ALE (ECLIPTIC BREWING) Oregon brewing legend John Harris has been making beer for more than 30 years. Rigel Sparkling Ale, currently on tap at his just-opened Ecliptic Brewing in North Portland, has been in the works for 27 of them. Back in the ’80s, while working at McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse in Hillsboro, Harris and his fellow brewers found a wild grape vine growing by the road and decided to make a beer with the fruit. That fi rst attempt planted a seed, and now Harris has honed the recipe with this highly carbonated, refreshing ale combining light malts and fruity Crystal hops with riesling juice from a winery in Roseburg. That addition gives the beer a touch of musty funkiness, but it’s still drinkable and subtly sophisticated. Forget Miller High Life— this is the real Champagne of beers. Recommended. REBECCA JACOBSON.

FOOD & DRINK P H OTO S B Y N ATA L I E B E H R I N G . C O M

REVIEW

9 AM: Kouign amann.

9 PM: Pomodoro pizza.

BOTH ENDS BURNING ROMAN CANDLE BY DAY AND BY NIGHT. BY M A RT I N C I Z M A R

MCIZMAR@wweek.com

In the morning, Roman Candle tends to be busy, all four planks of communal walnut splattered with laptops and coffee mugs. The brightly lit room is inviting from the street—warm smells and white coats gliding around behind the counter. Pastry cases flanking the Square-equipped iPad that serves as the register are heavy with fresh treats from the back, most of them on the rich side, many with a sprinkle of salt. The Stumptown beans that won Duane Sorenson the capital to open this place are on offer, with espresso from a La Marzocco Strada machine poured into a pint glass to make an Americano ($2.75). House hot cocoa ($3.25) is served in a white ceramic mug bearing the bakery’s logo, with a crown of fluffy cream. You’ll want to order at least one sweet. My favorite was kouign amann ($3), a trendy and formerly obscure French pastry made from thin, buttery layers dusted with sea salt that you may know from the now-closed Alder Pastry or from St. Honoré. Learn to pronounce it “queen aman” or receive gentle correction. For something heartier, keep an eye out for coffeecake with seasonal berries or the polenta cherry bar ($3), which, as its name implies, is made from moist cornmeal dough similar to cornbread and topped with a shake of powdered sugar, sliced almonds and dried cherries. As at sister restaurant Ava Gene’s, bread slabs with interesting toppings are a focal point. Here, the “toasts” are open-faced sandwiches on the house’s substantial super-grain bread. The best has large hunks of moist smoked trout ($7.50) fresh out of its skin atop a schmear of creme fraiche, sliced avocado and bitter greens. Down the menu, opt for a robust bowl of Old World cereal ($8) with flax seeds, nuts, almond milk and maple syrup, or a sandwich I’m calling the McDuane ($6; add meat for $3), a herby everything-bun with aged cheddar and a steamed egg that pops its yellow yolk on the first squeeze.

In the evening, you have your pick of tables at what is essentially a pizza-by-the-slice place, though its simple, doughy wood-fired squares aren’t like any other pie. The kitchen is dim, but the brightly lit Roman Candle dining room feels like an overflow room for those left out of Ava Gene’s next door—itself a den of booming laughter and fleet servers. The pastry cases are mostly empty by dusk, a few dessert cakes and cookies lingering for mop-up duty. Beverage options include Lurisia sparkling spring water ($3) and Mexican Coke ($3). Pizza bianca typically refers to a type of bread topped with olive oil, salt and herbs, so Roman Candle’s square slabs of crusty flatbread might be better called pizza al taglio, as most have tomato sauce plus mushrooms, sausage or cheese. Start with appetizer options borrowed from Ava Gene’s, including the stellar Tuscan Cavalry salad ($11, $18) of thinly sliced kale below a blanket of shaved Parmesan, lemon juice, garlic and bread crumbs. There’s also a plate of Iowa’s famous La Quercia prosciutto ($11) with cracker sticks and a bowl of mixed olives or a locavore Fruit Loop salad ($12, $22) that combines slices of hard Italian pecorino cheese, slices of ripe pear, hazelnuts and arugula in a dressing of caramelized grape must. The slices themselves are bready, too thick to bend when lifted, with a little char on the bottom and a fingernail-wide grip of naked crust. The best slice is also the simplest: a red-faced slab of pomodoro ($4) that builds from the house’s piquant marinara using a sprinkle of sea salt, paper-thin slices of garlic and a too-light shake of oregano. A slab of potato pizza ($5) with provolone and thyme, on the other hand, failed to escape the starchy trap laid with the recipe. The pizzaiolo was too stingy with sausage ($6) and pepperoni ($5) for my taste. Believe it or not, there’s also a separate lunch menu centered on hoagies. The only thing missing, then, is late-night cannolis to fill the few fallow hours remaining. EAT: Roman Candle, 3377 SE Division St., 971-302-6605, romancandlebaking.com. 7 am-10 pm daily. $-$$. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

MUSIC

nov. 13-19 PROFILE

= WW Pick. Highly recommended.

B+

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. Editor: MATTHEW SINGER. 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: msinger@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 13 The Besnard Lakes, Elephant Stone

[MOOD ROCK] Like a lot of bands originating in the early aughts, the Besnard Lakes channeled the Beach Boys. But over the years, the moody Canadian post-rock group grew increasingly into its own shoes, developing nuance and a brooding, dark, atmospheric backbone. Released last year, Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO shows the quartet continuing on its march to impart big, melodic rock with melancholy. Live, the Besnard Lakes are something else, known to blend lengthy and emotive tracks without a single seam. MARK STOCK. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

Slaid Cleaves

[SUPERIOR SINGER-SONGWRITER] Empathy rises from Slaid Cleaves’ voice like steam from fresh-baked bread, where the salt in the recipe comes from tears of hardship and lost love, the wheat is harvested by the rough hands of the working man and the leavening comes from his understated but warm sense of humor. And the heat of the oven, particularly on his 2013 collection, Still Fighting the War, comes in part from the crucible of war. The title song introduces a veteran whose wounds are all on the inside but are no less devastating, just one of many characters Cleaves paints with a sharp eye and tender heart. JEFF ROSENBERG. Secret Society Ballroom, 116 NE Russell St. 7 pm. $18 advance, $22 day of show. 21+.

Vaz, Rabbits, Prizehog

[UGLY AMERICANS] Brooklyn’s Vaz will never be popular. Its driving noise rock is just too far out of time. Spawned from the ashes of Minneapolis crushers Hammerhead, Vaz kept on trucking as a duo, ignoring modern music trends. Paul Erickson’s vocals revel in the hopelessness of ’80s hardcore, belied by the fact that he’s still here, slugging it out in the trenches. Drummer Jeff Moordian remains a revelation, yet has similarly matured into a more songoriented player. The brand new Vaz album, Visiting Hours, drops the day before the show and finds the band inflated to a trio. This is end-time music with hooks and heart. Wipers fans would do well to give these guys a shot. NATHAN CARSON. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. Call venue for ticket information. 21+.

Toro y Moi, Classixx

[CHILL DANCE] Toro y Moi, aka Chazwick Bradley Bundick, is sexy. From his jazz-influenced beats to his subdued swagger, Bundick has defined his sound and stage presence within the subtleties of electronic music. His music—jazzy electronic beats that possess a certain infectious swagger nonetheless—is like the lead actor in a ’60s spy film: debonair yet modest. Although there’s always been a delicate sensuality to his sound, his most recent effort, Anything in Return, is less timid than previous albums. His tracks bleed together, but not messily, rather like a well-thought out impressionist painting. ASHLEY JOCZ. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686. 8 pm. $20 advance, $23 day of show. 21+.

THURSDAY, NOV. 14 Ashia and the Bison Rouge

[POLISH IMMIGRANT SONGS] It takes a village to realize the Vagabond

Opera and Portland Cello Project cellist-chanteuse Ashia Grsezik’s expansive musical vision. Just returned from a year in Central Europe performing with a Berlin-based acrobatic theater company, the Wroclaw-born, American-raised ex-Cirque du Soleil performer enlists VO guitarist Robin Jackson, Lyrical Strings Duo, Lucia Conrad String Quartet, musicians from Chervona and Radiation City and other guests to join her in music inspired by their Polish and Slavic roots. The second set of this concert, presented by Classical Revolution PDX, celebrates the release of Grzesik’s colorful new album, Diesel vs. Lungs, which, like much of her theatrical, multilingual music, owes as much to the European cabaret tradition as to American pop. BRETT CAMPBELL. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 7196055. 8 pm. $12 advance, $15 day of show, $30 VIP. All ages.

Latyrx, Vursatyl, Tope

[RAP RETURN] In 1997, Latyrx—that’s Bay Area rappers Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truth Speaker—released The Album, an endearingly weird hip-hop record that didn’t sound like a collaboration so much as two eccentric MCs unknowingly spliced together by their producers, in this case, DJ Shadow and Blackalicious’ Chief Xcel. Sixteen years later, the pair has finally issued a sequel, simply dubbed The Second Album. Sadly, the thrill is largely gone. Whereas The Album sounded like it was broadcasting from hip-hop’s future, the two rappers now sound stuck in indie-rap past, eschewing sheer strangeness for vague sociopolitical message songs and generic inspirational uplift. Worse yet, Shadow and Xcel are nowhere to be found, their alternate-dimension funk beats replaced by a grab-bag of producers that, for some reason, includes the Decemberists’ Chris Funk. The group can still start a party live, but considering what they used to be capable of, that’s perhaps of little consolation. MATTHEW SINGER. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686. 7:30 pm. $17 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.

FRIDAY, NOV. 15 Pop. 1280, Vice Device, Smoke Rings

[NU-PIGFUCK] New York thought it had rid itself of bands like Pop. 1280. After Giuliani cleaned up Times Square, and Brooklyn became a friendly place for Midwesterners with nice smiles and closets full of Western shirts, the city was thought to have become uninhabitable for scuzzy, degenerate noiseniks of the kind that roamed the clubs and art galleries and loft spaces back in the No Wave ‘80s. Clearly, though, something from that era survived, and has crawled from the sewers to save us from the mannered niceties of Williamsburg indie rock. Imps of Perversion, Pop. 1280’s second fulllength, is an unrelenting set of twisted, ear-bleeding guitars, industrialized rhythms, meltdown synths and singer Chris Bug’s apocalyptic howling, beset with a sense of urban dread straight out of a John Carpenter film. Nothing about the band is polite, but its intensity is invigorating—just like New York used to be. MATTHEW SINGER. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. Call venue for ticket information. 21+.

Naomi LaViolette, Ghosts Like Us, Jane Kramer

[RETRO-SOUL] Veteran Portland songstress Naomi LaViolette presides over a soulful revue at the Secret

CONT. on page 28

LOW-END THEORY THE CASUAL VIRTUOSITY OF STEPHEN “THUNDERCAT” BRUNER. BY MATTHEW SIn GER

msinger@wweek.com

As a child, Stephen Bruner had two favorite toys: a plastic ThunderCats sword and a bass guitar. That’s how intertwined the 27-year-old musician, who records spaced-out R&B under the name Thundercat, is with his instrument. And so, when one asks why he gravitated toward the low end, despite having a father and an older brother who played drums, it’s sort of like asking what made him play with finger paints or eat mud or do whatever else kids do when they’re too young to know why they do anything. “My mom likes to say I just had a natural affinity for strings,” says Bruner with an almost audible shrug over the phone from Los Angeles. “Every picture I look at from when I was a kid, I have a bass or a guitar in my hands.” For Bruner, music is just something he’s always done. As such, he’s nonchalant about his skills. He’s a virtuoso, to be sure, but one who places melody and atmosphere above braining the listener with a torrent of notes. The two albums he’s released as Thundercat are so loose, almost weightless, that their complexity isn’t always obvious. His approach to songwriting is an extension of his personality. Although a committed jazzhead, who’ll casually name-drop Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke and studio musicians only other musicians are familiar with, Bruner is just as apt to discuss his music in the context of the X-Men or Adult Swim or Sonic the Hedgehog. He’s no Guitar Center wank anxious to show off his sick fretwork. He doesn’t have to. “Not everyone wants to know everything you can do,” he says. Anyone who is interested in sampling the breadth of Bruner’s ability, though, is free to check his wildly varied résumé. He’s played in everything from wedding bands to hardcore jazz ensembles to Snoop Dogg’s and Erykah Badu’s touring bands. At 15, he was in a glorified boy band that had a hit single in Germany. A year or two later, he joined his brother in the long-running California thrash outfit

Suicidal Tendencies. “It gave me a lot of confidence as a bass player because of the things I had to do,” he says of playing for punk audiences. “I’d start the songs and people would be looking to me, and if I sucked, I’d get a boot right to the head.” But his solo career didn’t take shape until he met electronic music producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus. The two connected a few years ago, and it was “like Jay and Silent Bob meeting for the first time,” as Bruner told Pitchfork. Bruner played on Ellison’s groundbreaking Cosmogramma album, while Ellison co-produced the first Thundercat record, 2011’s The Golden Age of Apocalypse, lending his cinematic eye to a record blending ’70s jazz fusion, stargazing soul and ambient electronica into a head-tripping cosmic swirl. “We don’t always see eye to eye on everything,” Bruner says of his relationship with Ellison. “A lot of the time, he’ll think I’m retarded and I’ll think he’s crazy or whatever. But deep inside, there’s a symbiosis we both work with, and I think it translates to the music.” Apocalypse, Bruner’s latest album, also co-produced by Ellison, exists on the same celestial plane as its similarly titled predecessor but is grounded in more earthly concerns. The boogie-funk jam “Oh Sheit It’s X,” for example, finds Bruner singing, in an airy falsetto, about dancing so hard at a party he forgets to eat. It’s not always that frivolous: As the title implies, the album is rooted in catastrophes, both big and small, from the economic collapse to the death of Bruner’s close friend, the composer Austin Peralta, who’s the subject of the heavenly, string-abetted suite that concludes the album. But then there’s something like “Tron Song,” featuring a skittering, Flying Lotus-style beat and Bruner crooning, quite lovingly, about his cat. Though he’s gone through some tragedies in the past year, it clearly hasn’t changed the nature of who Bruner is: an artist for whom playing music and playing around are basically the same thing. “I play Grand Theft Auto all day,” he says. “And when I’m not playing Grand Theft Auto, I’m playing the bass.” SEE IT: Thundercat plays Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., with Grammies, on Thursday, Nov. 14. 9 pm. $15. 21+. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

MUSIC 9:30pm(doors open at 9pm) 21 & Over

SEB AND THE RHAADICKS LAST PRICK STANDING NEEDLES AND PIZZA $6.00 at the door.

THURSDAY, NOVERMBER 14 9pm. 21 & Over

THE ESTRANGED CHEMICALS SEX CRIME ARCTIC FLOWERS $5.00 at the door.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 9pm 21 & Over

MEGATON LEVIATHAN THE LOW 12

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 9pm. 21 & Over

SKELATOR ALPHA VIPER REVOLUTION OVERDUE $7.00 at the door.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17 8pm. All Ages

Portland Poetry Slam MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18 8pm. All Ages

The church of rocknroll Presents... RVIVR NASALROD

Falafel House: 3 to Late–Night All Ages Shows: Every Sunday 8–11pm Free Pinball Feeding Frenzy: Saturday @ 3pm WITHIN SPITTING DISTANCE OF THE PEARL

1033 NW 16TH AVE. (971) 229-1455 OPEN: 3–2:30AM EVERY DAY

HAPPY HOUR: MON–FRI NOON–7PM PoP-A-Shot • PinbAll • Skee-bAll Air hockey • Free Wi-Fi

Cults, Sacco, Mood Rings

SUNDAY, NOV. 17 Papa, Waters

[INDIE ROCK] Papa is almost too perfect for its own good. The attractive duo creates idyllic, melody-driven indie rock with its own soulful twist. In addition to that ofthe-moment combination, the two sing about the standard trials of life growing up in Los Angeles: women, drugs and making it big. Even their

SATURDAY, NOV. 16 Fruit Bats, the Donkeys

[COFFEE-SHOP QUIRK] Folksy, vibraphone-dappled pop wasn’t exactly hip when Fruit Bats released its second LP, Mouthfuls, in 2003. But the album—which the Chicagoreared band, led by Eric Johnson, is playing in full here—is arguably the most beloved of the band’s work. It’s laced with acoustic strumming and weird, electronic curls in the form of drum machines, keys and other digitized ﬁxings. Although much of the album is made up of bummed-out love ballads, the Shins-y “Rainbow Sign” and twee closer, “When U Love Somebody,” remain fan favorites. And for those fans, this will be the last opportunity to hear those songs: Johnson announced this week that, after this run of anniversary shows, he’s putting Fruit Bats to bed. BRANDON WIDDER. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $15. All ages.

[PLASTIC SOUL] Once—as in, earlier this year—there was a band called Foxygen. Music critics salivated over the young band’s hypnotic, nostalgia-minded psych rock. Comprising brainy former child actors, Foxygen broke up and reunited more times in a month than most bands do in a lifetime. While apart, its members have been turning out noteworthy solo records, including ex-drummer Shaun Fleming, aka Diane Coﬀee. The Seussian title of his own LP, My Friend Fish, speaks to the color and creativity inherent in the music. Even without his bandmates, Fleming beautifully meshes plastic-soul-era David Bowie with late-pop Beatles and doo-wop. Nashville alt-rockers Those Darlins headline. MARK STOCK. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 894-9708. 9 pm. $12. 21+.

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants

[STOMP BLUES] How big is Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band? Pretty small, actually. But the three members of the Nashvilleby-way-of-Indiana band have, over the course of six records, including last year’s Between the Ditches, managed to dredge the muck of Southern swamp blues and country rock and surface with a larger-than-

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

Jessie Ware, the Invisible

[SOUL MODERNE] While her contemporaries climb all over one another to prove the limits of their vocal prowess, 29-year-old U.K. chanteuse Jessie Ware has won an increasingly ardent fan base on both sides of the pond for her commitment to that rarest of all gimmicks within the nu-soul marketplace: restraint. A diligent student of Sade’s smooth operations, Ware ﬁrst won notice with her supple, sultry stylings on the self-titled debut of post-dubstep tastemaker SBTRKT before the former journalist released her own album last summer. Devotion, atmospheric and alluring with hints of a welcome playfulness, proved Ware more than capable of belting to the rafters if needed. But, in a pop arena stocked with false Idols treating each note like the ﬁnals, such moments appear all the more powerful when surrounded by a measured grace. JAY HORTON. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 9 pm. $17. All ages.

[INDIE POP] Consider Cults to be the most easily digestible encapsulation of the cyclical micro-trends celebrated by music-blog culture over the past three years: the dense, reverb-soaked melodies of Phil Spector productions; the distorted, saturated layer of goop the Jesus and Mary Chain slathered across their richest melodies. Throw in samples of actual cult leaders and some reliable girl-group rhythms and you’ve got a veritable gold mine of mass-market appeal. Beyond the ediﬁce of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion’s woozy R&B-tinged arrangements is simple, compelling pop music that feels both timeless and fresh at the same time. Latest release Static can be a bummer at times, but you’re likely to leave with a smile on your face nonetheless. PETE COTTELL. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686. 9 pm. $15 advance, $17 day of show. All ages.

Those Darlins, Diane Coffee

life sound. Combining the stomping, funky twang of Jerry Reed and the ghosts of blues and country greats, the Rev and company have the rare ability to turn any venue into a roadhouse. AP KRYZA. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. $10. 21+.

Society Ballroom, but the novelty of the night will be Ghosts Like Us, a local act still in its infancy. Longtime musicians and principal members Matthew Gailey and Peter Lance collaborated on Gailey’s solo record, Beast in Babylon, which led to a partnership that became Ghosts Like Us. A collection of the band’s demo tracks recalls the sound of Beast in Babylon—smooth indie rock narrated by Gailey’s high-range vocals and sincere lyricism—but Ghosts Like Us clearly bends toward a more consistently retro-funk sound. GRACE STAINBACK. Secret Society Ballroom, 116 NE Russell St. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.

BRUCE + JANA

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13

FRIDAY-TUESDAY ﬁrst full-length, A Good Woman Is Hard to Find, speaks to their potential as the ideal indie-rock band: They sing about familiar struggles, but in an enticing and exhilarating way that should propel them up the charts quickly. GEOFFREY NUDELMAN. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $12. 21+.

Hunters, Audacity, Lee Corey Oswald

[NEW GRUNGE] I saw New York’s Hunters at South By Southwest in March, playing the relatively empty courtyard of a fancy-pants bar. Pink-haired singer Isabel Almeida splayed herself across the monitors in between furiously pogoing and mugging for photos, while guitarist Derek Watson churned out torrents of gloriously distorted noise. It reminded me a bit of early Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I found it fun. On its self-titled, full-length debut, though, the band falls in with much older references—namely, Sonic Youth and Nirvana—and colors of a much grayer hue than Almeida’s fluorescent locks. The album quickly calcifies into an inert mold of grungy alt-rock riffs barely distinguishable from one another, and the boundless energy of their live show is buried underneath. Which is to say: See them here, buy a shirt, and leave it at that. MATTHEW SINGER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.

TUESDAY, NOV. 19 Bill Callahan, Mick Turner

[FINGER-SNAPPING FOLK] You’ve probably heard it said that jazz is equally about the space between notes as the notes themselves.

