THE DIVISION STREET BOUGIE TACO TRAIL. P. 25 WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
WE MADE L.A.’S HOT NEW CBD COCKTAILS. P. 50
JESUS COMES BACK TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS. P. 10
A HIT MAN CAME TO KILL SUSAN KUHNHAUSEN. TEN YEARS LATER, SHE TELLS HER STORY. PAGE 12
She Survived. WWEEK.COM
VOL 42/42 8. 17. 2016
He Didn’t. BY BETH SLOVIC
2
Willamette Week Date, 2012 wweek.com
cait PearSon
FINDINGS
PAgE 25
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 42, ISSUE 42.
We give our tax dollars to the Portland Parks Bureau and suppress The Simpsons. 4
People responding to this newspaper’s classified ads may send a hit man to kill you. 12
If you want a cheap apartment, look for one built in the ’70s. 7
In 2006, an aspiring comic shop owner saw no one in Portland had
There are some credible allegations suggesting a connection between the city closing nightclubs and those clubs being owned by black people. 9
and figured opening a new spot would be a “no brainer.” 45
A Christian group operating in Portland schools won’t disclose which schools so people can’t form “Satanist clubs” in reaction. 10
ON THE COVER:
a good Fantagraphics collection
Some people sincerely believe the internet is a manifestation of the Antichrist. 46 Some people don’t believe Little Nicky is among Adam Sandler’s finest works. 49
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Photo courtesy of Susan Kuhnhausen.
old Portland is still dead. it’s saying its goodbyes and letters are pouring in as people realize it’s gone.
STAFF Editor & Publisher Mark Zusman EditoriAl News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Beth Slovic Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Maya McOmie Stage & Screen Editor Enid Spitz Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage Music Editor Matthew Singer Web Editor Sophia June Books Zach Middleton
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letting go of the R WORD
MULTNOMAH EARLY CHILDHOOD PEER PROGRAM Schools in David Douglas, PPS, Reynolds, Centennial, Parkrose, and Gresham Preschool Sessions Monday-Thursday AM or PM 2 hours and 45 minutes / day Only $32 per month Free and Reduced Tuition to families who qualify
Q.
How come Portland— home of Simpsons creator Matt Groening—doesn’t have any Simpsonsrelated civic art? I was just in Santa Rosa, Calif., home of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, and they’ve got Charlie Brown stuff everywhere. —Chuck D
Call 503-261-5535 For Information and Registration 4
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
feds drop teen’s pot case
I lost my sister in law yesterday. She was 56 and Nice to see the little guy win for a change had Down syndrome [“The R Word,” WW, Aug. [“Unshakable,” WW, Aug. 10, 2016]. Good for this 10, 2016]. When I was a teen, I was the kid at the kid to fight for what he believed in and not take fair that would point and laugh at the “retards.” some plea. Trying to imagine what sort of convoThen, I married into a family that had one of these luted agenda that [prosecutor] had that he would persons as a member. Suddenly, a new think that’s a good use of taxpayer world opened to me. My new SIL simdollars. —“Gigantipithecus” ply adored me; next to Hulk Hogan, I was her “hero.” She loved it when she I love that Devontre Thomas wants came to stay overnight. We always to be a different kind of crazy that played a game the next morning for changes the craziness. Me too. I hope breakfast: I would ask, “What do you this unfortunate waste of court and want to for breakfast?” “Um, what do law enforcement resources will be a you think?” she would answer. “You learning opportunity on how to prevent tell me. You’re going to be the one anything like this from happening again eating it.” “OK. Cheese omelet. With in Oregon or anywhere in the future. extra cheese!” This same conversation —“SarahDuff ” “Idiots occurred every time she came over for moving 30 years. And neither one of us ever nix Ye Olde Portland here are tired of it. When I hear people say, Please stop posting the alleged “historigoing to cal” articles written by your supposed “what a retard,” I simply shake my head. It’s not my job to correct them, “historian” Dr. Mitchell Millar [Ye believe I can’t save the world single-handOlde Portland]. Not only are they not this edly. I simply chalk it up to a person funny, not well-written, and poorly tripe.” that is intellectually lazy. They will Photoshopped, they add nothing to the never know. already intricate history of Portland. —“Clayman” Why not have an actual historian write about actual historic events here? At least have the I’m gonna use the word “stupid” here—but not in decency to put “satire” or “humor” somewhere relation to [Amy Silverman’s] daughter—because on the page. Because seriously, all these idiots the whole concept of “bad” words is just a way for moving here are going to believe this tripe, and limited minds to try to protect themselves from before long we’ll have people giving tours of this stress. Let’s look at the word “retard.” The pri- crap alleging it’s true, just like fucking Michael P. mary meaning is “to delay or hold back in terms Jones and the Shanghai Tunnels. of progress, development, or accomplishment: —Mary Reynolds e.g., ‘his progress was retarded by his limp.’” Northwest Portland The way to deal with the problem is to publicly disparage those who use the word to denigrate LEtters to the editor must include the author’s street address and phone number for or insult others, not to simply react like a 5-year- verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. old: “Oh! Bad word!” Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: mzusman@wweek.com —“Mick Wagner”
Not to throw too much interurban shade here, Chuck, but I’m guessing that Santa Rosa is beating us in the resident-cartoonist-boosting game mostly because it doesn’t have a whole lot else to brag about. If it weren’t for Peanuts, Santa Rosa’s slogan would be “Next Town Over From the Former Home of the World Wrist-Wrestling Championship.* In Portland, we have bigger claims to fame to commemorate through sculpture—like, say, the rusting, skeletal ghost homes recently erected on
Southeast Grand Avenue in memory of affordable housing. Still, the Simpsons are an undeniable force in popular culture, and many of the characters are named for streets and people in Portland. Moreover, Groening was actually from here, unlike that Minnesota-born carpetbagger Schulz. Would it kill us to erect a plaque? As it turns out, there was a plan in 2009 to erect a granite statue somewhere in Portland of the Simpson family, seated on their signature couch. This effort, sponsored by local Fox TV affiliate KPDX, would have tied in with the 20th anniversary of the show. Organizers originally hoped to locate the statue in a Portland park, but the Parks Bureau decided—not entirely unreasonably—that a sculpture celebrating a current TV show was a little too close to a commercial promotion. Plan B was to locate the inevitably creepylooking 3-D rendering of the cartoon family in Northeast Portland, near the Hollywood Theatre. Neighborhood residents were, by all accounts, enthusiastic. Unfortunately, 2009 turned out to be a better year for global economic collapse than for goofy art projects, and the plan was shelved over funding concerns. There you have it. Let’s hear it for “Dr. Know,” your go-to source for seven-year-old news about things that, as it turns out, didn’t even happen! The Pulitzer committee knows where to find me. * Petaluma, for those keeping score at home. Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
Willamette Week Date, 2012 wweek.com
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PPS Finds a Substitute Superintendent
It’s been nearly a month since former Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith resigned in the wake of revelations of elevated lead levels in school drinking water. At press deadline, the School Board was poised to appoint her temporary replacement: a retired superintendent from a small neighboring school district. Bob McKean led the East Portland school district of Centennial for seven years before retiring in 2010.
Judge Tells Pirate Hunter to Abandon Ship
A federal judge has pressed the “pause” button on an Oregon lawyer who aggressively chases down movie pirates. Last year, WW profiled Carl Crowell, a Salem lawyer who helps small to midsize mainstream movie studios sue people who illegally download their films online (“The Pirate Hunter,” WW, Aug. 25, 2015). On Aug. 10, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie F. Beckerman ruled that a man who pirated the Adrien Brody thriller American Heist owed $791 to the movie studio that produced it. But she denied Crowell another $4,833 in attorney fees, saying that awarding such a large judgment on top of small damages “would only contribute to the continued overaggressive assertion and negotiation of these Copyright Act claims.” Crowell is not discouraged. “The enforcement activity will continue,” he says.
Priest Takes Flak After Winning AR-15
The Lake Oswego priest who won an AR-15 rifle raffled by a girl’s softball team says he received threats after pledging to turn the gun into an art installation. The Rev. Jeremy Lucas told the Los Angeles Times this week that he’s “come to learn a lot about the nature of social media” after winning the gun. Lucas remains under investigation by Oregon State Police after the head of gun-rights group Oregon Firearms Federation reported him for illegally transferring the gun. Lucas says he welcomes the attention. “I mean, it took me less than half an hour to pass that background check and walk out with a semi-automatic rifle,” Lucas told the Times. “We really should be talking about that.”
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
REPUBLICANS ARE CAUGHT BETWEEN A TRUMP AND A HARD PLACE. BY R AC H E L M O N A H AN and JO H ANNA BE RNH ARD 5 03 -24 3 - 2 12 2
L O VAT T O
The Aug. 14 edition of The New York Times contained a delicious tidbit: Donald Trump told Karl Rove in a May strategy meeting that he would try to win Oregon. (Rove left the meeting convinced that Trump was “confused and scared.”) In fact, Trump is putting Oregon Republicans in an unpleasant spot. WW reported last week that the state’s GOP donor class is abandoning the presidential nominee as his polling numbers sink and his statements grow more outrageous. With Trump scheduled to visit Portland on Aug. 31, Republican officeholders and office-seekers are being pressed to make the same decision. We asked those officials and candidates:
Do you endorse Donald Trump?
U.S. REP. GREG WALDEN
OREGON REP. MIKE MCLANE
OREGON REP. JULIE PARRISH
House minority leader
Tualatin/West Linn
2nd Congressional District
Yes.
“While I may disagree with the rhetoric Mr. Trump uses and some policy positions, he is the better option than Hillary Clinton in the White House.”
No.
“Rep. McLane is not planning to attend any of Donald Trump’s events,” says spokesman Preston Mann. “I am not aware of any House Republicans that have endorsed Donald Trump at this time.”
No.
“I’m not endorsing Trump and have never endorsed any presidential candidate while I’ve been in office. I prefer to focus my time and energy on local issues and races.”
OREGON SEN. TED FERRIOLI
DENNIS RICHARDSON
BUD PIERCE
Senate minority leader
Candidate for Oregon secretary of state
Candidate for Oregon governor
Won’t say.
“We need to focus on Oregon’s problems and how we will solve them together,” he said. WW asked him to answer yes or no. “That’s the value of being a senator, I don’t have to give an answer,” he replied.
$997
THE BIG NUMBER
No.
Richardson says he won’t endorse any partisan candidate because the office he’s seeking supervises elections. “I have refrained from endorsing any candidates and will continue to do so,” he says.
Yes.
“Based on recent behavior, it does become harder every day to maintain support for our nominee for president. However, I support the democratic process and, as a Republican, I continue to support our nominee as chosen by the people. I cannot, however, support Hillary Clinton….While caught between a rock and a hard place, I still support the nominee of our party.”
That’s the average monthly rent for a Portland apartment in a building constructed during the 1970s. Buildings from that decade provide the city’s cheapest rents because of a trickle-down effect: As they age and as new units are built, these vintage units become less desirable. But these same apartments saw a 15 percent rent increase in the past year, says a new report from real estate investing firm Marcus & Millichap. That’s a bigger hike than apartments built in any other decade. With Portland’s vacancy rate at 3 percent, the rental crunch is trickling down, too. RACHEL MONAHAN. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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joe riedl
NEWS
Club Dread A $22 MILLION FEDERAL LAWSUIT SAYS PORTLAND AND THE OLCC DISCRIMINATED AGAINST A BLACK CLUB OWNER. By pe t e r d ’aur i a a n d BetH S LOViC
503-243-2122
The way Donna Thames sees it, her former business in Northeast Portland was part of a proud tradition of social hubs that catered to black Portlanders. “It was everything,” says Thames. “It was the spot. It meant a lot to a lot of people. It was bigger than Cheers.” Thames says her business, Exotica International Club for Men, was a rare, black-owned strip club that enjoyed mostly African-American clientele and employees. The way city and state officials saw it, Thames’ business was dangerous. She was forced to close Exotica in 2015 after three men were wounded in a parking lot shooting. Thames doesn’t deny a shooting occurred on the club’s property. Instead, she says city and state officials punished Exotica more harshly than nearby, white-owned businesses where violent crimes also took place. Now, she’s alleging in court that the government response was part of a pattern of Portland-area regulators cracking down on black-owned nightspots. Thames is bringing a $22 million federal lawsuit against the agencies she says drove her from her business at the corner of Northeast Columbia and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards. A 48-page complaint, filed Aug. 12 in U.S. District Court, claims the business was the latest victim of long-standing discrimination against African-American club owners by the city of Portland and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. “This case is about unconscionable, illegal conduct creating insurmountable obstacles to success of black club owners catering to black people and clubs offering entertainment and playing music appealing to black people,” the complaint reads. “The city of Portland, working in partnership with state liquor authorities, has a long and shameful history of knowingly and intentionally targeting black clubs with all of their regulatory power in a concerted effort to drive the clubs out of business.” The Portland Police Bureau, the city’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement, and Mayor Charlie Hales declined WW’s requests to comment on the lawsuit, saying they do not comment on pending litigation. “OLCC will continue to provide a level of fairness for all liquor licensees across the state,” agency spokeswoman Christie Scott writes in an email. Thames’ suit, filed by Portland attorney Tim Volpert and lawyers at Levi Merrithew Horst, details a long history of what Thames calls unfair treatment at the hands of city and OLCC officials. It is the latest in a series of business-owner allegations that Portland agencies discriminate against black nightlife. After the 2013 closing of the Fontaine Bleau, a Northeast Portland hip-hop nightclub, following a shooting outside, owner Rodney DeWalt filed a $3 million lawsuit against OLCC and the city of Portland for “a campaign intended to thwart black-owned clubs or clubs that played hip-hop and catered to the black community.” The suit is currently in U.S. District Court. In 2011, after the closure of Seeznin’s Bar and Lounge on Northeast 82nd Avenue, owner Sam Thompson accused authorities of racism when the OLCC imposed
barred: donna Thames owned exotica International Club for Men until 2015, when she says she was forced to close because of regulatory restrictions. “I walked away,” she says. “I lost everything.”
strict restrictions on Seeznin’s because of a series of neighborhood shootings. “It’s better to be a bike or a dog in this town than a black male,” Thompson told The Skanner in 2011. Beth Creighton, a Portland civil rights lawyer, says discrimination cases can be challenging to prove when racism is not overt. “In this day in age, people have gotten smart about discriminating and hiding what their true motives are,” she says. Thames, 43, says scrutiny of Exotica intensified when she took over in 2010 from the previous owner, who was Jordanian. “I felt like we were being targeted,” she says. “The prior owner wasn’t treated that way.” In August 2010, Thames alleges, about two months
“Portland has a long and shameful history of intentionally targeting black clubs.” after she took ownership of the club, the OLCC granted her a liquor license, but imposed what Thames calls “draconian” restrictions. The club was required to have three security officers on duty from Sunday to Thursday and four on Fridays and Saturdays—even on slow nights. Security staff was required to “patrol” the parking lot every 15 minutes. Club patrons were also prohibited from being in possession of more than one alcoholic drink at a time. In August 2014, the suit alleges, OLCC officers came to the club, “ostensibly to review video of a patron who had been arrested.” Thames recorded the interaction on her cellphone with the officers’ consent. After viewing the video, officers demanded Thames’ cellphone, saying, “It’s now evidence in our criminal investigation.” When she would not give it to them, she claims the offi-
cers arrested her, confiscated her cellphone, and “marched [her], in handcuffs, through her club, past her customers and staff, and made her stand in the hot, midday sun” for “approximately one and one half hours.” She was arrested for resisting arrest and interfering with a peace officer. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office declined to charge her, saying the arrest was unwarranted. “It was very obvious that she had been targeted,” her father, C.L. Thames, tells WW. “These people were basically coming at her from every possible angle.” The end came in 2015 after Exotica bouncers denied entry to a group of men believed to be in a gang. One of the ejected patrons then opened fire in Exotica’s parking lot, wounding three people. Thames says her club did nothing wrong, but she was told by city authorities with the Office of Neighborhood Involvement that Exotica was in need of a “prolonged cooling-off period” and would need to close at midnight for three months. Her dancers and bartenders told Thames they wouldn’t work for her if the club closed at midnight because that would cut significantly into their tips. “Ms. Thames was told, in no uncertain terms, that she could either accept midnight closure for 90 days or face such a closure for a year,” the suit alleges. Thames’ suit says no similar restrictions were placed on white-owned clubs where people had been shot. “A business named ‘Skinns,’ operated by a white person not far from Exotica, experienced two homicides and a shooting involving two more victims in three separate incidents on the premises between 2011 and 2016,” the complaint reads. “Neither the OLCC nor the City imposed any restrictions on that business. It continues to operate.” OLCC spokeswoman Scott confirms that Club Skinn currently operates without restrictions, but says the agency is conducting “a lengthy investigation” into the business. Exotica International closed in July 2015. Thames’ suit says Portland’s over-regulation has shut down most of the bars run by black people. “Presently, black people in Portland comprise approximately 6.3 percent of the population, but there are only three black-owned clubs or bars in the city,” the suit says. “There are no currently operating black clubs in Portland catering to young black people and playing hip-hop music.” Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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w w s ta f f
NEWS
Good News, Bad News an evangelical christian program has quietly established chapters in portland’s public elementary schools. By ju l i a co m n e s
@JuliaComnes
In September 2015, David Linn’s 6-year-old son came home from Sacramento Elementary in East Portland with an unusual flier. The flier promoted an after-school program called the Good News Club. In red block letters, it advertised “Dynamic Bible Lessons” and “Life-Changing Scripture Memory,” taking place in the school’s gymnasium. A year later, the Good News Club is still there, and it bothers Linn. “The club is using the legitimacy of the school to add credence to its own agenda,” Linn says. “If it’s at the school, kids think the club has the same distinction as their teachers.” Few after-school offerings are as divisive as Good News Clubs—evangelical Christian Bible studies held in the rooms of public elementary schools. Critics say it’s hard for kids to differentiate the clubs’ teachings from school curriculum, and that the clubs encourage students as young as 5 years old to proselytize other children. When the Missouri-based nonprofit running the Good News Clubs brought a campaign to Portland in 2014, it faced fierce resistance. A group called Protect Oregon Children was formed, pledging to rally parents to resist religious teaching in public school buildings. But the Missouri group, called the Child Evangelism Fellowship, succeeded in gaining a beachhead in Portland. For the first time, two Portland school districts are publicly acknowledging that Good News Clubs operate in at least three public elementary schools within city limits. WW has confirmed with the Parkrose School District in East Portland that both Sacramento and Russell elementary schools have Good News Clubs, and Portland Public Schools confirmed that Harrison Park K-8 also has a club. The schools are all on the city’s outer eastside and serve higher-poverty populations.
Andrew Robinson, a fifth-grade teacher at a Parkrose district elementary school, says the arrival of the clubs diminishes the effectiveness of his teaching. “Every public school educator and administrator I know works very hard each day of the school year to impart critical thinking skills to their students under trying circumstances,” Robinson writes in an email to WW. “To then have any organized group come into your building and systematically undermine those efforts is obviously frustrating and disappointing.” The ministers who sponsor the clubs say they’re voluntary and welcome kids from all backgrounds. “It’s a time where kids get together with other kids,” says Tom Schiave, lead pastor at Gateway Baptist Church, which sponsors the club at Russell. “It’s a nice break.”
says. “You’re not supposed to discriminate based on religion, but you’re not supposed to promote it.” The leading national critic of Good News Clubs says it’s not surprising the nonprofit picked schools in East Portland. Katherine Stewart, author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, says it’s part of a strategy. “In the lower-income districts there is sometimes less resistance to the club,” Stewart writes in an email to WW. “Parents need more after-school child care, and they are generally less likely to protest arrangements they don’t like.” Parents are required to sign permission slips before their kids are allowed to attend a Good News Club. But the clubs are free, often provide snacks and, at some of the schools, are offered on days when no other afterschool care is offered. At Russell and Sacramento, the clubs are held on Wednesday—a day of the week when class gets out early. Lana Buchanan, 52, whose grandchildren go to Harrison Park Elementary, says that volunteers handed out Good News Club fliers in front of the school last fall. She says they were aggressive. “I quickly informed them we are a pagan household and have enough gods, thank you very much,” she says. But not every attempt to start a Good News Club in Portland has been successful. The Southeast Community Church of the Nazarene tried starting a club at Arleta Elementary School in the Portland Public Schools district a couple of years ago but was stonewalled. Rodney Bertholet, the pastor of the church, says one parent’s dissenting opinion prevented the club from starting there. “I think they know that solid Christian groups are not going to fight them,” Bertholet says. “Therefore, they can oppose [our clubs] in the way they want to oppose them.” Courtney Westling, a Portland Public Schools spokeswoman, says the club was blocked because no clubs hosted by outside groups are allowed at Arleta. The Portland chapter of the Child Evangelism Fellowship, along with many of the local churches who reportedly sponsor Good News Clubs, declined to speak directly to WW, all citing a need to protect the “safety and anonymity of the children,” instead directing queries to the national office. John Luck, project manager at the Child Evangelism Fellowship’s headquarters in Warrenton, Mo., would not grant WW information about the locations of clubs in Portland. He said that’s because he doesn’t want “Satanist clubs” to form in reaction. Good News Clubs gained a smattering of attention last month after a Satanist club cropped up at a Nehalem, Ore., elementary school in response to the
“The club is using the legitimacy of the school to add credence to its own agenda.” —David Linn The clubs’ existence at public elementary schools was protected by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2001 case, Good News Club v. Milford Central School. The court ruled 6-3 that a public school can’t prohibit a club based on its religious focus without violating the First Amendment. “If a public school allows outside organizations to come into the school, the school can’t say no to a club based on the fact that the club has a religious mission,” Jann Carson, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, tells WW. “It’s an all-or-nothing situation.” Portland School Board member Steve Buel says the district’s hands are tied. “It’s a double-edged sword,” he
school’s Good News Club. An organizer of the After School Satan Club, Finn Rezz, told The Oregonian he picked Nehalem because he didn’t think Portland had any Good News Clubs. Linn, the parent at Sacramento Elementary, says he hasn’t seen any change in the culture at his son’s school. But he’s still planning to submit a formal complaint to the Parkrose School District. “The clubs are sectarian and political,” Linn says. “They shouldn’t be taking place in elementary schools.” Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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SHE SURVIVED. A HIT MAN CAME TO KILL SUSAN KUHNHAUSEN. TEN YEARS LATER, SHE TELLS HER STORY.
THE CRIME SCENE: Blood pooled in the hallway outside the bedroom where a hit man attacked Susan Kuhnhausen on Sept. 6, 2006.