MIC CHECK

CONT. on page 30

BY JEFF ROSENBERG

THOMAS DOLBY ON THE INVISIBLE LIGHTHOUSE From his early, electronic-infused New Wave hits to his current position as music director of TED—and encompassing his development of audio software used for ringtones—Thomas Dolby has always represented the vanguard of music and technology. So it’s surprising to find him in his new project, The Invisible Lighthouse, besotted by nostalgia for a soon-to-be-lost artifact of his childhood, and the distant history of the remote British region of East Anglia where he grew up. Indeed, while the subject matter looks backward—as well as inward, to questions about the nature of memory itself—Dolby’s delivery system is as innovative as ever. The documentary film he self-produced, wrote, directed and edited forms the backdrop of his current performance, while its music score and narration are rendered live by Dolby. Its sound effects, likewise, are generated onstage by Foley artist (and groovy guitarist) Blake Leyh. Dolby explained to Willamette Week how the new project ties into themes in his previous work. “I think there’s always been a sense of parallel worlds in my music. Very often I cast myself as a sort of dissident, underground writer, ham-radio operator…. And I found myself in that guise with this piece, just wanting to document the closing of the lighthouse, and finding that the Ministry of Defence and the National Trust and Trinity House were all [opposed]. So I sort of took the law into my own hands and did a clandestine commando raid on the island. And I thought, if I get arrested and thrown off the island—or worse yet, walk into one of the supposed unexploded bombs on the island—it would at least make for an exciting climax to my film.” SEE IT: Thomas Dolby performs The Invisible Lighthouse at Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., on Tuesday, Nov. 19. 8 pm. General admission is $20 advance, $25 day of show. VIP is $60 advance, $65 day of show. 21+.

PHYLLIS SINGER

MUSIC

DATES HERE

LETTER TO MY 12-YEAR-OLD SELF BY MATTHEW SINGER

RE: NINE INCH NAILS Dear 12-year-old Matt, Hey, man. What’re you up to? Let me guess: gearing up for some Monday Night Raw by listening to those tapes you bought with your birthday money. What’s the pre-wrestling soundtrack tonight? Maybe the Offspring’s Smash? Siamese Dream, perhaps? Knowing you as I do, though, I bet you’re listening to Nine Inch Nails. It’s probably too early for you to realize, but this is your first favorite band. You’ve had favorite albums before. Pearl Jam’s Vs. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Freaky Styley, which Mom got you as a gift because you were too nervous to tell her the album of theirs you really wanted had “sex” in the title. Whatever Weird Al album had the Nirvana parody. This is different, though. You’re going to become a completist. Right now, all you’ve got is The Downward Spiral, but soon, you’ll have the two records that came before it, Pretty Hate Machine and Broken. Eventually, you’ll track down all the singles. Your wardrobe will include multiple NIN shirts. You’ll know weird things, like the name of the 1987 Michael J. Fox movie featuring a cameo from a young Trent Reznor (Light of Day) and the performance artist in the banned “Happiness in Slavery” video (Bob Flanagan). You’ll get oddly stoked whenever you see a Reznor-brand heater (his family started the company back in 1888). You’re probably asking, “Why Nine Inch Nails?” I was hoping you could tell me. Nineteen years later, it’s hard to figure why a generally happy California beach kid not yet in his broody teen years would fall in love with a band that made a concept album about descending into suicidal depression. What is it? Is the music alluring precisely because it’s so dark, allowing you to live a vicariously tortured existence through it? Is it the strange noises you’ve never heard another band create before? Is it all the swearing? What does “fist fuck” mean, anyway? Beats me. All I know is, you’ll never feel this way about a band again. Shit, you’re not even going to feel this way about Nine Inch Nails again. In a few years, you’ll be wearing powderblue suits to high school and listening to Reel Big Fish, and figure you’re too “mature” for Trent Reznor’s industrial-rock angst, which is going to seem really ironic once you find out what Reel Big Fish actually sounds like. Music is going to remain a big part of your life—you’re even going to get paid to write about it one day—and you’ll have several other favorite bands, but none will meet the same levels of slavish, obsessive devotion. I guess it’s sort of like what Richard Dreyfuss says at the end of Stand by Me, which I’m sure you’ve watched twice this week alone: You never have friends like the ones you have when you’re 12, and you never love bands the way you do when you’re that age, either. It can’t be explained. You’re not going to abandon Nine Inch Nails completely, though. In 2013, after a few years away winning Oscars for movie scores and launching his wife’s electro-goth band, Reznor will put out the ninth NIN album, Hesitation Marks, which will sound like the Pet Shop Boys playing an S&M club, and you’ll dig it. And, in 2009, you’ll finally see them live, at a festival in Washington called Sasquatch. To honor your 12-year-old self, you will stake out a spot at the front of the stage. As soon as Reznor walks onstage—looking like he just finished a Men’s Health cover shoot—the crowd will swell, crushing your brittle 27-year-old bones. You’ll move to the back of the pit. You’ll think the band sounds OK. You’ll realize you’re not a kid anymore. And you’ll be at peace with that. Sincerely, 31-year-old Matthew SEE IT: Nine Inch Nails play Moda Center, 1401 N Wheeler Ave., on Monday, Nov. 18. 7:30 pm. $29.50-$75.50. All ages.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

TUESDAY/CLASSICAL, ETC.

It’s a saying easily applicable to singer-songwriter Bill Callahan. His deadpan baritone, tatted with bent phrases and enriched with wry narratives, has unfurled at a glacial pace ever since the 47-year-old Austinite arrived in the late ’80s under the moniker Smog. His latest LP, the sublime Dream River, ﬁnds Callahan’s commentary on romance and the human condition deeply vivid and oblique, pitting characters in shipyards and on icy roads with moral quandaries outstretching even the singer’s reach. The music, much like his voice, saunters and eschews traditional verse-chorus structure, delicately weaving shimmering guitars and brushed percussion among his gravity-inducing drawl. BRANDON WIDDER. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $20. All ages.

PROFILE C H R I S TO P H E R PAT R I C K E R N S T

MUSIC

Zorch, Luke Wyland

[AUSTIN OUTER LIMITS] Zorch amassed critical levels of buzz with the pre-SXSW release of “We All Die Young”—the pop single as reverseengineered by alien architects granted only the briefest slivers of Ke$ha and Nate Ruess at their most triumphant. And that intricate mess of chopped euphoria proved a worthy introduction to the daft grandeur spliced throughout Zorch’s debut full-length, Zzoorrcchh. Texas transplants Zac Traeger and Shmu Chown really should be too cute for their own good, but, for all the tootrippy wordplay and progged-down onanism on patience-testing, digitized “instrumentals,” the ecstatic experimentalism and naked joie de vivre helplessly bursts through. JAY HORTON. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 894-9708. 9 pm. $3. 21+.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Army Navy

[INDIE POP] If this were 1991, it’d be safe to assume a band named after the first president of postUSSR Russia was an agitprop hardcore outfit. A few decades later, a ludicrous name that’s only slightly less annoying to truncate can mean only one thing: indie pop, obviously. Springfield, Mo.’s SSLYBY (ugh) certainly has the pedigree of a melodically advanced band of sincere Midwestern dudes: appeasing nods from Spin and Pitchfork; a buzzed-about debut released by earnest-core powerhouse Polyvinyl; and a saccharine sense of melody that bounces around like a caffeinated 6-year-old. If you’re in search of an OC Mix-approved alternative to the Shins, SSLYBY’s (ugh) latest, Fly by Wire, is a great place to start. PETE COTTELL. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $12. 21+.

Steve Aoki, Waka Flocka Flame, Borgore, Keys N Krates

[ELECTRO-HOUSE] Steve Aoki’s current goal, and name of his tour, is to Aokify America, which in plain English means to proliferate mirrored sunglasses, neon tank tops and chemically induced smiles among the youth. Aoki is an able DJ and producer of big-room electro-house, and he likes to bring the energy of the festival experience— complete with an inﬂatable raft he often surfs the crowd in—to traditional indoor venues. Pairing with other visionaries/wackos, including rapper Waka Flocka, is Aoki’s way of staying relevant in the often shortminded world of EDM. MITCH LILLIE. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 7 pm. $35. 18+.

CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD Crazy Jane Misbehaves: A Cascadia Women’s Concert

[XX-RATED COMPOSERS] As last month’s Third Angle concert featuring the music of Gabriela Lena Frank demonstrated, some of today’s most fascinating contemporary classical music is being written by female composers, as though they’re making up for the centuries in which women were denied such opportu-

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

SCREAMING FEMALES SATURDAY, NOV. 16 How to grow a punk band: play basements, record with Steve Albini, impress Garbage.

If there were a “right way” to make it as a punk band, Screaming Females would be a prime example. Being from New Brunswick, N.J.—a bona fide Mesopotamia of the East Coast DIY scene—certainly helps, but there’s more to it than the magic in the city’s water. Lying somewhere near the intersection of Sleater-Kinney’s riot-grrrl caterwauling, Dinosaur Jr.’s Marshall-stack meltdowns and the twisted surf-pop sensibilities of the Pixies, you’ll find the sound of restless punk kids who have done their homework. If Screaming Females were a football team, Michael Azerrad’s essential 2001 tome, Our Band Could Be Your Life, would be their playbook. As much as the Internet has shifted the indie ethos away from what made the ’80s underground rock documented in that book so industrious and fruitful, the important lesson in making it out of basements in blighted New Jersey college towns remains the same: play loud, play fast, get in the van. “Touring really hard, working really hard—that’s always been the way we’ve maintained visibility,” says singer-guitarist Marissa Paternoster. “Getting to shows on time and not pretending you don’t care is really important when you’ve dedicated your lives to being in a band.” It also helps when Steve Albini—In Utero producer and grand architect of the alt-rock era’s ubiquitous quiet-loud-quiet sound— is still just some dude in Chicago that will mix the music of any band that knocks on his studio’s door. Just practice your ass off and show up with cash. By 2012, with four records and hundreds of shows under their belt, Screaming Females felt they were finally tight enough to make the call. “We just called him and made an appointment,” Paternoster says. “He was really nice. There were a couple times he let us crash at the studio while we were passing through Chicago, and he made us dinner at 3 in the morning.” The resulting effort, 2012’s Ugly, pairs Albini’s engineering trademarks—tight, punchy percussion and crushing low end— with bouncy melodies and Paternoster’s incendiary fretwork. The record received praise from Spin, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. And so began the band’s ascent from the basement to proper rock venues. While friends’ bands remained in a holding pattern back home, Screaming Females were sharing the stage with radio-ready alt-rock staples like Dead Weather, Arctic Monkeys and Paternoster’s childhood favorite, Garbage. “It felt like a very natural process of moving from a basement to an art space to a club,” Paternoster says. “We end up opening for someone famous like Garbage—the first rock band I ever really loved back when I was 13—and we see it as an opportunity to sound huge. We’ve really wanted to sound like this three-headed monster, this posse with really strong characters.” Fortunately for Portland, Paternoster and company will be bringing their full-throttle performance to a space small enough to enjoy the ear-splitting volume up close and personal. With a home-brewed EP, Chalk Tape, fresh off the press and a new fulllength’s worth of songs in the set alongside it, the explosive glory of Screaming Females is almost guaranteed to blow a speaker or two. PETE COTTELL. SEE IT: Screaming Females play the Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., with Upset, on Saturday, Nov. 16. 8 pm. $8. 21+.

CLASSICAL, ETC. nities. Likewise, of the many concerts the Oregon composers group has staged in the past few years, those devoted to the region’s female composers have been some of the most entertaining and exploratory. This year’s lineup includes music by CC president Jan Mittelstaedt, electronic musician Susan Alexjander, Lisa Marsh, PSU prof Bonnie Miksch and other proven, emerging talents. BRETT CAMPBELL. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 725-3307. 7:30 pm Friday, Nov. 15. $5-$20.

Peter Brotzmann, Paal Nilssen, 1939 Ensemble

[AVANT-JAZZ] One of the most mind-blowing concerts I’ve

MUSIC

DATES HERE

ever attended was the Peter Brotzmann Tentet 2 back in 2001. A self-taught saxophonist who for decades has dismantled all the rules of the instrument, Brotzmann is returning, in an intimate setting accompanied by dynamic drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. I have to admit coming to Brotzmann ass-backward, as a fan of his son Caspar’s malevolent guitar music. But once I heard 1968 free-jazz opus Machine Gun, there was no turning away from this crazy German’s musical fury. Adding 1939 Ensemble’s drum-plus-vibes as support is some serious icing. NATHAN CARSON. Secret Society Ballroom, 116 NE Russell St. 7:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 17. $12-$20 sliding scale. 21+.

ALBUM REVIEWS

CASEY NEILL AND THE NORWAY RATS ALL YOU PRETTY VANDALS (INCIDENT RECORDINGS) [DAMAGED ROOTS] For nearly two decades, Casey Neill has been filtering posthardcore energies through an Americana muse for tales of wry lamentation, and the barroom mythologizing wed to painstaking craft has never sounded so perfectly realized. A songwriter’s songwriter, Neill has no end of devoted fans within the Pacific Northwest music community, and the new album brings a murderer’s row of local talent. Alongside the Norway Rats’ rhythm section of bassist Jesse Emerson and drummer Joe Mengis, producer Chris Funk enlists his fellow Decemberists Jenny Conlee and John Moen, guitarists Chet Lyster (Eels) and Matt Brown (She & Him) and vocals from Scott McCaughey, Luz Elena Mendoza and Langhorne Slim for backdrops that veer from the deceptively simple—see the strummed riff recast as rusted truck-door hinge on opener “Hollow Bones”—to beguilingly intricate as the songs demand. Atop them all lay Neill’s big-hearted, full-voiced yarns, his vocals resembling a working man’s Michael Stipe. He brings a certain empathetic grandeur to high-minded tales of resolutely low lives with all the crack musicianship and casual authenticity a few decades treading the boards should allow. JAY HORTON. SEE IT: Casey Neill and the Norway Rats play Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., with Sassparilla, on Friday, Nov. 15. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.

VARIOUS ARTISTS PORTLAND SMILES: A TRIBUTE TO THE BEACH BOYS (TENDER LOVING EMPIRE) [POP REHAB] It took some time to rehabilitate Smiley Smile. The Beach Boys’ lackluster 1967 follow-up to Pet Sounds and remnant of the aborted Smile sessions was recorded in Brian Wilson’s mansion during a fit of insanity and without Smile collaborator Van Dyke Parks. Slowly, though, it has been recast as a self-administered test of aesthetic maturity. I’ve long thought Smiley Smile the worst thing in the Beach Boys’ catalog prior to Carl and the Passions—“So Tough.” Obviously, the Tender Loving Empire folks feel differently, which is why we have this album, featuring a dozen Portland artists covering Smiley in its entirety. But Portland Smiles, to its credit, is not a faithful re-creation. Rather, refreshingly hi-fi tracks, like Colin Jenkins’ oovy-groovy version of “Heroes and Villains” and Radiation City’s sparse, hammock-on-a-screened-porch take on “Little Pad,” spotlight the better angels of the original, playing up their harmonic flourishes. Only one song didn’t do anything to make me consider its father in better light: Adam Brock’s overly earnest go at the unimpeachable “Good Vibrations.” Someone had to try, I suppose. MARTIN CIZMAR. SEE IT: The Portland Smiles release show, featuring Colin Jenkins, New Move, Church of Surf and Adam Brock, is at the Eagles Lodge, 4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd., on Friday, Nov. 15. 7 pm. $5. 21+.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

MUSIC CALENDAR

[NOV. 13-19] The Analog

= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: Mitch Lillie. 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. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: music@wweek.com. For more listings, check out wweek.com.

720 SE Hawthorne Putrid Christ, Neldoreth

Hawthorne Theatre Lounge

The Know

1503 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd. Madgesdiq, the Freedom Train Deena B

The old Church

Hawthorne Theatre

2026 NE Alberta St. Vaz, Rabbits, Prizehog 1422 SW 11th Ave. Linda Smith

The Press Club

2621 SE Clinton St. The Porch Cats

Tonic Lounge

3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio? Show: Pat Kearns

Tony Starlight’s

3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Ayars Times Two

Triple Nickel Pub

3646 SE Belmont St. Excellent Gentlemen

valentine’s

232 SW Ankeny St. Asss, I.E.

White eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Black Lillies, the Blackberry Bushes

Wilfs Restaurant & Bar

1507 SE 39th Ave. Tonight Alive, the Downtown Fiction, For the Foxes, Echosmith

Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant 1435 NW Flanders St. Tom Grant, Christine Sattler, Craig Irby

Jade Lounge

2346 SE Ankeny St. Christopher John Mead

Jimmy Mak’s

221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group

Kells

112 SW 2nd Ave. Sammi

Kenton Club

2025 N Kilpatrick St. Heavy Baang Staang, Numbers Station, Miley Cyrus Mind Control Quartet

800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen Band, Margie Gibson

Landmark Saloon

Wonder Ballroom

Langano Lounge

128 NE Russell St. Toro y Moi, Classixx

4847 SE Division St. The Pickups 1435 SE Hawthorne Blvd. TV Mike, 100%

LaurelThirst

THuRS. Nov. 14 Al’s den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Tiburones

Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St. Ashia and the Bison Rouge

Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Riviera, the Don of Division Street

Ash Street Saloon

225 SW Ash St. Honduran, Biipiigwan, Drunk Dad, Twohands

Biddy McGraw’s Irish Pub 6000 NE Glisan St. Faco and Friends

Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Paul Paresa and the People

THe BLACKeR CRoWS: Pop. 1280 plays the Know on Friday, Nov. 15.

Wed. Nov. 13 Al’s den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Tiburones

Alberta Rose Theatre

3000 NE Alberta St. Tish Hinojosa, Anny Celsi

Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Randy Brown and Matt Meighan

Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St. Aisle of View, Justin James Bridges, the Crescendo Show

Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Paul Paresa and the People

doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. The Besnard Lakes, Elephant Stone

east end

203 SE Grand Ave. Psycho Magic, Dottie Attie, Honey Bucket

eastBurn

1800 E Burnside St. Heart Lake Owl

Goodfoot Lounge

2845 SE Stark St. Redwood Son and the Forestry, 11 Eyes

Hawthorne Theatre 1507 SE 39th Ave. Kreator, Overkill, Warbringer

Interstate Farmers Market

3550 N Interstate Ave. Tender Forever, La Pump, Dubais Band, Break Up Flowers

Jack London Bar

529 SW 4th Ave. Proper Movement Drums and Bass

Kells

112 SW 2nd Ave. Sammi

Kelly’s olympian

426 SW Washington St. The Charlie Darwins, the Verner Pantons, Shores of Oblivion

Kenton Club

2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Tumblrs

Landmark Saloon

4847 SE Division St. Jake Ray and the Cowdogs, Miller and Sasser’s Twelve Dollar Band

Laughing Horse Books 12 NE 10th Ave. Dowsing, Duck Little Brother Duck, Our First Brains, Sweeping Exits

LaurelThirst

2958 NE Glisan St. The Lowest Pair, the Gin Jars, Ginger Darlings, Timberbound Project

LaurelThirst

2958 NE Glisan St. The Lowest Pair, the Gin Jars, Gloria Darlings

Lodge

6605 SE Powell Blvd Pete Ford Band Jam

Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom 1332 W Burnside St. Get Rhythm

McMenamins edgefield

2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Freak Mountain Ramblers, Henry Kammerer

Mississippi Pizza

3552 N Mississippi Ave. Women of the World Dance

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. The Melodic, Those Willows

Music Millennium

3158 E Burnside St. Tish Hinojosa

Secret Society Ballroom

116 NE Russell St. Slaid Cleaves

Sky Club at Ankeny’s Well 50 SW 3rd Ave. Gaea Soul

Slabtown

1033 NW 16th Ave. Seb and the Rhaadicks, Last Prick Standing, Needles and Pizza, the Mormon Trannys

Buffalo Gap eatery and Saloon 6835 SW Macadam Ave. The Noted, Commonly Courteous, Eight-53, A Crab’s Life

Bunk Bar

1028 SE Water Ave. Thundercat, Grammies

Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Dan Wilensky Trio

2958 NE Glisan St. Wildish, Br’er Rabbit

Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom

1332 W Burnside St. Ladies of Funk: Cherry Royale, Trixie & the Nasties, Miss V.

McMenamins edgefield 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Ditch Town

McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern

10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Pagan Jug Band

McMenamins’ Kennedy School 5736 NE 33rd Ave. Bill Wadhams

Mississippi Pizza

3552 N Mississippi Ave. Cafe Istanbul (9 pm); Mo Phillips (6 pm)

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. The Deer Tracks, Dropa, Fang Moon

Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Stumbleweed

Pioneer Courthouse Square

701 SW 6th Ave. Tuba Christmas: Chuck Bolton

Roseland Theater

Clyde’s Prime Rib

8 NW 6th Ave. Gramatik, Herobust, Ex Mag

dante’s

Secret Society Ballroom

5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Mesi and Bradley 350 W Burnside St. Dookie Jam: Tony Ozier & Doo Doo Funk

doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. Alejandro Escovedo and the Sensitive Boys, Amy Cook

east end

203 SE Grand Ave. I Am Clergic, Beringia, LB

Goodfoot Lounge

2845 SE Stark St. Yak Attack, Asher Fulero Trio

116 NE Russell St. Soulshake, the Keplers

Shaker and vine

2929 SE Powell Blvd. PDX Brass

Sky Club at Ankeny’s Well

50 SW 3rd Ave. Soundscape Thursdays: Bodie, Konkord, Julius Major, Final Frequency, Firie, PIA!!, Ryan Frakes, Tim Hulscher

Slabtown

1033 NW 16th Ave. The Estranged, Chemicals, Sex Crime, Arctic Flowers

Starky’s Bar

2913 SE Stark St. Candye Kane

Buffalo Gap eatery and Saloon

The Analog

6835 SW Macadam Ave. Broken Soviet

The Knock Back

510 NW 11th Ave. Andy Allo

The Know

350 W Burnside St. The Transcendental Brass Band

The Lovecraft

830 E Burnside St. Casey Neill and the Norway Rats, Sassparilla

The Press Club

1635 SE 7th Ave. Candye Kane

The TARdIS Room

1800 E Burnside St. The 78 Griots

720 SE Hawthorne Speaker Minds 2315 NE Alberta St. Double Plus Good, Brakemouth 2026 NE Alberta St. Memories, Cool Ghouls, the San Onofre Lizards 421 SE Grand Ave. Misprid Rocks 2621 SE Clinton St. Hot Club of Hawthorne 1218 N Killingsworth St. The Hugs

Tiger Bar

317 NW Broadway Karaoke From Hell

valentine’s

232 SW Ankeny St. Smoota

vie de Boheme

1530 SE 7th Ave. Pink Lady and the John Bennett Jazz Band

West Cafe

1201 SW Jefferson St. Alan Jones Academy Jazz Jam

White eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Novosti, Dedere, the Empty

Wilfs Restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Randy Porter Trio

Wonder Ballroom

128 NE Russell St. Latyrx, Vursatyl, Tope

FRI. Nov. 15 Al’s den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Tiburones

Aladdin Theater

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Over the Rhine, Noah Gundersen

Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. The Resolectrics

Alhambra Theatre

Camellia Lounge

dante’s

doug Fir Lounge

duff’s Garage

eastBurn

Foggy Notion

3416 N Lombard St. Humours, Hungers, Aerial Ruin

Habesha

801 NE Broadway Tiny Knives, Scrapies and Dead Panzies, Lady Problems

Hawthorne Theatre

1507 SE 39th Ave. Alestorm, Trollfest, Gypsyhawk, Weresquatch, Terraclipse

Hollywood’s Hot Rods 10810 NE Sandy Blvd. Mind Field

Island Mana Wines 526 SW Yamhill St. Terry Robb

Jimmy Mak’s

221 NW 10th Ave. Michael Allen Harrison

Katie o’Briens

2809 NE Sandy Blvd. Blastfemur, Succor, Alcojuana, Potbelly, Boudica

Kells Brewpub

210 NW 21st Ave. Sami Rouisi

Kelly’s olympian

426 SW Washington St. Future Historians, Young Blood, Pat Kearns

Kenton Club

2025 N Kilpatrick St. Dramady, Paulo Zappoli, Lonnie Winn

Langano Lounge

1435 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Australians

4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Lovefest 2013: Back Alley Barbers, The Warshers, Soriah, Boo Frog, Jagula, Don Lang, Don Schrieber, Monica Nelson

McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern

Artichoke Community Music

3552 N Mississippi Ave. Melao d’ Cuba, Brad Creel & the Reel Deel

3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Friday Coffeehouse

Ash Street Saloon

225 SW Ash St. The Israelites, the Rising Buffalo Tribe, Cool Smoke, DJ Double Barrel

Biddy McGraw’s Irish Pub 6000 NE Glisan St. Counterfeit Cash, Blue Flags and Black Grass

Bossanova Ballroom

722 E Burnside St. The Tragic Evolution: Particle Son, Devil in Furs, Wild Rumpus, Twenty Shades Of Red, Red @ Night

Branx

320 SE 2nd Ave. Agrimonia, Take Over and Destroy

Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Sidestreet Reny

10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro The Brothers Jam

Mississippi Pizza

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Sean Nelson, Eyelids, Herman Jolly

Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Terry Robb & Lauren Sheehan

Music Millennium

3158 E Burnside St. Mood Rings

Pioneer Courthouse Square

701 SW 6th Ave. Stimson Lumber Tree Arrival: Beat Goes On Marching Band, Dickens Carolers

Plew’s Brews

8409 N Lombard St. Mack and Dub, Neil Darling and the Smoking Section

CONT. on page 34 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

MUSIC CALENDAR Secret Society Ballroom 116 NE Russell St. Naomi LaViolette, Ghosts Like Us, Jane Kramer

Shaker and Vine

2929 SE Powell Blvd. Laura Berman

Slabtown

1033 NW 16th Ave. Megaton Leviathan, the Low 12

Star Theater

13 NW 6th Ave. KMFDM, Chant

The Analog

720 SE Hawthorne Whoadang, Slope114

The Blue Diamond

2016 NE Sandy Blvd. Norman Sylvester

The Know

2026 NE Alberta St. Pop 1280, Vice Device, Smoke Rings

The Press Club

2621 SE Clinton St. Trio Flux

The Waypost

3120 N Williams Ave. Malachi Graham, Jaspar Lepak

Tonic Lounge

3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Blood Sweat and Rythym: Carmine Appice, Vinny Appice, Steve Unger, Dan Crenshaw, Garden of Eden, Dinner for Wolves

University of Portland

5000 N Willamette Blvd. Nurses, Minden, the Randy Jacksons, Secret Sauce

White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Volifonix, Marca Luna

Wonder Ballroom

128 NE Russell St. Cults, Sacco, Mood Rings

nov. 13-19

SAT. NoV. 16 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Tiburones

Aladdin Theater

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Fruit Bats, the Donkeys

Alberta Rose Theatre

3000 NE Alberta St. Live Wire Radio: Portugal. The Man, Shelby Earl

Alberta Street Public House

Clyde’s Prime Rib

5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Andy Stokes

Dante’s

Jade Lounge

Doug Fir Lounge

210 NW 21st Ave. Sami Rouisi

830 E Burnside St. Shoot to Thrill

Duff’s Garage

1635 SE 7th Ave. DK Stewart Sextet

East End

Artichoke Community Music

1800 E Burnside St. Edewaard, DJ Zimmie

Ash Street Saloon

225 SW Ash St. Kinked, the Dee Dees, Broken Bodies

Beaterville Cafe

2201 N Killingsworth St. Cailin O’Hara, Anne-Marie Sanderson

Biddy McGraw’s Irish Pub 6000 NE Glisan St. Bottleneck Blues Band, the Barkers

Branx

320 SE 2nd Ave. The Casualties, Negative Approach, Millions of Dead Cops

Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Goh Kurosawa

Central Lutheran Church

1820 Northeast 21st Ave Satori Men’s Chorus

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

Secret Society Ballroom

Kells

112 SW 2nd Ave. Flight of Earls

Kelly’s olympian

Kenton Club

First Unitarian Church

2025 N Kilpatrick St. Husqvarna, 42 Ford Prefect, Feral Pigs

Foggy Notion

4847 SE Division St. The Redeemed

Landmark Saloon

3416 N Lombard St. M.A.R.C, Tyler M. King, Anne Mersereau, Modell For Now

LaurelThirst

Gemini Lounge

McMenamins Edgefield

Goodfoot Lounge

2845 SE Stark St. Garcia Birthday Band, Blue Lotus

Habesha

801 NE Broadway Herd William, Amenta Abioto, Turtles

Hawthorne Theatre

1507 SE 39th Ave. Anthony Green, Dave Davison, Brick and Mortar

Hollywood Theatre

4122 NE Sandy Blvd. Pop Cult Party: Wayne Bund, IBQT, POP, Identity Dubais, DJ Nadia Buyse, Aaron Montaigne

Roseland Theater

Kells Brewpub

EastBurn

6526 SE Foster Road So to Speak

8409 N Lombard St. Matt Lande Band, Taylor Kingman 8 NW 6th Ave. Jessie Ware, the Invisible

426 SW Washington St. Mercy Graves, Damn Divas

1011 SW 13th Ave. Motherlode

Plew’s Brews

2346 SE Ankeny St. JD’s Blues/grass Sessions

203 SE Grand Ave. Lebenden Toten, Reaktor

TICKETS AT TICKETFLY.COM OR WONDER BOX OFFICE DAY OF SHOW.

1435 NW Flanders St. Anandi Gefroh

350 W Burnside St. Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants

1036 NE Alberta St. Dan Haley’s Friendharmonic Orchestra

3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Sky in the Road, Paul Sanchez, Richard Colombo

Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant

2958 NE Glisan St. Wayward Vessel, Steep Ravine, Root Jack 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale The Old Yellers

Mississippi Pizza

3552 N Mississippi Ave. Three for Silver Acoustic, Bucharest Drinking Team, Kef

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Obits, Survival Knife, Paradise

Moda Center

1401 N Wheeler Ave. Michael Bublé

Music Millennium

3158 E Burnside St. Anthony Green

116 NE Russell St. Pretend Sweethearts, A Simple Colony, Sam Densmore

Sky Club at Ankeny’s Well

50 SW 3rd Ave. Madame De Sade’s Aerial Theatre: Surreal De Sade, Orchid Souris Rouge, Charity Marchandt, Jon Lumus, Twyla

Slabtown

1033 NW 16th Ave. Skelator, Alpha Viper, Tanagra, Revolution Overdue

Star Bar

639 SE Morrison St. White Mystery, No Tomorrow Boys

Star Theater

The Know

626 SW Park Ave. Cole Rubin Trio

The Lovecraft

1028 SE Water Ave. Nightlands, Thanks

421 SE Grand Ave. Iceland

Tonic Lounge

3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Death on the Highway, A Collective Subconscious, Ports Will Call

Valentine’s

232 SW Ankeny St. New Dadz, Consequences

Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave. Soul Vaccination

White Eagle Saloon

836 N Russell St. Lindi Ortega, Brett Detar, the Stubborn Lovers, Adam Sweeney

SUN. NoV. 17 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Garcia Birthday Band

13 NW 6th Ave. The Fleshtones, Split Squad, the Jim Jams, the Sellwoods

Alberta Rose Theatre

The Alleyway Cafe and Bar

Alberta Street Public House

2415 NE Alberta St. Old Junior, Damn Family, Darlin Brothers

The Analog

720 SE Hawthorne Mosby, Device Grips, Black Sheep

The Blue Monk

3341 SE Belmont St. GALLONS, Blesst Chest, Burner Courage

Brasserie Montmartre

2026 NE Alberta St. Screaming Females, Upset, the Ghost Ease

3000 NE Alberta St. Head for the Hills, Renegade Stringband

1036 NE Alberta St. Wayward Vessel, Steep Ravine

Andina

1314 NW Glisan St. Dirty Martini, Danny Romero

Ash Street Saloon

225 SW Ash St. The Deep Wile, Cutbank, Dr. Stahl

Beaterville Cafe

2201 N Killingsworth St. James Faretheewell

Mississippi Studios

Bunk Bar

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Hunters, Audacity, Lee Corey Oswald

Clyde’s Prime Rib

3158 E Burnside St. Norman

5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Ron Steen Jazz Jam

Doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. Papa, Waters

East End

203 SE Grand Ave. Service Industry Night: Angela V

Habesha

801 NE Broadway Beach Party, Young Splendor, Animism

Hawthorne Theatre

1507 SE 39th Ave. Fast Fox, the October Sky, Demure, Patrimony, the Iron Works, Surviving Yesterday

Kaul Auditorium at Reed College

3203 SE Woodstock Blvd. Portland Gay Symphonic Band

Kelly’s olympian

Music Millennium

Rontoms

600 E Burnside St. Summer Cannibals, Jay Arner, Fault Lines

Roseland Theater

8 NW 6th Ave. Sleeping With Sirens, Breathe Carolina, Issues, Our Last Night

The Conga Club

4923 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Suite 102 VYBZ Reggae Night

The Elixir Lab

2738 NE Alberta St. MWE

The Know

2026 NE Alberta St. US Girls, Ether Island, Tunnels

Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave. Chuck Israel

White Eagle Saloon

426 SW Washington St. Victory Swig, Kylan Johnson

836 N Russell St. Aireene Espiritu & the Hobos, Lone Madrone, Teri Untalan

LaurelThirst

Wonder Ballroom

2958 NE Glisan St. Warren Jackson, Hearne, Freak Mountain Ramblers

McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern

10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Hanz Araki

Mississippi Pizza

3552 N Mississippi Ave. Kings on Fire, All Together Now: Beatles Sing-a-long

128 NE Russell St. Sleigh’r-bration: Marv Ellis, We Tribe

MoN. NoV. 18 Aladdin Theater

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. 2 Cellos

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

1037 SW Broadway Romeo and Juliet: Oregon Symphony, Inon Barnatan

nov. 13-19

MUSIC CALENDAR

a n n a j ay e g o e l l n e r

BAR SPOTLIGHT

STARS ALIGNED: You may not have yet stopped by Ecliptic Brewing (825 N Cook St., 265-8002, eclipticbrewing.com), but you’ve almost certainly had John Harris’ beer. The Oregon brewing luminary perfected the recipes for some of the state’s most iconic brews, including Deschutes’ Black Butte Porter and McMenamins’ Hammerhead. Harris spent three decades working under others, most recently at Full Sail. Now, he’s his own boss, running a just-opened brewpub in a colossal former auto-body shop off Mississippi Avenue. The space pays homage to Harris’ love of astronomy, with constellations pinpricked in the concrete walls and a chandelier shaped like a lopsided figure eight to represent the sun’s path through the sky. The beers, accordingly, are named after stars. Try the supremely balanced Procyon Pale Ale or the Spica Hefepils, which is bottom-fermented like a Pilsner but unfiltered—it’s a cloudy golden lager with a pleasant, lingering bitterness. On a recent Friday, the place was packed, with grownups eating trout po’ boys and kids munching on grilled cheese. I’ll be back in a few weeks—Harris plans to roll out new beers around the solstices and equinoxes, and next up is a hearty winter ale. REBECCA JACOBSON. Dante’s

350 W Burnside St. Karaoke From Hell

Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St. Big Freedia

Duff’s Garage

1635 SE 7th Ave. Pete Anderson

East End

203 SE Grand Ave. Extralone, DJ Skullscraper

Habesha

801 NE Broadway Sons of Hippies, Psychomagic

Kells Brewpub

210 NW 21st Ave. Traditional Irish Jam Session

Kells

112 SW 2nd Ave. Bill Tollner

Kelly’s Olympian

426 SW Washington St. Eye Candy VJs

Kenton Club

2025 N Kilpatrick St. Lures, The Woolen Men, Appendixes

Laughing Horse Books

12 NE 10th Ave. The Joint Chiefs Of Math, Nah

LaurelThirst

2958 NE Glisan St. Kung Pao Chickens, Copper and Coal

Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom 1332 W Burnside St. Punk Rock Monday: The Lovesores, the Cool Whips

McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern 10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Bob Shoemaker

Moda Center

1401 N Wheeler Ave. Nine Inch Nails

Plew’s Brews

8409 N Lombard St. Medicated Monday: Mack and Dub

Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Larry Calame

Bunk Bar

1028 SE Water Ave. Zorch, Luke Wyland

Camellia Lounge

510 NW 11th Ave. Tom Wakeling, Steve Christofferson, David Evans, Todd Strait

Dante’s

Slabtown

350 W Burnside St. Daley

Tony Starlight’s

830 E Burnside St. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Army Navy

1033 NW 16th Ave. Company, Nasalrod, Rvivr 3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Christine Roccaro

Valentine’s

232 SW Ankeny St. Hawks Do Not Share, Johanna Warren, Tristen

TuES. NOV. 19 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Garcia Birthday Band

Aladdin Theater

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Bill Callahan, Mick Turner

Alberta Rose Theatre

3000 NE Alberta St. The Invisible Lighthouse: Thomas Dolby

Ash Street Saloon

225 SW Ash St. Experimental Portland Presents: Ethernet, Jatun, U Sco

Branx

320 SE 2nd Ave. Protest the Hero, Architects, Affiance, Kindred

Doug Fir Lounge

East End

203 SE Grand Ave. Visions: Push/Pull, Linda Austin, House of Aquarius, Reid Urban

Kelly’s Olympian

426 SW Washington St. The Soil and the Sun

Langano Lounge

1435 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Stein, Drinking Birds

Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom

1332 W Burnside St. Americana Round-Up: Davy Jay Sparrow

Mississippi Pizza

3552 N Mississippi Ave. The Soil & the Sun

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Vienna Teng, Barnaby Bright

Roseland Theater

8 NW 6th Ave. Steve Aoki, Waka Flocka Flame, Borgore, Keys N Krates

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

NOV. 13-19 C O U R T E S Y O F M O S T WA N T E D E N T E R TA I N M E N T

MUSIC CALENDAR

IN RUSSIA, PARTY FINDS YOU!: Bobina spins at the Whiskey Bar on Saturday, Nov. 16.

Tiga

1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Yard Sale

SAT. NOV. 16 Berbati’s

WED. NOV. 13 Andrea’s Cha Cha Club 832 SE Grand Ave. Salsa: DJ Alberton

Berbati’s

231 SW Ankeny St. DJ Seleckta YT

Bossanova Ballroom 722 E Burnside St. Wednesday Swing

CC Slaughters

219 NW Davis St. Trick with DJ Robb

Tiga

736 SE Grand Ave. Maxx Bass

639 SE Morrison St. DJ Jake Cheeto 1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Weird Cactus

FRI. NOV. 15 BC’s Restaurant

Berbati’s

736 SE Grand Ave. Pretty Ugly

231 SW Ankeny St. Cloud City Collective

Ground Kontrol

CC Slaughters

511 NW Couch St. TRONix: Popcorn, Mixed Signals

219 NW Davis St. Fetish Friday with DJ Jakob Jay

Holocene

Club 21

639 SE Morrison St. DJ Danny Dodge

The Firkin Tavern 1937 SE 11th Ave. Eye Candy VJs

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. Exhume

Tiga

1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Never Forget

THURS. NOV. 14 Berbati’s

231 SW Ankeny St. Studyhall: DJ Suga Shane

CC Slaughters

219 NW Davis St. Hip Hop Heaven with DJ Detroit Diezel

Dig a Pony

736 SE Grand Ave. Marti

Harlem

220 SW Ankeny St. Bounce: Tourmaline, Valen

CC Slaughters

Star Bar

Dig a Pony

Star Bar

231 SW Ankeny St. DJ Mellow Cee 219 NW Davis St. Revolution with DJ Robb

2433 SE Powell Blvd. Activate: DJ Dot, Trevor Vichas

1001 SE Morrison St. PDneXt: Druid Cloak, PRSN, Graintable, Danny Corn, Plumblyne

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

1001 SE Morrison St. I’ve Got A Hole In My Soul: DJ Beyondadoubt

2035 NE Glisan St. DJ MottaVader

Club 21

Holocene

2035 NE Glisan St. DJ Dollar Bin

Dig a Pony

Gold Dust Meridian

3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Clap Trap: DJ Gregarious

Ground Kontrol

511 NW Couch St. DJ I

Hawthorne Theatre Lounge

1503 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd. DJ Abilities, Jel, Serengeti

Holocene

1001 SE Morrison St. Gaycation: Mr. Charming

The Conga Club

31 NW 1st Ave. Bobina, Web, Eddie Pitzul

Gold Dust Meridian

Tiga

Goodfoot Lounge

Wonder Ballroom

511 NW Couch St. DJ Simon Galaga

Holocene

1001 SE Morrison St. Rockbox: Four Color Zack, Matt Nelkin, DJ Kez

1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Family Jewels 128 NE Russell St. The Polish Ambassador, DJ Vadim

SUN. NOV. 17 Berbati’s

231 SW Ankeny St. DJ Linkus EDM

Moloko Plus

Dig a Pony

Star Bar

Gold Dust Meridian

3967 N Mississippi Ave DJ Maxamillion 639 SE Morrison St. Uncontrollable Urge: DJ Paultimore

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. Perforce: DJ Musique Plastique, DJ Sharpie

CC Slaughters

219 NW Davis St. Maniac Monday with DJ Robb

Dig a Pony

4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Shout: DJ Drew Groove, DJ Hippie Joe, the Silver Fox

The Whiskey Bar

Ground Kontrol

231 SW Ankeny St. DJ Henry Dark

Eagles Lodge

East End

2845 SE Stark St. DJ Aquaman’s Soul Stew

Berbati’s

Club 21

736 SE Grand Ave. Jimbo, DJ The Beatles

3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ Disorder

225 SW Ash St. DJ Just Dave

Dig a Pony

4923 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Suite 102 Tropical Saturday Salsa

203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Nine Inch Nilina

MON. NOV. 18 Ash Street Saloon

736 SE Grand Ave. Boom Wow 3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ Mike-A-Nay

Star Theater

13 NW 6th Ave. Church of Hive

2035 NE Glisan St. DJ Bradly 736 SE Grand Ave. Bad Wizard

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. Departures: DJ Waisted, DJ Anais Ninja

Tiga

1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Cat Lady

TUES. NOV. 19 Berbati’s

231 SW Ankeny St. Soundstation Tuesdays: DJ Instigatah, Snackmaster DJ

Bossanova Ballroom 722 E Burnside St. Tango Tuesday

CC Slaughters

219 NW Davis St. Girltopia with DJ Alicious

Club 21

2035 NE Glisan St. DJ Danny Dodge

Dig a Pony

736 SE Grand Ave. Last Call

Eagle Portland

835 N Lombard St DMTV with DJ Danimal

Lodge

6605 SE Powell Blvd DJ Easy Finger

Star Bar

639 SE Morrison St. DJ Smooth Hopperator

The Analog

720 SE Hawthorne S.Y.N.T.

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. DJ Rhienna

Tiga

1465 NE Prescott St. Invisible Ziggurat

PreseNts

icona pop With k. flay & sirah

MUSIC MILLENNIUM’S UPCOMING IN-STORES TISH HINOJOSA WEDNESDAY, 11/13 @ 6 PM Tish Hinojosa’s music crosses borders – between cultures, languages and musical genres. Moving with equal grace through folk, country, pop and Latino styles, her music reflects contemporary America’s multicultural richness.