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THE HIT MAN ED HAFFEY
HE DIDN’T. BY BETH S LOVI C
bslovic@wweek.com
“We have an intruder in the house next door.…The intruder was in the bedroom with a hammer. The woman who lives there thinks she may have strangled him. He was down when she left.” “Can you put her on the phone?” “She’s bleeding.” “Does she need an ambulance?” “No, she’s a nurse. She says call an ambulance for the guy. He may be dead.” —Portland 911 call on Sept. 6, 2006
Susan Kuhnhausen took her time going home. On the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2006, the 51-year-old emergency room nurse ended her shift at Providence Portland Medical Center on Northeast Glisan Street and headed to Perfect Look hair salon on East Burnside Street. As she waited for her turn, she picked up a copy of Oprah magazine and read a poem. “I will not die an unlived life,” it began. “I will not live in fear.” One hour later, rested and relaxed, she drove to her blue, one-story Cape Cod with a gray picket fence in the Montavilla neighborhood of Southeast Portland. In the mudroom at the back of the house, Susan found a note by the microwave from her husband of almost 18 years, Mike. “Sue, haven’t been sleeping. Had to get away—Went to the beach.” He added that he’d see her on Friday or Saturday. “Luv, ME,” he signed off. Unlocking the door to the kitchen, Susan heard the beeping of her security alarm. She disarmed it, walked through the house to the front door and then went back outside. It was clear and warm at 6:37 pm that day, and she stood for a minute or two in the front yard, flipping through her mail. When she came back inside, she kicked off her Birkenstocks and noticed how dark it was in her bedroom on the first floor. Had she forgotten to open the curtains that morning? Suddenly, from behind the bedroom door, a man lurched toward her. CONT. on page 14
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At 5-foot-9, the 59-year-old stranger weighed 190 pounds. He wore Dockers, a blue-striped shirt and a tan baseball hat pulled down low over his eyes. His long hair was in a ponytail tucked into the cap. He wore yellow rubber gloves on his hands and carried a red and black claw hammer. “One minute you think you’re a regular person in the world,” she says now, “and then you’re not.” Ten years ago next month Susan was attacked inside her home, by a man she later learned had been hired to kill her. By her husband. Her story of survival remains one of the more shocking and violent tales in the annals of Portland crime—and one of the most heroic. It grabbed international headlines for weeks as people marveled at the middle-aged nurse who not only escaped murder but strangled the lowlife with a felony record who had been offered $50,000 for the hit. Her horrifying encounter fits a pattern. Nearly 1 in 4 homicides in Oregon involves intimate partners. For 10 years, Susan—who today goes by Susan Walters—has spoken occasionally about
her ordeal. But she’s revealing new details now, going back to how she met her husband. She’s telling this story for the first time, and is working on a memoir about her experience. She survived that day, but carries psychic wounds: from knowing that her husband wanted her dead and from having to kill another person to save herself. The dread she feels even today isn’t guilt or shame. But it weighs on her just the same. “I didn’t choose his death,” she says. “I chose my life.” 911 dispatcher: “What did she use on him? She strangled him. What else did she do?” Anne Warnock, neighbor: “She put a chokehold on him.” “I’ve got help on the way. Stay on the line.” “She has a hammer here.” “Don’t touch it. Don’t touch it. Just leave it there.” “She hit him in the head several times. That’s the hammer he had with him. She struck him, and she strangled him, and she thinks he’s dead.” —911 call on Sept. 6, 2006 For many people, the presence of an intruder
THE WEAPON: The hit man used this red and black claw hammer in the attack.
brandishing a hammer in a darkened bedroom would prompt an entirely understandable response. They’d run. But Susan wasn’t most people. An emergency room nurse for nearly 30 years, she had disarmed injured men, helped crack open people’s chests to perform heart massages, and administered IVs in patients thrashing from drug withdrawal. She and all the other nurses at Providence trained regularly in self defense, learning how to slip out of headlocks and clutches. Still, she had doubted herself: “Will I ever remember this stuff?” Years of training steadied Susan, who was still wearing blue scrubs when she returned home that night. When her assailant came at her, Susan crowded him, knowing the swings of his weapon would have less force if she stayed close. His first blow landed on her left temple. “WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT?” she screamed as loudly as she could. But he didn’t answer. And he didn’t stop. At 5-foot-4, Susan was 5 inches shorter than the man in the baseball cap. She had two bad knees from repeated injuries and excess weight. But she outweighed her attacker significantly. Hoping to push him over, Susan says she slammed her body up against his. He didn’t fall. Instead, he pushed Susan’s back against the pink-hued walls of her bedroom. He then uttered his only words that night: “You’re strong,” he told her. The phrase sent surges of adrenaline through Susan— and a terrible awakening. “He is here to kill me,” she realized at that moment. “I don’t know why. I don’t know who he is. But his intent was clear.” Susan responded by pushing him again. “Who sent you?” she demanded.
“SHE HIT HIM IN THE HEAD SEVERAL TIMES. THAT’S THE HAMMER HE HAD WITH HIM. SHE STRUCK HIM, AND SHE STRANGLED HIM, AND SHE THINKS HE’S DEAD.”
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THE ESTRANGED HUSBAND MIKE KUHNHAUSEN
She managed to wrestle the hammer from him, and she swung its claw three times, maybe four, into his skull. He snatched the hammer back. So Susan grabbed his throat. “WHO SENT YOU HERE?” she asked again, hands squeezing his airway. The intruder’s face turned red, then purple, then darker purple with a blue tinge. Susan spooked. She let go. Then she tried to flee. “I don’t know what I thought,” she says, “I just had to get out of there.” The man, whom police later identified as Edward Dalton Haffey, caught her as she ran from her bedroom into a narrow hallway. He spun her around again, punched her, splitting her lip. He punched her again. She fell to the floor. The image she saw next haunts her. “He was standing over me with the hammer,” she says. “I looked at the floor and I thought, I’m going to die today.” To this day she’s not sure how, but she managed to pull the man to the floor, too. “I gotta get the hammer,” she told herself then. She started to bite Haffey, thinking that if she was going to die, her teeth marks might tie her death to him. Wrestling on the floor, she bit his arm, his flank, his thigh. She even bit through his zipper to his genitals. At the same time, she tried to rifle through Haffey’s pockets, looking for ID she could toss under a bed or chair or dresser that police would later find. “I was like a downed power line snapping on the pavement,” she says. The fight had now lasted for about 14 minutes. They were both wedged on their sides in the hallway outside Susan’s bedroom. She threw her left leg over Haffey’s body, climbed up on top of him, and hooked her left arm around his neck. “TELL ME WHO SENT YOU HERE AND I WILL CALL YOU A FUCKING AMBULANCE!” she yelled in his face. He said nothing. Instead, he growled. Susan leaned forward, tightening her forearm against his throat. He stopped moving. Then she grabbed the hammer and fled outside to neighbors, who called 911.
“HIS LIFE PHILOSOPHY WAS LIFE IS A SHIT SANDWICH AND EVERY DAY YOU TAKE ANOTHER BITE UNTIL YOU DIE.”
THE COUPLE: Susan met Mike after a friend and Susan’s mother paid for a personal ad for Susan in Willamette Week. It ran in January 1988.
Dispatcher: “Was he by himself ?” Neighbor: “Did he have anybody with him? No.…She expressed a concern it may have been her ex-partner who sent the person.” —911 call on Sept. 6, 2006 Susan had not witnessed a lot of happy marriages growing up. Her father, an Air Force cook, and her mother, a homemaker, separated when she was in second grade. Life was chaotic as the children moved from Colorado to Arizona, California and Nevada, shuffling between schools, homes and parents. “My parents loved me, but they couldn’t teach me how to have a successful marriage any more than they could teach me how to fly,” she says. Susan became a licensed practical nurse and then a registered nurse. She moved to Oregon in the early ’80s, settling first in Coos Bay and later Portland. Outgoing and vivacious, Susan unleashed loud, boisterous laughs. When she went to shows at Harvey’s Comedy Club, she’d sit in the front row. In 1988, a friend and Susan’s mother paid for a personal ad for Susan in Willamette Week. “Something different,” the 65-word ad teased. “SWF, 33, overweight but not over life, seeks SM who wants more out of a relationship than just ‘slender.’” “Hi different,” one of many replies read. “My name is Mike. I’m a 39 y/o DWM. I enjoy most things in nature, from wandering in the Ape Caves at Mt. St. Helens to walking on the beach at sunset.”
The day she first spoke with Mike Kuhnhausen by telephone—Jan. 30, 1988—she marked in her kittenthemed daybook with a smiley face in red ballpoint pen. Susan and Mike spoke on the phone many times before actually meeting—over 100 hours, Susan estimates. “He had a nice voice,” she says. “I was impressed he wanted to talk about the deeper things.” For their first date, in February 1988, they met at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, next to Reed College, where they fed ducks and Mike tossed unsalted peanuts to squirrels. Within the year, they’d be driving to Reno to get married. Mike liked to play slots, and Susan figured there was no bigger gamble in life than marriage. It soured quickly. “It wasn’t very long after we got married,” she says, “that there was no more hiking, no more getting out.” Mike grew up in Portland, adopted as a newborn in 1948 by a couple in their 30s. He told Susan he saw combat in Vietnam, but she doubts that now. Military records list him as a switchboard operator.
Within a few years of the wedding, Mike got a new job as a janitorial supervisor for Oregon Entertainment, the parent company of Fantasy Adult Video. He started slowly revealing to her in the early years that he’d never really been happy. “His life philosophy was: Life is a shit sandwich, and every day you take another bite until you die,” she says. The couple never had any children, and Susan was fine with that. Mike, who chain-smoked while guzzling Diet Cokes, hounded Susan about her plans when she went out. He watched her spending and complained about minor purchases. Seventeen years into their marriage, Susan had had enough. If she tried to kiss him, he’d burp. “I cared about him, but I didn’t want to live with him anymore,” she says. “I wanted to be happy again.” In September 2005, she kicked him out of the house. He moved into his father’s home. But Susan never changed the locks or the alarm code—1210, their anniversary. CONT. on page 17
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Willamette Week Date, 2012 wweek.com
Dispatcher: “Have there been problems with her ex-husband or her ex-partner?” Neighbor: “She did talk to Mike, her ex-partner, and asked him to house-sit for the cats, and he said he couldn’t do it. He was on his way to the beach.…He left her a note. He knows the alarm.” “OK, that’s good information to pass to the officers.” —911 call on Sept. 6, 2006 It didn’t take Portland police long to identify Susan’s attacker and tie him to her husband. Police found a wallet with ID in the man’s back pocket. Ed Haffey was a 59-year-old Vietnam veteran with a long rap sheet. The day after the attack, Susan’s friend Helen Bulone accompanied Susan to her house to help her collect belongings. “Susan,” Helen told her, “there’s a backpack in your basement that doesn’t belong.” Police hadn’t noticed the backpack when officers inspected Susan’s cluttered basement. Inside was a container of Hershey’s syrup, $200 in cash, diabetes pills, a daybook and a pay stub made out to Haffey. An entry in the daybook for Monday, Sept. 4, 2006, was marked “Call Mike.” A manila envelope listed Mike’s new cellphone number. Haffey, an autopsy would show, had a near-lethal dose of cocaine in his system when he attacked Susan in her home. He had recently lived in a trailer on Northeast Killingsworth Street. Relatives and friends told police he’d been raised in an upper-middle-class home and was an avid tennis player. Court records revealed a gruesome crime 15 years earlier. On Feb. 28, 1991, Haffey arranged the murder of his exgirlfriend, 39-year-old Georgia Lee Dutton. Her decomposed body was later found along the Umpqua River, near Roseburg. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder on March 14, 1994, and spent the next nine years in the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. He was released on Nov. 3, 2003. After he got out, he moved to Portland, and he needed a job. He found one, in July 2004, when Mike Kuhnhausen hired him to clean floors at Fantasy Adult Video. Financial records police later reviewed show that on the day of the attack, Mike drove his gold Dodge Neon to the coast, checking into the Lincoln City Inn with a credit card that afternoon. He returned to Portland that night, then spent $339 on a Taurus .357 Magnum revolver at the Silver Lining pawn shop on Northeast Sandy Boulevard the next day.
THE BRUISES: Police photographed Susan’s injuries two days after the attack.
“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE MY SIDE OF THE STORY.”
THE DAYBOOK: The hit man left behind a backpack that also contained damning evidence—Mike’s new cellphone number and a daybook with a note to “call Mike” two days before the attack.
On Sept. 8, Mike left a suicide note at his father’s house: “All I ever wanted was to be loved and every time I had it—I fucked it up.” Then he bolted. Police put out a bulletin. At 10 am on Sept. 13, a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy finally caught up with Mike, stopping him in the parking garage of Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center, where Mike claimed to be checking himself in. “I have nothing to live for anymore,” he told officers. They put him on an involuntary psychiatric hold. Eleven hours later, officers put him under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder. Mike: “Am I under arrest?” Detective Steve Ober: “At this point you are, so what I’d like to do is re-advise you of your Miranda rights.” “You’re not going to believe my side of the story.” “Why is that? We haven’t heard your side of the story.” “My side of the story is so fucking off the wall.” —Police interview with Mike on Sept. 13, 2006 Authorities didn’t buy Mike’s pleas of innocence or his alibi that he’d been at the beach. He’d lost his job weeks earlier. He had no place to live. Susan had named her brother as beneficiary on her life insurance policy, and Mike knew it. But Susan and Mike had paid off the Montavilla house, and it was worth about $300,000—a house that would be his if Susan died. By the time of Mike’s arrest, detectives already had employment records from Fantasy Adult Video to prove Mike knew Haffey. But when police booked Mike into jail on Sept. 13, he initially denied any connection. Then he changed his story. “I didn’t do it,” he told them. “Just because I know the guy, doesn’t mean I did anything.” Other evidence pointed to a plot with Haffey. There were no signs of forced entry at Susan’s home. But security records showed someone had disabled the alarm at the Montavilla house while Susan was at work. Mike later acknowledged he did it while dropping off the note about going to the beach, but he denied letting Haffey inside. On Sept. 18, a former cellmate of Haffey’s contacted police saying Haffey had asked him to join a burglary— an “insurance scam,” the man told police. CONT. on page 19
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CHRISTINE DONG
THE SURVIVOR: Ten years after the attack, Susan finds comfort in helping others to understand that they, too, can survive a murder attempt. “If you can’t run and you can’t hide, you have to fight,” she says. “You don’t know that you won’t survive.”
He and Haffey met a guy at Southeast 82nd Avenue and Division Street. It was Mike Kunnhausen, who told the man he’d pay $5,000 if he helped Haffey kill his wife. He said no. On Nov. 17, another witness told police he’d driven Haffey to meet a bald man in the parking lot of an Applebee’s near Interstate 205. Days after that, he saw the man’s picture in the news after Susan’s attack. It was Mike, he said. “He could deny it all he wanted,” says Brian Davidson, a prosecutor on the case, “but the weight of the evidence was overwhelming.” On Aug. 30, 2007, Mike pleaded guilty to soliciting Susan’s murder. “Although this was a terrible thing that happened, no one in this family has any bad feelings toward you. You did what you were forced to do and in doing so, you spared many from the same trauma you experienced.” —Sept. 17, 2010 letter to Susan from the hit man’s aunt
“YOU DID WHAT YOU WERE FORCED TO DO AND IN DOING SO, YOU SPARED MANY FROM THE SAME TRAUMA YOU EXPERIENCED.” Mike was supposed to be released on Sept. 14, 2014. Susan, who’d filed for divorce the day after Mike’s arrest, prepared herself. Once bubbly and adventurous, the new Susan felt like “a broken plate glued back together.” She sat in restaurants where she could see the door. She switched driving routes. She circled the block if she thought someone might be following her. “I’m doing a life sentence for picking a bad husband,” she says. By 2014, she had moved to a new Portland home on an out-of-the-way cul-de-sac. Gravel surrounded her house so she could hear footsteps. She practiced shooting at a nearby range. “If he came here, he was not going to get close enough to hurt me,” she says. Mike wouldn’t live long enough to try. On Friday the 13th, in June 2014, cancer killed
Mike, 92 days before his release. Jailhouse letters show Mike never acknowledged his guilt. He claimed he’d pleaded to the crime only to escape a possibly longer sentence. He continued to believe he was the true victim. Ten years later, Susan still sobs intermittently when telling her story. “When I cry, I feel better,” she says. She continued to work as a nurse until December 2014. Her job was to save lives. But having killed a man, people called her a hero. Hero? What did it mean? And why did she of all people deserve such praise? “They’re not calling you a hero because you killed a man,” her boss told her. “They’re calling you a hero because they want to believe, given the same circumstances, they, too, might survive.”
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“I have always believed the internet is a manifestation of the Antichrist. It’s evil itself.” page 46
STARTERS
BITE-SIZED PORTLAND CULTURE NEWS.
POKÉLAND: Oregon is the No. 1 state for Pokémon Go, according to internet trend analysis site Internet Service Partners, which used data from Google Trends to come up with the top 10 states most interested in the game. They also ranked U.S. cities, and Portland came in at No. 10. This isn’t surprising. We’ve got Pokémon Go bar crawls and some of the city’s best patio bars that double as Pokéstops. Plus, the site found Oregon to be the second-most physically active state, with a 44 percent millennial population. Detroit is the No. 1 city for Pokémon Go, which is a little surprising. The most sought-after Pokémon in Oregon? According to the site, it’s the water-type Lapras.
WOOLEN GAIJIN: Speaking of cultural exchange between Portland and Japan: Portland’s Pendleton Woolen Mills will be going to Japan. The 153-year-old Portland textile and fashion company—best known for its woolen wear, blankets and Native American-inspired patterns—signed a deal in the tens of millions with Tokyo’s Sojitz Corporation to put clothes in major Japanese department stores, make Japan-specific lines of clothing and eventually install entire Pendleton-branded stores. Pendleton is already sold in Japan—but only in select stores. Still, Japan and Portland have a long history of trade that includes Voodoo Doughnut and Blue Star Donuts going abroad—and the first continental outposts for three different Japanese ramen brands locating in Portland. “When we go to Japan, they know what Portland is,” says Pendleton VP Robert Christnachts. “They know as much what’s going on in our city as we do.” STEERED WRONG: A 10-year-old Roseburg boy named his prize-winning steer after late militant LaVoy Finicum. Ryley Schneider’s 1,030-pound, black Maine-Anjou steer came in third place Thursday at the Douglas County Fair in Southern Oregon. A story published Sunday in The (Roseburg) News-Review says Schneider chose the name in honor of the spokesman “who stood up for all our rights” during the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January. Robert “LaVoy” Finicum was shot and killed while reaching for a gun after leading law enforcement on a high-speed chase. “When I heard the news I didn’t feel happy,” Schneider told The News-Review. “He was standing up for everyone’s rights and then he got shot and died. I just didn’t like that.” Schneider told The News-Review he plans to donate $200 of his winnings to Finicum’s wife. At the fair, Schneider proceeded to hand out pocket-sized editions of the U.S. Constitution to police officers, The News-Review reports. OPEN, OPEN, OPEN: It’s been a slow-moving summer, but three long-anticipated bars and restaurants are opening within a week of each other. Besaw’s adjunct bar, Solo Club, threw its grand-opening party Monday, Aug. 15, at Northwest 21st Avenue and Raleigh Street, with a focus on bitter liqueurs and bitters, and a new partner named Mark Bitterman. >> The next day, Aug. 16, James Beard Award-winning Seattle chef Rachel Yang—who owns two hip Asian-fusion spots in Seattle—opened her hip new Portland Asian-fusion spot, Revel, on Southeast Grand Avenue. >> And Tusk—the new Mediterranean restaurant owned by Ava Gene’s chef-owner Joshua McFadden—plans to open Aug. 21 in the old Levant space on East Burnside Street. 22
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Headout
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY AUG. 17
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y R I C K V O D I C K A A N D T R I C I A H I P P S
Mayoral Fun Swim with Ted Wheeler
GOODBYE, THO Northeast 7th Avenue
I pulled an all-nighter with some friends once, and we wound up playing on the jungle gym at Irving Park at 6 am before getting tired by 6:30 am and finding a pancake spot to eat breakfast in by 7 am.
Velo Cult Bike Shop 1969 NE 42nd Ave.
This is where I go to get my bike fixed. It is also where I go to do comedy. It is also occasionally where I go to get drunk.
I-5
Curtis’ Living Room
Irving Park
NE 42
PDX Airport ne killingsworth
Lou’s Parents’ House Taco Corners
il la m et
Velo Cult Bike Shop
te
7000 NE Airport Way
I love being in Portland’s airport, because half the time I’m there it means I’m about to leave this city.
The Creepy Statue Outside the Vital Records Office 800 NE Oregon St., Room 205
Every Tuesday, I bike past a statue that looks like the Swamp Thing’s ghost, and I just want to know what it’s supposed to be a sculpture of.
My Living Room Before Phil Moved In
y
nd
sa
There used to be a lot of parties in my living room. It was a cheap place to drink, there was no last call, anyone could show up. Some nights we’d expect to have a slew of friends stop by to sing impromptu karaoke until 4 am. But then I got a new roommate, and my new roommate hates to party. He only likes to read books about the Dust Bowl and cook fancy meals.
ve r
16 NW Broadway
The Brody Theater is the first place I ever performed standup in Portland, and the venue’s greenish hue and cult-film decor will forever characterize the vibes by
Ne
I-84
Ri
Brody Theater
Portland International Airport
Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Fremont Street
w
When I first moved to Portland, I stayed with my friend Lou’s parents. They’re a great family, but as generous as they were, they were all smaller people than me, and I was unreasonably embarrassed to eat in front of them. So when everyone had gone to sleep, I would sneak into the kitchen and make grilled cheese sandwiches. Lou has since moved across the country, and we don’t really talk anymore. He’s probably doing alright. All I know for sure is that he canceled our Netflix account, so he might as well be dead.
Irving Park
NE 33
Northeast 35th Avenue and Knott Street
There’s probably already a name for this place, but the corner of Northeast 7th and Broadway has a Muchas Gracias, a Chipotle, a Taco Bell and a Qdoba. This is probably where I’ve spent most of my time in Portland. My gym is about three
NE M L K
Lou’s Parents’ House
Taco Corners Northeast 7th Avenue and Broadway
blocks away from Taco Corners, and every so often I’ll buy a burrito and eat it across the street from my gym while wondering what my life would be like if I had abs.
go Brody Theater
Vital Records office
e Burnside
Amy Silverman
[BOOKS] The journalist, blogger and NPR contributor details her evolution from being a “spoiled brat” who avoided people with developmental disabilities to being a proud advocate and mother of a special-needs child. Silverman wrote last week’s cover story in WW, “The R Word.” Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton. 7 pm.
Los Tigres del Norte
BY CURTIS COOK which I remember this city. I had to text-message a misanthropic Ukrainian gentleman early in the morning just to end up 30th on the list for the open mic. I showed up at 9 pm and waited until 1 am to perform in front of three other comics, the bartender and the aforementioned Ukrainian man. I wouldn’t trade the memory of those frustrating nights for anything.
THURSDAY AUG. 18
FRIDAY AUG. 19
Curtis Cook, one of portland’s beststandups, is leaving the city. We asked him for a tour of his favorite spots.
I don’t get out much, and most of the places I used to hang around have closed down. So when Willamette Week asked me to write a farewell to my favorite Portland places before I move to Los Angeles, I wasn’t sure what to do. Sure, I have my everyday spots, coffee shops I frequent and liquor stores I drop by, and I wait in line at my local Safeway just like anybody else. But when it comes down to it, there are only a few places I have particularly strong memories of.
[FLOAT] It’s time you swam the Willamette with the mayor. Shuttles will take your stuff to the after-party on RiverPlace Hotel’s patio, where Kona Brewing is giving free drinks to people in wet swimsuits. Station 21 Firehouse Dock, 5 SE Madison St. 6 pm. Free, online waiver.
CURTIS COOK’S FAREWELL EARTHQUAKE HURRICANE SHOW is
at Velo Cult Bike Shop, 1969 NE 42nd Ave., on Wednesday, Aug. 17. 9 pm. $5 suggested donation. 21+.
[NORTEÑO LEGENDS] The U2 of Latin folk music is a fivepiece accordion band famed for its stories of real people. On this year’s release, Ataúd, the band continues its ballad-filled tradition, offering relatable songs about life’s greatest struggles. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway. 8 pm. $35-$85. All ages.