ANTHONY GREEN SATURDAY, 11/16 @ 5 PM

ALL AgEs!

Anthony Green has ventured away from his punk/hardcore roots and pushed deeper into the lush, intricate, melody-driven brand of alt-rock he’d begun to master on his first two solo offerings. The inaugural release from the Circa Survive frontman’s newly launched imprint Moshtradamus Records, Young Legs, is a masterful collection of sprawling, lavishly textured pop.

MOOD RINGS FRIDAY, 11/15 @ 6 PM Mood Rings rip the captions off the stairs and explode moonlight panels with alcohol and mint. This is not political music. Shifting seamlessly from taut post-punk to lush 60s balladry, and starry-eyed guitar pop to moody guitar squall, VPI Harmony is the sound of a band meticulously studied in their influences, and unafraid to expand.

NORMAN SUNDAY, 11/17 @ 5 PM Norman’s sophomore full-length, Hay, Hay, Make a Wish and Turn Away conjures images of a flatbed pickup rambling down a dusty country road on a warm Summer evening. Find a field, throw down a blanket, and play this record with the doors open and windows down, while you lay on your back watching the stars, wishing on the ones that fall.

friday, december 20 2013

WONDER BALLROOm 128 N RussELL st

tickets at mUsicfestNW.cOm/tickets & ticketfly.cOm Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

STAGE MARCO LAU

CULTURE

BULB BUDDIES: Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad (left) and Robert Krulwich.

LAB REPORT RADIOLAB’S NEW TOURING SHOW IS ALL ABOUT ENDINGS.

think it’s just trivia? think again.

RAMENS RAM N

Wednesday

Monday

) — 7:00 PM m 8p s@ ay(Portland ursdLion ThThirsty Hawthorne Hideaway (Portland) — 8:00 PM (Starts r & Grill Ba18th) gNovember Redwin

2 30th St • North Park 401Tuesday

The Dugout (Hillsboro ) — 7:00 PM Biddy McGraw's (Portland ) — 7:00 PM Cheerful Tortoise (Portland ) — 9:00 PM Tonic Lounge (Portland ) — 7:00 PM Shanahan's (Vancouver) - 7:00 PM

Mondays @ 9pm Bourbon Street Bar & Grill 4612 Park Blvd - University Heights

Saturdays @ 8pm Kelly’s Pub Cheerful Bullpen (Portland ) - 8:30 PM Concordia Ale House (Portland ) - 8:00 PM Double Dragon (Portland ) - 8:30 PM (new!) Space Room (Portland ) - 7:00 PM

2 San Diego Ave • Old Town 222Thursday

21st Avenue Bar & Grill (Portland ) - 7:00 PM Belmont Inn (Portland ) - 7:00 PM

days @ 8pm Tues Saturday (starts August 14th)

The Tardis Room (Portland) — 2:00 PM

South Park Abbey (All Dr. Who Quiz — ONE DAY ONLY)

1946 Fern Street • South Park www.geekswhodrink.com @geekswhodrink

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

facebook.com/geekswhodrink

Is oil really made of dinosaur bones? You’ve heard the expression, but have you stopped to consider whether the liquid in your gas tank actually came from a long-dead Apatosaurus? In their new touring show Apocalyptical, which is all about endings, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, hosts of the popular NPR show Radiolab, talk a lot about dinosaurs. From a hotel room in Houston, where they’re looking out at a skyline built by oil rigs, the duo explains that your car runs on ancient plankton. “It’s mostly little swimmy things in shallow seas, but occasionally dinosaurs fell in,” Krulwich says. “Think of it like a martini—that little bit of vermouth is the dinosaur bones.” Abumrad and Krulwich’s radio show, sort of a This American Labtech broadcast from WNYC, explores questions like why Kenyans rule the sport of long-distance running and how quicksand works. The show’s style—distinctive quick cuts that insert the hosts’ asides like parentheticals, and electronic flourishes recalling a Nova documentary—has earned it heaps of acclaim. The live stage adaptation, meanwhile, changes every night but generally aims to offer “a bouquet of how things can end.” One such segment explains the radical theory that the dinosaurs weren’t killed over tens of thousands of years, but in a single day. “The story that we’ve always grown up with is that a big rock hit the Earth and threw up dust, and that things got cold and dreary,” Krulwich says. “But some scientists think it happened very fast.” “It’s a radical theory that sounds dumb at first,” Abumrad adds. “But it’s increasingly persuasive.” The dinosaur story is told onstage with custom-built puppets and is among a few “fixed points” in a show that rotates comedians (Portland gets Reggie Watts), live musical accompanists and audiovisual segments about Samuel Beckett and Pepto-Bismol. “This is not just a radio show onstage,” Abumrad says. “If you’re used to the radio show, this is the radio show manufactured for your eyes—so it’s the same idea; it’s supposed to be surprising, it’s supposed to have rhythms that catch you.” The lesson of the mass dinosaur death theory remains open-ended. “If we live in a world that takes a while to change because of our actions, it’s different than if the consequences are instantaneous,” Krulwich says. “We don’t say what the implication is, but there’s a deep ‘uh-oh.’” MARTIN CIZMAR. GO: Radiolab Live: Apocalyptical will be at Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 19-20. 8 pm. $41.50-$161. radiolab.org.

win a pair of tickets to see

Monday, nov. 18 th @ the Moda center Go to wweek.com/promotions

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

Nov. 13–19 HOTSEAT

= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: REBECCA JACOBSON. Theater: REBECCA JACOBSON (rjacobson@wweek.com). Dance: AARON SPENCER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: rjacobson@wweek.com.

THEATER OPENINGS & PREVIEWS A. Lincoln

Sixth-generation Oregonian Steve Holgate presents an original one-man show about Honest Abe, drawing from news stories, speeches and letters. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 635-3901. 7 pm Tuesday, Nov. 19. $15.

All Things Holiday

Northwest Senior Theatre presents a musical variety show. Alpenrose Dairy Opera House, 6149 SW Shattuck Road, 227-2003. 2 pm Wednesday-Saturday, Nov. 20-23. $5.

Homomentum: The Musical

Pants-Off Productions presents an inprogress showing of a new musical about a troupe of intergalactic performance artists who find themselves in a world beset by class warfare. Can art triumph over mindless consumption? Expect glitter, magical unicorns and plenty of campy tunes. CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St. 7:30 pm FridaySaturday and 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 15-17. $10-$20 sliding scale.

Our Town (Liminal Performance Group)

Last spring, a member of the avantgarde Liminal Performance Group suggested—as a joke, or maybe a dare—that the company stage that overproduced mainstay of high-school theater, Our Town. Despite never having seen a production of Thornton Wilder’s play, John Berendzen decided to take the proposal seriously, which means the group’s co-founder and music director is for the first time helming a play that actually has a script. The text will remain intact, but also expect closed-circuit video and a soundscape including both shapenote singing and experimental electronic music. The Headwaters, 55 NE Farragut St., No. 9, 567-8309. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays and 3 pm Sundays through Dec. 1. No show on Thanksgiving. $12-$25 sliding scale.

Our Town (Portland State)

Portland State tosses its hat into the Our Town ring, with a production directed by Lorraine Bahr, joining versions by Reed College and the avantgarde Liminal Performance Group. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 725-3307. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 14-16 and Wednesday-Saturday, Nov. 20-23; 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 17. $6-$12.

The Reluctant Dragon

Tears of Joy Theatre presents a familyfriendly puppet show about a boy who must defend a poetry-loving dragon to villagers intent on slaying the creature. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 2480557. 11 am and 1 pm Saturdays and 1 and 3 pm Sundays through Nov. 24. Opening night performance 7:30 pm Friday, Nov. 15. $13-$18.

Script-O-Rama: Pocket Girl

A reading of a screenplay by Portlander Alexandra Blatt about a journalist who tries to sabotage an online-dating assignment in order to settle down with her boyfriend. Jack London Bar, 529 SW 4th Ave., 2287605. 5 pm Sunday, Nov. 17. Free.

Sex Tragedy Saturdays: The Maids Tragedy

In a three-part series, Salt and Sage Productions presents a staged reading of a largely forgotten and convoluted Jacobean tragedy. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 2 pm Saturday, Nov. 16. $5.

Twist Your Dickens

In addition to The Santaland Diaries, that tired evergreen of holiday theater, Portland Center Stage this year dishes up a sketch-comedy show spoofingThe Christmas Carol. We’re skeptical, but Chicago’s improv behemoth Second City had a hand in developing the production, and PCS has corralled an impressive cast, including locals John San Nicolas and Sam Dinkowitz. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Sundays, 2 pm Saturdays-Sundays and noon Thursdays through Dec. 22. $39-$67.

The Waterman

Action/Adventure Theatre presents an original musical by Kyle Acheson and Sam De Roest. It’s a one-act show about love and sushi, and it ties into Action/ Adventure’s serialized comedy Fall of the Band. Action/Adventure Theatre, 1050 SE Clinton St. 10:30 pm FridaysSaturdays through Nov. 23. $8-$10.

NEW REVIEWS Maleficia

“Maleficia is a time-traveling, nonverbal exploration of how fear of the unknown can lead well-meaning citizens to commit horrific acts of cruelty.” Because a production like Maleficia is so slippery, I will not expound upon director Joel Harmon’s statement except to note a few caveats. “The unknown” means witchcraft—voodoo dolls, love spells and a magic pendulum—while “acts of cruelty” denotes humiliation and, in one mesmerizing scene, a hanging symbolized by the snapping of twigs. These deeds and punishments play out in more than a dozen scenes, from loincloth-clad performers mixing medicinal pastes to an incongruous nod to a group of modern-day political prisoners. Each scene features its own creepily staring characters, with only minimal props—the twigs or a glass slowly filled with blood—connecting the pieces. Given its robotic choreography, a soundtrack Badalamenti would’ve written for Halloween, and the creaky floor, Maleficia should terrify. But with the lights cranked up much of the time, it doesn’t. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s a scene to creep everyone out. For me, it was when a woman reaches down a man’s pants and pulls out a parsnip. The man, writhing on the floor, hand between his legs, has clearly lost more than a root vegetable. I writhed in my seat, not terrified but disturbed. MITCH LILLIE. Shout House, 210 SE Madison St., Ste. 11. 10 pm ThursdaysSaturdays; 8 pm Friday, Nov. 1 and Sunday, Nov. 10. Through Nov. 16. $10.

ALSO PLAYING American Idiot

The touring Broadway show—a musical adaptation of Green Day’s rock opera, which The New York Times called “thrillingly raucous and gorgeously wrought”—stops in Portland. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 241-1802. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday and 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 13-17. $25-$75.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

We all do bad things. Whether that’s pirating your neighbor’s wireless signal or pouring acid onto a prostitute’s face just depends on your level of commitment. So for all its social commentary about good versus evil and the duality of man, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains fascinating and horrifying simply because, on some level, we know it’s true. Like a cross between Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Theatre Vertigo’s production of

CONT. on page 41 40

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

EARTH MOTHER

M I S S M I S S y P H O T O G R A P H y. N E T

PERFORMANCE

COMEDIAN MARGARET CHO EXPLAINS WHY WE CAN ALL BE MOTHERS IF WE WANT. Margaret Cho doesn’t have any kids of her own. But that doesn’t mean she’s not a mother—or, rather, that she can’t mother anyone she wants. The personally and politically outspoken comedian has long incorporated stories about her Korean mom into her act, but her new touring show tackles motherhood more broadly. And, in typical Cho fashion, it also touches on issues ranging from drugs to LGBT rights to sex toys. WW spoke with Cho by phone about twerking, the meaning of life, and drunken women who heckle pregnant comedians. REBECCA JACOBSON. WW: Tell me a recent story about your mother. Margaret Cho: We were watching the Miley Cyrus twerking thing with Robin Thicke, and my mother said, “Oh, she’s shaking out all her luck.” That’s a very Asian thing to say. You think luck is sort of something stored in the body, and if you shake a part of your body, it will shake out all your good luck. I was just laughing. But it was so sweet, too. She wasn’t judging her or anything. What happens if you shake out all your luck? I don’t know. It’s the same thing that happens if you’re Korean and you fall asleep next to a fan. There’s this thing about Korean people—we think if you have a fan [blowing] on you at night you’ll die. I don’t even really like a fan on me at any time. What’s worse: twerking or sleeping with the fan on? I think that it may be worse to go to sleep with a fan on you, so maybe Miley Cyrus did the right thing. What did you think about that performance? There was a lot of reaction about the racial implications. It’s really important to talk about why we sexualize women of color in that particular way. I don’t think anybody behind the authoring of that performance really thought it was saying something greater about the culture and race and women of color. Women of color are so invisible that we’d never even enter into the conversation. I don’t think they were conscious of what they were doing. You’ve described yourself as a mother within the comedy community. Why? I’m at the age [44] where people think of me as a mother figure anyway, whether it’s conscious or not. We just look at women in their 40s and above as mother figures. It’s an unconscious thing, but it’s very meaningful. I both enjoy and embrace it. Sometimes people talk about aging as being a very negative thing, but I am trying to reverse that and make it a positive thing. It’s a really wonderful thing to get older and have a sense of wisdom and understanding and then pass that on to other people. What sort of wisdom? That nothing really matters. Whatever you’re worrying about now, it’s not going to be a big deal later. When you’re younger, you get really obsessed about everything. Getting older, you realize you don’t even think about that anymore. You don’t even care. That, I think, is the wisdom of growing old—

and that the meaning of life is not that big of a deal. It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter to try to figure it out, because it doesn’t make a difference. You’re sometimes asked if you want children. Do you ever find that question offensive? It’s borne out of the assumption that all women have that maternal instinct and that biological drive. It’s weird that it’s not asked of men as much, because I think that they have the instinct just as strongly to have children and a family. But there’s an assumption with women that it’s all they can have, because they would obviously not be thinking about their career or whatever. Because we have the ability to bear children, people think there’s something wrong if you don’t utilize that potential. My take is that I can mother everybody. It doesn’t necessarily have to come out of my body. It has to do with my connection to the earth, and I can mother everybody on it if I choose. We can all be mothers. Ever seen a pregnant comic perform? I’ve seen a couple of pregnant comedians but very few. One was performing with me. She’s a comic actress and a singer, Kate Levering. She was very heavily pregnant, almost eight months. I was really shocked because we got heckled. That was really alarming. Here’s this woman who’s very obviously pregnant, and we were doing really well. We got heckled and I got so angry. I really screamed and I had the audience member kicked out. What did the heckler say? She screamed at us that it was not funny. It was this woman who was drunk and angry and, oddly enough, a mom and with her family, too. I was really offended that we would get heckled when we were doing really well and also that somebody would heckle a guest of mine who was eight months pregnant. GO: Margaret Cho is at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 800-273-1530, on Friday, Nov. 15. 8 pm. $37-$64.50.

Nov. 13–19

Fall of the Band Season Two

An onstage reincarnation of the dying TV sitcom, Action/Adventure Theater’s Fall of the Band is an entertaining theatrical alloy combining Friends and Portlandia. Season subscribers and one-off viewers alike can enjoy the lighthearted snafus of mohawked ex-junkie Heath and his band Ghost Dad as they pursue Doug Fir notoriety. It’s like watching a ’90s sitcom brought to life and populated by your favorite wannabe rock stars while nursing a few beers at the Slammer. With a set plot but no script, Fall of the Band’s veteran actors and competent musicians speckle Portlandcentric inside jokes (and digs at Portland Playhouse) throughout, to the delight of the small space’s audience. Scenes occasionally languish, but at a snappy 60 minutes, episodes are more peppy than ponderous. Beer is available for purchase; the only thing missing from a night of couch-potato indulgence is your own musty sofa. ENID SPITZ. Action/ Adventure Theatre, 1050 SE Clinton St. 8 pm Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 24. $10-$14; season pass $45.

Foxfinder

From the beginning of Foxfinder, it’s clear we’ve entered an off-kilter world. Even the set is askew: The stage slopes in different directions, and a door frame slants sharply to one side. The first person to come through that door is William Bloor, a government agent who’s traveled to the countryside to investigate a possible fox infestation. As he stands in the rain, tall and wiry and towering over the couple he’s about to interrogate, we know this dystopian world won’t right itself anytime soon. British playwright Dawn King’s Foxfinder, in its U.S. debut at Artists Rep, is a post-apocalyptic parable set in rural England. It finds a couple faced with floods on their farm and mourning the death of their son. In drops William, an ascetic 19-year-old tasked with annihilating foxes. The dreaded creature has been deemed responsible for destroying farmland—and for disturbing the weather, corrupting minds and fomenting anarchy. Dámaso Rodriguez’s direction plays up the sense of paranoia and foreboding, with an ominous soundscape and disquieting lighting design. In a strong cast, Joshua Weinstein most impresses, playing William not as an unhinged loony or hardened cynic but as a tormented young man who seeks comfort however he can, even in self-flagellation. But the symbol of the fox wears thin—it’s clearly a scapegoat for all the dangers and fears of an irrational world. Still, given our current culture of NSA snoops and imprisoned whistleblowers, it’s hard not to see the specter of the surveillance state in Foxfinder—an argument about how we find what we’re looking for, no matter how scant, slippery or strange the evidence. REBECCA JACOBSON. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Sundays and 2 pm Sundays through Dec. 1. $25-$55.

Inspecting Carol

Lakewood Theatre Company presents a backstage comedy about a haphazard production of The Christmas Carol. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 635-3901. 7:30 pm

Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm some Sundays and 7 pm some Sundays. No show on Thanksgiving. Through Dec. 8. $32.

Our Town (Reed College)

Reed College inaugurates its new performing arts center with Thornton Wilder’s classic, directed by Kate Bredeson. In addition to this Reed production, the 1938 play is being staged by Liminal Performance Group and Portland State University. Reed College Performing Arts Building, SE 28th Ave. and Botsford Drive, 777-7284. 7:30 pm ThursdaysSaturdays through Nov. 16. $3-$7.

The Submission

“It’s only a bullet if you load the gun with it,” says Danny, a playwright. He’s referring to the N-word, but he might as well be describing the shortcomings of The Submission, a play by Jeff Talbott. The story has plenty of ammo: It centers on Danny, a gay white playwright who has written a moving drama about a black family in the projects and, in a bid to increase its chances of being produced, has submitted it under the patently ridiculous pseudonym of Shaleeha G’ntamobi. When the play is actually accepted at a theater festival, Danny enlists a black actress to pose as the playwright. The bullets—all the racial and homophobic slurs you’d expect, pitched during debates about who corners the market on oppression—are there. What’s missing is the gun: a robust dramatic framework to give those munitions any firepower. Absent that, Defunkt Theatre’s season opener winds up talky but toothless. REBECCA JACOBSON. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 23. $15-$25 sliding scale, Thursdays and Sundays are “pay what you can.”

COMEDY & VARIETY 185 Buddhas Walk Into a Bar

Amanda Rountree presents her onewoman show about navigating improv comedy and Buddhism. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 7:30 pm Thursday, Nov. 14. $12.

Brink of Extinction

Slingshot, a collaboration between Bad Reputation Productions and Portland Center Stage, presents Los Angeleno Bryan Coffee’s one-man show in which everything—from werewolves to monster shrimp to summer camp— blows up. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 15-16. $15-$20.

Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction

The Nerdist-approved event returns to Portland for another delightfully weird and raucous night of comics writing and performing original erotic stories. Audience suggestions are encouraged, so bring your biggest Darcy and Hermione fantasies. The Blue Monk, 3341 SE Belmont St., 595-0575. 7:30 pm Thursday, Nov. 14. $10.

podcast, brings his cerebral and acerbic brand of comedy to Portland. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669. 8 pm Thursday and 7:30 and 10 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 14-16. $15-$25.

Script Tease

Using unfinished works by local playwrights, performers launch into staged readings—and then improvise once the scripted pages run out. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 7:30 pm Saturdays through Nov. 30. $10-$12.

Tim Lee

The biologist-turned-standup comic, who uses PowerPoint as a comedy prop, hits Helium for a one-night gig. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669. 8 pm Wednesday, Nov. 13. $20-$25.

My Little Brody

A sketch-comedy showcase from Brody students. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 9:30 pm Friday, Nov. 15. $5.

Neal Brennan

The co-creator of Chapelle’s Show, who now co-hosts The Champs

REVIEW

Whitney Streed hosts a weekly comedy showcase. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9:30 pm every Wednesday. “Pay what you want,” $3-$5 suggested.

bird brains: (From left) rebecca Lingafelter, amber Whitehall, Paige McKinney and Judson Williams.

DANCE Burtonesque

If you remember, Beetlejuice danced his way into a place called “Dante’s Inferno Room” in the 1988 movie. That’s as good an excuse as any to have Noah Mickens dress as the character and host (another) Tim Burton-themed burlesque show at Portland’s Dante’s. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm Sunday, Nov. 17. $12-$15. 21+.

Ecdysiast

The Southeast Portland pole dancing studio puts on its second semiannual aerial pole show. The group’s last show in May felt something like a circus act, with impressive, if redundant, stunts. It’s not a stripping show—no tipping and no heels—but the outfits in May were pretty skimpy. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 7196055. 8 pm Friday, Nov. 15. $24.

House of Tarab

The Seattle Arabic music group makes a Portland appearance with a bevy of belly dancers. Among them is Portland ensemble Ritim Egzotik opening the show. Analog Cafe, 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 7 pm Saturday, Nov. 16. $15-$20.