SATURDAY AUG. 20 Gold Panda
[BREXIT MUSIC] England’s vote to leave the European Union hit producer Derwin Panda hard. To cope, he bottled his anxiety and looming fears into a surprise EP titled Kingdom, an album more downtempo and melancholic than its predecessors, reflecting simultaneously the nervousness of the time and the search for calm amid the chaos. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St. 9 pm. $16. 21+.
SUNDAY AUG. 21 Electric Summer
[FOOD, BOOZE AND BEATS] White Owl’s Tia Vanich and Departure’s Gregory Gourdet will host a DJ party on the patio with food from Bamboo, Biwa, Blue Hour, Chicken and Guns, Clyde Common, the Country Cat and the rest of the alphabet, plus shit-tons of music and a best-dressed contest. White Owl Social Club, 1305 SE 8th Ave. 3 pm. $10. 21+.
TUESDAY AUG. 23 Boris
[ART METAL] When Japanese trio Boris released Pink in 2006, things were much different, but the world still hasn’t quite caught up to its ferocious, shape-shifting vision of hard rock. The band returns to North America to prove how fresh it sounds even a decade later, playing the record in its entirety. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St. 8:30 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.
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FOOD & DRINK = WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17 Parking Lot Paella Tasting
Paella superstar chef Juanjo Canals from restaurant Con Amor in Madrid has been hanging out at the various John Gorham spaces in Portland all week—and today he’ll be out in the parking lot making paella with Gorham. And, well, you get to taste it—perhaps while waiting for a full meal at the Bravo, perhaps just while sucking down beers in the parking lot. Toro Bravo, 120 NE Russell St., 503-281-4464. 3:30-5:30 pm. Free.
Simple ApproAch
Bold FlAvor vegan Friendly
open 11-10
everyday
FRIDAY, AUG. 19 Rack & Cloth Pop-Up
Rack & Cloth cider is both terrific and far up the Columbia River Gorge in a secluded farmhouse. Rev. Nat’s will bring it close to home with eight taps, including three one-offs that have never left the farm. Expect a two-deep vertical flagship stony pig, plus peach and cherry cider, wild cider and others. Oh, and if you want farm-fresh eggs or peaches from the farm instead? It will sell those too. Reverend Nat’s Cidery & Public Taproom, 1813 NE 2nd Ave., 503-567-2221. 4-11 pm.
SATURDAY, AUG. 20 Electric Summer
500 NW 21st Ave, (503) 208-2173 kungpowpdx.com
For years, White Owl’s Tia Vanich and Departure’s Gregory Gourdet have thrown blowout potlucks for the
industry set—Electric Summer PDX takes it public with a fine food-EDM mashup on the White Owl patio with food from Bamboo, Biwa, Blue Hour, Chicken and Guns, Clyde Common, the Country Cat and the rest of the alphabet, plus shit-tons of music and a best-dressed contest, just to make sure you come dressed properly. $10 cheap. White Owl Social Club, 1305 SE 8th Ave., 503-236-9672. 3 pm-1 am. Through Sunday. $10. 21+.
Distillery Row Birthday Beach Party
Booze is nice when it’s free. And so this booze will be nice. The eight distilleries of Southeast Portland’s Distillery Row will be hanging out in House Spirits’ swanky new parking lot at its swanky new distillery, in honor of the Row’s eighth-ish birthday. You can get some Koi Fusion bulgogi tacos, plus tons of liquor tastes and maybe some live music. House Spirits Distillery, 5 SE Washington St., 503-235-3174. 6-9 pm. Free.
Lotus Cardroom: End of (Almost) a Century
The old and venerable Lotus—by some estimations Portland’s first hipster bar—is closing after 92 years, to make way for progress (progress is a hotel). But if you want to own a piece of the useless, lovely past, you can—on the final-night party, the Lotus will be auctioning off pieces of the bar to benefit the Oregon Historical Society. Also, there will be slideshows and there will be booze. And maybe tears. Lotus Cardroom, 932 SW 3rd Ave., 503-227-6185. 7 pm. Free.
3. Paiche
1. Poke Mon
1485 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-894-9743, pokemonpdx.com. Go to Poke Mon. Seriously, though— pun aside, you’ve been waiting for a truly great poke spot and didn’t even know it. You won’t even have to go to a gym later. $$.
2. Botto Barbecue
I
Shandong www.shandongportland.com
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Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
2204 NW Roosevelt St., 503-354-7748, bottobbq.com. Texas-style brisket and ribs—including beef as big as dinosaur bones late in the week—and kickass kolaches, in a parking lot surrounded by barbed wire. God bless ’Merica. $-$$.
4237 SW Corbett Ave., 503-403-6186, paichepdx.com. Peruvian Paiche is now a dinner restaurant, and the menu has upgraded accordingly—with lovely, spicy, citric seafood all across the menu. $$$.
4. Le Pantry
113 SE 28th Ave. This cart is great, and each day is different—with criminally low prices on caramelized short rib or lovely mushrooms in rice gravy. $.
5. Gumba
1477 NE Alberta St., 503-975-5951, facebook.com/Gumbacart. Gumba’s pappardelle ($11) is some of the best pasta we’ve had all year, served in a rich and earthy shortrib ragu. $.
DRANK
Definitely Not (BREAKSIDE/WAYFINDER)
Shandong www.shandongportland.com
Definitely Not—the new collab from Breakside and forever-forthcoming brewery Wayfinder—is definitely not an East Coast IPA, even though it has that same yeasty and fruity hop character, and that same silky viscosity. Breakside brewer Ben Edmunds has been steadfast in his light mockery of Vermont haze, but the beer is definitely not a West Coast IPA either. Hell, it’s not even an IPA. It’s a hopped-up hefeweizen that Breakside brewer Ben Edmunds says is what he imagined the Widmers might brew if they’d invented their American-style hefe now instead of in 1984. Hopfenweizen, maybe? Either way, it’s heavy on that fruity haze and light on the heavy wheat, so you actually have to be told what it’s “definitely not.” Really it’s as close as a glass of beer gets to a joke or a magic trick. But if it’s a joke, it’s a damn good one. Recommended. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
REVIEW cait pearson
The Great Portland Bougie Taco Crawl WE WENT FOR TACOS AND MARGS AT THE SIX MOST CHICHI TACO SPOTS IN SOUTHEAST. HERE IS THE BEST OF EVERYTHING. By M a rt i n C i z M a r a nd
This is a place whose tacos we have loved in the past, one of those spots whose meatfilled, handmade corn-tortilla tacos can When it comes to tacos, the higher the stakes, make an “upgrade” on street food seem the hotter the takes. like a great idea rather than a condescendOr so we’ve found from discussing bougie ing fiction. The salsas remained uniformly tacos. You rarely hear comterrific, especially the plaints about a dollar taco. verde. But on this visit, Best overall: Xico But run that up to $3.25 that $3 wild boar carnitas and people get both picky Biggest Disappointment: taco ($5 when not happy taqueria nueve and partisan. Some of the hour) was less flat-top Best Drop-In Spot: most contentious debates seared into crispness stella we’ve ever had about food than dried into jerky, the Best Margaritas: in this city have involved “vegetal” veggie taco was Xico ¿Por Qué No?, Xico and an undersalted scattering Strongest Margaritas: Taqueria Nueve. of greens, and the fatty ¿por Qué no? ($9 for large) So, on a recent Thursday brisket was both overdone Most Fun Margaritas: night, we decided to settle and underseasoned. At a chelada at stella ($5), a things, once and for all. frozen marg topped with an spot we know is capable of upside-down pacifico. We assembled a crew much better, T9 seemed Best Vegetarian tacos: of eight avowed Mexicanasleep at the switch. And Hongos y nopales at nuestra food snobs and hit all the the margaritas showed cocina ($7 for three) top spots in Southeast, the perils of being “fancy.” Best Meat tacos: focusing on Division Street, More than in tropical Brisket from stella ($2.75) which has in the past year climes, fresh-squeezed tell your Friends: become home to a constel“nah, let’s just go to ¿por limes are highly variable Qué no? again instead of lation of bougie Mexican in Portland—and so were that Honky tonk place.” places rivaling anything the fresh-squeezed-lime outside Los Angeles (see margaritas. One saltour story on CBD cocktails from Gracias rimmed glass was perfection, while another Madre, page 50). was super-tart and the next sadly tepid. At each we ordered the available tacos and margs, along with a few assorted bits Stella taco that struck our collective fancy. 3060 SE Division St., 503-206-5446, stellatacopdx.com In the end, there was a clear winner—one Stella opened its second shop in the former expected by two members of our party and Pizza Maria (RIP) space in May, and on grudgingly accepted by two others. Here’s visits since has been consistently good. The how it went. lines here are short, and the menu has a nice, wide range of options in food, drinks nuestra Cocina and sauces. There are five types of marga2135 SE Division St., 503-232-2135, nuestracocina.com. rita, including a fun frozen marg beer float This decade-old spot predates the existence that delighted our table, and they’re a buck of Division Street’s restaurant row as we off between 3 and 6 pm. The tacos run $2.75 know it, and has long been our favorite fancy to $3 ( just $2 during happy hour) and are Mexican spot in town. It’s a warm, avocado- big compared to their brothers, with large colored room filled with the smell of house- hunks of meat contained in a traditional made tortillas and the tequila-aided laughter double layer of corn tortillas. Our favorites of large groups sipping extra-salty margaritas were the meaty shredded brisket with from blue-rimmed tumblers. Maybe it was bright pickled onions and marinated jalapethe hour—we arrived promptly at 5 to avoid ños and the batter-fried avocado, essentially the often huge lines—or the fact that we fried fat that got extra good with a spritz of passed on the $23 steak plate in favor of a pair the tongue-whipping habanero salsa. of $7 taco plates, but on this visit the experience was missing something. The crowd was honky tonk taco mostly middle-aged, sober and attired for 3384 SE Division St., 503-384-2259, honkytonktaco.com. tourism (think Andina), and the margaritas Before it was playin’ George Strait and were overly citrusy with a bitter bite that servin’ $4 Shiners, this brand-new Texasdidn’t refresh. One very bright spot was a veg- themed Mexican spot was Andy Ricker’s etarian taco, stuffed with meaty mushroom Sen Yai, where the Pok Pok proprietor sold bits and crisp, bright fresh cactus strips. a dish that included instant ramen noodles
Mat tHE W KO r F H aG E
taqueria nueve 727 SE Washington St., 503-954-1987, taquerianueve.com.
This was an upset—in that it was upsetting.
for $9. Well, the big, sun-drenched patio is in the hands of Clyde Common’s Nate Tilden now, and he’s aiming for a people-pleaser. As such, there’s free chips and salsa (don’t
tACo ALLEy: the patio at Xico.
honky tonk
second problem is that the tacos are both teensy-tiny and extremely dry—as though the kitchen anticipated complaints about greasy meat from yoga moms and decided to head them off at the pass. You’ll find all the grease on a chorizo-based queso fundido ($9), but it’s overblown and fake—like some weird one-off Doritos flavor. This is the only place on the crawl we never plan to return to, but your mileage may vary.
proteins at ¿Por Qué No? are notable for their heartening consistency, rarely amazing but generally solid. And damned if the rich, pretty queso fresco on that barbacoa wasn’t one of the highlights of the night.
Xico 3715 SE Division St., 503-548-6343, xicopdx.com.
Xico is expensive—a meal of corn and beans with a price tag that makes it the McGuffin for a south-of-the-border O. Henry story. Late night service can also be inattentive. But then you take a single sip of the graceful margaritas—a marvel of citrus and lightness and smokiness, with booze that comes on not as heat but fullness—and all is forgiven. “We had a lot of margs tonight,” said one of our diners, “but only one margarita.” The happy-hour taco, only available just before closing, is $5 (makes 2-3) and rotates nightly. The tortilla had the lively punch you expect of freshly shucked corn on the cob, but tonight’s albondigas (meatballs) had about the same texture as the tortilla and were a little low on seasoning—making them both hearty and unremarkable. On the other hand the salsa was lovely, the cait pearson
megan nanna
dare upgrade to the $6 guacamole, an unenthusiastically half-mashed and unadorned avocado) and a deep drink menu headlined by palomas ($8) and slushy margs ($9). The first problem is that every cocktail we’ve had on two visits—six of the dozen available— has been substandard, bottoming out with a seasonal margarita that tasted like the juice left over after you wash strawberries. The
¿Por Qué no? 4635 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-954-3138, porquenotacos.com.
¿Por Qué No? is sometimes easy to think of as a place where tacos come as a side to boozy margaritas. The salsas are awful—a rojo like burnt water, a verde like a sweet mud puddle—and the tortillas are a little funny-textured, so bowls and salads often trump the tacos. But that two-margarita house maximum almost always feels like a minimum by the time you finish one, and the fact the restaurant serves these drinks while you’re still waiting in the neverending line—and fan-spray water vapor on people stuck on the hot sidewalk—makes ¿Por Qué No? seem run by geniuses compared to others in the fast-casual set. In stark contrast to the highs and lows of most other bougie taco spots on the crawl, the
XICo
chips were a strange marvel of corn-crisped cloud, and certain bites of the chile relleno were soft-breaded heaven with a delicacy unusual for the dish. And after that hilarious Honky Tonk fundido that tasted like the inside of a hot pocket, Xico’s came on as all deep-throated cheese—a refreshing swim in the moneyed bins of richness. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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BEER PRO/AM SAVE THE DATE!!!
WILLAMETTE WEEK’S 2016
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15 Noon–6 p.m. 27 new beers you can only try here! Portland’s original home and pro brewer collaboration festival! bit.ly/FBwwbeerproam
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eat drink shop go
The BesT Guide To PorTland is now availaBle — and iT’s Free. willameTTe week’s 2016-17
Finder
Pick one up today at any of these fine establishments: New Seasons Markets, Powell’s Books, Bars, Restaurants, Coffee Shops, Dispensaries, Breweries and more. For a full list of locations visit wweek.com/FinderDirectory
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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MUSIC FEATURE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. 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, AUG. 17 Robin Bacior, the Fourth Wall, Sheers
[CINEMATIC POP] Robin Bacior makes anxiety sound incredibly calming. On Water Dreams, Bacior’s most recent album, Bacior processes overwhelming change and what it’s like to reassess your dreams in the form of soft, piano-driven pop. Bacior’s voice presides over an occasionally tense cello and rolling drums with such gentleness, it’s easy to miss how emotionally intense it all is. Water Dreams is cinematic, not just because Bacior knows how to create a scene, but also because you don’t necessarily notice the subtle expressions of angst, as you’re too busy taking in the beauty of the whole moment. SHANNON GORMLEY. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave. 8 pm. $5. 21+.
former band traded their banjos and Quaker-chic apparel for leather the latter duo of Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance has kept wearing the widebrimmed hats while continuing to mine Dixie-fried sounds from all facets of American roots music. Like much of the songs from the band’s debut LP, latest single “Back to Austin” explores the weight of love with a flurry of guitars and poppy, shout-along choruses that are likely to fall into guilty-pleasure territory for most. BRANDON WIDDER. Crystal Ballroom (Lola’s Room), 1332 W Burnside St. 7:30 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.
Dreadnought, Ford Theatre Reunion, Strangeweather, Barrowlands
[KRALLICE IN CHAINS] At one time, you could say that Krallice was the side project of guitar wunderkind Colin Marston, the guy behind tech-metal head-spinners Dysrhythmia and Behold the Arctopus. Now that he’s a halfdozen albums deep into his Weaklinginspired black-metal project, though, it appears that long, winding forays into atmospheric murk are his new main squeeze. Where technical acts usually put instrumental theatrics front and center, Marston dresses his riffs is so many swirling layers of sound you almost forget that he’s on his seventh riff. WALKER MACMURDO. Panic Room, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd. 9 pm. $10 advance, $13 day of show. 21+.
[MILE-HIGH METAL] Colorado already left egg on our face by legalizing weed first. Now it’s sending one of America’s finest genre-bending metal acts to town, to show us just how elegantly disparate elements can be wielded. At times, Dreadnought’s latest album, 2015’s aptly titled Bridging Realms, sounds more like British prog band Curved Air than anything in the metal canon—but then come the screams and the riffs. From the pastoral to jazz to psychedelic postmetal sludge, Dreadnought has a firm grasp on music as a whole, ignoring the regimented constructs of subgenres. Kelly Schilling plays the flute, Lauren Vieira plays the piano, and both women share vocal duties, which gives the band even more majestic power. Recommended for fans of music, not just metal. NATHAN CARSON. High Water Mark Lounge, 6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Sonny and the Sunsets, Garth Steel Klippert
FRIDAY, AUG. 19
Krallice, Pale Chalice, Uada
[SPF 1 MILLION] Master of the unharshed mellow, Sonny Smith has worn the weather-beaten hats of several genres convincingly over an extensive output of idiosyncratic grooves. The San Francisco troubadour has demonstrated his ability to portray a folk balladeer, scuzzy garage-rocker and reggae-devoted islander with his 100 Records series. On his latest, Moods Baby Moods, Smith employs TuneYards’ Merrill Garbus to inject a funky exuberance to his nonchalant riffage that finds him in territory similar to other art-school weirdos Talking Heads and Of Montreal. CRIS LANKENAU. Revolution Hall (roof deck), 1300 SE Stark St., No. 110. 7 pm. $15. 21+.
THURSDAY, AUG. 18 Abronia, Zozma, Ruidoso
[PSYCH ROCK] If there’s one thing the Portland Psych Fest sought to establish a couple weeks ago, it’s that there needs to be much more appreciation for psych as a genre on the live music front. So here is the scene’s next attempt. While Zozma’s otherworldly mix of psychotropic matter with ancient Middle Eastern chants makes them probably the most psychedelic band in the world, think of Abronia’s kaleidoscopic confection as Explosions in the Sky going through a sad acid trip, fulfilling all post-rock needs in dark manner. Ruidoso will open up with a very textbook definition of the style, offering a little something for everyone no matter where they fall on the psych spectrum. CERVANTE POPE. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
Jamestown Revival, Wilderado
[HEARTACHE AND HANDCLAPS] Lately, it seems as though the pop Americana that once defined bands like Mumford and Sons and, to a lesser degree, Jamestown Revival is on the decline. But where members of the
Band of Horses, Wild Feathers
[1-MILLION-DAY FUNERAL] “Country Teen,” the most surprising track on the new Band of Horses record, sounds like an Eagles song, with a jangly buhde-duh guitar riff that mirrors the bass line and hollow, soothing vocals. Light praise? Maybe. But the 10th track on Why Are You OK is the only one that doesn’t cling so closely to the classic BoH formula as to be interchangeable with anything off the band’s last three records. And that’s fine for those of us who’ve always enjoyed the band’s soft twang and effortless long, slow builds. Still, five albums in, it might be nice to see the band take a harder swing. It hasn’t really seemed to reach for anything in a decade, ever since Ben Bridwell strained his voice leading into jam-out on “The Funeral.” Then again, if you’re riding a vibe, why, you know, mess around? MARTIN CIZMAR. Edgefield, 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale. 6:30 pm. $39.50. All ages.
People Under the Stairs, Moka Only, DJ Thanksgiving Brown
[HIP-HOP VETERANS] After nearly two decades in the biz and more than 10 albums, Thes One and Double K, together known as People Under the Stairs, show no signs of slowing down. The L.A. duo still embodies the cooler side of underground hip-hop, the kind first forged by groups like A Tribe Called Quest on the streets of Queens at the onset of the ’90s. On 2015’s The Gettin’ Off Stage, Step 2, the duo embraces the laid-back vibes with which it’s always been associated, erecting them atop a tasteful collection of jazz and funk samples intended to elicit positivity on all fronts. “Acid Raindrops” it is not, but at this point, “The P” no longer need to prove anything. BRANDON WIDDER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave.. 9 pm. Sold out. 21+.
Kill At Will THE SIX RECORDS THAT MADE KILL ROCK STARS. BY PORTIA SA B IN
503-243-2122
When you pick up a record from Kill Rock Stars, you might have little idea what you’re going to hear, but you know what you’re going to get. Since it launched in Olympia, Wash., the year punk broke—and pretty close to the month—the label has prided itself on placing substance above style, emphasizing leftist political principles over any easily placed musical aesthetic. As such, the label provided an early home for many of the most vital acts to come out of the Pacific Northwest that, viewed together, form a timeline of the movements that have defined underground music in the region for the past quarter-century—from grunge to riot grrrl, to singer-songwriter soul-baring to literate indie rock, to the new punk rock of standup comedy. As the label, now with offices in Portland as well as Olympia, prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary, we asked Portia Sabin, who took over as president from founder Slim Moon in 2006, to name the records that have come to define Kill Rock Stars for her.
Various artists, Kill Rock Stars (1991)
“The story of this album is really the story of the label, in that founder Slim Moon was documenting the Olympia scene and other bands that were important to that scene. He put a bunch of his friend’s bands that he loved on the record, including his next-door neighbor Kurt’s band, Nirvana. The comp was released in August 1991 and Nevermind came out in September. The Kill Rock Stars comp promptly sold 25,000 copies, and the label was launched for real.”
Bikini Kill, Pussy Whipped (1993)
“This stands out as a defining record for the label in that it represents a lot of the other bands KRS was releasing, like Bratmobile, Huggy Bear, Heavens to Betsy, and Excuse 17. These bands gave the label a reputation as the home of riot grrrl and also as a queer-friendly, feminist label for political artists with something to say.”
Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out (1997)
“I lived in New York City in the late ’90s, and the band I played in, the Hissyfits, was obsessed with SleaterKinney. We went to Irving Plaza one night in May 2000 to see them play, and I was introduced to Slim by a mutual friend, and that’s how I ended up getting involved with the label. Dig Me Out remains the defining S-K album for me—it’s so raw and powerful.”
Elliott Smith, Either/Or (1997)
“Elliott Smith was somewhat of a departure for the label soundwise, but signing him was certainly a testament to Slim’s ability to spot true talent, even when not packaged in the ‘band’ format that was in vogue at the time. Either/Or is KRS’s best-selling album, a beautiful gem that we’re honored to be able to introduce to new generations of fans.”
Decemberists, Castaways and Cutouts (2002)
“I saw Colin Meloy play solo at a rock ’n’ swap in the backyard of a Portland bar in 2002 and immediately forced Slim to go see him. His charisma and talent as a songwriter just shone out of him. We released this record as a co-release with their Portland label, Hush Records, then did two more. I picked this album because it set the stage for several of the artists that we signed after that, like Horse Feathers and Thao With the Get Down Stay Down—a group of less punk, more melodic bands driven by a singer-songwriter.”
Cameron Esposito, Same Sex Symbol (2014)
“In the last five years, we have started releasing comedy records by comedians who have something important to say. Cameron’s album is a great example of this. With over 500 releases, it’s probably KRS’s commitment to feminist, queer, political and innovative artists that provides a throughline for understanding the label, rather than a particular sound.” SEE IT: Kill Rock Stars’ 25th Birthday Party, with Kinski, Wimps and Lithics, is at Spare Room, 4830 NE 42nd Ave., on Friday, Aug. 19. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
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MUSIC [STRANGER SYNTHS] Eighties nostalgia just won’t quit, as evidenced by the coronation of Stranger Things soundtrack artists Survive and John Carpenter’s recent Lost Themes tour. Creepy mood music made on analog synths is in high demand, and local metal musician and record producer Joel Grind, of the band Toxic Holocaust, is set to add his debut solo synth single to the zeitgeist. Fatal Planet’s two instrumental tracks—loaded with cozily familiar Prophet 600, Juno 6, and Moog tones—straddle the lines between ambient drones, horrifying shuddercore and Knight Rider-style thrills. It is neither adventurous nor virtuosic, but it’s firmly in the pocket, delivering soothing vibes, spooky atmosphere and edgeless, escapist longing. NATHAN CARSON. Panic Room, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd. 8 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
SATURDAY, AUG. 20 Rock Against the TPP
[RALLY UP] Don’t ask me for any informed analysis of the TransPacific Partnership—what do I look like, a journalist?—but what I can tell you is that the lineup for this protest tour is pretty bonkers. Warped Tour relics Anti-Flag? A dude from Chumbawamba? A Hawaiian slack-key guitarist? Lost actress Evangeline Lilly doing…something, presumably? Not exactly a coalition of the influential, but it’s certainly eclectic. And there’s at least one reason to head downtown, regardless of your feelings toward multinational trade agreements, and it is, appropriately enough, Rhode Island’s Downtown Boys, whose awesomely raging, bilingual, sax-abetted feminist punk recalls a thrashier X-Ray Spex. If anyone can influence hearts and minds, it’s them. And barring that, well, Hari Kondabolu is pretty funny. MATTHEW SINGER. Director Park, 815 SW Park Ave. 5 pm. Free. All ages.
Gold Panda, Beacon, Baba Ali
[BREXIT MUSIC FOR A FILM] The United Kingdom’s recent vote to leave the European Union hit people hard, particularly producer Derwin Panda. Following this summer’s release of the excellent Good Luck and Do Your Best, he bottled his anxiety and looming fears stemming from his countrymen’s xenophobia into a surprise EP titled Kingdom. The instrumental album is more downtempo and melancholic than its predecessor, laced with minor-key samples and Caribou-esque breakbeats that have long served as the fundamental bedrock for his electronic wandering and ambient compositions. The outro track, which consists purely of tunnel recordings, showcases how much Derwin has skirted the traditional MPC over the past six years in favor of something more natural. BRANDON WIDDER. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St. 9 pm. $16. 21+.
Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas
[DISNEY CHATTEL] BFFs ever since the 23-year-olds appeared together in the all-too-appropriately titled Camp Rock eight years back, Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas launched this tour as true co-headliners, ceding the minimal stage to one another for smallish sets that lean heavily on their near charttopping (both debuted at No. 2) recent albums. Lovato’s fifth LP, Confident, bends her show-stopping pipes to dancefloor confessionals. Meanwhile, Last Year Was Complicated, Jonas’ newest fulllength effort, re-brings sexy back via chilled R&B allusions to high-profile romantic contretemps. The second generation of Magic Kingdom expats should perhaps be forgiven for falling back upon familiar tropes, but the new breed offers so little of the delirious discovery or erotic frisson that
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INTRODUCING COURTESY OF TURTLENECKED
Lord Dying, Child Bite, Joel Grind, Gaytheist
Turtlenecked Who: Harrison Smith (vocals, guitar, drums, bass). For fans of: The Pixies, Car Seat Headrest, Futureheads. Sounds like: A grounded teenager lamenting his confinement to Gang of Four LPs played at 45 rpm. Harrison Smith is fidgety. He blushes. He’s visibly uncomfortable. He’s exactly as you’d imagine a burgeoning young genius to be. “I always thought of myself as a musician,” he shrugs from across a table at the B-Side Tavern, his voice cracking. “But I also feel like I just rip off all my favorite bands.” In an era when home-studio setups are as ubiquitous to college dorm rooms as the slackers who inhabit them, Smith was another skinny kid among the college freshmen toting their Squiers to school along with their MacBooks. He’d played bass casually in the only punk band in the sleepy small town of Woodinville, Wash., before moving to Portland in 2015 to attend Lewis & Clark College. The ambition to begin writing was sparked more by observing so many of these pretenders strutting around campus, wearing their self-aggrandizement as proudly as the buttons pinned to their denim jacket lapels. “There was this kid from L.A. who I hated,” Smith says. “His band sucked, and I was really mad that I hadn’t made anything and he still had his band.” Smith bided time the following summer, working in a factory manufacturing bobbleheads and cultivating ideas for songs that would form his first EP, Twisted Legs. His naiveté about production methods ended up being the impetus for a lo-fi aesthetic developed out of necessity, making the finished product all the more admirable. Using his laptop’s built-in microphone for vocals and Garageband’s makeshift keyboard plug-in, he created a ramshackle collage of songs improvised out of what he had on hand at the time. “I’m just into doing things really fast and trying to learn,” he says. “It was easy, and I could come out with ideas faster and be less self-conscious.” On his new record under the name Turtlenecked, Pure Plush Bone Cage, it’s obvious that his improvisations have paid off. Smith shifts dramatically song to song, from the fey innocence of his first efforts to a newfound confidence. His violent scream on “I Always Thought I Was Watching Television” rises urgently and unexpectedly, like a concealed weapon revealed in a fistfight, sounding more like Frank Black than an angsty young adult. It’s all over in a minute and a half. This bipolarity is perhaps Pure Plush’s principal feature, moving seamlessly from screeching, atonal dirges to melancholic power pop on songs like “Mondrian,” a slow-dance elegy about his latent artistic prowess. By the time its half-hour runtime is over, you feel battered by something immensely more powerful than you’d expect from another shy college student imitating his favorite records. Across the table from me, though, Smith is still overly nervous and giggling, self-conscious about his previous statements about the classmate who inspired him. “I hope it doesn’t sound like I have this campaign fueled by hate or something,” he says. CRIS LANKENAU. SEE IT: Turtlenecked plays the Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 503-238-5588, with Boreen, Mo Troper and the Assumptions and James Curry IV, on Thursday, Aug. 18. 7 pm. Contact venue for ticket prices. All ages. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
MUSIC marked Britney and Jt’s pop-life maturation. once upon a time, we worried Disney’s ascension would infantilize the culture, but a lifetime’s service to the Mouse has somehow turned our young stars adult-contemporary well before their time. JAY HoRton. Moda Center, 1 N Center Court St. $29.95$195. 7 pm. All ages.
The Body and Full of Hell, Thrones, Ruminant
[BUMPIn’ GRInDcoRE] Since napalm Death invented the subgenre in the mid-1980s there has been, at any given time, exactly one good grindcore band. currently, that band is Maryland’s Full of Hell. tonight, the group teams with Portland’s own experimental punk act, the Body, bringing to life the two bands’ excellent col-
laborative album, One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache, which shifts the gears slightly from unrelenting fury toward a more contemplative, electronics-driven miasma of noise, punk and oppressive filth. two of extreme music’s noisiest bands together on one stage—it’s a match made in Hell. WALKER MAcMURDo. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St. 8 pm. Contact venue for ticket prices. 21+.
SUNDAY, AUG. 21 Mic Capes, Rasheed Jamal, Maze Koroma
[ActIVISt RAP] Mic capes and Rasheed Jamal are ruling the Portland rap scene right now. capes’ most recent single, “one 4
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coURtESY oF SAcRED BonES REcoRDS
PROFILE
Cheena MONDAY, AUG. 22 Everybody knows New York is mostly just a bunch of rats that can smoke cigarettes and investment bankers waiting in line for $40 acai bowls. But in the sewers beneath that city lies Cheena. “My room is just a bunch of Indian food, empty Narragansett cans and stinky socks full of semen, mid-2000s hardcore records and mice,” says singer Walker Behl when asked to describe life in the Big Apple, “plus a bunch of floral-print jackets.” Leather freaks and thuggish psychopaths might recognize this flock of hoodlums from their previous bands. Cheena plucked its members from modern New York punk luminaries Crazy Spirit, Hank Wood and the Hammerhead, and the noise-freak project Pharmakon. Don’t expect them to sound like any of that, though— with Cheena, they’re slogging collectively down a new path. Lazy idiots at vile rags like Spin compare the band to the New York Dolls just because the members wear vests and are from the New York, but anyone who’s actually heard Cheena would be forced to agree they’re actually the sonic descendants of the Flesheaters, a band who wore vests and hailed from Los Angeles. “I don’t expect someone who isn’t a punk, or who didn’t grow up like that, to really get it,” Behl says. All this is to say that they’re not nice boys aping a pleasant old sound. Cheena just released its debut on Sacred Bones, a truly despicable LP called Spend the Night With…—and by despicable, I mean it’s one of the best records I’ve heard this year. The standouts are “Jane,” which has an early-’80s X feel, if only X had been on acid instead of dope, and “Electric Snoopy Gang,” which sounds like a country song played by vermin dropouts. Admittedly, though, while the songs are dirty, vile and shambling, these are still songs, with hooks and choruses, not just minute-and-a-half outbursts. It’s the sound of a band in transition—from hardcore scum-babies to floral-print dirtbags. “It’s easy to be a dumbass and not have to worry about anything,” Behl says. “Now I have to try.” BRACE BELDEN. A punk band making music from the gutter, for the gutter.
SEE IT: cheena plays the Lovecraft Bar, 421 SE Grand Ave., with Public Eye and the ointment, on Monday, Aug. 22. 8 pm. $6. 21+. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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NIGHT SHOWS Presented by Jack Daniels
portland.projectpabst.com THURSDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 2016
Todd Barry
comedy
with Bryan Cook and Joann Schinderle Dante’s • $15
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26TH, 2016
BUSDRIVER DEANTONI PARKS
Mississippi Studios 21+ 8pm doors/9pm show • $12 FRIDAY, AUGUST 26TH, 2016
Candace • Talkative Adventure Galley Pony Village Kelly’s Olympian 9pm show/8pm doors • $5 SATURDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 2016
HILLSTOMP
Underwhelming Favorites Pretty Gritty
Doug Fir Lounge 21+ 8pm doors/9pm show • $12 SATURDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 2016
DAVID BAZAN MICHAEL NAU
Mississippi Studios 21+ 9pm doors/10pm show • $20 SATURDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 2016
Crystal Ballroom 21+ 7pm doors/8pm show • $25 FRIDAY, AUGUST 26TH, 2016
Y LA BAMBA ORQUESTRA PACIFICO TROPICAL HALEY HEYNDERICKX
Revolution Hall 21+ 7pm doors/8pm show • $15 FRIDAY, AUGUST 26TH, 2016
REAL ESTATE AND GUESTS
Crystal Ballroom 21+ 7pm doors/8pm show • $18 FRIDAY, AUGUST 26TH, 2016
PINKISH BLACK NOCTURNAL HABITS MOTRIK • DEMON FAMILIAR
Ash St. Saloon 21+ 8pm doors/9pm show • $10 SATURDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 2016
GUIDED BY VOICES
SUMMER CANNIBALS
Crystal Ballroom 21+ 9pm doors/10pm show• $25 SATURDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 2016
And And And Souvenir Driver Rilla • Grand Lake Islands
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28TH, 2016
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28TH, 2016
THE LAST ARTFUL, DODGR • MY BODY Holocene 21+ 8:30pm doors $5/$10 Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
DIGABLE PLANETS CAMP LO
BELL WITCH • MUSCLE AND MARROW ZIRAKZIGIL • JOHN HAUGHM Ash St. Saloon 21+ 9pm doors/10pm show $10 at the door
SHY GIRLS
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 2016
Kelly’s Olympian 9pm show/8pm doors • $5
PETER BJORN AND JOHN AND GUESTS
Revolution Hall 21+ 8pm doors/9pm show • $20
MUSIC O’Shea,” is a “fuck the police” anthem that’s blisteringly poignant but also conveys a sense of frustrated exhaustion. Jamal has a lot to say, too, in his proudly twisted-up, Southern-rooted rap. “Can we please have a moment of violence?” he raps on “Urban Decay,” a track from last year’s Sankofa. Capes is still teasing his album Concrete Dreams, but he recently held a listening party in town, implying he’s for-real close this time. SHANNON GORMLEY. Rontoms, 600 E Burnside St. 8 pm. Free. 21+.
TUESDAY, AUG. 23 Elvis Depressedly, Teen Suicide, Nicole Dollanganger
[DIY-DREAMS] The half-dozen recordings available from Elvis Depressedly— essentially, the addled songcraft of Coma Cinema director Mat Cothran alongside Delaney Mills’ keyboards, drums and backing vocals—had already attracted an admiring cult of global tastemakers before threatening unexpected heights of approachability via the (relative) production sheen and (seriously relative) positivism of last year’s first proper fulllength, New Alhambra. Bedsit pop bristling with depressive whimsy and ramshackle ornamentation, the newly reissued and expanded Holo Pleasures/ California Dreamin’ sees the half-dozen marvels of serrated pop haze that originally appeared on the act’s 2013 EP and raises with another six like-minded tunes taken from the same sessions. Though the fuzz rolls in heavily, the blurrier textures contain their own allure and only accentuate a concerted tone best described as self-medicating. JAY HORTON. Analog Cafe, 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. $12 advance, $15 day of show. 7 pm. All ages.
Boris, Earth
[EXPERIMENTAL ROCK] When Japanese three-piece Boris turned out its seminal offering Pink in 2006, George W. Bush was in office, the American economy was booming and Gnarls Barkley was all over the radio. Somehow, the avant-garde band’s record still sounds fresh and creative today. Boris is touring the record in its entirety across North America and brings its ferocious, shape-shifting hard rock to the Rose City, touting over two decades of sonic experience. Bring your earplugs and prepare for a sore neck the next day. MARK STOCK. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St. 8:30 pm. $20. All ages.
CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD Cult of Orpheus
[21ST-CENTURY SONNETS] Portland composer Christopher Corbell seems determined to fling 19th-century musical forms into today’s culture. First came his opera, Viva’s Holiday, about the celebrated Portland stripper-authorsinger Viva Las Vegas. Now, Corbell’s Cult of Orpheus project features the onetime rock singer’s appealing modern mix of so-called “art song”—a dreadful name for poetic songs popular in the 19th through mid-20th centuries that often eschewed standard verse-chorusverse structure—with a contemporary singer-songwriter sensibility. This multifaceted show features singer-guitarist Corbell’s brand-new art songs from his forthcoming album with Portland Cello Project’s Sonja Myklebust, as well as his settings of Sufi poems and a foretaste of his next opera. BRETT CAMPBELL. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave. 7 pm Wednesday, Aug. 17. Sliding-scale general admission, pay your wage suggested. All ages.
Poranguí
[MULTICULTI] A show at a yoga center featuring a musician who’s also a therapeutic bodyworker and sound healer suggests a certain New Age-y vibe, but Poranguí’s music is as diverse as his Brazilian-AmericanMexican background. Trained in ethnomusicology and neuroscience, he uses instruments from many cultures, including African kalimba, didgeridoo (naturally), wooden flutes and various global percussion, along with beatbox-
dates here ing, electronic looping, field recordings (chirping insects abound), traditional indigenous sounds and tunes, and even contemporary dance rhythms to provide some musical momentum along with the meditative grooves. BRETT CAMPBELL. Sun Gate Center, 2215 NE Alberta St. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Aug. 17. $25. All ages.
Los Tigres del Norte
[NORTEÑO SUPERSTARS] Believe it or not, Hispanic music’s U2 is from San Jose, and it plays a Northern Mexican oompah music called norteño. Sixtime Grammy winners with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, the classic five-piece accordion band is famed for its stories of real people, first rising to international prominence with a 1974 hit called “Contrabando y traición” (“Contraband and Betrayal”) about a female drug smuggler. Philanthropists whose foundation has donated over a half-million dollars to the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Los Tigres is among the biggest names in Spanishlanguage music today. On this year’s release, Ataúd, the band continues its ballad-filled tradition, offering relatable songs about life’s greatest struggles. PARKER HALL. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway. 8 pm Friday, Aug. 19. $35-$85. All ages.
Classical Revolution PDX presents Music From Hell
[SINFUL SYMPHONICS] The concept: local classical music sophisticates hand-pick an array of performances too risqué even for purgatory, with 12 minutes of stage time to pay tribute to the underworld. Scheduled performances include cello-burlesque, Gregorian chants reinterpreted for electric harp and a demonic pianist. The Twilight Orchestra kicks the night off with a gothic symphony and DJ Kirin Moorty will no doubt wear out the grooves on “Enter Sandman,” Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” and that Rolling Stones song from the end of Interview With the Vampire. Coat check will also be issuing tickets for anyone wishing to abandon all hope before entering. CRIS LANKENAU. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St. 8 pm Saturday, Aug. 20. $10. 21+.
Montavilla Jazz Festival
[LOCAL SWING] Montavilla’s excellent little jazz fest returns for a third time this year, offering locals an affordable glimpse at some of Portland’s best progressive jazz artists. Special performances from the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, piano wizard (and head of the PSU jazz studies department) Darrell Grant, and Jimmy Mak’s regulars like guitarist Dan Balmer round out a community event that centers on music education and outreach. The fest does well to highlight the original works of Portland improvisers in a variety of jazz settings from big bands to intimate small ensembles, giving its patrons a clear glimpse of Portland’s jazz scene in the here and now. PARKER HALL. Portland Metro Arts, 9003 SE Stark St. 2 pm Saturday, Aug. 20. $10-$25 sliding scale. All ages.
Stary Olsa
[BELARUSIAN BEATS] Centuries of domination by neighboring cultures—principally Poles, Russians and Lithuanians—not to mention recent authoritarian rule have condemned Belarusian cultural arts to relative obscurity in the West. On its 13th album, Medieval Classic Rock, sextet Stary Olsa is trying to change that by covering Metallica and other hardrock favorites using ancient Eastern European cultural influences and instruments, including bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, flutes and more. The super-successful Kickstarter project that funded the album also paid for Stary Olsa’s first U.S. tour, where it’s delivering striking music that sometimes sounds like an inebriated Russian rocker growling over a Celtic or Renaissance music ensemble. BRETT CAMPBELL. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St. 9 pm Tuesday, Aug. 23. $15. 21+.
For more Music listings, visit
ALBUM REVIEWS
Sam Coomes BUGGER ME (No Quarter) [NU-PORTLAND BLUES] Sam Coomes is not one to play it straight. A key fixture of the local scene since his time in Heatmiser in the early ’90s, Coomes has helped create some of the finest music ever to come out of the Pacific Northwest, both with Quasi—his rocksichord-pop duo with drummer Janet Weiss—and through session and production work for the likes of Built to Spill, Sleater-Kinney and Bugskull. He’s a wicked guitar player and underrated songwriter, but on his debut recording under his own name, he veers sharply to the left, constructing an intentionally spooky, uncommercial album almost entirely via murky organs, a mid-’60s rhythm box and his unmistakable vocals. Despite the minimal approach, Bugger Me’s best moments rival Coomes’ classic oeuvre. Two-headed monster “Cruisin’ Thru/Just Like the Rest,” which begins as
a topical carnival-organ slow-dance number, with Coomes singing the Nu-Portland blues (“I don’t know where everyone went/Ain’t no good when they jack up your rent”), shifts to something more sinister halfway through its seven-minute runtime but rides the same steady drum-machine beat to the bitter end. Title track “Bugger-me” is a tumbling, noisy Suicide homage. There’s no real pure pop moments like the highlights from Quasi’s Featuring “Birds”—still the most underrated record of pre-Portlandia indie rock—but there is plenty of weird noise for fans to boogie along to at the next end-of-the-world party. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. SEE IT: Sam Coomes plays Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., with Clark and the Himselfs and Marisa Anderson, on Saturday, Aug. 20. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.
Federale ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK (Death Waltz) [TAGLIERINI WESTERN] Ever since a handful of locally based, globally feted tastemakers first embraced the misterioso-profundo orchestral élan of Sergio Leone-styled film scores, discussions of Federale inevitably invoke “cinematic” as a key descriptor. True, the band’s members insist each of their albums primarily exist as soundtracks for genre flicks of their own minutely detailed imagining. Still, in the laziest critical shorthand, cinematic music generally means instrumental music—approachable evocations of hummable, shimmering menace, particularly—and that no longer strictly applies to Federale. All the Colours of the Dark, the septet’s debut for artisanal soundtrack imprint Death Waltz, newly showcases lyrical narratives voiced in full. Toiling so long and so artfully within the thankless constraints of its rarefied milieu
elevated the group’s trademark tweaked-vintage aesthetic well beyond mere pastiche, and as Morricone devotees surely knew, there’s no better means of heightening drama than elongated wordless tension. Set against bristling, decorous soundscapes ever hinting at playful release, Federale jefe Collin Hegna unfurls a honeyed baritone that calls to mind Scott Walker at the Grand Ole Opry—or, for the title track’s scorched-country duet, a reverse-engineered Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. The best of these songs were made for tuneful, robust talking. And, with enviable grace, that’s just what they do. JAY HORTON. SEE IT: Federale plays Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., on Saturday, Aug. 20. 6 and 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. Early show all ages, late show 21+.
Coco Columbia WHEN THE BIRDS BEGIN TO WALK (Self-Released) [PORTLAND FUSION] Once you tear through the slight New Age façade, indie-jazz vocalist Coco Columbia’s sophomore album, When the Birds Begin to Walk, reveals itself as an astonishing 10-track gallery piece. Deeply virtuosic from the first note of the layered, beatdefying opening track “Weight on Limb,” the record blends prog-jazz breakdowns with spot-on J Dilla homages, all held together by the 25-year-old’s vocals. And despite its many quirks—like when Columbia places a searingly groovy cover of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” immediately after “Lionhearted,” a song that heavily features lyrics inspired by the Hayao Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro—the record rewards its creator’s daring choices. It’s a technically masterful set of songs that’s easily among the best jazz-influenced music
to emerge from Portland in years, and it comes courtesy of a growing number of 20- and 30-somethings with the skills (but not the dough) to move to more certified jazz meccas. Songs like “Chalkboard Heart” showcase the burning fingers of Israeli transplant Gil Assayas on the Fender Rhodes, with a groove from drummer Micah Hummel and bassist Alex Meltzer that’s as good as or better than anything from counterparts in New York. These combined musical efforts bolster the bandleader’s rhythmic songwriting style, culminating in a shimmering example of Weird Portland done right. PARKER HALL. SEE IT: Coco Columbia plays Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., with Sama Dams and Moorea Masa, on Wednesday, Aug. 17. 9 pm. $7 advance, $10 day of show. 21+. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
MUSIC CALENDAR WED. AUG. 17 Alberta Rose
3000 NE Alberta St Amy Helm and the Handsome Strangers
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St ECHoPURR, Sam Pace and the Gilded Grit
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St The Used
Dante’s
350 West Burnside Dread Crew of Oddwood
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Coco Columbia, Sama Dams, Moorea Masa
Holocene
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Rae Goren
High Water Mark Lounge
426 SW Washington St. The Suicide Notes, Slutty Hearts, Hong Kong Banana
Jimmy Mak’s
2958 NE Glisan St Hank Plank and the 2x4s; Michael Hurley & the Croakers
6800 NE MLK Ave Dreadnought, Ford Theatre Reunion, Strangeweather, Barrowlands
Mississippi Pizza
Kelly’s Olympian
Mississippi Studios
LaurelThirst Public House
Panic Room
426 SW Washington St. The Bricks, Bisti, Tallwomen, Noise Complaint
2958 NE Glisan St Billy Kennedy Band; Lewi & the Left Coast Roasters
Mission Theater
Jimmy Mak’s
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Bitter Buddha
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Rachel Mann & friends; Anita Margarita & the Rattlesnakes
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Robin Bacior, the Fourth Wall, Sheers
Panic Room
1624 NW Glisan St. Mamma Coal, Git Rights, Matty & Katie
3228 SW Sunset Blvd. Na Rósaí
The Goodfoot
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Creative Institute of Dying, Deep Love, Moro, Consumer; The Runaway Four
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Shafty
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Killed By Health, Vincent Van Whoa BDAY, Manx
The Old Church 1422 SW 11th Ave Cult of Orpheus
THURS. AUG. 18 Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St ArtPornMurder, Kid Defender, TRITA, Fluid Spill
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. Abronia, Zozma, Ruidoso
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St Turtlenecked, Boreen, Mo Troper and the Assumptions, James Curry IV
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Jamestown Revival, Wilderado
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St. The Builders & The Butchers
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave Kill Rock Stars presents Kinski, Wimps, and Lithics
The Analog Cafe
The Firkin Tavern
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St Mic Crenshaw, DJ Klavical and Karma Rivera
The Lovecraft Bar
The Know
Turn! Turn! Turn!