Hula-scape

Keyon Gaskin

Portlander Barbara Holm hosts a twice-monthly standup showcase featuring local and traveling comics. EastBurn, 1800 E Burnside St., 2362876. 8:30 pm every first and third Monday. Free.

For more Performance listings, visit

Weekly Recurring Humor Night

The Invite: Preparing the Meal

It’s Gonna Be Okay

In Ginger Story, the fable of the gingerbread man is retold with a political and surreal twist. Proaño and JB Butler provide movement, music and outrageous costumes. All ages welcome. Studio 14, 333 NE Hancock St. 8 pm Fridays, Nov.8-Dec. 27. $5-$15 sliding scale.

PDX Comedy Fans, a network of people devoted to this city’s burgeoning comedy scene, celebrates its second anniversary with a showcase featuring headliner Debbie Wooten. Alberta Street Pub, 1036 NE Alberta St., 2847665. 8 pm Tuesday, Nov. 19. $7. 21+.

Competitive improv, with two teams battling for stage time. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 10 pm every first and third Friday. $5.

Improvisers from two groups—Peachy Chicken and Whiskey Tango—team up for a night of unscripted comedy. ComedySportz, 1963 NW Kearney St., 236-8888. 8 pm Thursday, Nov. 14. $5.

Luciana Proano

Undisputedly Funny

Just about the time when all of Portland flees to warmer parts of the globe, Burlescape has a Hawaiian theme. Drag madame Zora Phoenix has recruited a selection of Portland burlesque and boylesque talent who probably aren’t wearing anything under their grass skirts. Crush, 1400 SE Morrison St, 235-8150. 9 pm Saturday, Nov. 16. $10. 21+.

Friday Night Fights

dance industry. Suraj, a Portland native who has been called the “Queen of Waacking Nuevo,” was the first dancer to bring waacking, the disco-inspired street dance, to So You Think You Can Dance. She choreographed this performance, which features 20 program graduates, with Los Angeles’ Latin/hip-hop dancer Lady Cultura. Ambridge Event Center, 1333 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 2399921. 8 pm Thursday-Friday, Nov. 14-15 and Sunday, Nov. 17. $25.

GARY NORMAN

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is fast-paced, gleefully wicked and undeniably cool. Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation stays relatively faithful to the original tale, and director Bobby Bermea keeps the action brisk. At its violent climaxes, we see briefly lit snapshots of morbidly beautiful choreography: a cane poised to strike, a howling cry, a face contorted in pain. Cleverly hinting at the evil in all of us, the fiend Edward Hyde is portrayed by not one but six actors throughout the performance. But he’s played primarily by Heath Koerschgen, who displays a suave demeanor and a surprising amount of sympathy, especially in his love for the feisty but naive Elizabeth Jelkes (Karen Wennstrom). Despite Hyde’s ruthless nature, it’s hard not to feel a thrill when he emerges, top hat and cane in hand. We, too, are transfixed by his actions, just like the maid who witnesses his horrific deeds from a window. “The good in me would have called out sooner,” she says, “but the bad in me wanted to watch.” PENELOPE BASS. Shoebox Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 306-0870. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 23. $20.

PERFORMANCE

Tempowaryly: Seriously Frivolous, the first evening-length work in Portland by Keyon Gaskin, is an abstract piece of performance art about the inability to know—an obvious thesis for a piece packed with random and obscure acts. In an excerpt at Studio 2 in September, performers Jen Hackworth and Rosana Ybarra wore saggy boy undies and paraded around an audience that was seated in chairs scattered about the floor. Ybarra stuffed dried lavender in her mouth. Hackworth screamed at some books. Both worked together to stretch red fabric around audience members. Performance Works NW, 4625 SE 67th Ave., 777-1907. 7:37 pm Friday-Sunday, Nov. 15-17. $11-$16.

Kumari Suraj Experience

The House of Suraj is the concluding performance of the Kumari Suraj Experience program, which Suraj created to give lessons on making a career in the global

SONG OF THE DODO (PETE) Earlier this year, I predicted that Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble’s Song of the Dodo would be unlike anything else on a Portland stage this fall. It was an easy wager. From the walls and floor covered in plastic the color of Big Bird to the man in the surgical mask sweeping shredded bits of brown rubber into shapes like Rorschach inkblots, this new, original work cements PETE’s reputation as an idiosyncratic force in the local theater scene. But if any sequence defines the alternately silly, contemplative and bleak Song of the Dodo, it’s one involving performer Rebecca Lingafelter shoving an egg into her mouth. Sheathed in a dignified gray dress, Lingafelter gapes at the audience, her lips stretched around the egg. She waits. She bites down. The egg is raw. The yolk oozes down her chin. Bits of shell hit the yellow plastic. Lingafelter spits and smacks. She grimaces only slightly. She picks up a glass of red wine and glugs, the liquid streaming down her neck and leaving pink stains on her dress. Gimmicky? Perhaps. But it’s still one of the most disgusting and arresting things I’ve seen onstage, something of a reversal of the performance-art stunt where a woman ejects an egg from her vagina (or maybe this is just something that happened at my college). Other moments of this non-narrative work channel a similarly delicious absurdity, albeit one less likely to result in salmonella. Song of the Dodo opens with Lingafelter and two other female performers—our dodo birds—dressed in velvety, silver-hued costumes with pillowlike padding over their rumps. They preen and shimmy and squawk and sigh, flicking their feet as if they’ve just stepped in poo. Later, perched on stools like panelists on a talk show, they titter about extinction and the misery of life as tinkly music plays in the background. Lingafelter explains how people need to die in order to make room for the rest of us. “That was superb,” replies Paige McKinney with perfect self-seriousness, as Amber Whitehall bugs out her eyes and blinks maniacally. Last season, PETE performed a strikingly sinister adaptation of Richard III, and now it’s wonderful to see its performers exercising their impressive comedic muscle. Pierced with Cristi Miles’ intermittent exposition, the first hour of the show captivates and delights while still prodding at questions about tragedy, grief and rage. But then things plummet into full-tilt, screechy melodrama. The last 15 minutes or so draw from Euripides’ Hecuba, with the four female performers crouched at the front of the stage, their eyes trained on the ground. As they wail about the extermination of the Trojan queen’s 50 children, the parallel with the extinction of the dodo is heavy-handed and obvious. The ending strives for catharsis, but I was left mourning the disappearance of that adorable dodo. REBECCA JACOBSON. A bird’s-eye view of tragedy.

see it: Song of the Dodo is at Studio 2, 810 SE Belmont St., petensemble.org. 8 pm Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 24. $12-$40. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

VISUAL ARTS

NOV. 13–19

= 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.

NEWS 7th Annual Art Auction

For the seventh year in a row, arts nonprofi t Disjecta is holding a fancypants auction to raise money for its programming. Among the well-known local artists off ering up their wares: Hayley Barker, Damien Gilley, Calvin Ross Carl, Sean Healy, Avantika Bawa, Grant Hottle and Adam Sorensen, as well as dozens of others. Master of ceremonies is that quintessentially adorable nerd A.C. Dickson. From its superb curator-in-residence program, now in its third year, to its recent grant from the Warhol Foundation, Disjecta continues to defi ne why it’s one of the region’s most important arts organizations. Events like the auction help it keep on truckin’. Silent auction begins at 7 pm Saturday, Nov. 16, with the live auction commencing at 8. To preview featured artwork, visit disjecta.org/auction. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449. 7 pm Saturday, Nov. 16.

SHOWING

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen: A Series of Rectangles

Impossibly precious and precocious husband-and-wife team Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen (the plus sign used in lieu of an ampersand is their own) present artworks made during a residency in Omaha, Neb. The work centers on political texts and poetry. Through Nov. 30. PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063.

Augustine Kofie

Augustine Koﬁ e’s works on paper and panel are the highlight of an architectonically precise group show. Koﬁ e uses disparate media such as paper, ballpoint pen, acrylic, screenprinting and spray paint to create abstract images that recall architectural blueprints or 1960s modernist designs. While his works on panel fairly ooze an impeccable cool, it’s his works on paper that intrigue the most. The paper’s heft and highly tactile surfaces play invigorating counterpoint to the fastidious rectilinear imagery, giving the works a zing and zip that’s a pleasure to behold. Through Nov. 30. Breeze Block Gallery, 323 NW 6th Ave., 318-6228.

Bling Boutique

Art dealer and chronic self-reinventor Mark Woolley has used up at least ﬁ ve of his nine lives. His erstwhile Pearl District gallery gave way to a space under the Wonder Ballroom, then another next to Augen Gallery’s downtown digs—and ﬁ nally, following a brief semi-retirement, his current space inside Pioneer Place. This guy never sits still. With Bling, he gives

himself a big, fat, diamond 20th-anniversary ring, celebrating two decades as a gallerist. For this group show, artists will contribute pieces across a spectrum of media, all themed on the conceit of glitz and bling. Woolley has many established talents in his stable, but he also has a bevy of upand-comers such as Kayla Newell and Wesley Younie, so it’ll be instructive to see how artists young and oldish respond to the same motif. Nov. 16-Jan. 25. Mark Woolley Gallery @ Pioneer, 700 SW 5th Ave., third ﬂ oor, Pioneer Place Mall, 998-4152.

Carolyn Cole

One of the Northwest’s best-known painters, Carolyn Cole subtly but pointedly changes her well-played tune in a suite of new acrylic and collaged paintings. A free, almost oﬀ hand use of graphite imparts a newfound sense of slapdash scrawl where before there was only glib perfection. And her use of color seems to be evolving away from the triedand-true combinations that have made her work so imminently collectible, toward more intuitive palettes. In works such as Orange 71307 and Blue 91306 , bursts of luminescence sear the eye like phosphenes, engaging the viewer’s opticality and imagination. This is Cole’s most inventive show in years. Through Nov. 30. Butters Gallery, 520 NW Davis St., second ﬂ oor, 248-9378.

Contemporary Northwest Art Awards

Expansive, thoughtful and dramatically installed, the biannual Contemporary Northwest Art Awards didn’t disappoint this year. Curator Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson has created a spectacular survey of artwork across a diverse fi eld of practices, fi lling—but not overfi lling—a generous exhibition space with work by artists from Oregon (Karl Burkheimer), Washington (Isaac Layman, Nicholas Nyland and the single-monikered artist known as Trimpin), Montana (Anne Appleby) and Wyoming (Abbie Miller). As heterogeneous as these artists’ works are, somehow LaingMalcolmson makes them cohere spatially and thematically. Through Jan. 12. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-0973.

the sands’ peaks and troughs with an astute sense of shadow play that underlines their formal and thematic ties with the human body. Dunes and bodies are mutable; they rise and fall by the caprices of weather and time. Bradley intuits this and captures it in sumptuous black-and-white. Through Dec. 31. Gallery 903, 903 NW Davis St., 248-0903.

JOSHUA LUTZ, HESITATING BEAUTY

Michael Flohr

Michael Flohr calls himself a “modern urban impressionist,” which means he paints cityscapes, interiors and still lifes in a fuzzy, washy style that evokes the haze of idealized memory. His images of various cities, including Portland, are the sort you would conjure if you loved a town but had to leave it for good. In your memories, all the quotidian details would fade, and you’d be left with the contours of pure euphoria: a certain night when everything seemed perfect, and the lights on the marquee of the Schnitz reﬂ ected the gleam in your lover’s eyes. There’s something irresistably treacly about this kind of vision, which is simultaneously the strength and weakness of Flohr’s paintings. Through Nov. 30. Shaﬀ er Fine Art Gallery, 308 SW 1st Ave., Suite 158. 295-4979.

Rich Jascobs

Oakland, Calif., artist Rich Jascobs is the best thing about the overdense, ploddingly hung group show Oﬀ the Wall PDX . Spirited and eclectic, Jascobs’ works range the gamut of formal conceits: Text-based, pattern-based, rubber-stamped, geometric, organic—you name it, he’s got it covered. Amazingly, somehow it doesn’t come across as hodgepodge. His most hilarious piece shows a dripping, amorphous blob with the inscrutable caption: “Your other cellphone looks like this.” Huh? Through Dec. 1. Compound Gallery, 107 NW 5th Ave., 796-2733.

Rick Bartow: Bird Wings

Part human, part beast, part spirit: That’s what Rick Bartow’s stylized fi gures typically consist of. The artist, a member of the Wiyot tribe of Northern California, integrates his native heritage into his work, infusing fi gure studies with mystical overtones. There is an undercurrent of polymorphous perversity to his paintings and drawings, bespeaking a fl uidity of identity. We can all shape-shift, his works seem to proclaim; we are limited only by the parameters of our imaginations. Through Dec. 13. Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St., 222-1142.

Jock Bradley: Time Sands Still

They have the same ﬁ rst name: Jock Sturges and Jock Bradley. Sturges may be famous (and in some circles infamous) as the photographic chronicler of the nude body, but Bradley has made a name for himself by photographically chronicling the landscape in ways that evoke the nude body. His images of sand dunes in New Mexico and Colorado capture

REVIEW

For more Visual Arts listings, visit

Childhood memories often play through the 8 mm lens of The Wonder Years, set on a Slip ’N Slide behind a picket fence on a sunny day. Think harder, though, FAILED ATTEMPT BY JOSHUA LUTZ and you’ll remember more Lend me your eyes... bogeyman-filled forests. New York-based photographer Joshua Lutz went through hell as a kid and came out the other side to tell the tale. The fulcrum of his harrowing show, Hesitating Beauty, is his late mother, who suffered from severe depression and schizophrenia. In recontextualized archival shots and newly staged photographs, Lutz shows us what it felt like to grow up with a troubled mother. It’s not a pretty picture. In rephotographed 1970s snapshots such as The Coming Insurrection, the artist’s mother is all free-flowing hair and wide smile, the picture of ebullience. But in Whitestone Bridge, her downcast eyes and sullen expression presage the storm clouds ahead. Lutz doesn’t spell out exactly what happened in gory, Mommie Dearest detail. But he offers hints in staged vignettes that recall the narrative tableaux of a much more famous photographer, Gregory Crewdson. In one print, the garage door of a suburban home is open just enough to betray the eerily glowing taillights of a car, carbon monoxide billowing out into the night. The piece is called Failed Attempt. Hangnot, Slipnot (sic) shows a noose intertwined with tree vines. Emergency, shot outside a hospital, continues a thread that’s not hard to figure out. Nor is it a mystery how the young Lutz felt about his mother. The snow-covered mailbox in Devil, Devil is emblazoned with the numeral 666. That number also appears on the back of a crashed school bus. And the highway sign in Exit 17 lists the exit’s number but not its destination. The text field where the location should be is an empty green void. That must be what it’s like to grow up with a mentally ill parent: You can see they’re leaving the road, but you have no idea where they’re headed. In his ghost-haunted reverie, the photographer paints an affecting portrait of a poisoned presence and the unfathomable absence of sense, meaning and hope. It’s a sad, honest, gorgeous show. RICHARD SPEER. SEE IT: Hesitating Beauty is at Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210, through Dec. 1.

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BOOKS

NOV. 13–19

= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By PENELOPE BASS. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 13 History Decoded

History buﬀs and conspiracy nerds unite. Based on Brad Meltzer’s History Network show, new book History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time explores historical myths like whether Fort Knox is really empty and Hitler’s obsession with the Roman spear of destiny. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651. 7 pm. Free.

John Nichols and Robert McChesney

With hundreds of millions of dollars inﬂuencing elections across the country, authors John Nichols and Robert McChesney aim to expose the system of corruption with their new book, Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America. Wait—money inﬂuences elections? Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 2284651. 7:30 pm. Free.

THURSDAY, NOV. 14 Karen Karbo

There’s no argument that Julia Child was a badass. But author Karen Karbo explores the saucy chef’s life and achievements through 10 lessons in her new book, Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life. The book is a continuation of Karbo’s “KickAss Women” series that has also included Georgia O’Keeﬀe, Coco Chanel and Katherine Hepburn. Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726. 8 pm. Free.

Comics Underground

If your graphic novels aren’t quite graphic enough, Comics Underground once again brings comics to life with a live onstage reading including music, sound eﬀects and the magic of overhead projection. Taking the stage are Marvel and Dark Horse writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Captain Marvel, Pretty Deadly), Dark Horse Comics Editor Scott Allie sharing the ﬁrst issue of the new Serenity series and Frank Beaton reading from his latest Western tale from Outlaw Territory. Jack London Bar, 529 SW 4th Ave., 228-7605. 8 pm. $3-$5. 21+.

David Folkenflik

Despite being recently embroiled in a corruption scandal, with founder Rupert Murdoch on trial himself, News Corp. continues to stream information to the public. In his new book, Murdoch’s World, NPR media correspondent David Folkenﬂik delves deep into the history of the company. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.

FRIDAY, NOV. 15 Kevin Sampsell

Portland author Kevin Sampsell (A Common Pornography) reads from his debut novel, This Is Between Us. The book follows the arc of one couple’s relationship, from initial passion to the fragile creation of a family. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.

SATURDAY, NOV. 16 Elohi Gadugi Journal

Promoting the work of indigenous American writers and focusing on environmental responsibility and intercultural understanding, the Elohi Gadugi Journal celebrates the release of an anthology from its ﬁrst year as an online journal. Featured readers for the release of Narratives for a New World include Tiel Aisha Ansari, Judith Arcana, Kristin Berger,

Katie Eberhart and others. Milepost 5, 850 NE 81st Ave., 729-3223. 3 pm. Free; $5 suggested donation.

MONDAY, NOV. 18 Peter Boghossian

Aiming to help spread the word of reason, or maybe just piss people oﬀ, PSU philosophy professor Peter Boghossian’s new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Meant to counter the conversion of people into religious faiths, Boghossian’s

book oﬀers a guide for questioning faith. Powell’s on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.

TUESDAY, NOV. 19 Jonathan Miles

Jonathan Miles’ ﬁrst novel, Dear American Airlines, heaped on the acclaim with Miles being heralded as a “comic genius.” Now turning his attention toward Americans’ obsession with possession, Miles’ new novel, Want Not, retains his acerbic wit with a three-pronged story about the search for fulﬁllment. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.

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REVIEW

WINEMAKERS OF THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY In conversation with Oregon oenophiles, California is a curse word. John Vincent and Vivian Perry capitalize on this fiery state pride with Winemakers of the Willamette Valley: Pioneering Vintners from Oregon’s Wine Country (American Palate, 160 pages, $19.99). Part travel guide, part manifesto and part biography, More boxed than bottled. it catalogs the emerging second generation of Willamette Valley winemakers with 15 profiles of purple-handed heirs. In his foreword, veteran vintner Harry Peterson-Nedry dubs them the “validation generation.” After the truncated introduction’s Wiki-like overview of Willamette wine history, Perry and Vincent explore current production. Chapters chronicling Penner-Ash, Matzinger Davies, and Boedecker will look familiar to anyone who’s browsed bottles. Short profiles on winemakers may satisfy casual consumers with tidbits about how Holland shaped Kelley Fox’s wines or why Eric Hamacher changed state law to build a wine collective. For Willamette Valley wine devotees, the book is a satisfyingly self-indulgent glorification of Oregon’s virtuous industry and its “passionistas.” But the grape-stained profiles, written with the stereotypical verbosity of wine reviews under painful headings like “Allowing Wine to Express Its Nature,” are mostly ego inflation after the fascinating tale of how Willamette Valley pinot noir dramatically stole a place from the French at the 1979 World Wine Olympics. The time since is a millisecond in winemaking culture, but it’s been long enough for more than 600 vineyards to take hold in the meteorologically ideal region. Oregon Pinots became the princelings of American wines as the state’s wineries grew eightfold in 15 years. But Winemakers is less pioneering. It is informative, with an appendix of wineries by region and fact boxes for touring wine country. But in an industry where passion reigns supreme, Perry and Vincent muster all the intrigue of Two-Buck Chuck. The chapter on Lynn Penner-Ash stands out for exploring gender imbalance in Oregon winemaking. Otherwise, any passion comes across as “vinticulturally pubescent”—to use Peterson-Nedry’s words. The biographies read like résumés rewritten into encyclopedia entries, albeit authored with sincere intentions. If we learn anything, it’s how much California sun Oregon winemakers have in their backgrounds. No less than half the profiles begin with stints at UC Davis or bartending in Carmel. From there, we’re treated to listlike accounts of where the winemakers lived during their careers, when they married their spouses and a plethora of the authors’ own fortune-cookie interjections. Somewhere in between, the real soul of Oregon winemaking seeped away. ENID SPITZ. READ IT: Winemakers of the Willamette Valley is available in bookstores.

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THE FUNNIEST 5 A showcase of Portland’s top standup comics, as chosen by their peers.

Free!

SUNDAY, NOV. 24 7-9 pm at the Alhambra Theatre, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

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= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: REBECCA JACOBSON. 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: rjacobson@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.