421 SE Grand Ave Blue Vanities Project
The Analog Cafe
10350 N Vancouver Way, Whisky Union
2845 SE Stark St 11th Annual Jerry Garcia Birthday Celebration with Andy Coe Band
Revolution Hall
2215 NE Alberta Street Poranguí
Ponderosa Lounge
The Firkin Tavern
2026 NE Alberta St Egadz
Sun Gate Center
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Lord Dying, Child Bite, Joel Grind, Gaytheist
1937 SE 11th Ave Walking Stalking Robots, Bob Fossil, Garanzuay
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Krallice, Pale Chalice, Uada 1300 SE Stark St #110 Sonny and the Sunsets, Garth Steel Klippert (roof deck)
3939 N Mississippi Ave. People Under the Stairs, Moka Only, DJ Thanksgiving Brown
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. School of Rock Concert
1937 SE 11th Ave Sell the Farm//Laryssa Birdseye (band)//Matt Lindley
The Lovecraft Bar
The O’Neil Public House 6000 NE Glisan St. The Hillwilliams
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St Crimson Altar, Gorgon Stare, Demon’s Bell
FRI. AUG. 19 Alberta Rose
3000 NE Alberta St Paperback Writer
Alberta Rose
3000 NE Alberta St Bob Schneider
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Los Tigres del Norte
421 SE Grand Ave Marrquii, DJs Junior & Buckmaster 8 NE Killingsworth St Lavender Country, Hearts of Oak
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Summer of Love
SAT. AUG. 20 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Bethel Music Worship Night
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Raise the Bridges, Bad Man, Ships to Roam, The Cooked and the Raw
Bossanova Ballroom 722 E Burnside St. Jai Ho! 6th Annual Independence Bollywood Party: Celebrating India & Pakistan’s Freedom
Bunk Bar
225 SW Ash St Cool Nutz
1028 SE Water Ave. Sam Coomes, Clark and the Himselfs, Marisa Anderson
Doug Fir Lounge
Crystal Ballroom
Ash Street Saloon
830 E Burnside St. Steep Ravine and Crow and The Canyon
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Tommy Thompson; Rick Emery
Edgefield
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Band of Horses
High Water Mark Lounge
6800 NE MLK Ave Skeleton Hands, William Hart, Bloom Offering, Vibrissae
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Karen Lovely & John Del Toro Richardson; Karen Lovely
LAST WEEK LIVE
3552 N Mississippi Ave Three for Silver
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Sixtwoseven, Drive On Mak, guests
[AUG. 17-23]
LaurelThirst Public House
221 NW 10th Ave. Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
1001 SE Morrison St. The Castaway Kids, Amber Moon, Pedestrian Death Gang 221 NW 10th Ave. Mel Brown Quartet; The Christopher Brown Quartet
Kelly’s Olympian
For more listings, check out wweek.com.
bRIDgET bAkER
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Editor: Matthew Singer. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/ submitevents. 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.
1332 W Burnside St Jordan Fisher
Dante’s
CREW LOVE: Portland rap label EYRST had a lot to celebrate at its first anniversary show, including a new EP from founder Martell Webster to hype-hauling releases from Myke Bogan, The Last Artful Dodgr and Maze Koroma. Filling out the Evergreen’s large main floor is a difficult proposition for a local hip-hop show, but the scene on Aug. 12 seemed more like a cocktail mixer than just a show, with artists, old friends and new fans alike raising a glass to Webster and label co-founder Neill Von Tally’s team. The night started with solo sets from Epp and Calvin Valentine, both best known for their collaborative efforts with Tope in TxE. Koroma then hit the stage with what’s become a new tradition of his, throwing Ring Pops into the crowd. The young MC performed much of his EYRST project Osiris but truly hit his stride when he belted a full, karaoke-worthy version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” Why not? It was just that kind of night. The lights went low for Blossom to croon through her brief catalog. Webster, meanwhile, seemed more comfortable offstage, watching the rest of the collective perform and cheering them on—when it came time for his headlining set, he came off reserved and a bit unnatural on the mic. Luckily, Dodgr mesmerized the room before the lights went up, tapping Bogan in for their collaborative “Pop!” and then riding out with an ode to her crew and what they can, and will, accomplish, the booming “Squadron.” MATTHEW SCHONFELD. Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Gold Panda, Beacon, Baba Ali
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Tahirah Memory
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Ladywolf, Soft Lions, Silver Ships
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Santiam, Livy Conner; Redray Frazier
Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St. Samantha Crain and Matthew Milia
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave The Israelites Ska Band
Mississippi Studios
350 West Burnside Classical Revolution PDX presents Music from Hell
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Federale
Director Park
Moda Center
815 SW Park Avenue Rock Against the TPP
1 N Center Court St Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas
Duff’s Garage
Portland Metro Arts
2530 NE 82nd Ave Levi Dexter; Pin & Hornits; BridgeCreek
Eastburn
1800 E Burnside St, Erotic City: Live Prince Tribute
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. The Fall of Troy, ‘68, Illustrations, We the Wild; Earth Anchor (lounge)
9003 SE Stark St. Montavilla Jazz Festival
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. Belphegor, Origin, Shining, Abigail Williams
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Smoochknob, Crazy Like Me; Parallel Dysfunction, SearchingforSanity, Wolf Fang Fist, The Castaway Kids, The Macks
The Firkin Tavern
Rontoms
1937 SE 11th Ave The New Not Normals, Broad Strokes, Stein
600 E Burnside St Mic Capes, Rasheed Jamal, Maze Koroma
The Goodfoot
Star Theater
2845 SE Stark St Farnell Newton and The Mothership Connection
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St The Body and Full of Hell, Thrones, Ruminant
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Modern Ritual with Sonns
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave The Hood and The Lyre, Darkswoon
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St The Late Great, Mike Coykendall & Hollow Sidewalks
SUN. AUG. 21 Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Professor Slice Box, Stein, Onion The Man
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Freak Mountain Ramblers
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Anna Fritz; Kela Parker
Panic Room
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Master, Sacrificial Slaughter, VX36, The Black Order
13 NW 6th Ave. Blue Vanities Project
The Analog Cafe
Jimmy Mak’s
Loveboys, Foxx Bodies, Killed By Health, Lord Becky
LaurelThirst Public House
Lan Su Chinese Garden
221 NW 10th Ave. Dan Balmer Trio
2958 NE Glisan St Wheels, Kung Pao Chickens
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. ACOUSTIC EXILE, IDLE FOX, ANOTHER NEIGHBORHOOD DISAPPEARED, HE UPPER STRATA, LIVIYIU
Revolution Hall
The Know
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Out To Lunch, Day Moanstar, Dog Claw
2026 NE Alberta St Roselit Bone, The Reverberations, Thee Last Go Round
1300 SE Stark St #110 Rooftop Campfire Singalong hosted by The OK Chorale PDX
The Analog Cafe
The Lovecraft Bar
The Liquor Store
421 SE Grand Ave Cheena, Public Eye, The Ointment
The Secret Society
Ash Street Saloon
3341 SE Belmont St, There Is No Mountain, Sam Humans, Wave Action 116 NE Russell St 12th Avenue Hot Club, The Newport Nightingales, The Tickled Pinks, Doug & Dee’s Hot Lovin’ Jazz Babies, Melissa Roane
TUES. AUG. 23 225 SW Ash St All Hail the Yeti, Final Drive
Dante’s
350 West Burnside Stary Olsa
Doug Fir Lounge
MON. AUG. 22 Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Dwight Church, Dwight Dickinson, Dirty Uncle Karl and The Vegetable
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave. A Benefit For XRAY.fm
830 E Burnside St. Reeve Carney
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave John Cliftone
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Mel Brown Septet
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St.
239 NW Everett St. An Intimate Evening with Thomas Lauderdale & China Forbes: A Benefit for Lan Su
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Jackstraw; The Lonesome Valley Pussyfooters & I Can Lick Any SOB In The House
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Benny Bassett
Panic Room
3100 NE Sandy Blvd NEID, Genocide Method, Hyborian Rage, Extraterrestrial Plague Sprayer
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave Alter Bridge, Saint Asonia
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Elvis Depressedly, Teen Suicide, Nicole Dollanganger
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Boys II Gentlemen
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Waves, Dear Rabbit, The Century
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Boris, Earth
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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MUSIC c o u rtes y o f B r y c e L o well
needle exchange
PRSN Years DJing: I’ve been collecting music since I can remember, but it was 2009 when I started mixing music. Genre: Hip-hop, dancehall, bass music and everything in between. Where you can catch me regularly: My homie Barisone and I host a monthly at the Liquor Store the last Thursday of every month called Wake the Town. We play host to some of our favorite artists from around the globe. Craziest gig: A couple months back at What the Festival, I was playing a sunrise set, and Claude VonStroke came up and dropped a couple tunes in the midst of it all—not that crazy, but hilarity ensued. My go-to records: I’ve been vibing with this new Knox Brown EP that just came out called Searching. It features Anderson .Paak and BJ the Chicago Kid. My roommate, Reva DeVito is about to drop a record, too, called The Move. That should be dropping shortly. Don’t ever ask me to play…: I’m not too keen on requests, but if I’m asked the right thing, I’m game. NEXT GIG: PRSN spins at Wake the Town at the Liquor Store, 3341 SE Belmont St., with Sinistarr, Qloq and Barisone, on Thursday, Aug. 25.
Killingsworth Dynasty 832 N Killingsworth St Post Punk Discotheque
Moloko
WED, AUG. 17 Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave Club Libra
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave. Morning Remorse (fuzz, psych & hand claps)
Euphoria Nightclub 320 SE 2nd Ave, Alix Perez & Eprom: Shades, Trevor Kelly, Šuma b2b LSV, Whateveryn
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. TRONix (electronica)
STREET P.21 40
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
Sandy Hut
1430 NE Sandy Blvd. DJ Atom 13
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Suzanne Bummers
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Event Horizon (darkwave, industrial, synthpop)
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Easy Egg
THURS, AUG. 18 Beech Street Parlor 412 NE Beech Street Taylor Hill
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave. Battles & Lamar (freestyle, electro, boogie)
Gold Dust Meridian
3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ Matt Stanger
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Mumdance, Massacooraman, Korma
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Nik Nice & Brother Charlie (brazilian)
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Thursday Electronic
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Shadowplay (goth, industrial, EBM)
FRI, AUG. 19 Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave The Cave (rap)
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St 80s Video Dance Attack
Evergreen at Loyal Legion 618 SE Alder St. Metroplane
Euphoria Nightclub
315 SE 3rd Ave MitiS, Hal-V & Spacecase, Nowa
e m i ly j o a n g r e e n e
BAR REVIEW
Where to drink this week.
1.
Blitz Ladd
2239 SE 11th Ave., 503-236-3592, blitzladd.com. recover from the indignity of U.S. women’s soccer losing to Sweden by watching nBa players roll over the world in basketball. Blitz will have drink and maybe food specials during the men’s olympic basketball games.
2.
Ardor
1006 N Killingsworth St., 503-852-1125, ardornaturalwines.com. ardor’s array of natural wine pours—popping up funnily inside red e Cafe at night—can seriously only be found at, like, Four Horsemen in new york and in Paris, France. enjoy.
3.
Century
930 SE Sandy Blvd., centurybarpdx.com. Century is the sports bar with the best hair in all of Portland, and also the best shirts and pants, the best roof, and the best late-hours nightclub.
4.
Craft Pour House
16055 SW Regatta Lane, No. 700, Beaverton, 503-747-5864, craftpourhouse.com. Well, hold the goddamn phone. Craft Pour House might be Beaverton’s first true nerd-out, beer-geek bar—with great, weird and interesting brews.
5.
Division Wines
3564 SE Division St., 503-234-7281, divisionwines.com. one of the finest wine shops and bars in town—especially if your tastes run toward the natural, oddball and aperitif.
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. 50: A Possible History of Dance Music, 1960s - Present
Killingsworth Dynasty
832 N Killingsworth St Strange Babes (post-punk)
Local Lounge
FINALLY, TIME TO RIOT: Until last week, there was no home pub for some of Portland’s best cider. Cider Riot’s stuff was made in the garage of Abe Goldman-Armstrong, and the most reliable way to find a keg of Everybody Pogo hopped cider was to visit one of the city’s Timbers bars. But the new Cider Riot taproom (807 NE Couch St., 503-662-8275, ciderriot.com) is not only the one place you’re currently guaranteed to get hold of a bottle of truly stellar 1763 cider—a farmy and beautiful number made with traditional English cider apples, judged the best cider in Oregon at this year’s Portland Cider Invitational—it’s actually a pretty damn good bar. Going against the recent taproom trend of throwing a few chairs into a box and calling it good, the handmade-feeling bar is a mess of high ceiling, woodgrain and little hidey-holes, with a sectioned-off dart area in the front, a parking-lot patio with shawarma from Ramy’s Lamb Shack food cart, and a goofball vending machine. A collaboration with Cascade Barrel House— mixing its sour tripel with Cider Riot’s black currant—is deep-flavored and bracingly acidic, while Amarillo-hopped Chaos de Tejas is one of few alcoholic drinks to make elegant use of blood orange. Guest taps, meanwhile, include brew from neighboring Burnside, plus Portland Cider Company’s Sorta Sweet to fill in the sugary gaps for those less accustomed to Cider Riot’s drier output. Kids are welcome till 7 pm, then moved out for grownups who like to drink. There’s only one real problem—the place closes at 9 pm, unless crowds exert some peer pressure by showing up late. Do so. I’d like to drink here a little later than that. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Spend The Night w/ Recloose
DJ Always Ready
Valentines
Sandy Hut
232 SW Ankeny St Surface Noise Vinyl Invitational Happy Hour (b.y.o. records)
SAT, AUG. 20
3536 NE M L King Blvd, Club Dionysus (electronica, edm, retro)
Beech Street Parlor
Moloko
Bossanova Ballroom
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Sappho & Friends (disco)
Quarterworld
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd DJ Battles (synthpop, electro)
Saucebox
214 N Broadway St LeMove
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Danava
The Embers Avenue
412 NE Beech Street Spencer D. & Max
722 E Burnside St. Blow Pony w/ MicahTron, Bomb Ass Pussy & Tammie Brown
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Come As You Are 90s Dance Flashback
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave. Dirty Red (boogie & bangers)
Euphoria Nightclub
100 NW Broadway Friday Night 80’s & Top 40
315 SE 3rd Ave Jason Ross, Eddie Pitzul & Jamie Meushaw
The Goodfoot
Moloko
2845 SE Stark St Soul Stew (funk, soul, disco)
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St,
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Montel Spinozza
Quarterworld
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd
1430 NE Sandy Blvd. DJ Marty King
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Clovis
The Embers Avenue
100 NW Broadway Saturday Top 40 Remixed
Super Fun Happy Kawaii Party (Jpop, Kpop, cosplay)
MON, AUG. 22 Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. Reagan-o-mix (new wave, hip-hop, soundtrack)
The Lovecraft Bar
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Black Mass (goth dance)
Valentines
Beech Street Parlor
421 SE Grand Ave Sabbath (darkside of rock, electronic) 232 SW Ankeny St Signal 18: Strategy (live set)
SUN, AUG. 21 Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave. Emerson Lyon (hip hop, r&b of the early aughts)
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Latino Night (latin, cubono, salsa)
The Lovecraft Bar 421 SE Grand Ave
TUES, AUG. 23 412 NE Beech Street Backyardmango
Club 21
2035 NE Glisan St. DJ Blackhawk
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Wrestlerock
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Recycle (dark dance)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave BONES w/ DJ Aurora & friends (goth, synth)
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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PERFORMANCE = 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.
THEATER OPENINGS & PREVIEWS Battle of the Sexes
Get ready for codpieces. An all-male cast is doing Oregon Practice Shakespeare’s afternoon show of Twelfe Night, the comedy about tangled lovers that inspired Channing Tatum and Amanda Bynes’ tween flick She’s the Man. Then, at night, an all-female cast does Richard III, an existential political drama that would benefit from a little more cleavage. Gabriel City Park, Southwest Vermont Street and 4th Avenue. 2 and 7 pm Saturday, Aug. 20. Free.
Brainwaves’ Fan Appreciation
Portland’s longest-running improv ensemble has been doing long- and medium-form comedy for 30 years. This is a show for their friends. Free food, free drinks, old friends returning to stage and so many Easter eggs, you’ll think Jesus is come again. Free food? That makes us friends. Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th Ave. 8 pm Friday, Aug. 19. $5.
Proscenium Live
Portland Shakespeare Project’s annual festival of new works is just about as exciting as free theater extravaganzas get. Local stage icons like Tobias Anderson (King Lear at Post5), Orion Bradshaw, Michael Mendelson and Crystal Muñoz star in four nights of free shows, which are followed by post-show discussions at Artists Rep. The highlights are Saturday night’s artists reception for the Geezer Gallery’s “Celebrating Portland!” show (inside the theater), and Pericles Wet (7:30 pm Sunday), directed by one of Portland’s top directors, Matthew Zrebski. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 503-241-1278. 7:30 pm Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 18-21. Free.
Seven Minutes In Heaven
10 acts get seven minutes of stage time to do whatever the fuck they want. Even the producers only know the genre of the act. The show took off in Arizona— now Space 55 and Where the Buffalo Roam are bringing it to Portland, to the venue where comedians double as strippers. Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave. 9:30 pm Saturday, Aug. 20. $7 advance, $10 at the door. 21+.
Something Wicked This Way Rocks
A hair-band version of Macbeth, this adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy channels Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe for an ’80s version of the Thane’s rise to power. Here, Lady M wants superstardom and Banquo doubles as a guitarist. For North Portland’s low-budget theater, it’s a fun undertaking. We expect a lot of thriftstore costuming and vigor. Twilight Theater Company, 7515 N Brandon Ave., 8 pm Friday-Saturday and 6 pm Sunday, Aug. 19-21. $15.
ALSO PLAYING The Music Man
Clackamas Repertory Theatre produces the classic musical about a traveling salesman who cons the parents of a small Iowa town into buying his instruments by promising to start a marching band. He plans to skip town before making good on that promise, but when a feisty librarian catches his eye, he decides to stick around for a while. Clackamas Repertory Theatre, 19600 Molalla Ave., Oregon City, 503-594-6047. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2:30 pm Sundays, through Aug. 28. $10-$18.
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Broadway Rose Theatre continues its love for Sondheim, staging Forum right after its production of West Side Story. Broadway Rose founding general manager Dan Murphy will make an appearance as Pseudolus alongside Ethan Crystal—who just finished his run in Triangle Production’s American Idiot— and Eugene native Kaitlyn Sage. This show follows a Greek slave trying to gain his freedom by helping his master get the girl of his dreams. The Deb Fennell Auditorium, 9000 SW Durham Road, Tigard. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through Aug. 21. Additional show 2 pm Saturday, Aug. 20. $20-$28.
Jesus Christ Superstar
It has been 11 years since Jesus Christ Superstar was staged by a Portland company. This summer, the once-controversial musical is not only onstage, it is in an old church in Sellwood. This Superstar is best when Lloyd Webber’s addictive music is given free rein. Even as lepers swarm, Judas cries and Jesus explodes with anger, the audience cannot help but manically bob its collective head. If starpower moments like these sound too big for a small theater, it’s because they are. Superstar is meant to be performed big. In Sellwood’s theater, it feels like a squeeze. Talent sweeps every staging issue under the rug, though. When Tell is singing as Judas—one of the most difficult roles in musical theater, with a vocal range spanning two octaves—you forget that it’s 90 degrees and the actors are trying not to trip over each other. Post5 Theatre, 1666 SE Lambert St., 971-333-1758. 8 pm Thursday-Sunday, through Aug. 20. $20.
The Maids
In a recent London production of The Maids, stars from Orange Is the New Black and Downton Abbey appeared in the play about the sister maids who murder their mistress. That same show from Portland’s newest theater company, Public Citizen Theatre, drags on in a way that anyone acquainted with playwright Jean Genet’s inflammatory works would hardly believe. The stage is restrictive on purpose, but it backfires. Audiences spend the intermission-free show facing a corner of the mistress’s private room. After the play, my date and I searched online for the film Murderous Maids, based on the same scintillating true story of the Papin sisters. The sex and scorn in that three-minute trailer raised my pulse higher than Public Citizen’s production ever managed. In his director’s note, Aaron Filyaw promises this production will be funny. One of the maids (it’s so hard to keep them straight) says to the other, “We should be laughing or our tragedy will blow us out the window.” A sense of humor can help one through many trying circumstances, such as servitude, strangling or seeing this play. JESS DRAKE. Shaking the Tree Theater, 823 SE Grant St., 503-235-0635. 8 pm Thursday-Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, through Aug. 21. $15-$25.
DANCE Belly Dance Off
There are many secrets behind belly dancing. One is that there’s a lot of improvisation behind those rolling umbilical regions. Here, a panel of judges gives constructive feedback while the audience gets to score dancers and shake their own stuff at intermission when the dance floor opens up. The live music from Ritim Egzotik melds Turkish classics with modern rock and jazz. But what the hell do we know about belly dancing? With
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
PREVIEW
What’s Underneath PRO BONO BURLESQUE RAISES FUNDS FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD. BY ENID SPITZ
espitz@wweek.com
There is a legend in the burlesque world named Big Fannie Annie. Now 63, she was 450 pounds at the height of her career in the ’80s, when she made $28,000 some weeks by taking off her clothes. Annie is also the inspiration for philanWORKIN’ THE TEASE: Julia Reed Nichols. thropist Kat Thomas. Burlesque is equal parts fundraising and therapy for Thomas, who goes by Kitty Kat DeMille It’s not all about the money, though. Burwhen touring with her nonprofit pinup shows, lesque, in her ideal world, is both educational Pin-Ups for Vets and Workin’ the Tease, a fund- and therapeutic for everyone. “We go to spas and raiser for Planned Parenthood that’s coming to talk to people in their 60s,” she says. “It’s about Portland this Friday. finding self-empowerment by showing off what’s “ We’re really good at reining in money,” underneath. It’s about loving your body.” In Vegas Thomas says. for the Burlesque Hall of Fame’s biggest showThe last time Thomas’s company, Do Right case this spring, she saw a 90-year-old dancer get Industries, came to town, she sold out the east- a standing O. “In one show, you can’t be onstage side’s Crush Bar. Now, Thomas is bringing her if you’re under 60,” she says, “and these women crew back for a Planned Parenthood benefit at have been doing this since they were in their Dante’s downtown. teens.” Planned Parenthood employees “There is more money in strip get free admission to Thomas’ shows. clubs than the classic theater or “This is our way to give back,” she concert venues,” says Thomas. says. “After a shooting in L.A., half The strip club industry averthe staff was getting counseling “I CAN’T LIGHT ages $3 billion in annual because they were scared. So revenue, matching the largwe went there to just give them THEM ON FIRE— est U.S. charity on Forbes’ a fun time and celebrate human FOR INSURANCE annual list, United Way. sexuality and all that great stuff It is no surprise that Portthat empowers people.” PURPOSES.” land is especially lucrative. Big Fannie Annie is great st u f f . S h e b r o ke t h e st i g m a “Portland embraces whatever - Kitty Kat DeMille you want to be. Sexual fluidity against overweight dancers with is more embraced there than anyher slogan—“450 pounds of pure sizzling sex”—and she is now a legend where I’ve been,” says Thomas. recognized by the Burlesque Hall of Fame. All around the nation, Thomas has “We’re the misfits, the ones on the edges, taking toured with her pro bono burlesque, visiting places like Billings, Mont., where she worried that none off our clothes for strangers for money,” says Thomof the rural, red-state residents would come out as. “We’re also here to show you the other side.” At Dante’s, which Thomas identifies as “the of the woodwork to benefit Planned Parenthood by watching a tattooed African-American stripper place under the Keep Portland Weird sign,” the with crystal tassels swinging from her tits. To off- acts won’t just include dancers. “We have a standset the cost of doing fundraisers, the girls perform up comedian who plays the ukulele, Julia is our straight burlesque shows as they travel through cit- sultry songbird, and I do poi—those flaming balls ies, including Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Wyo., and at the end of a string,” says Thomas, “but I can’t Spokane, Wash. “We like to introduce burlesque to light them on fire—for insurance purposes.” Instead, she says, “I have a set of LEDs that are places that might not have it,” says Thomas. “You can’t take off your clothes on military very Burning Man.” Therapy with feather boas and bases,” she says. Instead, Thomas just spent 35 flashing lights. Annie would be proud. days touring the nation’s American Legion posts, which she says are perfect because they still have SEE IT: Workin’ the Tease is at Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 9:30 pm Friday, Aug. 19. $20-$35. proscenium stages from the ’40s. 21+.