12 Years a Slave

A Twelve Years a Slave was part of

a literary tide. When the memoir was published in 1853, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Frederick Douglass’ autobiography were bestsellers, helping to fuel the abolitionist movement. But Solomon Northup’s story was different. Born a free man, he led a comfortable life as a carpenter and violinist with his wife and children in upstate New York in 1841, when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Northup managed to regain his freedom 12 years later and soon published Twelve Years a Slave, which became a bestseller of its own. But at some point, Northup disappeared and his book fell out of print. Now, it’s little-known outside the halls of academia. All of which makes British director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave an even more staggering revelation. The film is agonizing but not lurid, compassionate but not melodramatic, patient but still thrilling. McQueen exposes the full extent of slavery’s physical cruelty, from the endless hours of cotton-picking to the capricious acts of violence, as well as the system’s psychological toll. Chiwetel Ejiofor, with stoicism and crushing reserve, plays a man forced to keep his head down and feign illiteracy. Despite its handful of vicious instances of violence, 12 Years has none of the garish extravagance of last year’s Django Unchained, in which Quentin Tarantino perverted a historical atrocity into a hip-hop-scored spaghetti Western. Alongside the film’s occasional brutality, McQueen stages takes of astounding beauty and surprising tranquility. Most impressive is that 12 Years a Slave does not feel like an ethical or educational obligation. While its instructive value is undeniable, this is also a rousing portrait, a morally complicated tale and a masterful work of art. It’s not perfect, but it comes damn close. R. REBECCA JACOBSON. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center.

20 Feet From Stardom

A- Life is unfair, and the music indus-

try is worse. If there were a rubric to figure out what makes one performer a household name and the other just another name in the liner notes, the history of pop would read much differently. Turning the spotlight on several career backup singers, Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom shows, with great warmth and color, what it might sound like. These are voices and personalities every bit as big as Tina’s and Aretha’s but that, through the vagaries of fate more than anything else, never made what Bruce Springsteen calls “the long walk” from the back of the stage to the front. Only Sheryl Crow, it seems, fully shed the stigma of being a supporting player. Most are resigned to their roles in the musical ecosystem, content to have sacrificed their own aspirations for the sake of elevating the art itself. Whether that’s noble or a con, Neville never judges. He just lets them sing. And, in a more perfect universe, that would be enough. MATTHEW SINGER. Living Room Theaters.

About Time

C In About Time, writer-director Richard Curtis—who scripted Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill—tells yet another tale of a British bloke besotted with an American woman in London. Now, though, there’s a time-travel hook. Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) and Mary (Rachel McAdams, returning to familiar ground after the high-concept Harlequin romance of The Time Traveler’s Wife) are the destined-to-be-happy couple. The twist is that Tim can visit the past without the pesky problem of running into younger selves. At first this conceit allows for one-trick-pony jokes as Tim benefits from do-overs of amorous mishaps—like erasing his fumbling with Mary’s front-clasp bra during their first tryst. But the movie

ultimately spirals outward from its romcom roots to encompass family, birth, death and, natch, the meaning of life. As ever, Curtis’ brand of cleverness remains in the realm of the cute while tiptoeing around darker territory, hinted at in Tim’s momentary temptation to cheat on Mary with a formative crush. If you could constantly revise the past, how would this affect your morality? Alas, About Time doesn’t go down this enticing rabbit hole, remaining too committed to rutted sentimentality. R. KRISTI MITSUDA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Fox Tower.

All Is Lost

B We all know Robert Redford too well. We know that, after nearly 50 years on the big screen, Redford the man is not an investigative journalist, a gadabout sidekick or a dark-horse power hitter. He is, however, a mildly eccentric and reclusive celebrity, one who might very well undertake a solo sailing trip around the world. As the only actor in All Is Lost, he does just that. Then, wood cracks and water rushes in. A shipping container has punched a hole in the hull, destroying the GPS and radio. He does his best to patch the hole, but it’s Redford vs. the world from here on out. The autobiographical parallels are striking, which is perhaps the reason Redford is out of the director’s chair and working with newbie J.C. Chandor, who became a rising star after 2011’s Margin Call. That movie thrilled with 24 hours inside an investment firm’s meltdown; All Is Lost does the same with much less. As the storm worsens, though, so do the special effects. The heavy rain is obviously hose-powered and green-screened. But All Is Lost quickly regains its tension, and it intrigues both as a cinematic experiment and as a vehicle for Redford’s naturalistic acting. Critics who have seen the film as an allegory for capitalism ignore the story’s deep simplicity: That’s a shipping container crashing into Redford’s yacht, not some thinly veiled symbol of consumerism. This is one man, alone, facing death. Redford is playing himself, and he’s not playing around. PG-13. MITCH LILLIE. Clackamas, Fox Tower.

Andy Milligan Double Feature

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] An evening devoted to the cult director of micro-budget Grand Guignol horror films, with screenings of 1970’s Guru, the Mad Monk, set in a 15th-century prison colony, and Seven Ghastly Sins, a fan-made film that pays homage to Milligan’s fondness for gore and dysfunctional families. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, Nov. 19.

The Best Man Holiday

Nearly 15 years later, a sequel to 1999’s The Best Man finds most of the cast— including Taye Digs, Sanaa Lathan and Nia Long—reunited for Christmas. R. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Cornelius, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Division, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV.

Blue Jasmine

B Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine isn’t

so much a fish-out-of-water movie; it’s a horse-with-a-broken-leg-in-water movie. You know how this thing’s going to end. Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine is a rarefied, half-delusional socialite tossed roughly down the slopes of her husband’s financial pyramid scheme after he is arrested. She lands in a strangely Bronx Guido version of San Francisco inhabited by her lowrent sister Ginger (played with wonderful sympathy by Sally Hawkins). Blanchett’s performance is fascinating. She’s an Ingmar Bergman figure yanked straight out of Tennessee Williams: brittle, high-bred, wellguarded against reality but wretchedly vulnerable, snapping back and forth between high-class snob and raving drunk. Jasmine adapts to the poor life, needless to say, badly. Blanchett’s often-harrowing portrait bumps heads

with a loose screwball comedy of nomanners. She is groped by a bumbling dentist and trades insults with Ginger’s goombah fiance Chili (Bobby Canavale). Blue Jasmine cannot reconcile its broad comedy and pathos into coherence, but all the more impressive, then, that Hawkins’ and Blanchett’s twinned performances still manage to pick up most of the pieces. PG13. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Academy, Laurelhurst.

Captain Phillips

A- You probably already know the

story behind the new Tom Hanks movie, Captain Phillips, because you heard it first from the helmet-haired hagiographers of cable news. Back in 2009, four Somali pirates boarded a freighter and kidnapped its captain, Richard Phillips (played in the movie by Hanks). They kept him for five days on a lifeboat, demanding a ransom of $10 million, then got their brains blown out of their skulls by Navy SEALs. In outline form, the politics of the plot are problematic for a film: It is the heroic triumph of superior, mostly white American forces against amateurish, violent African criminals. But Paul Greengrass’ film is no Black Hawk Down. Whenever the Navy SEALs emerge, they are seen in blank silhouette, accompanied by the ominous music of alien assault. It’s an interesting choice by Greengrass: Why won’t he let you just root for Tom Hanks and the Navy and then cheer at the end? Instead, we observe the inevitable violent death of the only real characters in the film: the pirates themselves. Though shot with an eerie, disciplined neutrality, this is perhaps the most compassionate piece of filmmaking I’ve seen this year. PG-13. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, CineMagic, Forest, Oak Grove, Division, Fox tower, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sandy, St. Johns.

Counselor, directed by Ridley Scott and written by Cormac McCarthy (it’s the author’s first original screenplay), is an unmitigated mess. It’s a cautionary tale about drug trafficking and reckless romance, set on the U.S.Mexico border, but it’s so full of fauxpoetic mumbo-jumbo and so choppily assembled that the result is just frustrating and dumb. The titular character, played by Michael Fassbender, is an unnamed lawyer who has gotten himself into a mess involving a martini-guzzling client (Javier Bardem, his hair looking like he stuck his finger in an electric socket) and a cowboy hatwearing middleman (Brad Pitt). As it becomes obvious things will unravel for Fassbender, Pitt turns to him: “Counselor, I don’t know what you should do, but it’s out of your hands,” he says. The film, likewise, spirals out of Scott’s hands, lurching between

The Case Study: Dutch Media Art

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Marylhurst University and the Pacific Northwest College of Art present an evening featuring experimental work by five Dutch media artists. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Friday, Nov. 15.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2

Cheeseburgers, falling from the sky! Again! PG. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Oak Grove, Division, Movies on TV.

The Counselor

D+ So far as I can tell, The Counselor has one primary lesson to teach viewers: Drug trafficking is bad. Real bad. Unless, of course, you’re an exotic dancer-turned-heartless villain with cheetah print tattoos down your back and your fingernails painted silver. The

CONT. on page 46

REVIEW

HaRRy POTTER aND DRaCO DICaPRIO GO TO COLLEGE: Daniel Radcliffe (in glasses) and Dane DeHaan.

Carrie

C- Kimberly Peirce’s new take on Stephen King’s seminal high-school tale is gorgeously shot, capably acted and appropriately gruesome. But it also manages the dubious task of being at once horrifically redundant, lazy and irresponsible in its inability to fit itself into the current landscape, one that could desperately use a more thoughtful rethinking of the story of a bullied high-school outcast. Peirce’s Carrie exists in a very different setting than King’s 1974 novel and Brian De Palma’s 1976 movie classic, and that makes 2013 Carrie a very different beast. We exist now in a postColumbine world, one where the conversation about bullying permeates our cultural consciousness. And it’s in this respect that Peirce’s lack of nuance and inability to reinterpret her source material becomes troubling. In essentially re-creating De Palma’s work, Peirce misses an opportunity to really say something about Carrie’s story. Peirce—who, it’s important to note, gave us one of cinema’s most tragic and heartfelt portraits of victimization with Boys Don’t Cry—just goes through the beats of DePalma’s film and does little to bring its underlying themes into focus. It’s We Need to Talk About Kevin repurposed as a rollicking revenge flick. Carrie White and her victims deserve better. So do we. R. AP KRYZA. Eastport, Clackamas, Division, Movies on TV.

disconnected vignettes and gruesome acts of violence. We get some glimpses into the ludicrously moneyed world these characters inhabit, a place where cheetahs wearing rhinestone collars sit both poolside and pianoside. It’s a world of Bentleys, diamonds and snakeskin boots, riches that Scott ogles in artless close-ups. It’s also an oversexed world, which is where that woman with the cheetahprint tattoos enters. She’s played by Cameron Diaz, in a stiff, affected performance so bad it’s painful to watch. As with McCarthy’s novels adapted for the screen—The Road and No Country for Old Men—The Counselor is peopled with bizarre characters harboring dark motives. This effort, though, could have used some counseling of its own. R. REBECCA JACOBSON. Living Room

C L AY E N O S

MOVIES

KILL YOUR DARLINGS Sometimes in film, actors so fully inhabit the roles of historical figures that they don’t just capture the essence of the human being, they become even more vivid and convincing than footage of the actual person. Think Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan. But whatever you do, don’t think Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg. His mealy-mouthed performance as a college-aged Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings is so completely divorced from the person he’s meant to portray that all thoughts of the poet are inaccessible. It will only distract you to try. In place of the poet’s ejaculative, adenoidal New Jersey drawl, Radcliffe speaks in a wobbly transatlantic mumble—North Dakota by way of Hogwarts—with an emotional range that spans buttermilk tepidity and petulant whinging. Even his smile appears to be a cringe. So forget Ginsberg, at least as you know him publicly: Consider Radcliffe, instead, to be some weak-willed kid who does a lot of drugs at Columbia with an uncanny facsimile of William Burroughs (Ben Foster) that might as well be animatronic, plus a great galumphing jock named Jack Kerouac and a pretty-boy narcissist named Lucien Carr, the latter played with arrestingly sociopathic charm by Dane DeHaan. And indeed, it’s Carr who’s the real focal point of the story. He’s interestingly complex, both self-pitying and vainly self-regarding, a genuine victim and also an overt manipulator who trades on his sexuality to cozen term papers from an older man who is his stalker, his “guardian angel,” and probably the ruiner of his youth. Ginsberg is plainly in love with Carr. Kerouac is also entranced. And the camera loves him, too. Too bad, then, that we spend so much time with Radcliffe, presumably on the notion that we want to watch the great Ginsberg take shape from lumpen clay. But this gambit falls flat. We’re stuck watching the watcher as he quite literally masturbates his way to a sort-of-OK poem, which he reads dramatically on a boat to show the world who he really is. And what he is, unfortunately, is weak tea. It’s a good thing for this muddled, diffuse film that Carr, at least, is composed of much stronger stuff. DeHaan’s performance is not enough on its own to make this a good film. But it’s certainly enough to make it interesting. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Less a howl than a moan.

C+

SEE IT: Kill Your Darlings is rated R. It opens Friday at Fox Tower. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

nov. 13-19

Theaters, Movies on TV.

Dallas Buyers Club

A The first time Matthew

McConaughey appears onscreen in Dallas Buyers Club, the reflex is to gasp. That carved-from-amber beach bod has been whittled down to a toothpick. He’s gaunt, almost insectoid, with a head too big for his neck and skin stretched like plastic wrap around his eyes and Adam’s apple. It’s a transformation mirroring that of McConaughey’s career over the past year, ever since the day he woke up, put on a shirt and decided to become the best actor of his generation: The rom-com lothario has withered away. In his place arrives a performer at his peak, in a role that better damn well win him an Oscar, as an AIDS activist the movies have never seen before: a shit-kicking, homophobic redneck. That redneck actually existed, too. In 1985, Ron Woodroof, a Dallas electrician, bull rider and pussy-chasing, coke-snorting degenerate, became one of the rare straight men in the early years of the AIDS epidemic to contract HIV. Left out of the trials of an experimental new drug, and frustrated by the grinding inertia of Big Pharma, Woodroof went to Mexico, where, with a cocktail of natural supplements and non-FDA-approved meds, he was nursed back to health. Figuring there was a great racket in AIDS drugs that actually worked, he returned to Texas and opened a “buyers club.” Operating out of a fleabag motel, he skirted federal regulations by selling “memberships” at a rate of $400 per month and doling out the banned substances for “free.” To the credit of writers Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack and director Jean-Marc Vallée, Dallas Buyers Club has no weepy epiphanies, no soliloquies about newfound understanding. Woodroof may have been an asshole, but he was an asshole whose instinct for self-preservation eventually helped extend the lives of millions of better people. And, in the face of a plague, that’s worth more than one jerk’s enlightenment. R. MATTHEW SINGER. Fox Tower.

Despicable Me 2

Don Jon

A- Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s debut as

a triple threat—writer, director and star, a la Clint Eastwood—is appropriately festooned with the time-honored totems of macho masculinity. We’ve got cartoonish muscles, unbridled rage, some good old-fashioned misogyny and, of course, sex that’s all about the man. “Condoms are just terrible,” whines Jon (Gordon-Levitt), a Guido beefcake who likes porn better than real sex. “But you gotta wear one because, unlike porn, real pussy will kill you.” Or rather, real pussy—with all its trappings of commitment—will kill your bachelor lifestyle. Jon doesn’t have time for that. He is so immersed in Internet porn that it’s hard to tell whether his attitudes about sex and love are the product or the cause of his obsession. When Jon meets superfox Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) and actually tries to date her, her abject horror at his obsessive meat-pounding kicks off the slow unraveling of Jon’s belief in porn as the apex of sexual stimulation. Gordon-Levitt brings just enough depth to the character, and to the film overall, to turn a schlocky premise into an honest and approachable exploration of how porn—and really, any other addictive simulation of reality—can cheat us out of the richness of actual experiences. R. EMILY JENSEN. Living Room Theaters.

Elysium

B+ In the year 2154, we’re told, the

rich don’t care about the poor. Neill Blomkamp, whose debut film was the alien-apartheid fantasy District 9, pretty much takes this for granted. His sophomore film, Elysium, is essentially a political metaphor gone fiercely rogue in the physical world. Not only do the rich not give two flying figs about the poor, but they live in a utopian space station in the sky, constantly bathed in heavenly light. Would-be “illegal” visitors—usually Hispanic—are shot down before they reach it. Below, on Earth, the abandoned residents of Los Angeles languish in a dreamily intricate slum that has fallen into apocalyptic steampunk, a world of shit and piss and dirt. Somewhere in the middle of this dung heap is Matt Damon as a blondhaired, blue-eyed chulo who’s gone straight after years as a car thief. It betrays nothing to tell you Max eventually thumbs a trip to Elysium to upset this hilariously unfair social order. Blomkamp’s cinematic vision may be stunning, but Elysium’s plot and characters are pure Hollywood camp. But goddamn if it isn’t good, solid, hardworking Hollywood camp— with absolutely brutal, inventive action sequences that include swords, hovercraft, force fields, exploding bullets and acrobatic killer robots. The film is what a sci-fi epic should be: a fantastical machine fueled by our own dreams and fears, made believable by its absolute devotion to these dreams.

R. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Academy, Avalon, Edgefield, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst, Milwaukie, Mt. Hood, St. Johns, Valley.

Ender’s Game

B- There’s no denying that Orson Scott Card’s political and anti-gay views are worse than cockeyed. Still, Gavin Hood’s adaptation of Card’s 1985 sci-fi novel deserves notice: It makes clear how salient and eerily prescient the author used to be, back before he was equating Obama with Hitler. Much in the same vein as The Hunger Games—and, of course, The Lord of the Flies long before it— Ender’s Game taps into the brutality and ruthlessness of which children are capable. In this speculative future, Earth is at war with the Formics, an alien insectoid race, and children have become the military’s best shot at victory. The fact that the complex computer games and zero-gravity exercises (realized through some impressively understated CGI) leave the kids increasingly desensitized doesn’t seem to cost their commanding officers (Harrison Ford and Viola Davis) any sleep. Ford’s Colonel Graff uncovers a potentially sociopathic Skywalker to wage an all-too-familiar “war to prevent all future wars” in loner Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield). Continuing to display a remarkable aptitude for portraying isolated characters, the otherworldly Butterfield is just as compelling here as he was in Hugo. Hood keeps a firm handle on the film’s somber tone, ensuring we’re never once at ease with the sadistic environment. But while there’s no shortage of tension, there is a lack of dramatic escalation, and Ender’s Game doesn’t naturally build to its epic climax so much as it smash-cuts to it. To its credit, though, the film never flinches as it poses the harrowing question: What if an outsider finally finds his calling only to discover that it’s genocide? It’s that rarest of cinematic offerings: a young adult film that refuses to be easily dismissed. PG-13. CURTIS WOLOSCHUK. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Division, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Roseway, Sandy.

Enough Said

A- Watching Nicole Holofcener’s

Enough Said is a bit like watching any romantic comedy—provided you’re hung over and bleary-eyed and vulnerable, a little raw from the weight of life. In Enough Said, you’re going to get a huge sitcom-caliber calamity: Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ new best friend (Catherine Keener) turns out to be the embittered ex-wife of her new lover (James Gandolfini). The film is a rare thing: a portrait of middle-aged romance that feels genuine in its baby steps and lurches, the hesitations of people out of practice. Louis-Dreyfus’ comedy is rooted in missed opportunity and sudden regret, Keener’s often in the brittle judgment of the alpha female. Gandolfini’s? Apparently it

JOHAN PERSSON

C Gru, the lead character of Despicable Me 2, is the sort of megalomaniacal evildoer bound to risk everything on grandiose schemes destined to fail spectacularly. Steve Carell, fittingly, blesses him with richly textured, endlessly inventive vocal embellishments, cultivating every last nuance of long suffering from the character. This sequel to 2010’s blockbuster adds Kristen Wiig as high-spirited love interest and expands the animated repertoire to encompass 3-D thrills, but the story itself, which shoehorns Gru into the service of a global super-spy league for the flimsiest of reasons, arrives packed with exposition and shorn of coherency while allowing precisely no opportunities for expression of the dastardly hubris that named the franchise. PG. JAY HORTON. Eastport,

Movies on TV.

great expectations 46

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA PICTURES

MOVIES

muscle shoals comes from love. In his final role, he shows a tenderness and good-natured humor that imbues the film with an extra layer of pathos: that we will not know him this way again. One of his last lines in the film is “I’ve missed you.” Well, I’ll miss him, too. PG-13. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Hollywood Theatre, Fox Tower.

Escape Plan

C+ Escape Plan is the sort of film they don’t make anymore. Every single element, from choice of fonts to riffdappled score to blithe racism, has been curated to ass-end-of-the-’80s specifications. The central conceit— prison security specialist Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) finds himself mysteriously shunted to a privately operated detention facility housing a hulking graybeard with a thick accent (Arnold Schwarzenegger)—isn’t especially ludicrous. No more or less suspension of disbelief is demanded than from the average popcorn flick, but the reliance on rightfully abandoned modes of storytelling proves torturous. Stallone and Schwarzenegger are in their comfort zone, to be sure. Even as the film plays out with all the verve and tension of a John Deere catalog, our heroes do their damnedest to distract. But these sorts of films, these immobile actioners, feel so cramped after a while, especially compared to the hyperkinetic restlessness of modern shoot-’em-ups. And yet. In the final, oddly rousing battle, when Schwarzenegger finally grabs a machine gun, the viewer feels momentary awe. Within the simplest possible staging, the filmmakers insert a closeup of his deadened gaze. It’s an old trick, equal parts Man With No Name and Dick Tracy, and, in the instant, timeless. R. JAY HORTON. Eastport, Clackamas, Division, Movies on TV.