C O U R T E S Y O F K I T T Y K AT D E M I L L E
Editor: ENID SPITZ. Theater: ENID SPITZ (espitz@wweek.com). Dance: ENID SPITZ (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: espitz@wweek.com.
a full, multicourse dinner included in the ticket price (decide between steak, salmon or polenta), at least there’s no question that bellies will be satiated . Tony Starlight Showroom, 1125 SE Madison St. 6 pm Saturday, Aug. 20. $25 show only, $59 includes dinner.
Friends with Benedicts
Start Saturday with mimosas and Bri Pruett’s brunch bunch of standup comedians. This month’s lineup includes Seattleites Maddie Downes and Natalie Holt, plus local hairstylist Chris Ettrick, who was a finalist for Portland Funniest Person at Helium this year, and Paul Schlesinger of the sporadic Comedy Is OK show. The Lamp, 3023 SE Milwaukie Ave. 1 pm. $5 suggested donation.
COMEDY & VARIETY WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17 Revolution Comedy Presents: Fuck Donald Trump
Becky Robinson
Becky with the good hair is in from L.A. This Portland native is back for one night, taking a break from MTV’s Wild ’n Out. She hasn’t made her big break yet, but she has Comedy Central credits on shows like Not Safe With Nikki Glaser and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and she reps Leslie Jones. That’s enough. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave. 7:30 pm. $12. 21+.
For more Performance listings, visit
REVIEW M AT T H E W M U R P H Y
Andie Main is a self-proclaimed “Bernie Babe.” But really she’s out to fuck Trump over and hang on to her abortion rights, she says. She’ll give you a piece of her mind about that and a lot more at this bi-monthly showcase, where she gathers local comics like Gabe Dinger, Ben Harkins, Chris Ettrick, Jon Washington and Anthony Lopez, plus surprise guests, to raise money for a fuck-Trump cause. You can also get in by showing a screenshot of your donation to Hillary or #UniteAgainstHate. Kickstand Comedy Space, 315 NW Davis St. 8 pm. $5.
SUNDAY, AUG. 21
Earthquake Hurricane
Don’t show up to Velo Cult this Wednesday expecting to see some of the funniest Portland standup comedians telling jokes inside the bike shop The show is going on at Helium. To say goodbye to one of the four founders—Curtis Cook is moving (like so many of his brethren) to L.A.— the foursome is throwing a goingaway party. All the things you love, but without the bikes, and watching Curtis do awkward crowd work will probably make you cry this time. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave. 8 pm. $10. 21+.
THURSDAY, AUG. 18 Mark Normand
New York’s Mark Normand hosts the podcast We’re All Friends Here!, but since breaking into NYC’s brutal standup scene in 2006, he’s been clawing his way up relentlessly. He was a 2011 Comedy Central favorite, Esquire’s best in 2012, one of Splitsider’s Top 10 and finally Best Comedian of 2013 according to Village Voice. And since his Comedy Central Half Hour special two years ago? Let’s see if his trajectory holds. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave. 8 pm. $15-$23. 21+.
FRIDAY, AUG. 19 Mark Normand
New York’s Mark Normand hosts the podcast We’re All Friends Here!, but since breaking into NYC’s brutal standup scene in 2006, he’s been clawing his way up relentlessly. He was a 2011 Comedy Central favorite, Esquire’s best in 2012, one of Splitsider’s Top 10 and finally Best Comedian of 2013 according to Village Voice. And since his Comedy Central Half Hour special two years ago? Let’s see if his trajectory holds. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 7:30 and 10 pm FridaySaturday. $15-$23. 21+.
SATURDAY, AUG. 20 Clint Coley
Once upon a time in Philly, Clint Coley reigned at The Laff House. He then moved his storytelling style to NYC and won the Apollo’s Amateur Night. His style’s been called “refreshing,” a more longform style in the vein of Chris Rock and George Carlin, heavy with charisma and honesty. Charismatic story time is not the usual at local standup showcases, but it could be a refreshing break. Curious Comedy Theater. 9:30 pm. $15.
Circling Back
DÉJÀ VU: Aaron Nelson.
The Lion King was daring when it came out 22 years ago. The story of regicide, revenge and coming of age was nothing new, but it was Disney’s first Africa-inspired story. The colors were more vibrant, the music less familiar, and it featured a black voice actor in a role more prominent and positive than any Disney flick before. The wildlife is just as bright and exotic in the Broadway adaptation, and the songs are pulled straight from the film. The Lion King production never fully separates itself from the experience of watching the movie in a theater as a 6-year-old. It doesn’t really want to. The play opens the same as the movie: the sun rising over the desert as animals from all across the savannah come to serenade the new king with “The Circle of Life.” From birds that fly like kites at the end of a fishing line, to the two-person elephants stomping down the orchestra-level aisles, to the cheetah licking her paws—it’s all really impressive stuff. Mufasa, Simba, Zazu and the more involved characters have anthropomorphic costumes to allow for greater range of motion and acting, even if it looks weird seeing Mufasa dual-wield scimitars when he takes on the hyenas. Also, Scar looks like a rejected skin for Nightmare in Soulcalibur for some reason. The show is faithful enough to its source material that it gives you a feeling of déjà vu throughout—so much so that the added scenes and songs feel jarringly out of place. A little padding is a necessity when adapting an 89-minute film into a Broadway play, but so much of the play is dedicated to remaking the sound, look and feel of the film that scenes like Simba breaking down from PTSD while Timon is being attacked by a crocodile undercut that experience. But Scar telling Zazu to never sing “Let It Go” again does draw the biggest laugh. The Lion King on Broadway won the Tony Award for Best Musical when it debuted in 1997 for good reasons. A few years ago, it surpassed The Phantom of the Opera as the top grossing musical (or film) in box office history. On stage in Portland, the show accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. Maybe Pumbaa was more than just a fart joke in the film, and maybe Scar was less of a wheezing gasbag. But this is The Lion King alright. Hakuna matata. JOHN LOCANTHI. The Lion King is 22-yearsyoung and just as fun.
SEE IT: The Lion King is at Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 503-
241-1802. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, through Sept. 4. $30-$150.
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VISUAL ARTS C O U R T E SY O F S T E P H A N I E C H E FA S .C O M
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By JENNIFER RABIN. 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: espitz@wweek.com.
Amanda Leigh Evans and Anastasia Greer
Certain mediums in art are commonly gendered as female, and they tend to be more craft-based or functional in nature. Women are great at making quilts and throwing pots! In a joint show, Amanda Leigh Evans and Anastasia Greer play with these forms and with our preconceived notions of them. Evans’ small-scale, minimal ceramic sculptures are delicately hand-built, consisting of far more negative space than positive space, but they convey great sturdiness. The pieces echo functionality, as though constructed out of nothing but handles with which to pick them up and use them, but they serve no purpose other than an aesthetic one. Greer uses the traditional gridded patterns from quilting, but mounts her sewn fabric onto rigid substrates, stretching them as you would canvas over a frame. Greer then paints over them, her organic brush strokes breaking up the staid geometry of our expectation. Nationale, 3360 SE Division St., 503-477-9786. Through Aug. 28.
Anniversary Group Show
Now seems to be the time for anniversary group shows. Last month, PDX Contemporary celebrated its 21st with an exhibition of 2-D and 3-D pieces from the well-known artists it represents, and this month Butters Gallery joins the ranks, celebrating its 28th anniversary with a collection of work from its roster of artists. Without anything to tie the work together other than the gallery in which they are shown, these types of shows can sometimes feel disjointed. But if you approach them as a way of getting to know the personality of a gallery, its aesthetic, and the type of work it tends to show, it can be an excellent way for collectors or potential collectors (I’m looking at you, whoever you are; remember you only need $90 a month to buy art) to decide if a gallery is one you want to keep going back to. Butters Gallery, 157 NE Grand Ave., 503-248-9378. Through Aug. 27.
Crafting the Future
In the minds of some, fine art and craft exist on opposite sides of a great chasm. This group exhibition aims to show us where the Venn diagram overlaps, highlighting the significant role of craft in the practice of contemporary fine art. On its face, Crafting the Future can feel impenetrable, which is why it’s important to ask questions when you’re at the gallery. The answers will turn inaccessible works into pieces that will send chills up your arms. For example, you will discover that the design on a hand-quilted wall hanging near the front door reflects the gravitational pull of galaxy superclusters. You will learn that in order to make her muted gouache on paper, artist Ellen Lesperance searched through archive images of protests, and when drawn in by the image of a particular female protester, Lesperance re-created on paper the knitting pattern of the activist’s sweater. Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave., 503-224-0521. Through Aug. 27.
Freedom
Portland Art Museum dedicates multiple galleries to artist Josh Kline’s disquieting vision of a near-future dystopia. Kline became interested in how technology shapes the political and social landscape during the Occupy movement, when he saw police officers film a crowd of activists instead of detaining them. Using facial replacement software in multiple video installations, Kline shows us what might be possible if law enforcement officers could steal the faces, and therefore identities, of activists, or if regular people could credibly impersonate public figures. In what is
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the most arresting and moving piece of the exhibition, Kline uses facial replacement software (and the help of actors) to create a video of politicians apologizing for their crimes. One by one, Condoleezza Rice, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld appear in a prison cell, crying, offering their remorse in a virtual reality that we wish could be made real by our desire. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-226-2811. Through Nov. 13.
Old Ways
Some of artist Victor Maldonado’s large-scale paintings evoke arched stained-glass windows. The smaller pieces look like violent colorful abstractions. What they all have in common is the recurring theme of the Mexican wrestling Luchador mask, which symbolizes to Maldonado “the struggle to be free, body and soul, from the grips of oppression.” The telltale dome can be almost completely obscured in certain canvases, but once you know what you’re looking for, it becomes a thrill to follow the lines and patterns to identify the form that ties all of the work together. Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St., 503-222-1142. Through Aug. 20.
The Open [Sketch]Book
Artists all over town are familiar with Pushdot Studio as a place to have their fine art prints made. But few people know the front of the shop serves as an art gallery. This month, writer-turned-painter Thérèse Murdza explores the vulnerability involved “as a body of work reveals itself.” In addition to the monumental-scale abstract canvas that anchors the series, Murdza opens her sketchbook to us, showing bright, quick, gestural paintings on paper that blend abstract expressionism with a pop palette. Together, they offer the viewer a fuller notion of process and a window into an artist’s creative practice. Pushdot Studio, 2505 SE 11th Ave., Suite 104, 503-224-5925. Through Sept. 30.
Portland 2016 Biennial Salon
For Portland’s 2016 Biennial, some of Oregon’s most high-profile contemporary artists are showing their work across the state, in venues as disparate as residential garages, hardware stores and hotel lobbies. Think of it as an Oregon-wide Easter egg hunt, where all the eggs are art installations. The jewel in the Biennial crown is the salon at Disjecta, where every inch of wall space in the cavernous warehouse is covered with sculptures, paintings, drawings and video projections by artists who were handpicked to represent our fair state. You won’t have a chance to have many intimate moments with the work, or to even find out who made what (unless you want to fumble with the awkwardly folded maps and numbered diagrams), but perhaps that shouldn’t be the goal. If you stop trying to appreciate each work individually, you can delight in the chorus of hundreds of artistic voices shouting, “Look what we made!” Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 503-286-9449. Through Sept. 18.
Rain
Thin white translucent ribbons, flecked with black horizontal lines, stream down from the gallery ceiling at varied heights, like a rainstorm in suspended animation. There is an immediate and overwhelming desire to run through the installation, to feel the material on your skin. The genesis for Rain came three years ago when artist Stephanie Speight, whose day job is at New Seasons Market, was swapping out spools of spent labels and replacing them with new ones in the labeling machine. Not knowing why, she started taking the spools home instead of throwing them away. “I find myself looking to unmask a hidden beauty in some very mundane mate-
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
rials, to take something out of the world as opposed to adding to it.” As a visitor, I would argue that by taking something out of the world Speight has added many things to it, including but not limited to our collective awe and delight. Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210. Through Aug. 28.
Harold Feinstein Retrospective
Blue Sky is doing something unusual this month by devoting both of its galleries to a retrospective of Harold Feinstein’s photographs. Feinstein, who was born in Coney Island in the ’30s, began taking photographs when he was 15. At the ripe old age of 19, some of them had already been acquired by MoMA. The exhibition of his black-andwhite gelatin silver prints encompasses everything from street photography to portraiture to a personal record of his time serving in the Korean War— giving us a multifaceted view of life in the last half of the 20th century. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 503-2250210. Through Aug. 28.
Sentient Spaces: The DSM-5 Illustrated
versace due
REVIEW
Hot and Bothered
I’ve been trying to come up with a demure way to describe the group show at Stephanie Chefas Projects this month, but nothing polite does it justice. So here goes: Heatwave feels like a hot fuck in the middle of an August afternoon in Los Angeles after you’ve come home sticky from the beach with the taste of salt still on your tongue. Meegan Barnes’ high-gloss ceramic sculptures will probably be the first things you see when you enter the gallery. The female forms are cut off above their tiny waists and below their sun-kissed thighs, leaving nothing but thong-clad asses that drip gold luster like sweat. The considerable height of the pedestals on which they’re displayed plays up the in-your-face sexuality of the pieces because they are, literally, in your face. Normally this would feel heavy-handed, but for these pieces it’s exactly right. A bottle of suntan lotion and a pair of sunglasses accompanies each form on top of its pedestal, and the objects are glazed to such a shine that the gallery lights glint off of them like the blazing sun. Kate Klingbeil’s paintings of coitus on wood panel lack the male gaze, highlighting the female subjects’ pleasure and form. Over flat gouache sunset-colored backdrops, Klingbeil pipes acrylic paint like frosting to create lushly textured figures and flora in the foreground. The combination of food and sex confuses the brain, and the total effect is sweet and dirty, hungry and horny all at the same time. Monica Kim Garza’s naive tropical paintings on paper offer another contradiction: Childlike renderings of fruit trees and smiley-faced suns share compositions with naked figures engaged in carnal acts. The marriage of these elements calls to mind a simpler and freer time, the lusty insouciance of youth before the weight of relationships come bearing down. It is exceptionally difficult to put together a cohesive group show around a single theme, but Chefas has managed to take work from eight different artists, in a wide range of styles and media, and make it feel like they are speaking to us in a collective voice about the same luscious, sun-soaked idea. I have only touched on the work of three of the artists here, but there are beautiful abstracts, geometrical phenomena, precise paper cuts, and feats of undulation and symmetry waiting to leave you hot and bothered. JENNIFER RABIN.
Heatwave drips sex all over Stephanie Chefas Projects.
SEE IT: Heatwave is at Stephanie Chefas Projects, 305 SE 3rd Ave., Suite 202, 503-719-6945. Through Sept. 3.
In Sentient Spaces: The DSM-5 Illustrated, Jo Lundberg merges her experiences as a child and family therapist, an art therapist, and an artist to create a series of 2-D and 3-D works that each encapsulates a psychiatric diagnosis. Marrying statistical data with her own clinical observation, Lundberg can elicit a visceral response in the viewer that mimics the state of each illness. A framed portrait of a screaming young girl represents Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, and would be disquieting on its own—but Lundberg installed the painting on a white wall, which she then raked dirty handprints over, originating from the center of the portrait, as though its subject is in the midst of a violent tantrum that stretches all the way to the electrical socket in the room. Lundberg’s piece about Major Depressive Disorder feels like walking into a black hole that requires effort to walk out of. Wolff Gallery, 618 NW Glisan St., Suite R1, 971-413-1340. Through Aug. 28.
Serious Play
Picasso said, “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth,” and it is this truth that photographer Grace Weston is aiming for. Weston works in deliberately contrived miniature—that’s the lie part. But she reveals the truth by superimposing the darker psychological landscape of adulthood onto scenes of childlike fantasy. In one composition, a giraffe wearing three bowties and a cravat stands, businesslike, against a softly clouded sky. A dirigible flies close to his skyscraper-high neck. The child in me sees only whimsy; the adult remembers 9/11. Weston’s skill is in revealing this tension and contradiction that lives inside of each of us. Oranj Studio, 726 SW Gaines St., 503-719-5338. Through Sept. 30.
Tokens, Gold, & Glory
You may remember Wendy Red Star as one of the three contemporary Native artists included in the Portland Art Museum’s recent Edward Curtis exhibition. Hers is an important voice in contemporary art, and Portland is lucky to claim her as one of its own. This month, employing a wry wit, Red Star fills Hap Gallery with golden headless deer decoys atop AstroTurfcovered palettes. It is a comment on our plastic culture, that has us so distracted by shiny things that we often focus on what is insignificant (the head to hang on our wall) and ignore what really matters (the body). In addition, Red Star has hand-beaded a limited series of trucker hats, showing us with a single object the arresting visual disparity between cheap mass production and work that requires great care. (These hats are a great example of how a beginning collector can affordably acquire work from an important artist.) Hap Gallery, 916 NW Flanders St., 503-444-7101. Through Aug. 28.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
BOOKS a ride to your guts and destroy you from the inside, Osmosis Jones-style. In his new book, The Fermented Man, Derek Dellinger eats only fermented foods for a year, to show that bacteria can be not only healthy, but critical to the foods we eat. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. BY ZACH MIDDLeTON. 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.
William Ritter
Sallie Tisdale
High-school language-arts teacher William Ritter dreamed up the world of his New York Times best-selling Jackaby series while staying up at night with his fussy baby. Now on the third installment with Ghostly Echoes, Ritter brings back Abigail Rook and her boss, detective R. F. Jackaby, in a mystery that mixes folklore into the world of Sherlock Holmes-style detec-
A reader reads many books in life that are smart but boring, or dumb but funny, or dumb and boring but satisfying in some way we don’t care to admit. Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction) is the book you read after all that to help you remember that books can be this brilliant, engrossing, delightful and so damn funny that you can’t read it on the bus without embarrassing yourself. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
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FEATURE W W S TA F F
THURSDAY, AUG. 18
Ottessa Moshfegh
TUESDAY, AUG. 23
WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17 The Mountain Writers Series returns with Pushcart Award-winning author Sallie Tisdale who will read from Violation, her new book of essays. Tisdale is the author of eight books, and was a judge for the 2010 National Book Awards. Joining Tisdale is Ceiridwen Terrill, a scientific essayist and memoirist whose book Part Wild was a finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Awards. Vie de Bohème, 1530 SE 7th Ave., 503-360-1233. 7:30 pm. $10 suggested donation.
tive caper. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 800-878-7323. 7 pm. Free.
Kate Ristau
In Portland young-adult-fiction author Kate Ristau’s book Shadowgirl, fairy Aine is forced to come to terms with her growing and possibly dangerous fey powers. Anyone who’s been a teenager knows that sometimes your fey powers blaze out of control, and you are forced to retreat into the Shadowlands (which is what they call Hot Topic in fairy world). Who among us hasn’t been there? Another Read Through, 3932 N Mississippi Ave. 7 pm. Free.
Amy Silverman
Having a child changed Amy Silverman’s life. Having a child born with Down syndrome changed her worldview. A journalist, blogger, and NPR contributor, Silverman details her evolution from being a “spoiled brat,” who avoided people with developmental disabilities, to being a mother of a special-needs child and advocate for that community in her memoir, My Heart Can’t Even Believe It. Silverman authored last week’s cover story in WW, “The R Word.” Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 800-878-7323. 7 pm. Free.
Sarah Jaffe with Matt Bors
Whether you’re a teabagger or a Bernie Bro, Hillary man or Trumpet, there’s been a groundswell of fervorous political engagement. Journalist Sarah Jaffe explains in her forthcoming book, Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, how movements both aligning with and against the two-party system have garnered grassroots support. Jaffe will be in conversation with editorial cartoonist Matt Bors. Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
SUNDAY, AUG. 21 Sig Unander
You’ve probably seen someone hoist her chihuahua up to one of the city’s iconic quadripartite drinking fountains to take a drink on a hot summer day (a person actually drinking out of them is a less common sight), but you may not know that those Benson Bubblers were installed by Portland businessman Simon Benson, who helped revolutionize Oregon’s timber industry and led the charge for developing better roads in Oregon at the beginning of the 20th century. Local historian Sig Unander will present on one of Portland’s early public servants. Multnomah County Library Central Library, 801 SW 10th Ave. 2 pm. Free.
MONDAY, AUG. 22 The Fermented Man
If you listen to the Stepford freaks from Lysol commercials, bacteria are green-and-blue heebie-jeebies that lurk on cutting boards, waiting to hitch
Floating World Comics circa 2008.
Floating World Comics 10th Anniversary D
owntown Portland boasts exactly one comic store. But that store, Floating World, is considered one of the best in the nation—a sharply curated balance of art-school and geek culture that mixes Marvel and DC with rare and indie graphic novels, a beautifully drawn book by local artist T. Edward Bak about a naturalist’s journey to Kamchatka, and esoterica like artist Killian Eng’s Object series of post-Max Ernst drawings. The store was featured in Wired, and routinely makes top 10 lists of geek sites like Flavorwire, one of few bookstores in the country to expand not once but twice over the past decade. On Thursday, Aug. 17, it will celebrate its 10th anniversary—a milestone for any bookstore launched on the eve of the great recession. “My motivation for opening Floating World was looking at the other shops in town,” says owner Jason Leivian. “No one had a good Fantagraphics collection, which to me seemed like a no-brainer.” With a wallet full of interest-free credit cards and a bank loan, Leivian launched in a modest ActivSpace in 2006 under the I-405 freeway. “Right from the beginning, it worked out,” says Leivian. After only four months Floating World moved into a bigger space on Northwest 5th Avenue, before expanding yet again to a third, even larger location on the corner of Northwest 4th Avenue and Couch Street. Floating World has branched out from its storefront by publishing its own books and putting on art shows on First Thursdays. “The first comic I ever got when I was a kid was ROM Space Knight,” Leivian says. “And we started doing these tribute art shows, and we donated the proceeds to [disabled ROM writer] Bill Mantlo.” Many longtime customers and even former store employees will be contributing to the 10th anniversary. Cathy Camper will be signing her new Lowriders to the Center of the Earth. Artist Zack Soto is releasing his latest Study Group anthology—this one equipped with an RPG theme and a wacky dungeon master’s screen. Artist Eric Mast designed a new T-shirt for the occasion. “The part I’m looking forward to is, we’re going to do a sidewalk sale,” Leivian says. “We’re going to do books by the pound.” Because Floating World neighbor Deadstock Coffee already has the street closed for a coffee smackdown event called TNTNW, Floating World will spill stock right out the front door. “I’ve always just wanted it to feel like a bookstore,” Leivian says. “but we only carry comics mostly, and art books. Because comics are really cool.” NATHAN CARSON. see IT: Floating World Comics’ 10th anniversary is at 400 NW Couch St., floatingworld.com, on Thursday, Aug. 18. 11 am. Free.