Free Birds

B While we wouldn’t quite call Free Birds a good idea, there are so many children’s pics waiting to collide at the Christmas line of scrimmage that any cartoon set during November (even a mismatched pair of turkeys traveling through time to steer the first Thanksgiving away from poultry) seems, well, smart business. Helmed by Horton Hears a Who! vet Jimmy Hayward and voiced by an enviable troupe of A-listers, the resulting feature arrives with sweeping inoffensiveness and large personalities. Woody Harrelson’s grizzled selfsatire as a Turkey Liberation Front radical might actually comfort both sides of the vegan divide. If the film changes any Thanksgiving menus, credit less the mixed moral lesson than the impossibly unappetizing depictions: These turkeys resemble golfclub cozies in pastel-colored suede jackets. And, if we must watch another iteration of an adorably feckless fellow wooing an officious overachiever, Owen Wilson and Amy Poehler know the roles pretty well. For a production so strictly manufactured, there’s an addled comedic sensibility given blessedly free range. Children won’t understand any of the jokes, of course,

but this isn’t really a kid’s movie. The nimble tiptoe past racially sensitive issues and the Brueghelian tint of the computer animation tend toward the dully ominous, and the only interesting character development plays strictly for adults. Neither kids nor parents will be happy, exactly, but that’s not the point of Thanksgiving. We gather together, ignore the dry white meat, and load up on the stuffing. PG. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Division, Movies on TV, Sandy.

Gravity

A- Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity begins

with a staggeringly brilliant and mesmerizingly staged 17-minute single take, which manages to encapsulate every single feeling the rest of the film will instill in its viewers: tranquility, warmth, peace, trepidation, nervousness, endearment, wonder and, most of all, fear. With Gravity, Cuarón and his screenwriter son, Jonas, take on the most primal fear possible, that of being lost in an abyss of nothingness. The film features only two actors, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Their simple space-station repair mission turns into a nightmare as debris from a destroyed satellite tears their shuttle to shreds and they’re left hopelessly adrift with a dwindling supply of oxygen. It is perhaps the most stressful experience to be had in a movie theater this year, and as such it’s nearly perfect. Bullock exudes terror and strength in her difficult role. Clooney, here playing a supporting piece of space debris, becomes the film’s sense of calm and functions as much-needed comic relief. It’s impossible to even consider relaxing as the characters drift from one scrape with death to the next over the course of 90 unrelenting minutes. But it’s in the brief lulls that Cuarón manages his most amazing feats, allowing us to stop and stare in awe at the beauty of the images onscreen. The film is as haunting and beautiful as it is brilliant. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Division, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sandy.

Great Expectations

The umpteenth adaptation of Dickens’ classic novel. This one has Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham. PG-13. Living Room Theaters.

How I Live Now

B- Isn’t the apocalypse over by now? It was so last year. But Britain is perhaps a little behind, and so we have the World War III tale How I Live Now, starring the talented Irish-NYC actress Saoirse Ronan (Hanna, The Lovely Bones). Ronan plays a petulant American girl who first learns to love from an English hill-boy who can talk to animals, then how to live when the world almost ends as a result of disconcertingly vague terrorist attacks. The film is hurried and tonally confused through most of its first half; the second act’s post-apocalyptic survival show, however, is arrestingly elegiac, a slow and meandering voyage whose

NOV. 13-19

Husbands and Wives

[THREE DAYS ONLY, REVIVAL] Man, that Woody Allen and that Mia Farrow sure do have great chemistry together. They should make another movie just like 1992’s Husbands and Wives…oh, wait. R. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 and 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 3 pm Sunday, Nov. 15-17.

In a World

B+ Lake Bell is on a crusade against

“sexy baby voice.” For those unfamiliar with this obnoxious tic, imagine if Betty Boop incorporated some of Ke$ha’s vocal fry—that low, guttural vibration—and ended every sentence as if it were a question. That’s Bell’s pet peeve, and she lampoons it to pitch-perfect effect in In a World…, which she wrote, directed, produced and stars in. But as funny as that sendup is, it’s still far from the best thing in the film, which takes us into the idiosyncratic and competitive realm of voice-over artists. Bell plays Carol, an aspiring voice-over artist with a bear of a father (Frank Melamed) who’s big in the biz. But rather than help Carol get her foot in the door, he’s as vain and sexist as the rest of his industry. But Carol, a graceless but tenacious 30-year-old who favors overalls and babydoll dresses, ends up vying for voice-over work on the trailers for an action “quadrilogy,” a hilarious Hunger Games-style spoof. The movie is overstuffed, but its unassuming tone, its generosity of spirit, and Bell’s skillful performance redeem the uneven pacing and bumpy storytelling. But most of all, In a World… succeeds for the way it calls bullshit on Hollywood’s gender dynamics and the dreck that passes for feminist cinema. R. REBECCA JACOBSON. Living Room Theaters.

tures narration by Morgan Freeman. Hollywood Theatre. 2 pm Saturday, Nov. 16.

Last Vegas

C- One can easily imagine the pitch that led to Last Vegas: “It’s The Hangover for the retired set!” John Turtletaub’s film thrusts four 60-something besties (Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline) into Sin City for a bachelor party/last hurrah in hopes hilarity will ensue. If that premise sounds familiar, so are the ensuing shenanigans: fanny packs, bikini contests, Viagra jokes, unearned nostalgia and shopworn musings on aging. Though intermittently funny and not entirely without their charms, Turteltaub’s halfhearted attempts to create a new Rat Pack mostly fall flat. So much screen time is devoted to defusing the longstanding tension between Douglas’ and De Niro’s characters— they liked the same girl; De Niro married her and Douglas didn’t show up at her funeral—that their would-be romp is ultimately something of a downer. Which would be fine if the film’s thoughts on friendship and mortality were especially poignant, but they’re as hackneyed as the jokes about boners, transvestites and 50 Cent, who at one point is mistaken for a member of the Jackson 5. PG-13. MICHAEL NORDINE. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Division, Fox Tower, Movies on TV, Sandy.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler

D Every time a character in The Butler goes on a trip, somebody oﬀers him a ham sandwich. Director Lee Daniels does much the same for the viewer—in every single scene.

It isn’t hard to see why Daniels wanted to tell this story, which is based (very) loosely on truth. It’s kind of irresistible: A black White House butler, Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), serves closely with every U.S. president during the civil rights era and lives to be invited back to the White House by Barack Obama. But the writer of The Paperboy isn’t known for subtlety, and he treats 50 years of U.S. history with as much depth as a Forrest Gump montage, although the politics here are triumphally progressive. A lot of the real fun is in the casting, which ranges from expected—Oprah Winfrey as Cecil’s earthy and soulful wife—to entirely ludicrous: a sniveling Robin Williams as Eisenhower, an outmatched Minka Kelly as Jackie Kennedy. The best joke in the movie is the casting of “Hanoi Jane” Fonda as Nancy Reagan. The ﬁlm’s full title is Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and the subject of the movie doesn’t matter, because Lee Daniels has decided that Lee Daniels is going to make you cry, and he’s going to hit you over the head until you do. PG-13. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Academy, Laurelhurst.

THIS RECYCLABLE BAG CAN BE YOURS FREE!

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones D+ Cassandra Clare’s bestselling series of young-adult novels, The Mortal Instruments, cribs liberally from Harry Potter in telling the story of a nonmagical girl who discovers she really is magical when forced into a world of demon-slayers, vampires, werewolves, curses and parental-abandonment issues. But the books are decidedly original compared to Harald Zwart’s adaptation of the ﬁrst novel, City of Bones, which steals elements of Potter and

CONT. on page 48

REVIEW CO U R T E SY O F PA N D O R A F I L M S

only purpose seems to be the discovery of what’s gone lost. The ﬁlm’s gauzy, shell-shocked mood means that consequences don’t really register even when children are shot in the head—which happens often enough. Ronan’s sadly trudging waif is our only real focus, and so we ﬂoat in the same post-concussive haze that she does. It is a pleasant drift: a feeling of fuzzy importance combined with a certain lack of oxygen, like doing nitrous when you’re 13 years old. R. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Living Room Theaters.

MOVIES

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa

B+ Entering theaters 11 years to the

day after the first Jackass release deliriously exceeded all expectations, Bad Grandpa has become the franchise’s fourth consecutive film to debut with top grosses, and nobody seems the least surprised that an ambling road movie with few stunts and relatively unknown leads bested Brad Pitt and George Clooney. As this narrative begins, Johnny Knoxville’s newly widowed, 86-yearold Irving Zisman is driving his grandson across the country to be dropped with his deadbeat dad. The farther they travel across America, the further Knoxville and talented child actor Jackson Nicoll press their man-on-the-street badinage toward creepiness. Nicoll’s unilateral decision to be adopted by friendly strangers probably wrings the most laughs, but Knoxville’s addled ferocity attains more intriguing dimensions. Throughout his travels, save for a bravura standoff with one loudmouth braggart, he accepts defeat in a bittersweet manner. Older but no wiser, and still obsessed with seizing the easy laugh with lunatic aplomb, Bad Grandpa isn’t quite art, and it’s not quite growing old gracefully. This, though, you may want to try at home. R. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Division, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sandy.

JFK: A President Betrayed

[ONE DAY ONLY] It’s the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which has meant a ﬂurry of ﬁlms about the 35th president. Parkland might have had Zac Efron, but Cory Taylor’s documentary fea-

FLUSH OF YOUTH: “The future is in small, exclusive places,” Bianca tells her brother. “The future,” he replies, “is only in artificial intelligence, computers, neural networks.” To the characters in Il Futuro, based on a Roberto Bolaño novella, the future is always unreachable, abstract to the point of meaninglessness. After a car accident kills both their parents, teenage Bianca and Tomas fall into the listless well of the eternal now—familiar to all lost children—and the film drifts patiently with them, moving from numb grief to crime caper to transient love. With the children alone, the house becomes a sty, the TV is rejiggered as a porn box, and they fall into cahoots with a pair of creepy gym rats who want to steal from a blind former Mr. Universe and ex-movie star (Rutger Hauer), using Bianca as both prostitute and spy. The film’s expressionistic cinematography and fetishistic wandering eye imbue everything with the chaotic significance of the teen years: Each moment and window and piano key seems to mean nothing and everything at the same time. But though little is ever redeemed or even completed onscreen, by its end the film makes life in the rubble still feel possible, maybe even beautiful. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. A-

SEE IT: Il Futuro opens Friday at the Clinton Street Theater.

STARTING TODAY AT THE PEARL DISTRICT WHOLE FOODS LOCATION 1210 NW COUCH ST.

While supplies last. Hurry! Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

MOVIES

nov. 13-19

throws in some Buffy, Blade II and Twilight for the hell of it. And so we have Clary (Lily Collins), whose quest to find her missing mother lands her in the middle of a centuries-old war between the forces of good and evil. That sounds plenty fun, especially considering the war involves crystal swords, electro-whips and flamethrowers. Yet fun is one thing Zwart forgot to steal from all of those superior works. Say what you will about 50 Shades of Grey, perhaps the most famous fan-fic of all. At least it knew how to titillate, and its whips weren’t even electric. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Edgefield, St. Johns.

The Motel Life

B- While it might be true that even

losers get lucky sometimes, such good fortune tends to be fleeting. That’s certainly the case with brothers Frank (Emile Hirsch) and Jerry Lee (Stephen Dorff), whose adolescent foray into rail-riding resulted in the latter losing a leg. Having since grown into fullblown fuckups, they hole up in Reno’s squalid motels, where dreams don’t so much die as fester. Fittingly, it takes a tragic bit of bad luck—a hit-andrun by Jerry Lee—to flush them from hiding and force them to confront their pasts. Real-life brothers Alan and Gabe Polsky’s adaptation of The Motel Life, a novel by Reno-born Portlander Willy Vlautin (who will attend the Nov. 9 screening and plans to hang around for drinks afterward), navigates an appealing range of visual techniques. Frank’s lurid fantasies, which a therapist would have a field day parsing, are depicted with debauched zeal by local animator Mike Smith, and one audacious tracking shot clearly shows Martin Scorsese’s influence. However, it’s the more stripped-down scenes that resonate strongest, including Frank’s realization that he’s not so much a legendary outlaw as fodder for a sad-ass country song. The Motel Life fulfills its modest ambitions, mining glimmers of muted beauty from these brothers’ otherwise bleak existences. R. CURTIS WOLOSCHUK. Hollywood Theatre.

Muscle Shoals

C+ To hear Bono talk, the Alabama

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

C- Given its M.O. of recycling Greek mythology, you’d think the fledgling Percy Jackson franchise would’ve guarded itself better against hubris. However, its opening installment (adapted from Rick Riordan’s youngadult fantasy novels) strolled onscreen in 2010, presuming itself the rightful heir to Harry Potter’s throne. Instead, it learned that it takes more than a serviceable premise to capture the public’s imagination. Returning duly humbled, considerably scaleddown and blandly directed by Thor Freudenthal, this second chapter hinges on a vague prophecy and a voyage to the astonishingly underpopulated Sea of Monsters. A mechanical bull seemingly ripped from Guillermo del Toro’s sketchbook and a cheeky Nathan Fillion cameo are highlights. However, such glimmers of life are snuffed out by leaden storytelling and insipid humor. PG. CURTIS WOLOSCHUK. Academy, Mt. Hood, Valley, Milwaukie.

A Place of Truth

C- [TWO NIGHTS ONLY] “Ambiguity”

is the name of Abigail Mott’s poem we see typed onscreen as she slowly sets up a table in front of a New York City Salvation Army on a chilly winter day. “Boggles the mind / I stand in its shore—,” she writes, hunt-and-pecking on her typewriter, huddled in a knit beanie and fingerless gloves. She wears red lipstick. As she writes her poems-by-donation for passersby, the scene is as unambiguously cute as they come, until Mott hands the poem over with an emotionless “There you go.” Portland documentarian Barrett Rudich’s A Place of Truth matches the high-mindedness of Mott’s poetry with plenty of wordless long takes, but it fails to humanize the poet herself. Mott, ever the wayfaring artist, comes off as self-righteous and not particu-

larly pleasant. After interviews with her former Kundalini yoga teacher, the uncle who found her broke in San Francisco, and an extremely fashion-forward friend, I had to check the credits to make sure this wasn’t Christopher Guest’s mockumentary take on hipsterdom. The epic music that cues each time a buyer reads Mott’s poems aloud, as well as interviewees’ tossing around of words like “masterpiece,” only dehumanizes Mott further. To Rudich’s credit, Mott does have both potential and determination, but she’s not the genius he thinks she is. MITCH LILLIE. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium: 7 pm Wednesday, Nov. 13. Hollywood Theatre: 4:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 17.

Planes

B+ The latest, ahem, vehicle from

a Disney factory evidently bereft of ideas yet borne aloft by an inexhaustible supply of good will, Planes doesn’t so much expand the mechanized universe of Pixar’s Cars as streamline the storytelling. This is a straightforward lark about a plucky crop-duster afraid of heights who manages to qualify for a round-the-world race. The global stereotypes lend themselves to humor at turns racist (the Mexican plane wears a wrestling mask), anti-racist (the gleaming, unaccented Mexican air force saves the American champ), and meta-racist (the Mexican plane harbors romantic stirrings for a sleek FrenchCanadian craft) while also enabling the studio’s trademark nuggets of scattershot whimsy. Buckle up, it’s gonna be a smooth ride. PG. JAY HORTON. Academy, Avalon, Kennedy School, Milwaukie.

Prisoners

B+ Like Clint Eastwood’s sadis-

tically bleak Mystic River, Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners presents its protagonists with an unimaginable horror: the abduction of their young daughters. As Pennsylvania patriarchs driven to the edge by the disappearance of their 7-year-olds, Hugh Jackman’s and Terrance Howard’s faces are mapped with anguish as their characters go to extreme measures to bring home their daughters. But unlike Mystic River, this year’s first high-profile awards contender wrings pulp out of the proceedings, something Eastwood was too busy torturing his characters to try. That’s not to say Prisoners is better than the overrated Mystic River, but it is far more watchable. After all, we want to watch our villains suffer, so most audiences will thrill at the idea of Jackman, shedding his Wolverine costume but not the menace, kidnapping and torturing a suspect (Paul Dano) in an effort to translate his pain into answers. Scenes between Jackman, Howard and the impressive Dano are wonder-

fully tense, but the film loses traction whenever Jake Gyllenhaal enters. As a hotshot detective, Gyllenhaal is perfectly effective, but it’s during his investigation that the mystery derails into total pulp. Still, Villeneuve, who exploded onto the scene with 2010’s devastating Incendies, shows endless potential in his U.S. debut. It may not have the endlessly pummeling effect of Mystic River or Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone, but in terms of childabduction thrillers, it’s engaging and gut-wrenching—without diving into an abyss of emotional torture in the name of entertainment. R. AP KRYZA. Academy, Laurelhurst, Valley.

Reel Eats: Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars

Breaking from its usual food-focused program, the monthly series presented by People’s Coop shows a documentary about American drone policy in Pakistan. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Monday, Nov. 18.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] An adulatory documentary about the reunion of the British rock band. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 17.

Thor: The Dark World

C Thor is Marvel’s most unidentifiable character, but his first solo cinematic outing worked because of how hilariously batshit it was. 2011’s Thor was part goofball sci-fi epic, part fishout-of-water comedy set in smalltown New Mexico, anchored by Chris Hemsworth’s charmingly boyish performance. Thor: The Dark World is the God of Thunder’s first post-Avengers romp, and it reverses the formula, transporting Thor’s scientist girlfriend (Natalie Portman) to his psychedelic space kingdom. It shows us a world of rainbow roads, elves with bazookas and giant rock monsters… only to make us long to be back in New Mexico. There’s some nonsense about dark elves and a forced teaming up with Thor’s a-hole brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston, great as always), but director Alan Taylor sucks all the fun out of the picture, creating a cornball drama that plays a lot like one of his episodes of Game of Thrones, minus the incest but with spaceships. The film finds some footing in its gonzo finale, in which London is laid to waste, Thor takes the subway and the comedic elements are suddenly resurrected. But even destroying a city can’t make up for the self-serious dullness that came before. It’s as if the film is at once trying too hard and holding back. It’s about as interesting as, well, a bag of hammers. And not the cosmic kind. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Moreland, Oak Grove,

COURTESY OF XSTREAM PICTURES

city of Muscle Shoals is a holy place conducive to magic and alchemy. Granted, the Irishman could probably wax equally rhapsodic about a digestive cookie. So, it’s a good thing the riverside city has the hymns to back up his assertion. Classics like Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” were recorded within FAME Studios’ unassuming walls, produced by Rick Hall and propelled by the Swampers, a powerhouse backing band with all the aura of farmhands. But first-time director Greg Camalier

rarely delves into the actual recording of these staples. Frequently, we glimpse keyboardist Spooner Oldham coaxing out a few skeletal chords before the finished track bursts forth fully formed. While this practice ensures that such hallowed tunes as the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” are never reduced to multiple takes and overdubs, it’s too cursory of an approach. Camalier gives short shrift to both Hall’s tragic backstory and his falling out with the Swampers, instead trotting out more effusive talking heads. (You’ll be hard-pressed to recall seeing Keith Richards this [re]animated.) And yet, the film possesses considerable persuasive power despite its modest substance and simple construction, making it very much like the timeless songs it showcases. PG. CURTIS WOLOSCHUK. Living Room Theaters, Hollywood Theatre.

a touch of sin 48

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

Division, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sandy, St. Johns.

A Touch of Sin

C With A Touch of Sin, Zhangke Jia

attempts to give contemporary China the Amores Perros treatment, telling four short stories about the country’s sociopolitical structure and the way it drives citizens to unthinkable violence. From the isolated coal mines to the bustling brothels, Jia paints a sweeping portrait of the consequences of corruption and the lengths to which people will go for a shred of happiness or comfort. But, following a gut-punch opening sequence depicting a frustrated employee’s attempts to have his complaints heard at any cost, Jia’s brushstrokes prove to be the broadest imaginable. At once extremely rushed and inexplicably dull, each scenario plods along until the inevitable burst of horrific violence, which the director uses as punctuation to statements that illuminate nothing about the moral state of the country. Instead, we’re trained to wait patiently until the next person gets his head splattered or throat gnashed open. There’s a great film lurking beneath A Touch of Sin, one that both takes a snapshot of the difficulties of Chinese life and serves as a cautionary tale against corruption and depravity. But that film’s buried under a pile of one-dimensional characters riddled with buckshot. AP KRYZA. Cinema 21.

We’re the Millers

B- Up until now, I only tolerated Jennifer Aniston. She’s the vanilla ice cream of the cinematic world. But her performance as a caustic stripper in We’re the Millers is a sort of remedy for all those years of goodgirl typecasting ). Is the novelty of a squeaky-clean Aniston working the pole yet another cheap Hollywood ploy to sell movie tickets? Absolutely. But it turns out she has the range to pull it off with surprising depth and feeling. Admittedly, her performance is tangled up in a very silly premise, in which she essentially plays house with a drug dealer (Jason Sudeikis), a runaway (Emma Roberts) and a freckle-plagued virgin (Will Poulter) as a front for smuggling an RV full of weed across the Mexican border. But the characters are engaging enough, and the situational comedy generally entertaining enough, to make for some decent brain candy. And when it’s less than decent, Aniston’s rather spectacular strip tease in an auto body shop is there to distract you. R. EMILY JENSEN. Avalon, Laurelhurst.

The World’s End

B+ Hyperkinetic director Edgar

Wright’s previous collaborations with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost—Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz—share the same DNA, and not just in the surface-value genre-mashing that makes the films both disarmingly hysterical and unexpectedly touching. Beneath the blood-soaked zombie apocalypse, or among the spent bullet casings of a buddy-cop shootout, the team explores the fears of men who were once the boys weaned on these very genres: abandonment, uncertainty of the future, the inability to grow up, and, chiefly, the increasing inability to deal with hangovers. It’s no surprise, then, that Wright, Pegg and Frost have rounded out what is unofficially named the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy with The World’s End, a film that dives deep into the fractured friendship of a group of small-town pals drawn back home to re-attempt the Golden Mile, a 12-stop pub crawl that bested them two decades before. It’s kind of like The Big Chill, but without the heavyhandedness. And with a legion of murderous, body-snatching robots disguised as the townfolk and bent on taking over the universe. Yet, despite its many strengths, The World’s End remains the weakest film of the trilogy. It’s the most straightforward and accessible of the three, but it’s also the most morose. It’s a strange approach for a movie about a robot invasion, but a perfect way to cap such a wonderful series: As soon as the credits roll, fans have to face the fact that this tremendous series is over. R. AP KRYZA. Academy, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst.

MOVIES KMB

ap film studies

HUMPIN’ IT HOW TO MAKE PORN IN PORTLAND. BY ap k rYz a

apkryza@wweek.com

This weekend, The Portland Mercury hosts another round of Hump, the amateur porn festival that makes you pray you won’t see your boss’ schlong. We wanted to make a film ourselves but didn’t want to shame everybody else with our washboard abs, immaculate genitalia and tantric performances that would make Sting bust his nut early. Instead, we offer these script treatments that you can use at next year’s festival—but only if you want to win. Cinema 21. Thursday-Sunday, Nov. 14-17. Script 1: 8-Mile A massive cave, glowing neon pink. LILY and THAD peer past the fleshy stalagmites. THAD: How did we get here? LILY: I don’t know, baby. Last thing I remember, we were in line for the Pink Martini concert. Suddenly, the neon-pink lights go dark, and from the shadows emerge DAVE NAVARRO and THOMAS LAUDERDALE. DAVE NAVARRO: Who dares enter Storm Large’s vagina? THAD and LILY sprint away. THOMAS LAUDERDALE ( bellowing): Foolish humans! You’ll never escape! THAD collides with a stalagmite. The ground begins to quake as a torrential rain begins to fall. END. Script 2: Hot Sausage A rain-soaked Alberta Street co-op. A Subaru Outback skids to a halt. STARMICHAEL exits the car with a pizza box, his small biceps glistening in the rain. He approaches the co-op and knocks. The door opens to reveal RHIANNON, draped in a handcrocheted robe. RHIANNON: I’m confused. I didn’t order a pizza. STARMICHAEL: Oh? Well, somebody’s gotta eat this thing. I’d love to give you this hot, gooey pie. RHIANNON: Mmmmm. Tell me what it has on it. STARMICHAEL: Fennel… RHIANNON: So spicy. Tell me more. STARMICHAEL: Gluten-free crust.

RHIANNON runs her hand through her short, mousy hair. STARMICHAEL (slowly): Kale... RHIANNON (whispering): Oooooh…I love kale. I used to date a guy named Kale. He had such a big... STARMICHAEL: Sausage… RHIANNON (abruptly): Excuse me? STARMICHAEL: Hot…big…sausage. Bursting with hot, juicy flavor. RHIANNON (angrily): Meat is murder, you fucking pig. RHIANNON hastily readjusts her robe, causing several threads to unloose. She slams the door. STARMICHAEL slowly walks back out into the rain. He dumps the pizza into the compost. END. Script 3: The Cogen Report VOICE-OVER: The following is an outline of the investigated allegations and a brief summary of the investigational findings as they related to criminal conduct, the focus of this investigation. These findings are based on the review of subpoenaed documents, public records, interviews, and other relevant information…. also showing: 1985’s low-key Fool for Love may not be Robert Altman’s best film. But it does star a young Kim Basinger as a woman trying to escape a former life, plus a lot of talk in a hotel room. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Wednesday, Nov. 13. Sometimes, it takes a dickhead to catch a dickhead. So in 2009’s The Yes Men Fix the World, filmmakers Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno pose as industrious profiteers in order to catch people exploiting victims of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. It’s as funny as it is infuriating. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 14. Hump might have some fellatio, but 1976’s All the President’s Men has Hal Holbrook deep-throating the shit out of the Nixon administration. It’s also the greatest film about newspaper journalism ever made. Academy Theater. Nov. 15-21. What’s more surprising: That Stephen King wrote the novella that became the moving prison drama The Shawshank Redemption? Or that director Frank Darabont went on to develop the The Walking Dead before getting kicked off so the show could focus more on people kicking it at a goddamn farm? Laurelhurst Theater. Nov. 15-21. He’s a maniac. And he’s a cop. But that’s not all Maniac Cop is: He’s also undead. And in Part 2, Officer Murderpants teams up with a serial killer for a bit of the old ultraviolence. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 15-16. Without Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, there would be no Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. I cannot stress how important that makes the film. 5th Avenue Cinema. 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 16.

Willamette Week’s THE FUNNIEST 5 A free showcase of Portland’s top standup comics, as chosen by their peers. SUNDAY, NOV. 24 7-9 pm at the Alhambra Theatre, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Free! Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

2013

GIVE! GUIDE

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

MOVIES

NOV. 15-21

C O U R T E S Y O F C A S T L E R O C K E N T E R TA I N M E N T

NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-221-1156 CITY BABY Fri 07:00

St. Johns Theater

Living Room Theaters THIS IS THE PART I REALLY LIKE: The Shawshank Redemption plays Nov. 15-21 at the Laurelhurst Theater.

Regal Lloyd Center 10 & IMAX

1510 NE Multnomah St., 800326-3264 THOR: THE DARK WORLD -- AN IMAX 3D EXPERIENCE Fri-Sat-Sun 01:10, 04:00, 06:50, 09:40 THOR: THE DARK WORLD Fri-Sat-Sun 01:40, 03:30, 04:30, 06:20, 07:20, 10:10 THOR: THE DARK WORLD 3D Fri-Sat-Sun 12:10, 12:40, 03:00, 05:50, 08:40, 09:10 12 YEARS A SLAVE Fri-Sat-Sun 12:05, 03:20, 06:30, 09:45 GRAVITY 3D Fri-SatSun 12:20, 02:40, 05:05, 06:40, 07:30, 09:15, 10:00 GRAVITY Fri-Sat-Sun 12:55, 03:40 ENDER’S GAME Fri-Sat-Sun 12:30, 03:50, 07:00, 10:05 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Fri-Sat-Sun 12:00, 03:05, 06:10, 09:25 JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA Fri-SatSun 01:20, 04:40, 07:10, 09:55 RUSH CLOCKWORK ANGELS TOUR Mon 07:00 THE ROYAL BALLET’S ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND Tue 07:00

Avalon Theatre & Wunderland

3451 SE Belmont St., 503-238-1617 INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 03:10, 07:15 ELYSIUM FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:05, 09:10 PLANES Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:35, 03:25, 05:15 WE’RE THE MILLERS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 05:10, 09:15 THE SMURFS 2 Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:10

Cinema 21

616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515 A TOUCH OF SIN Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:15, 07:00, 09:30

Clinton Street Theater

2522 SE Clinton St., 503-238-8899 IL FUTURO Fri-Sat-Sun 04:30, 09:00 DOUBLE AGENCY Fri 08:00 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Sat 12:00 DIE FLEDERMAUS Sun 01:00 COLD TURKEY Tue 07:00 PORTLAND STEW Wed 06:00 GREY AREA Wed 07:00

Laurelhurst Theatre & Pub 2735 E Burnside St., 503-232-5511 THE WAY, WAY BACK FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:45 THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:00 BLUE JASMINE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:00

ELYSIUM Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 09:10 RUSH Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:15 THE WORLD’S END Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:45 PRISONERS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:30 WE’RE THE MILLERS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:35 LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER Sat-Sun 01:00

Moreland Theatre

6712 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503236-5257 THOR: THE DARK WORLD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:30, 08:00

Roseway Theatre

7229 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-282-2898 ENDER’S GAME Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:30, 04:45, 08:00

St. Johns Cinemas

8704 N Lombard St., 503-286-1768 THOR: THE DARK WORLD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 05:00, 07:30, 09:55 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:30, 08:15

CineMagic Theatre

2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-7919 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:30, 08:15

Century 16 Eastport Plaza

4040 SE 82nd Ave., 800-326-3264-952 DESPICABLE ME 2 FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:55, 04:25, 06:55, 09:40 ESCAPE PLAN FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:50, 04:45, 07:35, 10:25 CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 04:55 CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 02:25 GRAVITY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:35, 09:00 GRAVITY 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:05, 02:45, 04:00, 05:10, 06:35, 07:40, 10:05 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 03:50, 07:05, 10:10 THE BEST MAN HOLIDAY FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:15, 04:15, 07:15, 10:15 CARRIE Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 07:20, 09:55 JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:35, 01:45, 03:00, 04:10, 05:25, 06:45, 08:00, 09:15, 10:30 ENDER’S GAME Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:25, 01:50, 03:15, 04:40, 06:05, 07:25, 08:55, 10:20 LAST VEGAS Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 01:55, 04:30, 07:10, 10:00 FREE BIRDS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed

12:15, 05:15, 07:45 FREE BIRDS 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 02:45, 10:15 THOR: THE DARK WORLD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 03:30, 06:30, 09:30 THOR: THE DARK WORLD 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 01:30, 02:30, 04:30, 05:30, 07:30, 08:30, 10:30

Edgeﬁeld Powerstation Theater

2126 SW Halsey St., 503-249-7474-2 THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 06:00 ELYSIUM Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:00

Kennedy School Theater

5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-249-7474-4 PLANES Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 05:30 ELYSIUM Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:40 THE WORLD’S END Fri-Sat-Tue-Wed 02:30

5th Avenue Cinema

510 SW Hall St., 503-725-3551 HUSBANDS AND WIVES Fri-Sat-Sun 03:00 THE SEVENTH SEAL Sat 08:00

Hollywood Theatre

4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-281-4215 MUSCLE SHOALS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:45, 09:00 ENOUGH SAID Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:15 THE MOTEL LIFE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:15 THE CASE STUDY: DUTCH MEDIA ART Fri 07:00 MANIAC COP 2 Fri-Sat 09:30 JFK: A PRESIDENT BETRAYED Sat-Sun 02:00 SOUND & VISION Sat 08:00 THE STONE ROSES: MADE OF STONE Sun 07:30 ANDY MILLIGAN DOUBLE FEATURE Tue 07:30

Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10

846 SW Park Ave., 800-326-3264 KILL YOUR DARLINGS FriSat-Sun 11:30, 01:50, 04:40, 07:10, 09:45 DALLAS BUYERS CLUB Fri-Sat-Sun 12:30, 01:30, 03:30, 04:30, 06:30, 07:20, 09:20, 10:10 12 YEARS A SLAVE Fri-SatSun 12:00, 01:00, 03:00, 04:00, 06:00, 07:00, 09:00, 10:00 ABOUT TIME Fri-Sat-Sun 11:30, 02:15, 04:45, 06:50, 09:40 LAST VEGAS Fri-Sat-Sun 11:50, 02:20, 07:30, 09:50 ALL IS LOST Fri-Sat-Sun 11:45, 02:10, 04:15, 06:40, 09:10 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Fri-Sat-Sun 12:15, 03:15, 06:15, 09:15 ENOUGH SAID Fri-Sat-Sun 11:40, 05:00, 07:15, 09:30 JFK Sun-Wed 02:00, 07:00

341 SW 10th Ave., 971-222-2010 20 FEET FROM STARDOM Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 03:00, 09:00 DON JON Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:30, 02:40, 04:50, 07:00, 09:20 GREAT EXPECTATIONS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:00, 03:50, 06:30, 09:10 HOW I LIVE NOW Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:40, 05:30 IN A WORLD... Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 03:10, 05:10, 07:45, 09:40 MUSCLE SHOALS Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 12:20, 02:00, 04:20, 07:15, 09:30 THE COUNSELOR Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:55, 02:20, 05:00, 06:45, 07:30, 09:50

STREET PG. 21

8203 N Ivanhoe St., 503-249-7474-6 THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES Fri-Sun-Tue-Wed 01:00, 06:00 ELYSIUM Fri-Tue-Wed 09:00 FOOTBALL Sat 01:00, 06:30 THE WALKING DEAD Sun 06:00, 08:00 MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL Mon 05:40

Century Clackamas Town Center and XD

12000 SE 82nd Ave., 800-326-3264-996 ESCAPE PLAN Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:15, 07:50 CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 11:25, 04:30, 09:35 CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 3D FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:00, 07:05 GRAVITY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:10, 09:20 GRAVITY 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 01:40, 03:00, 04:15, 05:30, 06:45, 08:00, 10:25 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:40, 03:50, 07:00, 10:10 THE BEST MAN HOLIDAY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 10:55, 01:50, 04:45, 07:40, 10:35 ABOUT TIME FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 10:50, 01:45, 04:40, 07:35, 10:30 CARRIE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:40, 05:10, 10:40 ALL IS LOST Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:20, 02:05, 04:50, 07:30, 10:10 JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:05, 12:30, 01:35, 02:55, 04:05, 05:25, 06:40, 07:55, 09:10, 10:25 ENDER’S GAME Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:10, 12:35, 02:00, 03:25, 04:50, 06:15, 07:40, 09:05, 10:30 12 YEARS A SLAVE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:45, 03:55, 07:15, 10:20 LAST VEGAS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:15, 01:55, 04:35, 07:20, 10:00 FREE BIRDS Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 11:00, 01:30, 04:00, 06:30, 09:00 FREE BIRDS 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 11:35 THOR: THE DARK WORLD Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 10:50, 12:15, 01:45, 04:45, 07:45, 09:15, 10:40 THOR: THE DARK WORLD 3D Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:30, 02:30, 03:15, 05:30, 06:15, 08:30 UFC 167: ST-PIERRE VS. HENDRICKS Sat 07:00 JFK Sun-Wed 02:00, 07:00 RUSH CLOCKWORK ANGELS TOUR Mon 07:00 SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, NOV. 15-21, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 13, 2013 wweek.com

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Week of November 14

ARIES (March 21-April 19): There’s something resembling a big red snake slithering around in your mind these days. I don’t mean that literally, of course. I’m talking about a big red imaginary snake. But it’s still quite potent. While it’s not poisonous, neither is it a pure embodiment of sweetness and light. Whether it ends up having a disorienting or benevolent influence on your life all depends on how you handle your relationship with it. I suggest you treat it with respect but also let it know that you’re the boss. Give it guidelines and a clear mandate so that it serves your noble ambitions and not your chaotic desires. If you do that, your big red snake will heal and uplift you. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In my astrological opinion, almost nothing can keep you from getting the love you need in the coming days. Here’s the only potential problem: You might have a mistaken or incomplete understanding about the love you need, and that could interfere with you recognizing and welcoming the real thing. So here’s my prescription: Keep an open mind about the true nature of the love that you actually need most, and stay alert for the perhaps unexpected ways it might make itself available. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind,” asserts novelist Chuck Palahniuk. Your assignment, Gemini, is to work your ass off to fall out of love with your pain. As if you were talking to a child, explain to your subconscious mind that the suffering it has gotten so accustomed to has outlived its usefulness. Tell your deep self that you no longer want the ancient ache to be a cornerstone of your identity. To aid the banishment, I recommend that you conduct a ritual of severing. Tie one side of a ribbon to a symbol of your pain and tie the other side around your waist. Then cut the ribbon in half and bury the symbol in the dirt. CANCER (June 21-July 22): “You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again,” said painter Joan Miró. “You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life,” he added. The coming days are likely to bring you none of the former kind of experiences and several of the latter, Cancerian. It’s a numinous time in your long-term cycle: a phase when you’re likely to encounter beauty that enchants you and mysteries that titillate your sense of wonder for a long time. In other words, the eternal is coming to visit you in very concrete ways. How do you like your epiphanies? Hot and wild? Cool and soaring? Comical and lyrical? Hot and soaring and comical and wild and cool and lyrical? LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): There’s a new genre of erotic literature: dinosaur porn. E-books like In the Velociraptor’s Nest and Ravished by the Triceratops tell tall tales about encounters between people and prehistoric reptiles. I don’t recommend you read this stuff, though. While I do believe that now is a good time to add new twists to your sexual repertoire and explore the frontiers of pleasure, I think you should remain rooted in the real world, even in your fantasy life. It’s also important to be safe as you experiment. You really don’t want to explore the frontiers of pleasure with cold-blooded beasts. Either travel alone or else round up a warm-blooded compassion specialist who has a few skills in the arts of intimacy. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The saxifrage is a small plant with white flowers. It grows best in subarctic regions and cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The word “saxifrage” is derived from the Latin word saxifraga, whose literal meaning is “stone-breaker.” Indeed, the plant does often appear in the clefts of stones and boulders. In his poem “A Sort of a Song,” William Carlos Williams celebrates its strength: “Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.” I nominate this darling little dynamo to be your metaphorical power object of the week, Virgo. May it inspire you to crack through blocks and barriers with subtle force. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You’re not being swept along in a flood of meaningless distractions and irrelevant information and trivial wishes, right? I’m hoping that you have a sixth sense about which few stimuli are

useful and meaningful to you, and which thousands of stimuli are not. But if you are experiencing a bit of trouble staying well-grounded in the midst of the frenzied babble, now would be a good time to take strenuous action. The universe will conspire to help you become extra stable and secure if you resolve to eliminate as much nonsense from your life as you can. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Sweetness is good. Sweetness is desirable. To be healthy, you need to give and receive sweetness on a regular basis. But you can’t flourish on sweetness alone. In fact, too much of it may be oppressive or numbing. I’m speaking both literally and metaphorically: To be balanced you need all of the other tastes, including saltiness, sourness, bitterness, and savoriness. From what I understand, you are headed into a phase when you’ll thrive on more bitterness and savoriness than usual. To get an idea of what I mean, meditate on what the emotional equivalents might be for bitter tastes like coffee, beer, and olives, and for savory tastes like mushrooms, cheese, spinach, and green tea. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): When you procrastinate, you avoid doing an important task. Instead, you goof off, doing something fun or simply puttering around wasting time. But what if there were a higher form of procrastination? What if you could avoid an important task by doing other tasks that were somewhat less important but still quite valuable? Here’s what that might look like for you right now: You could postpone your search for the key to everything by throwing yourself into a project that will give you the key to one small part of everything. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In his utopian novel Looking Backward, American author Edward Bellamy wrote a passage that I suspect applies to you right now: “It is under what may be called unnatural, in the sense of extraordinary, circumstances that people behave most naturally, for the reason that such circumstances banish artificiality.” Think of the relief and release that await you, Capricorn: an end to pretending, a dissolution of deception, the fall of fakery. As you weave you way through extraordinary circumstances, you will be moved to act with brave authenticity. Take full advantage. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “I have your back” is an American expression that could also be rendered as “I’m right behind you, ready to help and defend you” or “I’m ready to support you whenever you’ve got a problem.” Is there anyone in the world who feels that way about you? If not, now would be an excellent time to work on getting such an ally. Cosmic conditions are ripe for bringing greater levels of assistance and collaboration into your life. And if you already do have confederates of that caliber, I suggest you take this opportunity to deepen your symbiotic connection even further. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Over a hundred countries around the world celebrate a holiday called Independence Day, memorializing a time when they broke away from another nation and formed a separate state. I encourage you to create your own personal version of this festival. It could commemorate a breakthrough moment in the past when you escaped an oppressive situation, a turning point when you achieved a higher level of autonomy, or a taboo-busting transition when you started expressing your own thoughts and making your own decisions with more authority. By the way, a fresh opportunity to take this kind of action is available to you. Any day now might be a good time to declare a new Independence Day.

Homework At what moment in your life were you closest to being perfectly content? Recreate the conditions that prevailed then. Testify at Freewillastrology.com.

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503-445-2757 • mplambeck@wweek.com

JONESIN’ by Matt Jones

Across 1 Scraps 8 Annoy 11 Greek letters 14 Perfect example 15 Autumnal chill 16 Bambi’s aunt 17 Keep a distance 20 Gets under

control 21 Dispensable candy 22 Off kilter 23 ___ out a living 24 “Pet” that’s really a plant 26 Not one’s best effort, in a sports

CHATLINES

33 Schoolboy 34 Server of Duff Beer 35 “Watership Down” director Martin 38 Director Gus Van ___ 39 Atlanta health agcy. 42 Malt liquor amount 44 Antipoverty agcy. created by LBJ (hidden in SHOE ORGANIZER) 45 1994 Nobel Peace Prize sharer 46 No voters 47 “Alice’s Restaurant” singer Guthrie 48 “Change the World” singer Clapton 49 Keebler cookie maker 50 Airport runway 51 The right way (for things) 55 Carly ___ Jepsen 56 ___ center 57 Kindle, for one 58 Avg. level 59 Demand 60 Bum out

Down 1 Guinea pigs 2 Passages for drawing smoke 3 Kind of cat or twins 4 Eye problems 5 Bathrooms, for Brits 6 Big bird 7 “Go” preceder 8 Unpleasant way to live 9 Cracker brand 10 Speed meas. in Europe 11 Outgrowth of punk rock 12 Without weapons 13 Agree 18 Drug in a den 19 Bird on a coin 24 Monsieur de Bergerac 25 Broke new ground 26 Artists’ headwear 28 One of Henry VIII’s wives 29 Tea accompaniments 34 “I Try” singer Gray 35 Greets with lots of laughter 36 Circled the sun

37 1991 Wimbledon champ Michael 38 Total mess 39 Act like rust 40 “Coppelia” composer 41 Barrel makers 42 Director of “The Grifters” 43 Open an achievement, e.g. 47 Fragrant oil 49 They’re looking for you? 50 “Shake well,” e.g. 52 Time 53 Diploma alternative 54 Charlemagne’s domain: abbr. last week’s answers

©2013 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JONZ649.

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metaphor 27 Hi-___ monitor 28 With just us, not anyone else 30 Compass dir. 31 Utah city 32 Rocky Balboa opponent Apollo ___

You Had to Be There--and there you is.

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