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COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA PICTURES
MOVIES = WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: ENID SPITZ. 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: espitz@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
OPENING THIS WEEK Ben Hur
From the writer of 12 Years A Slave, the director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the producer of, gulp, The Bible comes this third filmic spectacular adapted from the 19th-century best-seller Ben-Hur. Jack Huston takes the reins from Charlton Heston as the titular nobleman-turned-slave, and though screened too late for review, earlier iterations of the story suggest that we’ll see galleys rowed to ramming speed, cameos from Jesus Christ, and a horse-drawn-carriage Death Race. Evangelicals and gladiator devotees, your chariots await! See wweek.com for review. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Chronic
B- David is a home care nurse who works intimately with terminally ill patients, played stoically by Tim Roth (The Hateful Eight, Pulp Fiction). He bathes them, feeds them and becomes emotionally reliant on their suffering, while the film asserts that most families are either reluctant or unable to stomach the grueling responsibility of caring for a dying loved one. With long, stagnant scenes of suffering, the film forces viewers to confront the emotional trauma of bonding with the vulnerable and moribund. Chronic invites the audience to stew in uncomfortable moments, and the ending is duly unsatisfying, but considering the film’s themes, that feels like a logical conclusion. NR. CURTIS COOK. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Tuesday, Aug. 23.
Free to Run
B It’s rare that a nice summer’s day goes by without runners abandoning their treadmills and taking to the streets, but in 1960s America, jogging was a far from common pastime. Free to Run focuses on the history of longdistance running, tracking its evolution from “oddball” recreation to popularist sport. The film does take some awkward detours (few viewers will be eager to learn more about a Swiss running magazine named Spiridon), but Run hits its stride when discussing the history of women in marathon running and highlighting the struggles that pioneers like Kathrine Switzer faced in order to break through gender barriers. NR. CURTIS COOK. Cinema 21.
Little Men
A- In the quiet, beatless drama of
Little Men, two 13-year-olds, Jake and Tony, bond over artistic dreams while their parents negotiate an unprofitable Brooklyn dress shop’s new lease. The neighborhood is gentrifying quickly, and Jake’s father (Greg Kinnear) feels forced to raise the rent on Tony’s mother (Paulina García). The boys are vulnerable and magnetized, but the impasse reached by the immovable García and the reluctantly realistic Kinnear is the acting feat. Director Ira Sachs draws a fine line down the middle of Little Men. Adults are their problems; children are their friendships. Watching that line begin to move is a mundane heartbreak. PG. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Fox Tower.
POWfest Animations
You have a lot of animated options right now. Rather than watch the blockbuster features that are out in theaters—sausages telling dick jokes and a big, green dragon—POWfest’s monthly
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screening night at the Clinton gives you 13 short animations by women filmmakers. Among them, standouts include a short called Heroes about the love between an albino man and the moon, which looks like it was drawn by a Basquiat and Betsey Johnson hybrid, and Inertia, a roughly sketched existential film by circus artist Emily Hughes. NR. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Monday, Aug. 22. $5-$10.
War Dogs
C+ War Dogs is the true story of two 20-something potheads, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) and David Packouz (Miles Teller) who scored a $300 million Pentagon contract to supply Afghanistan with weapons. The pressure of having crucial military strategies rest on their shoulders proves to be too much, however, and the pair is forced to make increasingly illegal decisions to keep the guns flowing. The film tries to offer a smart, funny look into the shady world of government defense contracts, but dull narration, racist stereotypes, uninspired weed jokes, and inexplicable scene breaks turn what could have been a humorous tale of ineptitude in the Bush administration into a haphazard rehashing that’s probably really funny if you’ve never smoked marijuana before. R. CRYSTAL CONTRERAS. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Oak Grove, Vancouver.
Viktoria
C Born without a bellybutton, Viktoria is named “Bulgaria’s Baby of the Decade,” a title which comes with its own private chauffeur and a direct line to the head of state. Life isn’t bad for the national brat until the fall of communism leaves Viktoria standing in bread lines and dreaming of a life abroad. The film starts as a surreal and satirical tale of the twilight of Bulgarian communism but quickly devolves into a self-indulgent, endless fever dream. The dark humor and captivating scenography is too often overpowered by heavyhanded symbolism, including one three-minute scene in which milk rains down on Viktoria’s emotionally distant mother. NR. CRYSTAL CONTRERAS. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Friday and 4 pm Saturday, Aug. 19-20.
STILL SHOWING Absolutely Fabulous
C For fans of the old BBC series, the further adventures of buffoonish publicist Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and perma-soused fashion editrix Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley) shouldn’t seem all that different from a favored punk band’s reunion tour. As Edina flounces around her normcore daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha), dismissive “Mother” (June Whitfield) and assistant Bubble (Jane Horrocks), little seems changed at first. The interfamilial barbs still sting, and while Hollywood’s relaxed attitudes toward drugs and drinking might blunt the impact of Edina’s debauchery, the film’s fat-shaming, transgender-mocking, racially insensitive gags still hit. But the film version lingers cruelly on slower stretches and magnifies the inabilities of Britcom director Mandie Fletcher to stage set pieces, and sketch queen Saunders to craft a proper screenplay. The fashion-backward wardrobes and attitudes are no help. Lacking any connection to the surrounding culture or satirical intent, we’re left with just a pair of rapacious, self-centered monsters seeking fun. Strangely, that’s almost enough. They’re still larger than life. It’s the tweets that grew small. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Cinema 21.
Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
LO AND BEHOLD: Is that a Pikachu?
REVIEW
Encounters at the End of the Web WERNER HERZOG EXPLORES THE DIGITAL FRONTIER.
Early in the film, we meet a Carnegie Mellon researcher who designed a game to study the way RNA and DNA molecules fold themselves. Thousands of people logged on, and through the users’ game play, researchers made important discoveries that BY ZACH MIDDLETON @zachjmiddleton could potentially benefit cancer and HIV studies. On the dark side, Herzog finds a family whose Life as one of the most important filmmakers has left daughter was killed in a horrific car crash. The coromarks on Werner Herzog’s body. His shoulders are ner wouldn’t tell the family the extent of the daughhunched from years of looking down into a camera ter’s injuries, but anonymous monsters online found or a video monitor. His face is weathered, as if carved pictures of her gruesome death and emailed them to from ancient driftwood, where his eyes are lodged the parents. Herzog shows the family in their dining deep like two silver bullets. When you hear his room, dressed in mourning clothes and sitting resinous, Bavarian voice, you know that around the empty chair the daughter used to sit in. The images of her maimed this is a man that’s seen some shit. “WHEN But there’s also something daughter still haunt the mother, who says, “I have always believed the that reminds you that this man TWO PERSONS is almost certainly incapable internet is a manifestation of the IN SEARCH OF of changing the desktop backAntichrist. It’s evil itself.” ground image on his MacBook. At this point, Herzog makes POKÉMON CLASH... the intentions of the documenSo when his new movie IS THERE tary clear: He is more interested about the internet, Lo and in fringe stories than in developing Behold, was announced, the VIOLENCE?” correct emotional reaction was a line of hard criticism. Deep in the —Werner Herzog extreme, unbridled giddiness. If forests of West Virginia, in an area with no cellphone towers or radio stations, we you are a fan of Herzog’s work, there find a woman who lived in a Faraday cage—a was excitement for another installment of masterful storytelling. If you know him primarily as wire cage that shields its contents from radiation— an internet meme, you’ll hope for more sound bites for several years. She believed the radiation had like the one from a recent interview for The Verge, been causing her constant pain. We also meet a in which Herzog attempts to comprehend Pokémon young man in internet-addict rehab whose life was Go. “When two persons in search of a pokémon clash ruined by too much pornography and video games. at the corner of Sunset and San Vicente, is there Interviews like this are interesting in a novelty violence? Is there murder?” he asks the interviewer. sort of way, but they don’t carry much water, critically Lo and Behold is similar to his previous films speaking. These cases are too specific to function as like Encounters at the End of the World and Aguirre, insightful commentary on the vast phenomenon that the Wrath of God in that Herzog has found a fron- is the internet. For every subject that Herzog launches, tier to explore. He has identified the people who there are a dozen documentaries that offer more comstudy, explore and sometimes even conquer it. This plete analysis and more relevant information. frontier is full of monsters and heroes, and every Herzog films aren’t really about criticism, though. They are about Herzog’s sense of wonder, action feels immeasurably consequential. He starts with the beginning of the internet, the existentialist angst that guides his inquiry and showing how engineers at UCLA and Stanford con- his ability to find unique and memorable characnected two computers and attempted to send the ters in interesting situations. Put another way, it’s word “login” between them. Only the letters “lo” all about his voice. were received before the computers crashed. But IT: Lo and Behold is not rated. It opens Friday at the biblical associations of the word have proven SEE Cinema 21 and Kiggins Theatre. appropriate for what has unfolded since.
Anthropoid
Bad Moms
C Hangovers loom large in the films
of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (21 & Over, The Change-Up, The Hangover). Not just actual ones, but the lingering haze as youthful passions awaken to the throbbing responsibilities of adulthood. Bad Moms opens with one of our titular heroines reciting her daily litany of First World problems. Cue the inexplicably raucous party, supermarket-destruction montage, dreamy young widower (Jay Hernandez) and chief antagonist (Christina Applegate as supermom Gwendolyn). R. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
The BFG
B- Like all Roald Dahl books, it’s an ecstatic mix of the sentimental and cruel—the story of a young orphan named Sophie abducted by a lovable Big Friendly Giant who catches and releases dreams. It is also a cavalcade of bodily functions rendered funny and an encyclopedia of brutality at the hands of other, evil giants like Bonecruncher and Fleshlumpeater. PG. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Academy, Avalon, Laurelhurst.
Cafe Society
C- In Woody Allen’s 47th feature, the doe-eyed Bobby arrives in 1930s Los Angeles looking more for an experience than a calling. New York is no life. His mother and father bicker. His sister is married in the suburbs. His brother is a two-bit gangster, though everyone looks the other way. In California, he knows no one but his uncle Phil (Steve Carrell), an in-demand film agent, though he soon begins rubbing elite shoulders and courting Phil’s assistant, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart). The annual Woody Allen production machine has assembled 90 very recognizable minutes here, with self-aware industry commentary, platitudes about New York and L.A., Jewish parentage, infidelity and a male ingénue looking for approval. There’s no body in this shell. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. City Center, Fox Tower, Hollywood.
Captain America: Civil War
A- In pitting team Iron Man (Robert
Downey Jr.) against Team Cap (Chris Evans) over a suspiciously fascist registration law for “enhanced humans,” directors Joe and Anthony Russo could have just put the heroes in a big-ass sandbox and let them duke it out. They do that, and it’s spectacular. But there’s nothing redundant in the action here. Civil War is fun. It’s smart. It’s coherent. And, most importantly, it allows its heart to beat strongly amid the chaos. Your move, DC. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Academy, Laurelhurst, Valley, Vancouver.
A Viggo Mortensen is mud-splat-
tered, idealistic and good at killing things, again. But this time with six kids in tow. Mortensen plays the idealistic patriarch as a drill sergeant with believable heart. He raises his kids in isolation in the Pacific Northwest, schooling them in killing deer, the Bill of Rights, and the banjo. When he leads the brood into society for their mother’s funeral, the film becomes a quirky, emotional quest that outshines Little Miss Sunshine. R. ENID SPITZ. City Center, Fox Tower.
C A buddy action comedy that relies on cheesy stunts, penis jokes and bro buffoonery—like most of its genre brethren—Central Intelligence is a far cry from anything resembling intelligence. PG-13. MICHELLE DEVONA. Valley, Vancouver.
Don’t Think Twice
A- The newest feature from come-
dian Mike Birbiglia follows members of a comedy troupe yearning to get on Weekend Live, a thinly veiled
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REVIEW C O U R T E S Y O F L A I K A E N T E R TA I N M E N T
thriller, Anthropoid instead transports us to the cobbled streets of Nazi-occupied Prague. The story is based on the real-life assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking Nazi who was a chief architect of the Holocaust. It follows exiled soldiers Josef Gabcík (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) as they parachute back into their homeland of Czechoslovakia on a secret mission named Operation Anthropoid. Muddled by inept Slavic accents and a monotonous buildup toward the anticipated assassination of Heydrich, who was nicknamed the “Butcher of Prague,” the film doesn’t build suspense until its second half. R. MICHELLE DEVONA. Bridgeport, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Vancouver.
Central Intelligence
Captain Fantastic
B- Though its title suggests a sci-fi
BLIND PILOT album release performance WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17TH AT 7PM
Blind Pilot turns loss into inspiration on their new album ‘And Then Like Lions’. Written and composed by Nebeker over the course of three years, the record is a transcendent, cathartic response to the loss of his father and end of a 13-year relationship. ‘..Lions’ is Blind Pilot’s most exhilarating album to date, a lush 10-song collection that is resilient, uplifting and often majestic in the face of tragedy.
SEAN WHITE SATURDAY, AUGUST 20TH AT 6PM
CG-EYE: Beetle, Kubo and Monkey.
Laika Classic
Laika’s late-summer bid for animation domination manages multiple triumphs. It’s an original story that feels lived in, a kid-focused fable with real stakes, and it’s a high-octane spectacle full of white-knuckle action and terrifying creatures that’s matched every step of the way by heart. In telling the tale of a one-eyed boy (Art Parkinson) in an ancient Japanese village, director Travis Knight throws a lot at the screen. There are battles with building-sized skeletons, morbid floating apparitions and snarling beasts. Yet amid the eye-popping visuals, the film still takes time for small moments of tenderness. It’s a hero’s quest in which Kubo—aided by a cantankerous monkey (Charlize Theron) and a cursed samurai who’s mutated into a half-beetle (Matthew McConaughey)—must find golden armor to defeat the malevolent Moon King (Ralph Fiennes). Inside all this is a fable about love, courage, death and the power of storytelling. It’s glorious. It’s also the crowning achievement of the animation house that Phil Knight built. Blending puppetry, stop-motion and CGI seamlessly, Kubo looks light years ahead of the technical wonders of Laika’s debut feature, Coraline. It’s luminescent and tactile, layered, fully realized and wholly original. If there’s any quibble, it’s a slight case of tonal inconsistency. This is a kid’s film that pulls no punches with its terrifying images. Much of it looks like a nightmarish mirror reflection of Spirited Away, but our hero also creates whimsical moving origami figures. At one moment, Monkey and Beetle are comic relief, the next they’re locked in battle with bloodthirsty demigods. As a result, kids will probably be reduced to quivering masses while those drawn by its more adult fantasy elements will roll their eyes at the goofball humor. But neither set will be able to take their eyes off the screen. Drawing on everything from ancient folklore to samurai cinema and Princess Mononoke, Laika’s newest epic plays out like a high-octane Hayao Miyazaki puppet show full of simply rendered morals and staggering action. Kubo transcends its kiddie-flick leanings to become a modern fable, emerging not just as the year’s best animated film, but as an instant classic. AP KRYZA. Kubo and the Two Strings is like a dazzling Miyazaki puppet show.
As seen on Comedy Central, called “amazing” by The Laugh Button, “bleakly hilarious” by The AV Club. “highly original” by Penthouse Magazine, “Killing it” by the Chicago Tribune, and “Fearless” by ComedyofChicago.com, Sean White was just listed as one of the top 16 comics in Chicago by Chicago Magazine “with jokes that look misery straight in the eye” and has been performing over 11 years in clubs across 3 countries.
TOMMY THOMSEN SUNDAY, AUGUST 21ST AT 3PM
Western Swing singer, piano pounder, guitar picker extraordinaire– grew up in Sonoma, California, at a time when small town values were still a way of life in the Valley of the Moon. He went on to play Blues Rock with Sammy Hager, Americana with Norton Buffalo, and Blue Grass with Rose Maddox. His cowboy band went on to appear at many of the popular clubs around Texas, Idaho, and Nevada including the Nugget and Reno’s MGM Grand.
DREAMERS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24TH AT 6PM
After more than two years of nomadism and cross-country touring, as well as two EPs, Los Angeles’ DREAMERS is set to unleash its debut full-length LP This Album Does Not Exist. Throughout the album, DREAMERS toys with themes of existence and existentialism, but it’s easy enough to get sucked into their world and dance the big questions away.
‘Of Monkees & Men’ $12.99 CD avail. 8/19/16
‘ “For those of you familiar with the Scott The Hoople box set, this album might seem like old news to you. But let’s face it, there aren’t that many of you out there—I mean, there were only 750 copies made. This slightly updated version of the LP coincides of course with the 50th Anniversary of the Monkees, and why not celebrate it?” —Scott McCaughey ‘
PETER BRODERICK ‘Partners’ $14.99 CD avail. 8/19/16
‘For close to a decade, Portland’s Peter Broderick has cut his own unpredictable path through the world of contemporary music. So far, his wanderings have led him from solo works, to film, dance and documentary scores, as well as art installations. Now Peter takes that unpredictability one step further. For his latest album, he experiments with chance, surrendering an entire song’s composition to the roll of dice.’ Sale prices valid through 9/15/16
A SEE IT: Kubo and the Two Strings is rated PG. It opens Friday at Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Vancouver. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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C O U R T E S Y O F B R I T TA N Y C A M P B E L L
MOVIES
Heroes, as part of POWfest Animations SNL surrogate. It might me their big break, and this film might be Birbiglia’s. It has already been called Birbiglia’s Annie Hall, and with the help of Keegan-Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs, this movie brings together a group of talent on the verge of superstardom. R. ZACH MIDDLETON. Cinema 21.
Finding Dory
B+ The sea has become a little more existential since Nemo got found. For 13 years, the entire world eagerly awaited Pixar’s sequel and the return of Ellen DeGeneres as the forgetful Dory. This time, Dory is on a quest to find her family. There’s tears to fill a tide pool, wit to keep adults amused, and laughs for any audience with a short attention span. You will (hopefully) remember a majority of this film. PG. AMY WOLFE. Academy, Avalon, Clackamas, Empirical, Kennedy School, Tigard.
Florence Foster Jenkins
B There is singing flat. There is off-key caterwauling. Then, there is Mrs. Jenkins’ operatic singing. Search YouTube for recordings of her real-life singing, as words will never do it justice. In the film, Streep has a great deal of fun as she tries to hit the sharp high notes of the “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and her loving husband St. Clair (Hugh Grant) pays off attendees and hides reviews to shield her from the truth. Making fun of terrible singing is cheap and easy, but Florence Foster Jenkins avoids cheap shots. PG-13. JOHN LOCANTHI. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Fox Tower, Vancouver.
Ghostbusters
A It’s been 32 years since the
release of the original, and the Ghostbusters reboot has no chill. The script from Paul Feig and Kate Dippold hammers home the message that it’s 2016 and rebooting a classic Dude Comedy with an all-female cast will make people mad. There are fart jokes, self-referential jokes, vagina jokes, race jokes, comedy nerd jokes, showbiz-insiderArrested Development-type jokes, all presented in a mille-feuille of irony. The movie is maximalist. It’s glorious, and if it ruined your childhood, sorry bro. PG-13. ZACH MIDDLETON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Lloyd, Tigard, Vancouver.
Hell or High Water
B+ Was No Country for Old Men too smart and slow for you? Loved the gunfights and the misanthropic cowboy glamour, but maybe Javier Bardem’s haircut made you uncomfortable? Try Jeff Bridges’ new Western genre vehicle, Hell or High Water. Like its predecessor, it’s set
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in economically depressed West Texas and features desert car chases, jaw-dropping cinematography and a trigger-happy sociopath ex-con. The result is a film that never quite goes where you expect. R. GRACE CULHANE. Bridgeport, Fox Tower, Vancouver.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
B+ This latest offbeat film from Taika Waititi, of What We Do in the Shadows fame, searches for humor and hope in this tragic setup, with just enough bloody boar slayings, militarized foster care agents and conspiracy theories from a bumbling trailer dweller to make a coming-of-age-inthe-wilderness story feel like something you haven’t seen many times before. PG-13. JOHN LOCANTHI. Cinema 21, Hollywood.
Ice Age: Collision Course
C- The fifth installment of an already lustless franchise, Ice Age: Collision Course brings back Sid and the gang, this time on a quest to save the world from a deadly asteroid heading toward Earth. A cacophony of brazen, shrill characters coupled with a predictable and tedious plot certainly makes it seem as if that asteroid couldn’t hit soon enough. PG. MICHELLE DEVONA. Clackamas, Division, Vancouver.
Jason Bourne
A- Bourne never had an identity issue. Robert Ludlum’s series has always been the real-world response to a genre of CGI stunts—no Aston Martin, no suits, hardly any sex. For the fifth installment, director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon make a welcome return and deliver onbrand thrills via hand-held footage of riots in Athens, a motorcycle chase down a gazillion nard-punching stairs and, of course, many scenes in which assassins splash cold water on their faces and reflect in a mirror. But something is off. This time, there’s a very next-gen storyline involving a tech startup. It feels like writers sitting in a conference room asked, “What’re the kids into these days? Ah, the Facebook.” PG-13. ENID SPITZ. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Oak Grove, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard, Vancouver.
The Jungle Book
B+ Director Jon Favreau may have
been out to show off the latest in special effects, but his reverence for the classic 1967 cartoon shines through all the digital rendering. He probably should’ve thought twice before having Bill Murray sing a warbly, soulless version of the “Bare Necessities.” PG. LAUREN TERRY. Vancouver.
The Legend of Tarzan
Googling Hozier’s music video—a sad man at a piano spliced with softcore porn and animal nuzzling—will give you a good idea. PG-13. Avalon, Empirical, Kennedy School.
Life, Animated
A- The Little Mermaid teaches autistic children writing skills in director Roger Ross Williams’ Disney doc. For most of us, Mermaid was an under-the-sea sing-along and The Lion King our entree to the circleof-life lesson, but for Owen Suskind, animation was vital for developing his reading, writing and communication skills. PG. AMY WOLFE. Bridgeport.
Lights Out
C+ There are stylish horror films, and there are horror films with stylists. Lights Out is the latter. It’s actually a well-made haunter with some effective jump scares and a couple of great laughs. A general audience will be unnerved, occasionally scared out of their wits, and probably satisfied by this old-fashioned exploration of fear of the dark. PG-13. NATHAN CARSON. Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Tigard.
The Lobster
B+ The Lobster is one of those dystopian sci-fi movies that needs to spend the first 30 minutes laying down the ground rules of the setting. David (Colin Farrell) is single, which is outlawed, so he goes to a singles retreat. But there is one catch: If you don’t find a mate within 60 days, you will be turned into an animal. On the plus side, you get to pick your animal. David chooses the lobster. Interesting concept, though this vision of the future mostly involves Farrell, John C. Reilly, Rachel Weisz and the rest of cast speaking in a dull, passionless monotone. R. JOHN LOCANTHI. Academy, Laurelhurst.
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
C Based on a true story of hardpartying brothers Mike and Dave Stangle (Adam DeVine and Zac Efron), this summer comedy is a frat fantasy in which the Stangles use Craigslist to find parent-friendly dates for their sister’s wedding. R. LAUREN TERRY. Valley, Vancouver.
Nerve
B+ Would you kiss a stranger
on camera for $100? Nerve asks what happens when you combine Periscope-like live video with a democratized game of truth or dare in which the consequences are lifethreatening and the rewards are fame and fortune. When a bookish high school girl (Emma Roberts) gets swept up in the game with the help of a mysterious stud (Dave Franco), it seems they’re in for a night of harmless fun. But when the
The Nice Guys
A- The Nice Guys exists in some weird, hyperviolent mirror image of Los Angeles—one that looks a lot like Atlanta. It’s like Roger Rabbit’s Toontown, but populated with cartoons that bleed. R. AP KRYZA. Laurelhurst.
Nine Lives
Trapping Kevin Spacey inside a tabby cat’s body so he can’t continually ignore and bone his gorgeous wife (Jennifer Garner) is a delightfully feminist and felinist plot in itself. Casting Christopher Walken as an eccentric pet store owner named Felix Perkins is the cherry on top. Not screened for critics. PG. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
That’s where Rogen and Goldberg’s Sausage Party transcends other R-rated animated provocations (Fritz the Cat, Heavy Metal) to become something more. This is a thinking person’s 90-minute dick joke. And shit, if we can’t ponder big issues while giggling at the sight of a talking, used condom or a sentient douchebag with the voice of Nick Kroll, maybe we’ve lost something in society. This is a film that starts out funny and ratchets up the insanity until a bugfuck final 15 minutes of blissful depravity, with pop-culture references and visual gags littering each frame, and gut-busting performances by Apatow elite like Bill Hader, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill and a fantastic Michael Cera. It’s a rare comedy that gets better as it progresses. R. AP KRYZA. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns 1 & 2, Tigard, Vancouver.
The Secret Life of Pets
Louis C.K. voices a pampered terrier who gets sucked from his NYC home into a tough gang of pets set on punishing the people who’ve wronged them. PG. Beaverton, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
Now You See Me 2
The Shallows
anything else, Now You See Me 2 supersedes its predecessor on every level of absurdity. Jesse Eisenberg leads the Four Horsemen in his usual irritatingly haughty fashion as the gang goes on a mission to steal a computer chip that can control the world. Trying too hard to be cool with a string of tricks each more ridiculous than the next, the flashy caper proves anything but magical. PG-13. MICHELLE DEVONA. Vancouver.
nation of Blake Lively, a computergenerated shark, and director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax), many critics welcomed The Shallows as a relief from the sequels and summer superhero flicks. But drone shots of an aquamarine coastline do not a good film make. PG-13. LAUREN TERRY. Vancouver.
C- A hyperbolic spectacle more than
Pete’s Dragon
A Pete’s Dragon deserves the hype. Effortlessly evoking the triumphant emotions of Disney’s best live-action outings, it also provides a somber examination of the death of innocence, set among a magical pastiche of misty 1980s forest towns straight out of E.T., or the more recent Stranger Things. The adults do fine work, and it’s fun to see Karl Urban struggle in a rare turn as the villain, but the real stars here are a smart screenplay that does take its young audience for granted, and, of course, the giant CGI dragon. The constant pull on your heartstrings is balanced with just enough comic relief, and the computer-generated dragon effects are thoughtfully designed and seamlessly executed. Your kids will cry through the majority of the film, and you probably will too. PG. MIKE GALLUCCI. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Moreland, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Sausage Party
A- Sometimes, a
dick joke is just a dick joke. But sometimes, a dick joke can be an existential meditation on atheism butting up against organized religion, false gods and politics.
C+ In spite of the worrying combi-
Star Trek Beyond
The 13th Trek movie has been heralded as a return to good, old-fashioned fun for the series. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Suicide Squad
C- As the saying goes, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become Ben Affleck. Or something to that effect. Following the dismal Batman v Superman with Suicide Squad, DC seemed intent on injecting some Slurpee-colored mischief back into its monochromatic veins. Now, more than a decade into an era of popular culture that’s obsessed with the concept of the antihero, is the idea of criminal saviors really that novel? Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve become accustomed to protagonists with questionable morals. Maybe it’s the film’s PG-13 rating. Either way, Suicide Squad hardly makes good on its subversive promise, rushing through an overstuffed, incoherent two hours and pureeing everything into a slush of clichés, albeit one rendered in the garish palette of a Warped Tour merchandise table. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, CineMagic, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Roseway, St. Johns 1 & 2, Tigard, Vancouver.
X-Men: Apocalypse
B+ The latest in the X-franchise
C O U R T E S Y O F E U R O PA C O R P.
proves that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not the only home for A-grade superhero fare. With Apocalypse, writer Bryan Singer has finally steered the ship back on course, crafting one of the greatest comics pictures to date. Factions on the internet will inevitably find reasons to hate this movie. The Egyptians will be too pale for some. The question is: Do you want to have fun and enjoy a comic book turned into a quarter-billion-dollar feature film or would you rather stay home reading Proust? PG-13. NATHAN CARSON. Academy, Jubitz, Valley.
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NINE LIVES
AP FILM STUDIES COURTESY OF NEW LINE CINEMA
dares posed by the internet mob turn dark, the pair must fight for their lives. With an EDM-tinged soundtrack, lots of desktop computer screen shares, and visuals that meet somewhere between Tron and Spring Breakers, this one was made for a younger generation. And yet, rarely do teen movies get the benefit of a stellar idea to build on. PG-13. ZACH MIDDLETON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Tigard.
THE WEDDING SINGER
Enter Sandman REMEMBERING WHEN ADAM SANDLER WASN’T TERRIBLE BY A P KRYZA
@APKryza
These days, it’s fashionable to shit on Adam Sandler,largely because Adam Sandler likes to shit on celluloid. Or Netflix, where he’s currently plopping out fare like The Ridiculous Six and The Do-Over as part of an exclusive deal he struck with the video-streaming company, apparently so he could continue to come to work in sweatpants. In the wake of Little Nicky, Pixels, 50 First Dates, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Grown Ups and the like—films that run the gamut from obnoxious exercises in high-concept idiocy to lazyass vacation reels—it’s become increasingly easy to forget the era when Sandler was actually fantastic. It was 19941998, and this week it’s alive in Portland. The Golden Age of Sandler—which was probably more a Rusty Bronze Age for anybody who had grown armpit hair prior to the era—includes the inspired lunacy of Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, but it’s bookended almost perfectly by slacker comedy Airheads and The Wedding Singer. Incidentally, both movies are grounded in music and showcase Sandler—fresh off his skit and music-based They’re All Gonna Laugh at You record—playing to all his strengths. 1994’s Airheads features a trio of grunge rockers—Steve Buscemi, Sandler and Brendan Fraser, for some reason—who get all Dog Day Afternoon in a radio station. It’s not the strongest film, but it shows us Sandler at his subdued best, offering a glimpse at the actor’s keen ability to go from meek to rage-fueled that he’d use to perfect effect in P.T. Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, a rare latter-day Sandler film that showed a glimmer of a great actor. A great actor who would go on to star in fucking The Cobbler. So it’s kind of a wash. Perhaps Sandler’s best-loved film, The Wedding Singer is better remembered, largely because the ’80s setting crystallizes it in a specific time. And while the laziness that pervades Sandler’s entire filmography is present here—wigs as punch lines, a little pre-Chuck and Larry homophobia—its heart is in the right place.
But the popularity of The Wedding Singer— essentially a film version of I Love the ’80s—had consequences. It announced Sandler as a bona fide A-lister and established his rapport with Drew Barrymore as a lowbrow Hanks-Ryan team that would show diminishing returns in 50 First Dates and Blended, two movies in the “Adam Sandler and friends take a vacation” subgenre that sent the pair to Hawaii and Africa. Airheads shows us a young, energetic Sandler emerging from the shadows of SNL, hungry and willing to take chances on absurdist humor that embraces the sophomoric. With The Wedding Singer, he showed a sensitive side and a willingness to go for broke when it came to higher-concept fare. The role meant he could basically do whatever he wanted going forward. Apparently, what he wanted was to wear pajamas and go on vacations with friends. That makes his early work all the more fascinating. Sandler got to do exactly what he wanted. And because of the goodwill built between 1994 and 1996, we keep going back for more, hoping at some point he’ll strike “stop looking at me, swan” lighting once again. Who knows, maybe there’s a static charge on the nice couch he bought with that Netflix money. SEE IT: Airheads is at Cartopia, 9 pm Sunday, Aug. 21. The Wedding Singer opens Wednesday at Mission Theater. ALSO SHOWING:
Frak! Theater rolls out a digital restoration of the groundbreaking Planet of the Apes, but offers no answer why we still haven’t seen a fully realized version of Troy McClure’s Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! Hollywood Theatre. 6:45 pm Thursday, Aug. 18. The John Waters musical classic Hairspray gets the Top Down treatment, with the roof of Hotel deLuxe poised for a touch of the Divine. Hotel deLuxe. 7 pm Thursday, Aug. 18. In Tim Burton’s Batman, Jack Nicholson pulled off the miracle of making a damaged gangster in clown makeup seem damaged without tattooing the word “damaged” on his fucking forehead. Academy Theater. Aug. 19-25. With King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest, Bette Davis began her slow transition from Hollywood icon to trash-cinema champion. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7:30 pm Saturday, Aug. 20. See more at wweek.com. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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The first thing we learned when trying to make cannabis cocktails is that it’s really, really hard to find liquid cannabis that won’t get you high. In this state at least, our liquor control commission is very adamant that THC and alcohol don’t and can’t mix. So when we discovered that two famous vegan spots in Los Angeles, Gratitude and Gracias Madre, were making high-end cocktails using an over-the-counter tincture containing only CBD—the Xanax-like cannabinoid that causes relaxation and pain relief but no impairment—it was way too good to pass up. If L.A. has cannabis cocktails, surely Portland should have them, right? Well, we don’t. So, short the money for the plane trip, we decided to remake Gracias Madre cannabis cocktails ourselves. The big problem was getting the CBD oil. Every time we tried to pick up some form of CBD tincture, it contained too much intoxicating THC to be sold to us legally without a medical card. Local company Messina Bitters makes cocktail-ready cannabis bitters—but only in THC versions. We ordered online and when the site failed to deliver for a week, we tried to make liquid out of a solid, sticky CO2 oil. But that thing about oil and water not mixing? It’s totally true. Even when the liquid was heated up, trying to dissolve the CBD oil into liquid was like dousing rubber cement. The oil stuck to every solid thing—everything we stirred it with, and every glass we put it in. Our office now has some very relaxed toothpicks. But finally, we were able to get hold of that cannabis oil website and procure some liquid 4 percent CBD hemp oil—a dark and viscid substance that looks like old balsamic vinegar. Gracias Madre’s Stoney Negroni costs $20—a variation on the classic Italian-style gin-vermouth-amaro cocktail that includes a bar spoon of ruby port and five drops of CBD tincture. At the restaurant, their orange slice was stamped with a silly little script saying “Puff. Puff. Pass.” We did not do this. After mixing the negroni, however, we discovered that the CBD oil and liquor still didn’t quite mix. Even stirred, it formed discrete spheres of brown inside the drink, surrounded by lighter brown slick—an unappealing adulteration that
RICK VODICKA
MATTHEW KORFHAGE mkorfhage@wweek.com
also showed up as a grassy, herbal tang in the nose. The drink tasted like a nice negroni—thank you very much—with a slight weirdball aftertaste, as if it were steeped with clover and hay. Even at its low dose, though, the CBD made a difference—presenting as a wash of relaxation and an odd halo effect around my sinuses. One suspects a bit of synergy with the alcohol. Cocktail two was far more successful. Again, we dispensed with the cutesy presentation. The Rolled Fashioned is a play on the Old Fashioned that goes half-andhalf between bourbon and aged Mezcal (we used Scorpion), and uses sarsaparilla syrup instead of sugar cube or simple sugar. Gracias Madre hangs a dime bag stuffed with a vegan churro on the outside of the glass—we almost did this, but with mini churros from Jack in the Box. We used syrup from Nob Hill martini spot Bartini—a lovely woody version—and though the oil still swam weirdly in the drink, the smokiness of both mezcal and syrup masked the weird herbal notes entirely. It was a damn fine drink with smokiness more subtle than overpowering, and the darkness of the liquor blended better with the oil. Apparently, when making cannabis cocktails, use smoke. Two CBD cocktails after a workday turn out to be remarkably relaxing. It was difficult to persuade myself to go to dinner. So, here’s the drink we recommend: 1 ounce W.L. Weller wheated whiskey, 1 ounce Scorpion Mezcal Añejo, half an ounce sarsaparilla syrup (available from Fee Brothers online), squeezed orange twist, two taps angostura bitters and five drops 4 percent CBD hemp oil. Combine over ice.
W W S TA F F
BY N AT E WAG G O N E R
Cat and Girl
The Swordfish Don’t Swim Here Anymore I used to love Old Portland in the summer. My favorite thing about it was when the swordfish would swim up the Columbia and into the Willamette from their homes in the warmer waters of the Pacific. Old Portlanders will remember this happened only a few days every summer, but it would be quite a show. People would gather on the waterfront to watch the swordfish leap 20 or 30 feet in the air, fence with each other, commandeer boats from those brave enough or foolish enough to venture close, and crash them into bridges. Marine biologists were at odds about what exactly caused the swordfish to pursue this annual behavior, though it seems to me it was for no reason in particular, that the swordfish just possessed the same degree of fondness for the city that we all did at the time. Old Portlanders will remember one time when the swordfish took over a dinner cruise on the Portland Spirit. If memory serves, there was a wedding party aboard at the time. The bride was in her 50s and on her second marriage; the groom was 70 and hoping for better luck on his fourth or fifth. The swordfish gathered the frightened celebrants in the ballroom, and just when things might have started getting ugly, a quick-thinking porter whistled at the gang of swordfish to get their attention, and then began throwing salmon fillets overboard. The swordfish followed the salmon back into the water and presumably enjoyed quite a feast. They kept coming for a few years every summer after that, but gradually their numbers began to taper off. Marine biologists were puzzled as to why they stopped coming, but longtime Portlanders understood and recognized that, sadly, this phenomenon could never happen in New Portland. Dr. Mitchell Millar is president of the Olde Portland Preservation Society, and leads semi-regular tours of the Willamette aboard the good ship Portland Spirit, which, when not encumbered by flotillas of pleasure boats, makes good speed to the great falls in Oregon City and back, while he regales newcomers with stories about how great the city once was and when it began its decline. To book passage on an upcoming tour go to merctickets.com and use the coupon code LiferBoat. Willamette Week AUGUST 17, 2016 wweek.com
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“Revenge of Inerts”--with an element of surprise, I hope. 28-Across 54 He’ll pour you one 56 Slippery fish 57 Frying pan sound 58 It really isn’t butter 59 Cellular tissue that makes up all glands 63 More than want 64 “Other” category, for short 65 Recent NFL Hall of Fame inductee Brett 66 Investigators: Abbr. 67 “No question!” 68 11- or 12-year-old
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Across 1 The Donald’s first wife 6 Band on Butthead’s T-shirt 10 Elementary school basics 14 “Say that thou ___ forsake me”: Shakespeare 15 “The Owl and the Pussycat” poet Edward 16 ___ Cynwyd, PA 17 Beyond saving 19 “The Heat ___” (“Beverly Hills Cop”
song) 20 Zurich peak 21 Stephen of “The Crying Game” 22 It’s often done with soil or fish tanks 24 Suffer a mosquito attack, say 26 Inkling 28 Snapple stuff 29 Hip or Nap follower 30 Feline foot 31 Admitted as a guest 33 He was joint FIFA Player of the Century
along with Pele 37 Cube creator Rubik 38 Bygone auto 39 Info 44 Martini & ___ (winemakers) 45 Plumb of “The Brady Bunch” 46 Judith with two Tonys 49 1099-___ (bank tax form) 50 Michael of “Arrested Development” 52 Herb-flavored
1 Conventioneers’ clip-ons 2 One end of the visible spectrum 3 Took on 4 Abbr. on a bad check 5 Centipede creator 6 Kelp, for example 7 Susan Wojcicki, for YouTube 8 Quayle or Marino 9 Brunch offering 10 Not that much 11 Binary 12 Surround, with “on” 13 Band with the album “Abraxas” 18 Abbr. after a former military leader’s name 23 Attempts, with “at” 25 Boxers alternatives 26 “Unaccustomed as ___ ... “ 27 The Rock’s real first name 30 Not so well off
32 Aphrodite’s beloved 34 Beethoven’s Third, familiarly 35 African antelope 36 Costar of Bea and Betty 39 Board game where players guess what three things have in common 40 Puff the Magic Dragon’s land 41 Address of the Boss’s band 42 Zoologist’s eggs 43 Hard to pin down 47 Nutritional supplement brand in cans 48 Flunkies 51 Axis, to the Allies 52 “___ Interwebs” (sarcastic name for online sites) 53 “___ My Heart in San Francisco” 55 Body ___ (piercings, earlobe stretching, etc.) 56 Do art on metal, e.g. 60 Black coffee gowith 61 “Happiness ___ Warm Puppy” 62 Scientist’s formulation last week’s answers
©2016 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 #JONZ791.
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Week of AUGUST 11
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Can you imagine feeling at home in the world no matter where you are? If you eventually master this art, outer circumstances won’t distort your relationship with yourself. No matter how crazy or chaotic the people around you might be, you will remain rooted in your unshakable sense of purpose; you will respond to any given situation in ways that make you both calm and alert, amused and curious, compassionate for the suffering of others and determined to do what’s best for you. If you think these are goals worth seeking, you can make dramatic progress toward them in the coming weeks. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): As I tried to meditate on your horoscope, my next-door neighbor was wielding a weed-whacker to trim her lawn, and the voices in my head were shouting extra loud. So I decided to drive down to the marsh to get some high-quality silence. When I arrived at the trail head, I found an older man in ragged clothes leaning against the fence. Nearby was a grocery cart full of what I assumed were all his earthly belongings. “Doing nothing is a very difficult art,” he croaked as I slipped by him, “because you’re never really sure when you are done.” I immediately recognized that his wisdom might be useful to you. You are, after all, in the last few days of your recharging process. It’s still a good idea for you to lie low and be extra calm and vegetate luxuriously. But when should you rise up and leap into action again? Here’s my guess: Get one more dose of intense stillness and silence. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): My readers have a range of approaches for working with the counsel I offer. Some study the horoscopes for both their sun signs and rising signs, then create do-it-yourself blends of the two. Others prefer to wait until the week is over before consulting what I’ve written. They don’t want my oracles to influence their future behavior, but enjoy evaluating their recent past in light of my analysis. Then there are the folks who read all 12 of my horoscopes. They refuse to be hemmed in by just one forecast, and want to be free to explore multiple options. I encourage you to try experiments like these in the coming days. The moment is ripe to cultivate more of your own unique strategies for using and interpreting the information you absorb -- both from me and from everyone else you listen to. CANCER (June 21-July 22): Have you been drinking a lot of liquids? Are you spending extra time soaking in hot baths and swimming in bodies of water that rejuvenate you? Have you been opening your soul to raw truths that dissolve your fixations and to beauty that makes you cry and to love that moves you to sing? I hope you’re reverently attending to these fluidic needs. I hope you’re giving your deepest yearnings free play and your freshest emotions lots of room to unfold. Smart, well-lubricated intimacy is a luxurious necessity, my dear. Stay very, very wet. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In my opinion, you need to bask in the glorious fury of at least one brainstorm -- preferably multiple brainstorms over the course of the next two weeks. What can you do to ensure that happens? How might you generate a flood of new ideas about how to live your life and understand the nature of reality? Here are some suggestions: Read books about creativity. Hang around with original thinkers and sly provocateurs. Insert yourself into situations that will strip you of your boring certainties. And take this vow: “I hereby unleash the primal power of my liberated imagination.” VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): When you were a child, did you play with imaginary friends? During your adolescence, did you nurture a fantasy relationship with a pretend boyfriend or girlfriend? Since you reached adulthood, have you ever enjoyed consorting with muses or guardian angels or ancestral spirits? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are in a good position to take full advantage of the subtle opportunities and cryptic invitations that are coming your way. Unexpected sources are poised to provide unlikely inspirations in unprecedented ways.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): When you were born, you already carried the seeds of gifts you would someday be able to provide -- specific influences or teachings or blessings that only you, of all the people who have ever lived, could offer the world. How are you doing in your quest to fulfill this potential? Here’s what I suspect: Your seeds have been ripening slowly and surely. But in the coming months, they could ripen at a more rapid pace. Whether they actually do or not may depend on your willingness to take on more responsibilities -- interesting responsibilities, to be sure -- but bigger than you’re used to. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): I suspect that you will soon be culminating a labor of love you’ve been nurturing and refining for many moons. How should you celebrate? Maybe with some champagne and caviar? If you’d like to include bubbly in your revels, a good choice might be 2004 Belle Epoque Rose. Its floral aroma and crispy mouth-feel rouse a sense of jubilation as they synergize the flavors of blood orange, pomegranate, and strawberry. As for caviar: Consider the smooth, aromatic, and elegant roe of the albino beluga sturgeon from the unpolluted areas of the Caspian Sea near Iran. But before I finish this oracle, let me also add that a better way to honor your accomplishment might be to take the money you’d spend on champagne and caviar, and instead use it as seed money for your next big project. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Some species of weeds become even more robust and entrenched as they develop resistances to the pesticides that are designed to eradicate them. This is one example of how fighting a problem can make the problem worse -- especially if you attack too furiously or use the wrong weapons. I invite you to consider the possibility that this might be a useful metaphor for you to contemplate in the coming weeks. Your desire to solve a knotty dilemma or shed a bad influence is admirable. Just make sure you choose a strategy that actually works.
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CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to compose an essay on at least one of the following themes: 1. “How I Fed and Fed My Demons Until They Gorged Themselves to Death.” 2. “How I Exploited My Nightmares in Ways That Made Me Smarter and Cuter.” 3. “How I Quietly and Heroically Transformed a Sticky Problem into a Sleek Opportunity.” 4. “How I Helped Myself by Helping Other People.” For extra credit, Capricorn -- and to earn the right to trade an unholy duty for a holy one -- write about all four subjects. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I suspect that in the coming months you will be drawn to wandering through the frontiers and exploring the unknown. Experimentation will come naturally. Places and situations you have previously considered to be off-limits may be downright comfortable. In fact, it’s possible that you will have to escape your safety zones in order to fully be yourself. Got all that? Now here’s the kicker. In the coming weeks, everything I just described will be especially apropos for your closest relationships. Are you interested in redefining and reconfiguring the ways that togetherness works for you? PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): If you’re playing the card game known as bridge, you’re lucky if you are dealt a hand that has no cards of a particular suit. This enables you, right from the beginning, to capture tricks using the trump suit. In other words, the lack of a certain resource gives you a distinct advantage. Let’s apply this metaphor to your immediate future, Pisces. I’m guessing that you will benefit from what may seem to be an inadequacy or deficit. An absence will be a useful asset.
Homework What’s the situation in your life where it’s hardest for you to be loving? Practice being a master of compassion there in the coming week. Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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